John Quincy Adams
John Quincy Adams was an American statesman, diplomat and diarist who served as the sixth president of the United States from 1825 to 1829. He served as the eighth United States Secretary of State from 1817 to 1825. During his long diplomatic and political career, Adams served as an ambassador, represented Massachusetts as a United States Senator and as a member of the United States House of Representatives, he was the eldest son of John Adams, who served as the second US president from 1797 to 1801. A Federalist like his father, he won election to the presidency as a member of the Democratic-Republican Party, in the mid-1830s became affiliated with the Whig Party. Born in Braintree, Adams spent much of his youth in Europe, where his father served as a diplomat. After returning to the United States, Adams established a successful legal practice in Boston. In 1794, President George Washington appointed Adams as the U. S. ambassador to the Netherlands, Adams would serve in high-ranking diplomatic posts until 1801, when Thomas Jefferson took office as president.
Federalist leaders in Massachusetts arranged for Adams's election to the United States Senate in 1802, but Adams broke with the Federalist Party over foreign policy and was denied re-election. In 1809, Adams was appointed as the U. S. ambassador to Russia by a member of the Democratic-Republican Party. Adams held diplomatic posts for the duration of Madison's presidency, he served as part of the American delegation that negotiated an end to the War of 1812. In 1817, newly-elected President James Monroe selected Adams as his Secretary of State. In that role, Adams negotiated the Adams–Onís Treaty, which provided for the American acquisition of Florida, he helped formulate the Monroe Doctrine, which became a key tenet of U. S. foreign policy. The 1824 presidential election was contested by Adams, Andrew Jackson, William H. Crawford, Henry Clay, all of whom were members of the Democratic-Republican Party; as no candidate won a majority of the electoral vote, the House of Representatives held a contingent election to determine the president, Adams won that contingent election with the support of Clay.
As president, Adams called for an ambitious agenda that included federally-funded infrastructure projects, the establishment of a national university, engagement with the countries of Latin America, but many of his initiatives were defeated in Congress. During Adams's presidency, the Democratic-Republican Party polarized into two major camps: one group, known as the National Republican Party, supported President Adams, while the other group, known as the Democratic Party, was led by Andrew Jackson; the Democrats proved to be more effective political organizers than Adams and his National Republican supporters, Jackson decisively defeated Adams in the 1828 presidential election. Rather than retiring from public service, Adams won election to the House of Representatives, where he would serve from 1831 to his death in 1848, he joined the Anti-Masonic Party in the early 1830s before becoming a member of the Whig Party, which united those opposed to President Jackson. During his time in Congress, Adams became critical of slavery and of the Southern leaders whom he believed controlled the Democratic Party.
He was opposed to the annexation of Texas and the Mexican–American War, which he saw as a war to extend slavery. He led the repeal of the "gag rule," which had prevented the House of Representatives from debating petitions to abolish slavery. Historians concur that Adams was one of the greatest diplomats and secretaries of state in American history, but they tend to rank him as an average president. John Quincy Adams was born on July 11, 1767, to John and Abigail Adams in a part of Braintree, Massachusetts, now Quincy, he was named for his mother's maternal grandfather, Colonel John Quincy, after whom Quincy, Massachusetts, is named. Young Adams was educated by private tutors – his cousin James Thaxter and his father's law clerk, Nathan Rice, he soon began to exhibit his literary skills, in 1779 he initiated a diary which he kept until just before he died in 1848. Until the age of ten, Adams grew up on the family farm in Braintree in the care of his mother. Though absent due to his participation in the American Revolution, John Adams maintained a correspondence with his son, encouraging him to read works by authors like Thucydides and Hugo Grotius.
With his father's encouragement, Adams would translate classical authors like Virgil, Horace and Aristotle. In 1778, Adams and his father departed for Europe, where John Adams would serve as part of American diplomatic missions in France and the Netherlands. During this period, Adams studied French and Latin, attended several schools, including Leiden University. In 1781, Adams traveled to Saint Petersburg, where he served as the secretary of American diplomat Francis Dana, he returned to the Netherlands in 1783, accompanied his father to Great Britain in 1784. Though Adams enjoyed Europe, he and his family decided he needed to return to the United States to complete his education and launch a political career. Adams returned to the United States in 1785 and earned admission as a member of the junior class of Harvard College the following year, he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa and excelled academically, graduating second in his class in 1787. After graduating from Harvard, he studied law with Theophilus Parsons in Newburyport, Massachusetts from 1787 to 1789.
Adams opposed the ratification of the United States Constitution, but he came to accept the document, in 1789 his father was elected
Ben Kingsley
Sir Ben Kingsley is an English actor with a career spanning over 50 years. He has won an Oscar, Grammy, BAFTA, two Golden Globes, a Screen Actors Guild Award, he is known for his starring role as Mohandas Gandhi in the 1982 film Gandhi, for which he won the Academy Award for Best Actor. He has appeared in Schindler's List, Twelfth Night, Sexy Beast, House of Sand and Fog, Lucky Number Slevin, Shutter Island, Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, Iron Man 3, The Boxtrolls, The Jungle Book. Kingsley was appointed Knight Bachelor in 2002 for services to the British film industry. In 2010, he was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. In 2013, he received the BAFTA Los Angeles Britannia Award for Worldwide Contribution to Filmed Entertainment. Kingsley was born Krishna Pandit Bhanji in Snainton, near Scarborough in the North Riding of Yorkshire, he is the son of Anna Lyna Mary, an actress and model who appeared in films in the 1920s and 1930s, Rahmitulla Harji Bhanji, a doctor. Kingsley's mother was British.
Kingsley's father, born in Kenya, was of Gujarati ancestry. Kingsley's paternal grandfather was an successful spice trader who had moved from India to Zanzibar, where Kingsley's father lived until moving to Britain at the age of 14. Kingsley's maternal grandfather was believed by the family to have been of Russian- or German-Jewish descent, while Kingsley's maternal grandmother was of English background, worked in the garment district of East London. Kingsley stated in 1994: "I'm not Jewish … and though there might be some Russian-Jewish heritage way back on my mother's side, the thread is so fine there's no real evidence."Kingsley grew up in Pendlebury, near Manchester. He was educated at Manchester Grammar School, where one of his classmates was the actor Robert Powell. Kingsley studied at De La Salle College in Salford, which became home to the Ben Kingsley Theatre. While at college he became involved in amateur dramatics in Manchester, making his professional stage debut on graduation, aged 23.
In 1967, he made his London West End theatre debut at the Aldwych Theatre. He was spotted by music producer and manager Dick James, who offered to mould Kingsley into a pop star, but Kingsley chose to join the Royal Shakespeare Company after an audition before Trevor Nunn. Devoting himself exclusively to stage work for the next 15 years, he made his Broadway debut in 1971 with the RSC. Kingsley played Mosca in Peter Hall's 1977 production of Ben Jonson's Volpone for the Royal National Theatre, in Peter Brook's acclaimed production of A Midsummer Night's Dream. At about this time, he changed his name to Ben Kingsley, fearing that a foreign name would hamper his career, he took his stage name from his father's nickname of "Benji" and his paternal grandfather's nickname of "King Cloves". He starred in the role of Willy Loman in a 1982 Sydney production of Death of a Salesman opposite Mel Gibson. Kingsley made the transition to film roles early on, with his first role coming in Fear Is the Key, released in 1972.
Kingsley continued starring in bit roles in both film and television, including a role as Ron Jenkins on the soap opera Coronation Street from 1966 to 1967 and regular appearances as a defence counsel in the long-running British legal programme Crown Court. In 1975, he starred as Dante Gabriel Rossetti in the BBCs historical drama The Love School and appeared in the TV miniseries Dickens of London the following year, he found fame as Mohandas Gandhi in the Academy Award-winning film Gandhi in 1982. The film was a critical and financial success, Kingsley won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance. Kingsley has since appeared in a variety of roles, his credits included the films Turtle Diary, Pascali's Island, Without a Clue, Suspect Zero, Sneakers, Searching for Bobby Fischer, Schindler's List, Silas Marner and the Maiden, Sexy Beast, for which he received another Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor, House of Sand and Fog, which led to an Oscar nomination for Best Actor.
He won a Crystal Globe award for outstanding artistic contribution to world cinema at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival in 2001. In 1997, he provided a voice in the video game Ceremony of Innocence. In 1998, he was the head of the jury at the 48th Berlin International Film Festival. In July 2006, he received an Emmy nomination for his performance in the made-for-TV film Mrs. Harris, in which he played famed cardiologist Herman Tarnower, murdered by his jilted lover, Jean Harris; that year, Kingsley appeared in an episode of The Sopranos entitled "Luxury Lounge", playing himself. In 2007, Kingsley appeared as a Polish American mobster in the Mafia comedy You Kill Me, a hitman in War, Inc. In 2010, Kingsley worked voicing a character named Sabine in Lionhead Studios game Fable III and starred alongside Leonardo DiCaprio in Shutter Island, directed by Martin Scorsese, he appeared in Scorsese's next film and signed up to appear in a new feature by Neil Jordan and John Boorman entitled Broken Dream.
In 2013, he appeared as Trevor Slattery in Iron Man 3, as the hero Mazer Rackham in Ender's Game. Kingsley's 2014 film roles included Exodus: Gods and Kings, as Nun, a Hebrew slave, Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb, as Merenkahre, a simulacrum of an Egyptian pharaoh and father of Ahkmenrah. In 2015, Kingsley played a driving instructor in the film Lear
Rupert Everett
Rupert James Hector Everett is an English actor and singer. He first came to public attention in 1981, when he was cast in Julian Mitchell's play and subsequent film Another Country as a gay pupil at an English public school in the 1930s, he went on to receive a second BAFTA Award nomination and his first Golden Globe Award nomination for his role in My Best Friend's Wedding, followed by a second Golden Globe nomination for An Ideal Husband. Everett has performed in many other prominent films, including The Madness of King George, Shakespeare in Love, Inspector Gadget, The Next Best Thing, Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Silk Stocking, The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Wild Target and Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children. Everett was born in Burnham Deepdale, Norfolk, to Major Anthony Michael Everett, who worked in business and served in the British Army, wife Sara, he has Simon Anthony Cunningham Everett. His maternal grandfather, Vice Admiral Sir Hector Charles Donald MacLean, was a nephew of Scottish military man Hector Lachlan Stewart MacLean, who received the Victoria Cross.
His maternal grandmother, Opre Vyvyan, was a descendant of the baronets Vyvyan of Trelowarren and the German Freiherr von Schmiedern. He is of English, Irish and more distant German and Dutch, ancestry. Everett was brought up as a Roman Catholic. From the age of seven, Everett was educated at Farleigh School in Andover and was educated by Benedictine monks at Ampleforth College, Yorkshire. In order to support himself during this time, he worked as a prostitute for drugs and money—he disclosed this information in an interview for US magazine in 1997. After being dismissed from the Central School of Speech and Drama for insubordination, he travelled to Scotland and worked at the Citizens Theatre in Glasgow. Everett's break came in 1981 at the Greenwich Theatre and West End production of Another Country, playing a gay schoolboy opposite Kenneth Branagh, his first film was the Academy Award-winning short A Shocking Accident, directed by James Scott and based on a Graham Greene story. This was followed by a film version of Another Country in 1984 with Colin Firth.
Following on with Dance With a Stranger, Everett began to develop a promising film career until he co-starred with Bob Dylan in the huge flop Hearts of Fire. Around the same time, Everett recorded and released an album of pop songs entitled Generation of Loneliness. Despite being managed by Simon Napier-Bell, the public didn't take to his change in direction; the shift was short-lived, he only returned to pop indirectly by providing backing vocals for his best friend Madonna many years on her cover of "American Pie" and on the track "They Can't Take That Away from Me" on Robbie Williams' Swing When You're Winning in 2001. In 1989, Everett moved to Paris, writing a novel, Darling, Are You Working?, coming out as gay, a disclosure which he has said may well have damaged his career. Returning to the public eye in The Comfort of Strangers, several films of variable success followed; the Italian comics character Dylan Dog, created by Tiziano Sclavi in 1986, is graphically inspired by him. Everett, in turn, appeared in an adaptation based on Dellamorte Dellamore.
In 1995 he released The Hairdressers of St. Tropez, his career was revitalised by his award-winning performance in My Best Friend's Wedding, playing Julia Roberts's character's gay friend, followed by Madonna's character's best friend in The Next Best Thing.. Around the same time, he starred as the sadistic Sanford Scolex/Dr. Claw in Disney's Inspector Gadget with Matthew Broderick. For the 21st century, Everett has decided to write again, he has been a Vanity Fair contributing editor, has written for The Guardian and wrote a film screenplay on playwright Oscar Wilde's final years, for which he sought funding. In 2006 Everett published a memoir, Red Carpets and Other Banana Skins, in which he reveals his six-year affair with British television presenter Paula Yates. Although he is sometimes described as bisexual, as opposed to homosexual, he described his heterosexual affairs during a radio show with Jonathan Ross as the result of adventurousness: "I was adventurous, I think I wanted to try everything".
Since the revelation of his sexuality, Everett has participated in public activities, played a double role in the film St. Trinian's, has appeared on TV several times, he has garnered media attention for his vitriolic quips and forthright opinions during interviews that have caused public outrage. In May 2007, he delivered one of the eulogies at the funeral of fashion director Isabella Blow, his friend since they were teenagers, who had committed suicide, he asked as part of his speech: "Have you gotten what you wanted, Issie? Life was a relationship that you rejected." During this time he voiced the nefarious, but handsome villain Prince Charming in the first two Shrek sequels. Everett's documentary on Sir Richard Francis Burton in which he retraces the travels of Burton through countries such
Gollum
Gollum is a fictional character from J. R. R. Tolkien's legendarium, he was introduced in the 1937 fantasy novel The Hobbit, became an important character in its sequel, The Lord of the Rings. Gollum was a Stoor Hobbit of the River-folk. Known as Sméagol, he was corrupted by the One Ring and named Gollum after his habit of making "a horrible swallowing noise in his throat". In Appendix F of The Lord of the Rings, the name Sméagol is said to be a "translation" of the actual Middle-earth name Trahald. Several critics speculate that Beowulf's Grendel could have been an inspiration for Gollum due to the many parallels between them – such as their affinity for water, their isolation from society due to personal choices, their bestial description. Although Tolkien never explicitly stated this, he accredited Beowulf as one of his "most valued sources" when writing The Hobbit; the Ring, which Gollum referred to as "my precious" or "precious", extended his life far beyond natural limits. Centuries of the Ring's influence twisted Gollum's body and mind, and, by the time of the novels, he "loved and hated, just as he loved and hated himself."
Throughout the story, Gollum was torn between his lust for his desire to be free of it. Bilbo Baggins found the Ring and took it for his own, Gollum afterwards pursued it for the rest of his life. Gollum seized the Ring from Frodo Baggins at the Cracks of Doom in Orodruin in Mordor, but he fell into the fires of the volcano, where both he and the Ring were destroyed. Gollum was first introduced in the Hobbit as "a small, slimy creature" who lived on a small island in the centre of an underground lake at the roots of the Misty Mountains, he survived on cave fish, which he caught from his small boat, small goblins who strayed too far from the stronghold of the Great Goblin. Over the years, his eyes adapted to the dark and became "lamp-like", shining with a sickly pale light. Bilbo Baggins stumbled upon Gollum's lair, having found the Ring in the network of goblin tunnels leading down to the lake. At his wits' end in the dark, Bilbo agreed to a riddle game with Gollum on the chance of being shown the way out of the mountains.
In the first edition of The Hobbit, Gollum's size is not stated. Only in the revised version is it specified that he is small and is an unnaturally long-lived Hobbit, he was characterized as being less bound to the Ring than in versions. To fit the concept of the ruling Ring that emerged during the writing of The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien revised editions of The Hobbit: The version of the story given in the first edition became the lie that Bilbo made up to justify his possession of the Ring to the Dwarves and Gandalf. In the new version Gollum pretended that he would show Bilbo the way out if he lost the riddle-game, but he planned to use the Ring to kill and eat the hobbit. Discovering the Ring missing, he realized the answer to Bilbo's last riddle – "What have I got in my pocket?" – and flew into a rage. Bilbo inadvertently discovered the Ring's power of invisibility as he fled, allowing him to follow Gollum undetected to a back entrance of the caves. Gollum was convinced that Bilbo knew the way out all along, hoped to intercept him near the entrance, lest the goblins apprehend Bilbo and find the Ring.
Bilbo at first thought to kill Gollum in order to escape, but was overcome with pity, so leaped over him. As Bilbo escaped, Gollum cried out, "Thief, Thief! Baggins! We hates it, we hates it, we hates it forever!" The Fellowship of the Ring, the first volume of The Lord of the Rings, explains that Gollum's real name was Sméagol, he had once been a member of the secluded branch of the early Stoorish Hobbits. He spent the early years of his life with his extended family under his grandmother. On Sméagol's birthday, he and his relative Déagol went fishing in the Gladden Fields north of Lothlórien. There, Déagol found the Ring in the riverbed after being pulled into the water by a fish. Sméagol fell under the Ring's influence and demanded it as a birthday present. Sméagol used the Ring for thieving and antagonizing his friends and relatives, who nicknamed him "Gollum" for the swallowing noise he made in his throat, until his grandmother expelled him from the family, he wandered in the wilderness for a few years until he retreated to a deep cavern in the Misty Mountains.
The Ring's malignant influence twisted his body and mind, prolonged his life well beyond its natural limits. Gollum left his cave in pursuit of Bilbo a few years after losing the Ring, he made his way to the edge of Mordor, where he met the monstrous spider Shelob and became her spy, worshiping her and bringing her food. He was captured by Sauron's forces and tortured, revealing to Sauron the names of "Baggins" and "the Shire", his testimony alerted the Dark Lord of Mordor to the existence and significance of Hobbits in general and the Baggins family in particular. He was freed, but was soon caught by Gandalf and Aragorn, who interrogated him about the Ring and placed him in the care of the Wood Elves of Mirkwood, he descended into Moria. Gollum picked up the trail and began following the Fellowship of the Ring in Moria, only to be spotted or heard by Frodo Baggins and Aragorn on several occasions. Gollum
