1.
BBC
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The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. It is headquartered at Broadcasting House in London, the BBC is the worlds oldest national broadcasting organisation and the largest broadcaster in the world by number of employees. It employs over 20,950 staff in total,16,672 of whom are in public sector broadcasting, the total number of staff is 35,402 when part-time, flexible, and fixed contract staff are included. The BBC is established under a Royal Charter and operates under its Agreement with the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport. The fee is set by the British Government, agreed by Parliament, and used to fund the BBCs radio, TV, britains first live public broadcast from the Marconi factory in Chelmsford took place in June 1920. It was sponsored by the Daily Mails Lord Northcliffe and featured the famous Australian Soprano Dame Nellie Melba, the Melba broadcast caught the peoples imagination and marked a turning point in the British publics attitude to radio. However, this public enthusiasm was not shared in official circles where such broadcasts were held to interfere with important military and civil communications. By late 1920, pressure from these quarters and uneasiness among the staff of the licensing authority, the General Post Office, was sufficient to lead to a ban on further Chelmsford broadcasts. But by 1922, the GPO had received nearly 100 broadcast licence requests, John Reith, a Scottish Calvinist, was appointed its General Manager in December 1922 a few weeks after the company made its first official broadcast. The company was to be financed by a royalty on the sale of BBC wireless receiving sets from approved manufacturers, to this day, the BBC aims to follow the Reithian directive to inform, educate and entertain. The financial arrangements soon proved inadequate, set sales were disappointing as amateurs made their own receivers and listeners bought rival unlicensed sets. By mid-1923, discussions between the GPO and the BBC had become deadlocked and the Postmaster-General commissioned a review of broadcasting by the Sykes Committee and this was to be followed by a simple 10 shillings licence fee with no royalty once the wireless manufactures protection expired. The BBCs broadcasting monopoly was made explicit for the duration of its current broadcast licence, the BBC was also banned from presenting news bulletins before 19.00, and required to source all news from external wire services. Mid-1925 found the future of broadcasting under further consideration, this time by the Crawford committee, by now the BBC under Reiths leadership had forged a consensus favouring a continuation of the unified broadcasting service, but more money was still required to finance rapid expansion. Wireless manufacturers were anxious to exit the loss making consortium with Reith keen that the BBC be seen as a service rather than a commercial enterprise. The recommendations of the Crawford Committee were published in March the following year and were still under consideration by the GPO when the 1926 general strike broke out in May. The strike temporarily interrupted newspaper production and with restrictions on news bulletins waived the BBC suddenly became the source of news for the duration of the crisis. The crisis placed the BBC in a delicate position, the Government was divided on how to handle the BBC but ended up trusting Reith, whose opposition to the strike mirrored the PMs own
2.
Opinion poll
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An opinion poll, sometimes simply referred to as a poll, is a human research survey of public opinion from a particular sample. Opinion polls are usually designed to represent the opinions of a population by conducting a series of questions, since Jackson won the popular vote in that state and the whole country, such straw votes gradually became more popular, but they remained local, usually city-wide phenomena. In 1916, The Literary Digest embarked on a national survey, then, in 1936, its 2.3 million voters constituted a huge sample, but they were generally more affluent Americans who tended to have Republican sympathies. The Literary Digest was ignorant of this new bias, the week before election day, at the same time, George Gallup conducted a far smaller survey, in which he polled a demographically representative sample. Gallup correctly predicted Roosevelts landslide victory, the Literary Digest soon went out of business, while polling started to take off. Elmo Roper was another American pioneer in political forecasting using scientific polls and he predicted the reelection of President Franklin D. Roosevelt three times, in 1936,1940, and 1944. Louis Harris had been in the field of opinion since 1947 when he joined the Elmo Roper firm. Looking for popular support or dissent with this question asked by appeasement politician, the Allied occupation powers helped to create survey institutes in all of the Western occupation zones of Germany in 1947 and 1948 to better steer denazification. By the 1950s, various types of polling had spread to most democracies, in long-term perspective, advertising had come under heavy pressure in the early 1930s. The Great Depression forced businesses to cut back on their advertising spending. Layoffs and reductions were common at all agencies, the New Deal furthermore aggressively promoted consumerism, and minimized the value of advertising. Historian Jackson Lears argues that By the late 1930s, though, George Gallup, the vice president of Young and Rubicon, and numerous other advertising experts, led the way. Moving into the 1940s, the played a leading role in the ideological mobilization of the American people for fighting the Nazis. As part of effort, they redefined the American Way of Life in terms of a commitment to free enterprise. Advertisers, Lears concludes, played a crucial role in creating the consumer culture that dominated post-World War II American society. Opinion polls for many years were maintained through telecommunications or in person-to-person contact, Methods and techniques vary, though they are widely accepted in most areas. Over the years, technological innovations have also influenced survey methods such as the availability of electronic clipboards, verbal, ballot, and processed types can be conducted efficiently, contrasted with other types of surveys, systematics, and complicated matrices beyond previous orthodox procedures. Opinion polling developed into popular applications through popular thought, although rates for some surveys declined
3.
British people
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British people, or Britons, are the citizens of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories, and Crown dependencies, and their descendants. British nationality law governs modern British citizenship and nationality, which can be acquired, for instance, although early assertions of being British date from the Late Middle Ages, the creation of the united Kingdom of Great Britain in 1707 triggered a sense of British national identity. The notion of Britishness was forged during the Napoleonic Wars between Britain and the First French Empire, and developed further during the Victorian era, because of longstanding ethno-sectarian divisions, British identity in Northern Ireland is controversial, but it is held with strong conviction by unionists. Modern Britons are descended mainly from the ethnic groups that settled in the British Isles in and before the 11th century, Prehistoric, Celtic, Roman, Anglo-Saxon, Norse. The British are a diverse, multi-national and multicultural society, with regional accents, expressions. Although none of his own writings remain, writers during the time of the Roman Empire made much reference to them, the group included Ireland, which was referred to as Ierne inhabited by the different race of Hiberni, and Britain as insula Albionum, island of the Albions. The term Pritani may have reached Pytheas from the Gauls, who used it as their term for the inhabitants of the islands. Greek and Roman writers, in the 1st century BC and the 1st century AD, name the inhabitants of Great Britain and Ireland as the Priteni, the origin of the Latin word Britanni. It has been suggested that name derives from a Gaulish description translated as people of the forms. By 50 BC Greek geographers were using equivalents of Prettanikē as a name for the British Isles. However, the term Britannia persisted as the Latin name for the island, during the Middle Ages, and particularly in the Tudor period, the term British was used to refer to the Welsh people and Cornish people. At that time, it was the held belief that these were the remaining descendants of the ancient Britons. This notion was supported by such as the Historia Regum Britanniae. Wales and Cornwall, and north, i. e. Cumbria, Strathclyde and this legendary Celtic history of Great Britain is known as the Matter of Britain. The indigenous people of the British Isles have a combination of Celtic, Norse, Anglo-Saxon, oppenheimer continues that the majority of the people of the British Isles share genetic commonalities with the Basques, ranging from highs of 90% in Wales to lows of 66% in East Anglia. Oppenheimers opinion is that. by far the majority of male gene types in the British Isles derive from Iberia, ranging from a low of 59% in Fakenham, Norfolk to highs of 96% in Llangefni, north Wales. The English had been unified under a single state in 937 by King Athelstan of Wessex after the Battle of Brunanburh. However, historian Simon Schama suggested that it was Edward I of England who was responsible for provoking the peoples of Britain into an awareness of their nationhood in the 13th century
4.
Guy Fawkes
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Guy Fawkes, also known as Guido Fawkes, the name he adopted while fighting for the Spanish, was a member of a group of provincial English Catholics who planned the failed Gunpowder Plot of 1605. Fawkes was born and educated in York and his father died when Fawkes was eight years old, after which his mother married a recusant Catholic. Fawkes converted to Catholicism and left for the continent, where he fought in the Eighty Years War on the side of Catholic Spain against Protestant Dutch reformers in the Low Countries and he travelled to Spain to seek support for a Catholic rebellion in England without success. He later met Thomas Wintour, with whom he returned to England, Wintour introduced Fawkes to Robert Catesby, who planned to assassinate King James I and restore a Catholic monarch to the throne. The plotters leased an undercroft beneath the House of Lords, prompted by the receipt of an anonymous letter, the authorities searched Westminster Palace during the early hours of 5 November, and found Fawkes guarding the explosives. Over the next few days, he was questioned and tortured, immediately before his execution on 31 January, Fawkes fell from the scaffold where he was to be hanged and broke his neck, thus avoiding the agony of the mutilation that followed. Fawkes became synonymous with the Gunpowder Plot, the failure of which has been commemorated in Britain since 5 November 1605 and his effigy is traditionally burned on a bonfire, commonly accompanied by a fireworks display. Guy Fawkes was born in 1570 in Stonegate, York and he was the second of four children born to Edward Fawkes, a proctor and an advocate of the consistory court at York, and his wife, Edith. Guys mothers family were recusant Catholics, and his cousin, Richard Cowling, Guy was an uncommon name in England, but may have been popular in York on account of a local notable, Sir Guy Fairfax of Steeton. The date of Fawkess birth is unknown, but he was baptised in the church of St. Michael le Belfrey on 16 April, as the customary gap between birth and baptism was three days, he was probably born about 13 April. In 1568, Edith had given birth to a daughter named Anne and she bore two more children after Guy, Anne, and Elizabeth. Both were married, in 1599 and 1594 respectively, in 1579, when Guy was eight years old, his father died. His mother remarried years later, to the Catholic Dionis Baynbrigge of Scotton. A governor of the school had spent about 20 years in prison for recusancy, and its headmaster, John Pulleyn, came from a family of noted Yorkshire recusants, the Pulleyns of Blubberhouses. Fawkess fellow students included John Wright and his brother Christopher and Oswald Tesimond, Edward Oldcorne and Robert Middleton, after leaving school Fawkes entered the service of Anthony Browne, 1st Viscount Montagu. The Viscount took a dislike to Fawkes and after a short time dismissed him, he was employed by Anthony-Maria Browne, 2nd Viscount Montagu. At least one source claims that Fawkes married and had a son, in October 1591 Fawkes sold the estate in Clifton that he had inherited from his father. He travelled to the continent to fight in the Eighty Years War for Catholic Spain against the new Dutch Republic and, from 1595 until the Peace of Vervins in 1598, France
5.
Parliament of England
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The Parliament of England was the legislature of the Kingdom of England. Over the centuries, the English Parliament progressively limited the power of the English monarchy which arguably culminated in the English Civil War, the Act of Union 1707 merged the English Parliament with the Parliament of Scotland to form the Parliament of Great Britain. When the Parliament of Ireland was abolished in 1801, its members were merged into what was now called the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Under a monarchical system of government, monarchs usually must consult, early kings of England had no standing army or police, and so depended on the support of powerful subjects. The monarchy had agents in every part of the country, however, under the feudal system that evolved in England following the Norman Conquest of 1066, the laws of the Crown could not have been upheld without the support of the nobility and the clergy. The former had economic and military bases of their own through major ownership of land. The Church was virtually a law unto itself in this period as it had its own system of law courts. In order to seek consultation and consent from the nobility and the clergy on major decisions. A typical Great Council would consist of archbishops, bishops, abbots, barons and earls, when this system of consultation and consent broke down, it often became impossible for government to function effectively. The most prominent instances of prior to the reign of Henry III are the disagreements between Thomas Becket and Henry II and between King John and the barons. Becket, who served as Archbishop of Canterbury between 1162 and 1170, was murdered following a long running dispute with Henry II over the jurisdiction of the Church. John, who was king from 1199 to 1216, aroused such hostility from many leading noblemen that they forced him to agree to Magna Carta in 1215, johns refusal to adhere to this charter led to civil war. The Great Council evolved into the Parliament of England, the term itself came into use during the early 13th century, deriving from the Latin and French words for discussion and speaking. The word first appears in documents in the 1230s. As a result of the work by historians G. O. Sayles and H. G. Richardson, during the 13th and 14th centuries, the kings began to call Knights of the Shire to meet when the monarch saw it as necessary. A notable example of this was in 1254 when sheriffs of counties were instructed to send Knights of the Shire to parliament to advise the king on finance, initially, parliaments were mostly summoned when the king needed to raise money through taxes. Following the Magna Carta this became a convention and this was due in no small part to the fact that King John died in 1216 and was succeeded by his young son Henry III. Leading peers and clergy governed on Henrys behalf until he came of age, among other things, they made sure that Magna Carta would be reaffirmed by the young king
6.
Oliver Cromwell
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Oliver Cromwell was an English military and political leader and later Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland, and Ireland. Cromwell was born into the gentry, albeit to a family descended from the sister of King Henry VIIIs minister Thomas Cromwell. Little is known of the first 40 years of his life as only four of his letters survive alongside a summary of a speech he delivered in 1628. He became an Independent Puritan after undergoing a conversion in the 1630s. He was a religious man, a self-styled Puritan Moses. He was elected Member of Parliament for Huntingdon in 1628 and for Cambridge in the Short and he entered the English Civil War on the side of the Roundheads or Parliamentarians. Cromwell was one of the signatories of King Charles Is death warrant in 1649 and he was selected to take command of the English campaign in Ireland in 1649–1650. Cromwells forces defeated the Confederate and Royalist coalition in Ireland and occupied the country, during this period, a series of Penal Laws were passed against Roman Catholics, and a substantial amount of their land was confiscated. Cromwell also led a campaign against the Scottish army between 1650 and 1651, as a ruler, he executed an aggressive and effective foreign policy. He died from natural causes in 1658 and was buried in Westminster Abbey, the Royalists returned to power in 1660, and they had his corpse dug up, hung in chains, and beheaded. In a 2002 BBC poll in Britain, Cromwell, sponsored by military historian Richard Holmes was selected as one of the ten greatest Britons of all time. However, his measures against Catholics in Scotland and Ireland have been characterised as genocidal or near-genocidal, Cromwell was born in Huntingdon on 25 April 1599 to Robert Cromwell and Elizabeth Steward. Katherine married Morgan ap William, son of William ap Yevan of Wales, Henry suggested to Sir Richard Williams, who was the first to use a surname in his family, that he use Cromwell, in honour of his uncle Thomas Cromwell. They had ten children, but Oliver, the child, was the only boy to survive infancy. Jasper was the uncle of Henry VII and great uncle of Henry VIII, Cromwells paternal grandfather Sir Henry Williams was one of the two wealthiest landowners in Huntingdonshire. Cromwells father Robert was of modest means but still a part of the gentry class, as a younger son with many siblings, Robert inherited only a house at Huntingdon and a small amount of land. This land would have generated an income of up to £300 a year, near the bottom of the range of gentry incomes, Cromwell himself in 1654 said, I was by birth a gentleman, living neither in considerable height, nor yet in obscurity. He was baptised on 29 April 1599 at St Johns Church and he went on to study at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, then a recently founded college with a strong Puritan ethos
7.
Richard III of England
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Richard III was King of England from 1483 until his death in 1485, at the age of 32, in the Battle of Bosworth Field. He was the last king of the House of York and the last of the Plantagenet dynasty and his defeat at Bosworth Field, the last decisive battle of the Wars of the Roses, marked the end of the Middle Ages in England. He is the subject of the historical play Richard III by William Shakespeare, when his brother King Edward IV died in April 1483, Richard was named Lord Protector of the realm for Edwards son and successor, the 12-year-old Edward V. As the young king travelled to London from Ludlow, Richard met and escorted him to lodgings in the Tower of London, on 25 June, an assembly of Lords and commoners endorsed the claims. The following day, Richard III began his reign, and he was crowned on 6 July 1483. The young princes were not seen in public after August, and accusations circulated that the boys had been murdered on Richards orders, there were two major rebellions against Richard. The first, in October 1483, was led by allies of Edward IV and Richards former ally, Henry Stafford, 2nd Duke of Buckingham. In August 1485, Henry Tudor and his uncle, Jasper Tudor, Henry Tudor landed in southern Wales with a small contingent of French troops and marched through his birthplace, Pembrokeshire, recruiting soldiers. Henrys force engaged Richards army and defeated it at the Battle of Bosworth Field in Leicestershire, Richard was struck down in the conflict, making him the last English king to die in battle on home soil and the first since Harold Godwinson. Henry then ascended the throne as Henry VII, after the battle Richards corpse was taken to Leicester and buried without pomp. His original tomb monument is believed to have been removed during the Reformation, in 2012, an archaeological excavation was commissioned by the Richard III Society on a city council car park on the site once occupied by Greyfriars Priory Church. Richards remains were reburied in Leicester Cathedral on 26 March 2015 and they returned to England following the defeat of the Lancastrians at the Battle of Towton and participated in the coronation of Richards eldest brother as King Edward IV in June 1461. At this time Richard was named Duke of Gloucester and made a Knight of the Garter and Knight of the Bath, by the age of seventeen, he had an independent command. With some interruptions, Richard stayed at Middleham either from late 1461 until early 1465, while at Warwicks estate, he probably met Francis Lovell, a strong supporter later in his life, and Warwicks younger daughter, his future wife Anne Neville. As the relationship between the king and Warwick became strained, Edward IV opposed the match, during Warwicks lifetime, George was the only royal brother to marry one of his daughters, the eldest, Isabel, on 12 July 1469, without the kings permission. George joined his father-in-laws revolt against the king, while Richard remained loyal to Edward, in 1468, Richards sister Margaret had married Charles the Bold, the Duke of Burgundy, and the brothers could expect a welcome there. Although only eighteen years old, Richard played crucial roles in the battles of Barnet, during his adolescence, Richard developed idiopathic scoliosis. Following a decisive Yorkist victory over the Lancastrians at the Battle of Tewkesbury, Richard married Anne Neville, by the end of 1470 Anne had previously been wedded to Edward of Westminster, only son of Henry VI, to seal her fathers allegiance to the Lancastrian party
8.
James Connolly
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James Connolly was an Irish republican and socialist leader, aligned to syndicalism and the Industrial Workers of the World. He was born in the Cowgate area of Edinburgh, Scotland and he left school for working life at the age of 11, but became one of the leading Marxist theorists of his day. He also took a role in Scottish and American politics and he was executed by a British firing squad because of his leadership role in the Easter Rising of 1916. Connolly was born in an Irish immigrant slum in Edinburgh in 1868 and his parents had moved to Scotland from Monaghan, Ireland and settled in Cowgate, an Irish ghetto where thousands of Irish people lived. He spoke with a Scottish accent throughout his life and he was born in St Patricks Roman Catholic parish, in the Cowgate district of Edinburgh known as Little Ireland. His father and grandfathers were labourers and he had an education up to the age of about ten in the local Catholic primary school. He then left and worked in labouring jobs, because of the economic difficulties he was having, like his eldest brother John, he joined the British Army. He enlisted in the British Army at age 14, falsifying his age and giving his name as Reid and he served in Ireland with the 2nd Battalion of the Royal Scots Regiment for nearly seven years, during a turbulent period in rural areas known as the Land War. He would later involved in the land issue. He developed a hatred for the British Army that lasted his entire life. When he heard that his regiment was being transferred to India, Connolly had another reason for not wanting to go to India, a young woman by the name of Lillie Reynolds. Lillie moved to Scotland with James after he left the army, there, Connolly began to get involved in the Scottish Socialist Federation, but with a young family to support, he needed a way to provide for them. He briefly established a shop in 1895, but this failed after a few months as his shoe-mending skills were insufficient. He was also active with the socialist movement at the time. He became secretary of the Scottish Socialist Federation, during this time, Connolly became involved with the Independent Labour Party which Keir Hardie had formed in 1893. At some time during this period, he took up the study of, and advocated the use of, by 1892 he was involved in the Scottish Socialist Federation, acting as its secretary from 1895. Two months after the birth of his daughter, word came to Connolly that the Dublin Socialist Club was looking for a full-time secretary. Connolly and his moved to Dublin, where he took up the position
9.
Irish nationalism
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Irish nationalism asserts that the Irish people are a nation. Since the partition of Ireland, the term refers to support for a united Ireland. Irish nationalists assert that rule from London has been to the detriment of Irish interests and this vision sought to overcome the old ethnic divide between Gaeil and Gaill which had been a feature of Irish life since the 12th century. Protestantism in England introduced an element to the 16th century Tudor conquest of Ireland, as many of the native Gaels. The Plantations of Ireland dispossessed many native Catholic landowners in favour of Protestant settlers from England and Scotland, in addition, the Plantation of Ulster, begun in 1609, planted a sizeable colony of English and Scottish Protestant settlers into the north of Ireland. Irish aristocrats waged many campaigns against the English presence, a prime example is the rebellion of Hugh ONeill which became known as the Nine Years War of 1594–1603, which aimed to expel the English and make Ireland a Spanish protectorate. The Confederate Catholics of Ireland, also known as the Confederation of Kilkenny, emphasised the idea of Ireland as a Kingdom independent from England and they demanded autonomy for the Irish Parliament, full rights for Catholics and an end to the confiscation of Catholic-owned land. The Cromwellian conquest of Ireland destroyed the Confederate cause and resulted in the permanent dispossession of the old Catholic landowning class. A similar Irish Catholic monarchist movement emerged in the 1680s and 1690s, the Jacobites demanded that Irish Catholics have a majority in an autonomous Irish Parliament, the restoration of confiscated Catholic land, and an Irish-born Lord Deputy of Ireland. Like the Confederates, they suffered defeat, in the Williamite War in Ireland. Thereafter, the largely English Protestant Ascendancy dominated Irish government and landholding, the Penal Laws discriminated against non-Anglicans. However, the Irish Catholic movements of the 16th century were led by a small landed. Professor Kevin Whelan has traced the emergence of the modern Catholic-nationalist identity that formed in 1760–1830, parliamentarians who wanted more self-government formed the Irish Patriot Party, led by Henry Grattan, who achieved substantial legislative independence in 1782–83. Grattan and radical elements of the Irish Whig party campaigned in the 1790s for Catholic political equality and he wanted useful links with Britain to remain, best understood by his comment, The channel forbids union, the ocean forbids separation. Grattans movement was notable for being both inclusive and nationalist as many of its members were descended from the Anglo/Irish minority, many other nationalists such as Samuel Neilson, Theobald Wolfe Tone and Robert Emmet were also descended from plantation families which had arrived in Ireland since 1600. From Grattan in the 1770s to Parnell up to 1890, nearly all the leaders of Irish separatism were Protestant nationalists, modern Irish nationalism with democratic aspirations began in the 1790s with the founding of the Society of the United Irishmen. It sought to end discrimination against Catholics and Presbyterians and to found an independent Irish republic and they were sponsored by the French Republic, which was then the enemy of the Holy See. The United Irishmen led the Irish Rebellion of 1798, which was repressed with great bloodshed, as a result, the Irish Parliament voted to abolish itself in the Act of Union of 1800–01 and thereafter Irish MPs sat in London
10.
Socialism
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Social ownership may refer to forms of public, collective, or cooperative ownership, to citizen ownership of equity, or to any combination of these. Although there are varieties of socialism and there is no single definition encapsulating all of them. Socialist economic systems can be divided into both non-market and market forms, non-market socialism aims to circumvent the inefficiencies and crises traditionally associated with capital accumulation and the profit system. Profits generated by these firms would be controlled directly by the workforce of each firm or accrue to society at large in the form of a social dividend, the feasibility and exact methods of resource allocation and calculation for a socialist system are the subjects of the socialist calculation debate. Core dichotomies associated with these concerns include reformism versus revolutionary socialism, the term is frequently used to draw contrast to the political system of the Soviet Union, which critics argue operated in an authoritarian fashion. By the 1920s, social democracy and communism became the two dominant political tendencies within the international socialist movement, by this time, Socialism emerged as the most influential secular movement of the twentieth century, worldwide. Socialist parties and ideas remain a force with varying degrees of power and influence in all continents. Today, some socialists have also adopted the causes of social movements. The origin of the term socialism may be traced back and attributed to a number of originators, in addition to significant historical shifts in the usage, for Andrew Vincent, The word ‘socialism’ finds its root in the Latin sociare, which means to combine or to share. The related, more technical term in Roman and then medieval law was societas and this latter word could mean companionship and fellowship as well as the more legalistic idea of a consensual contract between freemen. The term socialism was created by Henri de Saint-Simon, one of the founders of what would later be labelled utopian socialism. Simon coined socialism as a contrast to the doctrine of individualism. They presented socialism as an alternative to liberal individualism based on the ownership of resources. The term socialism is attributed to Pierre Leroux, and to Marie Roch Louis Reybaud in France, the term communism also fell out of use during this period, despite earlier distinctions between socialism and communism from the 1840s. An early distinction between socialism and communism was that the former aimed to only socialise production while the latter aimed to socialise both production and consumption. However, by 1888 Marxists employed the term socialism in place of communism, linguistically, the contemporary connotation of the words socialism and communism accorded with the adherents and opponents cultural attitude towards religion. In Christian Europe, of the two, communism was believed to be the atheist way of life, in Protestant England, the word communism was too culturally and aurally close to the Roman Catholic communion rite, hence English atheists denoted themselves socialists. Friedrich Engels argued that in 1848, at the time when the Communist Manifesto was published, socialism was respectable on the continent and this latter branch of socialism produced the communist work of Étienne Cabet in France and Wilhelm Weitling in Germany
11.
Michael Crawford
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Michael Patrick Smith, CBE, known as Michael Crawford, is an English actor, comedian and singer. He has received critical acclaim and won numerous awards during his career, which covers radio, television, film. He is best known for playing the hapless Frank Spencer in the popular 1970s British sitcom, Some Mothers Do Ave Em, Michael Crawford was born in Salisbury, England as Michael Patrick Smith. He was brought up by his mother, Doris Agnes Mary Pike and his maternal grandmother was born in County Londonderry, Northern Ireland, and lived to be 99 years old. His mothers first husband, Arthur Dumbbell Smudge Smith, who was not his father, was killed, aged 22, in 1940 during the Battle of Britain. Sixteen months after Smiths death, Crawford was born, the result of a short-lived relationship, there he attended St Michaels, a Catholic school run by nuns, who Crawford later described as not being shy in their use of corporal punishment, in Bexleyheath. At the end of the war, his mother remarried, to a grocer, the couple moved to London, where Crawford attended Oakfield Preparatory School, Dulwich, where he was known as Michael Ingram. His mothers second marriage, however, was stormy and abusive, according to Crawford, after his mothers death, young Michael was taken under the wing of an acting family, the Kendalls, led by music hall star Marie Kendall. He also participated in the recording of that made that same year. Then in 1958 he was hired by the English Opera Group to create the role of Jaffet in another Britten opera, Noyes Fludde, based on the story of Noah and the Great Flood. Crawford remembers that it was working in this production that he realised he seriously wanted to become an actor. He went on to perform in a wide repertoire and he appeared as the cabin boy John Drake in the television series Sir Francis Drake, a 26-part adventure series made by ITC starring Terence Morgan and Jean Kent. He made his debut in 1958 with leading roles in two childrens films, Blow Your Own Trumpet and Soapbox Derby, for The Childrens Film Foundation in Britain. Crawford appears in the surviving episode of the 1960 British crime series Police Surgeon alongside Ian Hendry. This series would spawn the much better-known The Avengers, at age nineteen, he was approached to play an American, Junior Sailen, in the film The War Lover, which starred Steve McQueen. To prepare for the role, he would spend hours listening to Woody Woodbury and it was this character that attracted film director Richard Lester to hire him for the role of Colin in The Knack …and How to Get It in 1965. The film was a success in the UK. Lester also cast him in the adaptation of Stephen Sondheims musical A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, and How I Won the War
12.
John Lennon
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John Winston Ono Lennon, MBE was an English singer and songwriter who co-founded the Beatles, the most commercially successful and musically influential band in the history of popular music. He and fellow member Paul McCartney formed a songwriting partnership. Born and raised in Liverpool, Lennon became involved in the craze as a teenager, his first band, the Quarrymen, first became the Silver Beatles. After his marriage to Yoko Ono in 1969, he added Ono as one of his middle names, Lennon disengaged himself from the music business in 1975 to raise his infant son Sean, but re-emerged with Ono in 1980 with the new album Double Fantasy. He was murdered three weeks after its release, Lennon revealed a rebellious nature and acerbic wit in his music, writing, drawings, on film and in interviews. By 2012, Lennons solo album sales in the United States exceeded 14 million and, as writer, co-writer, or performer, he is responsible for 25 number-one singles on the US Hot 100 chart. In 2002, a BBC poll on the 100 Greatest Britons voted him eighth and, in 2008, Rolling Stone ranked him the fifth-greatest singer of all time. He was posthumously inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1987, and into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame twice, in 1988 as a member of the Beatles and in 1994 as a solo artist. Lennon was born in war-time England, on 9 October 1940 at Liverpool Maternity Hospital, to Julia and Alfred Lennon, a merchant seaman of Irish descent and his parents named him John Winston Lennon after his paternal grandfather, John Jack Lennon, and then-Prime Minister Winston Churchill. When he eventually came home six months later, he offered to look after the family, after her sister, Mimi Smith, twice complained to Liverpools Social Services, Julia handed the care of Lennon over to her. In July 1946 Lennons father visited Smith and took his son to Blackpool, Julia followed them—with her partner at the time, Bobby Dykins—and after a heated argument his father forced the five-year-old to choose between them. Lennon twice chose his father, but as his mother walked away, he began to cry and followed her, according to author Mark Lewisohn, Lennons parents agreed that Julia should take him and give him a home as Alf left again. A witness who was there that day, Billy Hall, has said the scene often portrayed with a young John Lennon having to make a decision between his parents never happened. It would be 20 years before he had contact with his father again, Throughout the rest of his childhood and adolescence he lived at Mendips,251 Menlove Avenue, Woolton with his aunt and uncle, Mimi and George Smith, who had no children of their own. His aunt purchased volumes of stories for him, and his uncle. In September 1980, Lennon commented about his family and his rebellious nature, Part of me would like to be accepted by all facets of society, but I cannot be what I am not. I was the one who all the other boys parents—including Pauls father—would say, the parents instinctively recognised I was a troublemaker, meaning I did not conform and I would influence their children, which I did. I did my best to disrupt every friends home, partly out of envy that I didnt have this so-called home
13.
Diana, Princess of Wales
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Diana, Princess of Wales, was the first wife of Charles, Prince of Wales, who is the eldest child and heir apparent of Queen Elizabeth II. Diana was born into a family of British nobility with royal ancestry and was the child and third daughter of John Spencer, Viscount Althorp. She grew up in Park House, situated on the Sandringham estate, in 1975, after her father inherited the title of Earl Spencer, she became known as Lady Diana Spencer. She came to prominence in February 1981 when her engagement to Prince Charles was announced and her wedding to the Prince of Wales on 29 July 1981, held at St Pauls Cathedral, reached a global television audience of over 750 million people. While married, Diana bore the titles Princess of Wales, Duchess of Cornwall, Duchess of Rothesay, the marriage produced two sons, the princes William and Harry, who were then respectively second and third in the line of succession to the British throne. As Princess of Wales, Diana undertook royal duties on behalf of the Queen and she was celebrated for her charity work and for her support of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines. She was involved with dozens of charities including Londons Great Ormond Street Hospital for children, Diana remained the object of worldwide media scrutiny during and after her marriage, which ended in divorce on 28 August 1996. Media attention and public mourning were extensive after her death in a car crash in Paris on 31 August 1997, Diana was born on 1 July 1961, in Park House, Sandringham, Norfolk. She was the fourth of five children of John Spencer, Viscount Althorp, the Spencer family has been closely allied with the British Royal Family for several generations. Both of Dianas grandmothers had served as ladies-in-waiting to Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother, on 30 August 1961, Diana was baptised at St. Mary Magdalene Church, Sandringham, with wealthy commoners as godparents. Diana had three siblings, Sarah, Jane, and Charles and her infant brother, John, died shortly after his birth one year before Diana was born. The desire for an added strain to the Spencers marriage. Diana grew up in Park House, situated on the Sandringham estate, the Spencers leased the house from its owner, Queen Elizabeth II. The Royal Family frequently holidayed at the neighbouring Sandringham House, and Diana played with Princes Andrew, Diana was seven years old when her parents divorced. Her mother later had an affair with Peter Shand Kydd and married him in 1969, Diana lived with her mother in London during her parents separation in 1967, but during that years Christmas holidays, Lord Althorp refused to let Diana return to London with Lady Althorp. Shortly afterwards he won custody of Diana with support from his former mother-in-law, Ruth Roche, in 1972, Lord Althorp began a relationship with Raine, Countess of Dartmouth, the only daughter of Alexander McCorquodale and Dame Barbara Cartland. They married at Caxton Hall, London in 1976, as an upper-class child at the time, Diana was first educated under the supervision of her governess, Gertrude Allen. She began her education at Silfield Private School in Gayton, Norfolk, and moved to Riddlesworth Hall School, an all-girls boarding school near Diss
14.
Isaac Newton
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His book Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica, first published in 1687, laid the foundations of classical mechanics. Newton also made contributions to optics, and he shares credit with Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz for developing the infinitesimal calculus. Newtons Principia formulated the laws of motion and universal gravitation that dominated scientists view of the universe for the next three centuries. Newtons work on light was collected in his influential book Opticks. He also formulated a law of cooling, made the first theoretical calculation of the speed of sound. Newton was a fellow of Trinity College and the second Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge, politically and personally tied to the Whig party, Newton served two brief terms as Member of Parliament for the University of Cambridge, in 1689–90 and 1701–02. He was knighted by Queen Anne in 1705 and he spent the last three decades of his life in London, serving as Warden and Master of the Royal Mint and his father, also named Isaac Newton, had died three months before. Born prematurely, he was a child, his mother Hannah Ayscough reportedly said that he could have fit inside a quart mug. When Newton was three, his mother remarried and went to live with her new husband, the Reverend Barnabas Smith, leaving her son in the care of his maternal grandmother, Newtons mother had three children from her second marriage. From the age of twelve until he was seventeen, Newton was educated at The Kings School, Grantham which taught Latin and Greek. He was removed from school, and by October 1659, he was to be found at Woolsthorpe-by-Colsterworth, Henry Stokes, master at the Kings School, persuaded his mother to send him back to school so that he might complete his education. Motivated partly by a desire for revenge against a bully, he became the top-ranked student. In June 1661, he was admitted to Trinity College, Cambridge and he started as a subsizar—paying his way by performing valets duties—until he was awarded a scholarship in 1664, which guaranteed him four more years until he would get his M. A. He set down in his notebook a series of Quaestiones about mechanical philosophy as he found it, in 1665, he discovered the generalised binomial theorem and began to develop a mathematical theory that later became calculus. Soon after Newton had obtained his B. A. degree in August 1665, in April 1667, he returned to Cambridge and in October was elected as a fellow of Trinity. Fellows were required to become ordained priests, although this was not enforced in the restoration years, however, by 1675 the issue could not be avoided and by then his unconventional views stood in the way. Nevertheless, Newton managed to avoid it by means of a special permission from Charles II. A and he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1672. Newtons work has been said to distinctly advance every branch of mathematics then studied and his work on the subject usually referred to as fluxions or calculus, seen in a manuscript of October 1666, is now published among Newtons mathematical papers
15.
William Shakespeare
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William Shakespeare was an English poet, playwright, and actor, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the worlds pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called Englands national poet, and the Bard of Avon and his extant works, including collaborations, consist of approximately 38 plays,154 sonnets, two long narrative poems, and a few other verses, some of uncertain authorship. His plays have been translated into every major living language and are performed more often than those of any other playwright, Shakespeare was born and brought up in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire. At the age of 18, he married Anne Hathaway, with whom he had three children, Susanna, and twins Hamnet and Judith. Sometime between 1585 and 1592, he began a career in London as an actor, writer. He appears to have retired to Stratford around 1613, at age 49, Shakespeare produced most of his known work between 1589 and 1613. His early plays were primarily comedies and histories, which are regarded as some of the best work ever produced in these genres. He then wrote mainly tragedies until about 1608, including Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, in his last phase, he wrote tragicomedies, also known as romances, and collaborated with other playwrights. Many of his plays were published in editions of varying quality and it was prefaced with a poem by Ben Jonson, in which Shakespeare is hailed, presciently, as not of an age, but for all time. In the 20th and 21st centuries, his works have been adapted and rediscovered by new movements in scholarship. His plays remain highly popular and are studied, performed. William Shakespeare was the son of John Shakespeare, an alderman and a successful glover originally from Snitterfield, and Mary Arden and he was born in Stratford-upon-Avon and baptised there on 26 April 1564. His actual date of birth unknown, but is traditionally observed on 23 April. This date, which can be traced back to an 18th-century scholars mistake, has proved appealing to biographers because Shakespeare died on 23 April 1616 and he was the third child of eight and the eldest surviving son. At the age of 18, Shakespeare married 26-year-old Anne Hathaway, the consistory court of the Diocese of Worcester issued a marriage licence on 27 November 1582. The next day, two of Hathaways neighbours posted bonds guaranteeing that no lawful claims impeded the marriage, twins, son Hamnet and daughter Judith, followed almost two years later and were baptised 2 February 1585. Hamnet died of unknown causes at the age of 11 and was buried 11 August 1596, after the birth of the twins, Shakespeare left few historical traces until he is mentioned as part of the London theatre scene in 1592. The exception is the appearance of his name in the bill of a law case before the Queens Bench court at Westminster dated Michaelmas Term 1588 and 9 October 1589
16.
Charles Darwin
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Charles Robert Darwin, FRS FRGS FLS FZS was an English naturalist, geologist and biologist, best known for his contributions to the science of evolution. Darwin published his theory of evolution with compelling evidence in his 1859 book On the Origin of Species, by the 1870s, the scientific community and much of the general public had accepted evolution as a fact. In modified form, Darwins scientific discovery is the theory of the life sciences. Darwins early interest in nature led him to neglect his education at the University of Edinburgh, instead. Studies at the University of Cambridge encouraged his passion for natural science, puzzled by the geographical distribution of wildlife and fossils he collected on the voyage, Darwin began detailed investigations and in 1838 conceived his theory of natural selection. Although he discussed his ideas with several naturalists, he needed time for extensive research and he was writing up his theory in 1858 when Alfred Russel Wallace sent him an essay that described the same idea, prompting immediate joint publication of both of their theories. Darwins work established evolutionary descent with modification as the dominant scientific explanation of diversification in nature, in 1871 he examined human evolution and sexual selection in The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex, followed by The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals. His research on plants was published in a series of books, Darwin has been described as one of the most influential figures in human history, and he was honoured by burial in Westminster Abbey. Charles Robert Darwin was born in Shrewsbury, Shropshire, on 12 February 1809, at his familys home and he was the fifth of six children of wealthy society doctor and financier Robert Darwin and Susannah Darwin. He was the grandson of two prominent abolitionists, Erasmus Darwin on his fathers side, and Josiah Wedgwood on his mothers side, both families were largely Unitarian, though the Wedgwoods were adopting Anglicanism. The eight-year-old Charles already had a taste for history and collecting when he joined the day school run by its preacher in 1817. From September 1818, he joined his older brother Erasmus attending the nearby Anglican Shrewsbury School as a boarder and he found lectures dull and surgery distressing, so neglected his studies. He learned taxidermy in around 40 daily hour-long sessions from John Edmonstone, one day, Grant praised Lamarcks evolutionary ideas. Darwin was astonished by Grants audacity, but had recently read similar ideas in his grandfather Erasmus journals, Darwin was rather bored by Robert Jamesons natural-history course, which covered geology - including the debate between Neptunism and Plutonism. He learned the classification of plants, and assisted with work on the collections of the University Museum, as Darwin was unqualified for the Tripos, he joined the ordinary degree course in January 1828. He preferred riding and shooting to studying, when his own exams drew near, Darwin focused on his studies and was delighted by the language and logic of William Paleys Evidences of Christianity. In his final examination in January 1831 Darwin did well, coming out of 178 candidates for the ordinary degree. Darwin had to stay at Cambridge until June 1831, inspired with a burning zeal to contribute, Darwin planned to visit Tenerife with some classmates after graduation to study natural history in the tropics
17.
Aleister Crowley
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Aleister Crowley was an English occultist, ceremonial magician, poet, painter, novelist, and mountaineer. He founded the religion of Thelema, identifying himself as the prophet entrusted with guiding humanity into the Æon of Horus in the early 20th century, a prolific writer, he published widely over the course of his life. Born to a wealthy Plymouth Brethren family in Royal Leamington Spa, Warwickshire and he was educated at the University of Cambridge, where he focused his attentions on mountaineering and poetry, resulting in several publications. Some biographers allege that here he was recruited into a British intelligence agency, in 1898 he joined the esoteric Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, where he was trained in ceremonial magic by Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers and Allan Bennett. Moving to Boleskine House by Loch Ness in Scotland, he went mountaineering in Mexico with Oscar Eckenstein, before studying Hindu and Buddhist practices in India. Announcing the start of the Æon of Horus, The Book declared that its followers should Do what thou wilt, in 1907, he and George Cecil Jones co-founded a Thelemite order, the A∴A∴, through which they propagated the religion. Thelemite groups were established in Britain, Australia, and North America, in 1920 he established the Abbey of Thelema, a religious commune in Cefalù, Sicily where he lived with various followers. His libertine lifestyle led to denunciations in the British press, and he divided the following two decades between France, Germany, and England, and continued to promote Thelema until his death. Crowley gained widespread notoriety during his lifetime, being a recreational drug experimenter, bisexual and he was denounced in the popular press as the wickedest man in the world and a Satanist. Crowley has remained an influential figure over Western esotericism and the counter-culture. In 2002, a BBC poll ranked him as the seventy-third greatest Briton of all time, Crowley was born as Edward Alexander Crowley at 30 Clarendon Square in Royal Leamington Spa, Warwickshire, on 12 October 1875. His father, Edward Crowley, was trained as an engineer and his mother, Emily Bertha Bishop, came from a Devonshire-Somerset family and had a strained relationship with her son, she described him as the Beast, a name that he revelled in. The couple had married at Londons Kensington Registry Office in November 1874. Crowleys father was particularly devout, spending his time as a preacher for the sect and reading a chapter from the Bible to his wife. Following the death of their daughter in 1880, in 1881 the Crowleys moved to Redhill. At the age of 8, Crowley was sent to H. T, habershons evangelical Christian boarding school in Hastings, and then to Ebor preparatory school in Cambridge, run by the Reverend Henry dArcy Champney, whom Crowley considered a sadist. In March 1887, when Crowley was 11, his father died of tongue cancer, Crowley described this as a turning point in his life, and he always maintained an admiration of his father, describing him as his hero and his friend. Inheriting a third of his fathers wealth, he began misbehaving at school and was punished by Champney
18.
Republic of Ireland
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Ireland, also known as the Republic of Ireland, is a sovereign state in north-western Europe occupying about five-sixths of the island of Ireland. The capital and largest city is Dublin, which is located on the part of the island. The state shares its land border with Northern Ireland, a part of the United Kingdom. It is otherwise surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean, with the Celtic Sea to the south, Saint Georges Channel to the south-east, and it is a unitary, parliamentary republic. The head of government is the Taoiseach, who is elected by the Dáil and appointed by the President, the state was created as the Irish Free State in 1922 as a result of the Anglo-Irish Treaty. It was officially declared a republic in 1949, following the Republic of Ireland Act 1948, Ireland became a member of the United Nations in December 1955. It joined the European Economic Community, the predecessor of the European Union, after joining the EEC, Ireland enacted a series of liberal economic policies that resulted in rapid economic growth. The country achieved considerable prosperity between the years of 1995 and 2007, which known as the Celtic Tiger period. This was halted by a financial crisis that began in 2008. However, as the Irish economy was the fastest growing in the EU in 2015, Ireland is again quickly ascending league tables comparing wealth and prosperity internationally. For example, in 2015, Ireland was ranked as the joint sixth most developed country in the world by the United Nations Human Development Index and it also performs well in several national performance metrics, including freedom of the press, economic freedom and civil liberties. Ireland is a member of the European Union and is a member of the Council of Europe. The 1922 state, comprising 26 of the 32 counties of Ireland, was styled, the Constitution of Ireland, adopted in 1937, provides that the name of the State is Éire, or, in the English language, Ireland. Section 2 of the Republic of Ireland Act 1948 states, It is hereby declared that the description of the State shall be the Republic of Ireland. The 1948 Act does not name the state as Republic of Ireland, because to have done so would have put it in conflict with the Constitution. The government of the United Kingdom used the name Eire, and, from 1949, Republic of Ireland, for the state, as well as Ireland, Éire or the Republic of Ireland, the state is also referred to as the Republic, Southern Ireland or the South. In an Irish republican context it is referred to as the Free State or the 26 Counties. From the Act of Union on 1 January 1801, until 6 December 1922, during the Great Famine, from 1845 to 1849, the islands population of over 8 million fell by 30%
19.
Bono
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Paul David Hewson, known by his stage name Bono, is an Irish singer-songwriter, musician, venture capitalist, businessman, and philanthropist. He is best known as the lead vocalist of rock band U2, Bono was born and raised in Dublin, Ireland, and attended Mount Temple Comprehensive School where he met his future wife, Alison Stewart, and the future members of U2. Bono writes almost all U2 lyrics, frequently using religious, social, during U2s early years, his lyrics contributed to their rebellious and spiritual tone. As the band matured, his lyrics became inspired more by personal experiences shared with the other members, Bono is also widely known for his activism concerning Africa, for which he co-founded DATA, EDUN, the ONE Campaign and Product Red. He has organised and played in several concerts and has met with influential politicians. Bono has been praised for his activism and involvement with U2, together with Bill and Melinda Gates, Bono was named Time Person of the Year in 2005, among other awards and nominations. Bono was born in the Rotunda Hospital, Dublin, on 10 May 1960. He was raised in the Northside suburb of Finglas with his brother by their mother, Iris, a member of the Church of Ireland, and their father, Brendan Robert Bob Hewson and his parents initially agreed that the first child would be raised Anglican and the second Catholic. Although Bono was the child, he also attended Church of Ireland services with his mother and brother. He went to the local primary Glasnevin National School, Bonos mother died on 10 September 1974, after suffering a cerebral aneurysm at her fathers funeral. Many U2 songs, including I Will Follow, Mofo, Out of Control, Lemon, Bono attended Mount Temple Comprehensive School, a multi-denominational school in Clontarf. During his childhood and adolescence, Bono and his friends were part of a surrealist street gang called Lypton Village, Bono met one of his closest friends, Guggi, in Lypton Village. The gang had a ritual of nickname-giving, Bono had several names, first, he was Steinhegvanhuysenolegbangbangbang, then just Huyseman, followed by Houseman, Bon Murray, Bono Vox of OConnell Street, and finally just Bono. Bono Vox is an alteration of Bonavox, a Latin phrase which translates to good voice and it is said he was nicknamed Bono Vox by his friend Gavin Friday. He initially disliked the name, however, when he learned it translated to good voice, Hewson has been known as Bono since the late 1970s. Although he uses Bono as his name, close family and friends also refer to him as Bono. After he left school, his father Bob Hewson, told him he could live at home for one year but if he was not able to pay his own way, Bono is married to Alison Hewson. The couple have four children, daughters Jordan and Memphis Eve and sons Elijah Bob Patricius Guggi Q, Bono is almost never seen in public without sunglasses, as he suffers from glaucoma
20.
Bob Geldof
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Robert Frederick Zenon Geldof, KBE, is an Irish singer, songwriter, author, occasional actor, and political activist. He rose to prominence as the singer of the Irish rock band The Boomtown Rats in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The band had hits with his compositions Rat Trap and I Dont Like Mondays and he co-wrote Do They Know Its Christmas. One of the singles of all time, and starred in Pink Floyds 1982 film Pink Floyd – The Wall as Pink. Geldof is widely recognised for his activism, especially anti-poverty efforts concerning Africa, in 1984 he and Midge Ure founded the charity supergroup Band Aid to raise money for famine relief in Ethiopia. They went on to organise the charity super-concert Live Aid the following year, a single father, Geldof has also been outspoken for the fathers rights movement. In 2005 he received the Brit Award for Outstanding Contribution to Music, Geldof was born and brought up in Dún Laoghaire, Ireland, a son of Robert and Evelyn Geldof. His paternal grandfather, Zenon Geldof, was a Belgian immigrant and his paternal grandmother, Amelia Falk, was an English Jew from London. When Geldof was six or seven, his mother, Evelyn,41, Bob Geldof attended Blackrock College, where he was bullied for being a poor rugby player and for his middle name, Zenon. After work as a slaughterman, a navvy and pea canner in Wisbech, he was hired as a music journalist in Vancouver. He briefly guest hosted the CBC childrens program Switchback, returning to Ireland in 1975, he became lead singer of the Boomtown Rats, a rock group closely linked with the punk movement. In 1978, The Boomtown Rats had their first No.1 single in the UK with Rat Trap, in 1979, they gained international attention with their second UK No. This was both successful and controversial, Geldof had written it in the aftermath of Brenda Ann Spencers attempted massacre at an elementary school in San Diego, California in 1979. In 1980, The Boomtown Rats released the album Mondo Bongo and its single Up All Night was a hit in the U. S. and its video was played frequently on MTV. Geldof became known as an interview subject. He responded to nuns in the audience who tried to shout him down by saying they had a life with no material worries in return for which they gave themselves body. The interview caused uproar, making it impossible for The Boomtown Rats to play in Ireland again, in January 2013, Geldof announced The Boomtown Rats would be reforming to play together for the first time since 1986 at that year’s Isle of Wight Festival in June. They have subsequently announced further tour dates and released a new CD Back to Boomtown, Geldof left the Boomtown Rats in 1986, to launch a solo career and publish his autobiography, Is That It. which was a UK best-seller
21.
Ernest Shackleton
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Born in Kilkea, Athy, County Kildare, Ireland, Shackleton and his Anglo-Irish family moved to Sydenham in suburban south London when he was ten. Also, members of his team climbed Mount Erebus, the most active Antarctic volcano, for these achievements, Shackleton was knighted by King Edward VII on his return home. After the race to the South Pole ended in December 1911 with Roald Amundsens conquest, Shackleton turned his attention to the crossing of Antarctica from sea to sea, to this end he made preparations for what became the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition, 1914–17. Disaster struck this expedition when its ship, Endurance, became trapped in ice and was slowly crushed before the shore parties could be landed. In 1921, he returned to the Antarctic with the Shackleton–Rowett Expedition, at his wifes request he was buried there. Away from his expeditions, Shackletons life was generally restless and unfulfilled, in his search for rapid pathways to wealth and security, he launched business ventures which failed to prosper, and he died heavily in debt. Upon his death, he was lauded in the press, but was largely forgotten. Ernest Shackleton was born on 15 February 1874 in Kilkea near Athy, County Kildare, Ireland, ernests father was Henry Shackleton, and his mother was Henrietta Letitia Sophia Gavan. His fathers family was Anglo-Irish, originally from Yorkshire, England and his mothers family was Irish, from counties Cork and Kerry. Ernest was the second of their ten children and the first of two sons, the second, Frank, achieved notoriety as a suspect, later exonerated, in the 1907 theft of the Irish Crown Jewels. In 1880, when Ernest was six, Henry Shackleton gave up his life as a landowner to study medicine at Trinity College, Dublin, four years later, the family moved again, from Ireland to Sydenham in suburban London. From early childhood, Shackleton was a reader, a pursuit which sparked a passion for adventure. He was schooled by a governess until the age of eleven, at the age of thirteen, he entered Dulwich College. The young Shackleton did not particularly distinguish himself as a scholar and he was quoted later as saying, I never learned much geography at school. Literature, too, consisted in the dissection, the parsing, teachers should be very careful not to spoil taste for poetry for all time by making it a task and an imposition. In his final term at the school he was able to achieve fifth place in his class of thirty-one. Shackletons restlessness at school was such that he was allowed to leave at 16 and his father was able to secure him a berth with the North Western Shipping Company, aboard the square-rigged sailing ship Hoghton Tower. In August 1894, he passed his examination for Second Mate, two years later, he had obtained his First Mates ticket, and in 1898, he was certified as a Master Mariner, qualifying him to command a British ship anywhere in the world
22.
Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington
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His defeat of Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815 put him in the top rank of Britains military heroes. Wellesley was born in Dublin, belonging to the Protestant Ascendancy in Ireland and he was commissioned as an ensign in the British Army in 1787, serving in Ireland as aide-de-camp to two successive Lords Lieutenant of Ireland. He was also elected as a Member of Parliament in the Irish House of Commons and he was a colonel by 1796, and saw action in the Netherlands and in India, where he fought in the Fourth Anglo-Mysore War at the Battle of Seringapatam. He was appointed governor of Seringapatam and Mysore in 1799 and, as a newly appointed major-general, following Napoleons exile in 1814, he served as the ambassador to France and was granted a dukedom. During the Hundred Days in 1815, he commanded the army which defeated Napoleon at Waterloo. Wellesleys battle record is exemplary, he participated in some 60 battles during the course of his military career. Wellington is famous for his defensive style of warfare, resulting in several victories against numerically superior forces while minimising his own losses. He is regarded as one of the greatest defensive commanders of all time, after ending his active military career, Wellington returned to politics. He was twice British prime minister as part of the Tory party, from 1828 to 1830 and he oversaw the passage of the Catholic Relief Act 1829, but opposed the Reform Act 1832. He continued as one of the figures in the House of Lords until his retirement. As such, he belonged to the Protestant Ascendancy and his biographers mostly follow the contemporary newspaper evidence in saying that he was born 1 May 1769, the day that he was baptised. He was most likely born at his parents townhouse,24 Upper Merrion Street, Dublin, but his mother Anne, Countess of Mornington, recalled in 1815 that he had been born at 6 Merrion Street, Dublin. He spent most of his childhood at his familys two homes, the first a house in Dublin and the second Dangan Castle,3 miles north of Summerhill on the Trim Road in County Meath. In 1781, Arthurs father died and his eldest brother Richard inherited his fathers earldom and he went to the diocesan school in Trim when at Dangan, Mr Whytes Academy when in Dublin, and Browns School in Chelsea when in London. He then enrolled at Eton, where he studied from 1781 to 1784, moreover, Eton had no playing fields at the time. In 1785, a lack of success at Eton, combined with a shortage of funds due to his fathers death, forced the young Wellesley. Until his early twenties, Arthur showed little sign of distinction and his mother grew concerned at his idleness, stating. A year later, Arthur enrolled in the French Royal Academy of Equitation in Angers, where he progressed significantly, becoming a good horseman and learning French, upon returning to England in late 1786, he astonished his mother with his improvement
23.
Alexander Fleming
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Sir Alexander Fleming FRS FRSE FRCS was a Scottish biologist, pharmacologist and botanist. He wrote many articles on bacteriology, immunology, and chemotherapy, Fleming was knighted for his scientific achievements in 1944. In 1999, he was named in Time magazines list of the 100 Most Important People of the 20th century, hugh Fleming had four surviving children from his first marriage. He was 59 at the time of his marriage. Fleming went to Loudoun Moor School and Darvel School, and earned a scholarship to Kilmarnock Academy before moving to London. After working in an office for four years, the twenty-year-old Fleming inherited some money from an uncle. Fleming had been a private in the London Scottish Regiment of the Volunteer Force since 1900, in 1908, he gained a BSc degree with Gold Medal in Bacteriology, and became a lecturer at St Marys until 1914. Fleming served throughout World War I as a captain in the Royal Army Medical Corps and he and many of his colleagues worked in battlefield hospitals at the Western Front in France. In 1918 he returned to St Marys Hospital, where he was elected Professor of Bacteriology of the University of London in 1928, in 1951 he was elected the Rector of the University of Edinburgh for a term of three years. During World War I, Fleming witnessed the death of soldiers from sepsis resulting from infected wounds. Antiseptics, which were used at the time to treat infected wounds, at St Mary’s Hospital Fleming continued his investigations into antibacterial substances. Testing the nasal secretions from a patient with a heavy cold and this was the first recorded discovery of lysozyme, an enzyme present in many secretions including tears, saliva, skin, hair and nails as well as mucus. Although he was able to obtain larger amounts of lysozyme from egg whites, the enzyme was only effective against small counts of harmless bacteria, by 1927, Fleming had been investigating the properties of staphylococci. He was already well-known from his work, and had developed a reputation as a brilliant researcher. On 3 September 1928, Fleming returned to his laboratory having spent August on holiday with his family, before leaving, he had stacked all his cultures of staphylococci on a bench in a corner of his laboratory. Fleming showed the culture to his former assistant Merlin Price. Fleming grew the mould in a culture and found that it produced a substance that killed a number of disease-causing bacteria. He identified the mould as being from the Penicillium genus, and, after months of calling it mould juice
24.
Margaret Thatcher
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She was the longest-serving British prime minister of the 20th century, and the first woman to have held the office. A Soviet journalist dubbed her The Iron Lady, a nickname that became associated with her uncompromising politics, as Prime Minister, she implemented policies that have come to be known as Thatcherism. A research chemist before becoming a barrister, Thatcher was elected Member of Parliament for Finchley in 1959, Edward Heath appointed her Secretary of State for Education and Science in his 1970 government. In 1975, Thatcher defeated Heath in the Conservative Party leadership election to become Leader of the Opposition and she became Prime Minister after winning the 1979 general election. Her political philosophy and economic policies emphasised deregulation, flexible labour markets, the privatisation of state-owned companies and she narrowly escaped an assassination attempt in 1984. Thatcher was re-elected for a term in 1987. During this period her support for a Community Charge was widely unpopular and she resigned as Prime Minister and party leader in November 1990, after Michael Heseltine launched a challenge to her leadership. After retiring from the Commons in 1992, she was given a peerage as Baroness Thatcher which entitled her to sit in the House of Lords. After a series of strokes in 2002, she was advised to withdraw from public speaking. Despite this, she managed to pre-record a eulogy to Ronald Reagan prior to his death, in 2013, she died of another stroke in London, at the age of 87. Always a controversial figure, she has described as one of the greatest and most influential politicians in British history. Thatcher was born Margaret Hilda Roberts on 13 October 1925, in Grantham and her father was Alfred Roberts, originally from Northamptonshire, and her mother was Beatrice Ethel from Lincolnshire. She spent her childhood in Grantham, where her father owned two grocery shops, Prior to the Second World War, in 1938 the Roberts family gave sanctuary to a teenage Jewish girl escaping Nazi Germany. Thatcher was to describe this in her memoirs as among the significant events of her formative years, Alfred Roberts was an alderman and a Methodist local preacher, and brought up his daughter as a strict Wesleyan Methodist attending the Finkin Street Methodist Church. He came from a Liberal family but stood as an Independent and he was Mayor of Grantham in 1945–46 and lost his position as alderman in 1952 after the Labour Party won its first majority on Grantham Council in 1950. Margaret Roberts attended Huntingtower Road Primary School and won a scholarship to Kesteven and her school reports showed hard work and continual improvement, her extracurricular activities included the piano, field hockey, poetry recitals, swimming and walking. She was head girl in 1942–43, in her upper sixth year she applied for a scholarship to study chemistry at Somerville College, Oxford, but she was initially rejected and was offered a place only after another candidate withdrew. Her dissertation was on the structure of the antibiotic gramicidin, even while working on chemistry, she was already thinking towards law and politics
25.
Ringo Starr
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Richard Starkey, MBE, known professionally as Ringo Starr, is an English musician, singer, songwriter and actor who gained worldwide fame as the drummer for the Beatles. He occasionally sang lead vocals, usually for one song on an album, including With a Little Help from My Friends, Yellow Submarine and their cover of Act Naturally. He also wrote the Beatles songs Dont Pass Me By and Octopuss Garden, Starr was twice afflicted by life-threatening illnesses during childhood, and as a result of prolonged hospitalisations fell behind in school. In 1955, he entered the workforce and briefly held a position with British Rail before securing an apprenticeship at a Liverpool equipment manufacturer, soon afterwards, he became interested in the UK skiffle craze, developing a fervent admiration for the genre. In 1957, he cofounded his first band, the Eddie Clayton Skiffle Group, when the Beatles formed in 1960, Starr was a member of another Liverpool group, Rory Storm and the Hurricanes. After achieving moderate success with that band in the UK and Hamburg, he quit the Hurricanes and joined the Beatles in August 1962, Starr played key roles in the Beatles films and appeared in numerous others. After the bands break-up in 1970, he released several singles including the US number four hit It Dont Come Easy. In 1972, he released his most successful UK single, Back Off Boogaloo and he achieved commercial and critical success with his 1973 album Ringo, which was a top ten release in both the UK and the US. He has been featured in a number of documentaries and hosted television shows, since 1989, he has toured with twelve variations of Ringo Starr & His All-Starr Band. Ringos popularity brought forth a new paradigm and we started to see the drummer as an equal participant in the compositional aspect. His parts are so signature to the songs that you can listen to a Ringo drum part without the rest of the music and he was inducted into the Modern Drummer Hall of Fame in 1998. In 2011, Rolling Stone readers named Starr the fifth-greatest drummer of all time. Starr, who was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a Beatle in 1988, was inducted for his solo career in 2015. Richard Starkey was born on 7 July 1940, at 9 Madryn Street, in Dingle and he is the only child of confectioners Elsie and Richard Starkey. Elsie enjoyed singing and dancing, a hobby that she shared with her husband, an avid fan of swing. Prior to the birth of their son, whom they nicknamed Ritchie, the couple had spent much of their time on the local ballroom circuit. Elsie adopted an approach to raising her son that bordered on fixation. Subsequently, Big Ritchie, as Starkeys father became known, lost interest in his family, choosing instead to spend hours drinking and dancing in pubs
26.
The Beatles
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The Beatles were an English rock band, formed in Liverpool in 1960. With members John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr, the Beatles built their reputation playing clubs in Liverpool and Hamburg over a three-year period from 1960, with Stuart Sutcliffe initially serving as bass player. The core of Lennon, McCartney and Harrison went through a succession of drummers, including Pete Best, before asking Starr to join them. They acquired the nickname the Fab Four as Beatlemania grew in Britain the next year, from 1965 onwards, the Beatles produced increasingly innovative recordings, including the albums Rubber Soul, Revolver, Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band, The Beatles and Abbey Road, after their break-up in 1970, they each enjoyed successful musical careers of varying lengths. McCartney and Starr, the members, remain musically active. Lennon was shot and killed in December 1980, and Harrison died of cancer in November 2001. The Beatles are the band in history, with estimated sales of over 600 million records worldwide. They have had more number-one albums on the British charts and sold more singles in the UK than any other act, according to the RIAA, the Beatles are also the best-selling music artists in the United States, with 178 million certified units. In 2008, the group topped Billboard magazines list of the all-time most successful Hot 100 artists, as of 2016 and they have received ten Grammy Awards, an Academy Award for Best Original Song Score and fifteen Ivor Novello Awards. The group was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1988 and they were also collectively included in Time magazines compilation of the twentieth centurys 100 most influential people. In March 1957, John Lennon, then aged sixteen, formed a group with several friends from Quarry Bank school. They briefly called themselves the Blackjacks, before changing their name to the Quarrymen after discovering that a local group was already using the other name. Fifteen-year-old Paul McCartney joined as a rhythm guitarist shortly after he, in February 1958, McCartney invited his friend George Harrison to watch the band. The fourteen-year-old auditioned for Lennon, impressing him with his playing, after a month of Harrisons persistence, they enlisted him as their lead guitarist. By January 1959, Lennons Quarry Bank friends had left the group, the three guitarists, billing themselves at least three times as Johnny and the Moondogs, were playing rock and roll whenever they could find a drummer. They used the name until May, when they became the Silver Beetles, before undertaking a tour of Scotland as the backing group for pop singer. By early July, they had changed their name to the Silver Beatles, allan Williams, the Beatles unofficial manager, arranged a residency for them in Hamburg, but lacking a full-time drummer they auditioned and hired Pete Best in mid-August 1960
27.
Isambard Kingdom Brunel
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Brunel built dockyards, the Great Western Railway, a series of steamships including the first propeller-driven transatlantic steamship, and numerous important bridges and tunnels. His designs revolutionised public transport and modern engineering, though Brunels projects were not always successful, they often contained innovative solutions to long-standing engineering problems. Brunel set the standard for a railway, using careful surveys to minimise grades and curves. This necessitated expensive construction techniques, new bridges, new viaducts, one controversial feature was the wide gauge, a broad gauge of 7 ft 1⁄4 in, instead of what was later to be known as standard gauge of 4 ft 8 1⁄2 in. Brunel astonished Britain by proposing to extend the Great Western Railway westward to North America by building steam-powered iron-hulled ships and he designed and built three ships that revolutionised naval engineering, the Great Western, the Great Britain, and the Great Eastern. In 2002, Brunel was placed second in a BBC public poll to determine the 100 Greatest Britons, in 2006, the bicentenary of his birth, a major programme of events celebrated his life and work under the name Brunel 200. Brunels name is an amalgamation of his parents names and he inherited the family name of his father, and his middle name is his mothers surname. Brunels first name, Isambard, comes from his fathers middle name, Isambard is a Norman name of Germanic origin, meaning iron-bright. A cognate name is the German surname Eisenbarth, which can still be found today among Bavarians and German-Americans and he had two older sisters, Sophia and Emma, and the whole family moved to London in 1808 for his fathers work. Brunel had a childhood, despite the familys constant money worries. His father taught him drawing and observational techniques from the age of four, during this time he also learned fluent French and the basic principles of engineering. He was encouraged to draw interesting buildings and identify any faults in their structure, when Brunel was eight he was sent to Dr Morrells boarding school in Hove, where he learned the classics. When Brunel was 15, his father Marc, who had accumulated debts of over £5,000, was sent to a debtors prison. After three months went by with no prospect of release, Marc let it be known that he was considering an offer from the Tsar of Russia. In August 1821, facing the prospect of losing a prominent engineer, Brunel subsequently studied under the prominent master clockmaker and horologist Abraham-Louis Breguet, who praised Brunels potential in letters to his father. In late 1822, having completed his apprenticeship, Brunel returned to England, Brunels father, Marc, was the chief engineer, and the project was funded by the Thames Tunnel Company. The composition of the riverbed at Rotherhithe was often more than waterlogged sediment. The latter incident, in 1828, killed the two most senior miners, and Brunel himself narrowly escaped death and he was seriously injured, and spent six months recuperating
28.
Brunel University London
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Brunel University London is a public research university located in Uxbridge, London, United Kingdom. Founded in 1966, it was named after the Victorian engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel, Brunels campus is located on the outskirts of Uxbridge. It is organised into three colleges and three research institutes, a structure adopted in August 2014 which also changed the universitys name to Brunel University London. Brunel has over 12,900 students and 2,500 staff, Brunel College of Technology separated from Acton Technical College in 1957, and focused on the education of engineers. Brunel College of Technology was awarded the status of College of Advanced Technology in 1960, in June 1966 Brunel College of Advanced Technology was awarded a Royal Charter and became Brunel University London. It is sometimes described as a British plate glass university, Brunel is a member of the Association of Commonwealth Universities, the European University Association and Universities UK. Brunel is one of a number of British universities which were established in the 1960s following the Robbins Report on higher education and it is sometimes described as a plate glass university. The campus buildings were designed in the Brutalist style of architecture by Richard Sheppard, Robson & Partners, Architects. The Uxbridge railway branch line was closed in 1964, and the college purchased the adjacent to its site where the railway had run for £65,000 from the local council. The Royal Charter granting university status was awarded on 9 June 1966, the university continued to use both campuses until 1971 when it left the Acton site. In 1980 the university merged with Shoreditch College of Education, located at Coopers Hill, in 1995 the university expanded again, integrating the West London Institute of Higher Education, and adding campuses in Osterley and Twickenham. This increased the number of courses that Brunel University was able to offer, Brunel has been the subject of controversy as its approach to higher education has been both market-driven and politically conservative. In June 2011, Brunel University London licensed Creative Barcode, an automated idea sharing platform which protects ownership of early stage ideas, in the late 1990s Brunel devised a 10-year, £250 million Masterplan for the campus. This involved selling off campus sites at Runnymede, Osterley and Twickenham and using the revenue from the sales to renovate and update the buildings and facilities on the Uxbridge campus. The Brunel campus has appeared in films, most famously in Stanley Kubricks A Clockwork Orange, large parts of which were filmed on campus. It has also featured in several UK television series including Spooks, Silent Witness, The Sweeney, Brunel exists by virtue of a royal charter first granted in 1966 and it has the status of an exempt charity as defined by the Charities Act 2006. The governing body of Brunel is the Council, which comprises university staff and students, the Council appoints the Vice-Chancellor and other senior officers. The Council has a number of Committees which support its work, Brunels academic governing body is the Senate, which is chaired by the Vice-Chancellor
29.
2012 Summer Olympics opening ceremony
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The opening ceremony of the 2012 Summer Olympic Games took place on the evening of Friday 27 July in the Olympic Stadium, London. As mandated by the Olympic Charter, the proceedings combined the formal opening of this international sporting event with an artistic spectacle to showcase the host nations culture. The 2012 Games were formally opened by Queen Elizabeth II, the spectacle was entitled Isles of Wonder and directed by Academy Award-winning British film director Danny Boyle. Prior to London 2012 there had been considerable apprehension about Britains ability to stage a ceremony that could reach the standard set at the Beijing Summer Games of 2008. The 2008 ceremony had been noted for its scale, extravagance and expense, hailed as the greatest ever, in contrast, London spent an estimated £27m, which was nevertheless about twice the original budget. Nonetheless, the London opening ceremony was seen as a tremendous success, widely praised as a masterpiece. The ceremony began at 21,00 BST and lasted almost four hours and it was watched by an estimated worldwide television audience of 900 million, becoming the most-viewed Olympic opening ceremony in both the UK and US. The content had largely been kept secret before the performance, despite involving thousands of volunteers, two shorter sections drew particular comment, involving a filmed cameo appearance of the Queen, and a live performance by the London Symphony Orchestra joined by comedian Rowan Atkinson. These were widely ascribed to Britains sense of humour, the ceremony featured children and young people in most of its segments, reflecting the inspire a generation aspiration of Londons original bid for the Games. The London Organising Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games approached Danny Boyle to be the director of the ceremony in June 2010 and he said it felt weirdly more like a. civic or national responsibility to take the job. He said. obviously Im not going to try and build on Beijing and we cant, and you wouldnt want to, so were going back to the beginning. Were going to try and give the impression that were rethinking and restarting, theyve tried to top themselves each time and you cant do that after Beijing. Beijings budget had been £65m, whereas Londons final budget was £27m, the London stadium had the same number of seats as Beijings, but was half the size, this intimacy of scale meant that Boyle felt he could achieve something personal and connecting. K. Chesterton aphorism, The world shall not for lack of wonders. In July 2010 Boyle started brainstorming ideas with designer Mark Tildesley, writer Frank Cottrell Boyce and they considered what was essentially British, with the non-British Larlarb able to offer a view of what the world thought Britain meant. Cottrell Boyce had given Boyle a copy of Pandaemonium, by Humphrey Jennings and it had become traditional during the opening ceremony to produce the Olympic rings in a spectacular manner. Boyle decided that the journey from the pastoral to the industrial, at the same time the team moved to the Three Mills studio complex in east London, where a 4x4 metre scale model of the stadium was built. For security reasons, a single CGI-assisted version of the ceremony was kept on editor Sascha Dhillons laptop, the cast included professional performers and 7,500 volunteers
30.
2012 Summer Olympics closing ceremony
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The closing ceremony of the London 2012 Summer Olympics, also known as A Symphony of British Music, was held on 12–13 August in the Olympic Stadium. The closing ceremony was created by Kim Gavin, Es Devlin, Stephen Daldry, David Arnold, the worldwide broadcast began at 21,00 BST and finished on 13 August 2012 at 00,11, lasting three hours and eleven minutes. The stadium had turned into a giant representation of the Union Flag. Around 4,100 people partook in the ceremony, which reportedly cost £20 million, the 2012 Summer Olympics were officially closed by Jacques Rogge, who called Londons games happy and glorious. The ceremony included a handover to the next host city for the 2016 Summer Olympics, Rio de Janeiro and saw the Olympic flame extinguished, the main part of the evening featured a one-hour symphony of British Music as a number of British Pop acts appeared. Tributes to John Lennon and Freddie Mercury and the industry were included in the section. Rio marked the handover with a section known as Embrace created by Cao Hamburger and Daniela Thomas. Sebastian Coe gave a speech, and the volunteers of London 2012 were thanked, an average of 23.2 million viewers in the United Kingdom watched the event, with an estimated 750 million worldwide. Critics were generally positive, but noted that it was not as good as the opening ceremony, some of the foreign reviews questioned whether everyone would have understood the nods to British film and television. George Michael was roundly criticised for his song choice while Kate Moss, some performers were initially reluctant to appear, and other high-profile acts turned down invitations to perform at the ceremony. NBC in the United States and Prime TV in New Zealand were criticised by viewers for their broadcasts of the ceremony, there was also a concert in Hyde Park to close the Olympics, featuring Blur, New Order, and The Specials. The creative director and choreographer was Kim Gavin, with Es Devlin responsible for design, when Arnold was announced in his role he said that doing the closing ceremony was an honour and a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. While Gavin stated that he was excited and honoured to be involved. Davlin said that she was delighted to be part of the greatest show on earth, hugh Robertson, Minister for Sport and the Olympics, stated that he was delighted to have a high-quality team working on the ceremony. While Boris Johnson stated that we have the best of British creating the bookends to our Games, Stephen Daldry was the executive producer and Mark Fisher was in charge of production design. The ceremony cost £20 million, with the artists paid just £1 for contractual purposes, around 4,100 performers took part, comprising 3,500 adult volunteers,380 schoolchildren from the six original host boroughs, and 250 professionals. There had been around 15 rehearsals for the volunteers at the Three Mills Studio and at a site in Dagenham. Gavin said that “the show we are putting on is very shiny and we dont want to bang on about our culture
31.
2012 Summer Olympics
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It took place in London and to a lesser extent across the United Kingdom from 25 July to 12 August 2012. The first event, the stage in womens football began on 25 July at the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff. 10,768 athletes from 204 National Olympic Committees participated, London is the first and only city thus far to host the modern Olympic Games three times, having previously done so in 1908 and in 1948. Construction for the Games involved considerable redevelopment, with an emphasis on sustainability, the main focus was a new 200-hectare Olympic Park, constructed on a former industrial site at Stratford, East London. The Games also made use of venues that already existed before the bid, the Games received widespread acclaim for their organisation, with the volunteers, the British military and public enthusiasm praised particularly highly. During the Games, Michael Phelps became the most decorated Olympic athlete of all time, saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Brunei entered female athletes for the first time, so that every currently eligible country has sent a female competitor to at least one Olympic Games. Womens boxing was included for the first time, thus the Games became the first at which every sport had female competitors and these were the final Olympic Games under the IOC presidency of Jacques Rogge. The final medal tally was led by the United States, followed by China, several world and Olympic records were set at the games. Furthermore, the focus on sporting legacy and post-games venue sustainability was seen as a blueprint for future Olympics. On 18 May 2004, as a result of a technical evaluation. All five submitted their candidate files by 19 November 2004 and were visited by the IOC inspection team during February, throughout the process, Paris was widely seen as the favourite, particularly as this was its third bid in recent years. London was initially seen as lagging behind Paris by a considerable margin and its position began to improve after the appointment of Lord Coe as the new head of London 2012 on 19 May 2004. In late August 2004, reports predicted a tie between London and Paris, on 6 June 2005, the IOC released its evaluation reports for the five candidate cities. They did not contain any scores or rankings, but the report for Paris was considered the most positive, London was close behind, having closed most of the gap observed by the initial evaluation in 2004. New York and Madrid also received positive evaluations. On 1 July 2005, when asked who would win, Jacques Rogge said, but my gut feeling tells me that it will be very close. Perhaps it will come down to a difference of say ten votes, on 6 July 2005, the final selection was announced at the 117th IOC Session in Singapore. Moscow was the first city to be eliminated, followed by New York, the final two contenders were London and Paris
32.
Winston Churchill
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Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill KG OM CH TD PC DL FRS RA was a British statesman who was the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1940 to 1945 and again from 1951 to 1955. Churchill was also an officer in the British Army, a historian. He won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1953 for his overall, in 1963, he was the first of only eight people to be made an honorary citizen of the United States. Churchill was born into the family of the Dukes of Marlborough and his father, Lord Randolph Churchill, was a charismatic politician who served as Chancellor of the Exchequer, his mother, Jennie Jerome, was an American socialite. As a young officer, he saw action in British India, the Anglo–Sudan War. He gained fame as a war correspondent and wrote books about his campaigns, at the forefront of politics for fifty years, he held many political and cabinet positions. Before the First World War, he served as President of the Board of Trade, Home Secretary, during the war, he continued as First Lord of the Admiralty until the disastrous Gallipoli Campaign caused his departure from government. He then briefly resumed active service on the Western Front as commander of the 6th Battalion of the Royal Scots Fusiliers. He returned to government under Lloyd George as Minister of Munitions, Secretary of State for War, Secretary of State for Air, at the outbreak of the Second World War, he was again appointed First Lord of the Admiralty. Following the resignation of Neville Chamberlain on 10 May 1940, Churchill became Prime Minister and he led Britain as Prime Minister until victory over Nazi Germany had been secured. After the Conservative Party suffered a defeat in the 1945 general election. He publicly warned of an Iron Curtain of Soviet influence in Europe, after winning the 1951 election, Churchill again became Prime Minister. His second term was preoccupied by foreign affairs, including the Malayan Emergency, Mau Mau Uprising, Korean War, domestically his government laid great emphasis on house-building. Churchill suffered a stroke in 1953 and retired as Prime Minister in 1955. Upon his death aged ninety in 1965, Elizabeth II granted him the honour of a state funeral and his highly complex legacy continues to stimulate intense debate amongst writers and historians. Born into the family of the Dukes of Marlborough, a branch of the noble Spencer family, Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill, like his father. His ancestor George Spencer had changed his surname to Spencer-Churchill in 1817 when he became Duke of Marlborough, to highlight his descent from John Churchill, Churchill was born on 30 November 1874, two months prematurely, in a bedroom in Blenheim Palace, Woodstock, Oxfordshire. From age two to six, he lived in Dublin, where his grandfather had been appointed Viceroy, Churchills brother, John Strange Spencer-Churchill, was born during this time in Ireland
33.
Kenneth Branagh
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Sir Kenneth Charles Branagh is a Northern Irish actor, director, producer, and screenwriter originally from Belfast. Branagh trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London and he has directed or starred in several film adaptations of William Shakespeares plays, including Henry V, Much Ado About Nothing, Othello, Hamlet, Loves Labours Lost, and As You Like It. He also narrated the BBC documentary miniseries Walking with Dinosaurs, Walking with Beasts, Branagh has been nominated for five Academy Awards, five Golden Globes, and has won three BAFTAs, and an Emmy. He was appointed a knight bachelor in the 2012 Birthday Honours and was knighted on 9 November 2012, at the age of nine, he moved with his family to Reading, Berkshire, to escape the Troubles. He was educated at Grove Primary School, Whiteknights Primary School, then Meadway School, Tilehurst, at school, he acquired Received Pronunciation to avoid bullying. On his identity today he has said, I feel Irish, I dont think you can take Belfast out of the boy, and he attributes his love of words to his Irish heritage. He is known to have attended the Reading Cine & Video Society as a member and was a member of Progress Theatre for whom he is now the patron. Branagh went on to train at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London, Branagh was part of the new wave’ of actors to emerge from the Academy. Others included Jonathan Pryce, Juliet Stevenson, Alan Rickman, Anton Lesser, Bruce Payne, in 1984 he appeared in the Royal Shakespeare Company production of Henry V, directed by Adrian Noble. The production played to full houses, especially at the Barbican in London and it was this production that he adapted for the film version of the play in 1989. This Twelfth Night was later adapted for television, on the negative side, he has not got the magnetism of Olivier, nor the mellifluous voice quality of Gielgud nor the intelligence of Guinness. A year later in 1989 Branagh co-starred with Emma Thompson in the Renaissance revival of Look Back in Anger, Judi Dench directed both the theatre and television productions, presented first in Belfast then at the London Coliseum and Lyric Theatre. In 2002, Branagh starred at the Crucible Theatre, Sheffield as Richard III, in 2003 he starred in the Royal National Theatres production of David Mamets Edmond. Branagh directed The Play What I Wrote in England in 2001, from September to November 2008, Branagh appeared at Wyndhams Theatre as the title character in the Donmar West End revival of Anton Chekhovs Ivanov in a new version by Tom Stoppard. His performance was lauded as the performance of the year by several critics and it won him the Critics Circle Theatre Award for Best Male Performance but did not get him a Laurence Olivier Award nomination, to the surprise of critics. In July 2013 he co-directed Macbeth at Manchester International Festival with Rob Ashford, with Branagh in the title role, Alex Kingston played Lady Macbeth and Ray Fearon featured as Macduff. The final performance of the sold out run, was broadcast to cinemas on 20 July as part of National Theatre Live. He repeated his performance and directorial duties opposite Ashford and Kingston when the production moved to New York Citys Park Avenue Armory in June 2014, the production marked his New York stage debut
34.
Timothy Spall
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Timothy Leonard Spall, OBE is an English character actor and occasional presenter. He became a name in the UK after appearing in the 1983 ITV comedy-drama series Auf Wiedersehen. Spall received critical acclaim for his performance in Secrets & Lies, Spall has also starred in the television documentary Timothy Spall. at Sea. In 2014, he won the Best Actor award at the 2014 Cannes Film Festival for portraying J. M. W. Turner in Mike Leighs biographical film Mr. Turner, Spall, the third of four sons, was born in Battersea, London. His mother, Sylvia R. was a hairdresser, and his father and he trained at the National Youth Theatre and RADA, where he was awarded the Bancroft Gold Medal as the most promising actor in his year. He gained international recognition as Peter Pettigrew in the Harry Potter film series, in 1991 he guest starred in the series 5 Red Dwarf episode Back to Reality. In 1993, Spall was in Rab C, in the 2000 New Year Honours, he was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire. Spall performed lead vocals on the song The Devil is an Englishman from the Ken Russell film Gothic, Spall played the starring role of Albert Pierrepoint in the 2005 film Pierrepoint, which was released as The Last Hangman in the United States. In the 2006 video game Grand Theft Auto, Vice City Stories, Spall voiced Phil Collins manager, in 2007, he starred as Nathaniel in Disneys Enchanted and Beadle Bamford in Tim Burtons production of Sweeney Todd, The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. He also starred as Georgie Godwin in a one off television drama The Fattest Man in Britain on ITV1 which aired on 20 December 2009, the drama also featured Bobby Ball, Frances Barber, Aisling Loftus and Jeremy Kyle. Spall reprised the role at the 2012 Summer Olympics closing ceremony, in 2012, Spall filmed Wasteland, with actors Matthew Lewis and Vanessa Kirby. The Newport Beach Film Festival in Newport Beach, California, screened Wasteland in April 2013, also in 2012 Spall played Charlie Morgan in the edgy film Comes a Bright Day. In 2014, he won the Best Actor Award at the 2014 Cannes Film Festival for Mr. Turner, Timothy Spall plays various roles in Stanley A Man Of Variety, directed by Stephen Cookson and produced by Red Rock Entertainment. Timothy received the Edgeware Outstanding Achievement Award for his performance in Stanley A Man of Variety, Spall and his wife Shane have three children, Pascale, Rafe, who is also an actor and Mercedes. He lives in Forest Hill, south east London, in 1996, Spall was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukaemia, but has since been in remission. He has said of his illness, I didnt know what made me ill but stress had something to do with it and it made me aware of things and become more selective. I am less worried about employment, I really do my homework so I am not getting stressed on the set because I dont know what Im doing. He is the owner of a Dutch barge that he and his wife have been sailing around the British Isles as part of a BBC Four TV series Timothy Spall, Back at Sea
35.
The Tempest
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The Tempest is a play by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written in 1610–11, and thought by many critics to be the last play that Shakespeare wrote alone. It is set on an island, where the sorcerer Prospero, rightful Duke of Milan, plots to restore his daughter Miranda to her rightful place using illusion. He conjures up a storm, the eponymous tempest, to lure his usurping brother Antonio, there, his machinations bring about the revelation of Antonios lowly nature, the redemption of the King, and the marriage of Miranda to Alonsos son, Ferdinand. In addition, one of Gonzalos speeches is derived from Montaignes essay Of the Canibales, the masque in Act 4 may have been a later addition, possibly in honour of the wedding of Princess Elizabeth and Frederick V in 1613. The play was first published in the First Folio of 1623, the story draws heavily on the tradition of the romance, and it was influenced by tragicomedy, the courtly masque and perhaps the commedia dellarte. It differs from Shakespeares other plays in its observation of a stricter, H. Gonzalo, Alonsos counselor, had secretly supplied their boat with some food, fresh water, rich garments, linens, stuffs and necessaries, and volumes that Prospero prizes. Prospero maintains Ariels loyalty by promising to release the airy spirit from servitude. Sycorax had been exiled from Algiers to the island for wreaking havoc with her magic, Sycorax son, Caliban, a deformed monster and the only non-spiritual inhabitant before the arrival of Prospero, was initially adopted and raised by him. He taught Prospero how to survive on the island, while Prospero and Miranda taught Caliban religion, in slavery, Caliban has come to view Prospero as a usurper and has grown to resent him and his daughter. Prospero and Miranda in turn view Caliban with disappointment, contempt, Prospero only performs one act of magic himself directly on stage, he disarms Ferdinand, causing his nerves to become in their infancy again. The rest of his magic is through controlling spirits, which is how magicians of the time were believed to operate, Prospero, having divined that his brother Antonio is on a nearby ship, has raised a tempest that causes the passengers to believe they are shipwrecked and marooned. Also on the ship are Antonios friend and fellow conspirator, King Alonso of Naples, Alonsos brother and son and Alonsos trusted counselor, all these passengers are returning from the wedding of Alonsos daughter Claribel and the King of Tunis. Prospero contrives to separate the shipwreck survivors into several groups by his spells, three plots then alternate through the play. In one, Caliban falls in with Stephano and Trinculo, two drunkards, believing Stephano to be a god who bears celestial liquor. They attempt to raise a coup against Prospero, which ultimately fails, in the third subplot, Antonio and Sebastian conspire to kill Alonso and Gonzalo so that Sebastian can become King. Ariel thwarts them, at Prosperos command, Ariel appears to the three men of sin as a harpy, reprimanding them for their betrayal of Prospero. Prospero, who has witnessed this, leaves to visit Ferdinand, the three guilty nobles run off, distracted and in a frenzy, and Gonzalo and the attendant lords chase after to prevent them from doing what this ecstasy may now provoke them to. Prospero then explains that he tested Ferdinand, and betroths a willing Miranda to him and he then asks Ariel to bring some other spirits and create a masque to entertain the young couple
36.
Tim Berners-Lee
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Sir Timothy John Berners-Lee OM KBE FRS FREng FRSA FBCS, also known as TimBL, is an English computer scientist, best known as the inventor of the World Wide Web. Berners-Lee is the director of the World Wide Web Consortium, which oversees the development of the Web. He is also the founder of the World Wide Web Foundation and is a researcher and holder of the founders chair at the MIT Computer Science. He is a director of the Web Science Research Initiative, in 2011, he was named as a member of the board of trustees of the Ford Foundation. In 2004, Berners-Lee was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II for his pioneering work, in April 2009, he was elected a foreign associate of the United States National Academy of Sciences. Named in Time magazines list of the 100 Most Important People of the 20th century and he tweeted This is for everyone, which instantly was spelled out in LCD lights attached to the chairs of the 80,000 people in the audience. Berners-Lee was born in London, England, United Kingdom, one of four born to Mary Lee Woods. His parents worked on the first commercially built computer, the Ferranti Mark 1, a keen trainspotter as a child, he learnt about electronics from tinkering with a model railway. He studied at The Queens College, Oxford, from 1973 to 1976, after graduation, Berners-Lee worked as an engineer at the telecommunications company Plessey in Poole, Dorset. In 1978, he joined D. G. Nash in Ferndown, Dorset, Berners-Lee worked as an independent contractor at CERN from June to December 1980. While in Geneva, he proposed a project based on the concept of hypertext, to demonstrate it, he built a prototype system named ENQUIRE. After leaving CERN in late 1980, he went to work at John Pooles Image Computer Systems, Ltd, in Bournemouth and he ran the companys technical side for three years. The project he worked on was a remote procedure call which gave him experience in computer networking. In 1984, he returned to CERN as a fellow and it then was accepted by his manager, Mike Sendall. He used similar ideas to those underlying the ENQUIRE system to create the World Wide Web, for which he designed and his software also functioned as an editor, and the first Web server, CERN HTTPd. The first web site was built at CERN, despite this being an international organisation hosted by Switzerland, the office that Berners-Lee used was just across the border in France. It was put online on 6 August 1991 for the first time, It provided an explanation of what the World Wide Web was and we can connect with each other instantly, all over the world. In 1994, Berners-Lee founded the W3C at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and it comprised various companies that were willing to create standards and recommendations to improve the quality of the Web
37.
Black British
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Black British are British people of Black and African origins or heritage, including those of African-Caribbean background, and may include people with mixed ancestry. Black British is one of various self-designation entries used in official UK ethnicity classifications, Black residents constituted around 3 per cent of the United Kingdoms population in 2011. The figures have increased from just under 1.15 million residents in 2001, or 2 per cent of the population, over 95% of Black British live in England, particularly in Englands larger urban areas, with over a million Black British living in Greater London alone. Historically, the term has most commonly used to refer to Black people of New Commonwealth origin. For example, Southall Black Sisters was established in 1979 to meet the needs of black women, Black was used in this inclusive political sense to mean non-white British. The official UK Census has separate self-designation entries for respondents to identify as Asian British, Black British, the 1991 UK census was the first to include a question on ethnicity. Black British was also a term for those Black people in Sierra Leone who were descendants of migrants from England and Canada and considered themselves British. They are generally the descendants of people who lived in England in the 18th century. There is evidence of the presence of people from Romanised North Africa in Roman Britain, archaeological inscriptions suggest that most of these residents were involved with the military. However, some were in the echelons of society. Analysis of a found in a Roman grave in Yorkshire indicated that it belonged to a mixed-race female. Her sarcophagus was made of stone and also contained a jet bracelet, in 2007, scientists found the rare paternal haplogroup A1 in several living British men with Yorkshire surnames. This clade is today almost exclusively found among males in West Africa, the haplogroup is thus thought to have been brought to Britain either through enlisted soldiers during Roman Britain, or via the slave trade. Some of the individuals who arrived through the slave route attained a high social rank. Historical records indicate the presence of a very small African population in Britain dating at least as far as the 12th century, early in the 16th century, servants from parts of Africa probably arrived in London with Catherine of Aragon when she travelled to England to marry Henry VIII. A black musician is among the six trumpeters depicted in the retinue of Henry VIII in the Westminster Tournament Roll. He wears the royal livery, and is mounted on horseback, the man is generally identified as the John Blanke, the blacke trumpeter who appears in the payment accounts of both Henry VIII and his father, Henry VII. A group of Africans were at the court of James IV of Scotland, both he and John Blanke were paid wages for their services
38.
Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
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The Prime Minister of the United Kingdom is the head of Her Majestys Government in the United Kingdom. The prime minister and Cabinet are collectively accountable for their policies and actions to the Monarch, to Parliament, to their political party, the office is one of the Great Offices of State. The current prime minister, Theresa May, leader of the Conservative Party, was appointed by the Queen on 13 July 2016. The position of Prime Minister was not created, it evolved slowly and erratically over three hundred years due to acts of Parliament, political developments, and accidents of history. The office is therefore best understood from a historical perspective, the origins of the position are found in constitutional changes that occurred during the Revolutionary Settlement and the resulting shift of political power from the Sovereign to Parliament. The political position of Prime Minister was enhanced by the development of political parties, the introduction of mass communication. By the start of the 20th century the modern premiership had emerged, prior to 1902, the prime minister sometimes came from the House of Lords, provided that his government could form a majority in the Commons. However as the power of the aristocracy waned during the 19th century the convention developed that the Prime Minister should always sit in the lower house. As leader of the House of Commons, the Prime Ministers authority was further enhanced by the Parliament Act of 1911 which marginalised the influence of the House of Lords in the law-making process. The Prime Minister is ex officio also First Lord of the Treasury, certain privileges, such as residency of 10 Downing Street, are accorded to Prime Ministers by virtue of their position as First Lord of the Treasury. As the Head of Her Majestys Government the modern Prime Minister leads the Cabinet, in addition the Prime Minister leads a major political party and generally commands a majority in the House of Commons. As such the incumbent wields both legislative and executive powers, under the British system there is a unity of powers rather than separation. In the House of Commons, the Prime Minister guides the process with the goal of enacting the legislative agenda of their political party. The Prime Minister also acts as the face and voice of Her Majestys Government. The British system of government is based on an uncodified constitution, in 1928, Prime Minister H. H. Asquith described this characteristic of the British constitution in his memoirs, In this country we live. Our constitutional practices do not derive their validity and sanction from any Bill which has received the assent of the King, Lords. They rest on usage, custom, convention, often of slow growth in their early stages, not always uniform, the relationships between the Prime Minister and the Sovereign, Parliament and Cabinet are defined largely by these unwritten conventions of the constitution. Many of the Prime Ministers executive and legislative powers are actually royal prerogatives which are still vested in the Sovereign
39.
World War II
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World War II, also known as the Second World War, was a global war that lasted from 1939 to 1945, although related conflicts began earlier. It involved the vast majority of the worlds countries—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing alliances, the Allies and the Axis. It was the most widespread war in history, and directly involved more than 100 million people from over 30 countries. Marked by mass deaths of civilians, including the Holocaust and the bombing of industrial and population centres. These made World War II the deadliest conflict in human history, from late 1939 to early 1941, in a series of campaigns and treaties, Germany conquered or controlled much of continental Europe, and formed the Axis alliance with Italy and Japan. Under the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact of August 1939, Germany and the Soviet Union partitioned and annexed territories of their European neighbours, Poland, Finland, Romania and the Baltic states. In December 1941, Japan attacked the United States and European colonies in the Pacific Ocean, and quickly conquered much of the Western Pacific. The Axis advance halted in 1942 when Japan lost the critical Battle of Midway, near Hawaii, in 1944, the Western Allies invaded German-occupied France, while the Soviet Union regained all of its territorial losses and invaded Germany and its allies. During 1944 and 1945 the Japanese suffered major reverses in mainland Asia in South Central China and Burma, while the Allies crippled the Japanese Navy, thus ended the war in Asia, cementing the total victory of the Allies. World War II altered the political alignment and social structure of the world, the United Nations was established to foster international co-operation and prevent future conflicts. The victorious great powers—the United States, the Soviet Union, China, the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union and the United States emerged as rival superpowers, setting the stage for the Cold War, which lasted for the next 46 years. Meanwhile, the influence of European great powers waned, while the decolonisation of Asia, most countries whose industries had been damaged moved towards economic recovery. Political integration, especially in Europe, emerged as an effort to end pre-war enmities, the start of the war in Europe is generally held to be 1 September 1939, beginning with the German invasion of Poland, Britain and France declared war on Germany two days later. The dates for the beginning of war in the Pacific include the start of the Second Sino-Japanese War on 7 July 1937, or even the Japanese invasion of Manchuria on 19 September 1931. Others follow the British historian A. J. P. Taylor, who held that the Sino-Japanese War and war in Europe and its colonies occurred simultaneously and this article uses the conventional dating. Other starting dates sometimes used for World War II include the Italian invasion of Abyssinia on 3 October 1935. The British historian Antony Beevor views the beginning of World War II as the Battles of Khalkhin Gol fought between Japan and the forces of Mongolia and the Soviet Union from May to September 1939, the exact date of the wars end is also not universally agreed upon. It was generally accepted at the time that the war ended with the armistice of 14 August 1945, rather than the formal surrender of Japan
40.
Adolf Hitler
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Adolf Hitler was a German politician who was the leader of the Nazi Party, Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and Führer of Nazi Germany from 1934 to 1945. As dictator of the German Reich, he initiated World War II in Europe with the invasion of Poland in September 1939 and was central to the Holocaust, Hitler was born in Austria, then part of Austria-Hungary, and raised near Linz. He moved to Germany in 1913 and was decorated during his service in the German Army in World War I and he joined the German Workers Party, the precursor of the NSDAP, in 1919 and became leader of the NSDAP in 1921. In 1923 he attempted a coup in Munich to seize power, the failed coup resulted in Hitlers imprisonment, during which he dictated the first volume of his autobiography and political manifesto Mein Kampf. Hitler frequently denounced international capitalism and communism as being part of a Jewish conspiracy, by 1933, the Nazi Party was the largest elected party in the German Reichstag, which led to Hitlers appointment as Chancellor on 30 January 1933. Hitler aimed to eliminate Jews from Germany and establish a New Order to counter what he saw as the injustice of the post-World War I international order dominated by Britain, Hitler sought Lebensraum for the German people in Eastern Europe. His aggressive foreign policy is considered to be the cause of the outbreak of World War II in Europe. He directed large-scale rearmament and on 1 September 1939 invaded Poland, resulting in British, in June 1941, Hitler ordered an invasion of the Soviet Union. By the end of 1941 German forces and the European Axis powers occupied most of Europe, failure to defeat the Soviets and the entry of the United States into the war forced Germany onto the defensive and it suffered a series of escalating defeats. In the final days of the war, during the Battle of Berlin in 1945, Hitler married his long-time lover, on 30 April 1945, less than two days later, the two killed themselves to avoid capture by the Red Army, and their corpses were burned. Hitler and the Nazi regime were also responsible for the killing of an estimated 19.3 million civilians, in addition,29 million soldiers and civilians died as a result of military action in the European Theatre of World War II. The number of civilians killed during the Second World War was unprecedented in warfare, Hitlers father Alois Hitler Sr. was the illegitimate child of Maria Anna Schicklgruber. The baptismal register did not show the name of his father, in 1842, Johann Georg Hiedler married Aloiss mother Maria Anna. Alois was brought up in the family of Hiedlers brother, Johann Nepomuk Hiedler, in 1876, Alois was legitimated and the baptismal register changed by a priest to register Johann Georg Hiedler as Aloiss father. Alois then assumed the surname Hitler, also spelled Hiedler, Hüttler, the Hitler surname is probably based on one who lives in a hut. Nazi official Hans Frank suggested that Aloiss mother had been employed as a housekeeper by a Jewish family in Graz, and that the familys 19-year-old son Leopold Frankenberger had fathered Alois. No Frankenberger was registered in Graz during that period, and no record has been produced of Leopold Frankenbergers existence, Adolf Hitler was born on 20 April 1889 in Braunau am Inn, a town in Austria-Hungary, close to the border with the German Empire. He was one of six born to Alois Hitler and Klara Pölzl
41.
Nobel Prize in Literature
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Though individual works are sometimes cited as being particularly noteworthy, here work refers to an authors work as a whole. The Swedish Academy decides who, if anyone, will receive the prize in any given year, the academy announces the name of the chosen laureate in early October. Although the Nobel Prize in Literature has become the worlds most prestigious literature prize, many authors who have won the prize have fallen into obscurity, while others rejected by the jury remain widely studied and read. The prize has become seen as a political one - a peace prize in literary disguise, whose judges are prejudiced against authors with different political tastes to them. Tim Parks has expressed skepticism that it is possible for Swedish professors, as of 2016,16 of the 113 recipients have been of Scandinavian origin. The Academy has often been alleged to be biased towards European, Nobels vague wording for the criteria for the prize has led to recurrent controversy. In the original Swedish, the word translates as either idealistic or ideal. The Nobel Committees interpretation has varied over the years, in recent years, this means a kind of idealism championing human rights on a broad scale. Though Nobel wrote several wills during his lifetime, the last was written a little over a year before he died, Nobel bequeathed 94% of his total assets,31 million Swedish kronor, to establish and endow the five Nobel Prizes. Due to the level of surrounding the will, it was not until 26 April 1897 that the Storting approved it. The executors of his will were Ragnar Sohlman and Rudolf Lilljequist, the members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee that were to award the Peace Prize were appointed shortly after the will was approved. The prize-awarding organisations followed, the Karolinska Institutet on 7 June, the Swedish Academy on 9 June, the Nobel Foundation then reached an agreement on guidelines for how the Nobel Prize should be awarded. In 1900, the Nobel Foundations newly created statutes were promulgated by King Oscar II, according to Nobels will, the Royal Swedish Academy was to award the Prize in Literature. Each year, the Swedish Academy sends out requests for nominations of candidates for the Nobel Prize in Literature and it is not permitted to nominate oneself. Thousands of requests are sent out each year, and as of 2011 about 220 proposals are returned and these proposals must be received by the Academy by 1 February, after which they are examined by the Nobel Committee. By April, the Academy narrows the field to around twenty candidates, by May, a short list of five names is approved by the Committee. The subsequent four months are spent in reading and reviewing the works of the five candidates. In October, members of the Academy vote and the candidate who receives more than half of the votes is named the Nobel laureate in Literature
42.
Mo Mowlam
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Marjorie Mowlam was an English Labour Party politician. Mowlams time as Northern Ireland Secretary saw the signing of the historic Good Friday Peace Agreement in 1998 and her personal charisma and reputation for plain speaking led her to be perceived by many as one of the most popular New Labour politicians in the UK. When Tony Blair mentioned her in his speech at the 1998 Labour Party Conference and she would later be awarded the Freedom of the City in 1999. She was the one of the familys three children to pass the 11-plus exam. She started at Chiswick Girls grammar school in West London, then moved to Coundon Court School in Coventry and she then studied at Trevelyan College, Durham University, reading sociology and anthropology. She joined the Labour Party in her first year, Mowlam was a lecturer in the Political Science Department at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee in 1977 and at Florida State University in Tallahassee from 1977 to 1979. Mowlam returned to England in 1979 to take up an appointment at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne and she also worked in adult education at Northern College, Barnsley, with students who had fewer opportunities than traditional university students. In 1981, she organised a series of lectures to the Reith lectures being given that year by Laurence Martin. These were published as Debate on Disarmament, with their proceeds going to the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, Mowlam married Jonathan Norton, a City of London banker, in County Durham on 24 June 1995, Norton died on 3 February 2009. Having failed to win selection for the 1983 general election, Mowlam was selected as Labour candidate for the seat of Redcar after James Tinn stood down. She took the seat in the 1987 general election, becoming the Labour spokesperson on Northern Ireland later that year, together with Shadow Chancellor John Smith, Mowlam was one of the architects of Labours Prawn Cocktail Offensive dedicated to reassuring the UKs financial sector about Labours financial rectitude. Mowlam joined the Shadow Cabinet when John Smith became leader of the Labour Party in 1992, during this time, she antagonised both monarchists and republicans by calling for Buckingham Palace to be demolished and replaced by a modern palace built at public expense. Later, her willingness to speak her mind, often without regard to the consequences, was seen as her greatest strength by her supporters, following Smiths death in 1994, Mowlam, alongside Peter Kilfoyle, became a principal organiser of Tony Blairs campaign for the Labour leadership. After his victory, Blair made her Shadow Secretary of State for Northern Ireland and she initially resisted being appointed to the position, preferring an economic portfolio, but, after accepting it, she threw her weight into the job. In 1997, Mowlam was once again re-elected as MP for Redcar with a majority of 21,667. She was made Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, the first woman to have held the post and she was successful in helping to restore an IRA ceasefire and including Sinn Féin in multi-party talks about the future of Northern Ireland. Mowlam saw the Good Friday Agreement signed in 1998, which led to the establishment of a devolved power-sharing Northern Ireland Assembly. Im the new tea lady around here, Mowlam resented being appointed to the post, having previously disparaged it as Minister for the Today programme
43.
Great Western Railway
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The Great Western Railway was a British railway company that linked London with the south-west and west of England, the Midlands, and most of Wales. It was founded in 1833, received its enabling Act of Parliament on 31 August 1835, Goods wagons were painted red but this was later changed to mid-grey. Great Western trains included long-distance express services such as the Flying Dutchman, the Cornish Riviera Express and it also operated many suburban and rural services, some operated by steam railmotors or autotrains. The company pioneered the use of larger, more economic goods wagons than were usual in Britain and it operated a network of road motor routes, was a part of the Railway Air Services, and owned ships, docks and hotels. The Great Western Railway originated from the desire of Bristol merchants to maintain their city as the port of the country. The company was founded at a meeting in Bristol in 1833 and was incorporated by Act of Parliament in 1835. Isambard Kingdom Brunel, then aged twenty-nine, was appointed engineer and this was by far Brunels largest contract to date. Firstly, he chose to use a gauge of 7 ft to allow for the possibility of large wheels outside the bodies of the rolling stock which could give smoother running at high speeds. Secondly, he selected a route, north of the Marlborough Downs and this meant the line was not direct from to London to Bristol. From Reading heading west, the line would curve in a northerly sweep back to Bath, the first 22.5 miles of line, from Paddington station in London to Maidenhead Bridge station, opened on 4 June 1838. When Maidenhead Railway Bridge was ready the line was extended to Twyford on 1 July 1839, the cutting was the scene of a railway disaster two years later when a goods train ran into a landslip, ten passengers who were travelling in open trucks were killed. This accident prompted Parliament to pass the 1844 Railway Regulation Act requiring railway companies to provide carriages for passengers. The next section, from Reading to Steventon crossed the Thames twice, a 7. 25-mile extension took the line to Faringdon Road on 20 July 1840. Meanwhile, work had started at the Bristol end of the line, on 17 December 1840, the line from London reached a temporary terminus at Wootton Bassett Road west of Swindon and 80.25 miles from Paddington. The section from Wootton Bassett Road to Chippenham was opened on 31 May 1841, as was Swindon Junction station where the Cheltenham and Great Western Union Railway to Cirencester connected. That was an independent line worked by the GWR, as was the Bristol and Exeter Railway, in 1851, the GWR purchased the Kennet and Avon Canal, which was a competing carrier between London, Reading, Bath and Bristol. The GWR was closely involved with the C&GWUR and the B&ER, the South Wales Railway had opened between Chepstow and Swansea in 1850 and became connected to the GWR by Brunels Chepstow Bridge in 1852. It was completed to Neyland in 1856, where a port was established
44.
Clifton Suspension Bridge
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The Clifton Suspension Bridge is a suspension bridge spanning the Avon Gorge and the River Avon, linking Clifton in Bristol to Leigh Woods in North Somerset. Since opening in 1864, it has been a toll bridge, the bridge is built to a design by William Henry Barlow and John Hawkshaw, based on an earlier design by Isambard Kingdom Brunel, and contributed to by Sarah Guppy. It is a grade I listed building and forms part of the B3129 road, the idea of building a bridge across the Avon Gorge originated in 1753. Original plans were for a bridge and later iterations were for a wrought iron structure. In 1831, an attempt to build Brunels design was halted by the Bristol riots, although similar in size, the bridge towers are not identical in design, the Clifton tower having side cut-outs, the Leigh tower more pointed arches atop a 110-foot red sandstone-clad abutment. Roller-mounted saddles at the top of each tower allow movement of the three independent wrought iron chains on each side when loads pass over the bridge, the bridge deck is suspended by 162 vertical wrought-iron rods in 81 matching pairs. The Clifton Bridge Company initially managed the bridge under licence from a charitable trust, the trust subsequently purchased the company shares, completing this in 1949 and took over the running of the bridge using the income from tolls to pay for maintenance. The bridge is a landmark, used as a symbol of Bristol on postcards, promotional materials. It was also used as a backdrop to several films and television advertising and it has also been the venue for significant cultural events such as the first modern bungee jump in 1979, the last ever Concorde flight in 2003 and a handover of the Olympic Torch relay in 2012. It is unknown when the first bridge was constructed across the Avon in Bristol and it had houses with shopfronts built on it to pay for its maintenance. A 17th-century illustration shows that these houses were five stories high, including the attic rooms. In the 1760s a bill to replace the bridge was carried through parliament by the Bristol MP Sir Jarrit Smyth, by the early 18th century, increase in traffic and the encroachment of shops on the roadway made the bridge fatally dangerous for many pedestrians. A new bridge, designed by James Bridges and finished by Thomas Paty was built in 1763 and 1768, resentment at the tolls exacted to cross the new bridge occasioned the Bristol Bridge Riot of 1793. To achieve this, any bridge constructed between Bristol Bridge and Avon Gorge, from Hotwells to Ashton Gate, would require massive embankments and viaducts, the alternative was to build across the narrowest point of the Avon Gorge, well above the height required for shipping. Although there was little development in the area before the late 18th century, as Bristol became more prosperous, Clifton became fashionable, in 1793 William Bridges published plans for a stone arch with abutments containing factories, which would pay for the upkeep of the bridge. The French Revolutionary Wars broke out soon after the design was published, affecting trade and commerce, Sarah Guppy patented designs for a suspension bridge across the gorge which she later gave to Brunel. By 1829, Vicks bequest had reached £8,000, a competition was held to find a design for the bridge with a prize of 100 guineas. Entries were received from 22 designers, including Samuel Brown, James Meadows Rendel, William Tierney Clark, several were for stone bridges and had estimated costs of between £30,000 and £93,000
45.
SS Great Britain
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SS Great Britain is a museum ship and former passenger steamship, which was advanced for her time. She was the longest passenger ship in the world from 1845 to 1854 and she was designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel for the Great Western Steamship Companys transatlantic service between Bristol and New York. While other ships had been built of iron or equipped with a screw propeller and she was the first iron steamer to cross the Atlantic, which she did in 1845, in the time of 14 days. The ship is 322 ft in length and has a 3 and she was powered by two inclined 2 cylinder engines of the direct-acting type, with twin 88 in bore, 6-foot stroke cylinders. She was also provided with secondary sail power, the four decks provided accommodation for a crew of 120, plus 360 passengers who were provided with cabins, dining, and promenade saloons. When launched in 1843, Great Britain was by far the largest vessel afloat, in 1852 she was sold for salvage and repaired. Great Britain carried thousands of immigrants to Australia from 1852 until converted to sail in 1881, three years later, she was retired to the Falkland Islands where she was used as a warehouse, quarantine ship and coal hulk until scuttled in 1937. In 1970, following a donation by Sir Jack Hayward that paid for the vessel to be towed back to the UK. Now listed as part of the National Historic Fleet, she is a visitor attraction and museum ship in Bristol Harbour. After the initial success of its first liner, SS Great Western of 1838, the same engineering team that had collaborated so successfully on Great Western—Isambard Brunel, Thomas Guppy, Christopher Claxton and William Patterson—was again assembled. This time however, Brunel, whose reputation was at its height, construction was carried out in a specially adapted dry dock in Bristol, England. Two chance encounters were to affect the design of Great Britain. In late 1838, John Lairds 213-foot English Channel packet ship Rainbow—the largest iron-hulled ship then in service—made a stop at Bristol, Brunel despatched his associates Christopher Claxton and William Patterson to make a return voyage to Antwerp on Rainbow to assess the utility of the new building material. Both men returned as converts to iron-hulled technology, and Brunel scrapped his plans to build a wooden ship, Great Britains builders recognised a number of advantages of iron over the traditional wooden hull. Wood was becoming more expensive, while iron was getting cheaper, Iron hulls were not subject to dry rot or woodworm, and they were also lighter in weight and less bulky. The chief advantage of the hull was its much greater structural strength. The practical limit on the length of a ship is about 300 feet. Iron hulls are far less subject to hogging, so that the size of an iron-hulled ship is much greater
46.
Industrial Revolution
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The Industrial Revolution was the transition to new manufacturing processes in the period from about 1760 to sometime between 1820 and 1840. The Industrial Revolution began in Great Britain and most of the important technological innovations were British, aided by these legal and cultural foundations, an entrepreneurial spirit and consumer revolution drove industrialisation in Britain, which would be emulated in countries around the world. A change in marrying patterns to getting married later made able to accumulate more human capital during their youth. The Industrial Revolution marks a turning point in history, almost every aspect of daily life was influenced in some way. In particular, average income and population began to exhibit unprecedented sustained growth, mechanised textile production spread from Great Britain to continental Europe in the early 19th century, with important centres of textiles, iron and coal emerging in Belgium, and later in France. Since then industrialisation has spread throughout much of the world, the precise start and end of the Industrial Revolution is still debated among historians, as is the pace of economic and social changes. Economic historians are in agreement that the onset of the Industrial Revolution is the most important event in the history of humanity since the domestication of animals and plants. The term Industrial Revolution applied to change was becoming more common by the late 1830s. Friedrich Engels in The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844 spoke of an industrial revolution, however, although Engels wrote in the 1840s, his book was not translated into English until the late 1800s, and his expression did not enter everyday language until then. Credit for popularising the term may be given to Arnold Toynbee, some historians, such as John Clapham and Nicholas Crafts, have argued that the economic and social changes occurred gradually and the term revolution is a misnomer. This is still a subject of debate among some historians, the commencement of the Industrial Revolution is closely linked to a small number of innovations, beginning in the second half of the 18th century. By the 1830s the following gains had been made in important technologies, Textiles – mechanised cotton spinning powered by steam or water greatly increased the output of a worker, the power loom increased the output of a worker by a factor of over 40. The cotton gin increased productivity of removing seed from cotton by a factor of 50, large gains in productivity also occurred in spinning and weaving of wool and linen, but they were not as great as in cotton. Steam power – the efficiency of steam engines increased so that they used between one-fifth and one-tenth as much fuel, the adaptation of stationary steam engines to rotary motion made them suitable for industrial uses. The high pressure engine had a power to weight ratio. Steam power underwent an expansion after 1800. Iron making – the substitution of coke for charcoal greatly lowered the fuel cost for pig iron, using coke also allowed larger blast furnaces, resulting in economies of scale. The cast iron blowing cylinder was first used in 1760 and it was later improved by making it double acting, which allowed higher furnace temperatures
47.
Jeremy Clarkson
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Jeremy Charles Robert Clarkson is an English broadcaster, journalist and writer who specialises in motoring. He is best known for co-presenting the BBC TV show Top Gear with Richard Hammond and he also writes weekly columns for The Sunday Times and The Sun. From a career as a local journalist in northern England, Clarkson rose to prominence as a presenter of the original format of Top Gear in 1988. Since the mid-1990s, he has become a public personality, regularly appearing on British television presenting his own shows. As well as motoring, Clarkson has produced programmes and books on such as history. From 1998 to 2000, he hosted his own chat show. His opinionated but humorous tongue-in-cheek writing and presenting style has often provoked public reaction and his actions both privately and as a Top Gear presenter have also sometimes resulted in criticism from the media, politicians, pressure groups and the public. He also has a significant public following, being credited as a factor in the resurgence of Top Gear as one of the most popular shows on the BBC. On 25 March 2015, the BBC announced it would not renew Clarksons contract after he verbally and physically attacked a Top Gear producer over a dispute at a hotel while filming on location. In mid-2015 Clarkson, Hammond, May and producer Andy Wilman formed production company W. Chump & Sons to produce The Grand Tour for Amazon Video. Clarkson was born in Doncaster, the son of Shirley Gabrielle Clarkson, a teacher, and Edward Grenville Clarkson, according to his own account, he was expelled from Repton School for drinking, smoking and generally making a nuisance of himself. Clarkson attended Repton alongside Formula One engineer Adrian Newey and Top Gear Executive Producer, Clarkson played the role of a public schoolboy, Atkinson, in a BBC radio Childrens Hour serial adaptation of Anthony Buckeridges Jennings novels until his voice broke. Clarkson married Alexandra James in 1989, but she left him for one of his friends after six months, in May 1993 he married his manager, Frances Cain, daughter of VC recipient Robert Henry Cain, in Fulham. The couple lived in Chipping Norton, in the Cotswolds, with their three children, Clarkson has been described as a member of the Chipping Norton set. Known for buying him car-related gifts, for Christmas 2007 Clarksons second wife bought him a Mercedes-Benz 600 and she was reported to have filed divorce proceedings in April 2014. In September 2010 Clarkson was granted an injunction against his first wife to prevent her from publishing claims that their sexual relationship continued after his second marriage. He voluntarily lifted the injunction in October 2011, commenting that, Clarkson is a fan of the rock band Genesis and attended the bands reunion concert at Twickenham Stadium in 2007. He also provided notes for the reissue of the album Selling England by the Pound as part of the Genesis 1970–1975 box set
48.
Charles, Prince of Wales
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Charles, Prince of Wales is the eldest child and heir apparent of Queen Elizabeth II. Known alternatively in South West England as Duke of Cornwall and in Scotland as Duke of Rothesay, he is the heir apparent in British history. He is also the oldest person to be next in line to the throne since Sophia of Hanover, Charles was born at Buckingham Palace as the first grandchild of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth. After earning a bachelor of degree from Trinity College, Cambridge. In 1981, he married Lady Diana Spencer and they had two sons, Prince William later to become Duke of Cambridge, and Prince Harry, in 1996, the couple divorced, following well-publicised extramarital affairs. Diana died in a car crash in Paris the following year, in 2005, Charles married Camilla Parker Bowles. Charles has sought to raise awareness of the dangers facing the natural environment. As an environmentalist, he has received awards and recognition from environmental groups around the world. His support for alternative medicine, including homeopathy, has been criticised by some in the medical community and he has been outspoken on the role of architecture in society and the conservation of historic buildings. Subsequently, Charles created Poundbury, a new town based on his theories. He has authored a number of books, including A Vision of Britain, A Personal View of Architecture in 1989 and he was baptised in the palaces Music Room by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Geoffrey Fisher, on 15 December 1948. When Prince Charles was aged three his mothers accession as Queen Elizabeth II made him her heir apparent. As the monarchs eldest son, he took the titles Duke of Cornwall, Duke of Rothesay, Earl of Carrick, Baron of Renfrew, Lord of the Isles and Prince. Charles attended his mothers coronation at Westminster Abbey on 2 June 1953, seated alongside his grandmother, as was customary for upper-class children at the time, a governess, Catherine Peebles, was appointed and undertook his education between the ages of five and eight. Buckingham Palace announced in 1955 that Charles would attend school rather than have a private tutor, Charles then attended two of his fathers former schools, Cheam Preparatory School in Berkshire, England, followed by Gordonstoun in the north-east of Scotland. He reportedly despised the school, which he described as Colditz in kilts. Upon his return to Gordonstoun, Charles emulated his father in becoming Head Boy and he left in 1967, with six GCE O-levels and two A-levels in history and French, at grades B and C, respectively. Tradition was broken again when Charles proceeded straight from school into university
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. The Times. Retrieved 11 January 2018.