Desiderio Alberto Arnaz y de Acha III, better known as Desi Arnaz, was a Cuban-born American actor, bandleader and film and television producer. He is best known for his role as the witty Ricky Ricardo on the American television series sitcom I Love Lucy, where he co-starred with his wife and comedic actress Lucille Ball. Arnaz and Ball are credited as the innovators of the syndicated rerun, which they pioneered with the I Love Lucy series. Arnaz and Lucille Ball co-founded and ran the television production company called Desilu Productions to market I Love Lucy to television networks. After I Love Lucy ended, Arnaz went on to produce several other television series, at first with Desilu Productions, independently, including The Ann Sothern Show and The Untouchables, he was renowned for leading his Latin music band, the Desi Arnaz Orchestra. Arnaz was born Desiderio Alberto Arnaz y de Acha, III, in Santiago de Cuba, Cuba, to Desiderio Alberto Arnaz y de Alberni II and his wife Dolores de Acha.

His father was Santiago's youngest mayor and served in the Cuban House of Representatives. His maternal grandfather was an executive at rum producer Bacardi & Co.. Arnaz describes the opulent family life of his early youth in his autobiography, A Book —the family owned three ranches, a palatial home, a vacation mansion on a private island in Santiago Bay, Cuba. Following the Cuban Revolution of 1933, led by Fulgencio Batista, which overthrew President Gerardo Machado, Alberto Arnaz was jailed and all of his property was confiscated, he was released after six months. The family fled to Miami, where Desi attended St. Patrick Catholic High School. In the summer of 1934, he attended Saint Leo Prep to help improve his English; when he moved to the United States, Desi Arnaz turned to show business to support himself. In 1939, he starred on Broadway in the musical Too Many Girls, he went to Hollywood the next year to appear in the show's movie version at RKO, which starred Lucille Ball. Arnaz and Ball eloped on November 30, 1940.

Arnaz played guitar for Xavier Cugat. Arnaz appeared in several movies in the 1940s such as Bataan. Many consider his portrayal of the jive-loving California National Guardsman Felix Ramirez to be his best early role, he received his draft notice. He completed his recruit training, but was classified for limited service in the United States Army during World War II, he was assigned to direct United Service Organization programs at the Birmingham General Army Hospital in the San Fernando Valley. Discovering the first thing the wounded soldiers requested was a glass of cold milk, he arranged for movie starlets to meet them and pour the milk for them. Following his discharge from the Army on November 16, 1945, he formed another orchestra, successful in live appearances and recordings, he sang for troops in Birmingham Hospital with John Macchia and hired his childhood friend Marco Rizo to play piano and arrange for the orchestra. When he became successful in television, he kept the orchestra on his payroll, Rizo arranged and orchestrated the music for I Love Lucy.

On October 15, 1951, Arnaz co-starred in the premiere of I Love Lucy, in which he played a fictionalized version of himself, Cuban orchestra leader Enrique "Ricky" Ricardo. His co-star was Lucille Ball, who played Ricky's wife, Lucy. Television executives had been pursuing Ball to adapt her popular radio series My Favorite Husband for television. Ball insisted on Arnaz playing her on-air spouse so the two would be able to spend more time together. CBS wanted Ball's Husband co-star Richard Denning; the original premise was for the couple to portray Lucy and Larry Lopez, a successful show business couple whose glamorous careers interfered with their efforts to maintain a normal marriage. Market research indicated, that this scenario would not be popular, so Jess Oppenheimer changed it to make Ricky Ricardo a struggling young orchestra leader and Lucy an ordinary housewife who had show business fantasies but no talent; the character name "Larry Lopez" was dropped because of a real-life bandleader named Vincent Lopez, was replaced with "Ricky Ricardo".

Ricky appeared at, owned, the Tropicana Club, which under his ownership he renamed Club Babalu. The idea of having Ball and the distinctly Latin American Arnaz portray a married couple encountered resistance as they were told that Desi's Cuban accent and Latin style would not be agreeable to American viewers; the couple overcame these objections, however, by touring together, during the summer of 1950, in a live vaudeville act they developed with the help of Spanish clown Pepito Pérez, together with Ball's radio show writers. Much of the material from their vaudeville act, including Lucy's memorable seal routine, was used in the pilot episode of I Love Lucy. Segments of the pilot were recreated in the sixth episode of the show's first season. During his time on the show and Ball became TV's most successful entrepreneurs. With Ball, Arnaz founded Desilu Productions. At that time, most television programs were broadcast live, as the largest markets were in New York, the rest of the country received only kinescope images.

Karl Freund, Arnaz's cameraman, Arnaz himself have been credited with the development of the multiple-camera setup production style using adjacent sets in front of a live audience that became the standard for subsequent situation comedies. The use of film enabled every station around the coun

Alexandra "Alex" Wrubleski is a Canadian retired professional road cyclist. She has awarded three Canadian championship titles in both road race and time trial, represented her nation Canada at the 2008 Summer Olympics. Wrubleski raced for the United States' Webcor Builders Cycling Team, before she took a wide sporting break at the end of 2010 season. Wrubleski was born in Saskatchewan, she made her sporting debut as an amateur rider, when she joined the Canadian cycling team in 2006, earned two national titles in the women's road race and time trial. Strong results landed her an official spot on the Colavita–Sutter Home team in 2007, followed by her short stints and participation at the Joe Martin Stage Race and Tri-Peaks Challenge, both held in the United States. In 2008, Wrubleski managed a late surge to recapture the women's road race title at the Canadian Championships in Saint-Georges, Quebec. Wrubleski qualified for the Canadian squad in all road cycling events at the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing by receiving one of the nation's three available berths from the UCI World Cup.

In the women's road race, held on the second day of the Games, Wrubleski completed a grueling race with a fiftieth-place effort in 3:39:36, trailing behind Slovenia's Sigrid Corneo by a scanty, seven-second gap. Three days in the women's time trial, Wrubleski recorded a sprint time in 39:15.42 to surpass China's Meng Lang on the final stretch for the twenty-fourth spot. Alexandra Wrubleski at the Canadian Olympic Committee Alexandra Wrubleski at the International Olympic Committee Alexandra Wrubleski at Cycling Archives "Canadian Cycling Team Profile". Archived from the original on 2015-02-15. Retrieved 2013-10-11. NBC Olympics Profile

Cattle Annie and Little Britches is a 1981 Western drama starring Burt Lancaster, Rod Steiger, Diane Lane, Amanda Plummer, based on the lives of two adolescent girls in late–19th century Oklahoma Territory who became infatuated with the Western outlaws they had read about in Ned Buntline's stories and left their homes to join the criminals. It was scripted by David Eyre and Robert Ward from Robert Ward's book and directed by Lamont Johnson; the outlaws the girls find are the demoralized remnants of the Doolin-Dalton gang, led by an inaccurately aged Bill Doolin. Anna Emmaline McDoulet, or Cattle Annie and inspires the men to become what she had imagined them to be; the younger sister Jennie Stevens or Little Britches finds a father figure in Doolin, who in the story line coined her nickname "Little Britches". Doolin's efforts to live up to the girls' vision of him lead him to be carted off in a cage to an Oklahoma jail where he waits to be hanged. With the help of the girls and the gang, Doolin rides off to safety with his men.

The girls are triumphant, but they cannot escape Marshal Bill Tilghman and are sent back East to the reformatory in Framingham, Massachusetts. Burt Lancaster as Bill Doolin Rod Steiger as Bill Tilghman John Savage as Bittercreek Newcomb Diane Lane as Jennie Amanda Plummer as Cattle Annie Scott Glenn as Bill Dalton William Russ as Little Bill Raidler Buck Taylor as Dynamite Dick Roger Cudney as Capps Redmond Gleeson as Red Buck Chad Hastings as Conductor John Quade as Morgan Yvette Sweetman as Mrs. Sweetman Perry Lang as Elrod During production, Lancaster collapsed from a bile duct blockage. According to his daughter, on set, they returned to Los Angeles and an ambulance met them at the airport, it was 105 degrees, the ambulance broke down on the way to the hospital. "He got out and pushed,” she recalled. “I couldn’t get him to behave”. The film was favorably reviewed by the critic Pauline Kael in The New Yorker. " The cinematography is vivid … the colors are strikingly crisp and intense. The dialogue and most of the incidents have a dry humor.

It's a wonderful true story … there are some wonderful performances. As Bill Doolin, Lancaster is a gent surrounded by louts — a charmer; when he talks to his gang he uses the lithe movements and the rhythmic, courtly delivery that his Crimson Pirate had when he told his boys to gather round. In his scenes with Diane Lane, the child actor who appeared in New York in several of Andrei Serban's stage productions, who single handedly made the film A Little Romance worth seeing, Lancaster has an easy tenderness, never overdone. Lancaster looks happy in the movie and still looks tough: it's an unbeatable combination. Young Amanda Plummer gives a scarily brilliant performance." Cattle Annie and Little Britches on IMDb Cattle Annie and Little Britches at Rotten Tomatoes