John Newton
John Newton was an Anglican clergyman in England and the founder of the evangelical Clapham Sect. He started as an English sailor, in the Royal Navy for a period and he became ordained as an evangelical Anglican cleric, served Olney, Buckinghamshire for two decades, and wrote hymns, known for Amazing Grace and Glorious Things of Thee Are Spoken. Newton started his career at sea at an age. John Newton was born in Wapping, London, in 1725, Elizabeth was the only daughter of Simon Scatliff, an instrument maker from London. Elizabeth was brought up as a Nonconformist and she died of tuberculosis in July 1732, about two weeks before John’s seventh birthday. Newton spent two years at boarding school before going to live in Aveley in Essex, the home of his fathers new wife, at age eleven he first went to sea with his father. Newton sailed six voyages before his father retired in 1742, at that time, Newton’s father made plans for him to work at a sugarcane plantation in Jamaica. Instead, Newton signed on with a merchant ship sailing to the Mediterranean Sea, in 1743, while going to visit friends, Newton was captured and pressed into the naval service by the Royal Navy.
He became a midshipman aboard HMS Harwich, at one point Newton tried to desert and was punished in front of the crew of 350. Stripped to the waist and tied to the grating, he received a flogging of eight dozen lashes and was reduced to the rank of a common seaman, following that disgrace and humiliation, Newton initially contemplated murdering the captain and committing suicide by throwing himself overboard. He recovered, both physically and mentally, while Harwich was en route to India, he transferred to Pegasus, a slave ship bound for West Africa. The ship carried goods to Africa and traded them for slaves to be shipped to the colonies in the Caribbean, Newton did not get along with the crew of Pegasus. In 1742 they left him in West Africa with Amos Clowe, Clowe took Newton to the coast and gave him to his wife, Princess Peye of the Sherbro people. She abused and mistreated Newton equally as much as she did her other slaves, Newton recounted this period as the time he was once an infidel and libertine, a servant of slaves in West Africa.
During his 1748 voyage to England after his rescue, Newton had a spiritual conversion, the ship encountered a severe storm off the coast of Donegal and almost sank. Newton awoke in the middle of the night and, as the ship filled with water, the cargo shifted and stopped up the hole, and the ship drifted to safety. Newton marked this experience as the beginning of his conversion to evangelical Christianity and he began to read the Bible and other religious literature. By the time he reached Britain, he had accepted the doctrines of evangelical Christianity, the date was 10 March 1748, an anniversary he marked for the rest of his life
Johann Sebastian Bach
Johann Sebastian Bach was a German composer and musician of the Baroque period. Bachs compositions include the Brandenburg Concertos, the Goldberg Variations, the Mass in B minor and his music is revered for its technical command, artistic beauty, and intellectual depth. He is now regarded as one of the greatest composers of all time. Bach was born in Eisenach, in the duchy of Saxe-Eisenach and his father Johann Ambrosius Bach was the director of the town musicians, and all of his uncles were professional musicians. His father probably taught him to play the violin and harpsichord, apparently at his own initiative, Bach attended St. Michaels School in Lüneburg for two years. He received the title of Royal Court Composer from Augustus III in 1736, Bachs health and vision declined in 1749, and he died on 28 July 1750. Johann Sebastian Bach was born in Eisenach, the capital of the duchy of Saxe-Eisenach, in present-day Germany and he was the son of Johann Ambrosius Bach, the director of the town musicians, and Maria Elisabeth Lämmerhirt.
He was the eighth and youngest child of Johann Ambrosius, who taught him violin. His uncles were all musicians, whose posts included church organists, court chamber musicians. One uncle, Johann Christoph Bach, introduced him to the organ, Bachs mother died in 1694, and his father died eight months later. The 10-year-old Bach moved in with his eldest brother, Johann Christoph Bach, there he studied and copied music, including his own brothers, despite being forbidden to do so because scores were so valuable and private and blank ledger paper of that type was costly. He received valuable teaching from his brother, who instructed him on the clavichord, during this time he was taught theology, Greek and Italian at the local gymnasium. By 3 April 1700 Bach and his schoolfriend Georg Erdmann–who was two years Bachs elder–were enrolled in the prestigious St. Michaels School in Lüneburg, some two weeks travel north of Ohrdruf and their journey was probably undertaken mostly on foot. His two years there were critical in exposing Bach to a range of European culture.
In addition to singing in the choir, he played the Schools three-manual organ and he came into contact with sons of aristocrats from northern Germany, sent to the highly selective school to prepare for careers in other disciplines. While in Lüneburg, Bach had access to St. Johns Church and possibly used the famous organ from 1553. His role there is unclear, but it probably included menial, non-musical duties, despite strong family connections and a musically enthusiastic employer, tension built up between Bach and the authorities after several years in the post. Bach was dissatisfied with the standard of singers in the choir and he called one of them a Zippel Fagottist
The Bridge over the River Kwai
The Bridge over the River Kwai is a novel by the French novelist Pierre Boulle, published in French in 1952 and English translation by Xan Fielding in 1954. The novel won Frances Prix Sainte-Beuve in 1952, during its construction, approximately 13,000 prisoners of war died and were buried along the railway. An estimated 80,000 to 100,000 civilians died in the course of the project, chiefly forced labour brought from Malaya, two labour forces, one based in Siam and the other in Burma worked from opposite ends of the line towards the centre. Boulle had been a prisoner of the Japanese in Southeast Asia, however, he chose instead to use British officers in his book. The story describes the mistreatment of prisoners in the POW camp, lt. Colonel Nicholson marches his men into Prisoner of War Camp 16, commanded by Colonel Saito. Saito announces that the prisoners will be required to work on construction of a bridge over the River Kwai so that the connection between Bangkok and Rangoon can be completed.
However, Saito demands that all men, including officers, in response to this, Nicholson informs Saito that, under the Hague Conventions, officers cannot be required to do hard work. Saito reiterates his demand and Nicholson remains adamant in his refusal to submit his officers to manual labor, because of Nicholsons unwillingness to back down, he and his officers are placed in the ovens—small, iron boxes sitting in the heat of day. Eventually, Nicholsons stubbornness forces Saito to relent, construction of the bridge serves as a symbol of the preservation of professionalism and personal integrity to one prisoner, Colonel Nicholson, a proud perfectionist. Pitted against Colonel Saito, the warden of the Japanese POW camp, Nicholson will nevertheless, out of a sense of duty. While on the outside, as the Allies race to destroy the bridge, Nicholson must decide which to sacrifice, boulles portrayal of the British officers was satirical, for example, Colonel Nicholson is a military snob. Boulle examines friendship between soldiers, both among captors and captives.
The victorious Japanese soldiers cooperate with their prisoners, who strive to establish their superiority through the construction of the bridge. The incidents portrayed in the book are fictional, and though it depicts bad conditions and suffering caused by the building of the Burma Railway and its bridges. Historically the conditions were much worse, the real senior Allied officer at the bridge was British Lieutenant Colonel Philip Toosey. A transcript of the interview and the documentary as a whole can be found in the new edition of John Coasts book Railroad of Death, Nicholson was not entirely modeled on Tooseys experience, for example, Toosey was not a collaborator with the Japanese. Toosey, in fact, delayed building the bridge by obstruction, the bridge described in the book didnt actually cross the River Kwai. Pierre Boulle had never been to the bridge and he knew that the death railway ran parallel to the River Kwae for many miles, and he therefore assumed that it was the Kwae which it crossed just north of Kanchanaburi
Burma Railway
This railway completed the rail link between Bangkok and Rangoon, Burma. The line was closed in 1947, but the section between Nong Pla Duk and Nam Tok was reopened ten years in 1957, forced labour was used in its construction. More than 180, 000—possibly many more—Southeast Asian civilian labourers and 60,000 Allied prisoners of war worked on the railway,12,621 Allied POWs died during the construction. The dead POWs included 6,904 British personnel,2,802 Australians,2,782 Dutch, no compensation or reparations have been provided to Southeast Asian victims. In early 1942, Japanese forces invaded Burma and seized control of the colony from the United Kingdom. To supply their forces in Burma, the Japanese depended upon the sea, bringing supplies and troops to Burma around the Malay peninsula and through the Strait of Malacca and the Andaman Sea. This route was vulnerable to attack by Allied submarines, especially after the Japanese defeat at the Battle of Midway in June 1942. To avoid a hazardous 2,000 miles sea journey around the Malay peninsula, the Japanese began this project in June 1942.
The project aimed to connect Ban Pong in Thailand with Thanbyuzayat in Burma and its route was through Three Pagodas Pass on the border of Thailand and Burma. 69 miles of the railway were in Burma and the remaining 189 miles were in Thailand, the movement of POWs northward from Changi prison in Singapore and other prison camps in Southeast Asia began in May 1942. After preliminary work of airfields and infrastructure, construction of the began in Burma on 15 September 1942. The projected completion date was December 1943, most of the construction materials, including tracks and sleepers, were brought from dismantled branches of Malayas Federated Malay States Railway network and the East Indies various rail networks. The railway was completed ahead of schedule, on 17 October 1943, construction gangs originating in Burma and working south met up with construction gangs originating in Thailand and working north. The two sections of the line met at kilometre 263, about 18 km south of the Three Pagodas Pass at Konkuita, the Burma railway was an impressive accomplishment.
As an American engineer said after viewing the project, What makes this an engineering feat is the totality of it, all of that makes this railway an extraordinary accomplishment. The total freight carried during the war was 500,000 tonnes,12,000 Japanese soldiers, including 800 Koreans, were employed on the railway as engineers and supervisors of the POW and rōmusha labourers. Although working conditions were far better for the Japanese than the POW and rōmusha workers, Japanese soldiers are widely remembered as being cruel and indifferent to the fate of Allied prisoners of war and the Asian rōmusha. Many men in the railway workforce bore the brunt of pitiless or uncaring guards, cruelty could take different forms, from extreme violence and torture to minor acts of physical punishment and neglect
War film
War film is a film genre concerned with warfare, typically about naval, air, or land battles, with combat scenes central to the drama. It has been associated with the 20th century. The fateful nature of battle scenes means that war films often end with them, themes explored include combat and escape, the futility and inhumanity of battle, the effects of war on society, and the moral and human issues raised by war. War films are categorized by their milieu, such as the Korean War. The stories told may be fiction, historical drama, or biographical, critics have noted similarities between the Western and the war film. Subgenres, not necessarily distinct, include anti-war, animated, the war film genre is not necessarily tightly defined, the American Film Institute, for example, speaks of films to grapple with the Great War without attempting to classify these. However, some directors and critics have offered at least tentative definitions, the director Sam Fuller defined the genre by saying that a war film’s objective, no matter how personal or emotional, is to make a viewer feel war.
However, Neale notes, films set in the American Civil War or the American Indian Wars of the 19th century were called war films in the time before the First World War, the film scholar Kathryn Kane points out some similarities between the war film genre and the Western. Both genres use opposing concepts like war and peace, james Clarke notes the similarity between a Western like Sam Peckinpahs The Wild Bunch and war-movie escapades like The Dirty Dozen. They take place in the combat zones of World War II, against the established enemies, on the ground. They contain many repeated events, such as mail call, all presented visually with appropriate uniforms and she argues that the combat film is not a subgenre but the only genuine kind of war film. This in turn pushes combat scenes to the ends of war films. Not all critics agree, that war films must be about 20th century wars, the costliest war in U. S. history in terms of American life, this war has been the subject of, or the backdrop to, numerous films and mini-series.
One of the earliest films using the Civil War as its subject was D. W. Griffiths 1910 silent picture, The Fugitive. Some films such as Gettysburg focused on a battle during the war, or even on a single incident, like the French short film. Others like the 1993 miniseries North and South spanned the entire breadth of the war, some films deal with the human aspects of the war, such as The Red Badge of Courage, or Shenandoah, on the tragedy that the war inflicted on the civilian population. Ken Burnss The Civil War is the most watched documentary in the history of PBS, the first war films come from the Spanish–American War of 1898. Short actualities – documentary film-clips – included Burial of the Maine Victims, Blanket-Tossing of a New Recruit and these non-combat films were accompanied by reenactments of fighting, such as of Theodore Roosevelts Rough Riders in action against the Spanish, staged in the United States
Faith
Faith is confidence or trust in a person or thing, or the observance of an obligation from loyalty, or fidelity to a person, engagement. The word faith may refer to a particular system of religious belief. The term faith has numerous connotations and is used in different ways, the English word faith is thought to date from 1200–50, from the Middle English feith, via Anglo-French fed, Old French feid, feit from Latin fidem, accusative of fidēs, akin to fīdere. James W. Fowler proposes a series of stages of faith-development across the human life-span and his stages relate closely to the work of Piaget and Kohlberg regarding aspects of psychological development in children and adults. Fowler defines faith as an activity of trusting and relating to the world based on a set of assumptions of how one is related to others, intuitive-Projective, a stage of confusion and of high impressionability through stories and rituals. Mythic-Literal, a stage where provided information is accepted in order to conform with social norms, individuative-Reflective, In this stage the individual critically analyzes adopted and accepted faith with existing systems of faith.
Disillusion or strengthening of faith happens in this stage, based on needs and paradoxes. This stage is called negotiated settling in life, no hard-and-fast rule requires individuals pursuing faith to go through all six stages. There is a probability for individuals to be content and fixed in a particular stage for a lifetime. Stage 6 is the summit of faith development and this state is often considered as not fully attainable. There is a spectrum of opinion with respect to the epistemological validity of faith. Fideism is a theory which maintains that faith is independent of reason, or that reason and faith are hostile to each other. It states that faith is needed to determine some philosophical and religious truths, the word and concept had its origin in the mid- to late-19th century by way of Catholic thought, in a movement called Traditionalism. The Roman Catholic Magisterium has, repeatedly condemned fideism, in the Baháí Faith, faith is meant, conscious knowledge, and second, the practice of good deeds, ultimately the acceptance of the divine authority of the Manifestations of God.
In the religions view and knowledge are required for spiritual growth. Faith involves more than outward obedience to authority, but must be based on a deep personal understanding of religious teachings. Faith is an important constituent element of the teachings of Gautama Buddha— in both the Theravada and the Mahayana traditions, the teachings of Buddha were originally recorded in the language Pali and the word saddhā is generally translated as faith. Faith in Buddhism centers on the understanding that the Buddha is an Awakened being, on his role as teacher, in the truth of his Dharma
James Cosmo
On 3 January 2017 Cosmo entered the nineteenth series of Celebrity Big Brother, on Day 19 of the series he won a pass to the final on 3 February 2017 and finished in fourth place. James Cosmo was born in Clydebank, Scotland, and he is the son of actor James Copeland. Over the years he has had roles in films such as Trainspotting. He appeared in Troy with future Game of Thrones cast members Sean Bean and Julian Glover and he appeared in UFO as SHADO operative Lieutenant Anderson, and in Take the High Road as Alex Geddes from 1982 until 1983. He appeared as Lieutenant-Colonel Philip Drysdale in the series of Soldier Soldier. He recently portrayed Jeor Mormont, Lord Commander of the Nights Watch and he is currently involved in the filming of the thriller Breakdown in which he appears alongside Craig Fairbrass, Bruce Payne, Emmett Scanlan, Olivia Grant and Tamer Hassan. James Cosmo at the Internet Movie Database
Profanity
Profanity is socially offensive language, which may be called bad language, strong language, coarse language, foul language, bad words, vulgar language, lewd language, choice words or expletives. The use of language is swearing, cursing or cussing. Used in this sense, profanity is a subset of a languages lexicon that is considered to be strongly impolite. It can show a debasement of someone or something, or show intense emotion, profanity takes the form of words or verbal expressions that fall into the category of formulaic language. The term profane originates from classical Latin profanus, literally before the temple and it carried the meaning of either desecrating what is holy or with a secular purpose as early as the 1450s CE. Moreover, many Bible verses speak against swearing, profanities, in the original meaning of blasphemous profanity, are part of the ancient tradition of the comic cults, which laughed and scoffed at the deity or deities. An example from Gargantua and Pantagruel is Christ, look ye, in English, swear words and curse words tend to have Germanic, rather than Latin etymology.
Shit has a Germanic root, as, does fuck, the more technical alternatives are often Latin in origin, such as defecate or excrete, and fornicate or copulate respectively. Strong language is by no means a recent phenomenon, the Bible records instances, such as mention of men who eat their own dung, and drink their own piss in the Authorized King James Version of the 1611 translation of Hebrew text of 2 Kings 18,27. Analyses of recorded conversations reveal that an average of roughly 80–90 words that a person each day –0. 5% to 0. 7% of all words – are swear words. In comparison, first-person plural pronouns make up 1% of spoken words, Swearing performs certain psychological functions, and uses particular linguistic and neurological mechanisms, all these are avenues of research. Functionally similar behavior can be observed in chimpanzees, and may contribute to our understanding, Keele University researchers Stephens and Kingston found that swearing relieves the effects of physical pain. Stephens said I would advise people, if they hurt themselves, the overuse of swear words tends to diminish this effect.
The Keele team won the Ig Nobel Peace Prize in 2010 for their research, a team of neurologists and psychologists at the UCLA Easton Center for Alzheimers Disease Research suggested that swearing may help differentiate Alzheimers disease from frontotemporal dementia. Neurologist Antonio Damasio noted that loss of language due to damage to the language areas of the brain. A group of researchers from Wright State University studied why people swear in the world by collecting tweets posted on Twitter. An interdisciplinary team of researchers from the University of Warsaw investigated bilingual swearing and it listed the profanities in order of decreasing severity. A similar survey was carried out in 2009 by New Zealands Broadcasting Standards Authority, the results were published in March 2010, in a report called What Not to Swear
20th Century Fox
Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation is an American film studio currently owned by 21st Century Fox. It is one of the Big Six major American film studios and is located in the Century City area of Los Angeles, the studio was formerly owned by News Corporation. 20th Century Fox is a member of the Motion Picture Association of America, in 2015, 20th Century Fox celebrated its 80th anniversary as a studio. Spyros Skouras, manager of the Fox West Coast Theaters, the studios biggest star, Will Rogers, died in a plane crash weeks after the merger. Its leading female star, Janet Gaynor, was fading in popularity and promising leading men James Dunn, at first, it was expected that the new company was originally to be called Fox-20th Century, even though 20th Century was the senior partner in the merger. However, 20th Century brought more to the bargaining table besides Schenck and Zanuck, the new company, 20th Century-Fox Film Corporation, began trading on May 31,1935, the hyphen was dropped in 1985.
Schenck became Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, while Kent remained as President, Zanuck became Vice President in Charge of Production, replacing Foxs longtime production chief Winfield Sheehan. The company established a training school. The contracts included an option for renewal for as long as seven years. For many years, 20th Century Fox claimed to have founded in 1915. For instance, it marked 1945 as its 30th anniversary, however, in recent years it has claimed the 1935 merger as its founding, even though most film historians agree it was founded in 1915. The companys films retained the 20th Century Pictures searchlight logo on their credits as well as its opening fanfare. Also on the Fox payroll he found two players who he built up into the studios leading assets, Alice Faye and seven-year-old Shirley Temple, favoring popular biographies and musicals, Zanuck built Fox back to profitability. Thanks to record attendance during World War II, Fox overtook RKO, while Zanuck went off for eighteen months war service, junior partner William Goetz kept profits high by going for light entertainment.
The studios—indeed the industrys—biggest star was creamy blonde Betty Grable, in 1942, Spyros Skouras succeeded Kent as president of the studio. Together with Zanuck, who returned in 1943, they intended to make Foxs output more serious-minded. During the next few years, with pictures like The Razors Edge, Gentlemans Agreement, The Snake Pit and Pinky, Zanuck established a reputation for provocative, adult films. Fox specialized in adaptations of best-selling books such as Ben Ames Williams Leave Her to Heaven, starring Gene Tierney and they made the 1958 film version of South Pacific
Moya Brennan
Moya Brennan, born Máire Ní Bhraonáin, known as Máire Brennan, is an Irish folk singer, songwriter and philanthropist. She is the sister of Enya and Brídín Brennan. She began performing professionally in 1970 when her family formed the band Clannad, Moya released her first solo album in 1992 called Máire, a successful venture. She has been nominated for two Grammys and has won an Emmy Award and she has recorded music for several soundtracks, including Titanic, To End All Wars and King Arthur. Máire Philomena Ní Bhraonáin was born in Dublin after her parents eloped from County Donegal to marry in County Louth. Máire grew up as the eldest child of a family in the remote parish of Gweedore, a Gaeltacht area in County Donegal. Her mother Máire was a teacher and her father, Leo Brennan, was a member of a cabaret band with whom she performed as a child. Moya is the eldest of nine children and she has four sisters, Eithne, Olive and Brídín, and four brothers, Ciarán, Pól, Leon and Bartley. She sang along with her siblings in the pub, Leos Tavern in the village of Meenaleck.
She took part in pantomimes at the local Amharclann Ghaoth Dobhair, after leaving secondary school, Brennan spent a few years at the Royal Irish Academy of Music in Dublin studying the harp, the piano and singing. She has taught music at Holy Cross College in Falcarragh and it was during this time in 1970 that Brennan joined her two brothers Pól and Ciarán and their mothers twin brothers Noel and Pádraig Ó Dúgáin and eventually formed Clannad. They were identified and introduced to television by Tony MacMahon, after enjoying a decade of being among the worlds foremost Irish musical groups, Clannad graduated to chart success in 1982 with the album Magical Ring. Brennan was at the forefront of the success and her voice suddenly became synonymous with Celtic music. Brennan recorded 17 albums with Clannad and has won a Grammy, a BAFTA and her sister Eithne Ní Bhraonáin, who spent a while with Clannad, continues to pursue a very successful solo career under the name Enya. Following their 2008 reunion tour, it was announced that Moya would be working on a new unplugged album with Clannad for release in 2009, however.
Brennan released her first solo album in 1992, Máire, on Atlantic Records, misty Eyed Adventures on BGM followed three years later. In 1998, Brennan signed with Word Records and released Perfect Time, the album was nominated for the Grammy Award for Best New Age Album in 2001. Brennan is managed by her husband Tim Jarvis and her brother Leon Ó Braonáin and her music is usually classified as New Age or Celtic
