Karen Blanche Black was an American actress, screenwriter and songwriter. She rose to prominence for her work in various studio and independent films in the 1970s portraying eccentric and offbeat characters, established herself as a figure of New Hollywood, her career spanned over 50 years, includes nearly 200 credits in both independent and mainstream films. Black received numerous accolades throughout her career, including two Golden Globe Awards, as well as an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress. A native of suburban Chicago, Black studied theater at Northwestern University before dropping out and relocating to New York City, she performed on Broadway in 1965 before making her major film debut in Francis Ford Coppola's You're a Big Boy Now. Black relocated to California and was cast as an acid-tripping prostitute in Dennis Hopper's road film Easy Rider; this led to a lead in the drama Five Easy Pieces, in which she played a hopeless waitress, for which she was nominated for an Academy Award and won a Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actress.

Black made her first major commercial picture with the disaster film Airport 1975, her subsequent appearance as Myrtle Wilson in The Great Gatsby won her a second Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actress. Black starred as a glamorous country singer in Robert Altman's ensemble musical drama Nashville writing and performing two songs for the soundtrack, which won a Grammy Award for Best Score Soundtrack, her portrayal of an aspiring actress in John Schlesinger's morbid drama The Day of the Locust earned her a third Golden Globe nomination, this time for Best Actress. She subsequently appeared in three roles in Dan Curtis's anthology horror film Trilogy of Terror, followed by Curtis's supernatural horror feature, Burnt Offerings; the same year, she starred as a con artist in Family Plot. In 1982, Black starred as a trans woman in the Robert Altman-directed Broadway debut of Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean, a role she reprised in Altman's subsequent film adaptation, she next starred in the comedy Can She Bake a Cherry Pie?, followed by Tobe Hooper's remake of Invaders from Mars.

For much of the late 1980s and 1990s, Black starred in a variety of arthouse and horror films, as well as writing her own screenplays. She had a leading role as a villainous mother in Rob Zombie's House of 1000 Corpses, which cemented her status as a cult horror icon, she continued to star in low-profile films throughout the early 2000s, as well as working as a playwright before her death of ampullary cancer in 2013. Black was born Karen Blanche Ziegler on July 1, 1939, in Park Ridge, the daughter of Elsie Mary, a writer of several prize-winning children's novels, Norman Arthur Ziegler, an engineer and businessman, her paternal grandfather was Arthur Charles Ziegler, a classical musician and first violinist for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. She had one sister, actress Gail Brown, a brother. Black was of German and Norwegian descent; the Zieglers came to the United States from Southern Germany from the area of Neukirch between the Black Forest and the Swabian Jura. Black and her siblings were raised at 224 N. Greenwood Ave in Park Ridge, spent time on her uncle's farm near Green Bay, Wisconsin.

As a young teenager, she aspired to have a career as a stage actress, seeking out summer stock theater job opportunities. "From the age of 13 I'd rush out during vacations to find work in summer stock," Black recalled. "I started by cleaning toilets and by the time I was 16 I was a prop-girl and in the chorus line singing, at 17 I got my first real acting, paid job." Black graduated from Maine Township High School East in 1957. After high school, she enrolled at Northwestern University, where she majored in theatre arts, studying under Alvina Krause. Black completed two years of studies before dropping out, she reflected on her training unfavorably, stating: I would say that the college training was lousy, I don’t think that people learn by being invalidated... Acting teachers, not all of them but many, seem to think that beating up their students and invalidating them will make them better, which I think is wrong, and at that age, you don’t realize that this sick person is projecting all their neurosis onto you, you think that you’re the one who’s damaged...

Alvina Krause would not allow. I think she had favorites, you could never figure out why you weren’t a favorite, it never made any sense; the thing you have to remember is that if a person is making you feel bad about yourself, that person is going to be in his or her own world. They are lost in their own universe. After dropping out of Northwestern University in 1960, Black relocated to New York City to pursue an acting career, residing in a cold water flat in Manhattan, she took odd jobs working as a secretary, a front desk person at a hotel, at an insurance office, lived on "thirty dollars a week." Black began performing with the Rockefeller Players, a theater troupe in Westwood, New Jersey. She joined at the Actors Studio, but left shortly after enrolling commenting: "How can a man who isn't an actor teach you how to act?" This same year, she married her first husband, Charles Black, though the marriage was short-lived, ended within the year. However, she retained his surname. Black made her screen debut with a minor role in the independent film The Prime Time, which she would deem "the worst film made."

Disillusioned by this

Chesterfield Central was a railway station in the town of Chesterfield, Derbyshire. The station was on the Great Central Chesterfield Loop which ran between Staveley Central and Heath Junction on the Great Central Main Line; the station opened in 1892 and was closed in 1963. The station was demolished by 1973 to make way for Chesterfield's inner-relief road, much of, built along the former trackbed of the GCR; this dual-carriageway now forms part of the A61 road. The former 410yd entrance tunnel from the north still remains in place, sealed at its north end due to the road construction. Chesterfield was, at one time, served by three railway stations; the other two are: John. British Railways in and Around the Midlands 1953-57. Nottingham: Book Law Publications. ISBN 1-901945-47-2. Photographs of Central Station Site of the former Central Station, on what is now the A61 Inner-Relief road, looking south in 2008, Photo by Nick Catford The station in 1950 Britain from Above

Byse is a village in the Shimoga district of Karnataka, India. It is located around 140 km in the Nagara hobli of the Hosanagara taluka. Megalithic structures have been found at Byse at a site called Nilaskal Byana; the villagers have long been aware of the presence of these megaliths, a 1975 thesis by A. Sundara mentions the site as containing menhirs arranged in no particular order. In 2007, Professor Srikumar M Menon from the Manipal School of Architecture and Planning, Manipal University noticed the stones during a trip to the Nagara Fort at Byse. Subsequently, the researchers from the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research and Manipal University surveyed 26 stones during 2007-10; the researchers speculated that the stones could be dated prior to 1000 BCE, though carbon dating is yet to be done, as of March 2012. Using computer simulation, the researchers concluded that at least one of the stone alignments at Byse has "strong astronomical associations", which indicates that the site could have been an ancient astronomical observatory.

The tallest menhir is 1.6 m in width and 25 cm in thickness. Two menheirs are used by the villagers for a form of ancestor worship; the Kusannanakere water tank is located in Byse. The habitations that fall under the Byse gram panchayat include: Baise Konanahalli Kardigere Kuppaduru Kannamane Hokoppalau Chikalli Dhummadhagadde Doddagundi Niraballi Gundigadde Athikodige Sulagodu Channakodige The Chidambareshwara Devaru and Nethrabylu Choudi Devasthana Hindu shrines are located in Byse