1.
Norway
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The Antarctic Peter I Island and the sub-Antarctic Bouvet Island are dependent territories and thus not considered part of the Kingdom. Norway also lays claim to a section of Antarctica known as Queen Maud Land, until 1814, the kingdom included the Faroe Islands, Greenland, and Iceland. It also included Isle of Man until 1266, Shetland and Orkney until 1468, Norway has a total area of 385,252 square kilometres and a population of 5,258,317. The country shares a long border with Sweden. Norway is bordered by Finland and Russia to the north-east, Norway has an extensive coastline, facing the North Atlantic Ocean and the Barents Sea. King Harald V of the Dano-German House of Glücksburg is the current King of Norway, erna Solberg became Prime Minister in 2013, replacing Jens Stoltenberg. A constitutional monarchy, Norway divides state power between the Parliament, the Cabinet and the Supreme Court, as determined by the 1814 Constitution, the kingdom is established as a merger of several petty kingdoms. By the traditional count from the year 872, the kingdom has existed continuously for 1,144 years, Norway has both administrative and political subdivisions on two levels, counties and municipalities. The Sámi people have an amount of self-determination and influence over traditional territories through the Sámi Parliament. Norway maintains close ties with the European Union and the United States, the country maintains a combination of market economy and a Nordic welfare model with universal health care and a comprehensive social security system. Norway has extensive reserves of petroleum, natural gas, minerals, lumber, seafood, the petroleum industry accounts for around a quarter of the countrys gross domestic product. On a per-capita basis, Norway is the worlds largest producer of oil, the country has the fourth-highest per capita income in the world on the World Bank and IMF lists. On the CIAs GDP per capita list which includes territories and some regions, from 2001 to 2006, and then again from 2009 to 2017, Norway had the highest Human Development Index ranking in the world. It also has the highest inequality-adjusted ranking, Norway ranks first on the World Happiness Report, the OECD Better Life Index, the Index of Public Integrity and the Democracy Index. Norway has two names, Noreg in Nynorsk and Norge in Bokmål. The name Norway comes from the Old English word Norðrveg mentioned in 880, meaning way or way leading to the north. In contrasting with suðrvegar southern way for Germany, and austrvegr eastern way for the Baltic, the Anglo-Saxon of Britain also referred to the kingdom of Norway in 880 as Norðmanna land. This was the area of Harald Fairhair, the first king of Norway, and because of him
2.
Figure skating
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Figure skating is a sport in which individuals, duos, or groups perform on figure skates on ice. It was the first winter sport included in the Olympics, in 1908, the four Olympic disciplines are mens singles, ladies singles, pair skating and ice dancing. Non-Olympic disciplines include synchronized skating and four skating, the blade has a groove on the bottom creating two distinct edges — inside and outside. Judges prefer that skaters glide on one edge of the blade, during a spin, skaters use the sweet spot of the blade, which is the roundest portion of the blade, just behind the pick and near the middle of the blade. Skates used in single and pair skating have a set of large, toe picks are mainly used for the take-off on jumps. Ice dancing blades are an inch shorter in the rear and have smaller toe picks, Figure skaters compete at various levels from beginner up to the Olympic level at local, regional, national, and international competitions. The International Skating Union regulates international figure skating judging and competitions and these include the Winter Olympics, the World Championships, the World Junior Championships, the European Championships, the Four Continents Championships, and the Grand Prix series. The sport is also associated with show business, major competitions generally conclude with exhibition galas, in which the top skaters from each discipline perform non-competitive programs. Many skaters, both during and after their careers, also skate in ice shows which run during the competitive season. The term professional in skating refers not to level but competitive status. Figure skaters competing at the highest levels of competition are not professional skaters. They are sometimes referred to as amateurs, though some earn money, professional skaters include those who have lost their ISU eligibility and those who perform only in shows. They may include former Olympic and World champions who have ended their career as well as skaters with little or no international competitive experience. In languages other than English, Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Italian, Polish and Russian, the most visible difference in relation to ice hockey skates is that figure skates have a set of large, jagged teeth called toe picks on the front part of the blade. The toe picks are used primarily in jumping and should not be used for stroking or spins, if used during a spin, the toe pick will cause the skater to lose momentum, or move away from the center of his/her spin. Blades are mounted to the sole and heel of the boot with screws, typically, high-level figure skaters are professionally fitted for their boots and blades at a reputable skate shop. Professionals are also employed to sharpen blades to individual requirements, Blades are about 3/16 inch thick. When viewed from the side, the blade of a figure skate is not flat and this curvature is referred to as the rocker of the blade
3.
Filipinos
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Filipinos are the people who are identified with the country of the Philippines, either through descent or citizenship. Filipinos come from different ethnolinguistic nations, currently, there are more than 175 ethnolinguistic nations, each with its own language, identity, culture and history. The modern Filipino identity, with its Austronesian roots, was developed in conjunction with Spanish, Chinese, the Philippines was a Spanish colony for 333 years, setting a foundation for contemporary Filipino culture. Under Spanish rule, most of the Filipino populace embraced Roman Catholicism, almost all Filipinos adopted Spanish surnames from the Catálogo alfabético de apellidos published in 1849 by the Spanish colonial government. As neither past governments nor the modern Philippine Statistics Authority account for the background of an individual. The lack of the letter F in the pre-1987 Philippine alphabet, upon official adoption of the modern, 28-letter Filipino alphabet in 1987, the name Filipino was preferred over Pilipino. However the ABAKADA is only the Alphabet of the Tagalogs as other Ethnic Nations also have their own alphabet and/or writing script, use of the term Filipino in the Philippines started during the Spanish colonial period. The original meaning was a person of Spanish descent born in the Philippines and this original usage is now archaic and obsolete. Historian Ambeth Ocampo has suggested that the first documented use of the word to refer to Indios was the Spanish language poem A la juventud filipina, published in 1879 by José Rizal. A number of Filipinos refer to themselves colloquially as Pinoy, which is a word formed by taking the last four letters of Filipino. The term, although in popular usage, is considered by some Filipinos as a racial slur. Other collective endonyms for the Filipino people include, Patria Adorada as popularized by Jose Rizal through his poem Mi último adiós, in 2010, a metatarsal from Callao Man, discovered in 2007, was dated through uranium-series dating as being 67,000 years old. Prior to that, the earliest human remains found in the Philippines were thought to be the fragments of a skull and jawbone. Fox, an anthropologist from the National Museum, anthropologists who examined these remains agreed that they belonged to modern human beings. These include the Homo sapiens, as distinguished from the mid-Pleistocene Homo erectus species, the Tabon Man fossils are considered to have come from a third group of inhabitants, who worked the cave between 22,000 and 20,000 BCE. An earlier cave level lies so far below the level containing cooking fire assemblages that it must represent Upper Pleistocene dates like 45 or 50 thousand years ago, researchers say this indicates that the human remains were pre-Mongoloid, from about 40,000 years ago. Fluctuations in ancient shorelines between 150,000 BP and 17,000 BP connected the Malay Archipelago region with Maritime Southeast Asia and this may have enabled ancient migrations into the Philippines from Maritime Southeast Asia approximately 50,000 BP to 13,000 BP. A January 2009 study of language phylogenies by R. D and this was a two-pronged expansion, which moved north through the Philippines and into Taiwan, while a second expansion prong spread east along the New Guinea coast and into Oceania and Polynesia
4.
Isabela (province)
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Isabela is the second largest province of the Philippines, and the largest on the island of Luzon in land area. Its capital is the city of Ilagan and this primarily agricultural province is the rice and corn granary of Luzon due to its plain and rolling terrain. In 2012, the province was declared as the top producer of corn with 1,209,524 metric tons. Isabela is the 10th richest province in the Philippines in 2011, the province has four trade centers in the cities of Ilagan, Cauayan, Santiago and the municipality of Roxas. Prior to 1856, the Cagayan Valley was divided into two provinces, Cagayan and Nueva Vizcaya. The Province of Cagayan at that time consisted of all towns from Tumauini to Aparri in the north, all other towns from Ilagan southward to Aritao comprised the Province of the old Nueva Vizcaya. The province was placed under the jurisdiction of a governor with Ilagan as the capital and it was initially called Isabela de Luzón to differentiate from other places in the Philippines bearing the name of Isabela. The new province was named after Queen Isabella II of Spain, Isabela was re-organized as a province under the American military government through Act No. The Americans built schools and other buildings and instituted changes in the political system. However, the economy remained particularly agricultural with rice replacing corn. World War II stagnated the provinces economic growth but it recovered dramatically after the war, in 1942, Imperial Japanese occupied Isabela. A new wave of immigration began in the late 19th and 20th centuries with the arrival of the Ilokano who came in large numbers and they now constitute the largest group in the province. Other ethnic groups followed that made Isabela the Melting Pot of the Northern Philippines, in 1995, Republic Act Number 7891 was passed legislating that Isabela be divided into two new provinces, Isabela del Norte and Isabela del Sur. A referendum was held on the year with a strong majority voting against partitioning the province. In 2012, the town of Ilagan officially became a city. The night after the plebiscite, Ilagan was declared as a component city of the province, Isabela comprises an aggregate land area of 12,414.93 square kilometres, representing almost 40 percent of the regional territory. It is the largest province in the island of Luzon and the second largest province in the Philippines by land area, to the east lies the Philippine Sea, making Isabela one of the typhoon-prone provinces in the country. The province is divided into three physiographic areas, the eastern area, straddled by the Sierra Madre mountain range, is rugged and thickly forested
5.
University of Oslo
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The University of Oslo, until 1939 named the Royal Frederick University, is the oldest university in Norway, located in the Norwegian capital of Oslo. Until 1 January 2016 it was the largest Norwegian institution of education in terms of size, now surpassed only by the Norwegian University of Science. The Academic Ranking of World Universities has ranked it the 58th best university in the world, in 2015, the Times Higher Education World University Rankings ranked it the 135th best university in the world and the seventh best in the Nordics. While in its 2016, Top 200 Rankings of European universities, the university has approximately 27,700 students and employs around 6,000 people. Its faculties include Theology, Law, Medicine, Humanities, Mathematics, natural sciences, social sciences, Dentistry, the universitys original neoclassical campus is located in the centre of Oslo, it is currently occupied by the Faculty of Law. Most of the other faculties are located at the newer Blindern campus in the suburban West End. The Faculty of Medicine is split between several university hospitals in the Oslo area, the university was founded in 1811 and was modeled after the University of Copenhagen and the recently established University of Berlin. It was originally named for King Frederick VI of Denmark and Norway, the university is informally also known as Universitetet, having been the only university in Norway, until 1946 and was commonly referred to as The Royal Fredericks, prior to the name change. The Nobel Peace Prize was awarded in the universitys Atrium, from 1947 to 1989, since 2003, the Abel Prize is awarded in the Atrium. Five researchers affiliated with the university have been Nobel laureates, in 1813, The Royal Frederiks University was founded in Christiania, a small city at that time. Circumstances then changed dramatically one year into the commencement of the university, however, independence was somewhat restricted, as Norway was obliged to enter into a legislative union with Sweden based on the outcome of the War of 1814. Norway retained its own constitution and independent state institutions, although royal power, at a time when Norwegians feared political domination by the Swedes, the new university became a key institution that contributed to Norwegian political and cultural independence. The main initial function of The Royal Frederick University was to educate a new class of civil servants, as well as parliamentary representatives. The university also became the centre for a survey of the survey of culture, language, history. The staff of the university strove to undertake a range of tasks necessary for developing a modern society. Throughout the 1800s, the academic disciplines gradually became more specialised. Classical education came under increasing pressure, Education, health services and public administration were among those fields that recruited personnel from the universitys graduates. Research changed qualitatively around the turn of the century as new methods, scientific theories and it was decided that teachers should arrive at their posts as highly qualified academics and continue academic research alongside their role as teachers
6.
Sheffield
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Sheffield is a city and metropolitan borough in South Yorkshire, England. Historically part of the West Riding of Yorkshire, its derives from the River Sheaf. With some of its southern suburbs annexed from Derbyshire, the city has grown from its industrial roots to encompass a wider economic base. The population of the City of Sheffield is 569,700, Sheffield is the third largest English district by population. The metropolitan population of Sheffield is 1,569,000, in the 19th century, Sheffield gained an international reputation for steel production. Known as the Steel City, many innovations were developed locally, including crucible and stainless steel, Sheffield received its municipal charter in 1843, becoming the City of Sheffield in 1893. International competition in iron and steel caused a decline in these industries in the 1970s and 1980s, the 21st century has seen extensive redevelopment in Sheffield along with other British cities. Sheffields gross value added has increased by 60% since 1997, standing at £9.2 billion in 2007, the economy has experienced steady growth averaging around 5% annually, greater than that of the broader region of Yorkshire and the Humber. The city is in the foothills of the Pennines, and the valleys of the River Don and its four tributaries, the Loxley, the Porter Brook, the Rivelin. 61% of Sheffields entire area is space, and a third of the city lies within the Peak District national park. The area now occupied by the City of Sheffield is believed to have inhabited since at least the late Upper Palaeolithic period. The earliest evidence of occupation in the Sheffield area was found at Creswell Crags to the east of the city. In the Iron Age the area became the southernmost territory of the Pennine tribe called the Brigantes and it is this tribe who are thought to have constructed several hill forts in and around Sheffield. Gradually, Anglian settlers pushed west from the kingdom of Deira, a Celtic presence within the Sheffield area is evidenced by two settlements called Wales and Waleswood close to Sheffield. The settlements that grew and merged to form Sheffield, however, date from the half of the first millennium. In Anglo-Saxon times, the Sheffield area straddled the border between the kingdoms of Mercia and Northumbria, after the Norman conquest, Sheffield Castle was built to protect the local settlements, and a small town developed that is the nucleus of the modern city. By 1296, a market had been established at what is now known as Castle Square, from 1570 to 1584, Mary, Queen of Scots, was imprisoned in Sheffield Castle and Sheffield Manor. During the 1740s, a form of the steel process was discovered that allowed the manufacture of a better quality of steel than had previously been possible
7.
Stockholm
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The city is spread across 14 islands on the coast in the southeast of Sweden at the mouth of Lake Mälaren, by the Stockholm archipelago and the Baltic Sea. The area has settled since the Stone Age, in the 6th millennium BC. It is also the capital of Stockholm County, Stockholm is the cultural, media, political, and economic centre of Sweden. The Stockholm region alone accounts for over a third of the countrys GDP and it is an important global city, and the main centre for corporate headquarters in the Nordic region. The city is home to some of Europes top ranking universities, such as the Stockholm School of Economics, Karolinska Institute and it hosts the annual Nobel Prize ceremonies and banquet at the Stockholm Concert Hall and Stockholm City Hall. One of the citys most prized museums, the Vasa Museum, is the most visited museum in Scandinavia. The Stockholm metro, opened in 1950, is known for its decoration of the stations. Swedens national football arena is located north of the city centre, Ericsson Globe, the national indoor arena, is in the southern part of the city. The city was the host of the 1912 Summer Olympics, and hosted the equestrian portion of the 1956 Summer Olympics otherwise held in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. Stockholm is the seat of the Swedish government and most of its agencies, including the highest courts in the judiciary, and the official residencies of the Swedish monarch and the Prime Minister. The government has its seat in the Rosenbad building, the Riksdag is seated in the Parliament House, and the Prime Ministers residence is adjacent at the Sager House. After the Ice Age, around 8,000 BCE, there were already a number of people living in the present-day Stockholm area. Thousands of years later, as the ground thawed, the climate became tolerable, at the intersection of the Baltic Sea and lake Mälaren is an archipelago site where the Old Town of Stockholm was first built from about 1000 CE by Vikings. They had a positive impact on the area because of the trade routes they created. Stockholms location appears in Norse sagas as Agnafit, and in Heimskringla in connection with the legendary king Agne, the earliest written mention of the name Stockholm dates from 1252, by which time the mines in Bergslagen made it an important site in the iron trade. The first part of the name means log in Swedish, although it may also be connected to an old German word meaning fortification, the second part of the name means islet, and is thought to refer to the islet Helgeandsholmen in central Stockholm. Stockholms core, the present Old Town was built on the island next to Helgeandsholmen from the mid 13th century onward. The city originally rose to prominence as a result of the Baltic trade of the Hanseatic League, Stockholm developed strong economic and cultural linkages with Lübeck, Hamburg, Gdańsk, Visby, Reval, and Riga during this time
8.
Sergei Rachmaninoff
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Sergei Vasilievich Rachmaninoff was a Russian pianist, composer, and conductor of the late-Romantic period, some of whose works are among the most popular in the classical repertoire. Born into a family, Rachmaninoff took up the piano at age four. He graduated from the Moscow Conservatory in 1892 and had composed several piano, in 1897, following the critical reaction to his Symphony No. 1, Rachmaninoff entered a depression and composed little until successful therapy allowed him to complete his enthusiastically received Piano Concerto No.2 in 1901. After the Russian Revolution, Rachmaninoff and his family left Russia and resided in the United States, in 1942, Rachmaninoff moved to Beverly Hills, California. One month before his death from advanced melanoma, Rachmaninoff acquired American citizenship, the piano is featured prominently in Rachmaninoffs compositional output, and through his own skills as a performer he explored the expressive possibilities of the instrument. Rachmaninoff was born at an estate in the Novgorod province in north-western Russia. It is unclear if he was born in the estate of Oneg, near Veliky Novgorod, or Semyonovo, near Staraya Russa, the Rachmaninoffs had strong musical and military leanings. The composers grandfather on the line, Arkady Alexandrovich, was a musician. His father, Vasily Arkadyevich Rachmaninoff, was an army officer and he married Lyubov Petrovna Butakova, the daughter of a wealthy army general who gave her five estates as part of her dowry. The couple had three sons and three daughters, Rachmaninoff being their fourth child, Rachmaninoff began piano and music lessons organised by his mother at the age of four. She became impressed with her sons musical ability to recite passages from memory without playing a wrong note. Rachmaninoff later dedicated Spring Waters, Song No.32 to Ornatskaya, in 1882, Rachmaninoffs father had to auction off their Oneg estate due to his financial incompetence—the familys five estates had been reduced to one. Rachmaninoff described his father as a wastrel, a gambler, a pathological liar. The family moved to a flat in Saint Petersburg. When Rachmaninoffs course of lessons with Ornatskaya neared its end, she arranged for him to music at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory. That year, his sister Sofia died of diphtheria and his left the family, with their approval. In 1885, Rachmaninoffs sister Yelena died of pernicious anemia at eighteen and she was an important musical influence to Rachmaninoff who introduced him to the works of Tchaikovsky
9.
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
10.
Peter Gabriel
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After leaving Genesis in 1975, Gabriel launched a solo career with Solsbury Hill as his first single. His 1986 album, So, is his release and is certified triple platinum in the UK. The albums most successful single, Sledgehammer, won a record nine MTV Awards at the 1987 MTV Video Music Awards, Gabriel has been a champion of world music for much of his career. He co-founded the WOMAD festival in 1982 and he has continued to focus on producing and promoting world music through his Real World Records label. He has also pioneered digital distribution methods for music, co-founding OD2, Gabriel has also been involved in numerous humanitarian efforts. In 1980, he released the anti-apartheid single Biko and he has participated in several human rights benefit concerts, including Amnesty Internationals Human Rights Now. Tour in 1988, and co-founded the Witness human rights organisation in 1992, Gabriel developed The Elders with Richard Branson, which was launched by Nelson Mandela in 2007. He was made a BMI Icon at the 57th annual BMI London Awards for his influence on generations of music makers, AllMusic has described Gabriel as one of rocks most ambitious, innovative musicians, as well as one of its most political. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of Genesis in 2010, in March 2015 he was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of South Australia in recognition of his achievements in music. Peter Brian Gabriel was born in Chobham, Surrey and his father, Ralph Parton Gabriel, was an electrical engineer, and his mother, Edith Irene, who was from a musical family, taught him to play the piano at an early age. His great-great-great-uncle, Sir Thomas Gabriel, 1st Baronet, served as Lord Mayor of London from 1866 to 1877, Gabriel attended Cable House, a private primary school in Woking, St. Andrews Prep School in Horsell, and Charterhouse School in Godalming from 1963. He played drums in his first rock bands, and Mike Rutherford commented in 1985 that Pete was—and still is, Gabriel founded Genesis in 1967 with fellow Charterhouse School pupils Tony Banks, Anthony Phillips, Mike Rutherford, and drummer Chris Stewart. The name of the band was suggested by fellow Charterhouse alumnus, the pop music impresario Jonathan King, Gabriel has said to be influenced by many different sources in his way of singing, such as Family lead singer Roger Chapman. In 1970, he played the flute on Cat Stevenss album, the concerts made extensive use of black light with the normal stage lighting subdued or off. Early Genesis concerts were hampered by a bad public address system made it difficult for audiences to understand what Gabriel was singing. According to Mike Rutherford, this drove Gabriel to find ways to impress his personality on the audience. In an episode of the 2007 British documentary series Seven Ages of Rock and it was the dress-wearing, fox-headed entity immortalised on the cover of Foxtrot. Hackett and the rest of the band had no inkling that Gabriel was going to do this and it was a success, encouraging Gabriel to continue wearing stage clothes while singing
11.
George Gershwin
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George Jacob Gershwin was an American composer and pianist. Gershwins compositions spanned both popular and classical genres, and his most popular melodies are widely known, among his best-known works are the orchestral compositions Rhapsody in Blue and An American in Paris as well as the opera Porgy and Bess. Gershwin studied piano under Charles Hambitzer and composition with Rubin Goldmark, Henry Cowell and he began his career as a song plugger, but soon started composing Broadway theatre works with his brother Ira Gershwin, and Buddy DeSylva. He moved to Paris intending to study with Nadia Boulanger, who refused him, after returning to New York City, he wrote Porgy and Bess with Ira and the author DuBose Heyward. Initially a commercial failure, Porgy and Bess is now considered one of the most important American operas of the twentieth century, Gershwin moved to Hollywood and composed numerous film scores until his death in 1937 from a malignant brain tumor – glioblastoma multiforme. Gershwins compositions have been adapted for use in films and for television. Many celebrated singers and musicians have covered his songs, Gershwin was of Russian Jewish and Ukrainian Jewish ancestry. His grandfather, Jakov Gershowitz, had served for 25 years as a mechanic for the Imperial Russian Army to earn the right of travel and residence as a Jew. His teenage son, Moishe Gershowitz, worked as a cutter for womens shoes. Moishe Gershowitz met and fell in love with Roza Bruskina, the daughter of a furrier in Vilnius. She and her family moved to New York due to increasing anti-Jewish sentiment in Russia, Moishe, faced with compulsory military service if he remained in Russia, moved to America as soon as he could afford to. Once in New York, he changed his first name to Morris, Gershowitz lived with a maternal uncle in Brooklyn, working as a foreman in a womens shoe factory. When he married Rose on July 21,1895, Gershowitz soon Americanized his name to Gershwine. Their first child was born on December 6,1896, Gershwin then moved his family into a second-floor apartment on Brooklyns Snediker Avenue. Their second son, soon to be renamed George, was born at there on September 26,1898 and his birth certificate identifies him as Jacob Gershwine, with the surname pronounced Gersh-vin in the Russian and Yiddish immigrant community. He was named after his grandfather, the one time Russian army mechanic, American practice by then was to give children a first and a middle name, but had no other. He changed the spelling of his name to Gershwin when he became a professional musician, George and Ira lived in many different residences, as their father changed dwellings with each new enterprise which he became involved in. Mostly, the boys grew up around the Yiddish Theater District and they frequented the local Yiddish theaters, with George occasionally appearing onstage as an extra
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