Willis Clark Conover, Jr. was a jazz producer and broadcaster on the Voice of America for over forty years. He produced jazz concerts at the White House, the Newport Jazz Festival, for movies and television. By arranging concerts where people of all races were welcome, he is credited with desegregating Washington D. C. nightclubs. Conover is credited with keeping interest in jazz alive in the countries of Eastern Europe through his nightly broadcasts during the Cold War; as a young man Conover was interested in science fiction, published a science fiction fanzine, Science Fantasy Correspondent. This brought him into contact with horror writer H. P. Lovecraft; the correspondence between Lovecraft, at the end of his life, the young Conover, has been published as Lovecraft at Last. Conover's father had intended for him to attend The Citadel and follow his family's tradition of military service. Instead, he attended the Maryland State Teacher's College at Salisbury and became a radio announcer for WTBO in Cumberland, Maryland.

He moved to Washington, D. C. and focused on jazz in his programming the Duke Ellington hour on Saturday nights. His guests on this program and Saturday morning shows included many important artists, such as Boyd Raeburn. Conover came to work at the Voice of America, became a legend among jazz lovers due to the hour-long program on the Voice of America called Voice of America Jazz Hour. Known for his sonorous baritone voice, many would argue that he was the most important presenter on Voice of America, his slow delivery and the use of scripts written in "special English" made his programmes more accessible and he is said to have become the first teacher of English to a whole generation of East European jazz lovers. Conover was not well known in the United States among jazz aficionados, as the Voice of America did not broadcast domestically except on shortwave, but his visits to Eastern Europe and Soviet Union brought huge crowds and star treatment for him, he was a celebrity figure in the Soviet Union, where jazz was popular and the Voice of America was a prime source of information as well as music.

In 1956, Conover conducted a series of interviews with jazz luminaries like Duke Ellington, Billie Holiday, Stan Getz, Peggy Lee, Stan Kenton, Benny Goodman, Art Tatum. His interview with Tatum is noted as "the only known in-depth recorded interview with the pianist"; these interviews were selected by the Library of Congress as a 2010 addition to the National Recording Registry, which selects recordings annually that are "culturally or aesthetically significant". He died of lung cancer, he had been a smoker for 57 years. In 1990, Conover was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Music from Berklee College of Music. In 2015, the University of North Texas announced its Willis Conover Collection would make digitized copies of Conover's programs available online. Willis Conover at Find a Grave Doug Ramsey, "Willis Conover", October 29, 2005. Article about Willis Conover from the Voice of America web site Willis Conover introduces a band of jazz musicians during a live performance Willis Conover tells his story Voices of Freedom: A Celebration of VOA Jazz and Willis Conover Farber, Gary.

"If It Ain't Got That Swing". Amygdala. Article about Conover's interest in science fiction and fantasy, including his correspondence with H. P. Lovecraft; the Willis Conover Collection at the University of North Texas David Brent Johnson, "Conover’s Coming Over: Willis Conover and Jazz at the VOA", Indiana Public Media, November 12, 2007

Paul Taylor credited as Paul Horowitz, is an American musician, best known as the keyboardist/guitarist with the late 1980s and early 1990s rock band, Winger. Although he is most associated with Winger, Taylor has played with numerous other prominent musicians, including future Sammy Hagar and Boston guitarist Gary Pihl, Eric Martin, Aldo Nova, Steve Perry of Journey, Alice Cooper and Tommy Shaw. In the late 70's Paul played in a Northern California band called Stark Raving Mad (Paul on lead guitar and Vocals, with Donovan Stark, Gary Pihl, Jay Causbrook, David Payne, with Eric Martin. Taylor experienced his first mainstream success in the early 1980s as the touring keyboardist in Canadian musician Aldo Nova's backing band, he appears in the music video for Nova's biggest hit, "Fantasy." Prior to forming Winger and Kip Winger were both playing with Alice Cooper's backing band on the tours for Cooper's mid-80s albums and Raise Your Fist and Yell. During this time, the two began composing songs together and, while on break from touring, recorded what would become the first Winger demos.

Whereas Kip left Alice's band prior to the European leg of the 1987 tour, Paul remained on board for the European dates. However, in the midst of touring Europe, Paul received a call from Kip, working with future Winger lead guitarist Reb Beach recording more demos in New York, informing him that he had gotten a record deal. After the European tour was finished, Paul flew straight back to New York, the Winger project began rehearsing and recording their debut album. Taylor remained in Winger throughout the band's most successful period, which included the two smash albums, Winger and In the Heart of the Young. However, after the tour supporting the latter album ended in 1991, Taylor left the band in early 1992, citing exhaustion and a desire to write and get involved with other projects. Throughout the 1990s, Taylor immersed himself in numerous other projects the most prolific of, recording and touring with Steve Perry for his 1994 solo album. In 1998, he returned to the Alice Cooper band, once that tour ended, he embarked on a brief tour with Tommy Shaw.

Winger reunited in 2001 to record new material for a Greatest Hits album. Although it is unclear whether Taylor participated in these recording sessions, he did join the band on the supporting tour. Though Paul was asked by Kip Winger to rejoin the band again to work on their 2006 reunion album, he declined because he was involved with other projects. More Taylor has become involved in composing music for television series programs and has been pursuing his passion for photography, he spent the summer months of 2012 touring with Cinderella throughout the U. S. playing keyboards for them. He returned to Winger during mid-2013 and performed with them on select tour dates up through early 2014 and appeared in the Queen Babylon released in late 2014. Raise Your Fist and Yell Winger In the Heart of the Young For the Love of Strange Medicine Bryan Ferry - Frantic Böhse Onkelz - Memento

Billy Mitchell, born as William Mitchell was an English player of English billiards. Mitchell was born on 13 October 1854 at Birchinlee in Derbyshire, he became a marker, a role that involved keeping the score of billiards matches, at the Angel Hotel, Sheffield, at the age of 13. He worked at Bradleys, a billiard room in Scarborough, started playing matches for money at the age of 15. In 1882, he made the first four-figure break seen in a 1,055 against William Peall. In October 1887, Peall and Mitchell played at the Royal Aquarium in a 15,000-up match advertised as the "All-in Championship." Despite this billing, it was not recognised by the formed Billiard Association as a championship match. On the last day, Mitchell was 2,000 points behind Peall, but with a series of breaks including 801 and 912, recovered to win the match 15,000–13,733; the second of these unofficial matches was staged in March 1888 at the same venue, this time Peall won by a large margin, 15,00–6,753, including a record break of 2,031.

Mitchell won the first of three "Championship of the World" tournaments promoted from 1889 to 1891 by billiard table manufacturers George Wright and Company, finishing behind Peall in the other two. During his career, Mitchell compiled over 1,000 four-figure breaks the highest being a 1,620 which included 536 consecutive pots of the red from the spot, he died on 21 March 1931 at Sheffield. Billy Mitchell biography at the Billiard and Snooker Heritage Collection

Nicolaus Adam Radford known as Nic Radford is an American engineer, roboticist and serial entrepreneur raising over $26M in funding for his companies. He co-founded and is chief technology officer, Houston Mechatronics, Inc Prior to forming HMI, he spent 14 years at Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center's Dexterous Robotics Laboratory at NASA in Houston, Texas. Radford was the principal investigator tasked with leading the development of Valkyrie for participation in the 2013 DARPA Robotics Challenge and NASA's future Mars robotics missions. Preceding the DRC, he operated as deputy and chief engineer for Robonaut 2, a humanoid robot, developed in partnership between NASA and General Motors. Additionally, during his tenure at NASA, he became a leader in wearable robotics and exoskeletons for spaceflight and abled body human performance augmentation. Radford is active in the areas of electric motor design towards robotics and electric cars, winning awards for his research in variable flux technology.

Radford holds numerous patents, has authored several publications, earned a BSEE and a MSEE both from Purdue University. In 2017, Radford was the recipient of the Houston Business Journal's Top 40 Under 40 Award. Born in Champaign, United States, Radford's family moved to Indiana when he was two months old, settling in Columbus when he was five, he attended Columbus North High School and excelled in track and field, namely high jump, where he set the indoor/outdoor record, high hurdling, as well as varsity football. He was the 1996 recipient of the Dr. McKain Award for demonstrating "high character as a student and as a citizen in the community." He attended Purdue University and received his Bachelor of Science in Electrical and Computer Engineering in 2000. While at Purdue, Radford was a member of the Purdue Engineering Student Council and participated in Purdue Track and Field as a decathlete. A chronic ankle injury prevented him from pursuing track beyond his freshman year. After starting his career at NASA-JSC, he attended graduate school remotely at Purdue University and received his Master of Science in Electrical and Computer Engineering in 2012.

His research, sponsored by Dr. Gill Pratt of DARPA, was in a new class of electric motors and his thesis was entitled, "Analysis and Design of a Variable Flux Memory Motor for a Humanoid Robot Application." He was the recipient of the Grainger Foundation Outstanding Power and Energy Devices and Systems Award in April 2012, for his contribution to the field of Variable Flux Memory Motors. In 2010, he discussed how his time at Purdue prepared him for his future endeavors, "Purdue is a hands-on, laboratory- and design-oriented university; this equipped me well for my work at NASA. You understand the value of Purdue once you get out and have a little perspective, it offers an education. After graduating from Purdue University with his BSEE, Radford moved to Houston, Texas for a position with United Space Alliance as a robotics flight controller in the payload deployment retrieval system console in NASA's Mission Control Center. During this time, Radford co-founded the Amateur Spaceflight Association, a group of engineers that worked in their free time to become the first amateur group to launch a rocket into space.

He developed the rocket's avionics and ground control subsystems and was able to secure Rabbit Semiconductor financial support for development of the avionic subsystems. ASA had garnered so much attention that the Houston Chronicle covered the amateur space race competition between themselves and the Civilian Space eXploration Team, another amateur rocket group with the same aspiration, he was employed by Oceaneering Space Systems as an electrical engineer contractor to NASA, where he worked onsite at JSC and became involved with the Dexterous Robotics Laboratory. Additionally for five years, he volunteered as a mentor for high school teams competing in the FIRST Robotics Competition, working with Team 118 Robonauts. In 2008, Radford became a civil servant at NASA as chief engineer and deputy project manager for Robonaut 2, under Direct Hire Authority; this allowed the Office of Personnel Management to expedite staffing requests to fill "a critical hiring need." He led large multidisciplinary teams of engineering staff in project endeavors for developing Robonaut 2, X1 Exoskeleton, DARPA's Warrior Web, as well as leading R2's redesign and qualification efforts for the International Space Station, which flew to ISS aboard Space Shuttle Discovery's final flight STS-133.

In 2011, Radford became the principal investigator for NASA in the DARPA Robotics Challenge. He led a team of 55 engineers and technicians through design and field testing NASA's first full humanoid robot, created to aid in disaster relief efforts, he used this opportunity to create a controversial female robot, as a source of inspiration for girls with STEM related endeavors. His team based Valkyrie's form on "armor worn by women throughout history" as well as a "nod to the Valkyries of Norse mythology." Valkyrie's name was a tribute to previous NASA developed prototypes, including the North American XB-70 Valkyrie bomber, as well as an earlier robot Team 118 Robonauts created for FIRST. In Slate's 2015 article "Bot Looks Like a Lady", Radford discussed how NASA "missed a big opportunity" to inspire a new generation of women and girls, in maintaining their official stance that Valkyrie is gender neutral, he referred to his seven-year-old daughter as proof, "She was in love with this robot. It was a major source of inspiration for her.

She talked about it all the time. She drew pictures of Valkyrie." IEEE Spectrum's video where Radford introduced

Carl Zeth "Zäta" Konstantin Höglund was a leading Swedish communist politician, anti-militarist, author and mayor of Stockholm. Höglund can be credited as the founder of the Swedish Communist movement. Zeth Höglund went on many meetings in Bolshevik Russia and was elected to the Comintern Executive Committee in 1922. In 1926, he returned to the Social Democratic party but still chose to define himself as a communist. Zeth Höglund grew up in Gothenburg in a lower-middle-class family, his father, Carl Höglund, worked as a merchant in leather and became a shoemaker. Zeth was the youngest of ten children, he was the only son, hence had nine big sisters. His parents were religious but disliked the church hierarchy and the way preachers and governments used religion to influence people. Höglund would become an atheist. Early on in high school, Höglund started considering himself a socialist and instead of his school books he started reading the German socialists Karl Marx, Ferdinand Lassalle, Wilhelm Liebknecht and the Swedish socialists Axel Danielsson and Hjalmar Branting.

He read Nietzsche and August Strindberg. He graduated from high school in 1902 with average grades, he soon got an internship with the liberal daily Göteborgs-Posten and was hired by that newspaper that fall. The same fall Höglund started studying History, Political Science and Literature at the Gothenburg University. Here he met Fredrik Ström, a four-year-older student a radical socialist, they developed a close friendship. At the May Day demonstration in 1903, Höglund and Fredrik Ström had an invitation to speak from the Social Democratic Party on a demand for 8-hour workdays. Höglund started and was followed by Ström, who started agitating for 6-hour workdays, promising 4-hour workdays in a socialist future. In the summer of 1903, Höglund and Fredrik Ström decided to move to Paris, they were curious of the homeland of the great French Revolution of 1789 and the city where their heroes Jean-Paul Marat, Georges Danton and Louis de Saint-Just had lived and fought. In Paris they attended several socialist meetings, of which the grandest was when Jean Jaurès spoke to over 4,000 people.

They tried to write on their own and sent political articles home to Sweden where some of them were published in different newspapers. One day at the post office, Fredrik Ström discovered that they were under surveillance by the French police; the two Swedes were short on money. They could spend little money on food; when winter came they went hungry. They decided to go back to Sweden, they had no funds for the trip home, but two of Höglund's sisters and Alice, sent them the money, they returned home by Christmas 1903. Höglund joined the Swedish Social Democratic Party in 1904 and became the leader of party's youth movement, he wrote an article called "Let Us Make Swedish Social Democracy the Strongest in the World". In 1905, Höglund supported Norway's right to self-determination and independence from Sweden; when the Swedish conservatives made clear that they were prepared to subdue Norway by force, Zeth Höglund wrote the manifesto Down With Weapons! in which he indirectly declared that if the Swedish workers were forced to go to war with Norway, they would instead turn their weapons against the Swedish ruling class.

The war was avoided, Norway became independent, but, as a result of his anti-war agitation, Zeth Höglund was sentenced to six months in jail, which he served between the mid-summer and Christmas of 1906. While condemned and imprisoned by the Swedish ruling class as a dangerous rebel, Höglund was saluted by others; the German socialist Karl Liebknecht described him as a hero in his book Militarism and Anti-Militarism. The Russian Communist leader Lenin wrote: "The close alliance between the Norwegian and Swedish workers, their complete fraternal class solidarity, gained from the Swedish workers' recognition of the right of the Norwegians to secede.... The Swedish workers have proved that in spite of all the vicissitudes of bourgeois policy.... They will be able to preserve and defend the complete equality and class solidarity of the workers of both nations in the struggle against both the Swedish and the Norwegian bourgeoisie." In November 1912, Höglund, together with his Swedish friends Hjalmar Branting and Ture Nerman, attended the special emergency convention of the Socialist International, summoned to Basel in Switzerland, due to the outbreak of the Balkan Wars.

At the convention, the leaders of all the European Socialist parties agreed to stand together internationally to prevent any future wars. Together with Fredrik Ström and Hannes Sköld, Höglund wrote the anti-militarist manifesto Det befästa fattighuset in which they described and criticized Sweden as an armed fortress and at the same time a poorhouse, where the people were miserable and the rulers spent all resources on militarism. Not one krona, not one öre, to militarism! was the slogan of the manifesto. It was despised from the bourgeoisie media. In 1914, Höglund got a seat in the lower house of the Riksdag. There, he agitated for socialism, against capitalism and the Swedish monarchy. Höglund's speeches were so revolutionary that they provoked Hjalmar Branting, although many young socialists started seeing Höglund as their true leader. In 1914, when World War I broke out, Zeth Höglund together with Ture Nerman represented the Swedish-Norwegian members of the Zimmerwald Conference, the international socialist anti-war movement which gathered in the small Swiss village

I Killed My BFF is a Lifetime television film starring Katrina Bowden, Chris Zylka and Olivia Crocicchia. It was written by Blake Berris and Danny Abel, directed by Seth Jarrett. I Killed My BFF is inspired by a true story, the murder of Anne Marie Camp by Jamie Dennis and her husband, Michael Gianakos, in Minnesota in 1997. Shane Riley and Heather Thomas become friends. Chase, the father of Heather's new baby, confronts her, prompting Shane to come to Heather's defense, but two years one of these two young mothers will be found brutally murdered. After giving birth, the young women become close friends as Shane endeavors to achieve her dreams and Heather grapples with being bipolar, which leads the latter to have a couple of meltdowns. At first supportive of each other, their friendship becomes strained; when Shane is denied a loan to fund her dream and her boyfriend Alex commit a crime to secure the needed cash by stealing it from the neighborhood bar where Alex works. As Heather fights a bitter custody battle with Chase for her daughter Molly, she soon begins to suspect that Shane and Alex were the ones who robbed the bar.

But Heather feels pressured – she doesn't know what to do or what to say to the police. She soon finds the security computer from the bar. Shane becomes suspicious. Meanwhile, Heather begins to develop a dangerous attraction to Alex, with lethal repercussions. Shane becomes aware of Heather's attraction for Alex and forces Alex to pretend that he likes Heather in order to lure her to a remote location. Shane arrives after Alex do, with a gun in her hands, she kicks Heather. Heather is shocked and surprised when she finds out that the whole thing was a part of Shane's and Alex's plan. Heather confesses that she told the police everything and accuses Shane of only caring about herself, she tells Alex that he still has time to get away from Shane. Heather and Shane struggle and Alex points the gun at both of them. Alex cannot bring himself to shoot Heather, so Shane takes the gun and shoots Heather herself. While dying on the floor, Heather tells Alex that Shane will betray him too. Aggravated by Heather's accusation, Shane grabs a piece of broken glass and stabs Heather until she dies.

Alex watches on in horror. Shane and Alex drag Heather's body to dump her body there. Meanwhile, the custody hearing is in session and Heather's mom stares at the clock while Heather fails to show up. Heather's body is discovered and the police call to inform her mother. Shane talks to the police, blames Alex for both the robbery, the murder of Heather. Heather's mom gives the security computer that Shane threw out to the police; the police arrest both Alex and Shane. The end credits indicate that the real Alex was convicted for kidnapping and murder, he was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Katrina Bowden as Shane Riley Olivia Crocicchia as Heather Thomas Chris Zylka as Alex Lachan Blake Michael as Chase Jessica Lemon Wilkinson as Becky Thomas Official website I Killed My BFF on IMDb