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Babe
Ruth |
| On June 13,
1902, George Herman Ruth took his seven year-old son George Jr.
to St. Mary's Industrial School for Boys and signed over custody
to the Jesuit Missionaries. George, Jr. was a mischievous young
boy and quickly discovered that the baseball field provided a positive
outlet for his youthful energy. Young George Ruth, Jr., displayed
his potential at a very young age, playing all positions on the
field and demonstrating superb hitting talent. By his late teens
Ruth was a major league prospect. On February 27, 1914, at the age
of nineteen, Ruth signed with Jack Dunn of the Baltimore Orioles.
Jack Dunn was well known for picking up young talent. When George
Ruth, Jr., appeared with Dunn at the ballpark the players quipped,
"Here's Jack's newest Babe." The nick name stuck and thus
began the fabled career of Babe Ruth, ball player and foster child. |
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Charles Dickens |
| British novelist,
generally considered the greatest of the Victorian period. He was
born in Portsmouth. When his father, a clerk, was thrown into debtors
prison, Charles was withdrawn from school and forced to work in
a factory. As a young man he worked as a reporter. His fiction career
began with short pieces reprinted as Sketches by "Boz".
The comic novel The Pickwick Papers made him the most popular English
author of his time. After a trip to America, his novels began to
express a heightened uneasiness about the evils of Victorian industrial
society, which intensified in the semiautobiographical David Copperfield.
A Tale of Two Cities appeared in the period when he achieved great
popularity for his public readings. Dickens's works are characterized
by attacks on social evils and inadequate institutions, an encyclopedic
knowledge of London, pathos, a vein of the macabre, a pervasive
spirit of benevolence and geniality, inexhaustible powers of character
creation, an acute ear for characteristic speech, and a highly individual
and inventive prose style. |
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Dan O'Brien |
| O'Brien was adopted at age two
and raised in a large family with a wide racial mix. His athleticism
was clear, in high school winning four state track titles his senior
year and making all-state in football and basketball. He scored
well in the decathlon in 1988 but was dogged by injury problems.
In 1992, he avenged a no-height performance in the pole vault at
the Olympic Trials - which kept him off the decathlon team - to
set the world record later in the year. It was one of several challenges
he overcame. He spent 1997 in Arizona and returned to Moscow, Idaho,
for serious training before clinching the Olympic gold in 1996 with
a personal record in the javelin. Unable to compete in 2000 Olympic
Trials after straining the plantar fascia in his left arch while
training, he still hopes to reach 9000 points in the decathlon. |
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Edward Albee |
| Edward Albee is one of the most
interesting and influential American dramatists. His work is a continuous
theatrical experiment exploring and expanding the boundaries of
drama. His plays range from existentialist drama to metaphysical
dream plays. This experimental drive has earned Albee both commercial
successes and praises from critics as well as bitter reviews and
failures at the box office. To the general public Albee is probably
best known by his play Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, but theatre
fans around the globe are familiar with his work which has garnered
him three Pulitzer prizes and two Tony Awards. Born in Washington
D.C. on March 12th 1928 Albee is still active, writing and directing
his plays, teaching at the School of Theatre of the University of
Houston and giving lectures on his work at colleges around the USA.
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Faith Hill |
| Born in Jackson, Mississippi
on September 21, 1967 and raised in the small town of Star, Mississippi
Faith Hill is one of the most well known country singers of the
nineties. Since age three she began singing at family gatherings
and formed her first band when she was seventeen performing at
local rodeos. She moved to Nashville in 1989 and had limited success
until she befriended songwriter Gary Burr, who produced her demo
tape, and suitably impressed Warner Brothers Records. Her sparkling
debut single 'Wild One' topped the country charts and she followed
it with a version of Janis Joplin 's 'Piece Of My Heart'. Much
of Hill's popularity has been fuelled by having one of the best
touring bands in the business. 'It Matters To Me' was a further
US country chart topper in 1996. In 1997 she recorded with her
husband Tim McGraw, resulting in the number 1 hit and CMA Award-winning
'It's Your Love'. |
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George Washington Carver |
| U.S. agricultural chemist and agronomist.
Born a slave near Diamond Grove, Mo., Carver lived until age 10
or 12 on his former owner's plantation, then left and worked at
a variety of menial jobs. He did not obtain a high-school education
until his late twenties; he then obtained bachelor's and master's
degrees from Iowa State Agricultural College. In 1896 he joined
B. T. Washington at the Tuskegee Institute (now Tuskegee Univ.)
in Alabama, where he became director of agricultural research. He
was soon promoting the planting of peanuts and soybeans, legumes
that he knew would help restore the fertility of depleted soil.
To make such crops profitable, he worked intensively with the sweet
potato and the peanut (then not even recognized as a crop), ultimately
developing 118 derivative products from sweet potatoes and 300 from
peanuts. His efforts helped liberate the South from its untenable
cotton dependency; by 1940 the peanut was the South's second largest
cash crop. During World War II he devised 500 dyes to replace those
no longer available from Europe. Despite international acclaim and
extraordinary job offers, he remained at Tuskegee throughout his
life, donating his life's savings in 1940 to establish the Carver
Research Foundation at Tuskegee. |
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President Gerald Ford |
| Born in Omaha, Neb., he was an
infant when his parents divorced, and his mother later married Gerald
R. Ford. He attended the Univ. of Michigan and Yale law school,
and practiced law in Michigan after World War II. He served in the
U.S. House of Representative and after S. Agnew resigned as vice
president in 1973, R. Nixon nominated Ford to fill the vacant post.
When the Watergate scandal forced Nixon's departure, Ford became
the first president who had not been elected to either the vice
presidency or the presidency. His administration gradually lowered
the high inflation rate it inherited. Ford's relations with the
Democratic-controlled Congress were typified by his more than 50
vetoes, of which more than 40 were sustained. In the final days
of the Vietnam War in 1975, he ordered an airlift of 237,000 anti-Communist
Vietnamese refugees, most of whom came to the U.S. Reaction against
Watergate contributed to his defeat by J. Carter in 1976. |
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Ingrid Bergman |
| Swedish film and stage actress.
After appearing in Intermezzo in Sweden, she came to the U.S. to
act in the English-language version. Her radiance and unaffected
charm made her a star in films such as Casablanca, For Whom the
Bell Tolls, Gaslight, and A. Hitchcock's Spellbound and Notorious.
The scandal caused by her love affair with R. Rossellini kept her
off the U.S. screen for seven years, and she made films in Europe
before being welcomed back to Hollywood in Anastasia. Her later
films include Indiscreet, Cactus Flower, Murder on the Orient Express,
and Autumn Sonata. |
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James Michener |
| Born in 1907 James A. Michener
is a world famous author. His first book, Tales of the South Pacific,
was published when he was forty. In the course of the next forty-five
years Mr. Michener would write such monumental best-sellers as Sayonara,The
Bridges of Toko-Ri, Hawaii, The Source, Iberia, The Covenant, Centennial,
Chesapeake, Space, Texas, Alaska, Poland, Caribbean in addition
to Tales of the Pacific which was the basis for the musical SOUTH
PACIFIC written by Rodgers & Hammerstein with Joshua Logan.
Decorated with America's highest civilian award, the Presidential
Medal of Freedom, Mr. Michener has served on the Advisory Council
to NASA, the Postal Committee, and the operating committee for the
U.S. radio network broadcasting to the former U.S.S.R. and its satellites.
He holds honorary doctorates in five fields from thirty leading
universities, and received an award from the President's Committee
on the Arts and Humanities for his continuing commitment to the
arts in America. |
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John Lennon |
| British singer and songwriter.
Born in Liverpool, he wanted to be a sailor like his father, but
decided to be a musician after hearing E. Presley's recordings.
In 1957 he formed the band that became the Beatles, and in the 1960s
he enjoyed enormous success performing with the group and writing
songs with P. McCartney. In the mid-1960s he began working on side
projects in film and music, notably with the Japanese-U.S. avant-garde
artist Yoko Ono, whom he married in 1969. Their political activism
and social ideals were reflected in much of Lennon's early solo
work, incl. the hit "Imagine," and attracted the attention
of the U.S. government, which sought to have him deported. After
1975 he withdrew from public life; he and Ono returned with the
album Double Fantasy shortly before his murder by a deranged fan. |
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Langston Hughes |
| U.S. poet and writer. Born in
Joplin, Mo., he published the poem "The Negro Speaks of Rivers"
when he was 19, briefly attended Columbia Univ., and worked on an
Africa-bound freighter. His career was dramatically launched when
Hughes, working as a busboy, presented his poems to V. Lindsay as
he dined. His poetry collections include The Weary Blues and Montage
of a Dream Deferred. His later The Panther and the Lash reflects
black anger and militancy. Among his other works are short stories
(incl. The Ways of White Folks), autobiographies, many works for
the stage (incl. lyrics for K. Weill's Street Scene), anthologies,
and translations of poetry by F. García Lorca and G. Mistral.
His well-known comic character Jesse B. Semple, called Simple, appeared
in his newspaper columns. |
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Louisa May Alcott |
| U.S. author. Born in Germantown,
Pa., she grew up in Transcendentalist circles in Boston and Concord,
Mass. She began writing to help support her sisters. An ardent abolitionist,
she volunteered as a nurse during the Amer. Civil War, where she
contracted the typhoid that damaged her health the rest of her life;
her letters, published as Hospital Sketches, first brought her fame.
With the huge success of the autobiographical Little Women, she
finally escaped debt. An Old-Fashioned Girl, Little Men, and Jo's
Boys also drew on her experiences as an educator. |
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Malcolm X |
| Born in Omaha, Neb., he was raised
in Michigan, where the family house was burned by the Ku Klux Klan;
his father was later murdered and his mother was institutionalized.
He moved to Boston, drifted into petty crime, and was sent to prison
for burglary in 1946. He converted to the Black Muslim faith the
same year. On his release in 1952, he changed his last name to X
rejecting his "slave name." Soon after meeting the Nation
of Islam's leader, E. Muhammad, he became the sect's most effective
speaker and organizer. He spoke with bitter eloquence against white
exploitation of blacks and derided the civil rights movement and
integration, calling instead for black separatism, black pride,
and the use of violence for self-protection. Differences with E.
Muhammad prompted Malcolm to leave the Nation of Islam in 1964.
A pilgrimage to Mecca led him to acknowledge the possibility of
world brotherhood and to convert to orthodox Islam. Rival Black
Muslims made threats against his life, and he was shot to death
at a rally in a Harlem ballroom. |
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Marilyn Monroe |
| Born in Los Angeles, she endured
a loveless childhood and a brief teenage marriage. After working
as a photographer's model, she made her screen debut in 1948 and
won bit parts in The Asphalt Jungle and All About Eve. She achieved
stardom as a blonde sex symbol in the comedies Gentlemen Prefer
Blondes, How to Marry a Millionaire, and The Seven Year Itch. After
studying at the Actors Studio, she starred in more ambitious films,
incl. Bus Stop, Some Like It Hot, and The Misfits. Her private life,
which included marriages to J. DiMaggio and A. Miller, was widely
publicized. She died at 36 of an apparently self-administered barbiturate
overdose. |
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Nancy Reagan |
| As an actress in Hollywood, Nancy
Davis met and dated actor Ronald Reagan who was recently divorced
from Actress Jane Wyman. They made one motion picture together,
Hellcats Of The Navy. After their marriage Reagan was elected president
of the Screen Actors Guild, and later turned his career to politics.
A democrat at the time, it was Nancy who persuaded him to join the
republican party. She was instrumental in shaping his political
philosophy, and as First Lady she often stood directly behind him
and whipsered "appropriate responses" to reporter's questions.
Her domineering manner caused frequent run-ins with his staff that
earned her the title, "Dragon Lady". * In an effort to
combat the growing drug problem in the U. S. she organized a White
House summit meeting of wives from eight countries that dealt in
drug trafficing. When asked how kids could stay away from drugs
Mrs. Reagan coined the phrase, "Just say no!" |
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Nelson Mandela |
| The foster son of a Thembu chief,
Mandela was raised in the traditional, tribal culture of his ancestors,
but at an early age learned the modern, inescapable reality of what
came to be called apartheid. Nelson Mandela is one of the great
moral and political leaders of our time: an international hero whose
lifelong dedication to the fight against racial oppression in South
Africa won him the Nobel Peace Prize and the presidency of his country.
Since his triumphant release in 1990 from more than a quarter-century
of imprisonment, Mandela has been at the center of the most compelling
and inspiring political drama in the world. As president of the
African National Congress and head of South Africa's antiapartheid
movement, he was instrumental in moving the nation toward multiracial
government and majority rule. He is revered everywhere as a vital
force in the fight for human rights and racial equality |
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Steve Jobs |
| Adopted in infancy, he grew up
in Los Altos, Cal. He dropped out of Reed College and went to work
for Atari Corp. designing video games. In 1976 he confounded (with
S. Wozniak) Apple Computer, Inc. The first Apple computer, created
when Jobs was only 21, changed the public's idea of a computer from
a huge machine for scientific use to a home appliance that could
be used by anyone. Apple's Macintosh computer, which appeared in
1984, introduced a graphical user interface and mouse technology
that became the standard for all applications interfaces. In 1980
Apple made an initial public offering, and Jobs became the company's
chairman. Management conflicts led him to leave Apple in 1985 to
form NeXT Computer Inc., but he returned to Apple in 1996 and became
CEO in 1997; the striking new iMac computer (1998) revived the company's
flagging fortunes. |
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Tom Monaghan |
| On Christmas eve of 1941, at
the age of four, Tom lost his young father to peritonitis. His
mother was only earning $27.50 per week and placed Tom and his
brother Jim in a series of foster homes while she attended nursing
school. After graduation she took a job at a traverse City Michigan
hospital, and bought a house. Her two sons came to live with her.
Tom sold vegetables, fish, and newspapers as a boy to help his
mother, but unfortunately Tom and his mother argued constantly,
and he was sent to live on a farm just outside of town. During
his freshman year in high school, Monaghan decided he wanted to
become a priest and entered St. Joseph's seminary in Grand Rapids.
But the seminars strict discipline proved too much for the rambunctious
Tom. After a stint with the Marine Corps and dropping in and out
of the University of Michigan. His brother Jim overheard that
a pizza shop was for sale. The two brothers gave the seller a
seventy-five dollar down payment, and borrowed the remaining 900
from the post office credit union. Jim later sold his share of
the store to Tom, who eventually broke into franchising in 1967.
The company's remarkable growth has resulted in Domino's having
over 5000 stores in the United States and more than 260 stores
in other countries. |
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Willie Nelson |
| A country-music singer and songwriter,
he was born in Abbott, Texas. He learned guitar from his grandfather
and by 10 was performing at local dances. After working as a disc
jockey, in 1961 he moved to Nashville, where he wrote hit songs
for dozens of country, rhythm-and-blues, and pop singers, incl.
"Hello Walls," "Night Life," and "Crazy."
Returning to Texas, he released the hit album Red Headed Stranger;
it was followed by Wanted: The Outlaws, which outsold every country
album that had preceded it, and Stardust, with songs by H. Carmichael
and I. Berlin. He has recorded with at least 75 other singers, incl.
Waylon Jennings. In the 1980s he organized annual Farm Aid festivals
to raise money for farmers. |
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