F. Murray Abraham is an American actor, he became known during the 1980s after winning an Oscar for his leading role as Antonio Salieri in the drama film Amadeus. Abraham won a Golden Globe and received a BAFTA Award nomination for the role, he has appeared in many roles, both leading and supporting, in films such as All the President's Men, The Name of the Rose, Last Action Hero, Star Trek: Insurrection, Finding Forrester, Inside Llewyn Davis, The Grand Budapest Hotel. Abraham is known for his television and theatre work and is a regular cast member on the television series Homeland, which earned him two Primetime Emmy Award nominations. Abraham was born Murray Abraham on October 24, 1939 in Pittsburgh, the son of Fahrid "Fred" Abraham, an auto mechanic, his wife Josephine, a housewife, his father emigrated from Syria at age five during a famine. His mother, one of 14 children, was Italian American, the daughter of an Italian immigrant who worked in the coal mines of Western Pennsylvania, he had two brothers and Jack, who were killed in separate car accidents.
Abraham was raised in El Paso, near the Mexican border. He attended Vilas Grammar School, graduated from El Paso High School in 1958, he was a gang member during his teenage years. He attended Texas Western College, where he was given the best actor award by Alpha Psi Omega for his portrayal of the Indian Nocona in Comanche Eagle during the 1959–60 season, he attended the University of Texas at Austin studied acting under Uta Hagen at HB Studio in New York City. He began his acting career on the stage, debuting in a Los Angeles production of Ray Bradbury's The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit. Abraham added "F." to his stage name in honor of his father Fahrid. He has stated, it just is another name, so I thought I'd frame it." Abraham made his screen debut as an usher in the George C. Scott comedy They Might Be Giants. By the mid-1970s, Murray had steady employment as an actor, doing voice-overs. Abraham can be seen as one of the undercover police officers along with Al Pacino in Sidney Lumet's Serpico, in television roles including the bad guy in one fourth-season episode of Kojak.
He played a cabdriver in the theatrical version of The Prisoner of Second Avenue, a mechanic in the theatrical version of The Sunshine Boys, a police officer in the film All the President's Men. Despite these small roles, Abraham continued to do commercials and voice-over work for income, but in 1978, he decided to give them up. Frustrated with the lack of substantial roles, Abraham said, "No one was taking my acting seriously. I figured if I didn't do it I'd have no right to the dreams I've always had." His wife, Kate Hannan, went to work as an assistant and Abraham became a "house husband". He described, "I took care of the kids, it was rough on my macho idea of life. But it was the best thing that happened to me."Abraham gained greater prominence when he appeared as drug dealer Omar Suárez in the gangster film Scarface. In 1984, he played envious composer Antonio Salieri in the Academy Award for Best Picture-winning Amadeus, directed by Miloš Forman. Abraham won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his role, an award for which his co-star in the film Tom Hulce, playing Mozart, had been nominated.
He won a Golden Globe Award, among other awards, his role in the film, remains as his most iconic. After Amadeus, he next appeared in The Name of the Rose, in which he played Bernardo Gui, nemesis to Sean Connery's William of Baskerville. In its DVD commentary, his director on the film, Jean-Jacques Annaud, described Abraham as an "egomaniac" on the set, who considered himself more important than Sean Connery because Connery did not have an Oscar; that said, the film was a critical success. Abraham had tired of appearing as heavies and wanted to return to his background in comedy, as he explained to People Weekly in an interview he gave at the time of its release. Though Abraham had fewer prominent roles in the next decade or so, he became known for his roles in Peter Yates' An Innocent Man, Woody Allen's Mighty Aphrodite, Ahdar Ru'afo in Star Trek: Insurrection, Gus Van Sant's Finding Forrester, where he again played the nemesis to Connery, he had a significant role in Brian De Palma's adaptation of The Bonfire of the Vanities, but chose not to be credited due to a contract dispute.
Abraham's low-profile film career subsequent to his Academy Award win has been considered an example of the "Oscar jinx." According to film critic Leonard Maltin, professional failure following an early success is referred to in Hollywood circles as the "F. Murray Abraham syndrome." Abraham rejected this notion and told Maltin, "The Oscar is the single most important event of my career. I have dined with shared equal billing with my idols, lectured at Harvard and Columbia. If this is a jinx, I'll take two." In the same interview, Abraham said, "Even though I won the Oscar, I can still take the subway in New York, nobody recognizes me. Some actors might find that discon
"Flight on Titan" is a science fiction short story by American writer Stanley G. Weinbaum, it was the third story published by Weinbaum in his Planetary Series. Flight on Titan first appeared in the January 1935 issue of Astounding Stories, was the first of Weinbaum's to appear in Astounding Stories, is the only story by him set on Saturn's largest moon, Titan. In Weinbaum's description of the Solar System, in accordance with the then-accepted near-collision hypothesis of planetary formation, the gas giants radiate enough heat to bring their inner satellites up to Earth-like temperatures. Being over 600,000 miles from Saturn, Titan receives only a third of its heat from its primary. Titan's temperature is comparable to Earth's Antarctic regions, ranging from just above freezing during the day to eighty below zero Fahrenheit during the nine-hour-long nights. Due to Saturn's tidal pull, Titan is subject to 100 mph winds, which blow from east to west during half of the moon's sixteen-day revolution around its primary, west to east during the other half, only dying down for half an hour in between each shift in direction.
Despite all this, Titan has a flourishing Arctic ecosystem at the top of, a clawed, blubbery seal-like native race of infant-like intelligence. "The natives", as they are known, have developed a barter system with settlers from Earth, trading rare and expensive Titanian gems for knives, beads and other trinkets. Less sentient Titanian life-forms include the elastic, stinging "Whiplash Trees". There are strong hints of a former intelligent civilization on Titan that created their own architecture such as carved pillars. All life on Titan has a metabolism based on arsenic, so have to be chemically treated to render them safe before being eaten by humans, it is mentioned in the story that the eating of the semi-intelligent natives is forbidden, although some humans of the settlement of Nivia ignore this rule and eat this prohibited meat in secret. Tim and Diane Vick are two New Yorkers left impoverished by the 2142 collapse of the Planetary Trading Corporation. Rather than sit and wait for their money to run out, they decide to travel to Titan for a year to prospect for gems.
Six months into their stay on Titan, they have succeeded in acquiring eighteen flame-orchids, which will make them wealthy on Earth, assuming they survive to reach Earth. Every fifteen years, Saturn eclipses the sun, Titan spends seventy-two hours in darkness. Nine months into the Vicks' stay, four Titanian days before the eclipse is due, an ice mountain near the Vicks' shack collapses; the Vicks escape the destruction of their shack, but find themselves stranded a hundred miles from the main human settlement on Titan, the United States-ran Nivia, otherwise known as the City of Snow, on the far side of the Mountains of the Damned. Tim Vick decides that they should try to reach Nivia, since the wind shifted and will be at their backs for the next eight days. Three days into their trek, Diane collapses. In desperation, Tim drags her into an ice-ant nest; the air in the nest is above freezing, the ice-ants ignore them since they find the Vicks' foam-rubber clothing inedible. Tim wakes the next morning to find that the ice-ants have eaten away the leather bag holding their flame-orchids, all but one of them have been washed away into the depths of the subterranean ice-ant hive.
The eclipse begins, when the sun sets that night, Tim knows he won't see it again for four days. The temperature drops past a hundred below that night, only rises to seventy below the next day; the Vicks manage to find two small ice-ant nests to spend the next night in, remain there through the next day and night. The next day's journey brings them into the Mountains of the Damned; when the temperature drops to 140 below zero, they take shelter in a mountain cave. There they find themselves facing a Titanian threadworm. Tim is lulled to sleep by its hypnotic buzzing, but Diane wakes him, he shoots it, they block the entrance to a threadworm nest and Diane falls asleep. Tim finds it shattered. Angrily he pounds it into dust with a rock; when morning comes, they prepare to leave. During the night, each one had grown, they gather them up, Tim wraps up some of the rock dust from the cave floor for analysis. The two resume climbing, but they are still a mile below the summit when the wind dies, a thousand feet below when the wind starts blowing in their faces.
They find themselves being pushed back down the face of the mountain, pass out. Tim awakens to find the two of them in a hollow a quarter mile below the summit, he resumes climbing, dragging the unconscious Diane with him, until he passes the summit and starts down the far side, with the lights of Nivia visible in the foothills below. Despite a severe bashing from the wind, near unconsciousness and severe frostbite, Tim reaches the settlement in time to save himself and his wife; the Vicks are now rich from the fragments of the smashed, priceless flame-orchid that have all grown to the size of the original. "Flight on Titan" appears in the following Stanley G. Weinbaum collections: The Red Peri A Martian Odyssey and Other Science Fiction Tales Interplanetary Odysseys Flight on Titan title listing at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
West End is a village and civil parish in Surrey Heath, England, between the towns of Camberley and Woking, 4 miles west and east respectively. The village until the mid 20th century consisted of little-farmed smallholdings amid substantial common land – West End Common to the west is comparable in size to Chobham Common to the north, both dwarf the built-up heart of the village. West End Common includes training ranges of the British Army and is separated by a smaller public area, Brentmoor Heath, which shares in wet, acid heathland, a rare soil type. In geology, the Bagshot Formation is apparent in parts of the village. West End lies between Brookwood railway stations, 3 miles away; the River Bourne runs through the village from its sources to the immediate west. West End and Bisley have little commerce and industry compared to adjoining settlements, with parks, grassland areas and separated by Green Belt buffers. A golf course, plant nurseries and farms adjoin the clustered village centre.
Nearby lands were settled in prehistoric times, evidenced within this civil parish, with a megalithic barrow on Westend Common. West End may have obtained its name because it was the west of Chobham, 2 miles ENE; the 1845 map reproduced by EJ Willson provides boundaries at that date. Its direct predecessor named Westend was in 1870–72 described by John Marius Wilson as "a tything in Worplesdon parish, Surrey. Pop. 341." A dependency on Worplesdon church, as its tything, is attested in the medieval period until the late 19th century, after which the area formed part of the parish of Chobham. The "parish church", i.e. Church of England church of Holy Trinity, West End serves a similar area ecclesiastical parish and is a small building consisting of a chancel consecrated in 1890, nave consecrated in 1842, a vestry built in 1906; the material is stone and the style is 13th century. Over the west end is a small bell-turret with a square spire above the entrance. Recognising rising population and housebuilding, the village gained its parish in 1895.
In the 20th century many houses were added to the village, during which period books on the county and subject of nurseries show it to be a significant economic centre of nursery gardening. The civil parish was created in 1968; the village provides a BP garage. Some works operate in warehousing and distribution however most employment of an industrial, commercial, or retail kind is in neighbouring areas; every year on the village recreation ground is its Summer Fete and in the autumn, The Horticultural and Agricultural Show. The two grounds in the village host a seniors football team and cricket team, competing within the county; the bus routes 34 and 35 travel through the village at intervals of 30 minutes. The western neighbourhood of the village has this locality name; however it has never formed a recorded hamlet under the vestry-administered system. The area is not mentioned in county records under the name of a manor. West End Common is a restricted access area, not inhabited and is home to many rare heathland plants and has been designated a Site of Special Scientific Interest by English Nature.
It is a Thames Basin Heaths Special Protection Area within the remit of Surrey Heath. A linear settlement on a cul-de-sac road, Lucas Green Road, leading to the periphery of West End Common, Lucas Green has a close cluster of four buildings, surrounding Lucas Green Manor, which are listed. One, Lucas Green Manor house, at Grade II dates to the 16th century, Lucas Green further extends down Lucas Green Road leading on to a small hamlet on the left consisting of eleven more properties, some of which date back to the 17th Century; the village has two schools: the Holy Trinity Church of England Primary school and Gordon's School, built in commemoration of Gordon of Khartoum. SoilHeath, wet acid sandy and loamy soil dominates except in patches of highest land where the Bagshot Formation of sand and sandstone contributes a greater proportion than organic matter; this heath soil is just 1.9% of English soil and 0.2% of Welsh soil, which gives rise to pines and coniferous landscapes, as well as more gorse and patches of bog.
ElevationAll the highest areas are on the western border. White Hill here provides the highest point and is publicly accessible north of Red Road which leads to Camberley 120m Above Ordnance Datum; this is towards the north of a long, wide north-south ridge, known as it descends east through into the rolling restricted common as Chobham Ridges. The ridge is topped by The Maultway, bounding an estate of Camberley, known as Heatherside; the River Bourne runs through the village from its sources directly to the rising landscape to the rest in the civil parish. The population rose between the 2001 and 2011 censuses from 4,272 to 4,693; the average level of accommodation in the region composed of detached houses was 28%, the average, apartments was 22.6%. The proportion of households in the civil parish who owned their home outright compares to the regional average of 35.1%. The proportion who owned their home with a loan compares to the regional average of 32.5%. The remaining % is made up of rented dwellings.
Brian May, lead guitarist of Queen is a local resident. Old photos Multimap National Archives, Surrey History Centre 1829 Map 1845 Map