Mireille Mathieu, is a French singer. She has recorded over 1200 songs in eleven languages, with more than 150 million albums sold worldwide. Mireille Mathieu was born on 22 July 1946 in Avignon, the eldest daughter of a family of fourteen children, her father Roger and his family were native to Avignon, while her mother Marcelle-Sophie was from Dunkirk. She arrived in Avignon in 1944 as a refugee from World War II after her grandmother had died, her mother went missing. Roger, with his father Arcade, ran the family stonemason shop just outside the Saint-Véran cemetery main gate; the Mathieu family have been stonemasons for four generations. Today the shop is named Pompes Funèbres Mathieu-Mardoyan, is still owned by the family; the Mathieu family lived in poverty, with a huge improvement in their living conditions in 1954, when subsidized housing was built in the Malpeigné quarter near the cemetery. Again in 1961 they moved to a large tenement in the Croix des Oiseaux quarter southeast of the city.

Roger had once dreamed of becoming a singer, but his father Arcade disapproved, inspiring him to have one of his children learn to sing with him in church. Mireille included her father's operatic voice on her 1968 Christmas album, where it was mixed in with the Minuit Chrétiens song. Mireille's first paid performance before an audience, at age four, was rewarded with a lollipop when she sang on Christmas Eve 1950 during Midnight Mass. A defining moment was seeing Édith Piaf sing on television. Mireille performed poorly in elementary school because of dyslexia, requiring an extra year to graduate, she was born left-handed, her teachers used a ruler to strike her hand each time she was caught writing with it. She became right-handed, she has a fantastic memory, never uses a prompter on stage. Abandoning higher education, at age 14, after moving to Croix des Oiseaux, she began work in a local factory in Montfavet where she helped with the family income and paid for her singing lessons. Popular at work, she sang songs at lunch, or while working.

Like her parents, she is a short woman at 1.52 m in height. Her sister Monique, born on 8 July 1947, began work at the same factory a few months later. Both were given bicycles on credit to commute with, making for long days, many bad memories of riding against the mistral winds; the factory went out of business, so Mireille and two sisters became youth counselors at a summer camp before her rise to fame, a summer where she had her fortune told by Tarot cards by an old Gypsy woman, saying she would soon mingle with Kings and Queens. Mireille is Roman Catholic, her adopted patron saint is Saint Rita, the Saint for the Impossible. Mireille's paternal grandmother Germaine née Charreton, assured her that Saint Rita was the one to intercede to God for hopeless cases. Beyond religion, like many artists, she is unabashed about luck; when asked to reveal some of her superstitions, she said: "The most important one is to never mention any of them." She has stage fright, can be seen making the sign of the cross before moving out on stage.

Mathieu began her career by participating in an annual singing contest in Avignon called On Chante dans mon Quartier. Photos depict the affair as rather drab with one projector light; the stage was only twenty feet square, the singer had to share it with a large piano and musicians. One cannot help but notice the large and young audience; the judges sat at a table in front below the elevated stage. Anyone who signed the contract in the weeks before the show was allowed to sing. Talent scouts made this a worthwhile event for singers within hundreds of kilometers to participate in. Mireille's private singing lessons were by Madame Laure Collière, a piano teacher in Avignon. Self-described as stubborn in her autobiography, she wrote about singing love songs that the audience thought were inappropriate for a young girl, thus losing to Michèle Torr in 1962 when she sang "Les cloches de Lisbonne" at the first contest, losing again in 1963 singing Édith Piaf's "L'Hymne à l'amour." In 1964, she won the event with another Piaf song: "La Vie en rose."Her win was rewarded with a free trip to Paris, a pre-audition for the televised talent show Jeu de la Chance, where amateur singers competed for audience and telephone votes.

Her participation and train fare were arranged by the deputy mayor of Avignon. Accompanied by a pianist at the studio, dressed in black like Piaf, she sang two Piaf songs to the audition judges and left dispirited. Non-French cannot hear it, but Parisians at the studio made fun of her Provençal accent, her dyslexia scrambled words. For example, her sister and current manager Monique, is called "Matite" because Mireille couldn't pronounce "petite" as a child. During a 1965 summer gala, added to the Enrico Macias concert by Raoul Colombe, she met her future manager Johnny Stark. Mireille and her father both thought he was an American based on his name and manner, nicknamed him l'Américain. Stark had worked with singers such as Yves Montand, the relationship between him and Mathieu is described as resembling that between Colonel Tom Parker and Elvis Presley. Stark is credited with making her the successor to Piaf. By 1968, under his careful management, she was France's most popular singer. Mireille was invited to Paris by the impresario Régis Durcourt to sing on the "Song Parade" television program

The United University Club was a London gentlemen's club, founded in 1821. It occupied the purpose-built University Club House, at 1, Suffolk Street, England, from 1826 until 1971; the Club was founded at a meeting held at the Thatched House Tavern on 30 June 1821 and held its first Annual General Meeting at Willis's Rooms on 27 April 1822, under the chairmanship of Prince William Frederick, Duke of Gloucester and Edinburgh. It was agreed that the Club would admit no more than one thousand members and former members of the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, five hundred from each; this limitation remained in place for more than one hundred years. As a result, only eight years after the Club's foundation, its waiting list was so long that a second club was formed, called the Oxford and Cambridge Club; the initial entrance-fee was set at the annual subscription at six guineas. By 1879, these figures had increased to eight guineas, it was reported in Dickens's Dictionary of London that "The members elect by ballot, one black ball in ten excludes".

The Club's premises, called the University Club House, were at 1, Suffolk Street, London near Trafalgar Square. They were designed by the architect William Wilkins RA and by his colleague J. P. Gandy and opened on 13 February 1826. Wilkins was the architect of the nearby National Gallery in Trafalgar Square, finished in 1838, of the main buildings of Downing College, Cambridge; the Club was re-built on a grander scale in 1906, with Reginald Blomfield as architect. In 1906, friezes by Henry Alfred Pegram RA were commissioned. An extension was added on the north side of the building in 1924 and another extension on the east side in 1939–40. Sir Nicholas Pevsner described the development as "Sir Reginald Blomfield’s essay in Champs Elysées style". A third club for members of the two Universities, founded in 1864 and called the New University Club, had its rooms at 57 St James's Street; this amalgamated with the United University Club in 1938. After the Second World War, the gentlemen's clubs of London fell into a decline, in 1971 the United University Club closed its premises.

In March 1972, it was merged with the Cambridge Club. The combined club was called the'United Oxford and Cambridge University Club' and in 1972–73 was housed at the University Club House, but thereafter it occupied the club house further down Pall Mall designed for the Oxford and Cambridge Club in 1836; the lease of the University Club House was surrendered to the Crown Estate. The merged University club reverted to the name "Oxford and Cambridge Club" in 2001. Number One Suffolk Street was occupied from 1973 until 1980 by the bankers Coutts & Co. from 1980 to 1997 by the British School of Osteopathy, since 1998 as the London Centre of the University of Notre Dame. The Centre enables the Colleges of Arts & Letters, Business Administration, Science and the Law School to develop their own programs in London. William Ewart Gladstone, prime minister Stanley Baldwin, 1st Earl Baldwin of Bewdley, prime minister John Maynard Keynes, 1st Baron Keynes, economist Arthur Peel, 1st Viscount Peel, Speaker of the House of Commons 1884–1895 Frederic Thesiger, 1st Viscount Chelmsford, Viceroy of India 1916–1921 John George Dodson, 1st Baron Monk Bretton, politician Alexander Staveley Hill KC MP, barrister and politician Douglas Freshfield, mountaineer Sir Owen Seaman, editor of Punch 1906–1932 Herbert Trench, poet Sir Leslie Scott KC MP, barrister and politician Sir Herbert Brent Grotrian, 1st Baronet and politician Geoffrey Winthrop Young and poet Percy Herbert, Bishop of Norwich Sir Ivor Jennings, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cambridge J. C. C.

Davidson, 1st Viscount Davidson, politician List of London's gentlemen's clubs Graves, Leather Armchairs: The Chivas Regal Book of London Clubs. Thole and Matthews, The Oxford and Cambridge Clubs in London. ISBN 978-1-872474-01-4. Lejeune, Gentlemen's Clubs of London, ill. Malcolm Lewis. ISBN 0-8317-3800-6. United University Club, victorianlondon.org. 51°30′29.34″N 0°7′49.64″W

The Resistance Medal 1940–1945 was a Belgian war medal established by royal decree of the Regent on 16 February 1946 and awarded to all members of the Belgian armed resistance during the Second World War and to members of the intelligence service who operated in occupied territories and participated in combat actions aimed at the liberation of Belgium. The Resistance Medal 1940–1945 was a 39mm in diameter circular bronze medal, its obverse bore the upper body of a young woman facing left in defiance with her right fist clenched. The reverse bore the relief inscription in Latin on three lines "1940 RESISTERE 1945" superimposed over a laurel wreath; the medal was suspended by a ring through a suspension loop from a 37 mm wide black silk moiré ribbon with two central 1 mm wide red stripes 5 mm apart and 4 mm light green edge stripes. The colours of the ribbon were symbolic, the black denoting the dark days of the German occupation and/or the clandestine nature of the resistance, the green stood the hope of liberation and the red for the spilled blood of the resistance members.

The individuals listed below were awarded the Medal of the Armed Resistance: Lieutenant General Ernest Engelen Cavalry Major General Jules François Gaston Everaert Lieutenant General Jules Joseph Pire Lieutenant General Alphonse Verstraete Lieutenant General Joseph Leroy Cavalry Lieutenant General Jules De Boeck Police Lieutenant General Louis Joseph Leroy Achille van Acker Edmond Leburton Alfons Vranckx Baron Albert Lilar Count Harold d’Aspremont Lynden Count Jean-Charles Snoy et d’Oppuers Viscount Omer Vanaudenhove Geraard van den Daele Count Count Jean d’Ursel Baron Pierre van Outryve d’Ydewalle Count Charles of Limburg Stirum Robberechts Henri Marcel Verriest Resistance during World War II Resistance movement List of Orders and Medals of the Kingdom of Belgium Quinot H. 1950, Recueil illustré des décorations belges et congolaises, 4e Edition. Cornet R. 1982, Recueil des dispositions légales et réglementaires régissant les ordres nationaux belges. 2e Ed. N.pl. Borné A. C. 1985, Distinctions honorifiques de la Belgique, 1830–1985 Bibliothèque royale de Belgique Les Ordres Nationaux Belges ARS MORIENDI Notables from Belgian history