Special Toast

 1.Alfred Hitchcock
Director, Psycho
He was born Alfred Joseph Hitchcock. His father was a green grocer called William Hitchcock (1862 - 1914); his mother was Emma Jane Whelan (1863 - 1942), and he had two older siblings, William Hitchcock (born 1890) and Eileen Hitchcock(born 1892). He grew up in a very strict Roman Catholic family. He attended St...
“ 9 Films - Rear Window, Psycho, Rope, Rebecca, Strangers on a Train, Dial M for Murder, Vertigo, North by Northwest, Notorious. ” - CharacterNumber1
  2.Stanley Kubrick
Director, A Clockwork Orange
Stanley Kubrick was born in New York, and was considered intelligent despite poor grades at school. Hoping that a change of scenery would produce better academic performance, Kubrick's father Jack (a physician) sent him in 1940 to Pasadena, California, to stay with his uncle Martin Perveler. Returning to the Bronx in 1941 for his last year of grammar school...
“ 8 Films - 2001: A Space Odyssey, A Clockwork Orange, The Shining, The Killing, Barry Lyndon, Full Metal Jacket, Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, Paths of Glory. ” - CharacterNumber1

HENRY FORD
Henry Ford called the Model T the "universal car," a low-cost, reliable vehicle that could be maintained easily and could successfully travel the poor roads of the era. By 1916, 55% of all cars were Ford Model T's.

Ford owned a controversial anti-Semitic newspaper, The Dearborn Independent, an offensive publication which damaged Ford's reputation. Hitler believed that Henry Ford was a perfect example for what all Germans should become.

As most people know, Ford produced the first assembly line for automobiles. He supposedly got the idea from a process that was used to slaughter pigs.

Though it owns a portfolio of British brands - Jaguar, Land Rover, Volvo - UAW Ford does not consider them American cars.

Henry Ford was especially fond of Thomas Edison, and on Edison's deathbed, he demanded Edison's son catch his final breath in a test tube. The test tube can still be found today in Henry Ford Museum.

Mahatma Gandhi never visited the U.S., but he had many American fans and followers. One of his more unusual admirers was Henry Ford. Gandhi sent him an autographed charkha (spinning wheel) through a journalist emissary.

special toasts

Andre the Giant
Pro wrestler/actor
Preferred poison: Vodka, beer

It took more than a couple rounds of drinks for André René Roussimoff to catch a buzz. But that’s what happens when you’re around 7 feet tall and weigh 500 pounds. For Andre the Giant, it was all about living large before that phrase even existed. As for his legendary drinker status, blame it on Broadway. Specifically, Andre wanted to see a Broadway show just once, but realized the seats were too small and that he’d block people’s view. His plan B was to go to bars, the rest is fuzzy history and urban legend.      

I can’t believe he drank the whole thing: Legend has it he could drain 119 beers in six hours and take in up to 7,000 calories of alcohol daily

HANK WILLIAMS
Preferred poison: Whiskey

If you take a drink for every Hank Williams song that mentions drinking, well, that’s like throwing one back for every F-bomb in The Big Lebowski. This high-ranking legendary drinker lived just about every word he wrote. Toward the end, in late 1952, even his band quit on him, claiming Hank drank more than gigs paid. Some say Hank was determined to turn his life around, but it never came to be. For all the hell-raising and hard-living, he died quietly just a few hours into 1953 while being chauffeured to a show.  

I can’t believe he drank the whole thing: Grand Ole Opry grandmaster Roy Acuff chided Hank for his chugging, saying, "You've got a million-dollar voice son, but a 10-cent brain."

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Number 3
Andre the Giant
Pro wrestler/actor
Preferred poison: Vodka, beer

It took more than a couple rounds of drinks for André René Roussimoff to catch a buzz. But that’s what happens when you’re around 7 feet tall and weigh 500 pounds. For Andre the Giant, it was all about living large before that phrase even existed. As for his legendary drinker status, blame it on Broadway. Specifically, Andre wanted to see a Broadway show just once, but realized the seats were too small and that he’d block people’s view. His plan B was to go to bars, the rest is fuzzy history and urban legend.      

I can’t believe he drank the whole thing: Legend has it he could drain 119 beers in six hours and take in up to 7,000 calories of alcohol daily -- putting him roughly in line with a frat guy playing beer pong.

Number 2
Hank Williams
Musician
Preferred poison: Whiskey

If you take a drink for every Hank Williams song that mentions drinking, well, that’s like throwing one back for every F-bomb in The Big Lebowski. This high-ranking legendary drinker lived just about every word he wrote. Toward the end, in late 1952, even his band quit on him, claiming Hank drank more than gigs paid. Some say Hank was determined to turn his life around, but it never came to be. For all the hell-raising and hard-living, he died quietly just a few hours into 1953 while being chauffeured to a show.  

I can’t believe he drank the whole thing: Grand Ole Opry grandmaster Roy Acuff chided Hank for his chugging, saying, "You've got a million-dollar voice son, but a 10-cent brain."

Number 1
John Barrymore
Actor
Preferred poison: Hard liquor

Any guy who gets kicked out of prep school as a teenager for patronizing a cathouse can’t be half bad. In the years that followed his expulsion from school, Barrymore chased women about as much as he chased the bottle, and was unapologetic for either vice. During one night’s festivities, he drunkenly wandered into the ladies’ room and substituted a potted plant for the missing urinal. When a female witness scolded that the room was "for ladies exclusively," he whipped around -- while still whipped out -- and answered: "So, madam, is this. But every now and again, I'm compelled to run a little water through it."

In addition to such impromptu performances, his professional career spanned decades with dozens of films and hundreds of stage performances. Even after death, he continued to amaze, however unwittingly. When friends like Errol Flynn and Raoul Walsh went out drinking to remember Barrymore, Walsh slipped away from the crowd. He liberated Barrymore's body from the funeral home and propped it in a chair in Flynn’s living room. Needless to say, Flynn was a tad surprised.

I can’t believe he drank the whole thing: By one estimate, Barrymore is said to have emptied 640 barrels -- not bottles, barrels -- of booze over a 40-year period.

6

Richard Harris
Actor
Preferred poison: Vodka

Even in death, we suspect Richard Harris could outdrink us and then kick our asses one by one. This is the legendary drinker who was about as tough and straightforward as they come. In his words, “Someone asked me once, ‘What is the difference between Tom Cruise now and you when you were a major star?’  I said there is a great difference. Look at a photograph of me from the old days and I'm going to one of my film premieres with a bottle of vodka in my hand. Tom Cruise has a bottle of Evian water.”

I can’t believe he drank the whole thing: Harris’ “usual” at P.J. Clarke’s in New York City was six double vodkas.
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Number 7

Richard Harris
Actor
Preferred poison: Vodka

Even in death, we suspect Richard Harris could outdrink us and then kick our asses one by one. This is the legendary drinker who was about as tough and straightforward as they come. In his words, “Someone asked me once, ‘What is the difference between Tom Cruise now and you when you were a major star?’  I said there is a great difference. Look at a photograph of me from the old days and I'm going to one of my film premieres with a bottle of vodka in my hand. Tom Cruise has a bottle of Evian water.”

I can’t believe he drank the whole thing: Harris’ “usual” at P.J. Clarke’s in New York City was six double vodkas.

Number 6

Ernest Hemingway
Writer
Preferred poison: Beer, rum, gin


Credit Ernest Hemingway for not only having a vivid imagination, but for living a life based on reciprocity; his stories inspired adventure, and adventure inspired his stories. And no Hemingway adventure -- literal or literary -- would have been the same without his equally strong passion for the drink. After all, Prohibition was said to be a factor in his relocations to Canada and France, where he and other expats of the “Lost Generation” endured many lost evenings as well. "Sometimes I wish I’d went through those good times stone cold sober so I could remember everything,” he reflected, “but then again, if I had been sober, the times probably wouldn’t have been worth remembering." 

I can’t believe he drank the whole thing: One thing Papa couldn’t possibly forget about Paris was how he received the scar on his forehead. The injury came about when he drunkenly attempting to flush a toilet, but yanked a skylight toward his cranium instead
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Number 7

Richard Harris
Actor
Preferred poison: Vodka

Even in death, we suspect Richard Harris could outdrink us and then kick our asses one by one. This is the legendary drinker who was about as tough and straightforward as they come. In his words, “Someone asked me once, ‘What is the difference between Tom Cruise now and you when you were a major star?’  I said there is a great difference. Look at a photograph of me from the old days and I'm going to one of my film premieres with a bottle of vodka in my hand. Tom Cruise has a bottle of Evian water.”

I can’t believe he drank the whole thing: Harris’ “usual” at P.J. Clarke’s in New York City was six double vodkas.

Number 6

Ernest Hemingway
Writer
Preferred poison: Beer, rum, gin


Credit Ernest Hemingway for not only having a vivid imagination, but for living a life based on reciprocity; his stories inspired adventure, and adventure inspired his stories. And no Hemingway adventure -- literal or literary -- would have been the same without his equally strong passion for the drink. After all, Prohibition was said to be a factor in his relocations to Canada and France, where he and other expats of the “Lost Generation” endured many lost evenings as well. "Sometimes I wish I’d went through those good times stone cold sober so I could remember everything,” he reflected, “but then again, if I had been sober, the times probably wouldn’t have been worth remembering." 

I can’t believe he drank the whole thing: One thing Papa couldn’t possibly forget about Paris was how he received the scar on his forehead. The injury came about when he drunkenly attempting to flush a toilet, but yanked a skylight toward his cranium instead.

Number 5
Winston Churchill
Politician
Preferred poison: Whiskey, scotch, brandy, gin, champagne

Thanks to Churchill, there’ll always be an England and there’ll always be Johnnie Walker Red. The man who stood firm throughout World War II and carried the hopes and fears of a nation deserved a belt at the very least. In retrospect, Churchill was probably not what you’d classify as a barfly, but he wasn’t opposed to “the drinking of alcohol before, after and, if need be, during all meals and in the intervals between them," as he famously suggested. Late in life he satisfactorily reflected he’d “taken more out of alcohol than alcohol has taken out of [him]." So that’s what that “’V’ for Victory” was all about…

I can’t believe he drank the whole thing: Not only did Pol Roger allegedly bottle their champagne in pint bottles exclusively for Churchill, they introduced Cuvée Sir Winston Churchill in 1975 to commemorate the 10th anniversary of his death. It remains their signature champagne today.
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Number 7

Richard Harris
Actor
Preferred poison: Vodka

Even in death, we suspect Richard Harris could outdrink us and then kick our asses one by one. This is the legendary drinker who was about as tough and straightforward as they come. In his words, “Someone asked me once, ‘What is the difference between Tom Cruise now and you when you were a major star?’  I said there is a great difference. Look at a photograph of me from the old days and I'm going to one of my film premieres with a bottle of vodka in my hand. Tom Cruise has a bottle of Evian water.”

I can’t believe he drank the whole thing: Harris’ “usual” at P.J. Clarke’s in New York City was six double vodkas.

Number 6

Ernest Hemingway
Writer
Preferred poison: Beer, rum, gin


Credit Ernest Hemingway for not only having a vivid imagination, but for living a life based on reciprocity; his stories inspired adventure, and adventure inspired his stories. And no Hemingway adventure -- literal or literary -- would have been the same without his equally strong passion for the drink. After all, Prohibition was said to be a factor in his relocations to Canada and France, where he and other expats of the “Lost Generation” endured many lost evenings as well. "Sometimes I wish I’d went through those good times stone cold sober so I could remember everything,” he reflected, “but then again, if I had been sober, the times probably wouldn’t have been worth remembering." 

I can’t believe he drank the whole thing: One thing Papa couldn’t possibly forget about Paris was how he received the scar on his forehead. The injury came about when he drunkenly attempting to flush a toilet, but yanked a skylight toward his cranium instead.

Number 5
Winston Churchill
Politician
Preferred poison: Whiskey, scotch, brandy, gin, champagne

Thanks to Churchill, there’ll always be an England and there’ll always be Johnnie Walker Red. The man who stood firm throughout World War II and carried the hopes and fears of a nation deserved a belt at the very least. In retrospect, Churchill was probably not what you’d classify as a barfly, but he wasn’t opposed to “the drinking of alcohol before, after and, if need be, during all meals and in the intervals between them," as he famously suggested. Late in life he satisfactorily reflected he’d “taken more out of alcohol than alcohol has taken out of [him]." So that’s what that “’V’ for Victory” was all about…

I can’t believe he drank the whole thing: Not only did Pol Roger allegedly bottle their champagne in pint bottles exclusively for Churchill, they introduced Cuvée Sir Winston Churchill in 1975 to commemorate the 10th anniversary of his death. It remains their signature champagne today.

Number 4
Dylan Thomas
Poet
Preferred poison: Whiskey

An inspiration of legends to follow, including Bob Dylan and John Lennon, Dylan Thomas loved his drink, his wife and his poetry -- we’re just not sure of the order. We do know he first drunkenly saw his bride-to-be in a pub, staggered over and plopped his head on her lap, proposing marriage. What would get us instantly airborne by bouncers worked for Thomas; his life had a funny way of working like that: Success despite a perma-buzz.

I can’t believe he drank the whole thing: A few days before his death in 1953, he entered his hotel and announced, “I've had 18 straight whiskys; I think this is a record."

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Credit: NBC

 

The true drinking man is downright repulsed by the revolving-door rehab stints of modern-day celebrities. These amateurs obviously don’t know how to hold their liquor and their profession simultaneously. On that note, let’s look at the 10 most legendary drinkers who were able to carry notoriety in one hand and a glass of scotch in the other.

Number 10
Dean Martin
Entertainer
Preferred poison: J&B Scotch

Although we more recently heard tales that Dino’s mandatory drink-in-hand was either non-alcoholic or a real one that he nursed for hours, you still wouldn’t have wanted him to be the designated driver. Dean favored Jack Daniel’s -- though usually not during working hours or into the wee hours like his Rat Pack buddies. A morning round of golf was usually more precious to him than sleeping off a night of partying. Despite these revelations, he was exceptionally convincing in his persona, and that deserves placement in our cast of legendary drinkers.   

I can’t believe he drank the whole thing: Our favorite Dean Martin remark: "I'd hate to be a teetotaler. Imagine getting up in the morning and knowing that's as good as you're going to feel all day."

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Credit: NBC

 

The true drinking man is downright repulsed by the revolving-door rehab stints of modern-day celebrities. These amateurs obviously don’t know how to hold their liquor and their profession simultaneously. On that note, let’s look at the 10 most legendary drinkers who were able to carry notoriety in one hand and a glass of scotch in the other.

Number 10
Dean Martin
Entertainer
Preferred poison: J&B Scotch

Although we more recently heard tales that Dino’s mandatory drink-in-hand was either non-alcoholic or a real one that he nursed for hours, you still wouldn’t have wanted him to be the designated driver. Dean favored Jack Daniel’s -- though usually not during working hours or into the wee hours like his Rat Pack buddies. A morning round of golf was usually more precious to him than sleeping off a night of partying. Despite these revelations, he was exceptionally convincing in his persona, and that deserves placement in our cast of legendary drinkers.   

I can’t believe he drank the whole thing: Our favorite Dean Martin remark: "I'd hate to be a teetotaler. Imagine getting up in the morning and knowing that's as good as you're going to feel all day."

Number 9
Benjamin Franklin
Statesman
Preferred poison: Madeira wine

The guy on the $100 bill developed his own list of 13 virtues to follow through life. No. 1 read: “Temperance. Eat not to dullness; drink not to elevation." So why do we consider him a legendary drinker? Well, he wasn’t exactly a teetotaler. When he wasn’t busy inventing, innovating or hanging out in Europe, he was professing his love for potent potables, gushing, “Behold the rain which descends from heaven upon our vineyards; there it enters the roots of the vines, to be changed into wine; a constant proof that God loves us, and loves to see us happy.”  Either that, or he toasted, "Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy." There’s now debate over which words he actually spoke or penned, but you know what? It doesn’t matter. The words ring true, and we hold these truths to be self-evident.
 
I can’t believe he drank the whole thing: Philadelphia bars marked Franklin’s 300th birthday in 2006 by concocting specialty drinks like the “Franklin Royale” and "Printer's Pickle” martini.  A brewery even introduced an ale named "Poor Richard's Tavern Spruce."

8
Edgar Allan Poe
Poet/writer/playwright
Preferred poison: Brandy, gin

“Nevermore” or “I’ll have one more”? The man who gave us The Raven and so many other timeless works labored hard to earn his status as a legendary drinker. We’re not sure of his sobriety level when he married his 13-year-old cousin (take that, Jerry Lee Lewis), but we do know he operated with a persistent buzz for much of his adult life. And though his days on Earth ended far too early -- in 1849, at the age of 40 -- Poe’s mystique and influence are as strong as ever. As a couple of many examples of his influence, unknown individuals visit Poe’s grave site every January 19th, the poet’s birthday, drink a toast and leave roses. And what about that NFL team from Baltimore with the three mascots named Edgar, Allan and Poe? 

I can’t believe he drank the whole thing: While some believe it to have been the ultimate pub crawl, the events leading up to Poe’s demise remain disputed. And the man passed on too soon to regain coherence and clear the air -- or at least explain why he was reportedly found wearing another man’s clothes.

BORIS YELTSIN

Born in 1931, Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin rose rapidly through the ranks of post war Russia. A friend and ally of Gorbachev, Yeltsin helped lead the reformist wing of the Communist Party. Ever the political maverick, he fought against the rampant governmental corruption, and played a key role in putting down the hard-line Communist coup d'etat against Gorbachev in 1991.

While politically Yeltsin is seen as President who wields power with an iron fist, socially he has been known for his partaking in the pleasures of drink. Tales of his adventures are notorious and go from snubbing heads of state due to nasty hangovers to coping a feel on national television. In General Alexander Korzhakov's book "Boris Yeltsin: From Dawn to Dusk" Yeltsin is portrayed as a man who would neither give up control of the country nor the cask, and claims that after being forbidden by docters to drink his wife would smuggle in a little nip here and there to keep Boris happy.
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Charles Bukowski
A true drinkers bio at BarAmerica.

 
A drinker of mythic stature, Charles Bukowski-called Hank by his friends-is best known as an underground poet and novelist. His amusing, gritty and sometimes poignant writings have resonated deeply both here in the United States and abroad, inspiring a devoted cult following. Most of his many books of poetry and prose have been translated in over a dozen languages. Raised in the sun-washed streets of Los Angeles, Bukowski learned early in life that at the heart of American Dream was profound ambivalence and empty morality. His unique brand of alcohol-drenched irreverence and misadventure, tempered with social commentary, made Bukowski the voice of the poor and working-class. His most important works include Post Office, Ham On Rye, Mockingbird Wish Me Luck and the screenplay for the movie "Barfly." Bukowski died at home in Santa Barbara in1994 at the age of seventy-four.

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The Irish
A BarAmerica famous drinker biography, the Irish.

 
"An Irishman is never drunk as long as he can hold on to one
blade of grass and not fall from the face of the earth."
--Irish Proverb


Aside from an exquisite array of Whisky, Ireland has given the world the gift of Guinness Stout and Harp Lager, for which beer drinkers around the world will be forever thankful. Ireland exports a higher percentage of its beer than any other European country. It's no secret that the peoples of the Emerald Isle are big drinkers; in fact they are consistently among the top three countries that consume the most amount of alcohol per capita in the world. Stereotypes aside, the Irish have good reason to be such lusty drinkers. Irish pubs are of course widely famous for their good cheer and fine Irish fare, and are globally ubiquitous, even found in such unlikely and far off locales as Asia and Africa. The priest responsible for introducing Christianity to Ireland, later known as St. Patrick, was reputed to have his own personal brewer. Famous literary Irishmen partial to strong drink included James Joyce, William Butler Yeats, and Oscar Wilde.

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René François Ghislain Magritte[p] (21 November 1898 – 15 August 1967) was a Belgian surrealist artist. He became well known for a number of witty and thought-provoking images. His intended goal for his work was to challenge observers' preconditioned perceptions of reality and force viewers to become hypersensitive to their surroundings.

 

Magritte's work frequently displays a juxtaposition of ordinary objects in an unusual context, giving new meanings to familiar things. The representational use of objects as other than what they seem is typified in his painting, The Treachery of Images (La trahison des images), which shows a pipe that looks as though it is

René Magritte
a model for a tobacco store advertisement. Magritte painted below the pipe "Ceci n'est pas une pipe" ("This is not a pipe"), which seems a contradiction, but is actually true: the painting is not a pipe, it is an image of a pipe. It does not "satisfy emotionally"—when Magritte once was asked about this image, he replied that of course it was not a pipe, just try to fill it with tobacco.[9]

 

Magritte used the same approach in a painting of an apple: he painted the fruit realistically and then used an internal caption or framing device to deny that the item was an apple. In these "Ceci n'est pas" works, Magritte points out that no matter how closely, through realism-art, we come to depicting an item accurately, we never do catch the item itself.

 

Among Magritte's works are a number of surrealist versions of other famous paintings. Elsewhere, Magritte challenges the difficulty of artwork to convey meaning with a recurring motif of an easel, as in his The Human Condition series (1933, 1935) or The Promenades of Euclid (1955) (wherein the spires of a castle are "painted" upon the ordinary streets which the canvas overlooks). In a letter to André Breton, he wrote of The Human Condition that it was irrelevant if the scene behind the easel differed from what was depicted upon it, "but the main thing was to eliminate the difference between a view seen from outside and from inside a room."[10] The windows in some of these pictures are framed with heavy drapes, suggesting a theatrical motif.[11]

 

Magritte's style of surrealism is more representational than the "automatic" style of artists such as Joan Miró. Magritte's use of ordinary objects in unfamiliar spaces is joined to his desire to create poetic imagery. He described the act of painting as "the art of putting colors side by side in such a way that their real aspect is effaced, so that familiar objects—the sky, people, trees, mountains, furniture, the stars, solid structures, graffiti—become united in a single poetically disciplined image. The poetry of this image dispenses with any symbolic significance, old or new.”[12]

 

René Magritte described his paintings as "visible images which conceal nothing; they evoke mystery and, indeed, when one sees one of my pictures, one asks oneself this simple question, 'What does that mean?'. It does not mean anything, because mystery means nothing either, it is unknowable."[13]

 

Magritte's constant play with reality and illusion has been attributed to the early death of his mother. Psychoanalysts who have examined bereaved children have said that Magritte's back and forth play with reality and illusion reflects his "constant shifting back and forth from what he wishes—'mother is alive'—to what he knows—'mother is dead'

 


 


Marc Chagall 07/07

Marc Chagall (English pronunciation: /ʃəˈɡɑːl/, shə-GAHL;[1] Yiddish: מאַרק שאַגאַל; Russian: Марк Заха́рович Шага́л; 7 July 1887 – 28 March 1985), was a Belarusian (that time Russian Empire) French artist, associated with several key art movements and was one of the most successful artists of the 20th century. He created unique works in virtually every artistic medium, including painting, book illustrations, stained glass, stage sets, ceramic, tapestries and fine art prints. Chagall's haunting, exuberant, and poetic images have wide appeal, with art critic Robert Hughes referring to him as "the quintessential Jewish artist of the twentieth century."

 

As a pioneer of modernism and one of the greatest figurative artists of the 20th century, Chagall achieved fame and fortune, and over the course of a long career created some of the best-known paintings of our time. According to art historian Michael J. Lewis, Chagall was considered to be "the last survivor of the first generation of European modernists." For decades he "had also been respected as the world's preeminent Jewish artist." Using the medium of stained glass, he produced windows for the cathedrals of Reims and Metz, windows for the United Nations, and the Jerusalem Windows in Israel. He also did large-scale paintings, including the ceiling for the Paris Opéra.

 

His most vital work was made on the eve of World War I, when he traveled between St. Petersburg, Paris, and Berlin. During this period he created his own mixture and style of modern art based on his visions of Eastern European Jewish folk culture. He spent his wartime years in Russia, becoming one of the country's most distinguished artists and a member of the modernist avante-garde, founding the Vitebsk Arts College before leaving again for Paris in 1922.

 

He was known to have two basic reputations, writes Lewis: as a pioneer of modernism, and as a major Jewish artist. He experienced modernism's golden age in Paris, where "he synthesized the art forms of Cubism, Symbolism, and Fauvism, and the influence of Fauvism gave rise to Surrealism." Yet throughout these phases of his style "he remained most emphatically a Jewish artist, whose work was one long dreamy reverie of life in his native village of Vitebsk."[2] "When Matisse dies", Pablo Picasso remarked in the 1950s, "Chagall will be the only painter left who understands what colour really is."

 

Author Serena Davies writes that "By the time he died in France in 1985—the last surviving master of European modernism, outliving Joan Miró by two years—he had experienced at first hand the high hopes and crushing disappointments of the Russian revolution, and had witnessed the end of the Pale, the near annihilation of European Jewry, and the obliteration of Vitebsk, his home town, where only 118 of a population of 240,000 survived the Second World War." [30]

 

He came from nowhere to achieve worldwide acclaim. Yet his fractured relationship with his Jewish identity was "unresolved and tragic", Davies states. He would have died with no Jewish rites, had not a Jewish stranger stepped forward and said the kaddish, the Jewish prayer for the dead, over his coffin."

 

Chagall biographer Jackie Wullschlager calls Chagall a "pioneer of modern art and one of its greatest figurative painters... [who] invented a visual language that recorded the thrill and terror of the twentieth century."[3] She adds:

 

On his canvases we read the triumph of modernism, the breakthrough in art to an expression of inner life that ... is one of the last century's signal legacies. At the same time Chagall was personally swept up in the horrors of European history between 1914 and 1945: world wars, revolution, ethinic persecution, the murder and exile of millions. In an age when many major artists fled reality for abstraction, he distilled his experiences of suffering and tragedy into images at once immediate, simple, and symbolic to which everyone could respond.[3]:4

 

Art historians Ingo Walther and Rainer Metzger refer to Chagall as a "poet, dreamer, and exotic apparition." They add that throughout his long life the "role of outsider and artistic eccentric" came naturally to him, as he seemed to be a kind of intermediary between worlds: "as a Jew with a lordly disdain for the ancient ban on image-making; as a Russian who went beyond the realm of familiar self-sufficiency; or the son of poor parents, growing up in a large and needy family." Yet he went on to establish himself in the sophisticated world of "elegant artistic salons."[31]:7

 

Through his imagination and strong memories Chagall was able to use typical motifs and subjects in most of his work: village scenes, peasant life, and intimate views of the small world of the Jewish village (shtetl). His tranquil figures and simple gestures helped produce a "monumental sense of dignity" by translating everyday Jewish rituals into a "timeless realm of iconic peacefulness."[31]:8 Leymarie writes that Chagall "transcended the limits of his century. He has unveiled possibilities unsuspected by an art that had lost touch with the Bible, and in doing so he has achieved a wholly new synthesis of Jewish culture long ignored by painting." He adds that although Chagall's art cannot be confined to religion, his "most moving and original contributions, what he called 'his message,' are those drawn from religious or, more precisely, Biblical sources."[14]:x

 

Walther and Metzger try to summarize Chagall's contribution to art:

 

His life and art together added up to this image of a lonesome visionary, a citizen of the world with much of the child still in him, a stranger lost in wonder — an image which the artist did everything to cultivate. Profoundly religious and with a deep love of the homeland, his work is arguably the most urgent appeal for tolerance and respect of all that is different that modern times could make

 

(1887 – 1985) Russian Jewish modernist artist. He was a pioneer of modernism and one of the most successful artists of the twentieth century.

Diego Velázquez 06/06

Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez (Spanish pronunciation: [ˈdjeɣo roˈðriɣeð ðe ˈsilβa i βeˈlaθkeθ]; June 6, 1599 – August 6, 1660) was a Spanish painter who was the leading artist in the court of King Philip IV. He was an individualistic artist of the contemporary Baroque period, important as a portrait artist. In addition to numerous renditions of scenes of historical and cultural significance, he painted scores of portraits of the Spanish royal family, other notable European figures, and commoners, culminating in the production of his masterpiece Las Meninas (1656).

 

From the first quarter of the nineteenth century, Velázquez's artwork was a model for the realist and impressionist painters, in particular Édouard Manet. Since that time, more modern artists, including Spain's Pablo Picasso and Salvador Dalí, as well as the Anglo-Irish painter Francis Bacon, have paid tribute to Velázquez by recreating several of his most famous works.

 

Until the nineteenth century, little was known outside of Spain of Velázquez's work. His paintings mostly escaped being stolen by the French marshals during the Peninsular War. In 1828 Sir David Wilkie wrote from Madrid that he felt himself in the presence of a new power in art as he looked at the works of Velázquez, and at the same time found a wonderful affinity between this artist and the British school of portrait painters, especially Henry Raeburn. He was struck by the modern impression pervading Velázquez's work in both landscape and portraiture. Presently, his technique and individuality have earned Velázquez a prominent position in the annals of European art, and he is often considered a father of the Spanish school of art. Although acquainted with all the Italian schools and a friend of the foremost painters of his day, he was strong enough to withstand external influences and work out for himself the development of his own nature and his own principles of art.

 

Velázquez is often cited as a key influence on the art of Édouard Manet, important when considering that Manet is often cited as the bridge between realism and impressionism. Calling Velázquez the "painter of painters", Manet admired Velázquez's use of vivid brushwork in the midst of the baroque academic style of his contemporaries and built upon Velázquez's motifs in his own art.

 

The importance of Velázquez's art even today is evident in considering the respect with which twentieth century painters regard his work. Pablo Picasso presented the most durable homages to Velázquez in 1957 when he recreated Las Meninas in 58 variations, in his characteristically cubist form. Although Picasso was concerned that his reinterpretations of Velázquez's painting would be seen merely as copies rather than unique representations, the enormous works—including the largest he had produced since Guernica in 1937—earned a position of relevance in the Spanish canon of art. Picasso retained the general form and positioning of the original in the framework of his avant-garde cubist style.

 

Salvador Dalí, as with Picasso in anticipation of the tercentennial of Velázquez's death, created in 1958 a work entitled Velázquez Painting the Infanta Margarita With the Lights and Shadows of His Own Glory. The color scheme shows Dalí's serious tribute to Velázquez; the work also functioned, as in Picasso's case, as a vehicle for the presentation of newer theories in art and thought—nuclear mysticism, in Dalí's case.

 

The Anglo-Irish painter Francis Bacon found Velázquez's portrait of Pope Innocent X to be one of the greatest portraits ever made. He created several expressionist variations of this piece in the 1950s; however, Bacon's paintings presented a more gruesome image of the pope, who had now been dead for centuries. One such famous variation, entitled Figure with Meat (1954), shows the pope between two halves of a bisected cow

 

 

(1599 – 1660) Spanish painter and portrait artist, many of his famous paintings depicting scenes of historical and cultural significance, royalty and notable European figures of the time

Walter Gropius 05/18

Walter Adolph Georg Gropius (May 18, 1883 – July 5, 1969) was a German architect and founder of the Bauhaus School[1] who, along with Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Le Corbusier, is widely regarded as one of the pioneering masters of modern architecture.

 

Gropius's career advanced in the postwar period. Henry van de Velde, the master of the Grand-Ducal Saxon School of Arts and Crafts in Weimar was asked to step down in 1915 due to his Belgian nationality. His recommendation for Gropius to succeed him led eventually to Gropius's appointment as master of the school in 1919. It was this academy which Gropius transformed into the world famous Bauhaus, attracting a faculty that included Paul Klee, Johannes Itten, Josef Albers, Herbert Bayer, László Moholy-Nagy, Otto Bartning and Wassily Kandinsky. One example was the armchair F 51, designed for the Bauhaus's directors room in 1920 - nowadays a re-edition in the market, manufactured by the German company TECTA/Lauenfoerde.

 

In 1919, Gropius was involved in the Glass Chain utopian expressionist correspondence under the pseudonym "Mass." Usually more notable for his functionalist approach, the "Monument to the March Dead," designed in 1919 and executed in 1920, indicates that expressionism was an influence on him at that time.

 

In 1923, Gropius designed his famous door handles, now considered an icon of 20th-century design and often listed as one of the most influential designs to emerge from Bauhaus. He also designed large-scale housing projects in Berlin, Karlsruhe and Dessau in 1926-32 that were major contributions to the New Objectivity movement, including a contribution to the Siemensstadt project in Berlin.

 

With the help of the English architect Maxwell Fry, Gropius was able to leave Nazi Germany in 1934, on the pretext of making a temporary visit to Britain. He lived and worked in Britain, as part of the Isokon group with Fry and others and then, in 1937, moved on to the United States. The house he built for himself in Lincoln, Massachusetts, (now known as Gropius House) was influential in bringing International Modernism to the U.S. but Gropius disliked the term: "I made it a point to absorb into my own conception those features of the New England architectural tradition that I found still alive and adequate."

Gropius died in 1969 in Boston, Massachusetts, aged 86.

(1883 – 1969) German architect, founder of Bauhaus and a pioneer of modern architecture

Alexander Graham Bell 03/03

Alexander Graham Bell (March 3, 1847 – August 2, 1922) was an eminent scientist, inventor, engineer and innovator who is credited with inventing the first practical telephone.

 

Bell's father, grandfather, and brother had all been associated with work on elocution and speech, and both his mother and wife were deaf, profoundly influencing Bell's life's work.[1] His research on hearing and speech further led him to experiment with hearing devices which eventually culminated in Bell being awarded the first U.S. patent for the telephone in 1876.[N 1] In retrospect, Bell considered his most famous invention an intrusion on his real work as a scientist and refused to have a telephone in his study.[3]

 

Many other inventions marked Bell's later life, including groundbreaking work in optical telecommunications, hydrofoils and aeronautics. In 1888, Alexander Graham Bell became one of the founding members of the National Geographic Society.[

 

As a young child, Bell, like his brothers, received his early schooling at home from his father. At an early age, however, he was enrolled at the Royal High School, Edinburgh, Scotland, which he left at age 15, completing only the first four forms.[15] His school record was undistinguished, marked by absenteeism and lacklustre grades. His main interest remained in the sciences, especially biology, while he treated other school subjects with indifference, to the dismay of his demanding father.[16] Upon leaving school, Bell travelled to London to live with his grandfather, Alexander Bell. During the year he spent with his grandfather, a love of learning was born, with long hours spent in serious discussion and study. The elder Bell took great efforts to have his young pupil learn to speak clearly and with conviction, the attributes that his pupil would need to become a teacher himself.[17] At age 16, Bell secured a position as a "pupil-teacher" of elocution and music, in Weston House Academy, at Elgin, Moray, Scotland. Although he was enrolled as a student in Latin and Greek, he instructed classes himself in return for board and £10 per session.[18] The following year, he attended the University of Edinburgh; joining his older brother Melville who had enrolled there the previous year.

 

In 1865, when the Bell family moved to London,[25] Bell returned to Weston House as an assistant master and, in his spare hours, continued experiments on sound using a minimum of laboratory equipment. Bell concentrated on experimenting with electricity to convey sound and later installed a telegraph wire from his room in Somerset College to that of a friend.[26] Throughout late 1867, his health faltered mainly through exhaustion. His younger brother, Edward "Ted," was similarly bed-ridden, suffering from tuberculosis. While Bell recovered (by then referring to himself in correspondence as "A.G. Bell") and served the next year as an instructor at Somerset College, Bath, Somerset, England, his brother's condition deteriorated. Edward would never recover. Upon his brother's death, Bell returned home in 1867. His older brother, Melville had married and moved out. With aspirations to obtain a degree at the University College London, Bell considered his next years as preparation for the degree examinations, devoting his spare time at his family's residence to studying.

 

Helping his father in Visible Speech demonstrations and lectures brought Bell to Susanna E. Hull's private school for the deaf in South Kensington, London. His first two pupils were "deaf mute" girls who made remarkable progress under his tutelage. While his older brother seemed to achieve success on many fronts including opening his own elocution school, applying for a patent on an invention, and starting a family, Bell continued as a teacher. However, in May 1870, Melville died from complications due to tuberculosis, causing a family crisis. His father had also suffered a debilitating illness earlier in life and had been restored to health by a convalescence in Newfoundland. Bell's parents embarked upon a long-planned move when they realized that their remaining son was also sickly. Acting decisively, Alexander Melville Bell asked Bell to arrange for the sale of all the family property,[27] [N 4] conclude all of his brother's affairs (Bell took over his last student, curing a pronounced lisp),[28] and join his father and mother in setting out for the "New World".[29] Reluctantly, Bell also had to conclude a relationship with Marie Eccleston, who, he had surmised, was not prepared to leave England with him

 

On March 10, 1876, three days after his patent was issued, Bell succeeded in getting his telephone to work, using a liquid transmitter similar to Gray's design. Vibration of the diaphragm caused a needle to vibrate in the water, varying the electrical resistance in the circuit. When Bell spoke the famous sentence "Mr Watson—Come here—I want to see you" into the liquid transmitter,[59] Watson, listening at the receiving end in an adjoining room, heard the words clearly.[60]

 

Although Bell was, and still is, accused of stealing the telephone from Gray,[61] Bell used Gray's water transmitter design only after Bell's patent was granted and only as a proof of concept scientific experiment[62] to prove to his own satisfaction that intelligible "articulate speech" (Bell's words) could be electrically transmitted.[63] After March 1876, Bell focused on improving the electromagnetic telephone and never used Gray's liquid transmitter in public demonstrations or commercial use.[64]

 

In January 1915, Bell made the first ceremonial transcontinental telephone call. Calling from the AT&T head office at 15 Dey Street in New York City, Bell was heard by Thomas Watson at 333 Grant Avenue in San Francisco.

 

Bell died of complications arising from diabetes on August 2, 1922, at his private estate, Beinn Bhreagh, Nova Scotia, at age 75.[134] Bell had also been afflicted with pernicious anemia.[135] His last view of the earth he had inhabited was of the moon ascending over the beloved mountain on his estate at 2:00 A.M.[93] While tending to her husband after a long illness, Mabel whispered, "Don't leave me." By way of reply, Bell traced the sign for no—and then he expired.[115][136]

 

On learning of Bell's death, Canadian Prime Minister Mackenzie King cabled Mrs. Bell, saying:

 

[The Government expresses] to you our sense of the world's loss in the death of your distinguished husband. It will ever be a source of pride to our country that the great invention, with which his name is immortally associated, is a part of its history. On the behalf of the citizens of Canada, may I extend to you an expression of our combined gratitude and sympathy.[115]

 

Bell's coffin was constructed of Beinn Bhreagh pine by his laboratory staff, lined with the same red silk fabric used in his tetrahedral kite experiments. In order to help celebrate his life, his wife asked guests not to wear black (the traditional funeral color) while attending his service, during which soloist Jean MacDonald sang a verse of Robert Louis Stevenson's 'Requiem':[137]

 

Under a wide and starry sky,
Dig the grave and let me lie.
Glad did I live and gladly die
And I lay me down with a will

 


 


(1847 – 1922) Scientist and inventor famous for, among other things, inventing the telephone.

Luciano Pavarotti 10/12

Luciano Pavarotti, Cavaliere di Gran Croce OMRI (12 October 1935 – 6 September 2007) was an Italian operatic tenor, who also crossed over into popular music, eventually becoming one of the most commercially successful tenors of all time. He made numerous recordings of complete operas and individual arias, and established himself as one of the finest tenors of the 20th century.[1] He was one of "The Three Tenors" and became well-known for his televised concerts and media appearances. Pavarotti was also noted for his charity work on behalf of refugees and the Red Cross, amongst others.

 

Pavarotti began his professional career as a tenor in 1961 in Italy. In 1961, he made his first international appearance in La traviata in Belgrade, Yugoslavia.[2] He sang in opera houses in addition to Italy, in the Netherlands, Vienna, London, Ankara, Budapest and Barcelona. The young tenor earned valuable experience and recognition while touring Australia at the invitation of soprano Joan Sutherland in 1965. He made his United States debut in Miami soon afterwards, also on Sutherland's recommendation. His position as a leading lyric tenor was consolidated in the years between 1966 and 1972, during which time he first appeared at Milan's La Scala and other major European houses. In 1968, he debuted at New York City's Metropolitan Opera as Rudolfo in Puccini's La bohème. At the Met in 1972, in the role of Tonio in Donizetti's La fille du régiment he earned the title "King of the high Cs" when he sang the aria "Ah mes amis ... pour mon âme". He gained worldwide fame for the brilliance and beauty of his tone, especially into the upper register.[3] He was at his best in bel canto operas, pre-Aida Verdi roles and Puccini works such as La bohème, Tosca and Madama Butterfly. The late 1970s and 1980s saw Pavarotti continue to make significant appearances in the world's foremost opera houses.

 

Celebrity beyond the world of opera came to Pavarotti at the 1990 World Cup in Italy with performances of Puccini's "Nessun dorma",sample (help·info) from Turandot, and as one of "The Three Tenors" in their famed first concert held on the eve of the tournament's final match. He sang on that occasion with fellow star tenors Plácido Domingo and José Carreras, bringing opera highlights to a wider audience. Appearances in advertisements and with pop icons in concerts furthered his international celebrity.

 

His final performance in an opera was at the Metropolitan Opera in March 2004. Later that year, the National Italian American Foundation (NIAF) inducted him into its Italian American Hall of Fame in recognition of his lifetime of work. During a ceremony held at the Foundation's Anniversary Gala just four days after his 69th birthday, singer Faith Hill presented Pavarotti with a birthday cake and sang "Happy Birthday" to the opera legend.

 

The 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin, Italy, saw Pavarotti on stage for the last time, where he performed "Nessun dorma", with the crowd serving as the aria's chorus, and he received a thunderous standing ovation.[4]

 

On 6 September 2007, he died at home in Modena from pancreatic cancer, aged 71.

 

(1935 – 2007) Italian opera singer, part of “The Three Tenors” and one of the world’s most famous vocal artists.

Yuri Gagarin 03/09

Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin (Russian: Ю́рий Алексе́евич Гага́рин, Russian pronunciation: [ˈjurʲɪj ɐlʲɪˈksʲeɪvʲɪtɕ ɡɐˈɡarʲɪn]; 9 March 1934 – 27 March 1968), Hero of the Soviet Union, was a Soviet cosmonaut. On 12 April 1961, he became the first human in outer space and the first to orbit the Earth. He received medals from around the world for his pioneering tour in space.

 

Gagarin then became deputy training director of the Star City cosmonaut training base. At the same time, he began to re-qualify as a fighter pilot. On 27 March 1968, while on a routine training flight from Chkalovsky Air Base, he and flight instructor Vladimir Seryogin died in a MiG-15UTI crash near the town of Kirzhach. The bodies of Gagarin and Seryogin were cremated and the ashes were buried in the walls of the Kremlin on Red Square.

 

After the flight, Gagarin became a worldwide celebrity, touring widely with appearances in Italy, the United Kingdom,[13] Germany, Canada and Japan to promote the Soviet achievement.

 

In 1962, he began serving as a deputy to the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union. He later returned to Star City, the cosmonaut facility, where he worked on designs for a reusable spacecraft. Gagarin worked on these designs in Star City for seven years. He became Lieutenant Colonel (or Podpolkovnik) of the Soviet Air Force on 12 June 1962 and on 6 November 1963 he received the rank of Colonel (Polkovnik) of the Soviet Air Force.[3] Soviet officials tried to keep him away from any flights, being worried of losing their hero in an accident. Gagarin was backup pilot for Vladimir Komarov in the Soyuz 1 flight. As Komarov's flight ended in a fatal crash, Gagarin was ultimately banned from training for and participating in further spaceflights.

 

Gagarin then became deputy training director of the Star City cosmonaut training base. At the same time, he began to re-qualify as a fighter pilot. On 27 March 1968, while on a routine training flight from Chkalovsky Air Base, he and flight instructor Vladimir Seryogin died in a MiG-15UTI crash near the town of Kirzhach. The bodies of Gagarin and Seryogin were cremated and the ashes were buried in the walls of the Kremlin on Red Square.

 

 

(1934 – 1968) Soviet cosmonaut who was the first man in space and the first to orbit Earth.

Edvard Munch 12/12

Edvard Munch (Norwegian pronunciation: [ˈmuŋk], 12 December 1863 – 23 January 1944)[1] was a Norwegian Symbolist painter, printmaker and an important forerunner of expressionistic art. His best-known composition, The Scream, is part of a series The Frieze of Life, in which Munch explored the themes of life, love, fear, death, melancholia, and anxiety.

 

When Munch died, he bequeathed his remaining works to the city of Oslo, which built the Munch Museum at Tøyen (it opened in 1963). The museum hosts a collection of approximately 1,100 paintings, 4,500 drawings, and 18,000 prints, the broadest collection of his works in the world.[97] The Munch Museum currently serves at Munch's official Estate[98] and has been active in responding to copyright infringements, as well as clearing copyright for the work, such as the appearance of Munch's The Scream in a 2006 M&M advertisement campaign.[99] The U.S. copyright representative for the Munch Museum and the Estate of Edvard Munch is the Artists Rights Society.[100]

 

Munch’s art was highly personalized and he did little teaching. His “private” symbolism was far more personal than that of other Symbolist painters such as Gustave Moreau and James Ensor. Nonetheless, Munch was highly influential, particularly with the German Expressionists, who followed his philosophy, “I do not believe in the art which is not the compulsive result of Man’s urge to open his heart.”[101] Many of his paintings, including The Scream, have universal appeal in addition to their highly personal meaning.

 

Munch's works are now represented in numerous major museums and galleries in Norway and abroad. After the Cultural Revolution in the People's Republic of China ended, Munch was the first Western artist to have his pictures exhibited at the National Gallery in Beijing. His cabin “the Happy House” was given to the municipality of Åsgårdstrand in 1944 and is now a small Munch museum. The inventory is still exactly as he left it.

 

 

(1863 – 1944) Norwegian symbolist painter, known for his expressionistic art. His painting The Scream is one of the most recognizable in all art (and indeed the one Google used as basis for the themed logo).

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle 05/22

Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle, DL (22 May 1859 – 7 July 1930[1]) was a Scottish[2] physician and writer, most noted for his stories about the detective Sherlock Holmes, which are generally considered a major innovation in the field of crime fiction, and for the adventures of Professor Challenger. He was a prolific writer whose other works include science fiction stories, historical novels, plays and romances, poetry, and non-fiction.

 

Conan Doyle was also a fervent advocate of justice and personally investigated two closed cases, which led to two men being exonerated of the crimes of which they were accused. The first case, in 1906, involved a shy half-British, half-Indian lawyer named George Edalji who had allegedly penned threatening letters and mutilated animals. Police were set on Edalji's conviction, even though the mutilations continued after their suspect was jailed.

 

It was partially as a result of this case that the Court of Criminal Appeal was established in 1907, so not only did Conan Doyle help George Edalji, his work helped establish a way to correct other miscarriages of justice. The story of Conan Doyle and Edalji was fictionalized in Julian Barnes's 2005 novel Arthur & George. In Nicholas Meyer's pastiche "The West End Horror" (1976), Holmes manages to help clear the name of a shy Parsee Indian character wronged by the English justice system. Edalji himself was a Parsee.

 

The second case, that of Oscar Slater, a German Jew and gambling-den operator convicted of bludgeoning an 82-year-old woman in Glasgow in 1908, excited Conan Doyle's curiosity because of inconsistencies in the prosecution case and a general sense that Slater was not guilty. He ended up paying most of the costs for Slater's successful appeal in 1928.

 

Conan Doyle was found clutching his chest in the hall of Windlesham, his house in Crowborough, East Sussex, on 7 July 1930. He died of a heart attack at age 71. His last words were directed toward his wife: "You are wonderful."[23] The epitaph on his gravestone in the churchyard at Minstead in the New Forest, Hampshire, reads:

 

STEEL TRUE
BLADE STRAIGHT
ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE
KNIGHT
PATRIOT, PHYSICIAN & MAN OF LETTERS

 

 

(1859 – 1930) British author mostly known for his novels about Sherlock Holmes, one of the most famous fictional characters of all time.

Percival Lowell 03/13

Percival Lawrence Lowell (March 13, 1855–November 12, 1916) was a businessman, author, mathematician, and astronomer who fueled speculation that there were canals on Mars, founded the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona, and formed the beginning of the effort that led to the discovery of Pluto 14 years after his death. The choice of the name Pluto and its symbol were partly influenced by his initials PL.

 

Percival graduated from the Noble and Greenough School in 1872 and Harvard University in 1876 with distinction in mathematics.[1] At his college graduation, he gave a speech, considered very advanced for its time, on the "Nebular Hypothesis." He was later awarded honorary degrees from Amherst College and Clark University.[2]

 

In the 1880s, Lowell traveled extensively in the Far East. In August 1883, he served as a foreign secretary and counsellor for a special Korean diplomatic mission to the United States. He also spent significant periods of time in Japan, writing books on Japanese religion, psychology, and behavior. His texts are filled with observations and academic discussions of various aspects of Japanese life, including language, religious practices, economics, travel in Japan, and the development of personality. Books by Percival Lowell on the Orient include Noto (1891) and Occult Japan (1894); the latter from his third and final trip to the region. The most popular of Lowell's books on the Orient, The Soul of the Far East, (1888) contains an early synthesis of some of his ideas, that in essence, postulated that human progress is a function of the qualities of individuality and imagination.

 

Beginning in the winter of 1893-94, using his wealth and influence, Lowell dedicated himself to the study of astronomy, founding the observatory which bears his name.[3] For the last 23 years of his life astronomy, Lowell Observatory, and his and others' work at his observatory were the focal points of his life. He lived to be 61 years of age.

 

World War I very much saddened Lowell, a dedicated pacifist. This, along with some setbacks in his astronomical work (described below), undermined his health and contributed to his death from a stroke on November 12, 1916.[4]

 

Lowell is buried on Mars Hill near his observatory.

 

 

(1855 – 1916) American astronomer (among other things) famous for his study of Mars and founder of the Lowell Observatory, which after his death discovered Pluto.

Johann Sebastian Bach 03/31

 

[1] (31 March 1685[2] – 28 July 1750) was a German composer, organist, harpsichordist, violist, and violinist whose sacred and secular works for choir, orchestra, and solo instruments drew together the strands of the Baroque period and brought it to its ultimate maturity.[3] Although he did not introduce new forms, he enriched the prevailing German style with a robust contrapuntal technique, an unrivalled control of harmonic and motivic organisation, and the adaptation of rhythms, forms and textures from abroad, particularly from Italy and France.

 

Revered for their intellectual depth, technical command and artistic beauty, Bach's works include the Brandenburg concertos, the Goldberg Variations, the Partitas, The Well-Tempered Clavier, the Mass in B minor, the St Matthew Passion, the St John Passion, the Magnificat, The Musical Offering, The Art of Fugue, the English and French Suites, the Sonatas and Partitas for solo violin, the Cello Suites, more than 200 surviving cantatas, and a similar number of organ works, including the celebrated Toccata and Fugue in D minor and Passacaglia and Fugue in C minor.

 

Bach's abilities as an organist were highly respected throughout Europe during his lifetime, although he was not widely recognised as a great composer until a revival of interest and performances of his music in the first half of the 19th century. He is now generally regarded one of the main composers of the Baroque style, and as one of the greatest composers of all time.

 

Bach's health may have been in decline in 1749; on 2 June, Heinrich von Brühl wrote to one of the Leipzig burgomasters to request that his music director, Gottlob Harrer, fill the post of Thomascantor and Director musices posts "upon the eventual ... decease of Mr. Bach."[34] Bach became increasingly blind, and the celebrated British eye surgeon John Taylor (who would later operate unsuccessfully on Handel) operated on Bach while visiting Leipzig in 1750. Bach died on 28 July 1750 at the age of 65. A contemporary newspaper reported the cause of death as "from the unhappy consequences of the very unsuccessful eye operation".[35] Some modern historians speculate the cause of death was a stroke complicated by pneumonia

 


 


Ludwig van Beethoven 12/17

 

(German pronunciation: [ˈluːtvɪç fan ˈbeːt.hoːfən]  (listen); English: /ˈlʊdvɪɡ væn ˈbeɪt.hoʊvən/; baptised 17 December 1770[1] – 26 March 1827) was a German composer and pianist. He is considered to have been the most crucial figure in the transitional period between the Classical and Romantic eras in Western classical music, and remains one of the most famous and influential composers of all time.

 

Born in Bonn, then the capital of the Electorate of Cologne and a part of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation in present-day Germany, he moved to Vienna in his early twenties and settled there, studying with Joseph Haydn and quickly gaining a reputation as a virtuoso pianist. His hearing began to deteriorate in the late 1790s, yet he continued to compose, conduct, and perform, even after becoming completely deaf.

 

Beethoven was bedridden for most of his remaining months, and many friends came to visit. He died on Monday, 26 March 1827, during a thunderstorm. His friend Anselm Hüttenbrenner, who was present at the time, claimed that there was a peal of thunder at the moment of death. An autopsy revealed significant liver damage, which may have been due to heavy alcohol consumption.[65]

 

Unlike Mozart, who was buried anonymously in a communal grave (such being the custom at the time), 20,000 Viennese citizens lined the streets for Beethoven's funeral on Thursday, 29 March 1827. Franz Schubert, who died the following year and was buried next to Beethoven, was one of the torchbearers. After a Requiem Mass at the church of the Holy Trinity (Dreifaltigkeitskirche), Beethoven was buried in the Währing cemetery, north-west of Vienna. His remains were exhumed for study in 1862, and moved in 1888 to Vienna's Zentralfriedhof.

 


 


 

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart 01/27

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (German: [ˈvɔlfɡaŋ amaˈdeus ˈmoːtsaʁt], English see fn.[1]), baptismal name Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart[2] (27 January 1756 – 5 December 1791), was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical era. He composed over 600 works, many acknowledged as pinnacles of symphonic, concertante, chamber, piano, operatic, and choral music. He is among the most enduringly popular of classical composers.

 

Mozart showed prodigious ability from his earliest childhood in Salzburg. Already competent on keyboard and violin, he composed from the age of five and performed before European royalty. At 17 he was engaged as a court musician in Salzburg, but grew restless and travelled in search of a better position, always composing abundantly. While visiting Vienna in 1781, he was dismissed from his Salzburg position. He chose to stay in the capital, where he achieved fame but little financial security. During his final years in Vienna, he composed many of his best-known symphonies, concertos, and operas, and portions of the Requiem, which was largely unfinished at the time of Mozart's death. The circumstances of his early death have been much mythologized. He was survived by his wife Constanze and two sons.

 

Mozart learned voraciously from others, and developed a brilliance and maturity of style that encompassed the light and graceful along with the dark and passionate. His influence on subsequent Western art music is profound. Beethoven wrote his own early compositions in the shadow of Mozart, of whom Joseph Haydn wrote that "posterity will not see such a talent again in 100 years."

 

Mozart fell ill while in Prague for the premiere on 6 September of his opera La clemenza di Tito, written in 1791 on commission for the Emperor's coronation festivities.[62] He was able to continue his professional functions for some time, and conducted the premiere of The Magic Flute on 30 September. The illness intensified on 20 November, at which point Mozart became bedridden, suffering from swelling, pain, and vomiting.[63]

 

Mozart was nursed in his final illness by Constanze and her youngest sister Sophie, and attended by the family doctor, Thomas Franz Closset. It is clear that he was mentally occupied with the task of finishing his Requiem. However, the evidence that he actually dictated passages to his student Süssmayr is very slim.[64][65]

 

Mozart died at 1 a.m. on 5 December 1791 at the age of 35. The New Grove gives a matter-of-fact description of his funeral:

 

Mozart was buried in a common grave, in accordance with contemporary Viennese custom, at the St Marx cemetery outside the city on 7 December. If, as later reports say, no mourners attended, that too is consistent with Viennese burial customs at the time; later Jahn (1856) wrote that Salieri, Süssmayr, van Swieten and two other musicians were present. The tale of a storm and snow is false; the day was calm and mild.[66]

 

The cause of Mozart's death cannot be known with certainty. The official record has it as "hitziges Frieselfieber" ("severe miliary fever", referring to a rash that looks like millet seeds), a description that does not suffice to identify the cause as it would be diagnosed in modern medicine. Researchers have posited at least 118 causes of death, including trichinosis, influenza, mercury poisoning, and a rare kidney ailment.[67] The most widely accepted hypothesis is that Mozart died of acute rheumatic fever.

 

Mozart's sparse funeral did not reflect his standing with the public as a composer: memorial services and concerts in Vienna and Prague were well attended. Indeed, in the period immediately after his death, Mozart's reputation rose substantially: Solomon describes an "unprecedented wave of enthusiasm"[68] for his work; biographies were written (first by Schlichtegroll, Niemetschek, and Nissen; see Biographies of Mozart); and publishers vied to produce complete editions of his works.[68]

 

 


 

(1756 – 1791) Austrian musical prodigy and one of the most popular classical composers of all time

Martin Luther King Jr. 01/15

Martin Luther King, Jr. (January 15, 1929 – April 4, 1968) was an American clergyman, activist, and prominent leader in the African American civil rights movement.[1] He is best known for being an iconic figure in the advancement of civil rights in the United States and around the world, using nonviolent methods following the teachings of Mahatma Gandhi.[2] King is often presented as a heroic leader in the history of modern American liberalism.[3]

 

A Baptist minister, King became a civil rights activist early in his career.[4] He led the 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott and helped found the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in 1957, serving as its first president. King's efforts led to the 1963 March on Washington, where King delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech. There, he expanded American values to include the vision of a color blind society, and established his reputation as one of the greatest orators in American history.

 

In 1964, King became the youngest person to receive the Nobel Peace Prize for his work to end racial segregation and racial discrimination through civil disobedience and other nonviolent means. By the time of his death in 1968, he had refocused his efforts on ending poverty and stopping the Vietnam War.

 

King was assassinated on April 4, 1968, in Memphis, Tennessee. He was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1977 and Congressional Gold Medal in 2004; Martin Luther King, Jr. Day was established as a U.S. federal holiday in 1986.

 

 

(1929 – 1968) African American minister, probably most famous for his work against racial segregation and discrimination, which also earned him the Nobel Peace Prize.

Louis Braille 01/04

Louis Braille (English pronunciation: /ˈbreɪl/; French: [lwi bʁɑj]) (January 4, 1809 – January 6, 1852) was the inventor of braille,[1] a worldwide system used by blind and visually impaired people for reading and writing. Braille is read by passing the fingers over characters made up of an arrangement of one to six embossed points. It has been adapted to almost every known language.

 

Braille became a well-respected teacher at the Institute. Although he was admired and respected by his pupils, his writing system was not taught at the Institute during his lifetime. The air at the institute was foul and he died in Paris of tuberculosis in 1852 at the age of 43; his body was disinterred in 1952 (the centenary of his death) and honored with re-interment in the Panthéon in Paris. His system was finally officially recognized in France two years after his death, in 1854.

(1809 – 1852) The inventor of braille, a widely used reading and writing system for the blind and visually impaired (he was blind himself).

Frank Lloyd Wright 06/08

Frank Lloyd Wright (born Frank Lincoln Wright, June 8, 1867 – April 9, 1959) was an American architect, interior designer, writer and educator, who designed more than 1,000 projects, which resulted in more than 500 completed works.[1] Wright promoted organic architecture (exemplified by Fallingwater), was a leader of the Prairie School movement of architecture (exemplified by the Robie House, the Westcott House, and the Darwin D. Martin House), and developed the concept of the Usonian home (exemplified by the Rosenbaum House). His work includes original and innovative examples of many different building types, including offices, churches, schools, skyscrapers, hotels, and museums. Wright also often designed many of the interior elements of his buildings, such as the furniture and stained glass.

 

Wright authored 20 books and many articles, and was a popular lecturer in the United States and in Europe. His colorful personal life often made headlines, most notably for the 1914 fire and murders at his Taliesin studio.

 

Already well-known during his lifetime, Wright was recognized in 1991 by the American Institute of Architects as "the greatest American architect of all time".[1]

 

 

(1867 – 1959) American architect and interior designer. The American Institute of Architecture has named him “the greatest American architect of all time”.

Leonardo da Vinci 04/15

Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci (pronunciation (help·info)) (April 15, 1452 – May 2, 1519) was an Italian polymath: painter, sculptor, architect, musician, scientist, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, geologist, cartographer, botanist and writer. Leonardo has often been described as the archetype of the Renaissance man, a man whose unquenchable curiosity was equaled only by his powers of invention.[1] He is widely considered to be one of the greatest painters of all time and perhaps the most diversely talented person ever to have lived.[2] According to art historian Helen Gardner, the scope and depth of his interests were without precedent and "his mind and personality seem to us superhuman, the man himself mysterious and remote".[1] Marco Rosci points out, however, that while there is much speculation about Leonardo, his vision of the world is essentially logical rather than mysterious, and that the empirical methods he employed were unusual for his time.[3]

 

Born the illegitimate son of a notary, Piero da Vinci, and a peasant woman, Caterina, at Vinci in the region of Florence, Leonardo was educated in the studio of the renowned Florentine painter, Verrocchio. Much of his earlier working life was spent in the service of Ludovico il Moro in Milan. He later worked in Rome, Bologna and Venice and spent his last years in France, at the home awarded him by Francis I.

 

Leonardo was and is renowned[2] primarily as a painter. Among his works, the Mona Lisa is most famous and most parodied portrait and The Last Supper the most reproduced religious painting of all time, with their fame approached only by Michelangelo's Creation of Adam.[1] Leonardo's drawing of the Vitruvian Man is also regarded as a cultural icon,[4] being reproduced on everything from the euro to text books to t-shirts. Perhaps fifteen of his paintings survive, the small number due to his constant, and frequently disastrous, experimentation with new techniques, and his chronic procrastination.[nb 2] Nevertheless, these few works, together with his notebooks, which contain drawings, scientific diagrams, and his thoughts on the nature of painting, compose a contribution to later generations of artists only rivalled by that of his contemporary, Michelangelo.


Leonardo is revered[2] for his technological ingenuity. He conceptualised a helicopter, a tank, concentrated solar power, a calculator,[5] the double hull and outlined a rudimentary theory of plate tectonics. Relatively few of his designs were constructed or were even feasible during his lifetime,[nb 3] but some of his smaller inventions, such as an automated bobbin winder and a machine for testing the tensile strength of wire, entered the world of manufacturing unheralded.[nb 4] As a scientist, he greatly advanced the state of knowledge in the fields of anatomy, civil engineering,

 

 

(1452 – 1519) Italian polymath, doing groundbreaking work as a scientist, engineer, inventor, anatomist, painter and more. Often described the archetypal Renaissance man and one of the most widely talented people of all time.

Vincent van Gogh 03/30

Vincent Willem van Gogh (Dutch: [faŋˈxɔx]  (listen), English: /ˌvæn ˈɡɒx/;[note 1] 30 March 1853 – 29 July 1890) was a Dutch post-Impressionist painter whose work had a far-reaching influence on 20th century art for its vivid colors and emotional impact. He suffered from anxiety and increasingly frequent bouts of mental illness throughout his life and died, largely unknown, at the age of 37 from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.


Little appreciated during his lifetime, his fame grew in the years after his death. Today, he is widely regarded as one of history's greatest painters and an important contributor to the foundations of modern art. Van Gogh did not begin painting until his late twenties, and most of his best-known works were produced during his final two years. He produced more than 2,000 artworks, consisting of around 900 paintings and 1,100 drawings and sketches. Today many of his pieces—including his numerous self portraits, landscapes, portraits and sunflowers—are among the world's most recognizable and expensive works of art.

Van Gogh spent his early adulthood working for a firm of art dealers and traveled between The Hague, London and Paris, after which he taught in England. An early vocational aspiration was to become a pastor and preach the gospel, and from 1879 he worked as a missionary in a mining region in Belgium. During this time he began to sketch people from the local community, and in 1885 painted his first major work The Potato Eaters. His palette at the time consisted mainly of somber earth tones and showed no sign of the vivid coloration that distinguished his later work. In March 1886, he moved to Paris and discovered the French Impressionists. Later he moved to the south of France and was taken by the strong sunlight he found there. His work grew brighter in color and he developed the unique and highly recognizable style which became fully realized during his stay in Arles in 1888.

 

The extent to which his mental illness affected his painting has been a subject of speculation since his death. Despite a widespread tendency to romanticise his ill health, modern critics see an artist deeply frustrated by the inactivity and incoherence brought about by his bouts of sickness. According to art critic Robert Hughes, Van Gogh's late works show an artist at the height of his ability, completely in control and "longing for concision and grace"


(1853 – 1890) Dutch Post-Impressionist artist and a pioneer of Expressionism. And yes, he’s the one who cut off part of his own ear.

Ray Charles 09/23
Ray Charles Robinson (September 23, 1930 – June 10, 2004), better known by his shortened stage name Ray Charles, was an American musician. He was a pioneer in the genre of soul music during the 1950s by fusing rhythm & blues, gospel, and blues styles into his early recordings with Atlantic Records.[1][2][3] He also helped racially integrate country and pop music during the 1960s with his crossover success on ABC Records, most notably with his Modern Sounds albums.[4][5][6] While with ABC, Charles became one of the first African-American musicians to be given artistic control by a mainstream record company.[2] Frank Sinatra called Charles “the only true genius in show business.”

 

Rolling Stone ranked Charles number 10 on their list of "100 Greatest Artists of All Time" in 2004,[7] and number two on their November 2008 list of "100 Greatest Singers of All Time".[8] In honoring Charles, Billy Joel noted: "This may sound like sacrilege, but I think Ray Charles was more important than Elvis Presley. I don't know if Ray was the architect of rock & roll, but he was certainly the first guy to do a lot of things . . . Who the hell ever put so many styles together and made it work?"[9]

 

 

(1930 – 2004) American pianist and soul singer. Rolling Stone magazine ranked him as number two on its list of the 100 greatest singers of all time.

Gaston Julia 02/03
Gaston Maurice Julia (February 3, 1893 – March 19, 1978) was a French mathematician who devised the formula for the Julia set. His works were popularized by French mathematician Benoît Mandelbrot, and the Julia and Mandelbrot fractals are closely related.

 

Julia gained attention for his mathematical work after the war when a 199-page article he wrote was featured in the Journal de Mathématiques Pures et Appliquées, a French mathematics journal. The article, which he published during 1918 at the age of 25, titled "Mémoire sur l'itération des fonctions rationnelles" described the iteration of a rational function. The article gained immense popularity among mathematicians and the general population as a whole, and so resulted in Julia's later receiving of the Grand Prix de l'Académie des Sciences. Despite his fame, his works were mostly forgotten[citation needed] until the day Benoît Mandelbrot mentioned them in his works.

 

Julia died in Paris at the age of 85.

 

(1893 – 1978) French mathematician who devised the formula for the Julia set, common for generating fractals

Alfred Hitchcock 08/13
Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock, KBE (13 August 1899 – 29 April 1980)[1] was an English filmmaker and producer.[2] He pioneered many techniques in the suspense and psychological thriller genres. After a successful career in his native United Kingdom in both silent films and early talkies, Hitchcock moved to Hollywood. In 1956 he became an American citizen while remaining a British subject.

 

Over a career spanning more than half a century, Hitchcock fashioned for himself a distinctive and recognisable directorial style.[3] Viewers are made to identify with the camera which moves in a way meant to mimic a person's gaze, forcing viewers to engage in a form of voyeurism.[4] He framed shots to manipulate the feelings of the audience and maximise anxiety, fear, or empathy, and used innovative film editing to demonstrate the point of view of the characters.[4] His stories frequently feature fugitives on the run from the law alongside "icy blonde" female characters.[5] Many of Hitchcock's films have twist endings and thrilling plots featuring depictions of violence, murder, and crime, although many of the mysteries function as decoys or "MacGuffins" meant only to serve thematic elements in the film and the extremely complex psychological examinations of the characters. Hitchcock's films also borrow many themes from psychoanalysis and feature strong sexual undertones. Through his cameo appearances in his own films, interviews, film trailers, and the television program Alfred Hitchcock Presents, he became a cultural icon.


Hitchcock directed more than fifty feature films in a career spanning six decades. Often regarded as the greatest British filmmaker, he came first in a 2007 poll of film critics in Britain's Daily Telegraph, which said: "Unquestionably the greatest filmmaker to emerge from these islands, Hitchcock did more than any director to shape modern cinema, which would be utterly different without him. His flair was for narrative, cruelly withholding crucial information (from his characters and from us) and engaging the emotions of the audience like no one else."[6][7] MovieMaker has hailed him as the most influential filmmaker of all time,[8] and he is widely regarded as one of cinema's most significant artists.

 

 

(1899 – 1980) British film director and producer, a pioneer of the suspense and psychological thriller genres. He is one of the best-known filmmakers of all time

M. C. Escher 06/17
Maurits Cornelis Escher (17 June 1898 – 27 March 1972), usually referred to as M.C. Escher (English pronunciation: /ˈɛʃər/, Dutch: [ˈmʌurɪts kɔrˈneːlɪs ˈɛʃər]  (listen)),[1] was a Dutch graphic artist. He is known for his often mathematically inspired woodcuts, lithographs, and mezzotints. These feature impossible constructions, explorations of infinity, architecture, and tessellations. The special way of thinking and the rich graphic work of M.C. Escher has had a continuous influence in science and art, as well as references in pop culture. Ownership of the Escher intellectual property and of his unique art works have been separated from each other.


(1898 – 1972) Dutch graphic artist, famous for his mathematically inspired images of impossible constructions and geometric figures

Albert Einstein 03/14

Albert Einstein (pronounced /ˈælbərt ˈaɪnstaɪn/; German: [ˈalbɐt ˈaɪnʃtaɪn]  (listen); 14 March 1879 – 18 April 1955) was a German-born theoretical physicist who discovered the theory of general relativity, effecting a revolution in physics. For this achievement, Einstein is often regarded as the father of modern physics.[2] He received the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics "for his services to theoretical physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect".[3]

 

Near the beginning of his career, Einstein thought that Newtonian mechanics was no longer enough to reconcile the laws of classical mechanics with the laws of the electromagnetic field. This led to the development of his special theory of relativity. He realized, however, that the principle of relativity could also be extended to gravitational fields, and with his subsequent theory of gravitation in 1916, he published a paper on the general theory of relativity. He continued to deal with problems of statistical mechanics and quantum theory, which led to his explanations of particle theory and the motion of molecules. He also investigated the thermal properties of light which laid the foundation of the photon theory of light. In 1917, Einstein applied the general theory of relativity to model the structure of the universe as a whole.[4]

 

On the eve of World War II in 1939, he dictated and signed a letter alerting President Franklin D. Roosevelt that Germany might be developing an atomic weapon,and recommended that the U.S. begin uranium procurement and nuclear research. As a result, Roosevelt advocated such research, leading to the creation of the top secret Manhattan Project, and the U.S. becoming the first and only country to possess nuclear weapons during the war. Days before his death, however, Einstein also signed the Russell–Einstein Manifesto, that highlighted the dangers posed by the military usage of nuclear energy.

 

Einstein published more than 300 scientific papers along with over 150 non-scientific works, and received honorary doctorate degrees in science, medicine and philosophy from many European and American universities;[4] he also wrote about various philosophical and political subjects.[5] His great intelligence and originality has made the word "Einstein" synonymous with genius.[6]

 


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(1879 – 1955) German theoretical physicist, best known for his theory of relativity but contributed greatly to multiple fields within physics, for which he also received the Nobel Prize in Physics. He is regarded as one of the most influential people in human history

Michelangelo 03/06

Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni[1] (6 March 1475 – 18 February 1564), commonly known as Michelangelo, was an Italian Renaissance painter, sculptor, architect, poet, and engineer. Despite making few forays beyond the arts, his versatility in the disciplines he took up was of such a high order that he is often considered a contender for the title of the archetypal Renaissance man, along with his rival and fellow Italian, Leonardo da Vinci.

 

Michelangelo's output in every field during his long life was prodigious; when the sheer volume of correspondence, sketches, and reminiscences that survive is also taken into account, he is the best-documented artist of the 16th century. Two of his best-known works, the Pietà and David, were sculpted before he turned thirty. Despite his low opinion of painting, Michelangelo also created two of the most influential works in fresco in the history of Western art: the scenes from Genesis on the ceiling and The Last Judgment on the altar wall of the Sistine Chapel in Rome. As an architect, Michelangelo pioneered the Mannerist style at the Laurentian Library. At 74 he succeeded Antonio da Sangallo the Younger as the architect of Saint Peter's Basilica. Michelangelo transformed the plan, the western end being finished to Michelangelo's design, the dome being completed after his death with some modification.

 

In a demonstration of Michelangelo's unique standing, he was the first Western artist whose biography was published while he was alive.[2] Two biographies were published of him during his lifetime; one of them, by Giorgio Vasari, proposed that he was the pinnacle of all artistic achievement since the beginning of the Renaissance, a viewpoint that continued to have currency in art history for centuries. In his lifetime he was also often called Il Divino ("the divine one").[3] One of the qualities most admired by his contemporaries was his terribilità, a sense of awe-inspiring grandeur, and it was the attempts of subsequent artists to imitate Michelangelo's impassioned and highly personal style that resulted in Mannerism, the next major movement in Western art after the High Renaissance.

 

 

(1475 – 1564) Italian painter, sculptor, architect and engineer. Together with Leonardo da Vinci, he is often cited as the archetypal Renaissance man.

Pablo Picasso 10/25

Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso known as Pablo Ruiz Picasso (Spanish pronunciation: [ˈpaβlo ˈrwiθ piˈkaso]; 25 October 1881 – 8 April 1973) was a Spanish painter, draughtsman, and sculptor who lived most of his adult life in France. He is best known for co-founding the Cubist movement and for the wide variety of styles embodied in his work. Among his most famous works are the proto-Cubist Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907) and Guernica (1937), his portrayal of the German bombing of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War.

 

Picasso demonstrated uncanny artistic talent in his early years, painting in a realistic manner through his childhood and adolescence; during the first decade of the 20th century his style changed as he experimented with different theories, techniques, and ideas. His revolutionary artistic accomplishments brought him universal renown and immense fortune throughout his life, making him one of the best-known figures in 20th century art.

 

 

(1881 – 1973) Andalusian-Spanish painter and sculptor. Famous for (among other things) founding the Cubist movement. He also has one of the longest full names we’ve ever seen. Try this on for size: Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Martyr Patricio Clito Ruíz y Picasso

Andy Warhol  08/06

(1928 – 1987) American artist and illustrator and a well-known figure in the Pop Art movement. In addition to his many works of art, he is also famous for being the originator of the concept of “15 minutes of fame”.Andrew Warhola (August 6, 1928 – February 22, 1987), known as Andy Warhol, was an American painter, printmaker, and filmmaker who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art. After a successful career as a commercial illustrator, Warhol became famous worldwide for his work as a painter, avant-garde filmmaker, record producer, author, and member of highly diverse social circles that included bohemian street people, distinguished intellectuals, Hollywood celebrities and wealthy patrons.

Warhol has been the subject of numerous retrospective exhibitions, books, and feature and documentary films. He coined the widely used expression "15 minutes of fame." In his hometown of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, The Andy Warhol Museum exists in memory of his life and artwork.

 

The highest price ever paid for a Warhol painting is $100 million for a 1963 canvas titled Eight Elvises. The private transaction was reported in a 2009 article in The Economist, which described Warhol as the "bellwether of the art market." $100 million is a benchmark price that only Jackson Pollock, Pablo Picasso, Vincent van Gogh, Pierre-August Renoir, Gustav Klimt and Willem de Kooning have achieved.[1]

 


 


Piet Mondrian 03/07

(1872 – 1944) Dutch painter and an important contributor to the abstract De Stijl art movement.

Pieter Cornelis "Piet" Mondriaan, after 1912 Mondrian (Dutch pronunciation: [ˈpiːt ˈmɔndriaːn], later [ˈmɔndriɔn]; March 7, 1872 – February 1, 1944), was a Dutch painter.

 

He was an important contributor to the De Stijl art movement and group, which was founded by Theo van Doesburg. He evolved a non-representational form which he termed Neo-Plasticism. This consisted of white ground, upon which was painted a grid of vertical and horizontal black lines and the three primary colors.[1]

 

Between his 1905 painting, The River Amstel, and his 1907 Amaryllis, Mondrian changed the spelling of his signature from Mondriaan to Mondrian.[2]

 


 


Mad Jack Churchill  09/16

 

Lieutenant Colonel John Malcolm Thorpe Fleming "Jack" Churchill, DSO & Bar, MC & Bar (16 September 1906 – 8 March 1996), nicknamed "Fighting Jack Churchill" and "Mad Jack", was an English soldier who fought throughout World War II armed with a longbow, arrows, and a claymore (sword). He once said "any officer who goes into action without his sword is improperly dressed."

 

Bill Millin  7/14

 

William 'Bill' Millin (14 July 1922 – 17 August 2010[1]), commonly known as Piper Bill, was personal piper to Simon Fraser, 15th Lord Lovat, commander of 1 Special Service Brigade at D-Day.

 

a Scottish bagpiper who played highland tunes as his fellow commandos landed on a Normandy beach on D-Day and lived to see his bravado immortalized in the 1962 film “The Longest Day,” died on Wednesday in a hospital in the western England county of Devon. He was 88.


The cause was complications from a stroke, his family said.

 

Mr. Millin was a 21-year-old private in Britain’s First Special Service Brigade when his unit landed on the strip of coast the Allies code-named Sword Beach, near the French city of Caen at the eastern end of the invasion front chosen by the Allies for the landings on June 6, 1944.

 

By one estimate, about 4,400 Allied troops died in the first 24 hours of the landings, about two-thirds of them Americans.

 

The young piper was approached shortly before the landings by the brigade’s commanding officer, Brig. Simon Fraser, who as the 15th Lord Lovat was the hereditary chief of the Clan Fraser and one of Scotland’s most celebrated aristocrats. Against orders from World War I that forbade playing bagpipes on the battlefield because of the high risk of attracting enemy fire, Lord Lovat, then 32, asked Private Millin to play on the beachhead to raise morale.

 

When Private Millin demurred, citing the regulations, he recalled later, Lord Lovat replied: “Ah, but that’s the English War Office. You and I are both Scottish, and that doesn’t apply.”

 

After wading ashore in waist-high water that he said caused his kilt to float, Private Millin reached the beach, then marched up and down, unarmed, playing the tunes Lord Lovat had requested, including “Highland Laddie” and “Road to the Isles.”

 

With German troops raking the beach with artillery and machine-gun fire, the young piper played on as his fellow soldiers advanced through smoke and flame on the German positions, or fell on the beach. The scene provided an emotional high point in “The Longest Day.”

 

In later years Mr. Millin told the BBC the did not regard what he had done as heroic. When Lord Lovat insisted that he play, he said, “I just said ‘O.K.,’ and got on with it.” He added: “I didn’t notice I was being shot at. When you’re young, you do things you wouldn’t dream of doing when you’re older.”

 

He said he found out later, after meeting Germans who had manned guns above the beach, that they didn’t shoot him “because they thought I was crazy.”

 

Other British commandos cheered and waved, Mr. Millin recalled, though he said he felt bad as he marched among ranks of wounded soldiers needing medical help. But those who survived the landings offered no reproach.

 

“I shall never forget hearing the skirl of Bill Millin’s pipes,” one of the commandos, Tom Duncan, said years later. “As well as the pride we felt, it reminded us of home, and why we were fighting there for our lives and those of our loved ones.”

 

From the beach, Private Millin moved inland with the commandos to relieve British paratroopers who had seized a bridge near the village of Ouistreham that was vital to German attempts to move reinforcements toward the beaches. As the commandos crossed the bridge under German fire, Lord Lovat again asked Private Millin to play his pipes.

 

In 2008, French bagpipers started a fund to erect a statue of Mr. Millin near the landing site, but the fund remains far short of its $125,000 goal.

 

Bill Millin was born in Glasgow on July 14, 1922, the son of a policeman, and lived with his family in Canada as a child before returning to Scotland.

 

After the war, he worked on Lord Lovat’s estate near Inverness, but found the life too quiet and took a job as a piper with a traveling theater company. In the late 1950s, he trained in Glasgow as a psychiatric nurse and eventually settled in Devon, retiring in 1988. He visited the United States several times, lecturing on his D-Day experiences.

 


 


Robert Gerard Sands 03/09/1954

 

(Irish: Roibeárd Gearóid Ó Seachnasaigh,[1] commonly known as Bobby Sands; (9 March 1954 – 5 May 1981) was an Irish volunteer of the Provisional Irish Republican Army and member of the United Kingdom Parliament who died on hunger strike while in HM Prison Maze.

 

He was the leader of the 1981 hunger strike in which Irish republican prisoners protested against the removal of Special Category Status. During his strike he was elected as a member of the United Kingdom Parliament as an Anti H-Block/Armagh Political Prisoner candidate.[2][3] His death resulted in a new surge of IRA recruitment and activity. International media coverage brought attention to the hunger strikers, and the Republican movement in general, attracting both praise and criticism

 

The 1981 Irish hunger strike started with Sands refusing food on 1 March 1981. Sands decided that other prisoners should join the strike at staggered intervals in order to maximise publicity with prisoners steadily deteriorating successively over several months.

 

The hunger strike centred around five demands:

 

1.the right not to wear a prison uniform;

2.the right not to do prison work;

3.the right of free association with other prisoners, and to organise educational and recreational pursuits;

4.the right to one visit, one letter and one parcel per week;

5.full restoration of remission lost through the protest.[25]

The significance of the hunger strike was the prisoners' aim of being declared as political prisoners (or prisoners of war) and not to be classed as criminals. The Washington Post however, reported that the primary aim of the hunger strike was to generate international publicity

 

Sands died in the prison hospital after 66 days of hunger-striking, aged 27. The original pathologist's report recorded Sands' and the other hunger strikers' causes of death as "self-imposed starvation", later amended to simply "starvation" after protests from the dead strikers' families.[27] The coroner recorded verdicts of "starvation, self-imposed".[27]

 

The announcement of his death prompted several days of riots in nationalist areas of Northern Ireland. A milkman and his son, Eric and Desmond Guiney, died as a result of injuries sustained when their milk float crashed after being stoned by rioters in a predominantly nationalist area of north Belfast.[28][29] Over 100,000 people lined the route of Sands' funeral and he was buried in the 'New Republican Plot' alongside 76 others. Their grave is maintained and cared for by the National Graves Association, Belfast.[30] Sands was a Member of the Westminster Parliament for 25 days, though he never took his seat or the oath.

 

In response to a question in the House of Commons on 5 May 1981, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher said, "Mr. Sands was a convicted criminal. He chose to take his own life. It was a choice that his organisation did not allow to many of its victims".[31] The official announcement of Sands' death in the House of Commons omitted the customary expression of sense of loss and sympathy with the family of the member.[32]

 

He was survived by his parents, siblings, and a young son (Gerard) from his marriage to Geraldine Noade

 

In Europe, there were widespread protests after Sands' death. Five thousand Milanese students burned the Union Flag and shouted 'freedom for Ulster' during a march.[4] The British Consulate at Ghent was raided.[4] Thousands marched in Paris behind huge portraits of Sands, to chants of 'the IRA will conquer'.[4] In Oslo, demonstrators threw a balloon filled with tomato sauce at Elizabeth II, the Queen of the United Kingdom.[4] In the Soviet Union, Pravda described it as 'another tragic page in the grim chronicle of oppression, discrimination, terror and violence' in Ireland. Much more later Russian fans of Bobby Sands published a translation of the "Back Home In Derry" song ("На Родину в Дерри" in Russian). [4] Many French towns and cities have streets named after Sands, including in Nantes, St Etienne, Le Mans, Vierzon, and Saint-Denis.[33] In the Republic of Ireland, his death led to riots and bus burning. IRA members allegedly unsuccessfully attempted to coerce proprietors of shops and other businesses into closing for a national day of mourning.[34] The West German newspaper Die Welt took a negative view of Sands. The US media expressed a range of opinions on Sands' death.

 

William “Leadbelly” Ledbetter 12/06

 

Huddie (pronouced HYEW-dee or HUGH-dee) William Ledbetter (January 1888 – December 6, 1949) was an iconic American folk and blues musician, notable for his strong vocals, his virtuosity on the 12-string guitar, and the songbook of folk standards he introduced.

 

He is best known as Lead Belly or Leadbelly. Though many releases list him as "Leadbelly," he himself spelled it "Lead Belly." This is also the usage on his tombstone,[1][2] as well as of the Lead Belly Foundation.[3]

 

Although Lead Belly most commonly played the twelve string, he could also play the piano, mandolin, harmonica, violin, concertina, and accordion. In some of his recordings, such as in one of his versions of the folk ballad "John Hardy", he performs on the accordion instead of the guitar. In other recordings he just sings while clapping his hands or stomping his foot.

 

The topics of Lead Belly's music covered a wide range of subjects, including gospel songs; blues songs about women, liquor and racism; and folk songs about cowboys, prison, work, sailors, cattle herding and dancing. He also wrote songs concerning the newsmakers of the day, such as President Franklin Roosevelt, Adolf Hitler, Jean Harlow, the Scottsboro Boys, and Howard Hughes.

 

In 2008, Lead Belly was inducted into The Louisiana Music Hall of Fame.

 


 


Lead Belly's volatile temper sometimes led him into trouble with the law. In 1915 he was convicted "of carrying a pistol" and sentenced to do time on the Harrison County chain gang, from which he escaped, finding work in nearby Bowie County under the assumed name of Walter Boyd. In January 1918 he was imprisoned a second time, this time after killing one of his relatives, Will Stafford, in a fight over a woman. In 1918 he was incarcerated in Sugar Land west of Houston, Texas, where he probably learned the song "Midnight Special".[5][page needed] He served time in the Imperial Farm (now Central Unit) in Sugar Land.[6] In 1925 he was pardoned and released, having served seven years, or virtually all of the minimum of his seven-to-35-year sentence, after writing a song appealing to Governor Pat Morris Neff for his freedom. Lead Belly had swayed Neff by appealing to his strong religious beliefs. That, in combination with good behavior (including entertaining by playing for the guards and fellow prisoners), was Lead Belly's ticket out of jail. It was quite a testament to his persuasive powers, as Neff had run for governor on a pledge not to issue pardons (pardon by the governor was at that time the only recourse for prisoners, since in most Southern prisons there was no provision for parole). According to Charles K. Wolf and Kip Lornell's book, The Life and Legend of Leadbelly (1999), Neff had regularly brought guests to the prison on Sunday picnics to hear Lead Belly perform.

 

In 1930, Lead Belly was back in prison, after a summary trial, this time in Louisiana, for attempted homicide — he had knifed a white man in a fight. It was there, three years later (1933), that he was "discovered" by folklorists John Lomax and his then 18-year-old son Alan Lomax[7] during a visit to the Angola Prison Farm. Deeply impressed by his vibrant tenor voice and huge repertoire, they recorded him on portable aluminum disc recording equipment for the Library of Congress. They returned to record with new and better equipment in July of the following year (1934), all in all recording hundreds of his songs. On August 1, Lead Belly was released (again having served almost all of his minimum sentence), this time after the Lomaxes had taken a petition to Louisiana Governor Oscar K. Allen at Lead Belly's urgent request. The petition was on the other side of a recording of his signature song, "Goodnight Irene". A prison official later wrote to John Lomax denying that Lead Belly's singing had anything to do with his release from Angola, and state prison records confirm that he was eligible for early release due to good behavior. A descendant of his has also confirmed this.[citation needed] For a time, however, both Lead Belly and the Lomaxes believed that the record they had taken to the governor had hastened his release from Angola.

 

Among those who befriended Lead Belly while he was at Angola was the industrialist and inventor William Edenborn of Winn Parish, who became a regular prison visitor.[8]

 

Bob Dylan once remarked, on his XM radio show, that Lead Belly was "One of the few ex-cons who recorded a popular children’s album."

 

In 1949 Lead Belly had a regular radio broadcast on station WNYC in New York on Sunday nights on Henrietta Yurchenko's show. Later in the year he began his first European tour with a trip to France, but fell ill before its completion, and was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig's disease.[7] His final concert was at the University of Texas in a tribute to his former mentor, John A. Lomax, who had died the previous year. Martha also performed at that concert, singing spirituals with her husband.

 

Lead Belly died later that year in New York City, and was buried in the Shiloh Baptist Church cemetery in Mooringsport, 8 miles (13 km) west of Blanchard, in Caddo Parish. He is honored with a life-size statue across from the Caddo Parish Courthouse in Shreveport

 


 


Max Baer

 

Denzel Washington

 

Steven Hawking

 

Johnny Cash

 

John Lennon


William Lamport "El Zorro"

But the secret of the dashing Hispanic swordsman was that he was an Irish gentleman of noble birth a soldier of fortune named William Lamport, born in 1615 in County Wexford. William hailed from a Catholic family, and left Ireland during the confederate conflict as a result of oppressive English rule. He worked for a while as a privateer, attacking Englishmen merchantmen of Cromwell’s Commonwealth. In 1643 he enlisted in one of the three Irish regiments in Spanish service (O’Neill, O’Donnell and Fitzgerald) to fight against the French forces in Spanish Flanders. He was commended for bravery and entered Spanish Royal service.

Assuming the name “Guillen Lombardo” he went to the then-Spanish colony of Mexico. Once in Mexico he developed a sympathy for the poor and native Indians. He lived amongst them studying astrology and their healing skills. For this he came to the notice of the Spanish Inquisition, which under the guise of religious “correctness” hunted out enemies of the King of Spain. William became the leader of the fledgling Mexican independence movement. His name occurs time and time again in reports of Inquisitors gathering information by torture of suspected rebels. William was noted for a series of steamy affairs with Spanish noblewomen, both married and unmarried. He became engaged to Antonia Turcious, a member of the nobility, but before he could marry he was arrested by the Inquisition and accused of conspiracy against Spain and its Most Catholic Majesty. He was jailed for 10 years, but escaped from his dungeon and emerged only at night to daub the walls of Mexico City with his name and anti-Spanish graffiti.

William was arrested in 1652 when found in the bed of the wife of the Spanish Viceroy of Mexico, Marquis Lope Diez de Caderyta. He was sentenced to 7 years imprisonment, at the end of which he was turned over to the Inquisition to be burnt at the stake as a heretic. In 1659 He was tied to the stake in Mexico City, but as the bundles of brush and wood were lit, he undid the ropes that bound him and strangled himself before the flames could reach him.

 

 Johnny Cash
Pat Tillman
Michael Collins
Babe Ruth
Fedor Emelienenko
Michael Phelps
Lance Armstrong
Rosa Parks
Rosa Parks was an African American civil rights activist whom the U.S. Congress later called “Mother of the Modern-Day Civil Rights Movement”. On December 1, 1955, Parks became famous for refusing to obey bus driver James Blake’s order that she give up her seat to make room for a white passenger. This action of civil disobedience started the Montgomery Bus Boycott, which is one of the largest movements against racial segregation. In addition, this launched Martin Luther King, Jr., who was involved with the boycott, to prominence in the civil rights movement. She has had a lasting legacy worldwide. Rosa Parks resided in Detroit until she died at the age of ninety-two on October 24, 2005. City officials in Montgomery and Detroit announced on October 27, 2005 that the front seats of their city buses would be reserved with black ribbons in honor of Parks until her funeral. Her casket was transported to Washington, DC, and taken, aboard a bus similar to the one in which she made her protest, to lie in honor in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda (making her the first woman and second African American ever to receive this honor).

Martin Luther King Jr
Joan of Arc
Saint Joan of Arc was a 15th century national heroine of France. She was tried and executed for heresy when she was only 19 years old. The judgment was declared invalid by the Pope and she was declared innocent and a martyr 24 years later. She was beatified in 1909 and canonized as a saint in 1920. Joan asserted that she had visions from God which told her to recover her homeland from English domination late in the Hundred Years’ War. The uncrowned King Charles VII sent her to the siege at Orléans as part of a relief mission. She gained prominence when she overcame the dismissive attitude of veteran commanders and lifted the siege in only nine days. Several more swift victories led to Charles VII’s coronation at Reims and settled the disputed succession to the throne. She remained astute to the end of her life and rehabilitation trial testimony frequently marvels at her astuteness. Her subtle replies under interrogation even forced the court to stop holding public sessions.

Catherine II (the Great) reigned as Empress of Russia for 34 years, from June 28, 1762 until her death. She exemplifies the enlightened despot of her era. During her reign Catherine extended the borders of the Russian Empire southward and westward to absorb New Russia, Crimea, Right-Bank Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania, and Courland at the expense of two powers — the Ottoman Empire and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Catherine made Russia the dominant power in south-eastern Europe after her first Russo–Turkish War against the Ottoman Empire (1768–1774), which saw some of the greatest defeats in Turkish history, including the Battle of Chesma (5 July – 7 July 1770) and the Battle of Kagul (21 July 1770). Catherine’s patronage furthered the evolution of the arts in Russia more than that of any Russian sovereign before or after her. She subscribed to the ideals of the Enlightenment and considered herself a “philosopher on the throne”. She showed great awareness of her image abroad, and ever desired that Europe should perceive her as a civilized and enlightened monarch, despite the fact that in Russia she often played the part of the tyrant.

In 1889 Emmeline Pankhurst founded the Women’s Franchise League, followed by the Women’s Social and Political Union in 1905. She was joined by her daughters Christabel and Sylvia among others in the fight for Women’s Suffrage. Pankhurst’s tactics for drawing attention to the movement led to her being imprisoned several times, and even experienced force-feeding after going on hunger strike several times. She was also instrumental in placing women in men’s jobs during World War 1. She received funding of several thousand pounds from the government to aid her in encouraging employers that women were in fact fit to undertake these jobs. Her efforts finally came to fruition in March 1918, when women over the age of 30 were given the right to vote. Later that same year, women over the age of 21 were given the right to become Members of Parliament, despite the fact they were still unable to vote. It wasn’t until 1928 that women were finally given the same voting rights as men in the United Kingdom.

Boudica was a queen of the Iceni people of Norfolk who lead an uprising of the tribes against the occupying forces of the Roman Empire. Her husband, Prasutagus had left his Kingdom jointly to his daughters and the Roman Emperor when he died. The Roman Empire allowed allied independence only for the lifetime of the current king, and inheritance though the male line only was permitted. As he had left his kingdom to his daughters, his will was ignored and his kingdom annexed as if it had been conquered. It is reported that Boudica was flogged and her daughters raped. She was later chosen as the leader of her people and their neighbors in an uprising against the Romans. Her army fell on the poorly defended city of Camulodunum (Colchester), and destroyed it, besieging the last defenders in the temple for two days before it fell. Archaeology shows the city was methodically demolished. Quintus Petillius Cerialis attempted to relieve the city, but his forces were routed. His infantry was wiped out: only the commander and some of his cavalry escaped. Tacitus says the Britons had no interest in taking or selling prisoners, only in slaughter by gibbet, fire, or cross. Dio’s account gives more prurient detail: that the noblest women were impaled on spikes and had their breasts cut off and sewn to their mouths, “to the accompaniment of sacrifices, banquets, and wanton behaviour” in sacred places, particularly the groves of Andraste. Ironically, the great anti-imperialist rebel is now identified with the head of the British Empire, and her statue stands guard over the city she razed to the ground

Saint Catherine of Siena (born 23rd of 25 children) was a scholastic philosopher and theologian. She received no education and at age seven decided to become a lay member of the Dominican religious order (against the wishes of her parents). She lived at home as an anchoress in order to be able to perform acts of self denial that would not have been permitted in a nunnery. Catherine dedicated her life to helping the ill and the poor, where she took care of them in hospitals or homes. She wrote letters to men and women in authority, especially begging for peace between the republics and principalities of Italy and for the return of the papacy from Avignon to Rome. She carried on a long correspondence with Pope Gregory XI, also asked him to reform the clergy and the administration of the Papal States. Incredibly, the Pope, inspired by her wisdom, did return the Papal administration to Rome. Catherine’s letters are considered one of the great works of early Tuscan literature. More than 300 letters have survived. Pope Pius II canonized Catherine in 1461 and she is now one of three female Doctors of the Church. She is also one of the patron saints of Europe. You can read the letters of Saint Catherine of Siena online.

Eva Peron (Evita) was First Lady of Argentina from 1946 until her death in 1952. During her time as wife of President Juan Peron, she became powerful within the Pro-Peronist trade unions. Eventually, she founded the charitable Eva Perón Foundation, and the nation’s first large-scale female political party, the Female Peronist Party. Her charitable organization built homes for the poor and homeless, and also provided free health care to citizens. Eventually, Evita became the center of her own vast personality cult and her image and name soon appeared everywhere, with train stations, a city (“Ciudad Evita”), and even a star being named after her. Despite her dominance and political power, Evita was always careful to never undermine the important symbolic role of her husband. On August 22, 1951 the unions held a mass rally of two million people called “Cabildo Abierto” at which they begged Eva Peron to run for vice president. It has been claimed that “Cabildo Abierto” was the largest public display of support in history for a female political figure. She eventually declined to run and died the following year of Cancer.

Tomyris (reigned c. 530 BC) was a queen of the Massagetae, an Iranian people of Central Asia east of the Caspian Sea. She was famous for defeating and killing the Persian emperor Cyrus the Great during his invasion and attempted conquest of her country. When Cyrus captured Tomyris’ son, she sent a letter to him denouncing his treachery and challenging him to honorable battle. In the fight that ensued, the Persians were defeated with high casualties, Cyrus himself was killed, and Tomyris had his corpse beheaded. She allegedly kept his head with her at all times and drank wine from it until her death. Persian and Central Asian folklore maintain a rich store of other tales about Tomyris. It is believed that the word Tomis present day Constanta comes from Tomyris.

Hatshepsut is generally regarded by Egyptologists as one of the most successful female pharaohs, reigning longer than any other woman of an indigenous Egyptian dynasty. Although records of her reign are documented in diverse ancient sources, Hatshepsut was once described by early modern scholars as only having served as a co-regent from about 1479 to 1458 BC, during years seven to twenty-one of the reign previously identified as that of Thutmose III. It is now known that Hatshepsut assumed the position of pharaoh and her reign as king is usually given as twenty-two years since Manetho assigns her a reign of 21 years and 9 months. As Hatshepsut reestablished the trade networks that had been disrupted during the Hyksos occupation of Egypt during the Second Intermediate Period, thereby building a wealth of the Eighteenth Dynasty that has become so famous since the discovery of the burial of one of her descendants, Tutankhamun, began to be analysed. Hatshepsut was one of the most prolific builders in ancient Egypt, commissioning hundreds of construction projects throughout both Upper and Lower Egypt, that were grander and more numerous than those of any of her Middle Kingdom predecessors. Although many Egyptologists have claimed that her foreign policy was mainly peaceful, there is evidence that Hatshepsut led successful military campaigns in Nubia, the Levant, and Syria early in her career.

Florence Nightingale who came to be known as “The Lady with the Lamp”, was a pioneer of modern nursing, a writer and a noted statistician. Her lasting contribution has been her role in founding the modern nursing profession. She set a shining example for nurses everywhere of compassion, commitment to patient care, and diligent and thoughtful hospital administration. The work of the Nightingale School of Nursing continues today. The Nightingale building in the School of Nursing and Midwifery at the University of Southampton is named after her. International Nurses Day is celebrated on her birthday each year. Florence Nightingale’s most famous contribution came during the Crimean War, which became her central focus when reports began to filter back to Britain about the horrific conditions for the wounded. Florence and her compatriots began by thoroughly cleaning the hospital and equipment and reorganizing patient care. Nightingale believed the high death rates in the hospitals were due to poor nutrition and supplies and overworking of the soldiers. Consequently, she reduced deaths in the Army during peacetime and turned attention to the sanitary design of hospitals.

Alexander the Great

Grigori Rasputin

Simo Häyhä “White Death”

Abdullo Qodiriy

George Patton - Allied general that was most feared by Germany.

Audie Murphy - Most decorated US combat soldier.

Lewis "Chesty" Puller - Only Marine to earn five Navy Crosses.

Chuck Yeager - Test pilot who first broke the sound barrier.

Francis Marion - The "Swamp Fox," famous general from the US Revolution.

William Wallace - Scottish independence fighter.

Spartacus - Slave who led a rebellion against the Roman Empire.

Paul Neal "Red" Adair : Born June 18, 1915 in Houston, Texas.
Died August 8, 2004 in Houston, Texas, natural causes.

Paul Neal "Red" Adair was born to Charles and Mary Adair. Charles was a blacksmith in the Heights of Houston. Red had four brothers and three sisters. Red Adair quit high school and held various jobs to support the family. In 1936 he went to work for the Southern Pacific Railroad.
Red's first oil-related job came in 1938 with the Otis Pressure Control Company. Red worked numerous odd jobs in the oil industry before joining the Army during World War II. Red served with the 139th Bomb Disposal Squadron and attained the rank of Staff Sergeant.
After the war, Red began to work for Myron Kinley, the original pioneer of oil well fire and blowout control. Red worked for the M. M. Kinley Company for fourteen years, until he resigned in 1956. Red then formed the Red Adair Company.
The Red Adair Company became world-famous for pioneering techniques to control oil well fires and blowouts. The Red Adair Company was the first to extinguish an underwater wild well and the first to cap a U.S. well while it was on fire. Red's legend started when he extinguished the "Devil's Cigarette Lighter" in 1962 in the Sahara Desert. The blaze had been burning for six months, fueled by over 550 million cubic feet of gas a day.
Red also fought the 1970 offshore blaze at Bay Marchland, Louisiana, and the Piper Alpha disaster in 1988. Perhaps his most famous battle occurred when Red's team extinguished 117 oil well fires in Kuwait, left by the retreating Iraqi Army.
Red Adair was technical advisor for the John Wayne movie Hellfighters. Red sold the Red Adair Company in 1993.

"Retire? I don't know what that word means. As long as a man is able to work and he's productive out there and he feels good — keep at it. I've got too many of my friends that retired and went home and got on a rocking chair, and about a year and a half later, I'm always going to the cemetery." (to reporters while working at the Kuwaiti oil well fires at the end of the Gulf War in 1991)

"I've done made a deal with the devil. He said he's going to give me an air-conditioned place when I go down there, if I go there, so I won't put all the fires out." (in 1991, joking about afterlife alternatives)


Hugh Glass
In 1823, while a member of a trapping expedition led by Andrew Henry, Hugh Glass was mauled by a sow grizzly. His back and scalp were torn apart and one leg was broken. Because they were in Indian country, and because it seemed obvious that Glass could not live, Henry detailed John Fitzgerald and the 17-year-old Jim Bridger to stay with Glass until he died, bury him, and then catch up with the main party.

When Glass survived for 4 days, Fitzgerald and Bridger decided that there was no sense in waiting longer and left, after taking Glass’ rifle, tomahawk, and knife. Eventually, Glass grew strong enough to crawl, and be began his journey to Fort Kiowa, 200 miles and 6 weeks away. He set his own leg and let maggots eat the rotting flesh on his back. He lived on roots and berries, and on one occasion was able to drive a pair of wolves away from the carcass of a buffalo calf.

When he made it, he swore revenge on Fitzgerald and Bridger, but it was not to be: the former had joined the army, and he forgave the latter because of his youth. Glass was killed near the Yellowstone River by Arikara Indians in 1833.

John Wesley Hardin ?
Some gunmen (Wyatt Earp, most notably) built awesome reputations despite having killed very few people. (Earp got three or four.) However, this fun-loving Texan stacked up the bodies on an assembly-line basis. Born in 1853, Hardin stabbed a schoolmate at the age of 14, and then got serious a year later when he shot his first man. For the next ten years his life was one protracted gunfight, interrupted by arrests and escapes from jail. In 1878, he was tried and sentenced to 25 years for murder in Texas, but was pardoned in 1894.

Hardin then went bad. He studied law and opened a more or less successful practice. In 1895, he was murdered in El Paso by Constable John Selman, who shot him in the back of the head while Hardin was rolling dice. Hardin claim to have killed 44 men; the real number is probably more like 30. It will do.

Bear River Tom Smith
Remember all the punchouts in the Saturday afternoon Westerns? Mostly that stuff never happened, but here was one lawman who did use his fists in favor of his guns. Tom Smith was a New Yorker, a professional middleweight prizefighter, and a policeman who was hired by the city of Abilene, Kansas, in 1869. Smith enforced a highly unpopular no-guns policy in the cowtown, and for the most part, made the law stick by beating the hell out of people with his bare hands. He was thought to be completely fearless, and never backed down from a fight, no matter what the odds.

Smith met his end while carrying a gun to serve a warrant on two local farmers. He was shot, then clubbed with a rifle butt, and then decapitated with an axe. Smith was succeeded by James Butler Hickok, who believed in shooting people.

 

 

Frank Hammer
Born in 1884 he is my personal selection as the toughest sumbitch of all. This Texas Ranger is best known for leading the posse that killed Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow in 1934 (and forget the crap you saw in the movie; no one ever got the drop on him). He was a big man who would cheerfully stomp a mudhole in your ass or shoot you if you broke the law. He was never beaten in a fight of any kind; he survived numerous gunshot wounds and killed numerous people. Hamer did not play politics, which probably cut short his Ranger career.

Hamer’s career spanned the last of the Old West and into the 20th century. He served 18 years in the Rangers, and even after his retirement he retained a special commission as a Ranger. During his life, he refused money (a lot of it, reportedly) to tell his life story. Hamer died in his bed in 1955.

Jack “Coffee” Hayes
Black Bart
Isaac Parker (the “hanging judge”)
Roy Bean

Deputy Tom Herrera.   From 1943 to 1973 he was the “law” in several hundred square miles of New Mexico, not known for it’s law abiding ways even today.

Elfego Baca

Jim Bridger
Once there was a mountain man who couldn’t write his name
Yet he deserves the front row seat in History’s Hall of Fame
He forgot more about the Indians than we will ever know
He spoke the language of the Sioux the Black Foot and the Crow
(Let’s drink to old Jim Bridger yes lift your glasses high)
As long as there’s the USA don’t let his memory die
(That he was making history never once occured to him)
But I doubt if we’d been here if it weren’t for men like Jim

He spoke with General Custer and said listen Yellow Hair
The Sioux are the great nation so treat ‘em fair and square
Sit in on their war councils, don’t laugh away their pride
But Custer didn’t listen at Little Big Horn Custer died
(Let’s drink to old Jim Bridger...

There’s poems and there’s legends that tell of Carson’s fame
Yet compared to Jim Bridger Kit was civilized and tame
These words are straight from Carson’s lips if you place that story by him
If there’s a man who knows this God forsaken land it’s Jim
(Let’s drink to old Jim Bridger...


Commodore Perry Owens
Liver Eating Johnson

Aron Ralston went on a canyoneering trip in Blue John Canyon in Utah. A boulder fell on Aron’s arm pinning him to the ground. He spent five days trying to move the boulder, with no success. Aron drank his own urine to stay alive and videoed his goodbyes to his family. As a last attempt Aron cracked the bone in his forearm and with a pocket knife he cut away the soft tissue. He removed his body from the boulder leaving the arm behind and walked to help. He later had his arm cremated and returned the ashes to the site of the boulder.


Truman Duncan was a railroad switchman. Truman fell off the rails into an oncoming train. He was sucked in under the train and was cut in two. He lost both legs and a kidney but stayed conscious long enough to call for help on his cell phone. He waited forty five minutes for help and endured a twenty three hour surgery and lived.

 

Joe Simpson and Simon Yates were the first to scale the west peak of the Siula Grande in the Peruvian Andes. Simpson fell into a 100 foot crevice and Yates had to leave him. Simpson, after surviving the fall, crawled out of the crevice and crawled for three days back to base camp

Valentia from Rwanda

 

Cyrus the Great

Founder of the Persian Empire, Cyrus was spoken of in glowing terms by nearly all he encountered. Aside from being a ferocious combatatant, Cyrus was a merciful and wise ruler, praised by Herodotus and credited by the Bible with the return of the Jews to Jerusalem from their captivity in Babylon. Beyond conquering a vast amount of territory, Cyrus' greatness also lied in his ability to govern. The pattern of the Persian empire, one based upon provinces ruled by satraps all answering to a single, centralized authority, was followed for hundreds of years, and inspired the governments of future empires. Cyrus was largely unaffected by power and wealth though. When questioned as to why he didn't invade foreign lands and move from such a barren landscape, Cyrus replied, " Soft countries breed soft men. It is not the property of any one soil to produce fine fruits and good soldiers too."

 Peter the Great

Peter is a greatly overlooked and underrated figure in history. His childhood, which could have been defined by lavish indulgences and adolescent entertainments, was instead spent on learning, exploration, and "war games" with his playmates. Instead of whiling away time in the palace, Peter was recreating battles with his friends. The older he got, the more realisitc the "battles" became, eventually including elaborate forts. rifles with blanks, uniforms, and of course, some serious injuries. As Peter grew out of war games, his feverish passion for learning led to the formation of the first Russian navy, as all free time was devoted to educating himself and others on ship-building, dockyard construction, and sea-faring. Using Western Europe as his example, Peter completely revamped the Russian empire, modernizing every facet of Russian life and rebuilding his army from the ground up. Peter changed the face of Russia forever, changing her from a backward and dispersed tsardom to an efficient, modern and powerful emipire within his life-span. Peter's childhood disdain for luxury stayed with him his entire life, shrugging off kingly accomodations for simple, practically spartan living arrangements.

Xenophon

As a mercenary for hire from Athens, Greece, Xenophon's career took a turn for the worse in 401 BC, when the supposedly superior army of his employer, Cyrus the Younger, was defeated by the king of Persia, Artaxerxes II at the battle of Cunaxa. Seems Cyrus had failed to mention his true plans of overtaking the Persian empire from his older brother Artaxerxes. Instead, he deceived his Greek mercenaries and told them they would be fighting against the army of Tissaphernes, satrap of Caria and an old rival of Cyrus. To no surprise, the smaller army of Cyrus fell to Artaxerxes' force, and the Greeks found themselves far from home, surrounded by enemies. Through treachery, the Persians assassinated the Spartan Clearchus, leader of the Greek forces, and new leaders were accordingly elected, one of these being Xenophon. Deep within Mesopotamia, Xenophon skillfully led his army of 10,000 900 miles north to the Black Sea, fighting through hostile country every step of the way. Thankfully he lived to tell about it, and we can today read of his exploits in Xenophon's history book, The Anabasis.

Queen Boudicca

Of the all the atrocities carried out against women by the Roman army, this is one they lived to regret. After his death, Rome ignored the will of Boudicca's husband Prasutagus, which stated that his kingdom be divided between Boudicca, her daughters, and the Roman Empire, and begun plundering the territory that lawfully belonged to her. Had they stopped there, perhaps the warrior queen would have been more merciful, but after flogging her and raping her daughters, Boudicca's wrath was fully unleashed. Her army first marched to the Roman colony of Camulodunum, and destroyed it. They then defeated a retaliatory Roman division, and completely annihilated London, killing all inhabitants and burning it to the ground. The destruction didn't stop there, as Boudicca's avenging army moved from settlement to settlement, destroying all who stood in her way. The Britons met their match though, against the Roman general Suetonius, who employed superior weapons and tactics, and who used a narrow battlefield to negate the advantage of Boudicca's much larger army. Though Boudicca perished, probably by self-poisoning, the ferocity of her attacks due to Roman injustices led to a more tolerant approach towards the tribes of Britain by Rome.

King David


David's military accomplishments are legendary. Time and time again he brought his men against greater Philistine forces, and time and time again completely routed them. He paid for his bride with the foreskins of 200 slain Philistine warriors (try to avoid the visual), and sucessfully evaded roving bands of Saul's men bent on destroying him. But it's his first great accomplishment that puts him at number 4: The slaying of Goliath. According to I Samuel, David was only an adolescent when he destroyed Goliath. The courage involved in just confronting a nine-foot tall Philistine warrior covered in bronze armor is staggering enough, but David backed up his threats, and with nothing more than a sling and a stone, cracked Goliath right in between the eyes. He then picked up the warrior's sword and beheaded him, effectively demoralizing the Phillistine army and earning himself a place in history. Not bad for a teenager.

King Leonidas of Sparta

Well, this is a no-brainer. Anyone who has seen the movie "300" has at least a marginal grasp of what occurred at the pass of Thermopylae in 480 BC, however idealized and fantastic the movie interpretation may be. Even though in truth Leonidas' 300 Spartans were accompanied by approximately 700 Greeks during their last stand, the accomplishment is in no way diminished. After the traiterous Ephialtes revealed a way for the Persians to surround the Greeks, Leonidas and his men remained, in the faint hope that their sacrifice would buy enought time for the rest of Greece to amass a navy large enough to face the Persian threat. For three days they held off a Persian force numbering in the hundreds of thousands. When their spears broke, they fought with their swords. When their swords broke, they fought with their hands and teeth. Eventually, the Greeks, cornered by the massive Persian army, were slaughtered to a man. But their sacrifice not only bought Greece enough time to raise their navy (winning the battle of Salamis, a major turning point in the war) but the effect it had on overall Greek morale was astounding.

Joan of Arc

Joan of Arc was only 12 years old when she first started receiving visions concerning her role in the expulsion of the English army from France, and boy, did she listen. As a poor, uneducated farm girl, very few took Joan seriously, until she accurately predicted a battle reversal at Orleans, the last stronghold holding out England from the rest of France. Thus began a mind-blowing career, one that still has historians scratching their heads. How could a teenage girl with no military background succesfully lead armies against the English? It is a perplexing, almost unbelievable occurrence, and yet it happened. Joan of Arc proposed that France take the offensive at Orleans. They did, and they won, again and again; first taking back Orleans, then pushing all the way to the town of Reims. Not only was Joan a gifted strategist, she was tough as nails. Shot with arrows and crossbow bolts, hit in the head with a cannonball, not to mention the exhaustion involved in just moving around in that armor, Joan didn't cry, didn't complain, she just shook it off and returned to the battlefield to lead her army to victory. Amazing.

Paul of Tarsus

After being blinded for three days, Paul of Tarsus converted to Christianity and pretty much hit the ground running. Shipwrecks, imprisonment, and torture, not to mention being ostracized by entire cities (Like Ephesus), Paul endured almost every discomfort known to mankind, and yet, at the end of day, didn't complain, rather boasted about it all. There is something very impressive about a guy who preached to unruly mobs bent on ripping him apart and yet kept a smile on his face. Paul didn't lead armies into battle, or ascend the hightest peaks, but his passion was second-to-none, and his courage exlempary. Paul never gave up, never relented. As soon as his life's mission was clear, he ran with it, and lived with fervor, compassion and unflinching bravery.

Alexander the Great

Where to begin? From childhood to death, Alexander encompassed the term "bad ass." As a child, he tamed his loyal steed, Bucephalus. A feat that full-grown men, horse-trainers at that, failed to accomplish. He led his men into battle at the head of his cavalry, was stabbed, shot with arrows, and clubbed over the head numerous times, and surpassed the endurance level of his entire army time and time again. During a desert march, in which hundreds of Alexander's men fell from exhaustion and dehydration, some of his soldiers were able to procure a scant amount of water, putting it in a helmet and presenting it to their leader. Alexander, though grateful, dumped it on the ground, choosing instead to share every discomfort of his army.

The morning of the battle of Gaugamela, camped before hundreds of thousands of enemy soldiers, Alexander overslept, and had to be woken by his men. Upon waking, Alexander was in an excellent mood, and felt that victory over the Persian army had already been gained. I have to wonder, where does one conjure up that sort of fearlessness?

 

Chandragupta Maurya, born in Bihar, Eastern India, was an orphaned commoner who changed the face of India and forever altered its history, by clawing his way from the slums to forging one of the most expansive Empires in India’s history. Not only did he command nine thousand war elephants, fifty million people and an army of thirty-six thousand – he also had one of the most badass (and awesome) bodyguard units ever. His personal bodyguard unit was made of up more than five hundred Greek and Indian warrior women. In order to destroy the Nanda empire, Maurya simply grabbed a bronze sword and singlehandedly stormed the palace. He was captured and jailed, but escaped – further cementing his place in history as a badass. Ultimately, he went on to destroy the ruling dynasty and put into place the long lasting Maurya dynasty.

 

The Surena (a general) was born into the Surena family who had, for generations, protected the Kings of Parthia (found in Modern day Iran), but it was the general who cemented the family name in the books of history. By all accounts he was the hottest guy in town, the strongest, the manliest and the deadliest – and was obviously such a badass that he is known only as THE Surena. When King Hydrodes was overthrown and expelled from Parthia, the Surena led the mission to recapture the Kingdom. He also had a huge harem of concubines, which took two hundred wagons to transport, that travelled with him everywhere – including on military campaigns. When Crassus stupidly decided to take over the Parthian Empire at the battle of Carrhae, he was brutally put down in one of the most embarrassing trounces of the Roman Army ever, by the Surena and his men. When offered the chance to surrender, Crassus told his men to flee and consequently sent them all to their deaths as the Surena chased them down and killed the lot of them. Crassus was personally beheaded by the Surena and had molten gold poured down his neck. Oh – and did I mention that the Surena was a cross-dresser? Well, not quite, but this is what Plutarch said of him: “[He was] the tallest and finest looking man himself, but the delicacy of his looks and effeminacy of his dress did not promise so much manhood as he really was master of; or his face was painted, and his hair parted after the fashion of the Medes.”

 

Charles Martel – otherwise known as Charles the Hammer – was so badass that he not only stopped the Islamic invasion of Western Europe, he is considered to be a founding father of the Middle Ages and all of the delights that came from it (feudalism, knights and chivalry), and laid the groundwork for the Carolingian empire (he was Charlemagne’s Grandfather). He came to be in a position to lead the army against the invading Muslims, because he was the Mayor of the Palace under the Frankish kings. At that time the Kings were pretty useless and left all of the hard work up to the Mayor. He lost only one battle in his lifetime (the Battle of Cologne) but, most importantly, he won the Battle of Tours (October 10, 732) in which two French towns fought against the armies of the Umayyad Caliphat. The defeat of the Muslim army was very significant and, if the battle had gone the other way, we would probably all be speaking Arabic right now. The French army fought the battle entirely on foot which led many to declare that God had given the French the victory. Oh – and to top it all off he was humble too! Martel refused to accept an honorary title from the Pope for saving Europe.

 

Ulf (which means wolf) the Quarrelsome was a brutal Irish Warrior and brother of High King Brian Boru (pictured above). He despised the vikings because they murdered his mother while he was young. While King Brian made a name for himself by uniting Ireland, Ulf made a name for himself by whacking people over the head with a giant battle axe. The union of Ireland put an end to the Scandinavian power over the nation of small states and kingdoms, but some people weren’t too keen about the new state of affairs and they rebelled – with the help of thousands of vikings. It was the famous Battle of Clontarf, in 1014, that Ulf really showed his badassness. After almost singlehandedly destroying the viking rebels, Ulf came upon Bróðir of Man – one of the nastiest vikings around (and a sorcerer to boot). Here is Njals saga’s account of how Ulf ended the life of Bróðir – in revenge for killing his brother, King Brian: “Ulf the Quarrelsome cut open his belly, and led him round and round the trunk of a tree, and so wound all his entrails out of him, and he did not die before they were all drawn out of him.”

 

Harald Hardrada
1015 – September 25, 1066
Harald was the youngest of Saint King Olaf II of Norway’s three half-brothers, born to Åsta Gudbrandsdatter. After King Cnut killed his brother Saint Olaf (while Harald was a mere 15 years old), he went off to Constantinople and made himself rich. He then took the opportunity to join the most feared mercenary army, (the Byzantine Vanguard) and began working (or rather cleaving) his way through various armies at the paid request of various European kings. Over his lifetime Harald went on to battle anywhere he could – Europe, the Middle East and Jerusalem. He even managed to take a bit of time out to marry Princess Elisabeth of Russia. Eventually, Harald became the King of Norway (after the young illegitimate King Magnus mysteriously died). Not being content to rule just one country, he spent years trying to conquer Denmark (much to everyone’s annoyance – in Denmark and in Norway). He finally decided to put his energies elsewhere, which was to be his downfall, but the main reason that history remembers him – he decided to conquer England. Alas, his attempts to take England failed and his army was smashed by that of King Harold Godwinson. Harald was the last great Viking king of Norway, and his invasion of England, and death at the Battle of Stamford Bridge in 1066, marked the end of the Viking age and beginning of the High Middle Ages.

 

Tomoe Gozen
1157 – 1247
Two words sum up this amazing woman: concubine, warrior. Tomoe Gozen was an extremely rare thing: a female samurai warrior. Here is what a historical account of her says: “Tomoe was especially beautiful, with white skin, long hair, and charming features. She was also a remarkably strong archer, and as a swordswoman she was a warrior worth a thousand, ready to confront a demon or a god, mounted or on foot. She handled unbroken horses with superb skill; she rode unscathed down perilous descents. Whenever a battle was imminent, Yoshinaka sent her out as his first captain, equipped with strong armor, an oversized sword and a mighty bow; and she performed more deeds of valor than any of his other warriors.” High praise indeed for a male dominated nation, in the 13th century. This warrior woman was also a concubine of Minamoto no Yoshinaka, a revered Japanese general. When he was defeated on the battle field, the sexist pig told Tomoe to leave as he would be ashamed to die with a woman. She went on to behead many, slaughter many, and retire to a quiet life as a nun. Yes – a nun.

 

Miyamoto Musashi
1584 – 1645
Miyamoto Musashi was a kensei – a sword saint. In Japan, this word was used to refer to someone so badass with their sword that they were believed to posses preternatural abilities. Miyamoto Musashi was about the best example of this, ever. In his lifetime he fought over 60 duels, and won them all. He was trained in swordsmanship at the Yoshioka ryu school – a school he later singlehandedly destroyed. His first duel was at the age of thirteen and after that he basically wandered the country fighting as many people as possible, regardless of the weapon they wielded. At the age of thirty he had his most famous duel, against Sasaki Kojirō (The Demon of the Western Provinces). Sasaki Kojirō, fighting with a two handed sword, was defeated very quickly by Musashi, who fought with a little wooden staff, he carved in the boat on his way to the fight. Sick of fighting (and suffering from ill health) he retired to a cave to live as a hermit and write books. He died kneeling, with one hand on his sword and the other on his walking stick.

Agustina of Aragon
March 4, 1786 – May 29, 1857
Agustina de Aragón was a Spanish heroine who defended Spain during the Spanish War of Independence, first as a civilian and later as a professional officer in the Spanish Army. So badass were her actions that she became known as “the Spanish Joan of Arc”. When war broke out in 1808, in her small Spanish town, she took a basket of apples to feed the gunners. When she arrived she saw the Spanish soldiers take heavy losses to the French army, causing the Spaniards to flee. Instead of running away, Agustina ran to the cannons and began to defend the town on her own. The sight of her doing this gave the Spaniards the courage to return and help. After a bloody struggle, the French gave up the assault on Zaragosa and abandoned their siege for a few short weeks, before returning to fight their way into the city, house-by-house which ultimately won them the town. After being captured by the French, she was imprisoned but she subsequently mounted a daring escape and became a low-level rebel leader for the guerrilleros, helping to organize raids and attacks that harassed the French. On June 21, 1813, she acted as a front line battery commander at the Battle of Vitoria, under the command of Major Cairncross. This battle was to see the French Army that had occupied Spain effectively smashed beyond repair and driven out. She eventually married a doctor and lived the rest of her life in peace, proudly wearing her battle medals.

 

Jack Churchill
16 September 1906 – 8 March 1996
Now here is a man everyone should know about – he truly typifies badassness and bravery. Nicknamed “Fighting Jack Churchill” and “Mad Jack”, he was an English soldier who fought throughout World War II armed with just a longbow, arrows and a claymore (sword). He once said “any officer who goes into action without his sword is improperly dressed.” Remember that during this war he was basically using a sword and a bow and arrow against men with tanks and machine guns. He is the only soldier to have killed an enemy with an arrow in the war. And in true quirky British style, not only did he fight the good fight – he would rouse the troops with a merry tune on his bagpipes, as he was an expert piper and always took them with him to battle. In his most awesome moment, Churchill led a team of commandos into enemy lines playing “Will Ye No Come Back Again?” on his bagpipes. He was the only member of the group that made it to the objective alive – everyone else was killed around him. Perhaps the Germans liked his playing too much to kill him. When the war ended and the world celebrated, Churchill was not happy. He is recorded as saying: “If it wasn’t for those damn Yanks, we could have kept the war going another 10 years!” In retirement he took up surfing in Australia before returning to England to live. In the photograph above you can see Churchill on the right with sword in hand.

 

Bhanbhagta Gurung
September 1921 – 1 March 2008
Bhanbhagta Gurung was from Nepal and for his actions of one day in World War II he received the Victoria Cross – the highest honor available to British and Commonwealth soldiers. The best way to appreciate Gurung’s true badassity is to read what the London papers said of his deeds: “On 5 March, 1945, at Snowdon-East, near Tamandu, Burma (now Myanmar), Gurung and his unit were approaching Snowdon-East. His company became pinned down by an enemy sniper and were suffering casualties. As this sniper was inflicting casualties on the section, Rifleman Bhanbhagta Gurung, being unable to fire from the lying position, stood up fully exposed to the heavy fire and calmly killed the enemy sniper with his rifle, thus saving his section from suffering further casualties. [And then it really gets badass:]

“The section advanced again but came under heavy fire once again. Without waiting for orders, Gurung dashed out to attack the first enemy fox-hole. Throwing two grenades, he killed the two occupants and without any hesitation rushed on to the next enemy fox-hole and killed the Japanese in it with his bayonet. He cleared two further fox-holes with bayonet and grenade. “During his single-handed attacks on these four enemy fox-holes, Rifleman Bhanbhagta Gurung was subjected to almost continuous and point-blank Light Machine Gun fire from a bunker on the North tip of the objective.” For the fifth time, Gurung “went forward alone in the face of heavy enemy fire to knock out this position. He doubled forward and leapt on to the roof of the bunker from where, his hand grenades being finished, he flung two No. 77 smoke grenades into the bunker slit.” Gurung killed two Japanese soldiers who ran out of the bunker with his Kukri, and then advanced into the cramped bunker and killed the remaining Japanese soldier.”

 


2/15

“Men wanted for hazardous journey… Safe return doubtful. Honour and recognition in case of success.”

Sir Ernest Shackleton’s Antarctic expedition of 1914 would ultimately fail, but the hardy crew he mustered would still win honour and recognition for its ability to survive against the odds.

After their ship Endurance was crushed in pack ice, the crew abandoned the plan to cross Antarctica on foot and the aim became merely to survive. Over two years, Shackleton led the crew across ice floes, then in lifeboats to a camp on Elephant Island where for six months the main group would subsist on seal meat and blubber.

Shackleton took five men around the island to the north and then across 800 miles of treacherous ocean to South Georgia Island. He then hiked with two others for 36 hours across the island’s uncharted interior to a whaling station with another three months to go before he could safely reach the crew left on Elephant Island.

He later wrote, “We had suffered, starved and triumphed, grovelled down yet grasped at glory… We had reached the naked soul of man.”

Sir Ernest Henry Shackleton, CVO, OBE (15 February 1874 – 5 January 1922) was an Anglo-Irish explorer who was one of the principal figures of the period known as the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration. His first experience of the polar regions was as third officer on Captain Robert Falcon Scott’s Discovery Expedition, 1901–04, from which he was sent home early on health grounds. Determined to make amends for this perceived personal failure, he returned to Antarctica in 1907 as leader of the Nimrod Expedition. In January 1909 he and three companions made a southern march which established a record Farthest South latitude at 88°23'S, 97 geographical miles (114 statute miles, 190 km) from the South Pole, by far the closest convergence in exploration history up to that time. For this achievement, Shackleton was knighted by King Edward VII on his return home.

After the race to the South Pole ended in 1912 with Roald Amundsen's conquest, Shackleton turned his attention to what he said was the one remaining great object of Antarctic journeying–the crossing of the continent from sea to sea, via the pole. To this end he made preparations for what became the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition, 1914–17. Disaster struck this expedition when its ship, Endurance, was trapped in pack ice and slowly crushed, before the shore parties could be landed. There followed a sequence of exploits, and an ultimate escape with no lives lost, that would eventually assure Shackleton's heroic status, although this was not immediately evident.[1] In 1921 he went back to the Antarctic with the Shackleton-Rowett Expedition, intending to carry out a programme of scientific and survey activities. Before the expedition could begin this work Shackleton died of a heart attack while his ship, Quest, was moored in South Georgia. At his wife's request he was buried there.

Away from his expeditions, Shackleton's life was generally restless and unfulfilled. In his search for rapid pathways to wealth and security he launched many business ventures and other money-making schemes, none of which prospered. His financial affairs were generally muddled; when he died he was heavily in debt. On his death he was lauded in the press, but was thereafter largely forgotten, while the heroic reputation of his rival Scott was sustained for many decades. At the end of the 20th century Shackleton was "rediscovered",[2] and rapidly became a cult figure, a role model for leadership as one who, in extreme circumstances, kept his team together to accomplish a survival story which polar historian Stephanie Barczewski describes as "incredible"

 


9/27
Mark Joseph Inglis (ONZM, September 27, 1959) is a mountaineer, researcher, winemaker and motivational speaker. He holds a degree in Human Biochemistry from Lincoln University, New Zealand, and has conducted research in Leukemia. He is also an accomplished cyclist and won a silver medal in the 1 km time trial event at the Sydney 2000 Paralympic Games.[1]


In 1982, Mark Inglis and Phil Doole were high up the slopes of New Zealand’s highest mountain, Aoraki Mt. Cook, when a blizzard hit.

They built an ice cave and waited for the storm to pass, but it would be 13 days before help could reach them. They survived on meagre rations, but in the cramped cave they lost circulation in their legs, which had to be amputated.

This hasn’t stopped the men’s climbing careers. Both have gone on to summit Mt. Cook, and in 2006, Inglis became the first double amputee to conquer Mt Everest, losing five fingertips and more flesh off his legs to frostbite, though none of his strength of character.

He told the New Zealand Herald, “When you lose your legs when you’re 23… something like this is just a minor hiccup, just a bump in the journey, really.”


Inglis began work as a professional mountaineer in 1979 as a search and rescue mountaineer for Aoraki/Mount Cook National Park. In November 1982, Inglis and climbing partner Philip Doole were stuck in an ice cave on Aoraki/Mount Cook for thirteen days due to an intense blizzard. The rescue of the two climbers was a major media event in New Zealand. Both men's legs became badly frost bitten while awaiting rescue. Following Inglis' rescue, both his legs were amputated below the knee. He returned to Mt. Cook in 2002 and reached the summit successfully on January 7 of that year, after a previous attempt was thwarted by problems with his leg stumps. The summit assault in January 2002 was documented by the film No Mean Feat: The Mark Inglis Story.

In 2003, Inglis received the New Zealand Order of Merit as an Officer in recognition of his services to disabled people. On September 27, 2004, he successfully climbed Cho Oyu with three others, becoming only the second double amputee to summit a mountain greater than 8,000 metres (26,000 ft) in height.

On May 15, 2006, after forty days of climbing, Inglis became the first ever double amputee to reach the summit of Mount Everest, the tallest mountain in the world. While acclimatizing at 6,400 metres (21,000 ft), a fixed-line anchor failed, resulting in Inglis falling and breaking one of his carbon fiber prosthetic legs in half. It was temporarily repaired with duct tape, while a spare was brought up from base camp. Inglis's Everest expedition was filmed for the Discovery Channel series Everest: Beyond the Limit.

TVNZ's 'This Is Your Life' on June 5, 2007 honoured Inglis with the now infamous red book.

He currently resides in Hanmer Springs, New Zealand with his wife Anne and their three children.

[edit] David Sharp ControversyMain article: David Sharp (mountaineer)
While ascending Everest, Inglis and a party of 18 other climbers came upon distressed British climber David Sharp, but continued pushing towards the summit. Sharp subsequently perished. Inglis has been criticized for this decision by many people including the legendary Sir Edmund Hillary, who said he would have abandoned any attempt at the summit to help a fellow climber. Inglis has dismissed the criticism by saying that the decision was actually made by expedition leader Russell Brice, who was at the base camp. He also stated that the "trouble is at 8,500 metres it's extremely difficult to keep yourself alive, let alone anyone else alive." Some other climbers have agreed with this assessment, claiming there is little that can be done for a seriously ill person that close to the summit. However, Phil Ainslie, a scientist and mountaineer at the University of Otago, has said that it might have been possible to revive Sharp with bottled oxygen and get him to safety.

In an e-mailed statement to the Associated Press on June 10, the expedition leader Russell Brice contradicted comments by Inglis by saying that he only knew David Sharp was in distress when his team contacted him by radio during their descent.[2][3]

In the documentary "Dying For Everest" (broadcast on SKY 20.04.09), Mark Inglis now states: 'From my memory, I used the radio. I got a reply to move on and there is nothing that I can do to help. Now I'm not sure whether it was from Russell or from someone else, or whether you know..it's just Hypoxia and it's... it's in your mind." Russell received many radio messages (many of which were heard by others) that night and a full log was kept. There is no record of any call from Mark Inglis. The group continued to the summit, passing David Sharp, without offering any assistance. David was in a grave condition. On their descent, passing back through the cave several hours later, the group found David near death. Mark's fellow climber, Maxime Chaya (or Max) and Max's sherpa attempted to help David Sharp, but to no avail. Sir Edmund Hillary described Mark Inglis' attitude as "pathetic".


12/9 or 10/13 or 1/17
Fernando "Nando" Seler Parrado Dolgay (born December 9, 1949) is one of the sixteen Uruguayan survivors of the airplane crash of Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 which crashed in the Andes mountains on October 13, 1972[1]. After spending two months trapped in the mountains with the other crash survivors, he, along with Roberto Canessa, climbed through the Andes mountains over a ten day period to find help. His efforts, supported in various ways by the entire group, have been recognized through books and other media. He was portrayed by Ethan Hawke in the 1993 feature film Alive: Miracle in The Andes.
Parrado also states in Miracle in the Andes that after he returned from the mountains, he gave up his studies. Still coping with the loss of his sister, Susy, and their mother, Parrado drifted for a period of time. Initially, Parrado helped out in his father's business, though he was interested in the field of sports car racing and for many years developed a career as a professional race car driver. After his marriage, he gave up professional racing and took over his father's hardware business along with his older sister and brother-in-law. He also developed additional businesses and became a television personality in Uruguay.

[edit] ConferencesIn addition to his work in business and television, Parrado is a motivational speaker, using his experience in the Andes to help others cope with psychological trauma.

 

 

It’s a story so extraordinary it has spawned several books, a Hollywood film, an acclaimed documentary and an official website, and can be recognized with just one word: Alive.

When the plane carrying a Uruguayan rugby team crashed in the Andes in October 1972, the story should have ended there, but it was only just beginning. Of the 45 people on board, 12 died in the crash or shortly afterward, another five passed away the next morning from injuries, another on the eighth day, then eight in a later avalanche.

The remaining 16 struggled through extreme cold and starvation before resorting to cannibalism of those who had perished.

When it became clear help wouldn’t come to them, Nando Parrado and Roberto Canessa hiked for days out of the mountains and eventually found help. The most recent, and arguably the most sensitive retelling of the 72-day saga is Gonzalo Arijón’s 2007 documentary, Stranded: I Have Come From a Plane That Crashed on the Mountains.


Roberto Jorge Canessa Urta (January 17, 1953, Montevideo, Uruguay) is one of the 16 survivors of the Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571, which crashed in the Andes mountains on October 13, 1972[1], and a Uruguayan political figure. He was portrayed by Josh Hamilton in the 1993 feature film, Alive: Miracle in The Andes.
 

October 13, 1972 air crash At the time of the accident, Canessa was a 19 year old medical student. His fianceé was Laura Surraco, the daughter of a doctor.

It was Canessa who suggested to his fellow survivors that in order to stay alive, they should eat the flesh of the deceased victims of the crash. Together with Fernando Parrado, he spent 10 days trekking through the Andes in search of help for the survivors.

[edit] Post rescueAfter the rescue, Canessa recounted how his drive to escape from the mountains was fueled by the thought of his mother and his girlfriend. He later married Laura Surraco, and they have two sons and a daughter. He works as a cardiologist and motivational speaker.[2]

Passengers:
Francisco Abal
Jose Pedro Algorta SURVIVOR
Roberto Canessa SURVIVOR
Gaston Costemalle
Alfredo Delgado SURVIVOR
Rafael Echavarren
Daniel Fernández SURVIVOR
Roberto Francois SURVIVOR
Roy Harley SURVIVOR
Alexis Hounié
Jose Luis Inciarte SURVIVOR
Guido Magri
Alvaro Mangino SURVIVOR
Felipe Maquirriain
Graciela Augusto Gumila de Mariani
Julio Martínez-Lamas
Daniel Maspons
Juan Carlos Menéndez
Javier Methol SURVIVOR
Liliana Navarro Petraglia de Methol
 Dr. Francisco Nicola
Esther Horta Pérez de Nicola
Gustavo Nicolich
Arturo Nogueira
Carlos Páez Rodriguez SURVIVOR
Eugenia Dolgay Diedug de Parrado
Fernando Parrado SURVIVOR
Susana Parrado
Marcelo Perez
Enrique Platero
Ramón Sabella SURVIVOR
Daniel Shaw
Adolfo Strauch SURVIVOR
Eduardo Strauch SURVIVOR
Diego Storm
Numa Turcatti
Carlos Valeta
Fernando Vázquez
Antonio Vizintín SURVIVOR
Gustavo Zerbino SURVIVOR
 

 

10/27
Amputating your arm with a blunt knife is a task the average person would find virtually inconceivable. But on May 1, 2003, it was the only option left to Aron Ralston after an 800-pound boulder fell on his arm, pinning it to a canyon wall.

After five days, the little food and water he had was gone and it was unlikely anyone would find him in the remote canyon in Utah.

In his book, Between a Rock and a Hard Place, he describes how he managed to literally break free, first using the boulder to leverage his arm until the bones snapped and then sawing away at muscle and tendon with his pocket knife. He then had to rappel down a 65-foot wall. He was walking back to his car when hikers found him.

The 33-year-old continues to climb, including all of Colorado’s 55 peaks higher than 14,000 feet, and is also a motivational speaker.

Aron Lee Ralston (born October 27, 1975) is an American mountain climber and public speaker. He gained fame in May 2003[1] when, while canyoneering in Utah, he was forced to amputate his right arm with a dull knife in order to free himself after his arm became trapped by a boulder.

The incident is documented in Ralston's 2004 autobiography Between a Rock and a Hard Place, and is the subject of the 2010 film 127 Hours.


8/13
Simpson was born 13 August 1960 in Kuala Lumpur, Federation of Malaysia
Joe Simpson and Simon Yates were descending from the summit of the 20,813-foot-high Siula Grande in the Peruvian Andes when disaster struck-twice. First, Simpson slipped and broke his leg. Then, while Yates was lowering him down, Simpson went over a cliff and was left dangling on the end of the rope.

Yates couldn’t see or hear Simpson and held on for an hour as he was pulled down the mountain.

Controversially, he cut the rope (which some say was against the mountaineering code, while others say it ultimately saved both men’s lives) and safely descended. Simpson dropped into a crevasse, and though severely injured, was able to abseil down to the bottom from the ice shelf he landed on. From here, he spent three days dragging himself across five miles of rough terrain, with no food or water and in great pain.

He crawled into base camp in the middle of the night and was reunited with Yates, who, after recovering from his own injuries, was planning to break camp the next morning. The harrowing tale of survival is told in detail in Simpson’s book, Touching the Void, and the documentary of the same name.

In 1985, Yates and Simpson attempted a first-ascent of the previously unclimbed West Face of Siula Grande. Several teams had previously tried and failed to climb this face. Yates and Simpson were successful in their attempt, and after summiting they descended via the difficult North Ridge. Disaster struck on the descent when Simpson slipped down an ice cliff and landed awkwardly, smashing his tibia into his knee joint and breaking it. The pair, whose trip had already taken longer than they intended because of bad weather on the ascent, had run out of fuel for their stove and could not melt ice and snow for drinking water. With bad weather closing in and daylight fading, they needed to descend quickly to the glacier, about 3,000 feet below.

Yates proceeded to lower Simpson off the North Ridge by tying two 150' lengths of rope together to make one longer 300-foot rope. However because the two ropes were tied together, the knot couldn't go through the belay plate. Simpson would have to stand on his good leg to give Yates enough slack to unclip the rope, in order to thread the rope back through the lowering device with the knot on the other side. With storm conditions worsening and darkness upon them, Yates inadvertently lowered Simpson off a cliff. Because Yates was sitting higher up the mountain, he could not see or hear Simpson; he could only feel that Simpson had all his weight on the rope. Simpson attempted to ascend the rope using a Prusik knot. However, because his hands were badly frost-bitten, he was unable to tie the knots properly and accidentally dropped one of the cords required to ascend the rope.

The pair were stuck in a very bad situation. Simpson could not climb up the rope, Yates could not pull him back up, and the cliff was too high for Simpson to be lowered down. They remained in this position for some time, until it was obvious that the snow around Yate's belay seat was about to give out. Because the pair were tied together, they would both be pulled to their deaths. Yates had little choice but to cut the rope.

When Yates cut the rope, Simpson plummeted down the cliff and into a deep crevasse. Exhausted and suffering from hypothermia, Yates dug himself a snow cave to wait out the storm. The next day, Yates carried on descending the mountain by himself. When he reached the crevasse he realized the situation that Simpson had been in, and what had happened when he cut the rope. After calling for Simpson and hearing no reply, Yates was forced to assume that he had died and so continued down the mountain alone.

Simpson, however, was still alive. He had survived the 100-foot fall despite his broken leg, and had landed on a small ledge inside the crevasse. When Simpson regained consciousness, he discovered that the rope had been cut and realized that Yates would presume that he was dead. He therefore had to save himself. Simpson eventually abseiled from his landing spot onto a thin ice roof part way down the crevasse, and climbed back onto the glacier via a steep snow slope.

From there, Simpson spent three days without food and with almost no water, crawling and hopping five miles back to their base camp. Exhausted and almost completely delirious, he reached their tents only a few hours before Yates intended to return to civilization.

Simpson's survival is widely regarded by mountaineers as amongst the most amazing pieces of mountaineering lore

 


Sailing the South Pacific may seem like an idyllic pursuit, but when American Tami Oldham Ashcraft and her British boyfriend Richard Sharp were caught in a category four hurricane 19 days into what should have been a 30-day crossing, the dream turned into a nightmare.

It was 1983 and they were en route from Tahiti to San Diego to deliver the 44-foot sailboat Hazana. Battered by Hurricane Raymond’s 50-foot waves, Hazana capsized. Ashcraft, sheltering below decks, was knocked unconscious. When she woke 27 hours later, Sharp was gone, his safety line broken, and while the boat had righted itself, the mainmast had snapped.

In the May 2002 issue of National Geographic Adventure, Ashcraft described how she had to fight the desire to just give up, how she fixed a makeshift mast and sail, rationed her supplies and plotted a course for Hawaii, 1,500 miles away.

Forty days later she sailed into Hilo Harbor, still in shock but thankful to be alive. She continues to sail and in 2000 published an account of her ordeal in the book, Red Sky in Mourning.

The day they left Tahiti, the skies were a brilliant blue and the weather forecast predicted perfect conditions for their 31-day cruise.
Twenty days into their journey, they were suddenly trapped in every sailor’s worst nightmare, as their vessel heaved and dropped over five stories with each rolling wave. Sharp sent Ashcraft below to watch the barometer readings, while he remained behind the wheel. The last thing she remembers was his scream, “OHMIGOD!,” as the boat slid into a mammoth trench – then capsized 360° and catapulted end-to-end through the air.
Twenty-seven hours later, Ashcraft regained consciousness, severely injured and disoriented. Sharp was gone, and the sea was now a dead calm. The boat had taken on over three feet of water. The mast had snapped off, taking the sails with it. The motor was ruined, the electronics were fried. The radio was lost, making it impossible for her to send a mayday signal. And she had a limited supply of food and water. Only the rudder was still intact.
Left with only her native instincts and an often-wavering will to survive, Ashcraft managed to chart a path to the Hawaiian islands, though averaging only two knots an
RED SKY IN MOURNING Book Announcement
- 2 -
hour. One wrong calculation on her sextant or hour not spent at the wheel steering the Hazana to its destination, and there’s no doubt she would never have arrived.
Through it all, Ashcraft conquered overwhelming heartbreak, paralyzing fear, and severe depression. On her arrival, she weighed only 100 pounds (40 pounds less than when she started), and the boat was declared a total loss by the insurer.

 


The Mexican Revolution saw many deaths – but no one came so close as Wenseslao Moguel. The young man was captured on 18 March 1915 and sentenced to death by firing squad. He was shot eight times by the squad, then once more at close range through his head. He feigned death until his shooters left, then miraculously escaped.


12/13
Alexander Selkirk

Alexander Selkirk (1676 – 13 December 1721) was a Scottish sailor who spent four years as a castaway when he was marooned on an uninhabited island. It is probable that his travels provided the inspiration for Daniel Defoe's novel Robinson Crusoe.

 

This Scottish castaway was left on an uninhabited island in the South Pacific Ocean in 1704 due to his troublemaking on an expedition ship. Left alone with just a musket, gunpowder, carpenter’s tools, a knife, a Bible and some clothing, Alexander lasted four years and four months in complete solitude – apart from some domesticated wildcats. After hiding from two Spanish ships that arrived and departed the island due to fear of capture, Selkirk was eventually discovered and befriended by an English ship in 1709.


In October 1704, after the ships had parted ways because of a dispute between Stradling and Dampier, the Cinque Ports was brought by Stradling to the uninhabited archipelago of Juan Fernández off the coast of Chile for a mid-expedition restocking of supplies and fresh water. Selkirk had grave concerns by this time about the seaworthiness of this vessel (indeed, the Cinque Ports later foundered, losing most of its hands). He tried to convince some of his crewmates to desert with him, remaining on the island; he was counting on an impending visit by another ship. No one else agreed to come along with him. Stradling declared that he would grant him his wish and leave him alone on Juan Fernández. Selkirk promptly regretted his decision. He chased and called after the boat, to no avail. Selkirk lived the next four years and four months without any human company. All he had brought with him was a musket, gunpowder, carpenter's tools, a knife, a Bible, some clothing and rope.[citation needed]

Life on the islandHearing strange sounds from the inland, which he feared were dangerous beasts, Selkirk remained at first along the shoreline. During this time he ate shellfish and scanned the ocean daily for rescue, suffering all the while from loneliness, misery and remorse. Hordes of raucous sea lions, gathered on the beach for the mating season, eventually drove him to the island's interior. Once there, his way of life took a turn for the better. More foods were now available: feral goats – introduced by earlier sailors – provided him meat and milk, wild turnips, cabbage, and black pepper berries offered him variety and spice. Although rats would attack him at night, he was able, by domesticating and living near feral cats, to sleep soundly and in safety.

Selkirk proved resourceful in using equipment from the ship as well as materials that were native to the island. He built two huts[1] out of pimento trees. He used his musket to hunt goats and his knife to clean their carcasses. As his gunpowder dwindled, he had to chase prey on foot. During one such chase he was badly injured when he tumbled from a cliff, lying unconscious for about a day. (His prey had cushioned his fall, sparing him a broken back.)[2] He read from the Bible frequently, finding it a comfort to him in his condition and a mainstay for his English.

When Selkirk's clothes wore out, he made new garments from goatskin, using a nail for sewing. The lessons he had learned as a child from his father, a tanner, helped him greatly during his stay on the island. As his shoes became unusable, he had no need to make new ones, since his toughened, callused feet made protection unnecessary. He forged a new knife out of barrel rings left on the beach.

Two vessels had arrived and departed before his escape, but both of them were Spanish: as a Scotsman and privateer, he risked a terrible fate if captured. He hid himself from these crews. At one point, his Spanish pursuers urinated at the bottom of a tree he was hiding in, but did not discover him.[3]

His long-anticipated rescue occurred on 1 February 1709 by way of the Duke, a privateering ship piloted by the above-mentioned William Dampier. Selkirk was discovered by the Duke's captain, Woodes Rogers, who referred to him as Governor of the island. Now rescued, he was almost incoherent in his joy. The agile Selkirk, catching two or three goats a day, helped restore the health of Rogers' men. Rogers eventually made Selkirk his mate, giving him independent command of one of his ships. Rogers' A cruising voyage round the world: first to the South-Sea, thence to the East-Indies, and homewards by the Cape of Good Hope was published in 1712 and included an account of Selkirk's ordeal.

Journalist Richard Steele interviewed Selkirk about his adventures and wrote a much-read article about him in The Englishman.[4]

Early in 1717 Selkirk returned to Lower Largo but stayed only a few months. There he met Sophia Bruce, a sixteen-year-old dairymaid. They eloped to London but apparently did not marry. In March 1717 he again went off to sea. While on a visit to Plymouth, he married a widowed innkeeper. According to the ship's log, Selkirk died at 8 p.m. on 13 December 1721 while serving as a lieutenant on board the Royal ship Weymouth. He probably succumbed to the yellow fever which had devastated the voyage. He was buried at sea off the west coast of Africa.

Several people who spoke to Selkirk after his rescue (such as Captain Rogers and the journalist Steele) were impressed by the tranquillity of mind and vigour of the body that Selkirk had attained while on the island. Rogers stated that "one may see that Solitude and Retirement from the World is not such an unsufferable State of Life as most Men imagine, especially when People are fairly call'd or thrown into it unavoidably, as this Man was".[3] Steele noted that "This plain Man's Story is a memorable Example, that he is happiest who confines his Wants to natural Necessities; and he that goes further in his Desires, increases his Wants in Proportion to his Acquisitions"[4]

 

8/29
John McCain

John Sidney McCain III (born August 29, 1936) is the senior United States Senator from Arizona. He was the Republican nominee for president in the 2008 United States election.

 

This famous politician may not have won the election, but he sure won the fight for his life back in October 1967. His stay in the ‘Hanoi Hilton’ lasted five and a half years and was full of horrific incidents, including repeated torture, two years of solitary confinement and a suicide attempt. Of his experiences, McCain says: “I had learned what we all learned over there: Every man has his breaking point. I had reached mine.”

John McCain's capture and subsequent imprisonment began on October 26, 1967. He was flying his 23rd bombing mission over North Vietnam when his A-4E Skyhawk was shot down by a missile over Hanoi.[33][34] McCain fractured both arms and a leg ejecting from the aircraft,[35] and nearly drowned when he parachuted into Truc Bach Lake.[33] Some North Vietnamese pulled him ashore, then others crushed his shoulder with a rifle butt and bayoneted him.[33] McCain was then transported to Hanoi's main Hoa Lo Prison, nicknamed the "Hanoi Hilton".[34]

Although McCain was badly wounded, his captors refused to treat his injuries, beating and interrogating him to get information; he was given medical care only when the North Vietnamese discovered that his father was a top admiral.[36] His status as a prisoner of war (POW) made the front pages of major newspapers.[37][38]

McCain spent six weeks in the hospital while receiving marginal care.[33] By then having lost 50 pounds (23 kg), in a chest cast, and with his hair turned white,[33] McCain was sent to a different camp on the outskirts of Hanoi[39] in December 1967, into a cell with two other Americans who did not expect him to live a week.[40] In March 1968, McCain was put into solitary confinement, where he would remain for two years.[41]

 
McCain being pulled from Truc Bach Lake in Hanoi[42] on October 26, 1967In mid-1968, John S. McCain, Jr. was named commander of all U.S. forces in the Vietnam theater, and the North Vietnamese offered McCain early release[43] because they wanted to appear merciful for propaganda purposes,[44] and also to show other POWs that elite prisoners were willing to be treated preferentially.[43] McCain turned down the offer; he would only accept repatriation if every man taken in before him was released as well. Such early release was prohibited by the POW's interpretation of the military Code of Conduct: To prevent the enemy from using prisoners for propaganda, officers were to agree to be released in the order in which they were captured.[33]

In August 1968, a program of severe torture began on McCain.[45] He was subjected to rope bindings and repeated beatings every two hours, at the same time as he was suffering from dysentery.[33][45] Further injuries led to the beginning of a suicide attempt, stopped by guards.[33] After four days, McCain made an anti-American propaganda "confession".[33] He has always felt that his statement was dishonorable, but as he later wrote, "I had learned what we all learned over there: Every man has his breaking point. I had reached mine."[46][47] Many American POWs were tortured and maltreated in order to extract "confessions" and propaganda statements, with many enduring even longer and worse treatment;[48] virtually all of them eventually yielded something to their captors.[49] McCain subsequently received two to three beatings weekly because of his continued refusal to sign additional statements.[50]

McCain refused to meet with various anti-war groups seeking peace in Hanoi, wanting to give neither them nor the North Vietnamese a propaganda victory.[51] From late 1969 onward, treatment of McCain and many of the other POWs became more tolerable,[52] while McCain continued actively to resist the camp authorities.[53] McCain and other prisoners cheered the U.S. "Christmas Bombing" campaign of December 1972, viewing it as a forceful measure to push North Vietnam to terms.[47][54]

Altogether, McCain was a prisoner of war in North Vietnam for five and a half years. He was released on March 14, 1973.[55] His wartime injuries left him permanently incapable of raising his arms above his head.

 

5/5
Douglas Mawson

Sir Douglas Mawson, OBE, FRS, FAA (5 May 1882 – 14 October 1958) was an Australian Antarctic explorer and geologist. Along with Roald Amundsen, Robert Falcon Scott, and Ernest Shackleton, Mawson was a key expedition leader during the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration.

 

This Australian was a key figure in the so-called Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration. His Australian Antarctic Expedition, which begun in December 1911, however, nearly saw the end of his adventures forever. He was the only survivor in his team after his fellow explorer, Lieutenant Ninnis, fell through a crevice with the dogs and supplies and were lost. The other member of his exploration team, Xavier Mertz, died from a combination of weakness, cold and vitamin A poisoning from eating dog livers.  Ironically, Mawson fed the weaker Mertz the dog livers thinking they were more nourishing than the muscle tissue of the dogs which led to Hypervitaminosis A. Mawson continued alone and fell into a crevasse and saved himself by wedging his sledge above him. So bad was his condition when he arrived at base camp, his rescuer exclaimed, “My God, which one are you?”

12/24
Juliane Koepcke

Juliane Diller (born 1954 in Lima as Juliane Margaret Köpcke) is best known for being the sole survivor of 93 passengers and crew in the December 24, 1971, crash of LANSA Flight 508 (a LANSA Lockheed Electra OB-R-941 commercial airliner) in the Peruvian rainforest.


Of the 93 passengers and crew on board LANSA flight 508 on December 24 1971, only 17 year old Juliane survived. The plane was struck by lighting above the Peruvian rain forest and Juliane was blown out of the plane, still strapped to her seat, and landed two miles down  in the dense thicket. She came round, blind in one eye, with a broken collarbone and cuts and bruises. Borrowing her biologist father’s advice that water runs downstream and where there’s water there’s civilization, Juliane – wearing a mini skirt and sandals – trekked for nine days until she found a small cabin. She cleaned her injuries and worm-infested cuts and waited until the occupant came back. She was eventually reunited with her father and continued her studies to become a zoologist.

 Paul Templer


After years of serving in the British Army and travelling the world pursuing adventure and danger, Paul Templer decided to ‘settle down’ in his native Zimbabwe and become a river guide. During one routine trip, he was leading a group of tourists down the Zambezi River when he encountered a surprise attack from one of Africa’s most dangerous animals – a bull hippo. The hippo almost overturned one of the canoes, throwing another guide into the hazardous water. Templer jumped in to save his colleague, but the huge hippo sprang up between them and swallowed Templer’s head, simultaneously pinning his arms by his side with his razor-sharp teeth. The hippo carried him under water, and momentarily dazed, all Templer could think was “wow, it’s dark in here”. Somehow, he unskewered his body, levered himself out of the hippo’s jaws and swam to the surface – but the frenzied attack wasn’t over. The hippo mauled Templer several more times, ripping his foot, severing his arm, breaking ribs and tearing holes in his back and chest. After a seven hour operation – which involved the amputation of the severed arm – Templer began the long road to recovery. Undeterred, he still leads safari trips, as well as being a coach, public speaker and a key fundraiser for the children’s’ charity ‘Make-a-Difference’


4/20
Steven Callahan (born in 1952) is an American author, naval architect, inventor, and sailor most notable for having survived for 76 days adrift on the Atlantic Ocean in a liferaft.


Callahan departed Newport, Rhode Island, USA in 1981 on Napoleon Solo, a 6.5 meter sloop he designed and built himself, singlehanded the boat to Bermuda, and continued the voyage to England with friend Chris Latchem. He left Cornwall that fall, bound for Antigua as part of the Mini Transat 6.50 single-handed sailing race from Penzance, England, but dropped out of the race in La Coruña, Spain. Bad weather had sunk several boats in the fleet and damaged many others including "Napoleon Solo". Callahan made repairs and continued voyaging down the coast of Spain and Portugal, out to Madeira and the Canaries. He departed El Hierro in the Canary Islands on January 29, 1982, still headed for Antigua. In a growing gale, seven days out, his vessel was badly holed by an unknown object at night storm, and became swamped, although it did not sink outright due to watertight compartments Callahan had designed into the boat. In his book, Callahan writes that he suspects the damage occurred from a collision with a whale. Unable to stay aboard "Napoleon Solo" due to it being full of water and getting overwhelmed by breaking seas, he escaped into a six-person Avon inflatable life raft, measuring about six feet across. He stood off in the raft, but managed to get back aboard several times to dive below and retrieve a piece of cushion, a sleeping bag, and an emergency kit containing, among other things, some food, navigation charts, a short spear gun, flares, torch, solar stills for producing rainwater and a copy of Sea Survival, a survival manual written by Dougal Robertson, a fellow ocean survivor. Before dawn, a big breaking sea parted the life raft from "Napoleon Solo", and Callahan drifted away.[2]

The raft drifted westward with the South Equatorial Current and the trade winds. After exhausting the meager food supplies he was able to salvage from the sinking sloop, Callahan survived by "learning to live like an aquatic caveman." He ate primarily mahi-mahi as well as triggerfish, which he speared, along with flying fish, barnacles, and birds that he captured. The sea life was all part of an ecosystem that evolved and followed him for 1,800 nautical miles (3,300 km) across the ocean. He collected drinking water from two solar stills and various jury-rigged devices for collecting rainwater, which together produced on average just over a pint of water per day.

No rescue was initiated from Callahan's use of an EPIRB (Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacon) and many flares. EPIRBs were not monitored by satellites at the time, and he was in too empty a part of the ocean to be heard by aircraft. Ships did not spot his flares. While adrift, he spotted nine ships, most in the two sea lanes he crossed, but from the beginning, Callahan knew that he could not rely upon rescue but instead must, for an undetermined time, rely upon himself and maintaining a shipboard routine for survival. He routinely exercised, navigated, prioritized problems, made repairs, fished, improved systems, and built food and water stocks for emergencies.

On the eve of April 20, 1982, he spotted lights on the island of Marie Galante, south east of Guadeloupe. The next day, his 76th afloat in the raft, fishermen picked him up just offshore, drawn to him by birds hovering over the raft, which were attracted by the ecosystem that had developed around it. During the ordeal, he faced sharks, raft punctures, equipment deterioration, physical deterioration, and mental stress. Having lost a third of his weight and being covered with scores of saltwater sores, he was taken to a local hospital for an afternoon, but left that evening and spent the following weeks recovering on the island and while hitchhiking on boats up through the West Indies. He found within his journey many gifts and profoundly positive elements as well as suffering, describing it at one point as "A view of heaven from a seat in hell." He still enjoys sailing and the sea, which he calls the world's greatest wilderness. Since his survival drift, he's made dozens of additional offshore passages and ocean crossings, most of them with no more than two other crew.

This incident is featured on the I Shouldn't Be Alive episode 76 Days Adrift

 

1/15
Maurice Herzog (born January 15, 1919) is a French mountaineer and sports administrator who was born in Lyon, France. He led the expedition that first climbed a peak over 8000m, Annapurna, in 1950, and reached the summit with Louis Lachenal. Upon his return, he wrote a best-selling book about the expedition. More recently, doubts about the accuracy of his account have been raised.

 

[edit] Ascent of AnnapurnaOn June 3, 1950, Maurice Herzog and Louis Lachenal became the first people to climb a peak over 8000m when they summited the Himalayan mountain Annapurna, the 10th-highest mountain in the world. The ascent was all the more remarkable because the peak was explored, reconnoitered and climbed all within one season; and was climbed without the use of supplemental oxygen. The event caused a sensation that was only surpassed when Everest was summited in 1953 by Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay.

The two-week retreat from the peak proved challenging. Both summit climbers had opted for light boots for the summit dash. This combined with Herzog losing his gloves near the summit, and a night spent bivouaced in a crevasse on the descent with one sleeping bag for four climbers (Louis Lachenal, Gaston Rebuffat, Lionel Terray, and Maurice Herzog) resulted in severe frostbite, with both climbers losing all of their toes and Herzog most of his fingers. The consequent gangrene required the expedition doctor to perform emergency amputations in the field without anaesthetic.[1]

Annapurna was not climbed again until 1970, when the French north face route was climbed by a British Army expedition, simultaneous with an ascent of the south face by an expedition led by British climber Chris Bonington. The mountain's fourth ascent was not until 1977.[2]

 


9/11
Dog guides blind owner down from 78th floor By David Montero, Staff writer
Ventura County Star

The first thing greeting Michael Hingson and his guide dog, Roselle, was the choking stench of jet fuel wafting down the north tower of the World Trade Center.

Hingson hadn't seen what happened -- the 51-year- old has been blind since birth. But it wasn't hard to figure some sort of aircraft had struck the building with tremendous force at 8:45 a.m. Tuesday.

Quickly, he told the few people in his office to get out of there and suggested they take the stairs because he believed the elevators surely wouldn't be working. He had no idea what was happening. The Palmdale native, well-versed in earthquakes, said he only knew the rocking skyscraper was in terrible trouble--and that he was pretty much alone. On the 78th floor. "The office was empty except for myself, David, Frank and Roselle," he said. "I took a moment to call my wife and tell her there was an explosion at the World Trade Center and that I'd be home as soon as I could." With that, he hung up the phone, grabbed the harness for Roselle and began issuing the commands that told the yellow Labrador retriever it was time to go to work. But the dog, who had only been his guide for nine months, was already raring to go. She had been, in fact, since the initial impact that jarred her from an early morning slumber under Hingson's desk. "She had already jumped up from there," Hingson said. "Usually she doesn't even stir when the wind shakes the tower." While Frank described to Hingson how flaming chunks of debris were tumbling past their window, Roselle led him through the disheveled office and, eventually, to the stairwell. "The crowds weren't huge at first," Hingson said. "But as we started making our way down, they got bigger." It was getting hot, too, with temperatures in the stairwell climbing higher than 90 degrees. Hingson was sweating and Roselle was panting. By the time they got to about the 50th floor, United Airlines Flight 175 had slammed into the south tower of the World Trade Center -- something he wouldn't know about until later. Instead, the smell of jet fuel was getting stronger and soon he felt people bumping into him as Roselle, Frank and he continued downstairs. The problem was, the people bumping into him were going the wrong way. "I heard applause and was told they were firefighters," he said. "I clapped a few on the back, but I was scared for where they were going."

He should have been worried. Temperatures in the north tower were scorching the top part of the building at more than 1,000 degrees. And that heat was working its way through the stairwell each time people opened a door in an attempt to escape. Others were worried, too. As news spread across the country about the terrorist attack on the twin towers, Kay and Ted Stern watched the news, horrified, from their Santa Barbara home. The Sterns knew Hingson worked in the World Trade Center and had met him in December 1998 when they went to visit him and Roselle -- the puppy they had helped train for her eventual career as a guide dog. "We had several friends in New York, including Hingson, and we sent e-mails immediately and asked for them to respond so we would know if they were OK," Ted Stern said. At that time, however, Hingson, wasn't even sure he would be all right. The stairs were thick with people clambering down -- not stampeding, but moving quickly. And Hingson was worried about Roselle. The dog had begun panting heavily, her throat scratched by jet-fuel fumes. No air was circulating and Hingson knew she was thirsty. Frank stayed with both of them and they finally reached the lobby of the building. "A lot of pipes had broken and there were puddles on the floor," he said. "Roselle was stopping to drink some of the water, so I knew she was very thirsty." It had taken them 50 minutes to get down the stairs and it took them another 10 minutes to actually get out of the building and onto the street. The plan was to get to Frank's car and drive away, but at 9:50 a.m., that plan was scrapped. "I heard the second tower collapsing," Hingson said. "It sounded like a metal and concrete waterfall. We started running for the subway." He heard the shrieks of terror and yet Roselle remained focused on her task. He kept the commands simple --left, right -- and a police officer steered them into the subway.

When they emerged, Hingson was told the north tower was gone and the south tower smoldering near the top. "It was unbelievable," he said. "I felt lucky to be out of there. But I wondered about the firefighters." About 20 minutes later, while they were making their way from the World Trade Center, the south tower caved in on itself, sending a rolling gray cloud of ash, glass and debris toward them. "The air was filled with crud," he said. "A woman nearby couldn't see because she had stuff in her eyes, so Roselle and I helped her." Everyone was coated with the soot of what had once been two 110-story buildings. If Hingson could have seen her, Roselle had become a gray Labrador. Because there were no trains operating that day, Hingson had to stay at a friend's house in Manhattan on Tuesday night before going home to his wife in Westfield, N.J., on Wednesday. He then began the long process of e-mailing everyone who was waiting to hear from him. The Sterns finally heard from him Friday, after Hingson contacted the San Rafael-based Guide Dogs for the Blind Inc. Joanne Ritter, spokeswoman for the nonprofit company that supplies guide dogs around the country to the blind, said Roselle was the first puppy the Sterns had raised to be a service dog. The Sterns, for their part, said Hingson's story has inspired them to continue working with service dogs. "We're training our fourth dog now," she said. "But Michael's story sure gives us a lot of validation."|

 

ARTICLE
BBC
Monday, 6 April 2009 23:12 UK
 
Australian canine castaway found 
A pet dog which was washed overboard and believed drowned has been found four months later - as a castaway on a remote Australian island.

Sophie Tucker - named after the famous US entertainer - vanished as Jan and Dave Griffith sailed through stormy waters off Queensland last November.

But unknown to her grieving owners, the plucky dog survived a long swim across shark-infested waters to an island.

There she lived on a diet of baby goats until being found by visiting rangers.

The Griffiths were amazed to hear of the discovery and have now been reunited with their pet.


"She surprised us all," said Jan Griffith.

"She was a house dog and look what she's done, she has swum over five nautical miles, she has managed to live off the land all on her own. We wish she could talk, we truly do."

Sailing holiday

The Griffiths had been on a sailing holiday off the north-east Queensland coast when Sophie Tucker - an Australian cattle dog - was lost overboard.

"We hit a rough patch and when we turned around the dog was gone," Mrs Griffith said.

"We were able to back-track to look for her, but because it was a grey day, we just couldn't find her and we searched for well over an hour.

"We thought that once she had hit the water she would have been gone because the wake from the boat was so big."


But the hardy dog had swum five nautical miles to be washed up on the largely uninhabited St Bees Island.

There, Sophie Tucker survived on a diet of baby goats until rangers, who patrol the island, spotted her.

They eventually captured her, believing her to be a wild dog until they were contacted by the Griffiths.

"She was seen on St Bees looking pretty poor and then all of a sudden she started to look good and that was when they discovered she was eating baby goats," Mrs Griffith said.

"She had become quite wild and vicious. She wouldn't let anyone go near her or touch her. She wouldn't take food from anyone."

There was an emotional reunion when the Griffiths met the rangers' boat bringing Sophie Tucker to the mainland.

"We called the dog and she started whimpering and banging the cage and when they let her out she just about flattened us," Mrs Griffith told the AAP news agency.

Mrs Griffith added that Sophie Tucker had been quick to readjust to the comforts of home.

 

 
Apollo 13 by Jim Lovell and Jeffrey Kluger
Climb : stories of survival from rock, snow, and ice / edited by Clint Willis.
Danger stalks the land : Alaskan tales of death and survival / Larry Kaniut.
Desperate Journeys, Abandoned Souls: true stories of castaways and other survivors. Leslie, Edward E.
Dibs: in search of self - true story about a child who overcame many emoptional idsabilities, told by his therapist
Endurance Shackelton's Legendary Expedition by Caroline Alexander;
Everest : mountain without mercy. Coburn, Broughton, 1951-
Fire fighters : stories of survival from the front lines of firefighting.Ashcraft, Tami Oldham, 1960-
Geeks: how two lost boys rode the internet out of Idaho - true story about two 19 year olds who made new lives for themselves in Chicago.
Guts.Paulsen.
Hot Zone
Ice Bound: A Doctor's Incredible Battle for Survival at the South Pole by Dr. Jerri Nielsen
In the land of white death by Valerian Albanov?
Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mount Everest Disaster by Jon Krakauer
Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer
It's Not About the Bike,
Kon-Tiki: Across The Pacific by Raft by Thor Heyerdahl
Larson. Isaac's Storm.
Left for Dead
Lionheart: The Jesse Martin Story.
Lost on a mountain in Maine
Monster: Autobiography of an L.A. Gang Member by Monster Kody Scott, Sanyika Shakur
Not Without My Daughter,
Papillion
Prairie Earth,
Red sky in mourning : a true story of love, loss, and survival at sea.Bailey, Maurice.
Shackleton's boat trip by F.A. Worsley.
Ship of Gold in the Deep Blue Sea,
Shipwreck at the Bottom of the World by Jennifer Armstrong.
So that others may live : Caroline Hebard & her search-and-rescue dogs /
Staying alive! 117 days adrift--the incredible saga of a courageous couple who outwitted death at sea
Stolen Lives: Twenty Years in a Desert Jail,
Story of the Titanic as told by it's Survivors,
Survive the savage sea. Robertson, Dougal
Surviving Gallerias by Stanley Williams and Fen Montaigne
The Climb
The Donner party by Werther
The Dove
The Endurance: Shackleton's legendary Antarctic expedition by Alexander
The Grounding of Group 6 by Julian Thompson.


 

 

2/27
John R. "Johnny" Cash[2] (born J. R. Cash; February 26, 1932 – September 12, 2003) was an American singer-songwriter, actor,[3] and author,[3] who has been called one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century.[4] Although he is primarily remembered as a country music artist, his songs and sound spanned many other genres including rockabilly and rock and roll—especially early in his career—as well as blues, folk, and gospel. This crossover appeal led to Cash being inducted in both the Country Music Hall of Fame and Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Late in his career, Cash covered songs by several rock artists, among them the industrial rock band Nine Inch Nails[5][6] and the synthpop band Depeche Mode.[6][7][8]

Cash was known for his deep, distinctive bass-baritone voice;[9][10][11] for the "boom-chicka-boom" freight train sound of his Tennessee Three backing band; for his rebelliousness,[12][13] coupled with an increasingly somber and humble demeanor;[9] for providing free concerts inside prison walls;[14][15] and for his dark performance clothing, which earned him the nickname "The Man in Black".[16] He traditionally started his concerts by saying, "Hello, I'm Johnny Cash."[17][18] and usually following it up with his standard "Folsom Prison Blues."

Much of Cash's music, especially that of his later career, echoed themes of sorrow, moral tribulation and redemption.[9][19] His signature songs include "I Walk the Line", "Folsom Prison Blues", "Ring of Fire", "Get Rhythm" and "Man in Black". He also recorded humorous numbers, including "One Piece at a Time" and "A Boy Named Sue"; a duet with his future wife, June Carter, called "Jackson"; as well as railroad songs including "Hey, Porter" and "Rock Island Line".[20]

Cash, a devout but troubled Christian,[21][22] has been characterized as a "lens through which to view American contradictions and challenges."[23][24][25] A Biblical scholar,[3][26][27] he penned a Christian novel titled Man in White,[28][29] and he made a spoken word recording of the entire New King James Version of the New Testament.[30][31] Even so, Cash declared that he was "the biggest sinner of them all", and viewed himself overall as a complicated and contradictory man.[32][33] Accordingly,[34] Cash is said to have "contained multitudes", and has been deemed "the philosopher-prince of American country music

Cash learned upon researching his ancestry that he was of Scottish royal descent on his father's side, traced back to Malcolm IV King of Scots (1153-1165).[37][38][39] After the opportunity of meeting with since deceased Falkland, Fife laird, Major Michael Crichton-Stuart, he traced the Cash family tree to 11th-century Fife, Scotland.[40][41][42] Scotland's Cash Loch as well as portions of Fife bear the name of his family.[40] Though Cash learned he was not of Native American descent, his empathy and compassion for Native Americans was unabated. Such feelings were expressed in several of his songs, including "Apache Tears" and "The Ballad of Ira Hayes", and on his album, Bitter Tears: Ballads of the American Indian. He was also part English and Scots-Irish.

Early lifeBorn J. R. Cash in Kingsland, Arkansas,[43] the fourth of seven children to Ray Cash (13 May 1897, Kingsland, Arkansas – 23 December 1985, Hendersonville, Tennessee)[44] and Carrie Cloveree Rivers (13 March 1904, Rison, Arkansas – 11 March 1991, Hendersonville, Tennessee).[45][46] Cash was given the name "J.R." because his parents could not agree on a name, only on initials.[47] When he enlisted in the United States Air Force, the military would not accept initials as his name, so he adopted John R. Cash as his legal name. In 1955, when signing with Sun Records, he took Johnny Cash as his stage name.[48]

The Cash children were, in order: Roy, Margaret Louise, Jack, J. R., Joanne, Reba and Tommy.[49][50] His younger brother, Tommy Cash, also became a successful country artist.

In March 1935, when Cash was three years old, the family settled in Dyess, Arkansas. J.R. was working in cotton fields beginning at age five, singing along with his family simultaneously while working. The family farm was flooded on at least two occasions, which later inspired him to write the song "Five Feet High and Rising".[51] His family's economic and personal struggles during the Great Depression inspired many of his songs, especially those about other people facing similar difficulties.

Cash was very close to his older brother, Jack.[52] In May 1944, Jack was pulled into a whirling head saw in the mill where he worked, and almost cut in two. He suffered for over a week before he died on May 20, 1944, at age 15.[51] Cash often spoke of the horrible guilt he felt over this incident. According to Cash: The Autobiography, his father was away that morning, but he and his mother, and Jack himself, all had premonitions or a sense of foreboding about that day, causing his mother to urge Jack to skip work and go fishing with his brother. Jack insisted on working, as the family needed the money. On his deathbed, Jack said he had visions of heaven and angels. Decades later, Cash spoke of looking forward to meeting his brother in heaven.

Cash's early memories were dominated by gospel music and radio. Taught by his mother and a childhood friend, Cash began playing guitar and writing songs as a young boy. In high school he sang on a local radio station; decades later he released an album of traditional gospel songs, called My Mother's Hymn Book. He was also significantly influenced by traditional Irish music that he heard performed weekly by Dennis Day on the Jack Benny radio program.[53]

Cash enlisted in the United States Air Force. After basic training at Lackland Air Force Base and technical training at Brooks Air Force Base, both in San Antonio, Texas, Cash was assigned to a U.S. Air Force Security Service unit, assigned as a code intercept operator for Soviet Army transmissions at Landsberg, Germany "where he created his first band named The Landsberg Barbarians."[54] He was the first radio operator to pick up the news of the death of Joseph Stalin.[55] After he was honorably discharged as a sergeant on July 3, 1954, he returned to Texas.[56]

MarriagesOn July 18, 1951, while in Air Force training, Cash met 17-year-old Vivian Liberto at a roller skating rink in her native San Antonio. They dated for three weeks, until Cash was deployed to Germany for a three year tour. During that time, the couple exchanged hundreds of pages of love letters.[57] On August 7, 1954, one month after his discharge, they were married at St. Anne's Catholic church in San Antonio. The ceremony was performed by her uncle, Father Vincent Liberto. They had four daughters: Rosanne, Kathy, Cindy and Tara. Cash's drug and alcohol abuse, constant touring, and affairs with other women, and his close relationship with future wife June Carter, led Liberto to file for divorce in 1966.[58]

In 1968, 13 years after they first met backstage at the Grand Ole Opry, Cash proposed to June Carter, an established country singer, during a live performance in London, Ontario,[59] marrying on March 1, 1968 in Franklin, Kentucky. They had one child together, John Carter Cash (born March 3, 1970). They continued to work together and tour for 35 years, until June Carter died in 2003. Cash died just four months later. Carter co-wrote one of Cash's biggest hits, "Ring of Fire," with singer Merle Kilgore. She and Cash won two Grammy awards for their duets.

Vivian Liberto claims a different version of the origins of "Ring of Fire" in I Walked the Line: My Life with Johnny, stating that Cash gave Carter the credit for monetary reasons.[60]

CareerEarly careerIn 1954, Cash and Vivian moved to Memphis, Tennessee, where he sold appliances while studying to be a radio announcer. At night he played with guitarist Luther Perkins and bassist Marshall Grant. Perkins and Grant were known as the Tennessee Two. Cash worked up the courage to visit the Sun Records studio, hoping to get a recording contract. After auditioning for Sam Phillips, singing mostly gospel songs, Phillips told him that gospel was unmarketable. It was once rumored that Phillips told Cash to "go home and sin, then come back with a song I can sell," though in a 2002 interview Cash denied that Phillips made any such comment.[61] Cash eventually won over the producer with new songs delivered in his early frenetic style. His first recordings at Sun, "Hey Porter" and "Cry! Cry! Cry!", were released in 1955 and met with reasonable success on the country hit parade.

On December 4, 1956, Elvis Presley dropped in on studio owner Sam Phillips to pay a social visit while Carl Perkins was in the studio cutting new tracks, with Jerry Lee Lewis backing him on piano. Cash was also in the studio and the four started an impromptu jam session. Phillips left the tapes running and the recordings, almost half of which were gospel songs, survived and have since been released under the title Million Dollar Quartet.

Cash's next record, "Folsom Prison Blues", made the country Top 5, and "I Walk the Line" became No. 1 on the country charts and entered the pop charts Top 20. "Home of the Blues" followed, recorded in July 1957. That same year Cash became the first Sun artist to release a long-playing album. Although he was Sun's most consistently best-selling and prolific artist at that time, Cash felt constrained by his contract with the small label. Presley had already left Sun, and Phillips was focusing most of his attention and promotion on Lewis. The following year Cash left the label to sign a lucrative offer with Columbia Records, where his single "Don't Take Your Guns to Town" became one of his biggest hits.

In the early 1960s, Cash toured with the Carter Family, which by this time regularly included Mother Maybelle's daughters, Anita, June and Helen. June, whom Cash would eventually marry, later recalled admiring him from afar during these tours. In the 1960s he appeared on Pete Seeger's short lived Rainbow Quest.[62]

He also acted in a 1961 film entitled Five Minutes to Live, later re-released as Door-to-door Maniac. He also wrote and sang the opening theme.

Outlaw imageAs his career was taking off in the late 1950s, Cash started drinking heavily and became addicted to amphetamines and barbiturates. For a brief time, he shared an apartment in Nashville with Waylon Jennings, who was heavily addicted to amphetamines. Cash used the uppers to stay awake during tours. Friends joked about his "nervousness" and erratic behavior, many ignoring the warning signs of his worsening drug addiction. In a behind-the-scenes look at The Johnny Cash Show, Cash claims to have "tried every drug there was to try."

Although in many ways spiraling out of control, Cash's frenetic creativity was still delivering hits. His rendition of "Ring of Fire" was a crossover hit, reaching No. 1 on the country charts and entering the Top 20 on the pop charts. The song was written by June Carter and Merle Kilgore. The song was originally performed by Carter's sister, but the signature mariachi-style horn arrangement was provided by Cash, who said that it had come to him in a dream.

In June 1965, his truck caught fire due to an overheated wheel bearing, triggering a forest fire that burned several hundred acres in Los Padres National Forest in California.[63][64] When the judge asked Cash why he did it, Cash said, "I didn't do it, my truck did, and it's dead, so you can't question it."[51] The fire destroyed 508 acres (2.06 km2), burning the foliage off three mountains and killing 49 of the refuge's 53 endangered condors. Cash was unrepentant: "I don't care about your damn yellow buzzards." The federal government sued him and was awarded $125,172 ($871,303 in current dollar terms). Cash eventually settled the case and paid $82,001.[65] He said he was the only person ever sued by the government for starting a forest fire.[51]

Although Cash carefully cultivated a romantic outlaw image, he never served a prison sentence. Despite landing in jail seven times for misdemeanors, each stay lasted only a single night. His most infamous run-in with the law occurred while on tour in 1965, when he was arrested by a narcotics squad in El Paso, Texas. The officers suspected that he was smuggling heroin from Mexico, but it was 688 Dexedrine capsules and 475 Equanil tablets that the singer had hidden inside his guitar case. Because they were prescription drugs rather than illegal narcotics, he received a suspended sentence.

 
Johnny Cash and his second wife, June CarterCash was later arrested on May 11, 1965, in Starkville, Mississippi, for trespassing late at night onto private property to pick flowers. (This incident gave the spark for the song "Starkville City Jail", which he spoke about on his live At San Quentin prison album.)

In the mid 1960s, Cash released a number of concept albums, including Ballads Of the True West (1965), an experimental double record mixing authentic frontier songs with Cash's spoken narration, and Bitter Tears (1964), with songs highlighting the plight of the Native Americans. His drug addiction was at its worst at this point, and his destructive behavior led to a divorce from his first wife and canceled performances.

In 1967, Cash's duet with Carter, "Jackson", won a Grammy Award.

Johnny Cash's final arrest was in Walker County, GA where he was taken in after being involved in a car accident while carrying a bag of prescription pills. Cash attempted to bribe a local deputy, who turned the money down, and then spent the night in a LaFayette, GA jail. The singer was released after a long talk with Sheriff Ralph Jones, who warned him of his dangerous behavior and wasted potential. Johnny credited that experience for saving his life, and he later came back to LaFayette to play a benefit concert that attracted 12,000 people (the city population was less than 9,000 at the time) and raised $75,000 for the high school.[66]

Cash curtailed his use of drugs for several years in 1968, after a spiritual epiphany in the Nickajack Cave, when he attempted to commit suicide while under the heavy influence of drugs. He descended deeper into the cave, trying to lose himself and "just die", when he passed out on the floor. He reported to be exhausted and feeling at the end of his rope when he felt God's presence in his heart and managed to struggle out of the cave (despite the exhaustion) by following a faint light and slight breeze. To him, it was his own rebirth. June, Maybelle, and Ezra Carter moved into Cash's mansion for a month to help him conquer his addiction. Cash proposed onstage to June at a concert at the London Gardens in London, Ontario, Canada on February 22, 1968; the couple married a week later (on March 1) in Franklin, Kentucky. June had agreed to marry Cash after he had 'cleaned up'.[67] He rediscovered his Christian faith, taking an "altar call" in Evangel Temple, a small church in the Nashville area, pastored by Rev. Jimmy Rodgers Snow, son of country music legend Hank Snow.

According to longtime friend Marshall Grant, Cash's 1968 rebirth experience did not result in his completely stopping use of amphetamines. However, in 1970, Cash ended all drug use for a period of seven years. Grant claims that the birth of Cash's son, John Carter Cash, inspired Cash to end his dependence. Cash began using amphetamines again in 1977. By 1983, he was once again addicted, and entered the Betty Ford Clinic in Rancho Mirage, CA for rehabilitation. Cash managed to stay off drugs for several years, but by 1989, he was dependent again and entered Nashville's Cumberland Heights Alcohol and Drug Treatment Center. In 1992, he entered the Loma Linda Behavioural Medicine Centre in Loma Linda, CA for his final rehabilitation (several months later, his son followed him into this facility for treatment).[68][69][70]

Folsom Prison BluesCash felt great compassion for prisoners. He began performing concerts at various prisons starting in the late 1950s. His first ever prison concert was held on January 1, 1958 at San Quentin State Prison.[71] These performances led to a pair of highly successful live albums, Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison (1968) and Johnny Cash at San Quentin (1969).

The Folsom Prison record was introduced by a rendition of his classic "Folsom Prison Blues", while the San Quentin record included the crossover hit single "A Boy Named Sue", a Shel Silverstein-penned novelty song that reached No. 1 on the country charts and No. 2 on the U.S. Top Ten pop charts. The AM versions of the latter contained a couple of profanities which were edited out. The modern CD versions are unedited and uncensored and thus also longer than the original vinyl albums, though they still retain the audience reaction overdubs of the originals.

In addition to his performances at U.S. prisons, Cash also performed at the Österåker Prison in Sweden in 1972. The live album På Österåker ("At Österåker") was released in 1973. Between the songs, Cash can be heard speaking Swedish, which was greatly appreciated by the inmates.

"The Man in Black"
Cash advocated prison reform at his July 1972 meeting with United States President Richard Nixon.From 1969 to 1971, Cash starred in his own television show, The Johnny Cash Show, on the ABC network. The Statler Brothers opened up for him in every episode; the Carter Family and rockabilly legend Carl Perkins were also part of the regular show entourage. However, Cash also enjoyed booking more contemporary performers as guests; such notables included Neil Young, Louis Armstrong, Kenny Rogers and The First Edition (who appeared a record four times on his show), James Taylor, Ray Charles, Eric Clapton (then leading Derek and the Dominos), and Bob Dylan.

Cash had met with Dylan in the mid 1960s and became closer friends when they were neighbors in the late 1960s in Woodstock, New York. Cash was enthusiastic about reintroducing the reclusive Dylan to his audience. Cash sang a duet with Dylan on Dylan's country album Nashville Skyline and also wrote the album's Grammy-winning liner notes.

Another artist who received a major career boost from The Johnny Cash Show was songwriter Kris Kristofferson, who was beginning to make a name for himself as a singer/songwriter. During a live performance of Kristofferson's "Sunday Mornin' Comin' Down", Cash refused to change the lyrics to suit network executives, singing the song with its references to marijuana intact: "On a Sunday morning sidewalk / I'm wishin', Lord, that I was stoned."[72]

By the early 1970s, he had crystallized his public image as "The Man in Black". He regularly performed dressed all in black, wearing a long black knee-length coat. This outfit stood in contrast to the costumes worn by most of the major country acts in his day: rhinestone suit and cowboy boots. In 1971, Cash wrote the song "Man in Black", to help explain his dress code: "We're doing mighty fine I do suppose / In our streak of lightning cars and fancy clothes / But just so we're reminded of the ones who are held back / Up front there ought to be a man in black."

 
Cash attired in black performing in Bremen, Northern Germany, in September 1972He wore black on behalf of the poor and hungry, on behalf of "the prisoner who has long paid for his crime",[73] and on behalf of those who have been betrayed by age or drugs.[73] "And," Cash added, "with the Vietnam War as painful in my mind as it was in most other Americans', I wore it 'in mournin' for the lives that could have been.' ... Apart from the Vietnam War being over, I don't see much reason to change my position ... The old are still neglected, the poor are still poor, the young are still dying before their time, and we're not making many moves to make things right. There's still plenty of darkness to carry off."[73]

He and his band had initially worn black shirts because that was the only matching color they had among their various outfits.[51] He wore other colors on stage early in his career, but he claimed to like wearing black both on and off stage. He stated that, political reasons aside, he simply liked black as his on-stage color.[51] To this day, the United States Navy's winter blue service uniform is referred to by sailors as "Johnny Cashes", as the uniform's shirt, tie, and trousers are solid black.[74]

In the mid 1970s, Cash's popularity and number of hit songs began to decline, but his autobiography (the first of two), titled Man in Black, was published in 1975 and sold 1.3 million copies. A second, Cash: The Autobiography, appeared in 1997. His friendship with Billy Graham led to the production of a film about the life of Jesus, The Gospel Road, which Cash co-wrote and narrated.

He also continued to appear on television, hosting an annual Christmas special on CBS throughout the 1970s. Later television appearances included a role in an episode of Columbo (Swan Song). He also appeared with his wife on an episode of Little House on the Prairie entitled "The Collection" and gave a performance as John Brown in the 1985 American Civil War television mini-series North and South.

He was friendly with every U.S. President starting with Richard Nixon. He was closest with Jimmy Carter, with whom he became close friends.[51] He stated that he found all of them personally charming, noting that this was probably essential to getting oneself elected.[51]

When invited to perform at the White House for the first time in 1972, Richard Nixon's office requested that he play "Okie from Muskogee" (a satirical Merle Haggard song about people who despised youthful drug users and war protesters) and "Welfare Cadillac" (a Guy Drake song which denies the integrity of welfare recipients). Cash declined to play either and instead selected other songs, including "The Ballad of Ira Hayes" (about a brave Native American World War II veteran who was mistreated upon his return to Arizona), and his own compositions, "What is Truth" and "Man in Black". Cash wrote that the reasons for denying Nixon's song choices were not knowing them and having fairly short notice to rehearse them, rather than any political reason.[51] However, Cash added, even if Nixon's office had given Cash enough time to learn and rehearse the songs, their choice of pieces that conveyed "antihippie and antiblack" sentiments might have backfired.[75]

Highwaymen
From left to right Kris Kristofferson, Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson, who formed the country music supergroup, The HighwaymenIn 1980, Cash became the Country Music Hall of Fame's youngest living inductee at age forty-eight, but during the 1980s his records failed to make a major impact on the country charts, although he continued to tour successfully. In the mid 1980s, he recorded and toured with Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson, and Kris Kristofferson as The Highwaymen, making two hit albums.

During that period, Cash appeared in a number of television films. In 1981, he starred in The Pride of Jesse Hallam, winning fine reviews for a film that called attention to adult illiteracy. In the same year, Cash appeared as a "very special guest star" in an episode of the Muppet Show. In 1983, he appeared as a heroic sheriff in Murder in Coweta County, based on a real-life Georgia murder case, which co-starred Andy Griffith as his nemesis. Cash had tried for years to make the film, for which he won acclaim.

Cash relapsed into addiction after being administered painkillers for a serious abdominal injury in 1983 caused by an unusual incident in which he was kicked and wounded by an ostrich he kept on his farm.[76]

At a hospital visit in 1988, this time to watch over Waylon Jennings (who was recovering from a heart attack), Jennings suggested that Cash have himself checked into the hospital for his own heart condition. Doctors recommended preventive heart surgery, and Cash underwent double bypass surgery in the same hospital. Both recovered, although Cash refused to use any prescription painkillers, fearing a relapse into dependency. Cash later claimed that during his operation, he had what is called a "near death experience". He said he had visions of Heaven that were so beautiful that he was angry when he woke up alive.[citation needed]

Cash's recording career and his general relationship with the Nashville establishment were at an all-time low in the 1980s. He realized that his record label of nearly 30 years, Columbia, was growing indifferent to him and was not properly marketing him (he was "invisible" during that time, as he said in his autobiography). Cash recorded an intentionally awful song to protest, a self-parody.[citation needed] "Chicken in Black" was about Cash's brain being transplanted into a chicken. Ironically, the song turned out to be a larger commercial success than any of his other recent material. Nevertheless, he was hoping to kill the relationship with the label before they did, and it was not long after "Chicken in Black" that Columbia and Cash parted ways.

In 1986, Cash returned to Sun Studios in Memphis to team up with Roy Orbison, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Carl Perkins to create the album Class of '55. Also in 1986, Cash published his only novel, Man in White, a book about Saul and his conversion to become the Apostle Paul. He also recorded Johnny Cash Reads The Complete New Testament in 1990.

American Recordings
Johnny Cash sings a duet with a Navy lieutenant c.1987.After Columbia Records dropped Cash from his recording contract, he had a short and unsuccessful stint with Mercury Records from 1987 to 1991 (see Johnny Cash discography).

His career was rejuvenated in the 1990s, leading to popularity with an audience not traditionally interested in country music. In 1991, he sang a version of "Man in Black" for the Christian punk band One Bad Pig's album I Scream Sunday. In 1993, he sang "The Wanderer" on U2's album Zooropa. Although no longer sought after by major labels, he was offered a contract with producer Rick Rubin's American Recordings label, better known for rap and hard rock.

Under Rubin's supervision, he recorded American Recordings (1994) in his living room, accompanied only by his Martin dreadnought guitar – one of many Cash played throughout his career.[77] The album featured covers of contemporary artists selected by Rubin and had much critical and commercial success, winning a Grammy for Best Contemporary Folk Album. Cash wrote that his reception at the 1994 Glastonbury Festival was one of the highlights of his career. This was the beginning of a decade of music industry accolades and commercial success. Cash teamed up with Brooks & Dunn to contribute "Folsom Prison Blues" to the AIDS benefit album Red Hot + Country produced by the Red Hot Organization. On the same album, he performed the Bob Dylan favorite "Forever Young".

Cash and his wife appeared on a number of episodes of the television series Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman starring Jane Seymour. The actress thought so highly of Cash that she later named one of her twin sons after him. He lent his voice for a cameo role in The Simpsons episode "El Viaje Misterioso de Nuestro Jomer (The Mysterious Voyage of Homer)," as the "Space Coyote" that guides Homer Simpson on a spiritual quest. In 1996, Cash enlisted the accompaniment of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers and released Unchained, which won the Best Country Album Grammy. Believing he did not explain enough of himself in his 1975 autobiography Man in Black, he wrote Cash: The Autobiography in 1997.

Last years and deathIn 1997, Cash was diagnosed with the neurodegenerative disease Shy-Drager syndrome, a form of Parkinson's disease. The diagnosis was later altered to autonomic neuropathy associated with diabetes. This illness forced Cash to curtail his touring. He was hospitalized in 1998 with severe pneumonia, which damaged his lungs. The albums American III: Solitary Man (2000) and American IV: The Man Comes Around (2002) contained Cash's response to his illness in the form of songs of a slightly more somber tone than the first two American albums. The video that was released for "Hurt", a cover of the song by Nine Inch Nails, fits Cash's view of his past and feelings of regret. The video for the song, from American IV, is now generally recognized as "his epitaph,"[78] and received particular critical and popular acclaim.

 
June Carter Cash died on May 15, 2003, at the age of 73. June had told Cash to keep working, so he continued to record and even performed a couple of surprise shows at the Carter Family Fold outside Bristol, Virginia. At the July 5, 2003 concert (his last public performance), before singing "Ring of Fire", Cash read a statement about his last wife that he had written shortly before taking the stage:

“ The spirit of June Carter overshadows me tonight with the love she had for me and the love I have for her. We connect somewhere between here and heaven. She came down for a short visit, I guess, from heaven to visit with me tonight to give me courage and inspiration like she always has. ”

Cash died of complications from diabetes less than four months after his wife, at 2:00 a.m. CT on September 12, 2003, while hospitalized at Baptist Hospital in Nashville. He was buried next to his wife in Hendersonville Memory Gardens near his home in Hendersonville, Tennessee.

His stepdaughter, Rosie (Nix) Adams and another passenger were found dead on a bus in Montgomery County, Tennessee, on October 24, 2003. It was speculated that the deaths may have been caused by carbon monoxide from the lanterns in the bus. Adams was 45 when she died. She was buried in the Hendersonville Memory Gardens, near her mother and stepfather.

On May 24, 2005, Vivian Liberto, Cash's first wife and the mother of Rosanne Cash and three other daughters, died from surgery to remove lung cancer at the age of 71. It was her daughter Rosanne's 50th birthday.[79]

In June 2005, his lakeside home on Caudill Drive in Hendersonville was put up for sale by his estate. In January 2006, the house was sold to Bee Gees vocalist Barry Gibb and wife Linda and titled in their Florida limited liability company for $2.3 million. The listing agent was Cash's younger brother, Tommy Cash. The home was destroyed by fire on April 10, 2007.[80]

One of Cash's final collaborations with producer Rick Rubin, entitled American V: A Hundred Highways, was released posthumously on July 4, 2006. The album debuted in the #1 position on the Billboard Top 200 album chart for the week ending July 22, 2006.

On February 26, 2010, what would have been Cash's 78th birthday, the Cash Family, Rick Rubin, and Lost Highway Records released his second posthumous record, titled American VI: Ain't No Grave, and from this album the song "Ain't No Grave (Can Hold My Body Down)" is currently serving as the theme song for WWE wrestler, The Undertaker.

LegacyFrom his early days as a pioneer of rockabilly and rock and roll in the 1950s, to his decades as an international representative of country music, to his resurgence to fame in the 1990s as a living legend and an alternative country icon, Cash influenced countless artists and left a large body of work. Upon his death, Cash was revered by the greatest popular musicians of his time. His rebellious image and often anti-authoritarian stance influenced punk rock.[81][82]

Among Cash's children, his daughter Rosanne Cash (by first wife Vivian Liberto) and his son John Carter Cash (by June Carter Cash) are notable country-music musicians in their own right.

Cash nurtured and defended artists on the fringes of what was acceptable in country music even while serving as the country music establishment's most visible symbol. At an all-star TNT concert in 1999, a diverse group of artists paid him tribute, including Bob Dylan, Chris Isaak, Wyclef Jean, Norah Jones, Kris Kristofferson, Willie Nelson, Dom DeLuise and U2. Cash himself appeared at the end and performed for the first time in more than a year. Two tribute albums were released shortly before his death; Kindred Spirits contains works from established artists, while Dressed in Black contains works from many lesser-known artists.

In total, he wrote over 1,000 songs and released dozens of albums. A box set titled Unearthed was issued posthumously. It included four CDs of unreleased material recorded with Rubin as well as a Best of Cash on American retrospective CD.

In recognition of his lifelong support of SOS Children's Villages, his family invited friends and fans to donate to that charity in his memory. He had a personal link with the SOS village in Diessen, at the Ammersee Lake in Southern Germany, near where he was stationed as a GI, and also with the SOS village in Barrett Town, by Montego Bay, near his holiday home in Jamaica.[83] The Johnny Cash Memorial Fund was founded.[84]

In 1999, Cash received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2004, Rolling Stone Magazine ranked Cash[85] #31 on their list of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time.[86]

In a tribute to Cash after his death, country music singer Gary Allan included the song "Nickajack Cave (Johnny Cash's Redemption)" on his 2005 album entitled Tough All Over. The song chronicles Cash hitting rock bottom and subsequently resurrecting his life and career.

The main street in Hendersonville, Tennessee, Highway 31E, is known as "Johnny Cash Parkway".

The Johnny Cash Museum is located in Hendersonville, Tennessee.

On November 2–4, 2007, the Johnny Cash Flower Pickin' Festival was held in Starkville, Mississippi. Starkville, where Cash was arrested over 40 years earlier and held overnight at the city jail on May 11, 1965, inspired Cash to write the song "Starkville City Jail". The festival, where he was offered a symbolic posthumous pardon, honored Cash's life and music, and was expected to become an annual event.[87]

JC Unit One, Johnny Cash's private tour bus from 1980 until 2003, was put on exhibit at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame + Museum in 2007. The Cleveland, Ohio museum offers public tours of the bus on a seasonal basis (it is stored during the winter months and not exhibited during those times).

WWE Superstar The Undertaker has been using Cash's song "Ain't no Grave" as his entrance theme since his return on February 21 2011. Along with the television show "The Deadliest Catch" is using the song "Ain't no Grave" as the theme song in many of their commercials.

  

Johnny Cash was born in the small town of Kingsland, in the hill country of southern Arkansas. Life had always been difficult there, but when the Great Depression destroyed the fragile agricultural economy of the region, Johnny's parents, Ray and Carrie Cash, could barely earn enough to feed their seven children.


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 In 1935, the New Deal administration of President Franklin D. Roosevelt encouraged marginal farmers from the hill country to resettle in the more fertile soil of northeastern Arkansas. The Cash family took the government up on this offer and made the move. Working together, they cleared 20 acres of land to grow cotton. Johnny worked side by side with his parents on the farm.

In the evenings when the day's chores were done, the Cash family gathered on their front porch. Johnny's mother, Carrie, played guitar, and the whole family sang hymns and traditional tunes. Johnny loved his mother's playing and singing, and he was entranced by the country and gospel singers he heard on an uncle's battery-powered radio. By 12 he was writing poems, songs and stories.

He took his first non-farm job at 14, carrying water for work gangs, but he had set his heart on a music career. He entered talent contests and sang any time and anywhere people would listen.  

When Johnny Cash graduated from high school in 1950, there was no question of his going to college. The Korean War was raging, and he enlisted in the United States Air Force. He was serving with the Air Force in Germany when he bought his very first guitar. With a few of his buddies, he started a band called the Barbarians to play in small night clubs and honky tonks around the air base. When his hitch in the service was over, Johnny Cash moved to Memphis, where he sold appliances door-to-door while trying to break into the music business.

In 1954, he was signed to the Sun Records label owned by Sam Phillips, who had also discovered rock 'n rollers Elvis Presley and Jerry Lee Lewis. Philips was impressed with the song "Hey Porter" Cash had written when he was returning home from the Air Force. When Phillips wanted a ballad for the b-side of "Hey Porter," Cash wrote "Cry, Cry, Cry" overnight. The single sold over 100,000 copies in the southern states alone. Johnny Cash and his sidemen, the Tennessee Two, began touring with Elvis Presley and the other Sun Records artists. They performed on the Louisiana Hayride radio program and Johnny Cash made his first television appearances on local programs in the south.

 
With his second recording, "Folsom Prison Blues," Johnny Cash scored a national hit. In 1956, "I Walk the Line," was a top country hit for 44 weeks and sold over a million copies. Johnny began to appear at the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, the Mecca of country music. His popularity increased so rapidly that by 1957, country music publications were rating him the top artist in the field.

By 1958 Johnny Cash had published 50 songs, and pop artists far from the country music mainstream were recording Johnny Cash tunes. He had sold over six million records for Sun when he moved to the New York-based Columbia records label. Johnny himself moved to California, and brought his parents along.

By the end of the 1950s, the LP or long-playing record was emerging as the dominant form for recorded music. The 1959 album: Fabulous Johnny Cash, sold half a million copies, as did Hymns and Songs of Our Soil, and the single "Don't Take Your Guns to Town." Concert tours took Johnny to Europe, Asia and Australia. He began to appear as an actor in television westerns. Even as his concert fees escalated, he took time from his schedule to perform free of charge at prisons throughout the nation.

The 1960 single "Ride This Train" won a gold record, as did the 1963 album Ring of Fire, and the 1968 LP Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison. In 1964, Cash, who was one-quarter Cherokee Indian, recorded the album Bitter Tears on Native American themes. That same year, he appeared at the Newport Folk Festival, breaking down a perceived barrier between the genres of country and folk music. At Newport, he made the acquaintance of Bob Dylan. Dylan featured Cash on his own Nashville Skylinealbum and Cash recorded several of Dylan's songs.

 
As the 1960s wore on, incessant touring took its toll on the singer. To keep up with his hectic schedule, he had become dependent on tranquilizers and the amphetamine Dexedrine. He gave up his home in California and relocated to Hendersonville, Tennessee, near Nashville. When his health recovered and he had freed himself from his chemical dependency, Johnny Cash married June Carter of the legendary Carter Family, whose radio broadcasts had inspired Johnny when he was growing up in Arkansas. With June at his side, he made a triumphant comeback, selling out Carnegie Hall and breaking the Beatles' attendance record at London's Palladium.

In 1969, public television broadcast the documentary film Cash! and the networks became interested in a more regular TV presence. The Johnny Cash Show premiered on ABC television in the summer of 1967 and became part of ABC's regular schedule the following January. This prime time television variety show ran until 1970 and presented guest artists as varied as Ray Charles, Neil Young, Stevie Wonder and The Who.

Renewed sales of his records made Johnny Cash a millionaire. He used his earnings to support mental health associations, a home for autistic children, refuges for battered women, the American Cancer Society, YWCA, Youth For Christ, Campus Life, and humane societies around the country. At the same time, he played benefits for Native American causes and endowed a burn research center in memory of his former guitarist Luther Perkins, who had died in a fire.

 
In addition to performing for prison inmates, Johnny Cash campaigned for prison reform, corresponded with inmates and helped many return to society. His 1975 autobiography Man In Black sold 1.3 million copies. He surprised fans and critics alike in 1986 by writing Man In White, a best-selling novel based on the life of St. Paul.

In 1987, Johnny Cash received three multi-platinum records for previous sales of over two million copies each of Folsom Prison, San Quentin, and his collection of Greatest Hits. In 1994 his recording career revived with the release of American Recordings, the first of four Grammy award-winning collections of extremely diverse material, ranging from folk songs to his own compositions and songs by contemporary artists such as U2 and Nine Inch Nails.

Over the course of his career, he received 11 Grammy awards. He was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and the Songwriters' Hall of Fame. He received the Kennedy Center Honors, and the National Medal of the Arts.

 

His wife of 35 years, June Carter Cash, died from complications following heart surgery in May, 2003. Johnny Cash followed her in death four months later, succumbing to respiratory failure after a long struggle with diabetes. Even in death, Johnny Cash remains a powerful force in American culture. Only two years after his passing, a motion picture based on his life, Walk the Line, enjoyed worldwide critical and popular success. The film generated a revival of interest in his life and work, assuring that another generation would find inspiration in the timeless sound of the Man in Black.

"American VI: Ain't No Grave" released on February 26, 2010 on what would have been Cash's 78th birthday is the last of the American Recordings series Cash was working on with producer Rick Rubin months before his death.

 

* Johhnys daughter Cindy once witnessed Johnny give a hitchhiker a thousand dollars to buy a bus ticket and Christmas presents  for his three children saying "Get you a bus ticket, Its too cold to hitchike, and buy those kids some Christmas presents on the way."

Johnny Cash's good friend, Kris Kristofferson, once observantly commented about Johnny in a down-home and wry way, "He's a walking contradiction, partly truth and partly fiction" (Cash, 7). Johnny Cash is indeed a complex, but invariably down-to-earth, man. He's humble, rugged, spiritual, poetic, and brutally honest in his thoughts, musical expression, and various articulate opinions. His songs somberly reflect the harsh, unforgiving bleakness of life that inevitably torments the poor, the downtrodden, and the persecuted. Johnny sings for the ragtag, poverty-stricken farmers of the magnolia-scented rural South and the out-of-luck boxcar transients who ride the lone, open railways in search of a brighter tomorrow. He sings for desperate inmates with nothing to lose as they count each passing second behind the ominous, foreboding walls of death row, and he sings for the Native American Indians confined to the haggard hopelessness and inhumane squalor of government-subsidized reservations in the West. Johnny Cash sings against the injustices and the inhumanities of this world while fervently revealing his belief that there is a calmer, more divine life to come. His is a lesson in song that brings hope and inspiration into a world full of rage, insanity, and despair.

 

 


FRANK ZAPPA

Frank Vincent Zappa[1] ( /ˈzæpə/; December 21, 1940 – December 4, 1993) was an American composer, singer-songwriter, electric guitarist, record producer, and film director. In a career spanning more than 30 years, Zappa wrote rock, jazz, electronic, orchestral, and musique concrète works. He also directed feature-length films and music videos, and designed album covers. Zappa produced almost all of the more than 60 albums he released with the band The Mothers of Invention and as a solo artist.

While in his teens, he acquired a taste for percussion-based avant-garde composers such as Edgard Varèse and 1950s rhythm and blues music. He began writing classical music in high school, while at the same time playing drums in rhythm and blues bands—he later switched to electric guitar. He was a self-taught composer and performer, and his diverse musical influences led him to create music that was often impossible to categorize. His 1966 debut album with the Mothers of Invention, Freak Out!, combined songs in conventional rock and roll format with collective improvisations and studio-generated sound collages. His later albums shared this eclectic and experimental approach, irrespective of whether the fundamental format was one of rock, jazz or classical. He wrote the lyrics to all his songs, which—often humorously—reflected his iconoclastic view of established social and political processes, structures and movements. He was a strident critic of mainstream education and organized religion, and a forthright and passionate advocate for freedom of speech, self-education, political participation and the abolition of censorship.

Zappa was a highly productive and prolific artist and gained widespread critical acclaim. Many of his albums are considered essential in rock and jazz history. He is regarded as one of the most original guitarists and composers of his time. He also remains a major influence on musicians and composers. He had some commercial success, particularly in Europe, and for most of his career was able to work as an independent artist. Zappa was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1995 and received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1997.

Zappa was married to Kathryn J. "Kay" Sherman from 1960 to 1964. In 1967, he married Adelaide Gail Sloatman, with whom he remained until his death from prostate cancer in 1993. They had four children: Moon Unit, Dweezil, Ahmet Emuukha Rodan and Diva Thin Muffin Pigeen. Gail Zappa manages the businesses of her late husband under the name the Zappa Family Trust.

Contents [hide]
1 Early life
1.1 Musical influences
2 Youth and beginning of career (1955–1960)
3 Early 1960s: Studio Z
4 Late 1960s: The Mothers of Invention
4.1 Debut album: Freak Out! (1966)
4.2 New York period (1966–1968)
4.3 Disbanding the original Mothers of Invention (1969)
5 1970s: From the Mothers to Zappa
5.1 Rebirth of the Mothers and film making (1970)
5.2 Accident, attack and their aftermath (1971–1972)
5.3 Top 10 album (1973–1975)
5.4 Business breakups and touring (1976–1979)
5.5 Zappa as an independent artist (1979)
6 1980s: Productive as ever
6.1 From hit single to classical performances
6.2 Synclavier
6.3 Senate testimony
6.4 Digital medium and last tour
7 1990s: Classical music and death
8 Legacy
8.1 Acclaim and honors
8.2 Artists influenced by Zappa
8.3 References in arts and sciences
9 Discography
10 References
11 Notes
12 External links
 

Early lifeFrank Zappa was born in Baltimore, Maryland, on December 21, 1940. His mother, Rose Marie (née Colimore), was of Italian and French descent, and his father, Francis Vincent Zappa, was a native of Partinico, Sicily and had Greek and Lebanese ancestry.[2] Zappa was the eldest of four children, and had two brothers and a sister.[3] The family moved often during Zappa's childhood because his father, a chemist and mathematician, had various jobs in the US defense industry. After a brief time in Florida in the mid-1940s, the family returned to Maryland, where Zappa's father worked at the Edgewood Arsenal chemical warfare facility at the Aberdeen Proving Ground. Due to their home's proximity to the arsenal, which stored mustard gas, gas masks were kept in the house in case of an accident.[4] This had a profound effect on the young Zappa: references to germs, germ warfare and other aspects of the defense industry occur throughout his work.[5]

During his childhood, Zappa was often sick, suffering from asthma, earaches and sinus problems. A doctor treated the latter by inserting a pellet of radium into each of Zappa's nostrils; little was known at the time about the potential dangers of being subjected to even small amounts of therapeutic radiation.[6] Nasal imagery and references appear both in his music and lyrics, as well as in the collage album covers created by his long-time visual collaborator, Cal Schenkel.

Many of Zappa's childhood diseases may have arisen from exposure to mustard gas. His health worsened when he lived in the Baltimore area.[4][6] In 1952, his family relocated mainly because of Zappa's health.[7] They next moved to Monterey, California, where Zappa's father taught metallurgy at the Naval Postgraduate School. Shortly afterward, they moved to Claremont, then to El Cajon before finally moving to San Diego.[8]

Musical influencesSince I didn't have any kind of formal training, it didn't make any difference to me if I was listening to Lightnin' Slim, or a vocal group called the Jewels ... , or Webern, or Varèse, or Stravinsky. To me it was all good music.

Frank Zappa, 1989[9]Zappa joined his first band, the Ramblers, at Mission Bay High School in San Diego. He was the band's drummer.[10] About the same time his parents bought a phonograph, which allowed him to develop his interest in music, and to begin building his record collection.[11] R&B singles were early purchases, starting a large collection he kept for the rest of his life.[12] He was interested in sounds for their own sake, particularly the sounds of drums and other percussion instruments. By age 12, he had obtained a snare drum and began learning the basics of orchestral percussion.[10] Zappa's deep interest in modern classical music began[13] when he read a LOOK magazine article about the Sam Goody record store chain that lauded its ability to sell an LP as obscure as The Complete Works of Edgard Varèse, Volume One.[14] The article described Varèse's percussion composition Ionisation, produced by EMS Recordings, as "a weird jumble of drums and other unpleasant sounds". Zappa decided to seek out Varèse's music. After searching for over a year, Zappa found a copy (he noticed the LP because of the "mad scientist" looking photo of Varèse on the cover). Not having enough money with him, he persuaded the salesman to sell him the record at a discount.[14] Thus began his lifelong passion for Varèse's music and that of other modern classical composers.

Zappa grew up influenced by avant-garde composers such as Varèse, Igor Stravinsky and Anton Webern, R&B and doo-wop groups (particularly local pachuco groups), and modern jazz. His own heterogeneous ethnic background, and the diverse social and cultural mix in and around greater Los Angeles, were crucial in the formation of Zappa as a practitioner of underground music and of his later distrustful and openly critical attitude towards "mainstream" social, political and musical movements. He frequently lampooned musical fads like psychedelia, rock opera and disco.[15][16] Television also exerted a strong influence, as demonstrated by quotations from show themes and advertising jingles found in his later works.[17]

Youth and beginning of career (1955–1960)By 1956, the Zappa family had moved to Lancaster, a small aerospace and farming town in the Antelope Valley of the Mojave Desert close to Edwards Air Force Base, in northern Los Angeles County. Zappa's mother encouraged him in his musical interests. Although she disliked Varèse's music, she was indulgent enough to give her son a long distance call to the composer as a 15th birthday present.[14] Unfortunately, Varèse was in Europe at the time, so Zappa spoke to the composer's wife. He later received a letter from Varèse thanking him for his interest, and telling him about a composition he was working on called "Déserts". Living in the desert town of Lancaster, Zappa found this very exciting. Varèse invited him to visit if he ever came to New York. The meeting never took place (Varèse died in 1965), but Zappa framed the letter and kept it on display for the rest of his life.[13][18]

At Antelope Valley High School, Zappa met Don Vliet (who later expanded his name to Don Van Vliet and adopted the stage name Captain Beefheart). Zappa and Vliet became close friends, sharing an interest in R&B records and influencing each other musically throughout their careers.[19] Around the same time, Zappa started playing drums in a local band, The Blackouts.[15] The band was racially diverse, and included Euclid James "Motorhead" Sherwood who later became a member of the Mothers of Invention. Zappa's interest in the guitar grew, and in 1957 he was given his first guitar. Among his early influences were Johnny "Guitar" Watson, Howlin' Wolf and Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown.[20] (In the 1970s and '80s, he invited Watson to perform on several albums.) Zappa considered soloing as the equivalent of forming "air sculptures",[21] and developed an eclectic, innovative and highly personal style.

Zappa's interest in composing and arranging proliferated in his last high-school years. By his final year, he was writing, arranging and conducting avant-garde performance pieces for the school orchestra.[22] He graduated from Antelope Valley High School in 1958, and later acknowledged two of his music teachers on the sleeve of the 1966 album Freak Out![23] Due to his family's frequent moves, Zappa attended at least six different high schools, and as a student he was often bored and given to distracting the rest of the class with juvenile antics.[24] He left community college after one semester, and maintained thereafter a disdain for formal education, taking his children out of school at age 15 and refusing to pay for their college.[25]

Zappa left home in 1959, and moved into a small apartment in Echo Park, Los Angeles. After meeting Kathryn J. "Kay" Sherman during his short stay at Pomona College, they moved in together in Ontario, and were married December 28, 1960.[26] Zappa worked for a short period in advertising. His sojourn in the commercial world was brief, but gave him valuable insights into how it works.[27] Throughout his career, he took a keen interest in the visual presentation of his work, designing some of his album covers and directing his own films and videos.

Early 1960s: Studio ZZappa attempted to earn a living as a musician and composer, and played different nightclub gigs, some with a new version of The Blackouts.[28] Financially more rewarding were Zappa's earliest professional recordings, two soundtracks for the low-budget films The World's Greatest Sinner (1962) and Run Home Slow (1965). The former score was commissioned by actor-producer Timothy Carey and recorded in 1961. It contains many themes that appeared on later Zappa records.[29] The latter soundtrack was recorded in 1963 after the film was completed, but it was commissioned by one of Zappa's former high school teachers in 1959 and Zappa may have worked on it before the film was shot.[30] Excerpts from the soundtrack can be heard on the posthumous album The Lost Episodes (1996).

During the early 1960s, Zappa wrote and produced songs for other local artists, often working with singer-songwriter Ray Collins and producer Paul Buff. Their "Memories of El Monte" was recorded by The Penguins, although only Cleve Duncan of the original group was featured.[31] Buff owned the small Pal Recording Studio in Cucamonga, which included a unique five-track tape recorder he had built. At that time, only a handful of the most sophisticated commercial studios had multi-track facilities; the industry standard for smaller studios was still mono or two-track.[32] Although none of the recordings from the period achieved major commercial success, Zappa earned enough money to allow him to stage a concert of his orchestral music in 1963 and to broadcast and record it.[33] He appeared on Steve Allen's syndicated late night show the same year, in which he played a bicycle as a musical instrument.[34] With Captain Beefheart, Zappa recorded some songs under the name of The Soots. They were rejected by Dot Records for having "no commercial potential", a verdict Zappa subsequently quoted on the sleeve of Freak Out![35]

In 1964, after his marriage started to break up, he moved into the Pal studio and began routinely working 12 hours or more per day recording and experimenting with overdubbing and audio tape manipulation. This set a work pattern that endured for most of his life.[36] Aided by his income from film composing, Zappa took over the studio from Paul Buff, who was now working with Art Laboe at Original Sound. It was renamed Studio Z.[37] Studio Z was rarely booked for recordings by other musicians. Instead, friends moved in, notably James "Motorhead" Sherwood.[38] Zappa started performing as guitarist with a power trio, The Muthers, in local bars in order to support himself.[39]

An article in the local press describing Zappa as "the Movie King of Cucamonga" prompted the local police to suspect that he was making pornographic films.[40] In March 1965, Zappa was approached by a vice squad undercover officer, and accepted an offer of $100 to produce a suggestive audio tape for an alleged stag party. Zappa and a female friend recorded a faked erotic episode. When Zappa was about to hand over the tape, he was arrested, and the police stripped the studio of all recorded material.[40] The press was tipped off beforehand, and next day's The Daily Report wrote that "Vice Squad investigators stilled the tape recorders of a free-swinging, a-go-go film and recording studio here Friday and arrested a self-styled movie producer".[41] Zappa was charged with "conspiracy to commit pornography".[42] This felony charge was reduced and he was sentenced to six months in jail on a misdemeanor, with all but ten days suspended.[43] His entrapment and brief imprisonment left a permanent mark, and was key in the formation of his anti-authoritarian stance.[44] Zappa lost several recordings made at Studio Z in the process, as the police only returned 30 out of 80 hours of tape seized.[45] Eventually, he could no longer afford to pay the rent on the studio and was evicted.[46] Zappa managed to recover some of his possessions before the studio was torn down in 1966.[47]

Late 1960s: The Mothers of InventionIn 1965, Zappa was approached by Ray Collins who asked him to take over as the guitarist in local R&B band The Soul Giants, following a fight between Collins and the group's original guitarist.[3] Zappa accepted, and soon he assumed leadership and the role as co-lead singer (even though he never considered himself a singer[48]). He convinced the other members that they should play his music to increase the chances of getting a record contract.[49] The band was renamed The Mothers, coincidentally on Mother's Day.[50] The group increased their bookings after beginning an association with manager Herb Cohen, while they gradually gained attention on the burgeoning Los Angeles underground music scene.[51] In early 1966, they were spotted by leading record producer Tom Wilson when playing "Trouble Every Day", a song about the Watts Riots.[52] Wilson had earned acclaim as the producer for singer-songwriter Bob Dylan and the folk-rock act Simon & Garfunkel, and was notable as one of the few African Americans working as a major label pop music producer at this time.

Wilson signed The Mothers to the Verve Records division of MGM Records, which had built up a strong reputation in the music industry for its releases of modern jazz recordings in the 1940s and 1950s, but was attempting to diversify into pop and rock audiences. Verve insisted that the band officially re-title themselves "The Mothers of Invention" because "Mother", in slang terminology, was short for "motherfucker"—a term that apart from its profane meanings can denote a skilled musician.[53]

Debut album: Freak Out! (1966)With Wilson credited as producer, the Mothers of Invention, augmented by a studio orchestra, recorded the groundbreaking Freak Out! (1966) which, alongside Bob Dylan's Blonde on Blonde, was one of the first rock double albums ever released. It mixed R&B, doo-wop, musique concrète,[54] and experimental sound collages that captured the "freak" subculture of Los Angeles at that time.[55] Although he was dissatisfied with the final product -- in a late '60s radio interview (included in the posthumous MOFO Project/Object compilation) Zappa recounted that the side-long closing track "Return of the Son of Monster Magnet" was intended to be the basic track for a much more complex work which Verve did not allow him to complete -- Freak Out immediately established Zappa as a radical new voice in rock music, providing an antidote to the "relentless consumer culture of America".[56] The sound was raw, but the arrangements were sophisticated. While recording in the studio, some of the additional session musicians were shocked that they were expected to read the notes on sheet music from charts with Zappa conducting them, since it was not standard when recording rock music.[57] The lyrics praised non-conformity, disparaged authorities, and had dadaist elements. Yet, there was a place for seemingly conventional love songs.[58] Most compositions are Zappa's, which set a precedent for the rest of his recording career. He had full control over the arrangements and musical decisions and did most overdubs. Wilson provided the industry clout and connections to get the group the financial resources needed.[59]

 "Hungry Freaks Daddy"

The opening track on Freak Out!. The album has "consistently been voted as one of top 100 greatest albums ever made".[56]
 

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During the recording of Freak Out!, Zappa moved into a house in Laurel Canyon with friend Pamela Zarubica, who appeared on the album.[57] The house became a meeting (and living) place for many LA musicians and groupies of the time, despite Zappa's disapproval of their illicit drug use.[60] He labeled people on drugs "assholes in action", and he only tried cannabis a few times without any pleasure.[61] He was a regular tobacco smoker for most of his life, and strongly critical of anti-tobacco campaigns.[62] After a short promotional tour following the release of Freak Out!, Zappa met Adelaide Gail Sloatman. He fell in love within "a couple of minutes", and she moved into the house over the summer.[49] They married in 1967, had four children and remained together until Zappa's death.

Wilson nominally produced the Mothers' second album Absolutely Free (1967), which was recorded in November 1966, and later mixed in New York, although by this time Zappa was in de facto control of most facets of the production. It featured extended playing by the Mothers of Invention and focused on songs that defined Zappa's compositional style of introducing abrupt, rhythmical changes into songs that were built from diverse elements.[63] Examples are "Plastic People" and "Brown Shoes Don't Make It", which contained lyrics critical of the hypocrisy and conformity of American society, but also of the counterculture of the 1960s.[64] As Zappa put it, "[W]e're satirists, and we are out to satirize everything."[65] At the same time, Zappa had recorded material for a self-produced album based on orchestral works to be released under his own name. Due to contractual problems, the recordings were shelved and only made ready for release late in 1967. Zappa took the opportunity to radically restructure the contents, adding newly recorded, improvised dialogue to finalize what became his first solo album (under the name Francis Vincent Zappa[1]), Lumpy Gravy (1968).[66] It is an "incredible ambitious musical project",[67] a "monument to John Cage",[68] which intertwines orchestral themes, spoken words and electronic noises through radical audio editing techniques.[69][70]

New York period (1966–1968)The Mothers of Invention played in New York in late 1966 and were offered a contract at the Garrick Theater during Easter 1967. This proved successful and Herb Cohen extended the booking, which eventually lasted half a year.[71] As a result, Zappa and his wife, along with the Mothers of Invention, moved to New York.[66] Their shows became a combination of improvised acts showcasing individual talents of the band as well as tight performances of Zappa's music. Everything was directed by Zappa's famous hand signals.[72] Guest performers and audience participation became a regular part of the Garrick Theater shows. One evening, Zappa managed to entice some US Marines from the audience onto the stage, where they proceeded to dismember a big baby doll, having been told by Zappa to pretend that it was a "gook baby".[73]

Situated in New York, and only interrupted by the band's first European tour, the Mothers of Invention recorded the album widely regarded as the peak of the group's late 1960s work, We're Only in It for the Money (released 1968).[74] It was produced by Zappa, with Wilson credited as executive producer. From then on, Zappa produced all albums released by the Mothers of Invention and as a solo artist. We're Only in It for the Money featured some of the most creative audio editing and production yet heard in pop music, and the songs ruthlessly satirized the hippie and flower power phenomena.[75] The cover photo parodied that of The Beatles' Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.[76] The cover art was provided by Cal Schenkel whom Zappa met in New York. This initiated a life-long collaboration in which Schenkel designed covers for numerous Zappa and Mothers albums.[77]

Reflecting Zappa's eclectic approach to music, the next album, Cruising with Ruben & the Jets (1968), was very different. It represented a collection of doo-wop songs; listeners and critics were not sure whether the album was a satire or a tribute.[78] Zappa has noted that the album was conceived in the way Stravinsky's compositions were in his neo-classical period: "If he could take the forms and clichés of the classical era and pervert them, why not do the same ... to doo-wop in the fifties?"[79] A theme from Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring is heard during one song.

In New York, Zappa increasingly used tape editing as a compositional tool.[80] A prime example is found on the double album Uncle Meat (1969),[81] where the track "King Kong" is edited from various studio and live performances. Zappa had begun regularly recording concerts,[82] and because of his insistence on precise tuning and timing, he was able to augment his studio productions with excerpts from live shows, and vice versa.[83] Later, he combined recordings of different compositions into new pieces, irrespective of the tempo or meter of the sources. He dubbed this process "xenochrony" (strange synchronizations[84])—reflecting the Greek "xeno" (alien or strange) and "chrono" (time).[83] Zappa also evolved a compositional approach which he called "conceptual continuity," meaning that any project or album was part of a larger project. Everything was connected, and musical themes and lyrics reappeared in different form on later albums. Conceptual continuity clues are found throughout Zappa's entire œuvre.[17][80]

During the late 1960s, Zappa continued to develop the business sides of his career. He and Herb Cohen formed the Bizarre Records and Straight Records labels, distributed by Warner Bros. Records, as ventures to aid the funding of projects and to increase creative control. Zappa produced the double album Trout Mask Replica for Captain Beefheart, and releases by Alice Cooper, Wild Man Fischer, and The GTOs, as well as Lenny Bruce's last live performance.[85]

Disbanding the original Mothers of Invention (1969) "Peaches En Regalia"

The opening track on Hot Rats is considered to be one of Zappa's most enduring compositions,[86][87] and has been covered by many artists.[88]
 

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Zappa and the Mothers of Invention returned to Los Angeles in the summer of 1968, and the Zappas moved into a house on Laurel Canyon Boulevard, only to move again to one on Woodrow Wilson Drive in the autumn.[89] This was to be Zappa's home for the rest of his life. Despite being a success with fans in Europe, the Mothers of Invention were not faring well financially.[90] Their first records were vocally oriented, but Zappa wrote more instrumental jazz and classical oriented music for the band's concerts, which confused audiences. Zappa felt that audiences failed to appreciate his "electrical chamber music".[91][92]

 
Zappa with the Mothers of invention, Theatre de Clichy, Paris, 1971In 1969 there were nine band members and Zappa was supporting the group himself from his publishing royalties whether they played or not.[90] In late 1969, Zappa broke up the band. He often cited the financial strain as the main reason,[93] but also commented on the band members' lack of sufficient effort.[94] Many band members were bitter about Zappa's decision, and some took it as a sign of Zappa's concern for perfection at the expense of human feeling.[92] Others were irritated by 'his autocratic ways',[59] exemplified by Zappa's never staying at the same hotel as the band members.[95] Several members would, however, play for Zappa in years to come. Remaining recordings with the band from this period were collected on Weasels Ripped My Flesh and Burnt Weeny Sandwich (both released in 1970).

After he disbanded the Mothers of Invention, Zappa released the acclaimed solo album Hot Rats (1969).[96][97] It features, for the first time on record, Zappa playing extended guitar solos and contains one of his most enduring compositions, "Peaches en Regalia", which reappeared several times on future recordings.[86] It was backed by jazz, blues and R&B session players including violinist Don "Sugarcane" Harris, drummers John Guerin and Paul Humphrey, multi-instrumentalist and previous member of Mothers of Invention Ian Underwood, and multi-instrumentalist Shuggie Otis on bass, along with a guest appearance by Captain Beefheart (providing vocals to the only non-instrumental track, "Willie the Pimp"). It became a popular album in England,[98] and had a major influence on the development of the jazz-rock fusion genre.[86][97]

1970s: From the Mothers to ZappaIn 1970 Zappa met conductor Zubin Mehta. They arranged a May 1970 concert where Mehta conducted the Los Angeles Philharmonic augmented by a rock band. According to Zappa, the music was mostly written in motel rooms while on tour with the Mothers of Invention. Some of it was later featured in the movie 200 Motels.[98] Although the concert was a success, Zappa's experience working with a symphony orchestra was not a happy one.[79] His dissatisfaction became a recurring theme throughout his career; he often felt that the quality of performance of his material delivered by orchestras was not commensurate with the money he spent on orchestral concerts and recordings.[99]

Rebirth of the Mothers and film making (1970)
Frank Zappa in Paris, early 1970sLater in 1970, Zappa formed a new version of The Mothers (from then on, he mostly dropped the "of Invention"). It included British drummer Aynsley Dunbar, jazz keyboardist George Duke, Ian Underwood, Jeff Simmons (bass, rhythm guitar), and three members of The Turtles: bass player Jim Pons, and singers Mark Volman and Howard Kaylan, who, due to persistent legal and contractual problems, adopted the stage name "The Phlorescent Leech and Eddie", or "Flo & Eddie".[100]

This version of the Mothers debuted on Zappa's next solo album Chunga's Revenge (1970),[101] which was followed by the double-album soundtrack to the movie 200 Motels (1971), featuring The Mothers, The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Ringo Starr, Theodore Bikel, and Keith Moon. Co-directed by Zappa and Tony Palmer, it was filmed in a week at Pinewood Studios outside London.[102] Tensions between Zappa and several cast and crew members arose before and during shooting;[102] co-director Palmer tried afterwards to have his name removed from the film.[103] The film deals loosely with life on the road as a rock musician.[104] It was the first feature film photographed on videotape and transferred to 35 mm film, a process which allowed for novel visual effects.[105] It was released to mixed reviews.[106] The score relied extensively on orchestral music, and Zappa's dissatisfaction with the classical music world intensified when a concert, scheduled at the Royal Albert Hall after filming, was canceled because a representative of the venue found some of the lyrics obscene. In 1975, he lost a lawsuit against the Royal Albert Hall for breach of contract.[107]

After 200 Motels, the band went on tour, which resulted in two live albums, Fillmore East - June 1971 and Just Another Band From L.A.; the latter included the 20-minute track "Billy the Mountain", Zappa's satire on rock opera set in Southern California. This track was representative of the band's theatrical performances in which songs were used to build up sketches based on 200 Motels scenes as well as new situations often portraying the band members' sexual encounters on the road.[108][109]

Accident, attack and their aftermath (1971–1972) "Waka/Jawaka"

The closing track on Waka/Jawaka, one of Zappa's jazz-oriented albums.

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Zappa performing in Hamburg, Germany in 1971In December 1971, there were two serious setbacks. While performing at Casino de Montreux in Switzerland, the Mothers' equipment was destroyed when a flare set off by an audience member started a fire that burned down the casino[110]. Immortalized in Deep Purple's song "Smoke on the Water", the event and immediate aftermath can be heard on the bootleg album Swiss Cheese/Fire, released legally as part of Zappa's Beat the Boots II compilation. After a week's break, The Mothers played at the Rainbow Theatre, London, with rented gear. During the encore, an audience member pushed Zappa off the stage and into the concrete-floored orchestra pit. The band thought Zappa had been killed—he had suffered serious fractures, head trauma and injuries to his back, leg, and neck, as well as a crushed larynx, which ultimately caused his voice to drop a third after healing.[110] This left him wheelchair bound, forcing him off the road for over half a year. Upon his return to the stage in September 1972, he was still wearing a leg brace, had a noticeable limp and could not stand for very long while on stage. Zappa noted that one leg healed "shorter than the other" (a reference later found in the lyrics of songs "Zomby Woof" and "Dancin' Fool"), resulting in chronic back pain.[110] Meanwhile, the Mothers were left in limbo and eventually formed the core of Flo and Eddie's band as they set out on their own.

During 1971–1972 Zappa released two strongly jazz-oriented solo LPs, Waka/Jawaka and The Grand Wazoo, which were recorded during the forced layoff from concert touring, using floating line-ups of session players and Mothers alumni.[111] Musically, the albums were akin to Hot Rats.[112] Zappa began touring again in late 1972.[112] His first effort was a series of concerts in September 1972 with a 20-piece big band referred to as the Grand Wazoo. This was followed by a scaled-down version known as the Petit Wazoo that toured the US for five weeks from October to December 1972.[113]

Top 10 album (1973–1975)Zappa then formed and toured with smaller groups that variously included Ian Underwood (reeds, keyboards), Ruth Underwood (vibes, marimba), Sal Marquez (trumpet, vocals), Napoleon Murphy Brock (sax, flute and vocals), Bruce Fowler (trombone), Tom Fowler (bass), Chester Thompson (drums), Ralph Humphrey (drums), George Duke (keyboards, vocals), and Jean-Luc Ponty (violin).

 
Frank Zappa in concert, Hordern Pavilion, Sydney, Australia, May 1973By 1973 the Bizarre and Straight labels were discontinued. In their place, Zappa and Cohen created DiscReet Records, also distributed by Warner Bros.[114] Zappa continued a high rate of production through the first half of the 1970s, including the solo album Apostrophe (') (1974), which reached a career-high #10 on the Billboard pop album charts[115] helped by the chart single "Don't Eat The Yellow Snow".[116] Other albums from the period are Over-Nite Sensation (1973), which contained several future concert favorites, such as "Dinah-Moe Humm" and "Montana", and the albums Roxy & Elsewhere (1974) and One Size Fits All (1975) which feature ever-changing versions of a band still called the Mothers, and are notable for the tight renditions of highly difficult jazz fusion songs in such pieces as "Inca Roads", "Echidna's Arf (Of You)" and "Be-Bop Tango (Of the Old Jazzmen's Church)".[117] A live recording from 1974, You Can't Do That on Stage Anymore, Vol. 2 (1988), captures "the full spirit and excellence of the 1973–75 band".[117] Zappa released Bongo Fury (1975), which featured live recordings from a tour the same year that reunited him with Captain Beefheart for a brief period.[118] They later became estranged for a period of years, but were in contact at the end of Zappa's life.[119]

Business breakups and touring (1976–1979)
Zappa with Captain Beefheart, seated left, during a 1975 concertZappa's relationship with long-time manager Herb Cohen ended in 1976. Zappa sued Cohen for skimming more than he was allocated from DiscReet Records, as well as for signing acts of which Zappa did not approve.[120] Cohen filed a lawsuit against Zappa in return, which froze the money Zappa and Cohen had gained from an out-of-court settlement with MGM over the rights of the early Mothers of Invention recordings. It also prevented Zappa having access to any of his previously recorded material during the trials. Zappa therefore took his personal master copies of the rock-oriented Zoot Allures (1976) directly to Warner Bros., thereby bypassing DiscReet.[121]

In the mid-1970s Zappa prepared material for Läther (pronounced "leather"), a four-LP project. Läther encapsulated all the aspects of Zappa's musical styles—rock tunes, orchestral works, complex instrumentals, and Zappa's own trademark distortion-drenched guitar solos. Wary of a quadruple-LP, Warner Bros. Records refused to release it.[122] Zappa managed to get an agreement with Mercury-Phonogram, and test pressings were made targeted at a Halloween 1977 release, but Warner Bros. prevented the release by claiming rights over the material.[123] Zappa responded by appearing on the Pasadena, California radio station KROQ, allowing them to broadcast Läther and encouraging listeners to make their own tape recordings.[124] A lawsuit between Zappa and Warner Bros. followed, during which no Zappa material was released for more than a year. Eventually, Warner Bros. issued major parts of Läther against Zappa's will as four individual albums with limited promotion.[125] Läther was released posthumously in 1996.[126]

Although Zappa eventually gained the rights to all his material created under the MGM and Warner Bros. contracts,[127] the various lawsuits meant that for a period Zappa's only income came from touring, which he therefore did extensively in 1975–1977 with relatively small, mainly rock-oriented, bands.[123] Drummer Terry Bozzio became a regular band member, Napoleon Murphy Brock stayed on for a while, and original Mothers of Invention bassist Roy Estrada joined. Among other musicians were bassist Patrick O'Hearn, singer-guitarist Ray White and keyboardist Eddie Jobson. In December 1976, Zappa appeared as a featured musical guest on the NBC television show Saturday Night Live.[128][129] The performances included an impromptu musical collaboration with cast member John Belushi during the instrumental piece "The Purple Lagoon". Belushi appeared as his Samurai Futaba character playing the tenor sax with Zappa conducting.[130] Zappa's song, "I'm the Slime", was performed with a voice-over by SNL booth announcer Don Pardo, who also introduced "Peaches En Regalia" on the same airing.

 
Zappa in Toronto, 1977Zappa's band at the time, with the additions of Ruth Underwood and a horn section (featuring Michael and Randy Brecker), performed during Christmas in New York, recordings of which appear on one of the albums released by Warner Bros., Zappa in New York (1978). It mixes intense instrumentals such as "The Black Page" and humorous songs like "Titties and Beer".[131] The former composition, written originally for drum kit but later developed for larger bands, is notorious for its complexity in rhythmic structure, radical changes of tempo and meter, and short, densely arranged passages.[132][133]

 "The Black Page Drum Solo/Black Page #1"

One of Zappa's complex, percussion-based compositions featured on Zappa in New York.

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Zappa in New York featured a song about sex criminal Michael H. Kenyon, "The Illinois Enema Bandit", which featured Don Pardo providing the opening narrative in the song. Like many songs on the album, it contained numerous sexual references,[131] leading to many critics objecting and being offended by the content.[134] Zappa dismissed the criticism by noting that he was a journalist reporting on life as he saw it.[135] Predating his later fight against censorship, he remarked: "What do you make of a society that is so primitive that it clings to the belief that certain words in its language are so powerful that they could corrupt you the moment you hear them?"[48] The remaining albums released by Warner Bros. Records without Zappa's consent were Studio Tan in 1978 and Sleep Dirt in 1979, which contained complex suites of instrumentally-based tunes recorded between 1973 and 1976, and whose release was overlooked in the midst of the legal problems.[136] Also released by the label without the artist's consent was Orchestral Favorites in 1979, which featured recordings of a concert with orchestral music from 1975.

Zappa as an independent artist (1979) "Bobby Brown"

The single became a hit in non-English speaking countries and helped Sheik Yerbouti become a best-seller.[137]
 

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Resolving the lawsuits successfully, Zappa ended the 1970s "stronger than ever",[138] by releasing two of his most successful albums in 1979: the best selling album of his career, Sheik Yerbouti,[139] and the "bona fide masterpiece",[138] Joe's Garage.[140] The double album Sheik Yerbouti was the first release on Zappa Records, and contained the Grammy-nominated single "Dancin' Fool", which reached #45 on the Billboard charts,[141] and "Jewish Princess", which received attention when a Jewish lobby group, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), attempted to prevent the song from receiving radio airplay due to its alleged anti-Semitic lyrics.[135] Zappa vehemently denied any anti-Semitic sentiments and dismissed the ADL as a "noisemaking organization that tries to apply pressure on people in order to manufacture a stereotype image of Jews that suits their idea of a good time".[142] The album's commercial success was attributable in part to "Bobby Brown". Due to its explicit lyrics about a young man's encounter with a "dyke by the name of Freddie", the song did not get airplay in the US, but it topped the charts in several European countries where English is not the primary language.[137] The triple LP Joe's Garage featured lead singer Ike Willis as the voice of the character "Joe" in a rock opera about the danger of political systems,[138] the suppression of freedom of speech and music—inspired in part by the Islamic revolution that had made music illegal within its jurisdiction at the time[143]—and about the "strange relationship Americans have with sex and sexual frankness".[138] The album contains rock songs like "Catholic Girls" (a riposte to the controversies of "Jewish Princess"),[144] "Lucille Has Messed My Mind Up", and the title track, as well as extended live-recorded guitar improvisations combined with a studio backup band dominated by drummer Vinnie Colaiuta (with whom Zappa had a particularly good musical rapport)[145] adopting the xenochrony process. The album contains one of Zappa's most famous guitar "signature pieces", "Watermelon in Easter Hay".[21][146]

On December 21, 1979, Zappa's movie Baby Snakes premiered in New York. The movie's tagline was "A movie about people who do stuff that is not normal".[147] The 2 hour and 40 minutes movie was based on footage from concerts in New York around Halloween 1977, with a band featuring keyboardist Tommy Mars and percussionist Ed Mann (who would both return on later tours) as well as guitarist Adrian Belew. It also contained several extraordinary sequences of clay animation by Bruce Bickford who had earlier provided animation sequences to Zappa for a 1974 TV special (which later become available on the video The Dub Room Special (1982)).[148] The movie did not do well in theatrical distribution,[149] but won the Premier Grand Prix at the First International Music Festival in Paris in 1981. The Zappa Family Trust released it on DVD, and it has been available since 2003.[148]

Zappa later expanded on his television appearances in a non-musical role. He was an actor or voice artist in episodes of Shelley Duvall's Faerie Tale Theatre,[150] Miami Vice[151] and The Ren and Stimpy Show.[150] A voice part in The Simpsons never materialized, to creator Matt Groening's disappointment.[152]

1980s: Productive as ever
Frank Zappa performing at the Memorial Auditorium, Buffalo, New York, 1980. The concert was released in 2007 as Buffalo.After spending most of 1980 on the road, Zappa released Tinsel Town Rebellion in 1981. It was the first release on his own Barking Pumpkin Records,[153] and it contains songs taken from a 1979 tour, one studio track and material from the 1980 tours. The album is a mixture of complicated instrumentals and Zappa's use of sprechstimme (speaking song or voice)—a compositional technique utilized by such composers as Arnold Schoenberg and Alban Berg—showcasing some of the most accomplished bands Zappa ever had (mostly featuring drummer Vinnie Colaiuta).[153] While some lyrics still raised controversy among critics, in the sense that some found them sexist,[154] the political and sociological satire in songs like the title track and "The Blue Light" have been described as a "hilarious critique of the willingness of the American people to believe anything".[155] The album is also notable for the presence of guitar virtuoso Steve Vai, who joined Zappa's touring band in the fall of 1980.[156]

The same year the double album You Are What You Is was released. Most of it was recorded in Zappa's brand new Utility Muffin Research Kitchen (UMRK) studios, which were located at his house,[83] thereby giving him complete freedom to work.[157] The album included one complex instrumental, "Theme from the 3rd Movement of Sinister Footwear", but focused mainly on rock songs with Zappa's sardonic social commentary—satirical lyrics targeted at teenagers, the media, and religious and political hypocrisy.[158] "Dumb All Over" is a tirade on religion, as is "Heavenly Bank Account", wherein Zappa rails against TV evangelists such as Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson for their purported influence on the US administration as well as their use of religion as a means of raising money.[159] Songs like "Society Pages" and "I'm a Beautiful Guy" show Zappa's dismay with the Reagan era and its "obscene pursuit of wealth and happiness".[159]

 "Shut Up 'N Play Yer Guitar Some More"

The title track on Shut Up 'N Play Yer Guitar features Zappa's guitar improvisations.

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In 1981, Zappa also released three instrumental albums, Shut Up 'N Play Yer Guitar, Shut Up 'N Play Yer Guitar Some More, and The Return of the Son of Shut Up 'N Play Yer Guitar, which were initially sold via mail order, but later released through the CBS label due to popular demand.[160] The albums focus exclusively on Frank Zappa as a guitar soloist, and the tracks are predominantly live recordings from 1979–1980; they highlight Zappa's improvisational skills with "beautiful performances from the backing group as well".[161] Another guitar-only album, Guitar, was released in 1988, and a third, Trance-Fusion, which Zappa completed shortly before his death, was released in 2006.

From hit single to classical performancesIn May 1982, Zappa released Ship Arriving Too Late to Save a Drowning Witch, which featured his biggest selling single ever, the Grammy Award-nominated song "Valley Girl" (topping out at #32 on the Billboard charts).[141] In her improvised lyrics to the song, Zappa's daughter Moon Unit satirized the vapid speech of teenage girls from the San Fernando Valley, which popularized many "Valspeak" expressions such as "gag me with a spoon," "fer sure, fer sure," "grody" (gross), and "barf out".[162] Most Americans who only knew Zappa from his few singles successes now thought of him as a person writing "novelty songs", even though the rest of the album contained highly challenging music.[163] Zappa was irritated by this[164] and never played the song live.[163]

In 1983, two different projects were released, beginning with The Man From Utopia, a rock-oriented work. The album is eclectic, featuring the vocal-led "Dangerous Kitchen" and "The Jazz Discharge Party Hats", both continuations of the sprechstimme excursions on Tinseltown Rebellion. The second album, London Symphony Orchestra, Vol. 1, contained orchestral Zappa compositions conducted by Kent Nagano and performed by the London Symphony Orchestra. A second record of these sessions, London Symphony Orchestra, Vol. 2 was released in 1987. The material was recorded under a tight schedule with Zappa providing all funding, helped by the commercial success of "Valley Girl".[165] Zappa was not satisfied with the LSO recordings. One reason is "Strictly Genteel", which was recorded after the trumpet section had been out for drinks on a break: the track took 40 edits to hide out-of-tune notes.[165] Conductor Nagano, who was pleased with the experience, noted that in "fairness to the orchestra, the music is humanly very, very difficult".[166] Some reviews noted that the recordings were the best representation of Zappa's orchestral work so far.[167] In 1984 Zappa teamed again with Nagano and the Berkeley Symphony Orchestra for a live performance of A Zappa Affair with augmented orchestra, life-size puppets, and moving stage sets. Although critically acclaimed the work was a financial failure, and only performed twice.[168][169]

Synclavier "Naval Aviation in Art?"

A Zappa composition for classical ensemble from Boulez Conducts Zappa: The Perfect Stranger.

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For the remainder of his career, much of Zappa's work was influenced by his use of the Synclavier as a compositional and performance tool. Even considering the complexity of the music he wrote, the Synclavier could realize anything he could dream up.[170] The Synclavier could be programmed to play almost anything conceivable, to perfection: "With the Synclavier, any group of imaginary instruments can be invited to play the most difficult passages ... with one-millisecond accuracy—every time".[170] Even though it essentially did away with the need for musicians,[171] Zappa viewed the Synclavier and real-life musicians as separate.[170] In 1984, he released four albums. Boulez Conducts Zappa: The Perfect Stranger, contains orchestral works commissioned and conducted by world-renowned conductor Pierre Boulez (who was listed as an influence on Freak Out!) and performed by his Ensemble InterContemporain, juxtaposed with premiere Synclavier pieces. Again, Zappa was not satisfied with the performances of his orchestral works as he found them under-rehearsed, but in the album liner notes he respectfully thanks Boulez's demands for precision.[172] The Synclavier pieces stood in contrast to the orchestral works, as the sounds were electronically generated and not, as became possible shortly thereafter, sampled.

The album Thing-Fish was an ambitious three-record set in the style of a Broadway play dealing with a dystopian "what-if" scenario involving feminism, homosexuality, manufacturing and distribution of the AIDS virus, and a eugenics program conducted by the United States government.[173] New vocals were combined with previously released tracks and new Synclavier music; "the work is an extraordinary example of bricolage".[174] Finally, in 1984, Zappa released Francesco Zappa, a Synclavier rendition of works by 18th century composer Francesco Zappa (no known relation), and Them or Us, a two-record set of heavily edited live and session pieces.

Senate testimony

Zappa testifies before the U.S. Senate, 1985

Testimony continuedOn September 19, 1985, Zappa testified before the United States Senate Commerce, Technology, and Transportation committee, attacking the Parents Music Resource Center or PMRC, a music organization, co-founded by Tipper Gore, wife of then-senator Al Gore. The PMRC consisted of many wives of politicians, including the wives of five members of the committee, and was founded to address the issue of song lyrics with sexual or satanic content.[175] Zappa saw their activities as on a path towards censorship,[176] and called their proposal for voluntary labelling of records with explicit content "extortion" of the music industry.[177] In his prepared statement, he said:

The PMRC proposal is an ill-conceived piece of nonsense which fails to deliver any real benefits to children, infringes the civil liberties of people who are not children, and promises to keep the courts busy for years dealing with the interpretational and enforcemental problems inherent in the proposal's design. It is my understanding that, in law, First Amendment issues are decided with a preference for the least restrictive alternative. In this context, the PMRC's demands are the equivalent of treating dandruff by decapitation ... The establishment of a rating system, voluntary or otherwise, opens the door to an endless parade of moral quality control programs based on things certain Christians do not like. What if the next bunch of Washington wives demands a large yellow "J" on all material written or performed by Jews, in order to save helpless children from exposure to concealed Zionist doctrine?[178]

Zappa set excerpts from the PMRC hearings to Synclavier music in his composition "Porn Wars" on the 1985 album Frank Zappa Meets the Mothers of Prevention, and the full recording was released on Congress Shall Make No Law.... Zappa is heard interacting with Senators Fritz Hollings, Slade Gorton, Al Gore (who claimed, at the hearing, to be a Zappa fan), and in an exchange with Florida Senator Paula Hawkins over what toys Zappa's children played with. Zappa expressed opinions on censorship when he appeared on CNN's Crossfire TV series and debated issues with Washington Times commentator John Lofton in 1986.[179] Zappa's passion for American politics was becoming a bigger part of his life. He had always encouraged his fans to register to vote on album covers, and throughout 1988 he had registration booths at his concerts.[180] He even considered running for President of the United States.[181]

Digital medium and last tourAround 1986, Zappa undertook a comprehensive re-release program of his earlier vinyl recordings.[182] He personally oversaw the remastering of all his 1960s, 1970s and early 1980s albums for the new digital compact disc medium.[183] Certain aspects of these re-issues were, however, criticized by some fans as being unfaithful to the original recordings.[184] Nearly twenty years before the advent of online music stores, Zappa had proposed to replace "phonographic record merchandising" of music by "direct digital-to-digital transfer" through phone or cable TV (with royalty payments and consumer billing automatically built into the accompanying software).[185] In 1989, Zappa considered his idea a "miserable flop".[185]

The album Jazz From Hell, released in 1986, earned Zappa his first Grammy Award in 1987 for Best Rock Instrumental Performance. Except for one live guitar solo (St. Etienne), the album exclusively featured compositions brought to life by the Synclavier. Although an instrumental album, Meyer Music Markets sold Jazz from Hell featuring an "explicit lyrics" sticker—a warning label introduced by the Recording Industry Association of America in an agreement with the PMRC.[186]

Zappa's last tour in a rock and jazz band format took place in 1988 with a 12-piece group which had a repertoire of over 100 (mostly Zappa) compositions, but which split under acrimonious circumstances before the tour was completed.[187] The tour was documented on the albums Broadway the Hard Way (new material featuring songs with strong political emphasis), The Best Band You Never Heard in Your Life (Zappa "standards" and an eclectic collection of cover tunes, ranging from Maurice Ravel's Boléro to Led Zeppelin's "Stairway to Heaven"), and Make a Jazz Noise Here (mostly instrumental and avant-garde music). Parts are also found on You Can't Do That on Stage Anymore, volumes 4 and 6.

1990s: Classical music and deathIn early 1990, Zappa visited Czechoslovakia at the request of President Václav Havel, and was asked to serve as consultant for the government on trade, cultural matters and tourism. Havel was a lifelong fan of Zappa who had large influence in the avant-garde and underground scene in Central Europe in the 1970s and 1980s (a Czech rock group that was imprisoned in 1976 took its name from Zappa's 1968 song "Plastic People").[188] Zappa enthusiastically agreed and began meeting with corporate officials interested in investing in Czechoslovakia. Within a few weeks, however, the US administration put pressure on the Czech government to withdraw the appointment. Havel made Zappa an unofficial cultural attaché instead.[189] Zappa also planned to develop an international consulting enterprise to facilitate trade between the former Eastern Bloc and Western businesses.[190]

 "N-Lite"

One of Zappa's works for Synclavier on Civilization, Phaze III, cited as his "last great work."[191]
 

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Most of Zappa's projects came to a halt in 1990, when he was diagnosed with terminal prostate cancer. The disease had been developing unnoticed for ten years and was considered inoperable.[190] After his diagnosis, Zappa devoted most of his energy to modern orchestral and Synclavier works. In 1993 he completed Civilization, Phaze III shortly before his death. It was a major Synclavier work which he had begun in the 1980s.[192][193]

In 1991, Zappa was chosen to be one of four featured composers at the world-acclaimed Frankfurt Festival in 1992 (the others were John Cage, Karlheinz Stockhausen and Alexander Knaifel).[194] Zappa was approached by the German chamber ensemble, Ensemble Modern, which was interested in playing his music for the event. Although ill, Zappa invited them to Los Angeles for rehearsals of new compositions and new arrangements of older material.[195] In addition to being satisfied with the ensemble's performances of his music, Zappa also got along with the musicians, and the concerts in Germany and Austria were set up for the fall.[195] In September 1992, the concerts went ahead as scheduled, but Zappa could only appear at two in Frankfurt due to illness. At the first concert, he conducted the opening "Overture", and the final "G-Spot Tornado" as well as the theatrical "Food Gathering in Post-Industrial America, 1992" and "Welcome to the United States" (the remainder of the program was conducted by the ensemble's regular conductor Peter Rundel). Zappa received a 20-minute ovation.[196] It would become his last professional public appearance, as the cancer was spreading to such an extent that he was in too much pain to enjoy an event that he otherwise found "exhilarating".[196] Recordings from the concerts appeared on The Yellow Shark (1993), Zappa's last release during his lifetime, and some material from studio rehearsals appeared on the posthumous Everything Is Healing Nicely (1999).

Frank Zappa died on Saturday, December 4, 1993 in his home surrounded by his wife and children. At a private ceremony the following day, Zappa was interred in an unmarked grave at the Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery in Westwood, Los Angeles,[197][198] next to the grave of actor Lew Ayres.[1] On Monday, December 6 his family publicly announced that "Composer Frank Zappa left for his final tour just before 6:00 pm on Saturday".[199]

LegacyAcclaim and honorsFrank Zappa was one of the first to try tearing down the barriers between rock, jazz, and classical music. In the late Sixties his Mothers of Invention would slip from Stravinsky's "Petroushka" into The Dovells' "Bristol Stomp" before breaking down into saxophone squeals inspired by Albert Ayler

The Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock & RollZappa earned widespread critical acclaim in his lifetime and after his death. The Rolling Stone Album Guide (2004) writes: "Frank Zappa dabbled in virtually all kinds of music—and, whether guised as a satirical rocker, jazz-rock fusionist, guitar virtuoso, electronics wizard, or orchestral innovator, his eccentric genius was undeniable".[200] Even though his work drew inspiration from many different genres, Zappa was seen establishing a coherent and personal expression. In 1971, biographer David Walley noted that "The whole structure of his music is unified, not neatly divided by dates or time sequences and it is all building into a composite".[201] On commenting on Zappa's music, politics and philosophy, Barry Miles noted in 2004 that they cannot be separated: "It was all one; all part of his 'conceptual continuity'".[202]

 
Frank Zappa in 1977Guitar Player devoted a special issue to Zappa in 1992, and asked on the cover "Is FZ America's Best Kept Musical Secret?" Editor Don Menn remarked that the issue was about "The most important composer to come out of modern popular music".[203] Among those contributing to the issue was composer and musicologist Nicolas Slonimsky, who conducted premiere performances of works of Ives and Varèse in the 1930s.[204] He became friends with Zappa in the 1980s,[205] and said "I admire everything Frank does, because he practically created the new musical millennium. He does beautiful, beautiful work ... It has been my luck to have lived to see the emergence of this totally new type of music."[206] Conductor Kent Nagano remarked in the same issue that "Frank is a genius. That's a word I don't use often ... In Frank's case it is not too strong ... He is extremely literate musically. I'm not sure if the general public knows that".[207] Pierre Boulez stated in Musician magazine's posthumous Zappa tribute article that Zappa "was an exceptional figure because he was part of the worlds of rock and classical music and that both types of his work would survive."[208] Many music scholars acknowledge Zappa as one of the most influential composers of his generation.[209][210][211] As an electric guitarist, he has become highly regarded.[212][213][214]

In 1994, jazz magazine Down Beat's critics poll placed Zappa in its Hall of Fame.[215] Zappa was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1995. There, it was written that "Frank Zappa was rock and roll's sharpest musical mind and most astute social critic. He was the most prolific composer of his age, and he bridged genres—rock, jazz, classical, avant-garde and even novelty music—with masterful ease".[216] He received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1997.[217] In 2005, the US National Recording Preservation Board included We're Only in It for the Money in the National Recording Registry as "Frank Zappa's inventive and iconoclastic album presents a unique political stance, both anti-conservative and anti-counterculture, and features a scathing satire on hippiedom and America's reactions to it".[218] The same year, Rolling Stone magazine ranked him 71 on its list of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time.[219]

Artists influenced by ZappaA number of notable musicians, bands and orchestras from diverse genres have been influenced by Frank Zappa's music. Rock artists like Alice Cooper,[220] Primus,[221] Fee Waybill of The Tubes[222] all cite Zappa's influence, as do progressive rock artists like Henry Cow,[223] Trey Anastasio of Phish,[219] and John Frusciante.[224] Paul McCartney regarded Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band as The Beatles' Freak Out![225] Heavy rock and metal acts like Black Sabbath,[226] Mike Portnoy,[227] Warren DeMartini,[228] Steve Vai,[229] System of a Down,[230] Clawfinger,[231] and Devin Townsend[232] acknowledge Zappa's inspiration. On the classical music scene, Tomas Ulrich,[233] Meridian Arts Ensemble,[234] Ensemble Ambrosius [235] and the Fireworks Ensemble[236] regularly perform Zappa's compositions and quote his influence. Contemporary jazz musicians and composers Bill Frisell[237] and John Zorn[238] are inspired by Zappa, as is funk legend George Clinton.[239] Other artists whose work is affected by Zappa include new age pianist George Winston,[240] electronic composer Bob Gluck,[241] parody singer "Weird Al" Yankovic,[242] and noise music artist Masami Akita of Merzbow.[243]

References in arts and sciences
Frank Zappa bust by Vaclav Cesak in Bad DoberanScientists from various fields have honored Zappa by naming new discoveries after him. In 1967, paleontologist Leo P. Plas, Jr. identified an extinct mollusc in Nevada and named it Amaurotoma zappa with the motivation that, "The specific name, zappa, honors Frank Zappa".[244] In the 1980s, biologist Ed Murdy named a genus of gobiid fishes of New Guinea Zappa, with a species named Zappa confluentus.[245] Biologist Ferdinando Boero named a Californian jellyfish Phialella zappai (1987), noting that he had "pleasure in naming this species after the modern music composer".[246] Belgian biologists Bosmans and Bosselaers discovered in the early 1980s a Cameroonese spider, which they in 1994 named Pachygnatha zappa because "the ventral side of the abdomen of the female of this species strikingly resembles the artist's legendary moustache".[247] A gene of the bacterium Proteus mirabilis that causes urinary tract infections was in 1995 named zapA by three biologists from Maryland. In their scientific article, they "especially thank the late Frank Zappa for inspiration and assistance with genetic nomenclature".[248] In the late 1990s, American paleontologists Marc Salak and Halard L. Lescinsky discovered a metazoan fossil, and named it Spygori zappania to honor "the late Frank Zappa ... whose mission paralleled that of the earliest paleontologists: to challenge conventional and traditional beliefs when such beliefs lacked roots in logic and reason".[249]

In 1994, lobbying efforts initiated by psychiatrist John Scialli led the International Astronomical Union's Minor Planet Center to name an asteroid in Zappa's honor: 3834 Zappafrank.[250] The asteroid was discovered in 1980 by Czechoslovakian astronomer Ladislav Brozek, and the citation for its naming says that "Zappa was an eclectic, self-trained artist and composer ... Before 1989 he was regarded as a symbol of democracy and freedom by many people in Czechoslovakia".[251]

In 1995, a bust of Zappa by sculptor Konstantinas Bogdanas was installed in the Lithuanian capital Vilnius. A replica was offered to the city of Baltimore in 2008, and on September 19, 2010—the twenty-fifth anniversary of Zappa's testimony to the US senate—a ceremony dedicating the replica was held. Speakers at the event included Gail Zappa and Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake.[252][253] In 2002, a bronze bust was installed in German city Bad Doberan, since 1990 location of the Zappanale, an annual music festival celebrating Zappa.[254] At the initiative of musicians community ORWOhaus, the city of Berlin named a street in the Marzahn district "Frank-Zappa-Straße" in 2007.[255] The same year, Baltimore's mayor Sheila Dixon proclaimed August 9 as the city's official "Frank Zappa Day" citing Zappa's musical accomplishments as well as his defense of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.[256]

Discography Frank Zappa portal
Main article: Frank Zappa discography
ReferencesDay, Nancy (2001), Censorship: Or Freedom of Expression?, Minneapolis: Twenty-First Century Books, Lerner Publications, ISBN 0-822-52628-X .
DeCurtis, Anthony; Henke, James with Holly George-Warren, ed. (1992), The Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock & Roll, Jim Miller (Original Editor) (3rd ed.), New York: Random House, ISBN 0-679-73728-6 .
Gray, Michael (1984), Mother! is the Story of Frank Zappa, London: Proteus Books, ISBN 0-862-76146-8 .
James, Billy (2000), Necessity Is . . .: The Early Years of Frank Zappa & the Mothers of Invention, London: SAF Publishing Ltd., ISBN 0-946-71951-9 .
Lowe, Kelly Fisher (2006), The Words and Music of Frank Zappa, Westport: Praeger Publishers, ISBN 0-275-98779-5 .
Martin, Bill (2002), Avant Rock: Experimental Music from the Beatles to Björk, Peru, Illinois: Open Court Publishing Company, ISBN 0-812-69500-3 .
MacDonald, Ian (1994), Revolution in the head: The Beatles' Records and the Sixties, Fourth Estate Ltd., ISBN 1-857-02099-5 .
Miles, Barry (2004), Frank Zappa, London: Atlantic Books, ISBN 1-843-54092-4 .
Slaven, Neil (2003), Electric Don Quixote: The Definitive Story of Frank Zappa, London: Omnibus Press, ISBN 0-711-99436-6 .
Sparks, Michael (1982), Cocaine Fiends and Reefer Madness: An Illustrated History of Drugs in the Movies, New York: Cornwall Books, ISBN 0-845-34504-4 .
Walley, David (1980), No Commercial Potential. The Saga of Frank Zappa. Then and Now, New York: E. P. Dutton, ISBN 0-525-93153-8 .
Watson, Ben (1996), Frank Zappa: The Negative Dialectics of Poodle Play, New York: St. Martin's Griffin, ISBN 0-312-14124-6 .
Watson, Ben (2005), Frank Zappa. The Complete Guide to His Music, London: Omnibus Press, ISBN 1-844-49865-4 .
Zappa, Frank with Occhiogrosso, Peter (1989), The Real Frank Zappa Book, New York: Poseidon Press, ISBN 0-671-63870-X .
"Frank Zappa", The New Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock & Roll, New York: Simon & Schuster Inc, 1993, ISBN 0-684-81044-1
Notes1.^ a b Until discovering his birth certificate as an adult, Zappa believed he had been christened "Francis", and he is credited as Francis on some of his early albums. His real name was "Frank", however, never "Francis." Cf. Zappa with Occhiogrosso, 1989, The Real Frank Zappa Book, p. 15.
2.^ Zappa with Occhiogrosso, 1989, The Real Frank Zappa Book, p. 15.
3.^ a b The New Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock & Roll, 1993.
4.^ a b Zappa with Occhiogrosso, 1989, The Real Frank Zappa Book, pp. 20–23.
5.^ Miles, 2004, Frank Zappa, pp. 8–9.
6.^ a b Miles, 2004, Frank Zappa, p. 10.
7.^ Zappa with Occhiogrosso, 1989, The Real Frank Zappa Book, p. 22.
8.^ Mendoza, Bart (November, 2005), Counter Culture Coincidence, San Diego Troubadour, The San Diego Troubadour, http://www.sandiegotroubadour.com/content/features/fullcircle.aspx?issue=nov_2005 . Retrieved on September 11, 2010.
9.^ Zappa with Occhiogrosso, 1989, The Real Frank Zappa Book, p. 34.
10.^ a b Zappa with Occhiogrosso, 1989, The Real Frank Zappa Book, p. 29.
11.^ Miles, 2004, Frank Zappa, p. 22.
12.^ Miles, 2004, Frank Zappa, p. 36.
13.^ a b Zappa, Frank (June 1971), Edgard Varese: The Idol of My Youth, Stereo Review, pp. 61–62.
14.^ a b c Zappa with Occhiogrosso, 1989, The Real Frank Zappa Book, pp. 30–33.
15.^ a b Watson, 1996, Frank Zappa: The Negative Dialectics of Poodle Play, p. 13.
16.^ Among his many musical satires are the 1967 songs "Flower Punk" (which parodies the song "Hey Joe") and "Who Needs The Peace Corps?", which are critiques of the late-Sixties commercialization of the hippie phenomenon.
17.^ a b For a comprehensive list of the appearance of parts of "old" compositions or quotes from others' music in Zappa's catalogue, see Albertos, Román García, FZ Musical Quotes, Information is Not Knowledge, globia.net/donlope, http://globalia.net/donlope/fz/quotes.html . Retrieved on January 21, 2008.
18.^ On several of his earlier albums, Zappa paid tribute to Varèse by quoting his: "The present-day composer refuses to die."
19.^ Slaven, 2003, Electric Don Quixote, pp. 29–30.
20.^ The Mike Douglas Show, NBC [TV Show], November 1976 .
21.^ a b The other signature pieces are "Zoot Allures" and "Black Napkins" from Zoot Allures. See Zappa, Dweezil (1996), Greetings music lovers, Dweezil here, Liner Notes, Frank Zappa Plays the Music of Frank Zappa: A Memorial Tribute .
22.^ Miles, 2004, Frank Zappa, p. 40.
23.^ Walley, 1980, No Commercial Potential, p. 23.
24.^ Miles, 2004, Frank Zappa, p. 48.
25.^ Miles, 2004, Frank Zappa, p. 345.
26.^ Miles, 2004, Frank Zappa, p. 58.
27.^ Zappa with Occhiogrosso, 1989, The Real Frank Zappa Book, p. 40.
28.^ Miles, 2004, Frank Zappa, p. 59.
29.^ Miles, 2004, Frank Zappa, p. 63.
30.^ Miles, 2004, Frank Zappa, p. 55.
31.^ Gray, 1984, Mother!, p. 29.
32.^ Zappa with Occhiogrosso, 1989, The Real Frank Zappa Book, p. 42.
33.^ Miles, 2004, Frank Zappa, p. 74.
34.^ Slaven, 1996, Electric Don Quixote, pp. 35–36.
35.^ Watson, 1996, Frank Zappa: The Negative Dialectics of Poodle Play, p. 27.
36.^ Zappa with Occhiogrosso, 1989, The Real Frank Zappa Book, p. 43.
37.^ Miles, 2004, Frank Zappa, pp. 80–81.
38.^ Miles, 2004, Frank Zappa. pp. 82–83.
39.^ Watson, 1996, Frank Zappa: The Negative Dialectics of Poodle Play, p. 26.
40.^ a b Miles, 2004, Frank Zappa, p. 85.
41.^ Harp, Ted (March, 1965), "Vice Squad Raids Local Film Studio", The Daily Report (Ontario, California) .
42.^ Zappa with Occhiogrosso, 1989, The Real Frank Zappa Book, p. 57.
43.^ Miles, 2004, Frank Zappa, pp. 86–87.
44.^ Miles, 2004, Frank Zappa, p. XV.
45.^ Miles, 2004, Frank Zappa, p. 87.
46.^ Slaven, 1996, Electric Don Quixote, p. 40.
47.^ Miles, 2004, Frank Zappa, pp. 90–91.
48.^ a b Swenson, John (March 1980), Frank Zappa: America's Weirdest Rock Star Comes Clean, High Times .
49.^ a b Zappa with Occhiogrosso, 1989, The Real Frank Zappa Book, pp. 65–66.
50.^ Slaven, 2003, Electric Don Quixote, p. 42.
51.^ Walley, 1980, No Commercial Potential, p. 58.
52.^ Miles, 2004, Frank Zappa, p. 103.
53.^ Interview with Frank Zappa, UMRK, Los Angeles, CA: BBC [TV Show], March 1993 .
54.^ Lowe, 2006, The Words and Music of Frank Zappa, p. 25.
55.^ Walley, 1980, No Commercial Potential, pp. 60–61.
56.^ a b Miles, 2004, Frank Zappa, p. 115.
57.^ a b Miles, 2004, Frank Zappa, p. 112.
58.^ Watson, 2005, Frank Zappa. The Complete Guide to His Music, pp. 10–11.
59.^ a b Miles, 2004, Frank Zappa, p. 123.
60.^ Miles, 2004, Frank Zappa, p. 122.
61.^ Loden, Kurt (1988), Rolling Stone Interview, Rolling Stones Magazine .
62.^ He considered such campaigns as yuppie inventions and noted that "Some people like garlic ... I like pepper, tobacco and coffee. That's my metabolism". Zappa with Occhiogrosso, 1989, The Real Frank Zappa Book, pp. 234–235.
63.^ Lowe, 2006, The Words and Music of Frank Zappa, p. 5.
64.^ Lowe, 2006, The Words and Music of Frank Zappa, pp. 38–43.
65.^ Miles, 2004, Frank Zappa, pp. 135–138.
66.^ a b Miles, 2004, Frank Zappa, pp. 140–141.
67.^ Lowe, 2006, The Words and Music of Frank Zappa, p. 56.
68.^ Walley, 1980, No Commercial Potential, p. 86.
69.^ Couture, François, Lumpy Gravy. Review, Allmusic.com, http://www.allmusic.com/album/r22630 . Retrieved on January 2, 2008; Lowe, 2006, The Words and Music of Frank Zappa, p. 56.
70.^ The initial orchestra-only recordings were released posthumously on the box set Lumpy Money (2009). See Dolan, Casey (December 8, 2008), "The Resurrection of Frank Zappa's Soul", LA Weekly (Village Voice Media), http://www.laweekly.com/2008-12-11/music/the-resurrection-of-frank-zappa-8217-s-soul/1 . Retrieved on February 2, 2009.
71.^ James, 2000, Necessity Is . . . , pp. 62–69.
72.^ Miles, 2004, Frank Zappa, p. 147.
73.^ Zappa with Occhiogrosso, 1989, The Real Frank Zappa Book, p. 94.
74.^ Huey, Steve, We're Only in It for the Money. Review, Allmusic.com, http://www.allmusic.com/album/r22631 . Retrieved on January 2, 2008.
75.^ Watson, 2005, Frank Zappa. The Complete Guide to His Music, p. 15. Walley, 1980, No Commercial Potential, p. 90.
76.^ As the legal aspects of using the Sgt Pepper concept were unsettled, the album was released with the cover and back on the inside of the gatefold, while the actual cover and back were a picture of the group in a pose parodying the inside of the Beatles album. Miles, 2004, Frank Zappa, p. 151.
77.^ Watson, 1996, Frank Zappa: The Negative Dialectics of Poodle Play, p. 88.
78.^ Lowe, 2006, The Words and Music of Frank Zappa, p. 58.
79.^ a b Zappa with Occhiogrosso, 1989, The Real Frank Zappa Book, p. 88.
80.^ a b Miles, 2004, Frank Zappa, p. 160.
81.^ James, 2000, Necessity Is . . ., p. 104.
82.^ In the process, he built up a vast archive of live recordings. In the late 1980s some of these recordings were collected for the 12-CD set You Can't Do That on Stage Anymore.
83.^ a b c Chris Michie (January 2003), We are the Mothers...and This Is What We Sound Like!, MixOnline.com, http://mixonline.com/recording/business/audio_mothers_sound/ . Retrieved on January 4, 2008.
84.^ Bob Marshall, "Interview with Frank Zappa," October 22, 1988.
85.^ Miles, 2004, Frank Zappa, pp. 173–175.
86.^ a b c Lowe, 2006, The Words and Music of Frank Zappa, p. 74.
87.^ Couture, François. "Peaches en Regalia [Song Review"]. Allmusic. http://www.allmusic.com/song/t2677929. Retrieved 11 April 2010.
88.^ Notable covers include: Jon Poole, What's the Ugliest Part of Your Body?; Meridian Arts Ensemble, Prime Meridian; Dixie Dregs, California Screamin'; Dweezil Zappa, Go with What You Know; Phish, Vegas 96; The Roots, How I Got Over
89.^ Miles, 2004, Frank Zappa, p. 178.
90.^ a b Walley, 1980, No Commercial Potential, p. 116.
91.^ Slaven, 2003, Electric Don Quixote, pp. 119–120.
92.^ a b Miles, 2004, Frank Zappa, pp. 185–187.
93.^ Zappa with Occhiogrosso, 1989, The Real Frank Zappa Book, p. 107.
94.^ Slaven, 2003, Electric Don Quixote, p. 120.
95.^ Miles, 2004, Frank Zappa, p. 116.
96.^ Huey, Steve, Hot Rats. Review, Allmusic.com, http://www.allmusic.com/album/r22632 . Retrieved on January 2, 2008.
97.^ a b Miles, 2004, Frank Zappa, p. 194.
98.^ a b Zappa with Occhiogrosso, 1989, The Real Frank Zappa Book, p. 109.
99.^ Zappa with Occhiogrosso, 1989, The Real Frank Zappa Book, pp. 142–156.
100.^ Miles, 2004, Frank Zappa, p. 201.
101.^ Miles, 2004, Frank Zappa, p. 205.
102.^ a b Watson, 1996, Frank Zappa: The Negative Dialectics of Poodle Play, p. 183.
103.^ Miles, 2004, Frank Zappa, p. 213.
104.^ Miles, 2004, Frank Zappa, p. 207.
105.^ Starks, 1982, Cocaine Fiends and Reefer Madness, p. 153.
106.^ Lowe, 2006, The Words and Music of Frank Zappa, p. 94.
107.^ Zappa with Occhiogrosso, 1989, The Real Frank Zappa Book, pp. 119–137.
108.^ Miles, 2004, Frank Zappa, pp. 203–204.
109.^ During the June 1971 Fillmore concerts Zappa was joined on stage by John Lennon and Yoko Ono. This performance was recorded, and Lennon released excerpts on his album Some Time In New York City in 1972. Zappa later released his version of excerpts from the concert on Playground Psychotics in 1992, including the jam track "Scumbag" and an extended avant-garde vocal piece by Ono (originally called "Au"), which Zappa renamed "A Small Eternity with Yoko Ono".
110.^ a b c Zappa with Occhiogrosso, 1989, The Real Frank Zappa Book, pp. 112–115.
111.^ Lowe, 2006, The Words and Music of Frank Zappa, p. 101.
112.^ a b Miles, 2004, Frank Zappa, pp. 225–226.
113.^ Official recordings of these bands did not emerge until more than 30 years later on Wazoo (2007) and Imaginary Diseases (2006), respectively.
114.^ Miles, 2004, Frank Zappa, p. 231.
115.^ Frank Zappa > Charts and Awards > Billboard Albums, Allmusic.com, http://www.allmusic.com/artist/p74796 . Retrieved on January 3, 2008.
116.^ Huey, Steve, Apostrophe ('). Review, Allmusic.com, http://www.allmusic.com/album/r53148 . Retrieved on January 3, 2008.
117.^ a b Lowe, 2006, The Words and Music of Frank Zappa, pp. 114–122.
118.^ Miles, 2004, Frank Zappa, p. 248.
119.^ Miles, 2004, Frank Zappa, p. 372.
120.^ Miles, 2004, Frank Zappa, p. 250.
121.^ Miles, 2004, Frank Zappa, p. 253; pp. 258–259.
122.^ Lowe, 2006, The Words and Music of Frank Zappa, p. 131.
123.^ a b Miles, 2004, Frank Zappa, p. 261.
124.^ Slaven, 2003, Electric Don Quixote, p. 248.
125.^ Miles, 2004, Frank Zappa, p. 267.
126.^ It remains debated whether Zappa had conceived the material as a four-LP set from the beginning, or only when approaching Mercury-Phonogram; see, e.g., Watson, 2005, Frank Zappa. The Complete Guide to His Music, p. 49. In the liner notes to the 1996 release, however, Gail Zappa states that "As originally conceived by Frank, Läther was always a 4-record box set."
127.^ Watson, 2005, Frank Zappa. The Complete Guide to His Music, p. 49.
128.^ Miles, 2004, Frank Zappa, p. 262.
129.^ In 1978, Zappa served both as host and musical act on the show, and as an actor in various sketches.
130.^ Zappa, Frank, 1978, Zappa in New York, Liner Notes.
131.^ a b Lowe, 2006, The Words and Music of Frank Zappa, p. 132.
132.^ Clement, Brett (2004), "Little dots: A study of the melodies of the guitarist / composer Frank Zappa (pdf file)" (PDF), Master Thesis (The Florida State University, School of Music): pp. 25–48, http://etd.lib.fsu.edu/theses/available/etd-04122004-114345/unrestricted/zappathesis3.pdf . Retrieved on December 29, 2007.
133.^ Hemmings, Richard (2006), Ever wonder why your daughter looked so sad? Non-danceable beats: getting to grips with rhythmical unpredictability in Project/Object, richardhemmings.co.uk, http://www.richardhemmings.co.uk/001/research/zappology/saddaughter.html . Retrieved on July 24, 2008.
134.^ Miles, 2004, Frank Zappa, pp. 261–262; Lowe, 2006, The Words and Music of Frank Zappa, p. 134.
135.^ a b Miles, 2004, Frank Zappa, p. 234.
136.^ Lowe, 2006, The Words and Music of Frank Zappa, p. 138.
137.^ a b Watson, 1996, Frank Zappa: The Negative Dialectics of Poodle Play, p. 351.
138.^ a b c d Lowe, 2006, The Words and Music of Frank Zappa, p. 140.
139.^ Groening, Matt; Menn, Don (1992), "The Mother of All Interviews. Act II: Matt Groening joins in on the scrutiny of the central decentralizer", in Menn, Don (ed.), Zappa! Guitar Player Presents., San Francisco, CA: Miller Freeman, p. 61, ISSN 1063-4533
140.^ Both albums made it onto the Billboard top 30. Frank Zappa > Charts & Awards > Billboard Albums, Allmusic.com, http://www.allmusic.com/artist/p74796 . Retrieved on January 6, 2008.
141.^ a b Frank Zappa > Charts & Awards > Billboard Singles, Allmusic.com, http://www.allmusic.com/artist/p74796 . Retrieved on January 6, 2008.
142.^ Peterson, Chris (November 1979), He's Only 38 and He Knows How to Nasty, Relix Magazine
143.^ Miles, 2004, Frank Zappa, p. 277.
144.^ Watson, 2005, Frank Zappa. The Complete Guide to His Music, p. 59.
145.^ Zappa with Occhiogrosso, 1989, The Real Frank Zappa Book, p. 180.
146.^ Watson, 2005, Frank Zappa. The Complete Guide to His Music, p. 61.
147.^ Baby Snakes, 2003, DVD cover, Eagle Vision.
148.^ a b Miles, 2004, Frank Zappa, p. 282.
149.^ Sohmer, Adam (June 8, 2005), Baby Snakes – DVD, Big Picture Big Sound, http://www.bigpicturebigsound.com/article_501.shtml . Retrieved on January 7, 2008.
150.^ a b Frank Zappa, IMDb – The Internet Movie Database, http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0953261/ . Retrieved on July 30, 2008.
151.^ Miles, 2004, Frank Zappa, p. 343.
152.^ Eliscu, Jenny (November 8, 2002), "Homer and Me", Rolling Stone Magazine (Rolling Stone) .
153.^ a b Lowe, 2006, The Words and Music of Frank Zappa, p. 161.
154.^ Miles, 2004, Frank Zappa, p. 284.
155.^ Lowe, 2006, The Words and Music of Frank Zappa, p. 165.
156.^ Miles, 2004, Frank Zappa, p. 283.
157.^ Miles, 2004, Frank Zappa, p. 269.
158.^ Huey, Steve, You Are What You Is. Review, Allmusic.com, http://www.allmusic.com/album/r53163 . Retrieved on January 7, 2008.
159.^ a b Lowe, 2006, The Words and Music of Frank Zappa, pp. 169–175.
160.^ Zappa, Frank (November 1982), Absolutely Frank. First Steps in Odd Meters, Guitar Player Magazine, p. 116.
161.^ Swenson, John (November, 1981), Frank Zappa: Shut Up 'N Play Yer Guitar, Shut Up 'N Play Yer Guitar Some More, The Return of the Son of Shut Up 'N Play Yer Guitar, Guitar World
162.^ Huey, Steve, Valley Girl. Frank Zappa. Song Review, Allmusic.com, http://www.allmusic.com/song/t2677879 . Retrieved on January 7, 2008.
163.^ a b Lowe, 2006, The Words and Music of Frank Zappa, p. 178.
164.^ Miles, 2004, Frank Zappa, p. 304.
165.^ a b Zappa with Occhiogrosso, 1989, The Real Frank Zappa Book, pp. 146–156.
166.^ Miles, 2004, Frank Zappa, p. 315.
167.^ Ruhlmann, William, London Symphony Orchestra, Vol. 1. Review, Allmusic.com, http://www.allmusic.com/album/r53172 . Retrieved on January 7, 2008.
168.^ Miles, 2004, Frank Zappa, p. 323.
169.^ Kelp, Larry (June 18, 1984), "Zappa Pokes Into The Fine Arts", The Oakland Tribune, http://www.afka.net/Articles/1984-06_Tribune.htm, retrieved 2009-07-05
170.^ a b c Zappa with Occhiogrosso, 1989, The Real Frank Zappa Book, pp. 172–173.
171.^ Miles, 2004, Frank Zappa, p. 319.
172.^ Watson, 2005, Frank Zappa. The Complete Guide to His Music, p. 73.
173.^ The musical was eventually produced for the stage in 2003. See Thing-Fish – The Return of Frank Zappa, The British Theatre Guide, http://www.britishtheatreguide.info/otherresources/interviews/Thing-Fish.htm . Retrieved on December 11, 2007.
174.^ Carr, Paul; Hand, Richard J. (2007), "Frank Zappa and musical theatre: ugly ugly o'phan Annie and really deep, intense, thought-provoking Broadway symbolism", Studies in Musical Theatre 1 (1): 44–51., doi:10.1386/smt.1.1.41/1, http://www.atypon-link.com/INT/doi/abs/10.1386/smt.1.1.41_1?cookieSet=1&journalCode=smt  Full article available by free login only. Retrieved on July 28, 2008.
175.^ Day, 2000, Censorship, p. 53.
176.^ Zappa with Occhiogrosso, 1989, The Real Frank Zappa Book, p. 267.
177.^ Zappa with Occhiogrosso, 1989, The Real Frank Zappa Book, p. 262.
178.^ Record Labeling. Hearing before the committee on commerce, science and transportation., US Government printing office, September 19, 1985, http://www.joesapt.net/superlink/shrg99-529/p51.html . Retrieved on December 31, 2007.
179.^ Crossfire with Frank Zappa and John Lofton, CNN [TV Debate], March 1986, http://www.archive.org/details/FrankZappaOnCrossfire
180.^ Miles, 2004, Frank Zappa, p. 348.
181.^ Miles, 2004, Frank Zappa, p. 365.
182.^ Miles, 2004, Frank Zappa, p. 340.
183.^ For a comprehensive comparison of vinyl of CD releases, see The Frank Zappa Album Versions Guide – Index, The Zappa Patio, www.lukpac.org/~handmade/patio, http://www.lukpac.org/~handmade/patio/vinylvscds/index.html . Retrieved on January 7, 2008.
184.^ For example, new drum and bass parts were used on the 1960s albums We're Only in It for the Money and Cruising with Ruben & the Jets. See Miles, 2004, Frank Zappa, p. 327.
185.^ a b Zappa with Occhiogrosso, 1989, The Real Frank Zappa Book, pp. 337–339.
186.^ Nuzum, Eric, Censorship Incidents: 1980s, Parental Advisory: Music Censorship in America, ericnuzum.com, http://ericnuzum.com/banned/incidents/80s.html . Retrieved on July 23, 2007.
187.^ Miles, 2004, Frank Zappa, pp. 346–350.
188.^ Mitchell, Tony (May, 1992), "Mixing Pop and Politics: Rock Music in Czechoslovakia before and after the Velvet Revolution", Popular Music. A Changing Europe (Cambridge University Press) 11: 187–203 .
189.^ Miles, 2004, Frank Zappa, pp. 357–361.
190.^ a b Ouellette, Dan (August 1993), Frank Zappa, Pulse! Magazine, pp. 48–56.
191.^ Watson, 2005, Frank Zappa. The Complete Guide to His Music, p. 100.
192.^ Miles, 2004, Frank Zappa, pp. 374–375.
193.^ It brought him a posthumous Grammy Award (with Gail Zappa) for Best Recording Package – Boxed in 1994. GRAMMY Winners, GRAMMY.com, http://www.grammy.com/GRAMMY_Awards/Winners/Results.aspx . Retrieved on August 18, 2008.
194.^ Menn, Don, ed. (1992), "Andreas Mölich-Zebhauser—Preparing the Ensemble Modern for the Frankfurt Festival", Zappa! Guitar Player Presents., San Francisco, CA: Miller Freeman, pp. 12–13, ISSN 1063-4533
195.^ a b Miles, 2004, Frank Zappa, p. 369.
196.^ a b Miles, 2004, Frank Zappa, p. 371.
197.^ Watson, 2005, Frank Zappa. The Complete Guide to His Music, p. 552.
198.^ Miles, 2004, Frank Zappa, pp. 379–380.
199.^ Slaven, 2003, Electric Don Quixote, p. 320.
200.^ Brackett, Nathan; Hoard, Christian, eds. (2004), The New Rolling Stone Album Guide: Completely Revised and Updated 4th Edition, New York, NY: Fireside, p. 903, ISBN 0-7432-0169-8
201.^ Walley, 1980, No Commercial Potential, p. 3.
202.^ Miles, 2004, Frank Zappa, p. 383.
203.^ Menn, Don (1992), "From the Editor", in Menn, Don, Zappa! Guitar Player Presents., San Francisco, CA: Miller Freeman, p. 3, ISSN 1063-4533
204.^ Kozinn, Allan (December 27, 1996), "Nicolas Slonimsky, Author of Widely Used Reference Works on Music, Dies at 101", The New York Times, http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C04E6D61539F934A15751C1A963958260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all . Retrieved on August 17, 2008.
205.^ In December 1981, the then 87 year old Slonimsky made a guest appearance on piano at a Zappa concert. Miles, 2004, Frank Zappa, p. 295–296.
206.^ Menn, Don, ed. (1992), "Nicolas Slonimsky—The Century's Preeminent Lexicographer Nails Zappa Down", Zappa! Guitar Player Presents., San Francisco, CA: Miller Freeman, pp. 6–7, ISSN 1063-4533
207.^ Menn, Don, ed. (1992), "Kent Nagano—Premiering Zappa with the London Symphony Orchestra", Zappa! Guitar Player Presents., San Francisco, CA: Miller Freeman, pp. 8–11, ISSN 1063-4533
208.^ Isler, Scott et al. (February, 1994), Frank Zappa, Musician Magazine
209.^ Ashby, Arved (1999), "Frank Zappa and the Anti-Fetishist Orchestra", The Musical Quarterly (Oxford University Press) 83: 557–606., doi:10.1093/mq/83.4.557
210.^ Grier, James (2001), "The Mothers of Invention and "Uncle Meat": Alienation, Anachronism and a Double Variation", Acta Musicologica (International Musicological Society) 73 (1): 77–95., doi:10.2307/932810, http://jstor.org/stable/932810
211.^ Cotter, Jim (2002), "Frank Zappa (1940–1993)", in Sitsky, Larry, Music of the Twentieth-century Avant-garde. A Biocritical Sourcebook, Westfort, CT: Greenwood Publishing Group, p. 597, ISBN 0-313-29689-8
212.^ He is ranked 45th in The 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time, Rolling Stone, August 27, 2003 .
213.^ He is ranked 51st in The 100 Wildest Guitar Heroes, Classic Rock Magazine, April 2007
214.^ He is ranked 39th in Gibson.com Top 50 Guitarists of All Time, May 25, 2010, http://www.gibson.com/en-us/Lifestyle/Features/Top-50-Guitarists-525/ . Retrieved on June 27, 2010.
215.^ 1994 Down Beat Critics Poll, Down Beat Magazine, http://www.downbeat.com/default.asp?sect=stories&subsect=story_detail&sid=720 . Retrieved on August 12, 2008.
216.^ Frank Zappa, The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum, Inc., http://www.rockhall.com/inductee/frank-zappa . Retrieved on August 14, 2008.
217.^ GRAMMY.com Lifetime achievement award, GRAMMY.com, http://www.grammy.com/Recording_Academy/Awards/Lifetime_Awards/ . Retrieved on August 14, 2008.
218.^ The National Recording Registry 2005, National Recording Preservation Board, The Library of Congress, May 24, 2005, http://www.loc.gov/rr/record/nrpb/registry/nrpb-2005reg.html . Retrieved on August 18, 2008.
219.^ a b "The Immortals", Rolling Stone Magazine, Issue 972 (Rolling Stone) .
220.^ Quigley, Mike (September 1969), Interview with Alice Cooper, Poppin, Issue #5
221.^ Elfman, Doug (October 15, 2003), Primus plays Hard Rock, Las Vegas Review-Journal, http://www.reviewjournal.com/lvrj_home/2003/Oct-15-Wed-2003/news/22374264.html . Retrieved on March 14, 2009.
222.^ Randall, David (2004), Get Ready to ROCK! Interview with singer and frontman of American rock band The Tubes, Fee Waybill, getreadytorock.com, http://www.getreadytorock.com/10questions/fee_waybill.htm . Retrieved on August 13, 2008.
223.^ Boisen, Myles, allmusic ((( Henry Cow > Biography ))), allmusic.com, http://www.allmusic.com/artist/p4475 . Retrieved on August 13, 2008.
224.^ Cleveland, Barry (September 2006), Exclusive Outtakes from GP's Interview with John Frusciante!, Guitar Player, http://www.guitarplayer.com/article/exclusive-outtakes-from/Sep-06/23282 . Retrieved on August 12, 2008.
225.^ MacDonald, 1994, Revolution in the Head, p. 171.
226.^ Black Sabbath Online: Tony Iommi & Geezer Butler Interview, black-sabbath.com, May 1994, http://www.black-sabbath.com/interviews/tonygeez_0594.html . Retrieved on August 12, 2008.
227.^ about mike, mikeportnoy.com, http://www.mikeportnoy.com/aboutmike/bio.aspx . Retrieved on April 22, 2009.
228.^ Menn, Don, ed. (1992), "Warren De Martini—Ratt Guitarist Turns Zappa Stylist", Zappa! Guitar Player Presents., San Francisco, CA: Miller Freeman, p. 14, ISSN 1063-4533
229.^ Vai.com > All About Steve > Vaiography, Vai.com, http://www.vai.com/AllAboutSteve/vaiography.html . Retrieved on August 12, 2008.
230.^ Sinclair, Tom, Mezmerize (2005): System of a Down, Entertainment Weekly, http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,1060789,00.html . Retrieved on June 28, 2010.
231.^ The official Pages, clawfinger.net, http://www.clawfinger.net/main.php?band . Retrieved on August 12, 2008.
232.^ SOS, Mike, INTERVIEW: Strapping Young Lad, inmusicwetrust.com, http://www.inmusicwetrust.com/articles/71h16.html . Retrieved on December 18, 2010.
233.^ Tomas Ulrich at All about Jazz, All About Jazz, http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/musician.php?id=15347  Retrieved on November 13, 2008.
234.^ Meridian Arts Ensemble – About Us, meridianartsensemble.com, http://www.meridianartsensemble.com/about.htm . Retrieved on August 12, 2008.
235.^ Academic Zappa: Seriously Taken Musical Study of Frank Zappa's Music — At Last, ensembleambrosius.com, http://ensembleambrosius.com/news2.html . Retrieved 17 December 2010.
236.^ About fireworks, fireworksensemble.org, http://www.fireworksensemble.org/about.htm . Retrieved on August 25, 2008.
237.^ Bill Frisell Biography, Songline/Tonefield Productions, http://www.songtone.com/artists/Frisell/default.html . Retrieved on August 12, 2008.
238.^ Cook, Richard; Morton, Brian (2004), The Penguin Guide To Jazz On CD, Seventh Edition, London: Penguin Books, p. 1721, ISBN 0-14101-416-4
239.^ Bush, John, allmusic ((( George Clinton > Biography ))), allmusic.com, http://www.allmusic.com/artist/p65136 . Retrieved on August 13, 2008.
240.^ George Winston Biography, georgewinston.com, http://www.georgewinston.com/us/biography . Retrieved on June 27, 2010.
241.^ gluckbio.html, electricsongs.com, http://www.electricsongs.com/gluckbio.html . Retrieved on September 1, 2008.
242.^ "Weird Al" Yankovic: Frequently Asked Questions, weirdal.com, http://www.weirdal.com/faq.htm . Retrieved on August 12, 2008.
243.^ Martin, 2002, Avant Rock, p. 160.
244.^ Plas, Jr., Leo P. (March, 1972), "Upper Wolfcampian (?) Mollusca from the Arrow Canyon Range, Clark County, Nevada", Journal of Paleontology, (SEPM Society for Sedimentary Geology) 46: 249–260.
245.^ Murdy, E. O. (1989), A Taxonomic Revision and Cladistic Analysis of the Oxudercine Gobies (Gobiidae: Oxudercinae), Records of the Australian Museum, ISBN 0-730-56374-X
246.^ Boero, Ferdinando (April, 1987), "Life cycles of Phialella zappai n. sp., Phialella fragilis and Phialella sp. (Cnidaria, Leptomedusae, Phialellidae) from central California", Journal of Natural History (Taylor & Francis Groups) 21: 465–480., doi:10.1080/00222938700771131
247.^ Bosmans, Robert; Bosselaers, Jan (October 1995), "Spiders of the genera Pachygnatha, Dyschiriognatha and Glenognatha (Araneae, Tetragnathidae), with a revision of the Afrotropical species", Zoologica Scripta (The Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters) 23: 325–352., doi:10.1111/j.1463-6409.1994.tb00392.x
248.^ Wassif, Christopher; Cheek, Diana; Belas, Robert (October 1995), "Molecular Analysis of a Metalloprotease from Proteus mirabilis", Journal of Bacteriology (American Society for Microbiology) 177 (20): 5790–5798., PMC 177400, PMID 7592325, http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?tool=pmcentrez&artid=177400
249.^ Salak, Marc; Lescinsky, Halard L. (July, 1999), "Spygoria zappania New Genus and Species, a Cloudina-like Biohermal Metazoan from the Lower Cambrian of Central Nevada", Journal of Paleontology (Paleontological Society) 73: 571–576.
250.^ Seachrist, Lisa (August 12, 1994), "Random Samples", Science. New Series (American Association for the Advancement of Science) 265: 870–871.
251.^ (3834) Zappafrank, IAU: Minor Planet Center (Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory), http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/iau/special/rocknroll/0003834.html . Retrieved on August 15, 2008.
252.^ The Baltimore Sun (September 16, 2010), Zappa comes home, The Baltimore Sun, http://www.baltimoresun.com/entertainment/music/bs-ae-zappa-cover-0917-20100916,0,7348006.story?page=1 . Retrieved on September 19, 2010.
253.^ The Baltimore Sun (September 16, 2010), Zappa-looza: A full guide to the weekend's events, The Baltimore Sun, http://www.baltimoresun.com/entertainment/music/bs-ae-zappa-rail-0917-2-20100916,0,2014204.story . Retrieved on September 19, 2010.
254.^ Zappanale – Startseite, zappanale.de, http://zappanale.de/ . Retrieved on August 14, 2008.
255.^ The Associated Press (July 30, 2007), Berlin Names Street After Frank Zappa, The Washington Post, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/30/AR2007073000690.html . Retrieved on August 15, 2008.
256.^ Zappa.com > What's New in Baltimore?, zappa.com, http://www.zappa.com/whatsnew/news/baltimore.html . Retrieved on August 15, 2008.
External linksThe official Frank Zappa website
Frank Zappa at the Internet Movie Database
Frank Zappa interviewed on the Pop Chronicles (1969).
 Media related to Frank Zappa at Wikimedia Commons
 Quotations related to Frank Zappa at Wikiquote
[hide]v · d · eFrank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention
 
Albums 1960s Freak Out! • Absolutely Free • Lumpy Gravy • We're Only in It for the Money • Cruising with Ruben & the Jets • Uncle Meat • Mothermania • Hot Rats
 
1970s Burnt Weeny Sandwich • Weasels Ripped My Flesh • Chunga's Revenge • Fillmore East – June 1971 • 200 Motels • Just Another Band from L.A. • Waka/Jawaka • The Grand Wazoo • Over-Nite Sensation • Apostrophe (') • Roxy & Elsewhere • One Size Fits All • Bongo Fury • Zoot Allures • Zappa in New York • Studio Tan • Sleep Dirt • Sheik Yerbouti • Orchestral Favorites • Joe's Garage Act I • Joe's Garage Acts II & III
 
1980s Tinseltown Rebellion • Shut Up 'n Play Yer Guitar • Shut Up 'n Play Yer Guitar Some More • Return of the Son of Shut Up 'n Play Yer Guitar • You Are What You Is • Ship Arriving Too Late to Save a Drowning Witch • The Man from Utopia • Baby Snakes • London Symphony Orchestra, Vol. I • Boulez Conducts Zappa: The Perfect Stranger • Them or Us • Thing-Fish • Francesco Zappa • The Old Masters, Box I • Frank Zappa Meets the Mothers of Prevention • Does Humor Belong in Music? • The Old Masters, Box II • Jazz from Hell • London Symphony Orchestra, Vol. II • The Old Masters, Box III • Guitar • You Can't Do That on Stage Anymore, Vol. 1 • You Can't Do That on Stage Anymore, Vol. 2 - The Helsinki Concert • Broadway the Hard Way • You Can't Do That on Stage Anymore, Vol. 3
 
1990s The Best Band You Never Heard in Your Life • You Can't Do That on Stage Anymore, Vol. 4 • Make a Jazz Noise Here • You Can't Do That on Stage Anymore, Vol. 5 • You Can't Do That on Stage Anymore, Vol. 6 • Playground Psychotics • Ahead of Their Time • The Yellow Shark • Civilization Phaze III • The Lost Episodes • Läther • Frank Zappa Plays the Music of Frank Zappa: A Memorial Tribute • Have I Offended Someone? • Mystery Disc • EIHN (Everything Is Healing Nicely)
 
2000s FZ:OZ • Halloween • Joe's Corsage • Joe's Domage • QuAUDIOPHILIAc • Joe's XMASage • Imaginary Diseases • MOFO (Deluxe 4-Disc) • MOFO (2-Disc) • Trance-Fusion • Buffalo • The Dub Room Special • Wazoo • One Shot Deal • Joe's Menage • Lumpy Money • Philly '76
 
2010s Greasy Love Songs • Congress Shall Make No Law... • Hammersmith Odeon
 
 
Other releases The Guitar World According to Frank Zappa • Beat the Boots • Beat the Boots II • Strictly Commercial • Strictly Genteel • Cucamonga • Cheap Thrills • Son of Cheep Thrills • The Frank Zappa AAAFNRAA Birthday Bundle 2006 • The Frank Zappa AAAFNRAAA Birthday Bundle 2008 • Beat the Boots III • The Frank Zappa AAAFNRAAAA Birthday Bundle 2010
 
Singles "Who Are The Brain Police? • How Could I Be Such A Fool • Why Don't You Do Me Right • Lonely Little Girl • Tears Began To Fall • What Will This Evening Bring Me This Morning • Don't Eat The Yellow Snow • Sofa • Disco Boy • I Don't Wanna Get Drafted • Bobby Brown • Dancin' Fool • Joe's Garage • Love Of My Life • Goblin Girl • Valley Girl • The Man From Utopia Meets Mary Lou • Cocaine Decisions"
 
Filmography 200 Motels • Baby Snakes • The Dub Room Special • Video from Hell • Does Humor Belong in Music? • The True Story of Frank Zappa's 200 Motels • The Amazing Mr. Bickford • Uncle Meat • The Torture Never Stops
 
Relatives Gail Zappa • Moon Zappa • Dweezil Zappa • Ahmet Zappa • Diva Zappa
 

Name Zappa, Frank
Alternative names Zappa, Frank Vincent
Short description Composer, Musician, Bandleader, Conductor, Producer
Date of birth December 21, 1940(1940-12-21)
Place of birth Baltimore, Maryland
Date of death December 4, 1993(1993-12-04)
Place of death Los Angeles


Frank Zappa was born in Baltimore, Maryland, on December 21, 1940. His mother, Rose Marie (née Colimore), was of Italian and French descent, and his father, Francis Vincent Zappa, was a native of Partinico, Sicily and had Greek and Lebanese ancestry.[2] Zappa was the eldest of four children, and had two brothers and a sister.[3] The family moved often during Zappa's childhood because his father, a chemist and mathematician, had various jobs in the US defense industry. After a brief time in Florida in the mid-1940s, the family returned to Maryland, where Zappa's father worked at the Edgewood Arsenal chemical warfare facility at the Aberdeen Proving Ground. Due to their home's proximity to the arsenal, which stored mustard gas, gas masks were kept in the house in case of an accident.[4] This had a profound effect on the young Zappa: references to germs, germ warfare and other aspects of the defense industry occur throughout his work.[5]

During his childhood, Zappa was often sick, suffering from asthma, earaches and sinus problems. A doctor treated the latter by inserting a pellet of radium into each of Zappa's nostrils; little was known at the time about the potential dangers of being subjected to even small amounts of therapeutic radiation.[6] Nasal imagery and references appear both in his music and lyrics, as well as in the collage album covers created by his long-time visual collaborator, Cal Schenkel.

Many of Zappa's childhood diseases may have arisen from exposure to mustard gas. His health worsened when he lived in the Baltimore area.[4][6] In 1952, his family relocated mainly because of Zappa's health.[7] They next moved to Monterey, California, where Zappa's father taught metallurgy at the Naval Postgraduate School. Shortly afterward, they moved to Claremont, then to El Cajon before finally moving to San Diego.[8]

Musical influencesSince I didn't have any kind of formal training, it didn't make any difference to me if I was listening to Lightnin' Slim, or a vocal group called the Jewels ... , or Webern, or Varèse, or Stravinsky. To me it was all good music.

Frank Zappa, 1989[9]Zappa joined his first band, the Ramblers, at Mission Bay High School in San Diego. He was the band's drummer.[10] About the same time his parents bought a phonograph, which allowed him to develop his interest in music, and to begin building his record collection.[11] R&B singles were early purchases, starting a large collection he kept for the rest of his life.[12] He was interested in sounds for their own sake, particularly the sounds of drums and other percussion instruments. By age 12, he had obtained a snare drum and began learning the basics of orchestral percussion.[10] Zappa's deep interest in modern classical music began[13] when he read a LOOK magazine article about the Sam Goody record store chain that lauded its ability to sell an LP as obscure as The Complete Works of Edgard Varèse, Volume One.[14] The article described Varèse's percussion composition Ionisation, produced by EMS Recordings, as "a weird jumble of drums and other unpleasant sounds". Zappa decided to seek out Varèse's music. After searching for over a year, Zappa found a copy (he noticed the LP because of the "mad scientist" looking photo of Varèse on the cover). Not having enough money with him, he persuaded the salesman to sell him the record at a discount.[14] Thus began his lifelong passion for Varèse's music and that of other modern classical composers.

Zappa grew up influenced by avant-garde composers such as Varèse, Igor Stravinsky and Anton Webern, R&B and doo-wop groups (particularly local pachuco groups), and modern jazz. His own heterogeneous ethnic background, and the diverse social and cultural mix in and around greater Los Angeles, were crucial in the formation of Zappa as a practitioner of underground music and of his later distrustful and openly critical attitude towards "mainstream" social, political and musical movements. He frequently lampooned musical fads like psychedelia, rock opera and disco.[15][16] Television also exerted a strong influence, as demonstrated by quotations from show themes and advertising jingles found in his later works.[17]

Youth and beginning of career (1955–1960)By 1956, the Zappa family had moved to Lancaster, a small aerospace and farming town in the Antelope Valley of the Mojave Desert close to Edwards Air Force Base, in northern Los Angeles County. Zappa's mother encouraged him in his musical interests. Although she disliked Varèse's music, she was indulgent enough to give her son a long distance call to the composer as a 15th birthday present.[14] Unfortunately, Varèse was in Europe at the time, so Zappa spoke to the composer's wife. He later received a letter from Varèse thanking him for his interest, and telling him about a composition he was working on called "Déserts". Living in the desert town of Lancaster, Zappa found this very exciting. Varèse invited him to visit if he ever came to New York. The meeting never took place (Varèse died in 1965), but Zappa framed the letter and kept it on display for the rest of his life.[13][18]

At Antelope Valley High School, Zappa met Don Vliet (who later expanded his name to Don Van Vliet and adopted the stage name Captain Beefheart). Zappa and Vliet became close friends, sharing an interest in R&B records and influencing each other musically throughout their careers.[19] Around the same time, Zappa started playing drums in a local band, The Blackouts.[15] The band was racially diverse, and included Euclid James "Motorhead" Sherwood who later became a member of the Mothers of Invention. Zappa's interest in the guitar grew, and in 1957 he was given his first guitar. Among his early influences were Johnny "Guitar" Watson, Howlin' Wolf and Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown.[20] (In the 1970s and '80s, he invited Watson to perform on several albums.) Zappa considered soloing as the equivalent of forming "air sculptures",[21] and developed an eclectic, innovative and highly personal style.

Zappa's interest in composing and arranging proliferated in his last high-school years. By his final year, he was writing, arranging and conducting avant-garde performance pieces for the school orchestra.[22] He graduated from Antelope Valley High School in 1958, and later acknowledged two of his music teachers on the sleeve of the 1966 album Freak Out![23] Due to his family's frequent moves, Zappa attended at least six different high schools, and as a student he was often bored and given to distracting the rest of the class with juvenile antics.[24] He left community college after one semester, and maintained thereafter a disdain for formal education, taking his children out of school at age 15 and refusing to pay for their college.[25]

Zappa left home in 1959, and moved into a small apartment in Echo Park, Los Angeles. After meeting Kathryn J. "Kay" Sherman during his short stay at Pomona College, they moved in together in Ontario, and were married December 28, 1960.[26] Zappa worked for a short period in advertising. His sojourn in the commercial world was brief, but gave him valuable insights into how it works.[27] Throughout his career, he took a keen interest in the visual presentation of his work, designing some of his album covers and directing his own films and videos.

Early 1960s: Studio ZZappa attempted to earn a living as a musician and composer, and played different nightclub gigs, some with a new version of The Blackouts.[28] Financially more rewarding were Zappa's earliest professional recordings, two soundtracks for the low-budget films The World's Greatest Sinner (1962) and Run Home Slow (1965). The former score was commissioned by actor-producer Timothy Carey and recorded in 1961. It contains many themes that appeared on later Zappa records.[29] The latter soundtrack was recorded in 1963 after the film was completed, but it was commissioned by one of Zappa's former high school teachers in 1959 and Zappa may have worked on it before the film was shot.[30] Excerpts from the soundtrack can be heard on the posthumous album The Lost Episodes (1996).

During the early 1960s, Zappa wrote and produced songs for other local artists, often working with singer-songwriter Ray Collins and producer Paul Buff. Their "Memories of El Monte" was recorded by The Penguins, although only Cleve Duncan of the original group was featured.[31] Buff owned the small Pal Recording Studio in Cucamonga, which included a unique five-track tape recorder he had built. At that time, only a handful of the most sophisticated commercial studios had multi-track facilities; the industry standard for smaller studios was still mono or two-track.[32] Although none of the recordings from the period achieved major commercial success, Zappa earned enough money to allow him to stage a concert of his orchestral music in 1963 and to broadcast and record it.[33] He appeared on Steve Allen's syndicated late night show the same year, in which he played a bicycle as a musical instrument.[34] With Captain Beefheart, Zappa recorded some songs under the name of The Soots. They were rejected by Dot Records for having "no commercial potential", a verdict Zappa subsequently quoted on the sleeve of Freak Out![35]

In 1964, after his marriage started to break up, he moved into the Pal studio and began routinely working 12 hours or more per day recording and experimenting with overdubbing and audio tape manipulation. This set a work pattern that endured for most of his life.[36] Aided by his income from film composing, Zappa took over the studio from Paul Buff, who was now working with Art Laboe at Original Sound. It was renamed Studio Z.[37] Studio Z was rarely booked for recordings by other musicians. Instead, friends moved in, notably James "Motorhead" Sherwood.[38] Zappa started performing as guitarist with a power trio, The Muthers, in local bars in order to support himself.[39]

An article in the local press describing Zappa as "the Movie King of Cucamonga" prompted the local police to suspect that he was making pornographic films.[40] In March 1965, Zappa was approached by a vice squad undercover officer, and accepted an offer of $100 to produce a suggestive audio tape for an alleged stag party. Zappa and a female friend recorded a faked erotic episode. When Zappa was about to hand over the tape, he was arrested, and the police stripped the studio of all recorded material.[40] The press was tipped off beforehand, and next day's The Daily Report wrote that "Vice Squad investigators stilled the tape recorders of a free-swinging, a-go-go film and recording studio here Friday and arrested a self-styled movie producer".[41] Zappa was charged with "conspiracy to commit pornography".[42] This felony charge was reduced and he was sentenced to six months in jail on a misdemeanor, with all but ten days suspended.[43] His entrapment and brief imprisonment left a permanent mark, and was key in the formation of his anti-authoritarian stance.[44] Zappa lost several recordings made at Studio Z in the process, as the police only returned 30 out of 80 hours of tape seized.[45] Eventually, he could no longer afford to pay the rent on the studio and was evicted.[46] Zappa managed to recover some of his possessions before the studio was torn down in 1966.[47]

Late 1960s: The Mothers of InventionIn 1965, Zappa was approached by Ray Collins who asked him to take over as the guitarist in local R&B band The Soul Giants, following a fight between Collins and the group's original guitarist.[3] Zappa accepted, and soon he assumed leadership and the role as co-lead singer (even though he never considered himself a singer[48]). He convinced the other members that they should play his music to increase the chances of getting a record contract.[49] The band was renamed The Mothers, coincidentally on Mother's Day.[50] The group increased their bookings after beginning an association with manager Herb Cohen, while they gradually gained attention on the burgeoning Los Angeles underground music scene.[51] In early 1966, they were spotted by leading record producer Tom Wilson when playing "Trouble Every Day", a song about the Watts Riots.[52] Wilson had earned acclaim as the producer for singer-songwriter Bob Dylan and the folk-rock act Simon & Garfunkel, and was notable as one of the few African Americans working as a major label pop music producer at this time.

Wilson signed The Mothers to the Verve Records division of MGM Records, which had built up a strong reputation in the music industry for its releases of modern jazz recordings in the 1940s and 1950s, but was attempting to diversify into pop and rock audiences. Verve insisted that the band officially re-title themselves "The Mothers of Invention" because "Mother", in slang terminology, was short for "motherfucker"—a term that apart from its profane meanings can denote a skilled musician.[53]

Debut album: Freak Out! (1966)With Wilson credited as producer, the Mothers of Invention, augmented by a studio orchestra, recorded the groundbreaking Freak Out! (1966) which, alongside Bob Dylan's Blonde on Blonde, was one of the first rock double albums ever released. It mixed R&B, doo-wop, musique concrète,[54] and experimental sound collages that captured the "freak" subculture of Los Angeles at that time.[55] Although he was dissatisfied with the final product -- in a late '60s radio interview (included in the posthumous MOFO Project/Object compilation) Zappa recounted that the side-long closing track "Return of the Son of Monster Magnet" was intended to be the basic track for a much more complex work which Verve did not allow him to complete -- Freak Out immediately established Zappa as a radical new voice in rock music, providing an antidote to the "relentless consumer culture of America".[56] The sound was raw, but the arrangements were sophisticated. While recording in the studio, some of the additional session musicians were shocked that they were expected to read the notes on sheet music from charts with Zappa conducting them, since it was not standard when recording rock music.[57] The lyrics praised non-conformity, disparaged authorities, and had dadaist elements. Yet, there was a place for seemingly conventional love songs.[58] Most compositions are Zappa's, which set a precedent for the rest of his recording career. He had full control over the arrangements and musical decisions and did most overdubs. Wilson provided the industry clout and connections to get the group the financial resources needed.[59]

 "Hungry Freaks Daddy"

The opening track on Freak Out!. The album has "consistently been voted as one of top 100 greatest albums ever made".[56]
 

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During the recording of Freak Out!, Zappa moved into a house in Laurel Canyon with friend Pamela Zarubica, who appeared on the album.[57] The house became a meeting (and living) place for many LA musicians and groupies of the time, despite Zappa's disapproval of their illicit drug use.[60] He labeled people on drugs "assholes in action", and he only tried cannabis a few times without any pleasure.[61] He was a regular tobacco smoker for most of his life, and strongly critical of anti-tobacco campaigns.[62] After a short promotional tour following the release of Freak Out!, Zappa met Adelaide Gail Sloatman. He fell in love within "a couple of minutes", and she moved into the house over the summer.[49] They married in 1967, had four children and remained together until Zappa's death.

Wilson nominally produced the Mothers' second album Absolutely Free (1967), which was recorded in November 1966, and later mixed in New York, although by this time Zappa was in de facto control of most facets of the production. It featured extended playing by the Mothers of Invention and focused on songs that defined Zappa's compositional style of introducing abrupt, rhythmical changes into songs that were built from diverse elements.[63] Examples are "Plastic People" and "Brown Shoes Don't Make It", which contained lyrics critical of the hypocrisy and conformity of American society, but also of the counterculture of the 1960s.[64] As Zappa put it, "[W]e're satirists, and we are out to satirize everything."[65] At the same time, Zappa had recorded material for a self-produced album based on orchestral works to be released under his own name. Due to contractual problems, the recordings were shelved and only made ready for release late in 1967. Zappa took the opportunity to radically restructure the contents, adding newly recorded, improvised dialogue to finalize what became his first solo album (under the name Francis Vincent Zappa[1]), Lumpy Gravy (1968).[66] It is an "incredible ambitious musical project",[67] a "monument to John Cage",[68] which intertwines orchestral themes, spoken words and electronic noises through radical audio editing techniques.[69][70]

New York period (1966–1968)The Mothers of Invention played in New York in late 1966 and were offered a contract at the Garrick Theater during Easter 1967. This proved successful and Herb Cohen extended the booking, which eventually lasted half a year.[71] As a result, Zappa and his wife, along with the Mothers of Invention, moved to New York.[66] Their shows became a combination of improvised acts showcasing individual talents of the band as well as tight performances of Zappa's music. Everything was directed by Zappa's famous hand signals.[72] Guest performers and audience participation became a regular part of the Garrick Theater shows. One evening, Zappa managed to entice some US Marines from the audience onto the stage, where they proceeded to dismember a big baby doll, having been told by Zappa to pretend that it was a "gook baby".[73]

Situated in New York, and only interrupted by the band's first European tour, the Mothers of Invention recorded the album widely regarded as the peak of the group's late 1960s work, We're Only in It for the Money (released 1968).[74] It was produced by Zappa, with Wilson credited as executive producer. From then on, Zappa produced all albums released by the Mothers of Invention and as a solo artist. We're Only in It for the Money featured some of the most creative audio editing and production yet heard in pop music, and the songs ruthlessly satirized the hippie and flower power phenomena.[75] The cover photo parodied that of The Beatles' Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.[76] The cover art was provided by Cal Schenkel whom Zappa met in New York. This initiated a life-long collaboration in which Schenkel designed covers for numerous Zappa and Mothers albums.[77]

Reflecting Zappa's eclectic approach to music, the next album, Cruising with Ruben & the Jets (1968), was very different. It represented a collection of doo-wop songs; listeners and critics were not sure whether the album was a satire or a tribute.[78] Zappa has noted that the album was conceived in the way Stravinsky's compositions were in his neo-classical period: "If he could take the forms and clichés of the classical era and pervert them, why not do the same ... to doo-wop in the fifties?"[79] A theme from Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring is heard during one song.

In New York, Zappa increasingly used tape editing as a compositional tool.[80] A prime example is found on the double album Uncle Meat (1969),[81] where the track "King Kong" is edited from various studio and live performances. Zappa had begun regularly recording concerts,[82] and because of his insistence on precise tuning and timing, he was able to augment his studio productions with excerpts from live shows, and vice versa.[83] Later, he combined recordings of different compositions into new pieces, irrespective of the tempo or meter of the sources. He dubbed this process "xenochrony" (strange synchronizations[84])—reflecting the Greek "xeno" (alien or strange) and "chrono" (time).[83] Zappa also evolved a compositional approach which he called "conceptual continuity," meaning that any project or album was part of a larger project. Everything was connected, and musical themes and lyrics reappeared in different form on later albums. Conceptual continuity clues are found throughout Zappa's entire œuvre.[17][80]

During the late 1960s, Zappa continued to develop the business sides of his career. He and Herb Cohen formed the Bizarre Records and Straight Records labels, distributed by Warner Bros. Records, as ventures to aid the funding of projects and to increase creative control. Zappa produced the double album Trout Mask Replica for Captain Beefheart, and releases by Alice Cooper, Wild Man Fischer, and The GTOs, as well as Lenny Bruce's last live performance.[85]

Disbanding the original Mothers of Invention (1969) "Peaches En Regalia"

The opening track on Hot Rats is considered to be one of Zappa's most enduring compositions,[86][87] and has been covered by many artists.[88]
 

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Zappa and the Mothers of Invention returned to Los Angeles in the summer of 1968, and the Zappas moved into a house on Laurel Canyon Boulevard, only to move again to one on Woodrow Wilson Drive in the autumn.[89] This was to be Zappa's home for the rest of his life. Despite being a success with fans in Europe, the Mothers of Invention were not faring well financially.[90] Their first records were vocally oriented, but Zappa wrote more instrumental jazz and classical oriented music for the band's concerts, which confused audiences. Zappa felt that audiences failed to appreciate his "electrical chamber music".[91][92]

 
Zappa with the Mothers of invention, Theatre de Clichy, Paris, 1971In 1969 there were nine band members and Zappa was supporting the group himself from his publishing royalties whether they played or not.[90] In late 1969, Zappa broke up the band. He often cited the financial strain as the main reason,[93] but also commented on the band members' lack of sufficient effort.[94] Many band members were bitter about Zappa's decision, and some took it as a sign of Zappa's concern for perfection at the expense of human feeling.[92] Others were irritated by 'his autocratic ways',[59] exemplified by Zappa's never staying at the same hotel as the band members.[95] Several members would, however, play for Zappa in years to come. Remaining recordings with the band from this period were collected on Weasels Ripped My Flesh and Burnt Weeny Sandwich (both released in 1970).

After he disbanded the Mothers of Invention, Zappa released the acclaimed solo album Hot Rats (1969).[96][97] It features, for the first time on record, Zappa playing extended guitar solos and contains one of his most enduring compositions, "Peaches en Regalia", which reappeared several times on future recordings.[86] It was backed by jazz, blues and R&B session players including violinist Don "Sugarcane" Harris, drummers John Guerin and Paul Humphrey, multi-instrumentalist and previous member of Mothers of Invention Ian Underwood, and multi-instrumentalist Shuggie Otis on bass, along with a guest appearance by Captain Beefheart (providing vocals to the only non-instrumental track, "Willie the Pimp"). It became a popular album in England,[98] and had a major influence on the development of the jazz-rock fusion genre.[86][97]

1970s: From the Mothers to ZappaIn 1970 Zappa met conductor Zubin Mehta. They arranged a May 1970 concert where Mehta conducted the Los Angeles Philharmonic augmented by a rock band. According to Zappa, the music was mostly written in motel rooms while on tour with the Mothers of Invention. Some of it was later featured in the movie 200 Motels.[98] Although the concert was a success, Zappa's experience working with a symphony orchestra was not a happy one.[79] His dissatisfaction became a recurring theme throughout his career; he often felt that the quality of performance of his material delivered by orchestras was not commensurate with the money he spent on orchestral concerts and recordings.[99]

Rebirth of the Mothers and film making (1970)
Frank Zappa in Paris, early 1970sLater in 1970, Zappa formed a new version of The Mothers (from then on, he mostly dropped the "of Invention"). It included British drummer Aynsley Dunbar, jazz keyboardist George Duke, Ian Underwood, Jeff Simmons (bass, rhythm guitar), and three members of The Turtles: bass player Jim Pons, and singers Mark Volman and Howard Kaylan, who, due to persistent legal and contractual problems, adopted the stage name "The Phlorescent Leech and Eddie", or "Flo & Eddie".[100]

This version of the Mothers debuted on Zappa's next solo album Chunga's Revenge (1970),[101] which was followed by the double-album soundtrack to the movie 200 Motels (1971), featuring The Mothers, The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Ringo Starr, Theodore Bikel, and Keith Moon. Co-directed by Zappa and Tony Palmer, it was filmed in a week at Pinewood Studios outside London.[102] Tensions between Zappa and several cast and crew members arose before and during shooting;[102] co-director Palmer tried afterwards to have his name removed from the film.[103] The film deals loosely with life on the road as a rock musician.[104] It was the first feature film photographed on videotape and transferred to 35 mm film, a process which allowed for novel visual effects.[105] It was released to mixed reviews.[106] The score relied extensively on orchestral music, and Zappa's dissatisfaction with the classical music world intensified when a concert, scheduled at the Royal Albert Hall after filming, was canceled because a representative of the venue found some of the lyrics obscene. In 1975, he lost a lawsuit against the Royal Albert Hall for breach of contract.[107]

After 200 Motels, the band went on tour, which resulted in two live albums, Fillmore East - June 1971 and Just Another Band From L.A.; the latter included the 20-minute track "Billy the Mountain", Zappa's satire on rock opera set in Southern California. This track was representative of the band's theatrical performances in which songs were used to build up sketches based on 200 Motels scenes as well as new situations often portraying the band members' sexual encounters on the road.[108][109]

Accident, attack and their aftermath (1971–1972) "Waka/Jawaka"

The closing track on Waka/Jawaka, one of Zappa's jazz-oriented albums.

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Zappa performing in Hamburg, Germany in 1971In December 1971, there were two serious setbacks. While performing at Casino de Montreux in Switzerland, the Mothers' equipment was destroyed when a flare set off by an audience member started a fire that burned down the casino[110]. Immortalized in Deep Purple's song "Smoke on the Water", the event and immediate aftermath can be heard on the bootleg album Swiss Cheese/Fire, released legally as part of Zappa's Beat the Boots II compilation. After a week's break, The Mothers played at the Rainbow Theatre, London, with rented gear. During the encore, an audience member pushed Zappa off the stage and into the concrete-floored orchestra pit. The band thought Zappa had been killed—he had suffered serious fractures, head trauma and injuries to his back, leg, and neck, as well as a crushed larynx, which ultimately caused his voice to drop a third after healing.[110] This left him wheelchair bound, forcing him off the road for over half a year. Upon his return to the stage in September 1972, he was still wearing a leg brace, had a noticeable limp and could not stand for very long while on stage. Zappa noted that one leg healed "shorter than the other" (a reference later found in the lyrics of songs "Zomby Woof" and "Dancin' Fool"), resulting in chronic back pain.[110] Meanwhile, the Mothers were left in limbo and eventually formed the core of Flo and Eddie's band as they set out on their own.

During 1971–1972 Zappa released two strongly jazz-oriented solo LPs, Waka/Jawaka and The Grand Wazoo, which were recorded during the forced layoff from concert touring, using floating line-ups of session players and Mothers alumni.[111] Musically, the albums were akin to Hot Rats.[112] Zappa began touring again in late 1972.[112] His first effort was a series of concerts in September 1972 with a 20-piece big band referred to as the Grand Wazoo. This was followed by a scaled-down version known as the Petit Wazoo that toured the US for five weeks from October to December 1972.[113]

Top 10 album (1973–1975)Zappa then formed and toured with smaller groups that variously included Ian Underwood (reeds, keyboards), Ruth Underwood (vibes, marimba), Sal Marquez (trumpet, vocals), Napoleon Murphy Brock (sax, flute and vocals), Bruce Fowler (trombone), Tom Fowler (bass), Chester Thompson (drums), Ralph Humphrey (drums), George Duke (keyboards, vocals), and Jean-Luc Ponty (violin).

 
Frank Zappa in concert, Hordern Pavilion, Sydney, Australia, May 1973By 1973 the Bizarre and Straight labels were discontinued. In their place, Zappa and Cohen created DiscReet Records, also distributed by Warner Bros.[114] Zappa continued a high rate of production through the first half of the 1970s, including the solo album Apostrophe (') (1974), which reached a career-high #10 on the Billboard pop album charts[115] helped by the chart single "Don't Eat The Yellow Snow".[116] Other albums from the period are Over-Nite Sensation (1973), which contained several future concert favorites, such as "Dinah-Moe Humm" and "Montana", and the albums Roxy & Elsewhere (1974) and One Size Fits All (1975) which feature ever-changing versions of a band still called the Mothers, and are notable for the tight renditions of highly difficult jazz fusion songs in such pieces as "Inca Roads", "Echidna's Arf (Of You)" and "Be-Bop Tango (Of the Old Jazzmen's Church)".[117] A live recording from 1974, You Can't Do That on Stage Anymore, Vol. 2 (1988), captures "the full spirit and excellence of the 1973–75 band".[117] Zappa released Bongo Fury (1975), which featured live recordings from a tour the same year that reunited him with Captain Beefheart for a brief period.[118] They later became estranged for a period of years, but were in contact at the end of Zappa's life.[119]

Business breakups and touring (1976–1979)
Zappa with Captain Beefheart, seated left, during a 1975 concertZappa's relationship with long-time manager Herb Cohen ended in 1976. Zappa sued Cohen for skimming more than he was allocated from DiscReet Records, as well as for signing acts of which Zappa did not approve.[120] Cohen filed a lawsuit against Zappa in return, which froze the money Zappa and Cohen had gained from an out-of-court settlement with MGM over the rights of the early Mothers of Invention recordings. It also prevented Zappa having access to any of his previously recorded material during the trials. Zappa therefore took his personal master copies of the rock-oriented Zoot Allures (1976) directly to Warner Bros., thereby bypassing DiscReet.[121]

In the mid-1970s Zappa prepared material for Läther (pronounced "leather"), a four-LP project. Läther encapsulated all the aspects of Zappa's musical styles—rock tunes, orchestral works, complex instrumentals, and Zappa's own trademark distortion-drenched guitar solos. Wary of a quadruple-LP, Warner Bros. Records refused to release it.[122] Zappa managed to get an agreement with Mercury-Phonogram, and test pressings were made targeted at a Halloween 1977 release, but Warner Bros. prevented the release by claiming rights over the material.[123] Zappa responded by appearing on the Pasadena, California radio station KROQ, allowing them to broadcast Läther and encouraging listeners to make their own tape recordings.[124] A lawsuit between Zappa and Warner Bros. followed, during which no Zappa material was released for more than a year. Eventually, Warner Bros. issued major parts of Läther against Zappa's will as four individual albums with limited promotion.[125] Läther was released posthumously in 1996.[126]

Although Zappa eventually gained the rights to all his material created under the MGM and Warner Bros. contracts,[127] the various lawsuits meant that for a period Zappa's only income came from touring, which he therefore did extensively in 1975–1977 with relatively small, mainly rock-oriented, bands.[123] Drummer Terry Bozzio became a regular band member, Napoleon Murphy Brock stayed on for a while, and original Mothers of Invention bassist Roy Estrada joined. Among other musicians were bassist Patrick O'Hearn, singer-guitarist Ray White and keyboardist Eddie Jobson. In December 1976, Zappa appeared as a featured musical guest on the NBC television show Saturday Night Live.[128][129] The performances included an impromptu musical collaboration with cast member John Belushi during the instrumental piece "The Purple Lagoon". Belushi appeared as his Samurai Futaba character playing the tenor sax with Zappa conducting.[130] Zappa's song, "I'm the Slime", was performed with a voice-over by SNL booth announcer Don Pardo, who also introduced "Peaches En Regalia" on the same airing.

 
Zappa in Toronto, 1977Zappa's band at the time, with the additions of Ruth Underwood and a horn section (featuring Michael and Randy Brecker), performed during Christmas in New York, recordings of which appear on one of the albums released by Warner Bros., Zappa in New York (1978). It mixes intense instrumentals such as "The Black Page" and humorous songs like "Titties and Beer".[131] The former composition, written originally for drum kit but later developed for larger bands, is notorious for its complexity in rhythmic structure, radical changes of tempo and meter, and short, densely arranged passages.[132][133]

 "The Black Page Drum Solo/Black Page #1"

One of Zappa's complex, percussion-based compositions featured on Zappa in New York.

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Zappa in New York featured a song about sex criminal Michael H. Kenyon, "The Illinois Enema Bandit", which featured Don Pardo providing the opening narrative in the song. Like many songs on the album, it contained numerous sexual references,[131] leading to many critics objecting and being offended by the content.[134] Zappa dismissed the criticism by noting that he was a journalist reporting on life as he saw it.[135] Predating his later fight against censorship, he remarked: "What do you make of a society that is so primitive that it clings to the belief that certain words in its language are so powerful that they could corrupt you the moment you hear them?"[48] The remaining albums released by Warner Bros. Records without Zappa's consent were Studio Tan in 1978 and Sleep Dirt in 1979, which contained complex suites of instrumentally-based tunes recorded between 1973 and 1976, and whose release was overlooked in the midst of the legal problems.[136] Also released by the label without the artist's consent was Orchestral Favorites in 1979, which featured recordings of a concert with orchestral music from 1975.

Zappa as an independent artist (1979) "Bobby Brown"

The single became a hit in non-English speaking countries and helped Sheik Yerbouti become a best-seller.[137]
 

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Resolving the lawsuits successfully, Zappa ended the 1970s "stronger than ever",[138] by releasing two of his most successful albums in 1979: the best selling album of his career, Sheik Yerbouti,[139] and the "bona fide masterpiece",[138] Joe's Garage.[140] The double album Sheik Yerbouti was the first release on Zappa Records, and contained the Grammy-nominated single "Dancin' Fool", which reached #45 on the Billboard charts,[141] and "Jewish Princess", which received attention when a Jewish lobby group, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), attempted to prevent the song from receiving radio airplay due to its alleged anti-Semitic lyrics.[135] Zappa vehemently denied any anti-Semitic sentiments and dismissed the ADL as a "noisemaking organization that tries to apply pressure on people in order to manufacture a stereotype image of Jews that suits their idea of a good time".[142] The album's commercial success was attributable in part to "Bobby Brown". Due to its explicit lyrics about a young man's encounter with a "dyke by the name of Freddie", the song did not get airplay in the US, but it topped the charts in several European countries where English is not the primary language.[137] The triple LP Joe's Garage featured lead singer Ike Willis as the voice of the character "Joe" in a rock opera about the danger of political systems,[138] the suppression of freedom of speech and music—inspired in part by the Islamic revolution that had made music illegal within its jurisdiction at the time[143]—and about the "strange relationship Americans have with sex and sexual frankness".[138] The album contains rock songs like "Catholic Girls" (a riposte to the controversies of "Jewish Princess"),[144] "Lucille Has Messed My Mind Up", and the title track, as well as extended live-recorded guitar improvisations combined with a studio backup band dominated by drummer Vinnie Colaiuta (with whom Zappa had a particularly good musical rapport)[145] adopting the xenochrony process. The album contains one of Zappa's most famous guitar "signature pieces", "Watermelon in Easter Hay".[21][146]

On December 21, 1979, Zappa's movie Baby Snakes premiered in New York. The movie's tagline was "A movie about people who do stuff that is not normal".[147] The 2 hour and 40 minutes movie was based on footage from concerts in New York around Halloween 1977, with a band featuring keyboardist Tommy Mars and percussionist Ed Mann (who would both return on later tours) as well as guitarist Adrian Belew. It also contained several extraordinary sequences of clay animation by Bruce Bickford who had earlier provided animation sequences to Zappa for a 1974 TV special (which later become available on the video The Dub Room Special (1982)).[148] The movie did not do well in theatrical distribution,[149] but won the Premier Grand Prix at the First International Music Festival in Paris in 1981. The Zappa Family Trust released it on DVD, and it has been available since 2003.[148]

Zappa later expanded on his television appearances in a non-musical role. He was an actor or voice artist in episodes of Shelley Duvall's Faerie Tale Theatre,[150] Miami Vice[151] and The Ren and Stimpy Show.[150] A voice part in The Simpsons never materialized, to creator Matt Groening's disappointment.[152]

1980s: Productive as ever
Frank Zappa performing at the Memorial Auditorium, Buffalo, New York, 1980. The concert was released in 2007 as Buffalo.After spending most of 1980 on the road, Zappa released Tinsel Town Rebellion in 1981. It was the first release on his own Barking Pumpkin Records,[153] and it contains songs taken from a 1979 tour, one studio track and material from the 1980 tours. The album is a mixture of complicated instrumentals and Zappa's use of sprechstimme (speaking song or voice)—a compositional technique utilized by such composers as Arnold Schoenberg and Alban Berg—showcasing some of the most accomplished bands Zappa ever had (mostly featuring drummer Vinnie Colaiuta).[153] While some lyrics still raised controversy among critics, in the sense that some found them sexist,[154] the political and sociological satire in songs like the title track and "The Blue Light" have been described as a "hilarious critique of the willingness of the American people to believe anything".[155] The album is also notable for the presence of guitar virtuoso Steve Vai, who joined Zappa's touring band in the fall of 1980.[156]

The same year the double album You Are What You Is was released. Most of it was recorded in Zappa's brand new Utility Muffin Research Kitchen (UMRK) studios, which were located at his house,[83] thereby giving him complete freedom to work.[157] The album included one complex instrumental, "Theme from the 3rd Movement of Sinister Footwear", but focused mainly on rock songs with Zappa's sardonic social commentary—satirical lyrics targeted at teenagers, the media, and religious and political hypocrisy.[158] "Dumb All Over" is a tirade on religion, as is "Heavenly Bank Account", wherein Zappa rails against TV evangelists such as Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson for their purported influence on the US administration as well as their use of religion as a means of raising money.[159] Songs like "Society Pages" and "I'm a Beautiful Guy" show Zappa's dismay with the Reagan era and its "obscene pursuit of wealth and happiness".[159]

 "Shut Up 'N Play Yer Guitar Some More"

The title track on Shut Up 'N Play Yer Guitar features Zappa's guitar improvisations.

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In 1981, Zappa also released three instrumental albums, Shut Up 'N Play Yer Guitar, Shut Up 'N Play Yer Guitar Some More, and The Return of the Son of Shut Up 'N Play Yer Guitar, which were initially sold via mail order, but later released through the CBS label due to popular demand.[160] The albums focus exclusively on Frank Zappa as a guitar soloist, and the tracks are predominantly live recordings from 1979–1980; they highlight Zappa's improvisational skills with "beautiful performances from the backing group as well".[161] Another guitar-only album, Guitar, was released in 1988, and a third, Trance-Fusion, which Zappa completed shortly before his death, was released in 2006.

From hit single to classical performancesIn May 1982, Zappa released Ship Arriving Too Late to Save a Drowning Witch, which featured his biggest selling single ever, the Grammy Award-nominated song "Valley Girl" (topping out at #32 on the Billboard charts).[141] In her improvised lyrics to the song, Zappa's daughter Moon Unit satirized the vapid speech of teenage girls from the San Fernando Valley, which popularized many "Valspeak" expressions such as "gag me with a spoon," "fer sure, fer sure," "grody" (gross), and "barf out".[162] Most Americans who only knew Zappa from his few singles successes now thought of him as a person writing "novelty songs", even though the rest of the album contained highly challenging music.[163] Zappa was irritated by this[164] and never played the song live.[163]

In 1983, two different projects were released, beginning with The Man From Utopia, a rock-oriented work. The album is eclectic, featuring the vocal-led "Dangerous Kitchen" and "The Jazz Discharge Party Hats", both continuations of the sprechstimme excursions on Tinseltown Rebellion. The second album, London Symphony Orchestra, Vol. 1, contained orchestral Zappa compositions conducted by Kent Nagano and performed by the London Symphony Orchestra. A second record of these sessions, London Symphony Orchestra, Vol. 2 was released in 1987. The material was recorded under a tight schedule with Zappa providing all funding, helped by the commercial success of "Valley Girl".[165] Zappa was not satisfied with the LSO recordings. One reason is "Strictly Genteel", which was recorded after the trumpet section had been out for drinks on a break: the track took 40 edits to hide out-of-tune notes.[165] Conductor Nagano, who was pleased with the experience, noted that in "fairness to the orchestra, the music is humanly very, very difficult".[166] Some reviews noted that the recordings were the best representation of Zappa's orchestral work so far.[167] In 1984 Zappa teamed again with Nagano and the Berkeley Symphony Orchestra for a live performance of A Zappa Affair with augmented orchestra, life-size puppets, and moving stage sets. Although critically acclaimed the work was a financial failure, and only performed twice.[168][169]

Synclavier "Naval Aviation in Art?"

A Zappa composition for classical ensemble from Boulez Conducts Zappa: The Perfect Stranger.

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For the remainder of his career, much of Zappa's work was influenced by his use of the Synclavier as a compositional and performance tool. Even considering the complexity of the music he wrote, the Synclavier could realize anything he could dream up.[170] The Synclavier could be programmed to play almost anything conceivable, to perfection: "With the Synclavier, any group of imaginary instruments can be invited to play the most difficult passages ... with one-millisecond accuracy—every time".[170] Even though it essentially did away with the need for musicians,[171] Zappa viewed the Synclavier and real-life musicians as separate.[170] In 1984, he released four albums. Boulez Conducts Zappa: The Perfect Stranger, contains orchestral works commissioned and conducted by world-renowned conductor Pierre Boulez (who was listed as an influence on Freak Out!) and performed by his Ensemble InterContemporain, juxtaposed with premiere Synclavier pieces. Again, Zappa was not satisfied with the performances of his orchestral works as he found them under-rehearsed, but in the album liner notes he respectfully thanks Boulez's demands for precision.[172] The Synclavier pieces stood in contrast to the orchestral works, as the sounds were electronically generated and not, as became possible shortly thereafter, sampled.

The album Thing-Fish was an ambitious three-record set in the style of a Broadway play dealing with a dystopian "what-if" scenario involving feminism, homosexuality, manufacturing and distribution of the AIDS virus, and a eugenics program conducted by the United States government.[173] New vocals were combined with previously released tracks and new Synclavier music; "the work is an extraordinary example of bricolage".[174] Finally, in 1984, Zappa released Francesco Zappa, a Synclavier rendition of works by 18th century composer Francesco Zappa (no known relation), and Them or Us, a two-record set of heavily edited live and session pieces.

Senate testimony

Zappa testifies before the U.S. Senate, 1985

Testimony continuedOn September 19, 1985, Zappa testified before the United States Senate Commerce, Technology, and Transportation committee, attacking the Parents Music Resource Center or PMRC, a music organization, co-founded by Tipper Gore, wife of then-senator Al Gore. The PMRC consisted of many wives of politicians, including the wives of five members of the committee, and was founded to address the issue of song lyrics with sexual or satanic content.[175] Zappa saw their activities as on a path towards censorship,[176] and called their proposal for voluntary labelling of records with explicit content "extortion" of the music industry.[177] In his prepared statement, he said:

The PMRC proposal is an ill-conceived piece of nonsense which fails to deliver any real benefits to children, infringes the civil liberties of people who are not children, and promises to keep the courts busy for years dealing with the interpretational and enforcemental problems inherent in the proposal's design. It is my understanding that, in law, First Amendment issues are decided with a preference for the least restrictive alternative. In this context, the PMRC's demands are the equivalent of treating dandruff by decapitation ... The establishment of a rating system, voluntary or otherwise, opens the door to an endless parade of moral quality control programs based on things certain Christians do not like. What if the next bunch of Washington wives demands a large yellow "J" on all material written or performed by Jews, in order to save helpless children from exposure to concealed Zionist doctrine?[178]

Zappa set excerpts from the PMRC hearings to Synclavier music in his composition "Porn Wars" on the 1985 album Frank Zappa Meets the Mothers of Prevention, and the full recording was released on Congress Shall Make No Law.... Zappa is heard interacting with Senators Fritz Hollings, Slade Gorton, Al Gore (who claimed, at the hearing, to be a Zappa fan), and in an exchange with Florida Senator Paula Hawkins over what toys Zappa's children played with. Zappa expressed opinions on censorship when he appeared on CNN's Crossfire TV series and debated issues with Washington Times commentator John Lofton in 1986.[179] Zappa's passion for American politics was becoming a bigger part of his life. He had always encouraged his fans to register to vote on album covers, and throughout 1988 he had registration booths at his concerts.[180] He even considered running for President of the United States.[181]

Digital medium and last tourAround 1986, Zappa undertook a comprehensive re-release program of his earlier vinyl recordings.[182] He personally oversaw the remastering of all his 1960s, 1970s and early 1980s albums for the new digital compact disc medium.[183] Certain aspects of these re-issues were, however, criticized by some fans as being unfaithful to the original recordings.[184] Nearly twenty years before the advent of online music stores, Zappa had proposed to replace "phonographic record merchandising" of music by "direct digital-to-digital transfer" through phone or cable TV (with royalty payments and consumer billing automatically built into the accompanying software).[185] In 1989, Zappa considered his idea a "miserable flop".[185]

The album Jazz From Hell, released in 1986, earned Zappa his first Grammy Award in 1987 for Best Rock Instrumental Performance. Except for one live guitar solo (St. Etienne), the album exclusively featured compositions brought to life by the Synclavier. Although an instrumental album, Meyer Music Markets sold Jazz from Hell featuring an "explicit lyrics" sticker—a warning label introduced by the Recording Industry Association of America in an agreement with the PMRC.[186]

Zappa's last tour in a rock and jazz band format took place in 1988 with a 12-piece group which had a repertoire of over 100 (mostly Zappa) compositions, but which split under acrimonious circumstances before the tour was completed.[187] The tour was documented on the albums Broadway the Hard Way (new material featuring songs with strong political emphasis), The Best Band You Never Heard in Your Life (Zappa "standards" and an eclectic collection of cover tunes, ranging from Maurice Ravel's Boléro to Led Zeppelin's "Stairway to Heaven"), and Make a Jazz Noise Here (mostly instrumental and avant-garde music). Parts are also found on You Can't Do That on Stage Anymore, volumes 4 and 6.

1990s: Classical music and deathIn early 1990, Zappa visited Czechoslovakia at the request of President Václav Havel, and was asked to serve as consultant for the government on trade, cultural matters and tourism. Havel was a lifelong fan of Zappa who had large influence in the avant-garde and underground scene in Central Europe in the 1970s and 1980s (a Czech rock group that was imprisoned in 1976 took its name from Zappa's 1968 song "Plastic People").[188] Zappa enthusiastically agreed and began meeting with corporate officials interested in investing in Czechoslovakia. Within a few weeks, however, the US administration put pressure on the Czech government to withdraw the appointment. Havel made Zappa an unofficial cultural attaché instead.[189] Zappa also planned to develop an international consulting enterprise to facilitate trade between the former Eastern Bloc and Western businesses.[190]

 "N-Lite"

One of Zappa's works for Synclavier on Civilization, Phaze III, cited as his "last great work."[191]
 

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Most of Zappa's projects came to a halt in 1990, when he was diagnosed with terminal prostate cancer. The disease had been developing unnoticed for ten years and was considered inoperable.[190] After his diagnosis, Zappa devoted most of his energy to modern orchestral and Synclavier works. In 1993 he completed Civilization, Phaze III shortly before his death. It was a major Synclavier work which he had begun in the 1980s.[192][193]

In 1991, Zappa was chosen to be one of four featured composers at the world-acclaimed Frankfurt Festival in 1992 (the others were John Cage, Karlheinz Stockhausen and Alexander Knaifel).[194] Zappa was approached by the German chamber ensemble, Ensemble Modern, which was interested in playing his music for the event. Although ill, Zappa invited them to Los Angeles for rehearsals of new compositions and new arrangements of older material.[195] In addition to being satisfied with the ensemble's performances of his music, Zappa also got along with the musicians, and the concerts in Germany and Austria were set up for the fall.[195] In September 1992, the concerts went ahead as scheduled, but Zappa could only appear at two in Frankfurt due to illness. At the first concert, he conducted the opening "Overture", and the final "G-Spot Tornado" as well as the theatrical "Food Gathering in Post-Industrial America, 1992" and "Welcome to the United States" (the remainder of the program was conducted by the ensemble's regular conductor Peter Rundel). Zappa received a 20-minute ovation.[196] It would become his last professional public appearance, as the cancer was spreading to such an extent that he was in too much pain to enjoy an event that he otherwise found "exhilarating".[196] Recordings from the concerts appeared on The Yellow Shark (1993), Zappa's last release during his lifetime, and some material from studio rehearsals appeared on the posthumous Everything Is Healing Nicely (1999).

Frank Zappa died on Saturday, December 4, 1993 in his home surrounded by his wife and children. At a private ceremony the following day, Zappa was interred in an unmarked grave at the Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery in Westwood, Los Angeles,[197][198] next to the grave of actor Lew Ayres.[1] On Monday, December 6 his family publicly announced that "Composer Frank Zappa left for his final tour just before 6:00 pm on Saturday".[199]

LegacyAcclaim and honorsFrank Zappa was one of the first to try tearing down the barriers between rock, jazz, and classical music. In the late Sixties his Mothers of Invention would slip from Stravinsky's "Petroushka" into The Dovells' "Bristol Stomp" before breaking down into saxophone squeals inspired by Albert Ayler

The Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock & RollZappa earned widespread critical acclaim in his lifetime and after his death. The Rolling Stone Album Guide (2004) writes: "Frank Zappa dabbled in virtually all kinds of music—and, whether guised as a satirical rocker, jazz-rock fusionist, guitar virtuoso, electronics wizard, or orchestral innovator, his eccentric genius was undeniable".[200] Even though his work drew inspiration from many different genres, Zappa was seen establishing a coherent and personal expression. In 1971, biographer David Walley noted that "The whole structure of his music is unified, not neatly divided by dates or time sequences and it is all building into a composite".[201] On commenting on Zappa's music, politics and philosophy, Barry Miles noted in 2004 that they cannot be separated: "It was all one; all part of his 'conceptual continuity'".[202]

 
Frank Zappa in 1977Guitar Player devoted a special issue to Zappa in 1992, and asked on the cover "Is FZ America's Best Kept Musical Secret?" Editor Don Menn remarked that the issue was about "The most important composer to come out of modern popular music".[203] Among those contributing to the issue was composer and musicologist Nicolas Slonimsky, who conducted premiere performances of works of Ives and Varèse in the 1930s.[204] He became friends with Zappa in the 1980s,[205] and said "I admire everything Frank does, because he practically created the new musical millennium. He does beautiful, beautiful work ... It has been my luck to have lived to see the emergence of this totally new type of music."[206] Conductor Kent Nagano remarked in the same issue that "Frank is a genius. That's a word I don't use often ... In Frank's case it is not too strong ... He is extremely literate musically. I'm not sure if the general public knows that".[207] Pierre Boulez stated in Musician magazine's posthumous Zappa tribute article that Zappa "was an exceptional figure because he was part of the worlds of rock and classical music and that both types of his work would survive."[208] Many music scholars acknowledge Zappa as one of the most influential composers of his generation.[209][210][211] As an electric guitarist, he has become highly regarded.[212][213][214]

In 1994, jazz magazine Down Beat's critics poll placed Zappa in its Hall of Fame.[215] Zappa was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1995. There, it was written that "Frank Zappa was rock and roll's sharpest musical mind and most astute social critic. He was the most prolific composer of his age, and he bridged genres—rock, jazz, classical, avant-garde and even novelty music—with masterful ease".[216] He received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1997.[217] In 2005, the US National Recording Preservation Board included We're Only in It for the Money in the National Recording Registry as "Frank Zappa's inventive and iconoclastic album presents a unique political stance, both anti-conservative and anti-counterculture, and features a scathing satire on hippiedom and America's reactions to it".[218] The same year, Rolling Stone magazine ranked him 71 on its list of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time.[219]

Artists influenced by ZappaA number of notable musicians, bands and orchestras from diverse genres have been influenced by Frank Zappa's music. Rock artists like Alice Cooper,[220] Primus,[221] Fee Waybill of The Tubes[222] all cite Zappa's influence, as do progressive rock artists like Henry Cow,[223] Trey Anastasio of Phish,[219] and John Frusciante.[224] Paul McCartney regarded Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band as The Beatles' Freak Out![225] Heavy rock and metal acts like Black Sabbath,[226] Mike Portnoy,[227] Warren DeMartini,[228] Steve Vai,[229] System of a Down,[230] Clawfinger,[231] and Devin Townsend[232] acknowledge Zappa's inspiration. On the classical music scene, Tomas Ulrich,[233] Meridian Arts Ensemble,[234] Ensemble Ambrosius [235] and the Fireworks Ensemble[236] regularly perform Zappa's compositions and quote his influence. Contemporary jazz musicians and composers Bill Frisell[237] and John Zorn[238] are inspired by Zappa, as is funk legend George Clinton.[239] Other artists whose work is affected by Zappa include new age pianist George Winston,[240] electronic composer Bob Gluck,[241] parody singer "Weird Al" Yankovic,[242] and noise music artist Masami Akita of Merzbow.[243]

References in arts and sciences
Frank Zappa bust by Vaclav Cesak in Bad DoberanScientists from various fields have honored Zappa by naming new discoveries after him. In 1967, paleontologist Leo P. Plas, Jr. identified an extinct mollusc in Nevada and named it Amaurotoma zappa with the motivation that, "The specific name, zappa, honors Frank Zappa".[244] In the 1980s, biologist Ed Murdy named a genus of gobiid fishes of New Guinea Zappa, with a species named Zappa confluentus.[245] Biologist Ferdinando Boero named a Californian jellyfish Phialella zappai (1987), noting that he had "pleasure in naming this species after the modern music composer".[246] Belgian biologists Bosmans and Bosselaers discovered in the early 1980s a Cameroonese spider, which they in 1994 named Pachygnatha zappa because "the ventral side of the abdomen of the female of this species strikingly resembles the artist's legendary moustache".[247] A gene of the bacterium Proteus mirabilis that causes urinary tract infections was in 1995 named zapA by three biologists from Maryland. In their scientific article, they "especially thank the late Frank Zappa for inspiration and assistance with genetic nomenclature".[248] In the late 1990s, American paleontologists Marc Salak and Halard L. Lescinsky discovered a metazoan fossil, and named it Spygori zappania to honor "the late Frank Zappa ... whose mission paralleled that of the earliest paleontologists: to challenge conventional and traditional beliefs when such beliefs lacked roots in logic and reason".[249]

In 1994, lobbying efforts initiated by psychiatrist John Scialli led the International Astronomical Union's Minor Planet Center to name an asteroid in Zappa's honor: 3834 Zappafrank.[250] The asteroid was discovered in 1980 by Czechoslovakian astronomer Ladislav Brozek, and the citation for its naming says that "Zappa was an eclectic, self-trained artist and composer ... Before 1989 he was regarded as a symbol of democracy and freedom by many people in Czechoslovakia".[251]

In 1995, a bust of Zappa by sculptor Konstantinas Bogdanas was installed in the Lithuanian capital Vilnius. A replica was offered to the city of Baltimore in 2008, and on September 19, 2010—the twenty-fifth anniversary of Zappa's testimony to the US senate—a ceremony dedicating the replica was held. Speakers at the event included Gail Zappa and Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake.[252][253] In 2002, a bronze bust was installed in German city Bad Doberan, since 1990 location of the Zappanale, an annual music festival celebrating Zappa.[254] At the initiative of musicians community ORWOhaus, the city of Berlin named a street in the Marzahn district "Frank-Zappa-Straße" in 2007.[255] The same year, Baltimore's mayor Sheila Dixon proclaimed August 9 as the city's official "Frank Zappa Day" citing Zappa's musical accomplishments as well as his defense of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.[256

 

*In 1966, Frank Zappa was the first musician, who released a Double-Album.

*No other rockband suffered more line up changes than the band of Frank Zappa. The reason was, Zappa had never been 100% happy with his musicians and his music. There were presumingly  more than 100 musicians, who played with Zappa throughout the years

*Frank Zappa had never touched drugs throughout his life. Only once he tried to smoke marihuana. He said afterwards: I felt tired and had a aching throat.  That was all. And if I ever catch one of my musicians taking drugs on stage, he's off  immidiately.

Frank Zappa died 2 weeks before his 53rd birthday in Laurel/california at a too late discovered prostata cancer. If the tumor would have been discovered half a year earlier, he now would have become 70 on the 21st. Dec. 2010.

At the smalltown Bad Doberach in Germany, each year there is a big festival held called "Zappanale"

In July 1994 the International Astronomical Union named a Czech-discovered asteroid, "Zappafrank

His 1979 album "Joe's Garage" came 20th in Classic Rock Magazine's list of the 30 greatest concept albums of all time.

Has an enormous following in the former communist countries of east-Europe

Zappa is the first, and so far only, artist to be inducted into both the Jazz and Rock and Roll Halls of Fame.

Gene Simmons visited with the Zappa family at their home, socializing, some time before Zappa's death. During their visit, Zappa showed Simmons something that proved how prolific Zappa was - hundreds of master tapes of unreleased music

Gave up his driver's license voluntarily, because he hated standing in line at the DMV.

I don’t want to spend my life explaining myself,” Frank Zappa once said. “You either get it or you don’t.”

One-time Mothers of Invention percussionist Ruth Underwood agreed, remarking that Zappa “just devoured music; that was all he thought about. We listened to his music on the bus; we rehearsed it at sound checks; we played it that night; we analyzed it the next day. I’ve got some original sketches, pieces he composed for me sitting in an airport waiting to board!… Everything was music.”

By the late 1970s Zappa was weary of his incessant battles with controversy- averse record company executives who were forever up in arms over his scathing (and often obscene) lyrics. Determined to attain a level of autonomy, Zappa secured the rights to nearly all of his master recordings and decided to extricate himself from his troubled relationship with Warner Bros., his label at the time. (Zappa’s decision to hang a huge banner reading “Warner Bros. Sucks” at his concerts made his view of the company fairly clear.)

Zappa formed his own record company.

For his part, Zappa was horrified at proposed PMRC solutions, and he made several highly visible appearances before national and state congressional committees to protest the efforts of the PMRC. “Taken as a whole, the complete list of PMRC demands reads like an instruction manual for some sinister kind of ’toilet training program’ to housebreak all composers and performers because of the lyrics of a few,” Zappa said in his congressional testimony. “Because of the subjective nature of the PMRC ratings, it is impossible to guarantee that some sort of ‘despised concept’ won’t sneakthrough, tucked away in new slang or the overstressed pronunciation of an otherwise innocent word…. The establishment of a rating system, voluntary or otherwise, opens the door to an endless parade of moral quality control programs based on Things Certain Christians Don’t Like.’”

his personal life was much more sedate.

“As far as rearing children goes, the basic idea I try to keep in mind is that a child is a person. Just because they happen to be a little shorter than you doesn’t mean they are dumber than you. A lot of people make that mistake, and forget how much value there is in raw intuition —and there’s plenty of that in every child.”

In January 1990 Zappa was diagnosed with prostate cancer.

Rip Rense wrote in LA Weekly, “time and energy were undependable, inadequate allies for Frank; he made do with them, ever stretching their limits through insomniac nights with the only drugs he ever abused: caffeine and nicotine. He would sit, often until dawn… working with an urgencythatbecameterribleand poignant as his health declined.”

Zappa died on December 4, 1993, leaving behind a huge and provocative catalog of music.

Tom Long wrote that “Zappa was an original, and originality is prized less and less these days. Still, if anyone believed in the undeniable force and passion of art, and its ability to overcome all obstacles, it was Frank Zappa.”

“In Frank I saw an artist of uncompromising approach and flawless integrity in his art. One hundred years from now when many popular bands will mean little more than funny names from the past, Frank will be revered and celebrated for the true genius that he is.”

Continue to be proof for and fuel driving millions of true music fans searching for anything original and anyone breaking the boundaries of the drab and repetitive music industry.  Zappa is the poster child.


 Barry James Sanders (born July 16, 1968) is a former American football running back who spent all of his professional career with the Detroit Lions in the NFL. Sanders is best known for being one of the most prolific and elusive running backs of all time, and left the game just short of the all-time rushing record. Sanders is a member of the college and professional football halls of fame; in 2010, the NFL Network series The Top 100: NFL's Greatest Players named him in the top 20 players of all time (and the associated fan poll ranked him fourth best of all time).[1]

A Wichita, Kansas native, Sanders attended Wichita North High School.[2] Sanders did not play running back until the fourth game of his senior year in 1985. He rushed for 1,322 yards in the final seven games of the season, which earned him all-state honors. He was, however, overlooked by most college recruiters because of his 5 ft 8 in (1.73 m) size. He chose Oklahoma State after finally getting accepted by the college.

[edit] College careerSanders played for the Oklahoma State Cowboys from 1986 to 1988, and wore the number 21. During his first two years, he backed up All-American Thurman Thomas. In 1987 he led the nation in kickoff return yards. Thomas moved on to the NFL, and Sanders became the starter for his junior year.

In 1988, in what has been called the greatest season in college football history,[3] Sanders led the nation by averaging 7.6 yards per carry and over 200 yards per game, including rushing for over 300 yards in four games. He set college football season records with 2,628 yards rushing, 3,248 total yards, 234 points, 39 touchdowns, of which 37 were rushing (also a record), 5 consecutive 200 yard games, scored at least 2 touchdowns in 11 consecutive games, and 9 times he scored at least 3 touchdowns. Sanders also ran for 222 yards and scored 5 touchdowns in his three quarters of action in the Holiday Bowl - a game that was not included with his season statistics.[4] Sanders won the Heisman Trophy as the season's most outstanding player.[5] He then chose to leave Oklahoma State before his senior season to enter the NFL draft.

[edit] Professional careerThe Detroit Lions selected Sanders with their 1st-round (3rd overall) pick in the 1989 draft,[2] thanks to the endorsement of then-coach Wayne Fontes. The Lions' management considered drafting another Sanders, cornerback Deion Sanders, but Fontes convinced them to draft Barry instead. He was offered the number 20, which had been worn by former Lions' greats Lem Barney and Billy Sims; Sims was known as one of the league's best running backs in the early 1980s.

Though there were concerns about his size, it turned out these concerns were mostly unfounded. Sanders was far too quick for defenders to hit solidly on a consistent basis, and too strong to bring down with arm tackles. Though short at 5'8", his playing weight was 203 lb (91 kg) and Sanders had a large portion of this weight in his exceptionally large and muscular legs, which provided him with a very low center of mass; his weight was also the same as Walter Payton and only slightly under the NFL average for a back. Further, Sanders was able to dazzle onlookers at an ESPN slam dunk contest by jamming comfortably from a flat footed position[citation needed] demonstrating his other defining characteristic: explosiveness. His agility and quick acceleration combined with his low center of mass made him very difficult to bring down.

In contrast to many of the star players of his era, Sanders was also noted for his on-field humility. Despite his flashy playing style, Sanders was rarely seen celebrating after the whistle was blown. Instead, he preferred to hand the ball to a referee or congratulate his teammates. But perhaps no other player in NFL history has ever electrified a crowd every time he touched the ball like Sanders, who played all 10 of his NFL seasons in Detroit. Lions fans remember fondly the thunderous "Barry! Barry!" chants that roared in the Pontiac Silverdome in the 1990s.

In his rookie year in 1989, Sanders missed training camp due to a contract dispute. Despite that, he ran for 18 yards on his first carry,[2] and scored a touchdown on his fourth. He finished the season second in the NFL in rushing yards and touchdowns after declining to go back into the regular season finale just 10 yards shy of the rushing title (later won by Christian Okoye), and won the Rookie of the Year Award.[6]

Barry was the featured running back on the Lion teams that made the playoffs five times during the 1990s (1991, 1993, 1994, 1995, and 1997). He was a member of the 1991 and 1993 squads that won the NFC Central division title; the 1991 team won 12 regular season games (a franchise record).

In 1994, Sanders rushed for 1,883 yards, on a 5.7 yards per carry average. He also totaled 283 receiving yards, which gave him a combined 2,166 yards from scrimmage for the season. He was named the NFL's Offensive Player of the Year. In 1995, Sanders posted 1,500 yards rushing with 398 receiving yards, beating his rushing total alone of the '94 season. In 1996, Sanders rushed for 1,553 yards with a career-low 147 receiving yards. Sanders' greatest season came in 1997 (see below), when he rushed for a career-high 2,053 yards.

In Sanders' last season in the NFL, 1998, he rushed for 1,491 yards, ending his four-year streak of rushing for over 1,500 yards in a season.

Despite his individual success, the Lions never reached the Super Bowl while Sanders was with the team.[2] The closest they came was in the 1991 season.[2] Aided by Sanders' 1,855 combined rushing/receiving yards and 17 touchdowns during the season, they recorded a 12–4 record and went on to defeat the Dallas Cowboys 38–6 in the divisional playoffs, which still stands as Detroit's only playoff victory since defeating the Cleveland Browns to win the 1957 NFL Championship. The Lions lost to the Washington Redskins 41–10 in the NFC Championship Game, and Sanders was held to 59 total yards in the game.

In Sanders' career, he achieved Pro Bowl status in all of his 10 seasons as a pro.[2] Sanders was named first team All-Pro eight times from 1989–1991 and 1993–1997 and was named second team All-Pro twice in 1992 and 1998. Sanders was also named All-NFC from 1989-1992 to 1994-1997. Sanders was named NFL Rookie of the Year in '89,[2] Offensive Player of the Year in '94 and '97, NFL MVP in '97, and was named to the 1990s NFL All-Decade team.

Sports Illustrated writer Paul Zimmerman wrote:

"It doesn't matter where the play is blocked; he'll find his own soft spot...The scheme doesn't matter with Sanders. He can run from any alignment. While other people are stuck with joints, he seems to have ball bearings in his legs that give him a mechanical advantage...Sanders' finest runs often occur when he takes the handoff and, with a couple of moves, turns the line of scrimmage into a broken field...Nobody has ever created such turmoil at the point of attack as Sanders has...Knock on wood, he seems indestructible..."

[edit] 1997 seasonSanders' greatest season came in 1997. After a start in which he gained 53 yards on 25 carries in the first two games of the season, Sanders ran off an NFL record 14 consecutive 100 yard games, including two 200 yard performances, en route to rushing for 2,053 yards. In reaching the 2,000 yard plateau, he became only the third player to do so in a single season and the first since O. J. Simpson to rush for 2,000 yards in a span of 14 consecutive games. He was the first running back to rush for 1,500 yards in five seasons and the only one to do it four consecutive years. At the end of the season, Sanders shared the Associated Press's NFL Most Valuable Player Award with Green Bay QB Brett Favre.

Week Team Carries Yards Average
1 ATL 15 33 2.2
2 TB 10 20 2.0
3 at CHI 19 161 8.5
4 at NO 18 113 6.3
5 GB 28 139 5.0
6 at BUF 25 107 4.3
7 at TB 24 215 9.0
8 NYG 24 105 4.4
9 at GB 23 105 4.6
10 at WAS 15 105 7.0
11 MIN 19 108 5.7
12 IND 24 216 9.0
13 CHI 19 167 8.8
14 at MIA 30 137 4.6
15 at MIN 19 138 7.3
16 NYJ 23 184 8.0
1997 TOTAL 335 2,053 6.1

[edit] RetirementSanders stunned many when he announced his retirement from pro football. His retirement was made public by faxing a letter to the Wichita Eagle, his hometown newspaper in July 1999.[7]

He left football healthy, having gained 15,269 rushing yards, 2,921 receiving yards, and 109 touchdowns (99 rushing and 10 receiving). He retired within a one-season striking distance of Walter Payton's career rushing mark of 16,726 yards. Only Walter Payton and Emmitt Smith have rushed for more yards than Sanders.

Sanders' retirement came somewhat unexpectedly and was a matter of controversy. Two years beforehand, Sanders had renewed his contract with the Lions for $35.4 million over six years with an $11 million signing bonus. When he retired with several years left on his contract, the Lions demanded that he return $7.3 million of the bonus.[8] Sanders refused, and the Lions sued and eventually won a judgment against him. On February 15, 2000, arbitrator Sam Kagel ruled that Sanders was in default of his bonus agreement and owed $5.5 million plus interest over the next three years.[9]

Several years after retirement, and repeated refusals to discuss the abruptness of it, Sanders finally admitted that the culture of losing in the Lions' organization was too much to deal with even though he said that he could still play. He explained that it robbed him of his competitive spirit, and he saw no reason to believe things were going to improve. Although Detroit had made the playoffs the season prior to his retirement (losing to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers 20-10 on the road in a 1998 NFC Wild Card game), Detroit drafted quarterback Charlie Batch in the second round of the 1998 NFL Draft. It became apparent that Batch would become Detroit's full time starter the next season, and Sanders seemed unwilling to embrace yet another change in the Lions' seemingly endless carousel of quarterbacks and offensive philosophies. He had also gone on record to criticize Detroit's front office (most notably Chuck Schmidt) for releasing Pro Bowl center Kevin Glover for salary cap reasons. Glover was an underrated player and close friend of Sanders in Detroit. He stated there were tears in his eyes as the Lions lost in the playoffs to Tampa in 1998, because he knew in his heart he was never going to play another game for Detroit. "I sobbed for 3 months," Sanders said.[10]

There was wide spread speculation that Sanders' retirement was a calculated move on his behalf to orchestrate a trade to a more legitimate contender. The Green Bay Packers and Miami Dolphins were both considered among the front runners in the negotiations. Detroit was either unable to find an attractive enough offer, or unwilling to negotiate altogether with other teams. It had been a long standing practice for the Detroit Lions to not accommodate players' requests for trades.

It was thought by some that Bobby Ross himself may have actually been the reason for his early retirement but Barry Sanders, however, debunked this theory in his autobiography; Barry Sanders: Now You See Him, saying that Coach Ross had nothing to do with his quitting and actually praised him as a great head coach.

[edit] Personal lifeBarry currently resides in West Bloomfield, Michigan, just outside of Detroit, and is married to the former Lauren Campbell, currently a news anchor on a local news station, and the couple have three children together. Sanders also has a son, Barry James Sanders from a previous relationship, who is currently a notable high school football prospect. As a freshman in 2008, Sanders' son ran for 742 yards and twelve touchdowns while helping Heritage Hall School to the 2008 Oklahoma 2A state title,[11][12] and he was the only sophomore on the 2009 Tulsa World all-state team.[13]

[edit] Career highlights[edit] CollegiateHe set 34 NCAA records
He holds the national college single-season rushing record with 2,628 rushing yards in 1988.
In 1988, Sanders won the Heisman Trophy while attending Oklahoma State University.
In 2008, Sanders was ranked #2 in ESPN's list of the Top 25 Greatest College Football Players Ever.
[edit] Professional Lists of miscellaneous information should be avoided. Please relocate any relevant information into appropriate sections or articles. (November 2008)

In the 1989 NFL draft, he was selected in the 1st round (3rd overall) by the Detroit Lions.
As a receiver, Sanders had 352 receptions for 2,921 yards and 10 touchdowns for the Detroit Lions.
Sanders led the NFL in rushing yards four times. 1990, 1994, 1996, and 1997.
Most Seasons, 1,100 or More Yards Rushing (10) tied with Walter Payton
Most Consecutive Seasons, 1,100 or More Yards Rushing (10)
Most Seasons, 1,300 or More Yards Rushing (9) tied with Walter Payton
Most Seasons, 1,400 or More Yards Rushing (7)
Most Consecutive Seasons, 1,400 or More Yards Rushing (5) tied with Emmitt Smith, 1991–1995
Most Seasons, 1,500 or More Yards Rushing (5)
Most Consecutive Seasons, 1,500 or More Yards Rushing (4)
In 1997, he set an NFL record by rushing for at least 100 yards in 14 consecutive games and became only the third player to reach 2,000 yards in a single season. He shared the NFL MVP award with Brett Favre.
During the final 14 games of the 1997 season Sanders rushed for exactly 2000 yards on 310 carries (6.5 yd./carry), a figure which bears comparison with O.J. Simpson's 14-game mark of 2003 yards on 332 carries (6.0 yd./carry).
Each of his 10 years from 1989 through 1998 he was first- or second-team All-Pro and selected to the Pro Bowl.
Over his professional football career, he rushed for at least 100 yards in 76 games, just short of Walter Payton's 77 games and Emmitt Smith's 78 games.
NFL record 25 games in which Sanders rushed for 150 yards or more. Brown is second with 22 games.
NFL record 46 games in which Sanders had 150 yards from scrimmage or more. Walter Payton is second with 45.
15 career touchdown runs of 50 yards or more, most in NFL history. Brown is second with 12.
At the time of his retirement, Sanders' 15,269 career rushing yards placed him second behind Walter Payton's 16,726 yards. At Sanders' then-current yearly yardage pace, he would have eclipsed Payton within one or two years. Payton died from liver cancer at age 45 just months after Sanders' sudden retirement.
If Sanders had gained an additional 31 yards over the course of his 153 games, he would have been only the 2nd NFL runner to average 100 yards per game. (See Jim Brown)
His 18,190 career yards from scrimmage place him fourth on the all-time list.
In 1999, he was ranked number 12 on The Sporting News' list of the 100 Greatest Football Players, making him the highest-ranking Lions player and the third highest ranked running back, behind Jim Brown and Walter Payton.
On January 31, 2004, he was elected into the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
On August 8, 2004, he was inducted to the Hall of Fame along with Bob Brown, Carl Eller, and John Elway.
Along with Gale Sayers, Sanders is one of the only members of the Pro Football Hall of Fame to be inducted while still in his 30's.
On November 25, 2004, his jersey number #20 was retired before the Lions' annual Thanksgiving Day game. (It should be noted that the number was shared with former running back Billy Sims and Hall of Fame defensive back Lem Barney, who also attended the event.)
Sanders also holds the NFL record for the most carries for negative yardage. According to the SI Book of Football, these numbers totaled 336 carries for -952 Yards.


*
Running Into Greatness

By JOHN WIEBUSCH
AOL Exclusive
November, 25 2003

It’s difficult to be objective when the running back you’re trying to be objective about is your son, but William Sanders, father of Barry Sanders, tried to keep his head about him when it came to evaluating the great running backs of the NFL.

"Among all the runners to play the game," William Sanders used to say, to Barry and anyone who would listen, "Jim Brown was a man among boys."

William had seen his son win the Heisman Trophy at Oklahoma State in 1988, and had seen him chosen by the Detroit Lions with the third selection of the 1989 NFL draft. The father had also seen his son win Rookie of the Year honors in his first season, and had seen him dazzle the game with moves so breathtaking they made grown men sit up and cry out in disbelief. But the old man continued to tell the young man that the bigger player (Brown was 6-foot-2, 230) from three decades before was a better player than the smaller player (Barry was 5-8, 200) from the 1990s.

Until 1997. Until the magic and derring-do of one of the greatest NFL seasons any individual player ever has had. Until Barry Sanders gained 2,053 yards, finishing the year with a record 14 consecutive 100-yard games.

Then William Sanders told people that his son was the greatest running back of all-time.

“He never told me then,” Barry says. “He told other people. He told me later.”

In the ongoing Cinderfella debate over which great back’s foot fits the glass running shoe best, a lot of insiders would side with William Sanders, post 1997.

Without much argument, the customers to get their numbers called first in the shoe store would be Sanders, Brown, Walter Payton, and Emmitt Smith. And if the shoe didn’t fit -- and it’s highly unlikely that it wouldn’t, don’t you think? -- Eric Dickerson, O. J. Simpson, and Gale Sayers would be next up.

If Sanders had not done something in 1999 -- if he had not chosen to walk away from the game at age 30, after 10 seasons -- the argument probably would be a moot one.

In his tenth season, Sanders had gained 1,491 yards, increasing his career total to 15,269, an average of 1,527 per year. His poorest season had been 1993 when he missed the last five games with a torn medial collateral ligament in his right knee and still finished fifth in the NFL with 1,115 yards (and that was the only significant injury of his decade in the NFL).

At the dawn of the 1999 season, Sanders needed only -- for him -- 1,458 yards to pass Payton and become the greatest running back, numerically, in pro football history. He needed only -- for him -- say, three "average" seasons to set the rushing record bar so high no one ever could reach it. (If Sanders had put together three of his average years he would have reached 19,850 yards in 13 years; Smith, still active with Arizona, has the current career No. 1 -- 17,354 yards in 14 years.)

But strange as this sounds, Sanders didn’t care about records... or, more specifically, about breaking records. He didn’t need to break Payton’s record to feel fulfilled. In fact, he felt that Payton’s record had a certain sanctity to it and that his walking away from the game respected the sanctity of the record held by the man everyone called Sweetness.

For the first time publicly, Sanders talks about the act that stunned the world of sport in a new book, Now You See Him…Barry Sanders’ Story in His Own Words.

In the book, co-written with Oklahoma writer Mark McCormack, Sanders writes:

"I’ve never been fond of public attention or a lot of dealing with the media. I don’t mean to sound aloof; being in the spotlight just isn’t in my nature… I never valued [the record] so much that I thought it was worth my dignity or Walter’s dignity to pursue it amid so much media and marketing attention."

Should we have been surprised then? Should we be surprised now? Probably not. This is a man who always has called his own signals... and always and consistently could care less how those about him perceived those signals.

-- On the eve of the Heisman Trophy ceremonies in New York in December 1988, he told friends that he wasn’t going. They told him he had to. He listened and went... and won. Later, he passed on invitations to visit the White House. And when his hometown of Wichita, Kansas, honored him with a two-day celebration he arrived home... a day late.

-- He quietly gave one-tenth of his signing bonus of $2.1 million to the Paradise Baptist Church in Wichita. “Because the Bible says you should tithe,” he said. He continued to give 10 percent of his annual salary to charity throughout his career. (He is deeply but quietly religious, a product of his upbringing.)

-- In 1989, he was the runaway NFL Rookie of the Year with 1,470 yards, a 5.3 average, and 14 touchdowns. He also could have been the NFL rushing leader. He stopped short of the achievement in the final minutes of the last game of the season, declining to play against Atlanta even though he needed only 11 yards to pass Kansas City’s Christian Okoye. "We had the game won," he said then, "and that was the only objective. There was no need for me to go back in to get a personal achievement. What difference would it have made?" (Déjà vu?)

In Now You See Him..., Sanders confesses to a wide range of human emotions, including something football people (well, Chiefs coach Dick Vermeil excepted) rarely reveal: tears. After what would be his last game, against the Ravens in 1998, he writes, he sat weeping at his locker after a 19-10 loss closed a 5-11 season.

-- In May 2003, Sanders was to have been one of seven inductees into the Michigan Sports Hall of Fame in elaborate ceremonies before nearly 800 people at Ford Field. He didn’t show. Instead his wife of three years, former Detroit TV news anchor Lauren Campbell Sanders, accepted the award. Barry was detained in Oklahoma City on banking business (he was the major stockholder in American State Bank). "I’m sorry about it," Campbell Sanders said. "I know the fans want him to be more of a presence but part of that is just his style."

In a telephone call to me arranged by his agent, Jeff (J. B.) Bernstein, Sanders admitted that he has watched more college games than pro games in the five years he has been away from the game, and that he has not been to a Lions game since he left as a player in 1998.

"I still might go to a Lions game this year, though," he said. "For sure, I’m going to be in Ford Field on [Tuesday] Dec. 2 for a press conference about the book. Matt Millen [Lions’ president and CEO] has been great at trying to patch things up between me and the club."

The ultimate healing would be if the Lions retired Sanders’ No. 20 jersey. "That’s being talked about for next season," Sanders admits.

Fifteen pounds under his playing weight at a fit 185 and still only 35 (he’s six years younger than Jerry Rice and 10 months older than Emmitt Smith), Sanders will be a Hall of Fame shoo-in in January.

And in February, his second child with Campbell Sanders will be born. The residents of Rochester Hills, a Detroit suburb, have a son, Nigel, 2. Sanders also has another son from a previous relationship, Barry, Jr., 9, in Oklahoma City.

Barry Sanders has no second thoughts about his decision to leave the game -- or about the stealthy way he did it (he announced it in a note to the Wichita Eagle on July 27, 1999 without talking to the Lions) -- but he does regret the fact that he and the Lions had so little team success during his decade there. In the book, he is candid about what he believes are management failures in retaining key players and building team cohesiveness.

From 1989-1998, the Lions lost four more games than they won, had winning records five times and losing records five times, including three 5-11 seasons. They won only one postseason game, in 1991 following a 12-4 year, but lost to Washington 41-10 in the NFC championship game.

In a remarkable bit of prescience, I came across this excerpt in a story that was written by Curt Sylvester for a national magazine following Sanders’ standout first season in 1989:

"When Sanders eventually retires from football, his goal, he says, is not to be remembered as the NFL’s all-time leading rusher.

"'It is to be a part, along with all the other guys, of turning the team around and making it a winner,’ he said. ‘Just being a natural competitor you want to win. The Lions have been notorious for losing. I think it would be nice to have notoriety for winning and maybe even go the Super Bowl in the next 10 years or whatever.'"

So add ‘em up for Barry Sanders -- the 15,269 yards, the 5.0 average (second only to Jim Brown’s 5.2), the 109 touchdowns (after every one of which he simply handed the ball to an official), the 10 Pro Bowl selections, the four rushing titles (and three second-place finishes), the 76 100-yard games, the Rookie of the Year award in ’89, the Player of the Year honor in ’97 -- and, for him, it still comes down to 0 for 10 in the Motor City.

Add ‘em all up for the rest of us, though… and he’s a highlight film we can watch for eternity.


John Wiebusch was Editor in Chief of NFL publications for 32 years. The editor of NFL Insider, GameDay, PRO! magazines and the Super Bowl Game Program, he has edited

 

CHARLES OAKLEY

 

 

Charles Oakley (born December 18, 1963) is a retired American professional basketball player and is currently an assistant coach for the Charlotte Bobcats of the National Basketball Association. Oakley, a former power forward, was a member of the Chicago Bulls, New York Knicks, Toronto Raptors, Washington Wizards and Houston Rockets

Oakley was born in Cleveland, Ohio, and attended Virginia Union University.

He placed in the top ten in rebounds per game five times between 1987 and 1994 (second in 1987 and 1988). In all but one of these seasons he played the full complement of 82 games. Due to his durability he actually placed in the top ten in total rebounds 6 times and led the league in total rebounds twice (1987 and 1988). In 1994, he became an NBA All-Star and was chosen to the league's All-Defense 1st team.

Drafted in 1985 by the Cleveland Cavaliers, Oakley's draft rights were traded to the Chicago Bulls. Oakley provided another scoring option and steady offensive and defensive performances to an up-and-coming Bulls squad led by Michael Jordan. He earned All-Rookie Team honors in 1986.

With the drafting and development of Horace Grant, the Bulls traded Oakley to the New York Knicks for 7'1" center Bill Cartwright. Oakley eventually became a part of the core which the Knicks built around, which also featured Patrick Ewing, John Starks, and point guard Mark Jackson. During the Knicks' 1994 season, which included a record 25 playoff games, Oakley started every regular season and playoff game for a record 107 starts in a single season.

In 1998, Oakley was traded by New York to the Toronto Raptors for blossoming star Marcus Camby. For the Raptors, he provided a veteran presence to a young team that included Vince Carter and Tracy McGrady. Oakley, in his final three seasons, played for the Bulls again, followed by the Washington Wizards and the Houston Rockets. For the Rockets, he was briefly reunited with former Knicks personnel Mark Jackson, who was the veteran point guard behind Steve Francis; Patrick Ewing, who was an assistant coach with the Rockets; and head coach Jeff Van Gundy, former head coach in Oakley's days in New York City.

As recently as 2007, it was publicized that Oakley, at age 44, wanted to make an NBA comeback. He claimed Dallas, Miami, Cleveland and New York were interested but said he would "not [come] back cheap".[1] He was hired as assistant coach of the Charlotte Bobcats on December 23, 2010. Oakley currently ranks 14th all-time in NBA games played with 1,282 games.

*

PHILADELPHIA (AP) -- Charles Oakley and Tyrone Hill probably won't be dining together anytime soon, but at least they're closer to ending their feud.

Hill, Philadelphia's starting power forward, paid the Raptors' Oakley money he owed him from a dice game last summer, a 76ers team source told The Associated Press on Wednesday.

The source, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Hill went to Toronto's team hotel Tuesday to meet Oakley after the Raptors arrived in Philadelphia.

The teams' Eastern Conference semifinal was tied heading into Wednesday's Game 5.

Oakley would not confirm that he was paid the remainder of the debt, about $54,000.

"Everything in life is double," Oakley said before Wednesday's game. "If he didn't pay me $108,000, he didn't pay me."

Oakley said the NBA doesn't want him to talk about the feud during the playoffs.

That didn't stop him from taking shots at Hill.

"A gentleman pays his debt within a week or two," Oakley said, adding that it's a "coward move" for Hill to say he paid him.

Hill would not comment before the game.

Oakley was suspended for one game without pay and fined $10,000 last month for hitting Hill in the head with a basketball after a morning shootaround in Toronto before the 76ers played the Raptors on April 3.

Before a preseason game, Oakley slapped Hill and neither was allowed to play.

Oakley has gotten the better of Hill on the court for the most part during this series. Oakley is averaging 7.5 points and 6 rebounds, Hill is averaging 5.8 points and 7.3 rebounds.


*

We all know about the great athletes in New York sports history – Babe Ruth, Tom Seaver, Lawrence Taylor, Joe Namath, Mark Messier, Walt Frazier – and even the busts – Ed Whitson, Mo Vaughn, Roberto Alomar, Stephon Marbury, Scott Gomez. But what about the slightly-to-highly-above-average athlete? The kind-of-great but not all-timer? They may not have been Hall-of-Famers, but they were All-Stars, fan favorites, cogs on a championship team or maybe even just pretty darn good. They’re the little brother that didn’t hog all the attention. But they’re certainly worth talking about and remembering. So when do they get their due? Well, now they will. Here is a series of the not-quite-legendary in New York sports history.

Some say Charles Oakley is the toughest man alive. Some say he was one of the best rebounders and fiercest defenders of his time. Some say he looks like Darryl from The Office. And they would all be right. Oakley played for the Knicks for 10 years, and he epitomized the brawling, blue-collar defensive style of the team of that era. He was tenacious. He was intimidating. He was the heart and soul of the Knicks.
The Cleveland native attended Virginia Union College and was drafted by the Cavaliers but traded to Chicago before ever playing a game for his hometown team. He was an instant success, being named to the All-Rookie team in 1986. After three years with the Bulls, he was shipped off to New York (for Bill Cartwright, and draft picks going each way), who were looking for a power-forward complement to Patrick Ewing. In Oakley, they found the perfect player. In his full decade with the Knicks (1988-’89−1997-’98), the team qualified for the playoffs every season he was on the team (yes, the Knicks once actually made the playoffs, and they did it consistently). Defense and rebounding were his specialties, and the Knicks of that era were one of the top defensive teams in the NBA. Oakley finished in the top 10 in rebounding six times in his career. Twice he led the league in total rebounds (while with the Bulls). He made the All-Defensive First Team in 1993-’94 and the All-Defensive Second Team in 1997-’98. Six times in his career he played all 82 games of the season, and had a few consecutive-game streaks that ran well into the hundreds. He set a number of Knick records (single-game offensive rebounds, total offensive rebounds for a season), and averaged 12.1 rebounds per game in 1990-’91, which was the highest per-game average for a Knick since Bob McAdoo’s 12.3 in 1977-’78.

The Charles Oakley−era Knicks peaked in the 1993-’94 season. The team boasted the league’s No. 1 defense, only allowing 91.5 points per game, which was the lowest total in the NBA since the 1954-’55 season. The Knicks finished in first place, with a 57-25 record, and defeated the Nets, Bulls and Pacers in the playoffs, before losing to Houston in the Finals (oh no! John Starks 2 for 18!). The team set a record by playing in 25 postseason games, with Oakley himself appearing in every game that season (107). He averaged 13.2 points and 11.7 rebounds in the playoffs. And his hard work was finally rewarded when he was named to his only All-Star team that year.

Oakley’s Knick career ended when he was traded to Toronto for Marcus Camby. He then bounced around to Chicago, Washington and Houston to finish his 19-year career. He scored 12,417 points and grabbed 12,205 rebounds, but numbers weren’t what he’ll be remembered for. He had a number of run-ins, feuds and extra-curricular activities with the likes of Tyrone Hill, Charles Barkley, Jeff McInnis and Shaquille O’Neal, and wouldn’t back down from anybody. He was also a sharp dresser who defended the NBA’s dress code. Charles Oakley once said, “If it ain’t broke, don’t break it.” And his dogged, hard-working, bulldozing style of play certainly wasn’t broke, so there was no need to break it.

*


George Herman Ruth, Jr. (February 6, 1895 – August 16, 1948), best known as "Babe" Ruth and nicknamed "the Bambino" and "the Sultan of Swat", was an American Major League baseball player from 1914–1935. Ruth originally broke into the major leagues with the Boston Red Sox as a starting pitcher, but after he was sold to the New York Yankees in 1919, he converted to a full-time right fielder and subsequently became one of the league's most prolific hitters. Ruth was a mainstay in the Yankees' lineup that won seven pennants and four World Series titles during his tenure with the team. After a short stint with the Boston Braves in 1935, Ruth retired. In 1936, Ruth became one of the first five players elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Ruth has since become regarded as one of the greatest sports heroes in American culture.[1] He has been named the greatest baseball player in history in various surveys and rankings, and his home run hitting prowess and charismatic personality made him a larger than life figure in the "Roaring Twenties".[2] Off the field he was famous for his charity, but also was noted for his often reckless lifestyle. Ruth is credited with changing baseball itself. The popularity of the game exploded in the 1920s, largely due to his influence. Ruth ushered in the "live-ball era", as his big swing led to escalating home run totals that not only excited fans, but helped baseball evolve from a low-scoring, speed-dominated game to a high-scoring power game.

In 1998, The Sporting News ranked Ruth number one on the list of "Baseball's 100 Greatest Players".[3] In 1999, baseball fans named Ruth to the Major League Baseball All-Century Team.[2] In 1969, he was named baseball's Greatest Player Ever in a ballot commemorating the 100th anniversary of professional baseball. In 1993, the Associated Press reported that Muhammad Ali was tied with Babe Ruth as the most recognized athletes, out of over 800 dead or alive athletes, in America. The study found that over 97% of Americans over 12 years of age identified both Ali and Ruth.[4] According to ESPN, he was the first true American sports celebrity superstar whose fame transcended baseball.[5] In a 1999 ESPN poll, he was ranked as the third-greatest US athlete of the century, behind Michael Jordan and Muhammad Ali.[2]

Ruth was the first player to hit 60 home runs in one season (1927), setting the season record which stood until broken by Roger Maris in 1961. Ruth's lifetime total of 714 home runs at his retirement in 1935 was a record, until first surpassed by Hank Aaron in 1974. Unlike many power hitters, Ruth also hit for average: his .342 lifetime batting is tenth highest in baseball history, and in one season (1923) he hit .393, a Yankee record.[6] His .690 career slugging percentage and 1.164 career on-base plus slugging (OPS) remain the Major League records.[2] Ruth dominated the era in which he played. He led the league in home runs during a season twelve times, slugging percentage and OPS thirteen times each, runs scored eight times, and runs batted in (RBIs) six times. Each of those totals represents a modern record (as well as the all-time record, except for RBIs).[7]

Ruth was born at 216 Emory Street in Pigtown, a rough neighborhood of Baltimore, Maryland. Ruth's German-American parents, Kate Schamberger-Ruth and George Herman Ruth, Sr., owned a succession of saloons and sold lightning rods.[8] Only one of Ruth's seven siblings, his sister Mamie, survived past infancy.[9]

 
Ruth (top row, far left) at St Mary's Industrial School for BoysNot much is known about Ruth's early childhood.[10] His mother was constantly ill (she later died of tuberculosis while Ruth was still a teenager).[11] Ruth later described his early life as "rough".[12] When he was seven years old, his father sent him to St. Mary's Industrial School for Boys, a reformatory and orphanage, and signed custody over to the Catholic missionaries who ran the school (the site of St. Mary's was occupied by Cardinal Gibbons School).[13] Ruth remained at St. Mary's for the next 12 years, only visiting with his family for special occasions.[14] Brother Matthias Boutlier, the Head of Discipline at St. Mary's, first introduced Ruth to the game of baseball.[15] He became a father figure in Ruth's life, teaching him how to read and write, and worked with Ruth on hitting, fielding and as his skills progressed, pitching.[16] During his time in St. Mary's, Ruth was also taught tailoring, where he became a qualified shirtmaker and was a part of both the school band and the drama club.[17]

Baltimore OriolesIn 1913, St. Mary's Industrial School was playing a game against Mount St. Mary's University (then college) in Emmitsburg, Maryland. That day, the game was attended by Joe Engel, a former Mount St. Mary's student who was now a pitcher for the Washington Senators.[18] Impressed with Ruth's pitching abilities, Engel, along with a teacher at St. Mary's, Brother Gilbert, brought Ruth to the attention of Jack Dunn, owner and manager of the then minor-league Baltimore Orioles. After watching Ruth pitch in a workout for half an hour, Dunn signed Ruth to a contract for $250 ($5,500 in current dollar terms) a month on February 14, 1914.[19] Since Ruth was only 19 years old, Dunn had to become Ruth's legal guardian as well; at that time, the age of majority was 25.[citation needed] When the other players on the Orioles caught sight of Ruth, they nicknamed him "Jack's newest babe".[20] The reference stayed with Ruth the rest of his life, and he was most commonly referred to as Babe Ruth from then on.[21] "Babe" was not a unique nickname (see e.g., Babe Adams). His teammates eschewed the public nickname "Babe", and instead called him "George"; or "Jidge" (a nickname for George); or "The Big Fellow"; or just "Bam".[22]

On July 7, 1914, Dunn offered to trade Ruth, along with Ernie Shore and Ben Egan, to Connie Mack of the Philadelphia Athletics. Dunn asked $10,000 ($220,000 in current dollar terms) for the trio, but Mack refused the offer.[23] The Cincinnati Reds, who had an agreement with the Orioles, also passed on Ruth. Instead, the team elected to take George Twombley and Claud Derrick.[24] Two days later, on July 9, Dunn sold the trio to Joe Lannin and the Boston Red Sox.[25] The amount of money exchanged in the transaction is disputed.

Major League careerRed Sox Years
Ruth pitching for the Red Sox in 1914, at Comiskey Park in ChicagoRuth appeared in five games for the Red Sox in 1914, pitching in four of them. He picked up the victory in his major league debut on July 11.[26] The Red Sox had many star players in 1914, so Ruth was soon optioned to the minor league Providence Grays of Providence, Rhode Island for most of the remaining season. Behind Ruth and Carl Mays, the Grays won the International League pennant.[27] Shortly after the season, in which he'd finished with a 2–1 record, Ruth proposed to Helen Woodford, a waitress whom he had met in Boston. They were married in Ellicott City, Maryland, on October 17, 1914.[27]

During spring training in 1915, Ruth secured a spot in the Red Sox starting rotation. He joined a pitching staff that included Rube Foster, Dutch Leonard, and Smokey Joe Wood. Ruth won 18 games,[28] lost eight, and helped himself by hitting .315. He also hit his first four home runs. The Red Sox won 101 games that year on their way to a victory in the World Series. Ruth did not pitch in the series, and grounded out in his only at-bat.[2]

In 1916, after a slightly shaky spring, he went 23–12, with a 1.75 ERA and nine shutouts, both of which led the league. On June 27, he struck out ten Philadelphia A's, a career high. On July 11, he started both games of a doubleheader, but the feat was not what it seemed; he only pitched one-third of an inning in the opener because the scheduled starter, Foster, had trouble getting loose. Ruth then pitched a complete-game victory in the nightcap. Ruth had unusual success against Washington Senators star pitcher Walter Johnson, beating him four times in 1916 alone, by scores of 5–1, 1–0, 1–0 in 13 innings, and 2–1. Johnson finally outlasted Ruth for an extra-inning 4–3 victory on September 12; in the years to come, Ruth would hit ten home runs off Johnson, including the only two Johnson would allow in 1918–1919. Ruth's nine shutouts in 1916 set an AL record for left-handers which would remain unmatched until Ron Guidry tied it in 1978.

Despite a weak offense, hurt by the sale of Tris Speaker to the Indians, the Red Sox made it to the World Series. They defeated the Brooklyn Robins four games to one. This time Ruth made a major contribution, pitching a 14-inning complete-game victory in Game Two.

 
Ruth batting in 1918Ruth went 24–13 with a 2.01 ERA and six shutouts in 1917, and hit .325, but the Sox finished second, nine games behind the Chicago White Sox. On June 23 against the Washington Senators, after walking the leadoff hitter, Ruth erupted in anger, was ejected, and threw a punch at the umpire, which would result in a ten-game suspension. Ernie Shore came into the game in relief, the baserunner was out stealing, and Shore retired all twenty-six batters he faced, for which he was credited with a perfect game until the 1990s. Ruth's outburst was an example of self-discipline problems that plagued Ruth throughout his career, and is regarded as the primary reason (other than financial) that then-owner Harry Frazee was willing to sell him to the Yankees two years later.

The left-hander was pitching a no-hitter in a 0–0 game against the Detroit Tigers on July 11, before a single deflected off his glove in the eighth inning. Boston finally pushed across a run in the ninth, and Ruth held onto his 1–0 victory by striking out Ty Cobb. In 1942, Ruth called this game his greatest thrill on the field.

In 1918, Ruth pitched in 20 games, posting a 13–7 record with a 2.22 ERA. He was mostly used as an outfielder, and hit a league-leading eleven home runs. His statistics were curtailed slightly when he walked off the team in July following an argument with Boston's manager.

Ruth threw a 1–0 shutout in the opener of the 1918 World Series, then won Game Four in what would be his final World Series appearance as a pitcher. Ruth won both his starts, allowing two runs (both earned) in seventeen innings for an ERA of 1.06. Ruth extended his World Series consecutive scoreless inning streak to 29⅔ innings, a record that would last until Whitey Ford broke it in 1961.

Emergence as a hitterIn the years 1915–1917, Ruth had been used in just 44 games in which he had not pitched. After the 1917 season, in which he hit .325, albeit with limited at bats, teammate Harry Hooper suggested that Ruth might be more valuable in the lineup as an everyday player.

In 1918, he began playing in the outfield more and pitching less, making 75 hitting-only appearances. Former teammate Tris Speaker speculated that the move would shorten Ruth's career, though Ruth himself wanted to hit more and pitch less. In 1918, Ruth batted .300 and led the A.L. in home runs with eleven despite having only 317 at-bats, well below the total for an everyday player.

During the 1919 season, Ruth pitched in only 17 of his 130 games. He also set his first single-season home run record that year with 29, including a game-winning homer on a September "Babe Ruth Day" promotion. It was Babe Ruth's last season with the Red Sox.

Sold to New York
Ruth in 1920, the year he joined the YankeesOn December 26, 1919,[29][30] Frazee sold Ruth to the New York Yankees. Popular legend has it that Frazee sold Ruth and several other of his best players to finance a Broadway play, No, No, Nanette (which, though it actually didn't debut until 1925, did have origins in a December 1919 play, My Lady Friends).[31] The truth is not so simple, as Frazee had another financial concern: Babe Ruth.

After the 1919 season, Ruth demanded a raise to $20,000 ($220,000 in current dollar terms)—double his previous salary.[32] However, Frazee refused, and Ruth responded by letting it be known he wouldn't play until he got his raise, suggesting that he may retire to undertake other profitable ventures.[33]

Frazee finally lost patience with Ruth, and decided to trade him. However, he was effectively limited to two trading partners—the Chicago White Sox and the then-moribund Yankees. The other five clubs rejected his deals out of hand under pressure from American League president Ban Johnson, who never liked Frazee and was actively trying to remove him from ownership of the Red Sox.[34] The White Sox offered Shoeless Joe Jackson $60,000 ($660,000 in current dollar terms), but Yankees owners Jacob Ruppert and Tillinghast L'Hommedieu Huston offered an all-cash deal—$100,000 ($1,100,000 in current dollar terms).

Frazee, Ruppert and Huston quickly agreed to a deal. In exchange for Ruth, the Red Sox would get $125,000 ($1.37 million in current dollar terms) in cash and three $25,000 ($270,000 in current dollar terms) notes payable every year at 6 percent interest. Ruppert and Huston also loaned Frazee $300,000 ($3.29 million in current dollar terms), with the mortgage on Fenway Park as collateral. The deal was contingent on Ruth signing a new contract, which was quickly agreed to, and Ruth officially became property of the Yankees on December 26. The deal was announced ten days later.[35]

In the January 6, 1920 edition of The Boston Globe, Frazee described the transaction:

"I should have preferred to take players in exchange for Ruth, but no club could have given me the equivalent in men without wrecking itself, and so the deal had to be made on a cash basis. No other club could afford to give me the amount the Yankees have paid for him, and I don't mind saying I think they are taking a gamble. With this money the Boston club can now go into the market and buy other players and have a stronger and better team in all respects than we would have had if Ruth had remained with us."
However, the January 6, 1920 The New York Times was more prescient:

"The short right field wall at the Polo Grounds should prove an easy target for Ruth next season and, playing seventy-seven games at home, it would not be surprising if Ruth surpassed his home run record of twenty-nine circuit clouts next Summer."[35]
The Yankee Years1920–1925After moving to the Yankees, Ruth's transition from a pitcher to a power-hitting outfielder became complete. In his fifteen year Yankee career, consisting of over 2,000 games, Ruth re-wrote the record books in terms of his hitting achievements, while making only five widely-scattered token appearances on the mound, winning all of them.

 
Babe Ruth in 1921.In 1920, his first year with the Yankees, Ruth hit 54 home runs and batted .376. His .847 slugging average was a Major League record until 2001. Aside from the Yankees, only the Philadelphia Phillies managed to hit more home runs as a team than Ruth did as an individual, slugging 64 in hitter-friendly Baker Bowl.

In 1921, Ruth improved to arguably the best year of his career, hitting 59 home runs, batting .378 and slugging .846 (the highest with 500+ at-bats in an MLB season) while leading the Yankees to their first league championship. On July 18, 1921, Babe Ruth hit career home run #139, breaking Roger Connor's record of 138 in just the eighth year of his career. (This was not recognized at the time, as Connor's correct career total was not accurately documented until the 1970s. Even if the record had been celebrated, it would have been on an earlier date, as Connor's total was at one time thought to be only 131.)

Ruth's name quickly became synonymous with the home run, as he led the transformation of baseball strategy from the "inside game" to the "power game", and because of the style and manner in which he hit them. His ability to drive a significant number of his home runs in the 450–500 foot range and beyond resulted in the lasting adjective "Ruthian", to describe any long home run hit by any player. Probably his deepest hit in official game play (and perhaps the longest home run by any player), occurred on July 18, at Detroit's Navin Field, in which he hit one to straightaway center, over the wall of the then-single-deck bleachers, and to the intersection, some 575 feet (175 m) from home plate.

As impressive as Ruth's 1921 numbers were, they could have been more so under modern conditions. Bill Jenkinson's 2006 book, The Year Babe Ruth Hit 104 Home Runs, attempts to examine each of Ruth's 714 career home runs, plus several hundred long inside-the-park drives and "fair-foul" balls. Until 1931 in the AL, balls that hit the foul pole were considered ground-rule doubles, and balls that went over the wall in fair territory but hooked foul were ruled foul. Many fields, including Ruth's home Polo Grounds, had exceptionally deep center fields—in the Polo Grounds' case, nearly five hundred feet. The author concluded that Ruth would have been credited with 104 home runs in 1921, if modern rules and field dimensions were in place. However, these claims ignore the extreme short distanes down the left and right field lines, which were 279 and 258 feet respectively. In addition, the 21 foot overhang in left field often intercepted fly balls which would otherwise have been catchable and turned them into home runs. In either case, Ruth set major league records in total bases (457), extra base hits (119) and times on base (379), all of which stand to this day.

The Yankees had high expectations when they met the New York Giants in the 1921 World Series, and the Yankees won the first two games with Ruth in the lineup. However, Ruth badly scraped his elbow during Game 2, sliding into third base (he had walked and stolen both second and third). After the game, he was told by the team physician not to play the rest of the series. Although he did play in Games 3, 4 and 5, and pinch-hit in Game 8 of the best-of-9 Series, his productivity was diminished, and the Yankees lost the series. Ruth hit .316, drove in five runs and hit his first World Series home run. (Although the Yankees won the fifth game, Ruth wrenched his knee and did not return to the Series until the eighth [last] game.)

Ruth's appearance in the 1921 World Series also led to a problem and triggered another disciplinary action. After the series, Ruth played in a barnstorming tour. A rule then in force prohibited World Series participants from playing in exhibition games during the off-season, the purpose of which was to prevent Series participants from "restaging" the Series and undermining its value. Baseball Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis suspended Ruth for the first six weeks of the 1922 season.[36] Landis had made his point about adhering to the letter of the rules, but he also recognized that the rule was no longer needed, and rescinded it.

Despite his suspension, Ruth started his 1922 season on May 20 as the Yankees' new on-field captain. But five days later, he was ejected from a game for throwing dirt on an umpire, and then climbed into the stands to confront a heckler; Ruth was subsequently stripped of the captaincy. In his shortened season, Ruth appeared in 110 games, batted .315, with 35 home runs and drove in 99 runs, but compared to his previous two dominating seasons, the 1922 season was a disappointment for Ruth. Despite Ruth's off-year, Yankees managed to win the pennant to face the New York Giants for the second straight year in the World Series. In the series, Giants manager John McGraw instructed his pitchers to throw Ruth nothing but curveballs, and Ruth never adjusted. Ruth had just two hits in seventeen at-bats, and the Yankees lost to the Giants for the second straight year by 4–0 (with one tie game).

In 1923, the Yankees moved from the Polo Grounds, where they had sublet from the Giants, to their new Yankee Stadium, which was quickly dubbed "The House That Ruth Built".[37] Ruth hit the stadium's first home run on the way to a Yankees victory over the Red Sox. Ruth finished the 1923 season with a career-high .393 batting average and major-league leading 41 home runs. For the third straight year, the Yankees faced the Giants in the World Series. Rebounding from his struggles in the previous two World Series, Ruth dominated the 1923 World Series. He batted .368, walked eight times, scored eight runs, hit three home runs and slugged 1.000 during the series, as the Yankees won their first World Series title, four games to two.

 
Ruth after being knocked unconscious from running into a wall at Griffith Stadium on July 5, 1924.On July 5, 1924, Ruth was knocked unconscious after running into a wall during a game at Griffith Stadium against the Washington Senators. Despite evident pain and a bruised pelvic bone, Ruth insisted on staying in the game and hit a double in his next at-bat.[38] Ruth narrowly missed winning the Triple Crown in 1924. He hit .378 for his only American League batting title, led the major leagues with 46 home runs, and batted in 121 runs to finish second to Goose Goslin's 129. Ruth's on-base percentage was .513, the fourth of five years in which his OBP exceeded .500. However, the Yankees finished second, two games behind the Washington Senators, who went on to win their only World Series while based in D.C. During that same year, Ruth served in the New York national Guard 104th Field Artillery.[39]

During spring training in 1925 Ruth's ailment was dubbed "the bellyache heard round the world," when one writer wrote that Ruth's illness was caused by binging on hot dogs and soda pop before a game.[40] Venereal disease and alcohol poisoning (caused by tainted liquor, a major health problem during the Prohibition) have also been speculated to be the causes of his illness.[41] However, the exact nature of his ailment has never been confirmed and remains a mystery. Playing just 98 games, Ruth had what would be his worst season as a Yankee as he finished the season with a .290 average and 25 home runs. The Yankees team finished next to last in the American League with a 69–85 mark, their last season with a losing record until 1965.

1926–1928Babe Ruth performed at a much higher level during 1926, batting .372 with 47 home runs and 146 RBIs. The Yankees won the AL pennant and advanced to the World Series, where they were defeated by Rogers Hornsby and the St. Louis Cardinals in seven games. In Game 4, he hit three home runs, the first time any player achieved this in a World Series game. Despite his batting heroics, he is also remembered for a costly baserunning blunder. Ruth had a reputation as a good but overaggressive baserunner (he had 123 stolen bases, including ten steals of home, but only a 51% career percentage). With two outs in the bottom of the ninth inning of the decisive seventh game, with the Yankees trailing 3–2, Ruth tried to steal second base. However, he was thrown out by ten feet, ending the game and the Series. Barrow later called this the only on-field boner Ruth ever made in his career.

This remains the only time that the final out of a World Series was a "caught stealing." The 1926 series was also known for Ruth's promise to Johnny Sylvester, a seriously ill 11-year old, that he would hit a home run on his behalf.[42]

Ruth was the leader of the famous 1927 Yankees, also known as Murderer's Row because of the strength of its hitting lineup. The team won a then AL-record 110 games, a mark for a 154-game season surpassed by the 1954 Cleveland Indians (the 2001 Seattle Mariners now hold the record with 116 wins, though they played eight more games), took the AL pennant by 19 games, and swept the Pittsburgh Pirates in the World Series.

With the race long since decided, the nation's attention turned to Ruth's pursuit of his own home run mark of 59. Early in the season, Ruth expressed doubts about his chances: "I don't suppose I'll ever break that 1921 record. To do that, you've got to start early, and the pitchers have got to pitch to you. I don't start early, and the pitchers haven't really pitched to me in four seasons. I get more bad balls to hit than any other six men...and fewer good ones." Ruth was also being challenged for his slugger's crown by teammate Lou Gehrig, who nudged ahead of Ruth's total in midseason, prompting the New York World-Telegram to anoint Gehrig the favorite. But Ruth caught Gehrig (who would finish with 47), and then had a remarkable last leg of the season, hitting 17 home runs in September. His 60th came on September 30, in the Yankees' next-to-last game. Ruth was exultant, shouting after the game, "Sixty, count 'em, sixty! Let's see some son-of-a-bitch match that!"[43] In later years, he would give Gehrig some credit: "Pitchers began pitching to me because if they passed me they still had Lou to contend with." In addition to his career-high 60 home runs, Ruth batted .356, drove in 164 runs and slugged .772.

 
The 1927 New York Yankees, one of the greatest baseball teams of all-time (Ruth is on top row, fifth from the left.)The following season started off well for the Yankees, who led the AL by 13 games in July. But the Yankees were soon plagued by some key injuries, erratic pitching and inconsistent play. The Philadelphia Athletics, rebuilding after some lean years, erased the Yankees' big lead and even took over first place briefly in early September. The Yankees, however, took over first place for good when they beat the A's three out of four games in a pivotal series at Yankee Stadium later that month.

Ruth's play in 1928 mirrored his team's performance. He got off to a hot start and on August 1, he had 42 home runs. This put him ahead of his 60 home run pace from the previous season. But Ruth was hobbled by a bad ankle the latter part of the season, and he hit just twelve home runs in the last two months of the regular season. His batting average also fell to .323, well below his career average. Nevertheless, he ended the season with 54 home runs, which would be the fourth (and last) time he hit 50 home runs in a season.

 
Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig at West Point, New York, 1927.The Yankees had a 1928 World Series rematch with the St. Louis Cardinals, who had upset them in the 1926 series. The Cardinals had the same core players as the 1926 team, except for Rogers Hornsby, who was traded for Frankie Frisch after the 1926 season. Ruth batted .625 (the second highest average in World Series history), including another three-home run game (in game 4), Gehrig batted .545, and the Yankees demolished the Cardinals in four games. The Yankees thus became the first major league team to sweep their opponents in consecutive World Series.

Decline and end with YankeesIn 1929, the Yankees failed to make the World Series for the first time in four years, and it would be another three years before they returned. Although the Yankees had slipped, Ruth led or tied for the league lead in home runs each year during 1929–1931. At one point during the 1930 season, as a stunt, Ruth was called upon to pitch for the first time since 1921, and he pitched a complete-game victory. (He had often pitched in exhibitions in the intervening years).

Also in 1929, the Yankees became the first team to use uniform numbers regularly (the Cleveland Indians had used them briefly in 1916). Since Ruth normally batted third in the order (ahead of Gehrig), he was assigned number 3 (to Gehrig's 4). The Yankees retired Ruth's number on June 13, 1948; however, it was kept in circulation prior to that.

 
Babe Ruth and Al SmithIn 1930, which was not a pennant year for the Yankees, Ruth was asked by a reporter what he thought of his yearly salary of $80,000 ($1.05 million in current dollar terms) being more than President Hoover's $75,000. His response: "I know, but I had a better year than Hoover."[44] That quote has also been rendered as, "How many home runs did he hit last year?" (Ruth had supported Al Smith in the 1928 Presidential election, and snubbed an appearance with president Hoover.) [45][46][47] Three years later, Ruth would make a public appearance with the ex-President at a Stanford – USC football game.

In the 1932 season, the Yankees went 107–47 and won the pennant under manager Joe McCarthy, as Ruth hit .341, with 41 home runs and 137 RBIs.

The Yankees faced Gabby Hartnett's Chicago Cubs in the 1932 World Series. The Yankees swept the Cubs and batted .313 as a team. During Game 3 of the series, after having already homered, Ruth hit what has now become known as Babe Ruth's Called Shot. During the at-bat, Ruth supposedly gestured to the deepest part of the park in center-field, predicting a home run. The ball he hit traveled past the flagpole to the right of the scoreboard and ended up in temporary bleachers just outside Wrigley Field's outer wall. The center field corner was 440 feet away, and at age 37, Ruth had hit a straightaway center home run that was perhaps a 490 foot blow.[48] It was Ruth's last Series homer (and his last Series hit), and it became one of the legendary moments of baseball history.

Ruth remained productive in 1933, as he batted .301, with 34 home runs, 103 RBIs, and a league-leading 114 walks. Elected to play in the first All-Star game, he hit the first home run in the game's history on July 6, 1933, at Comiskey Park in Chicago. His two-run home run helped the AL to a 4–2 victory over the NL, and Ruth made a fine catch in the game. Film footage of his All-Star game home run revealed the 38-year-old Ruth had become noticeably overweight.

Late in the 1933 season, he was called upon to pitch in one game and pitched a complete game victory, his final appearance as a pitcher. For the most part, his Yankee pitching appearances (five in fifteen years) were widely-advertised attempts to boost attendance. Despite unremarkable pitching numbers, Ruth had a 5–0 record in those five games, raising his career totals to 94–46.

In 1934, Babe Ruth recorded a .288 average, 22 home runs, and made the All-Star team for the second consecutive year. During the game, Ruth was the first of five consecutive strikeout victims (all of whom were future Hall of Fame players) of Giants pitcher Carl Hubbell, perhaps the most famous pitching feat in All-Star game history. In what turned out to be his last game at Yankee Stadium, only about 2,000 fans attended. By this time, Ruth had reached a personal milestone of 700 home runs and was about ready to retire.

 
Ruth with the baseball-kids in Japan in 1934After the 1934 season, Ruth went on a baseball barnstorming tour in the Far East. Players such as Jimmie Foxx, Lefty Gomez, Earl Averill, Charlie Gehringer, and Lou Gehrig were among fourteen players who played a series of 22 games, with many of the games played in Japan. Ruth was popular in Japan, as baseball had been popular in Japan for decades. Riding in a motorcade, Ruth was greeted by thousands of cheering Japanese. The tour was considered a great success for further increasing the popularity of baseball in Japan, and in 1936 Japan organized its first professional baseball league.

Sold to the BravesBy this time, Ruth knew he had little left as a player. His heart was set on managing the Yankees, and he made no secret of his desire to replace McCarthy. However, Ruppert would not consider dumping McCarthy. The slugger and manager had never got along and Ruth's managerial ambitions further chilled their relations. Just before the 1934 season, Ruppert offered to make Ruth manager of the Yankees' top minor-league team, the Newark Bears. However, Ruth's wife, Claire Merritt Hodgson and business manager advised him to reject the offer.

After the 1934 season, the only teams that seriously considered hiring Ruth were the Philadelphia Athletics and Detroit Tigers. A's owner/manager Connie Mack gave some thought to stepping down as manager in favor of Ruth, but later dropped the idea, saying that Ruth's wife would be running the team in a month if Ruth ever took over. Ruth was in serious negotiations with Tigers owner Frank Navin, but missed a scheduled interview in late 1934. Meanwhile, Ruppert negotiated with other major-league clubs, seeking one that would take Ruth either as a manager or player.

Boston Braves owner Emil Fuchs finally agreed to take Ruth. Even though the Braves had fielded fairly competitive teams in the last three seasons, Fuchs was sinking in debt and couldn't afford the rent on Braves Field. Fuchs thought Ruth was just what the Braves needed, both on and off the field.

After a series of phone calls, letters and meetings, the Yankees traded Ruth to the Braves on February 26, 1935. It was announced that in addition to remaining as a player, Ruth would become team vice president and would be consulted on all club transactions. He was also made assistant manager to Braves skipper Bill McKechnie. In a long letter to Ruth a few days before the press conference, Fuchs promised Ruth a share in the Braves' profits, with the possibility of becoming co-owner of the team. Fuchs also raised the possibility of Ruth becoming the Braves' manager, perhaps as early as 1936.

 
Ruth in a Boston Braves uniform in 1935, his last year as a player. Due to years of neglect, Ruth's health had declined considerably, significantly affecting his play.Amid much media hoopla, Ruth played his first home game in Boston in over 16 years. Before an opening-day crowd of over 25,000, Ruth accounted for all of the Braves' runs in a 4–2 defeat of the New York Giants. The Braves had long played second fiddle to the Red Sox in Boston, but Ruth's arrival spiked interest in the Braves to levels not seen since their stunning win in the 1914 World Series.

That win proved to be the only time the Braves were over .500 that year. By May 20, they were 7–17, and their season was effectively over. While Ruth could still hit, he could do little else, and soon stopped hitting as well. His conditioning had deteriorated so much that he could do little more than trot around the bases. His fielding was dreadful; at one point, three of the Braves' pitchers threatened not to take the mound if Ruth was in the lineup. Ruth was also annoyed that McKechnie ignored most of his managerial advice (McKechnie later said that Ruth's presence made enforcing discipline nearly impossible). He soon discovered that he was vice president and assistant manager in name only, and Fuchs' promise of a share of team profits was also hot air. In fact, Fuchs expected Ruth to invest some of his money in the team.

On May 25, at Forbes Field in Pittsburgh, Ruth went 4-for-4, drove in 6 runs and hit 3 home runs in an 11–7 loss to the Pirates. These were the last three home runs of his career. His last home run cleared the roof at the old Forbes Field—he became the first player to accomplish that feat. Five days later, in Philadelphia, Ruth played in his last Major League game. He struck out in the first inning and, while playing the field in the same inning, hurt his knee and left the game. In the 1948 film The Babe Ruth Story there was a more dramatic recounting of Ruth's last game. The Braves were depicted as winning the game against The Pirates and learning he had been fired for walking off the field during the game, while still in the locker room.

Two days after that, Ruth summoned reporters to the locker room after a game against the Giants and announced he was retiring. He had wanted to retire as early as May 12, but Fuchs persuaded him to stay on because the Braves hadn't played in every National League park yet. That season, he hit just .181 with six home runs in 72 at-bats. The Braves season went as badly as Ruth's short season. They finished 38–115, the fourth-worst record in Major League history, just a few percentage points fewer than the infamous 1962 New York Mets.

Personal lifeRuth married Helen Woodford in 1914.[49] Owing to his infidelities, they were reportedly separated around 1926.[49] Helen died in a fire in Watertown, Massachusetts on January 11, 1929 in a house owned by Edward Kinder, a dentist whom she had been living with as "Mrs. Kinder". Kinder identified her body as being that of his wife, then went into hiding after Helen's true identity was revealed; Ruth himself had to get authorities to issue a new death certificate in her legal name, Margaret Helen Woodford Ruth.[50]

Ruth had two daughters. Dorothy Ruth was adopted by Babe and Helen. Decades later, she wrote a book, My Dad, the Babe,[51] claiming that she was Ruth's biological child by a girlfriend named Juanita Jennings.[52][53][54]

Ruth adopted Julia Hodgson when he married her mother, actress and model Claire Merritt Hodgson. Julia currently resides in Arizona, and threw out the ceremonial first pitch before the final game in the original Yankee Stadium on September 21, 2008.

Ruth and Claire regularly wintered in Florida, frequently playing golf during the off-season and while the Yankees were spring training in Tampa, Florida. After retirement, he had a winter beachfront home in Treasure Island, Florida, near St. Petersburg.

Radio and films
Screenshot from Headin' HomeRuth made many forays into various popular media. He was heard often on radio in the 1930s and 1940s, both as a guest and on his own programs with various titles: The Adventures of Babe Ruth was a 15-minute Blue Network show heard three times a week from April 16 to July 13, 1934. Three years later, he was on CBS twice a week in Here's Babe Ruth which was broadcast from April 14 to July 9, 1937. That same year he portrayed himself in "Alibi Ike" on Lux Radio Theater. His Baseball Quiz was first heard Saturdays on NBC June 5 to July 10, 1943 and then later that year from August 28 to November 20 on NBC, followed by another NBC run from July 8 to October 21, 1944.

His film roles included a cameo appearance as himself in the Harold Lloyd film Speedy (1928). His first film appearance occurred in 1920, in the silent movie Headin' Home. He made numerous other film appearances in the silent era, usually either playing himself or playing a ballplayer similar to himself.

Ruth's voice was said by some biographers to be similar to that of film star Clark Gable, although that was obviously not evident in the silent film era. He had an appropriate role as himself in Pride of the Yankees (1942), the story of his ill-fated teammate Lou Gehrig. Ruth had three scenes in the film, including one in which he appeared with a straw hat. He said, "If I see anyone touch it, I'll knock his teeth in!" The teammates convinced young Gehrig (Gary Cooper) to chew up the hat; he got away with it. In the second scene, the players go to a restaurant, where Babe sees a side of beef cooking and jokes, "Well, I'll have one of those..." and, the dramatic scene near the end, where Gehrig makes his speech at Yankee Stadium ending with "I consider myself the luckiest man..."

Retirement and post-playing days
Ruth signing autographs at the 1937 All-Star Game at Griffith Stadium.In 1936, Ruth was one of the first five players elected into the Baseball Hall of Fame. Two years later, Larry MacPhail, the Brooklyn Dodgers general manager, offered him a first base coaching job in June.[55] Ruth took the job but quit at the end of the season. The coaching position was his last job in Major League Baseball. His baseball career finally came to an end in 1943. In a charity game at Yankee Stadium, he pinch hit and drew a walk. In 1947, he became director of the American Legion's youth baseball program.[56]

Baby Ruth candy bar controversyFor decades, the Baby Ruth candy bar was believed to be named after Babe Ruth and some sports marketing practitioners used this example of one of the first forms of sports marketing. However, while the name of the candy bar sounds nearly identical to the Babe's name, the Curtiss Candy Company has steadfastly claimed that Baby Ruth was named after President Grover Cleveland's daughter, Ruth Cleveland. Nonetheless, the bar first appeared in 1921, as Babe Ruth's fame was on the rise and long after Cleveland had left the White House and 15 years after his daughter had died. The company failed to negotiate an endorsement deal with Ruth, and many saw the company's story about the origin of the name of the bar as merely a ploy to avoid having to pay the baseball player any royalties. Ironically, Curtiss successfully shut down a rival bar that was approved by, and named for, Ruth, on the grounds that the names were too similar in the case of George H. Ruth Candy Co. v. Curtiss Candy Co, 49 F.2d 1033 (1931).[57] Sports marketing experts now believe that the Curtiss Candy Company employed the first successful use of an ambush sports marketing campaign, capitalizing on the Babe's name, fame, and popularity.

The New York Times supports the evidence of the ambush marketing campaign when it wrote "For 85 years, Babe Ruth, the slugger, and Baby Ruth, the candy bar, have lived parallel lives in which it has been widely assumed that the latter was named for the former. The confection's creator, the Curtiss Candy Company, never admitted to what looks like an obvious connection – especially since Ruth hit 54 home runs the year before the first Baby Ruth was devoured. Had it done so, Curtiss would have had to compensate Ruth. Instead, it eventually insisted the inspiration was "Baby Ruth" Cleveland, the daughter of President Grover Cleveland. But it is an odd connection that makes one wonder at the marketing savvy of Otto Schnering, the company's founder."[58]

 
The Great Bambino with future U.S. President George H. W. Bush at Yale.Thus, in 1995, a company representing the Ruth estate brought the Baby Ruth candy bar into sponsorship officialdom when it licensed the Babe's name and likeness for use in a Baby Ruth marketing campaign. On page 34 of the spring, 2007, edition of the Chicago Cubs game program, there is a full-page ad showing a partially-unwrapped Baby Ruth in front of the Wrigley ivy, with the caption, "The official candy bar of Major League Baseball, and proud sponsor of the Chicago Cubs." Continuing the baseball-oriented theme, during the summer and post-season of the 2007 season, a TV ad for the candy bar showed an entire stadium (played by Dodger Stadium) filled with people munching Baby Ruths, and thus having to hum rather than singing along with "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" during the seventh-inning stretch.[58]

IllnessIn 1946, he began experiencing severe pain over his left eye.[59] In November 1946, a visit to French Hospital in New York revealed Ruth had a malignant tumor in his neck that had encircled his left carotid artery. He received post-operative radiation therapy. Before leaving the hospital in February 1947, he lost approximately 80 pounds (36 kg).

Around this time, developments in chemotherapy offered some hope. Teropterin, a folic acid derivative, was developed by Dr. Brian Hutchings of the Lederle Laboratories.[59] It had been shown to cause significant remissions in children with leukemia. Ruth was administered this new drug in June 1947. He was suffering from headaches, hoarseness and had difficulty swallowing. He agreed to use this new medicine but did not want to know any details about it. All the while he was receiving this experimental medication, he did not know it was for cancer. On June 29, 1947, he began receiving injections and he responded with dramatic improvement. He gained over 20 pounds (9.1 kg) and had resolution of his headaches. On September 6, 1947, his case was presented anonymously at the 4th Annual Internal cancer Research Congress in St. Louis. Teropterin ended up being a precursor for methotrexate, a now commonly used chemotherapeutic agent.

 
Babe Ruth's number 3 was retired by the New York Yankees in 1948.

It is now known that Ruth suffered from nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPCA), a relatively rare tumor located in the back of the nose near the eustachian tube. Contemporary management for NPCA includes concurrent chemotherapy and radiation therapy.

On April 27, 1947, the Yankees held a ceremony at Yankee Stadium. Despite his health problems, Ruth was able to attend "Babe Ruth Day".[59] Ruth spoke to a capacity crowd of more than 60,000, including many American Legion youth baseball players. Although lacking a specific memorable comment like Gehrig's "Luckiest man" speech, Ruth spoke from the heart, of his enthusiasm for the game of baseball and in support of the youth playing the game. (Babe Ruth speaking at Yankee Stadium)

Later, Ruth started the Babe Ruth Foundation, a charity for disadvantaged children. Another Babe Ruth Day held at Yankee Stadium in September 1947 helped to raise money for this charity.

 
Nat Fein's Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph of Ruth at Yankee Stadium, June 13, 1948. This was his last public appearance before his death two months later.After the cancer returned, Ruth attended the 25th anniversary celebration of the opening of Yankee Stadium on June 13, 1948. He was reunited with old teammates from the 1923 Yankee team and posed for photographs. The photo of Ruth taken from behind, using a bat as a cane, standing apart from the other players, and facing "Ruthville" (right field) became one of baseball's most famous and widely circulated photographs. It won the Pulitzer Prize.

Death
The grave of Babe RuthShortly after he attended the Yankee Stadium anniversary event, Ruth was back in the hospital. He received hundreds of well-wishing letters and messages. This included a phone call from President Harry Truman. Claire helped him respond to the letters.

On July 26, 1948, Ruth attended the premiere of the film The Babe Ruth Story, a biopic about his own life. William Bendix portrayed Ruth. Shortly thereafter, Ruth returned to the hospital for the final time. He was barely able to speak. Ruth's condition gradually became worse, and in his last days, scores of reporters and photographers hovered around the hospital. Only a few visitors were allowed to see him, one of whom was National League president and future Commissioner of Baseball, Ford Frick. "Ruth was so thin it was unbelievable. He had been such a big man and his arms were just skinny little bones, and his face was so haggard," Frick said years later.

On August 16, the day after Frick's visit, Babe Ruth died at age 53 due to pneumonia.[59] An autopsy showed the cancer Ruth died from began in the nose and mouth and spread widely throughout his body from there.[59] His body lay in repose in Yankee Stadium. His funeral was two days later at St. Patrick's Cathedral, New York. Ruth was then buried in the Cemetery of the Gate of Heaven in Hawthorne, New York. At his death, the New York Times called Babe Ruth, "a figure unprecedented in American life. A born showman off the field and a marvelous performer on it, he had an amazing flair for doing the spectacular at the most dramatic moment."[60]

Legacy
Ruth's widow, Claire, at the unveiling of a memorial plaque in Baltimore's old Memorial Stadium (1955)Ruth's impact on American culture still commands attention. Top performers in other sports are often referred to as "The Babe Ruth of ______."[5] He is widely regarded as one of the greatest baseball players in history.[61] Many polls place him as the number one player of all time.[62]

Ruth was mentioned in the poem "Line-Up for Yesterday" by Ogden Nash:

Line-Up for Yesterday
R is for Ruth.
To tell you the truth,
There's just no more to be said,
Just R is for Ruth.

— Ogden Nash, Sport magazine (January 1949)[63]Films have been made featuring Ruth, or a Ruth-like figure ("The Whammer" in The Natural, for example).

During World War II, Japanese soldiers would yell in English, "To hell with Babe Ruth", in order to anger American soldiers.[citation needed] An episode of Hawaii Five-O would be named "To Hell With Babe Ruth" because of that.[5]

As a sidelight to his prominent role in changing the game to the power game, the frequency and popularity of Ruth's home runs eventually led to a rule change pertaining to those hit in sudden-death mode (bottom of the ninth or later inning). Prior to 1931, as soon as the first necessary run to win the game scored, the play was over, and the batter was credited only with the number of bases needed to drive in the winning run. Thus, if the score was 3–2 with the bases loaded in the bottom of the ninth, and the batter smacked an "over the fence home run", the game would end at 4–3, with the batter only allowed a double, and the runners officially stopped on 2nd and 3rd (since they weren't needed to win the game). The new rule allowed the entire play to complete, justified on the grounds that the ball was dead and that all runners could freely advance, thus granting the full allotment of HR and RBI to the batter, as we know it today. Several players lost home runs that way, including Ruth. As noted in the inaugural edition of The Baseball Encyclopedia (MacMillan, 1969), Ruth's career total would have been changed to 715 if historians during the 1960s had been successful in pursuing this matter. Major League Baseball elected not to retrofit the records to the modern rules, and Ruth's total stayed at 714.

Another rules change that affected Ruth was the method used by umpires to judge potential home runs when the batted ball left the field near a foul pole. Before 1931, i.e. through most of Ruth's most productive years, the umpire called the play based on the ball's final resting place "when last seen". Thus, if a ball went over the fence fair, and curved behind the foul pole, it was ruled foul. Beginning in 1931 and continuing to the present day, the rule was changed to require the umpire to judge based on the point where the ball cleared the fence. Jenkinson's book (p. 374–375) lists 78 foul balls near the foul pole in Ruth's career, claiming that at least 50 of them were likely to have been home runs under the modern rule.

Ruth's 1919 contract that sent him from Boston to New York was sold at auction for $996,000 at Sotheby's on June 10, 2005.[64] The most valuable memorabilia item relating to Ruth was his 1923 bat which he used to hit the first home run at Yankee Stadium on April 18, 1923. Ruth's heavy Louisville Slugger solid ash wood bat sold for $1.26 million at a Sotheby's auction in December 2004, making it the third most valuable baseball memorabilia item, behind Mark McGwire's 70th home run ball and the famous 1909 Honus Wagner baseball card.[65]

Career batting statisticsTaken from Retrosheet.[66]

G AB R H HR RBI BB SO Avg. OBP SLG
2,503 8,399 2,174 2,873 714 2,213 2,062 1,330 .342 .473 .690

All-time ranks3rd on all-time home run list with 714
10th on all-time batting average list with .342
2nd on all-time RBI list with 2,217
1st on all-time slugging % with 0.690
2nd on all-time on-base % list with .474
1st on all-time OPS with 1.164
4th on all-time runs list with 2,174
6th on all-time total bases list with 5,793
3rd on all-time bases on balls list with 2,062

 

*

Babe lived every minute of it, as if every minute would be his last, and he loved every minute of it. In the process, he gained a not-undeserved reputation for being a partier, jokester and clown. Babe was like a kid in a candy store. Plus, he didn't have the manners and refinement of someone from a different background, sometimes coming across as a bit crude. Yet, most people were drawn to this lively, super-talented young ballplayer.

Today, Babe's "festive" aspects of his personality are as well known as his baseball achievements. What's interesting to note is that his fun-loving nature and its related habits seem to have become much more magnified and the focus of his story today, than they had been during his playing days or lifetime. Although Babe did his share of living of his "new life on the outside of St. Mary's", he wasn't quite the hard-drinker and carouser that some of the media has portrayed.

Julia Ruth Stevens shares her thoughts: "He had a very deprived childhood being put into St. Mary's and he really just wanted to try everything there was. He wanted to get enough to eat so he felt full… and he wanted to have enough to drink so that he felt good. It was just one of those things that I would never begrudge him for. When you consider that he died at the age of 53, he didn't have that many years from 19 to 53. But he was never a drunkard -- no way. He never drank any more than anyone else in the days of prohibition. It was just the thing that everyone was doing."

During the Summer of 2006, BRC interviewed a number of people who knew the Babe directly, such as Bill Werber his former teammate, or second- or third hand. It was said over and over again that he wasn't the drinker that he is portrayed as today. And, the same was that he may not have been the ladies' man that he has been labeled, either. There is no doubt that he enjoyed his beverages; he enjoyed the attention of many women (remember that he was a true, yet accessible, superstar, at a time when there weren't many similar celebrities); he loved to have a good time; and, he loved the attention of the public and essentially returned that attention in like kind.

As time has passed, and as the press and public fascination with the "bad boys" and the negative aspects of celebrity personalities has increased, the negatives of Babe's life outside the ballpark have taken on a new dimension, a bigger focus, a legend in and of its own. While the truth probably lies somewhere between the different extremes, the public sometimes forgets that Babe was human, too. And, he had the same interests and spirit that many regular people had then and have today.

Within five months, Babe went from the Orioles in Baltimore to the Red Sox in Boston. His baseball career was running at warp speed. His personal life reflected the same dramatic changes. Babe wasn't even in Boston for more than a few months before he met and married a young waitress by the name of Helen Woodford in October 1914.

Babe bought his new bride a farm house out in Sudbury, MA, where they lived happily together for a few years. The reality is, however, that, at the time that Babe married Helen, he was still so "new" to the world outside of St. Mary's - the real world and real society. He was far from ready to really settle down. Babe was too interested in experiencing life's adventures and appreciating all the attention and admiration that he was receiving as a baseball star to respect the responsibilities and bonds that marriage entailed.

When Ruth was traded to the Yankees in 1920, the couple moved to New York, where Babe thrived more than ever in the spotlight. And, he soaked up the energy, entertainment and night life of the city. Unfortunately, Helen was never comfortable with his fame and all the attention that came with it. This disconnect increased the tension between them.

Even so, in 1921, Babe and Helen adopted a baby girl, whom they named Dorothy after friend and Yankee teammate Waite Hoyt's first wife (who also was Dorothy's god-mother).

Sadly, sharing the love of a new baby was not enough to maintain their relationship and they slowly drifted further apart. Helen ultimately had enough of the crazy life in the big city and of her big celebrity husband and decided to move with Dorothy back to the quiet of their Sudbury, MA home. Being a Catholic and unable to divorce, Babe and Helen remained married throughout the 1920's; however, they ended up spending most of their marriage separated.

It was 1922 when Babe first met the next love of his life, whom he would ultimately marry and remain with for the rest of his life. Her name was Claire Hodgson.

Claire was born in Athens, GA, the daughter of a lawyer who often did legal work for Ty Cobb. Claire, motivated to start a career in show business, decided to move to New York in 1918 with her baby daughter, Julia. Claire eventually had success in New York as a model and a showgirl. In the course of her performing career, she had befriended actor Jim Barton, who, in 1922, took her to a Yankee game and introduced her to the Babe. Claire was intelligent, energetic, confident and very self-assured around the Babe. In very short time, Ruth was very smitten with Claire.

As the rest of the decade passed, Babe and Claire became very close, but remained as friends given Babe's Catholic faith. In January 1929, Ruth's wife, Helen, sadly passed away in a tragic house fire. The exact cause of the fire was never completely determined, but a lit cigarette was the main theory.

In April of the same year, Babe married Claire a day before opening day at Yankee Stadium. After their marriage, Claire quickly introduced some much-needed discipline to Babe's life. She became his personal manager, managing everything from Babe's outrageous spending sprees to his exercise and eating habits.

 Babe also acquired an instant family, which included Babe's adopted daughter Dorothy from his marriage with Helen, his newly-adopted daughter Julia from his marriage to Claire and Claire's mother and two brothers from Athens, Georgia. Babe finally had the big family he had always wanted.

Julia Ruth Stevens recalled for BRC some of her memories of growing up with Babe Ruth as her father and their family life:

"Mother had told me that he was going to adopt me and I was just thrilled and thought how amazing it would be to be the daughter of Babe Ruth. Of course I had called him Babe for all the years that I had known him. But when they got married, Mother told Dorothy that she needed to teach me to start calling Babe, "Daddy." But it wasn't long before I started calling him Daddy and I still call him Daddy to this day.

Daddy and Mother loved entertaining people at their home. Daddy loved his home and all the things that went on -- all the holidays. They would almost always have a New Year's party and I can remember some of the various people that used to come - Hoagy Carmichael would come and play the piano. That was just fabulous.

He liked to have people around him but there were lots of evenings though where we would play or cards or play checkers with Momma and he would always beat her and she would get mad and walk out!

 He was so grateful to have an honest to goodness family, due to losing his mother at such a young age. Momma loved him and so did Gene and Hubert . He thought the world of all of them. It's not everyday that someone would be willing to bring in a whole family like that. Maybe a mother-in-law, but also two brothers? But he just loved it."

To hear more about Julia's life with her "Daddy", Babe Ruth, please visit Section 09 Voices to hear more personal stories.

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Babe's Generosity and Thoughfulness

Babe could never get enough attention and admiration from his fans - he thrived on their enthusiasm. It probably made him an even better, more motivated player as a result. Although he could be exuberant and somewhat cocky in personality, Babe normally didn't take his fame or fortune for granted.

 Many times gave to others who were less fortunate, most particularly to children. Children were Babe's biggest fans, who loved and admired him unconditionally throughout his life, and Babe always loved children in return. Even as a child himself, Babe was looking out for the younger and less fortunate children at St. Mary's. It was said that in wintertime that Ruth would run around the courtyard of St. Mary's, rubbing and blowing on the hands of the younger kids, trying to keep them warm.

Later in life, during his baseball career and retirement, Babe always made efforts with kids and those who helped him. The stories abound. At the height of his fame, Babe hardly ever passed up a request to visit an orphanage or a sick child in the hospital. He always spent time patientaly signing baseballs for each and every youngster who waited for him before and after games, as well as in public appearances later in life. As another example, St. Mary's Industrial School in Baltimore suffered a major fire in the 1930's, which caused significant damage to the main building. In response, Babe organized a fundraising drive that generated over $100,000 - a substantial amount of money in those days -- for repairs and rebuilding.

Three of BRC's contributors conveyed stories that illustrated spirit and kindness.

Mike Gibbons, Executive Director of the Babe Ruth Musuem and Birthplace, shared this perspective:
"He never ever turned a kid down for an autograph - no matter what. Towards the end, when he was in the hospital before he died, there was always a bunch of kids down on the sidewalk hoping to catch a glimpse of him or something like that. He would have these business-sized cards with nothing on them and he would sign as many of them as he could at the time and give them to his nurse and tell her to take them downstairs to the kids down on the sidewalk, or he would give her $10 and say, 'here, go buy all the kids some ice cream cones.'"


Billy Werber, Babe's former Yankees teammate, recounted:
"He was very generous. In Detroit, the clubhouse boy had gone out earlier to hang the uniforms up and put the locker in order for the Yankees to the play. It was cold and the game was called off and the kid had come back to the hotel and he was shaking with cold and Babe called him over - we were sitting there in circle chewing the fat - and peeled two $20 bills out of his pocket and told the kid to go out and buy himself a coat. When the kid came back we were still standing there and he comes over to give Babe $20 back, 'Here Babe, it only cost me $20" and Babe said, "You keep it and buy yourself something good to eat.'"


Betty Hoyt, Yankee Hall of Fame pitcher Waite Hoyt's widow, recalled one of Waite's stories of Babe's generosity:
"Waite said that people were always borrowing from Babe because Babe was making a lot more money than the rest of the players. So they would borrow money from Babe and they would pay him back when they got paid, but Babe would never take interest on any of it. And sometimes Babe would get loans from the guys and he would always give them 6% interest. As soon as he got paid he'd go over to them and pay them their money back plus 6% interest but he would never take interest from them. Because he knew that he was much better off than they all were."

 


LOU GHERIG

 


Henry Louis "Lou" Gehrig (June 19, 1903 – June 2, 1941), nicknamed "The Iron Horse" for his durability, was an American Major League Baseball first baseman. He played his entire 17-year baseball career for the New York Yankees (1923–1939). Gehrig set several major league records.[1] He holds the record for most career grand slams (23).[2] Gehrig is chiefly remembered for his prowess as a hitter, his consecutive games-played record and its subsequent longevity, and the pathos of his farewell from baseball at age 36, when he was stricken with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.

Gehrig was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1939. In 1969 he was voted the greatest first baseman of all time by the Baseball Writers' Association,[3] and was the leading vote-getter on the Major League Baseball All-Century Team, chosen by fans in 1999.[4]

A native of New York City, he played for the New York Yankees until his career was cut short by amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), now commonly known in the United States and Canada as Lou Gehrig's disease.[5] Over a 15-season span from 1925 through 1939, he played in 2,130 consecutive games, the streak ending only when Gehrig became disabled by the fatal neuromuscular disease that claimed his life two years later. His streak, long considered one of baseball's few unbreakable records,[6] stood for 56 years, until finally broken by Cal Ripken, Jr., of the Baltimore Orioles on September 6, 1995.

Gehrig accumulated 1,995 runs batted in (RBI) in 17 seasons, with a career batting average of .340, on-base percentage of .447, and slugging percentage of .632. Three of the top six RBI seasons in baseball history belong to Gehrig. He was selected to each of the first seven All-Star games (though he did not play in the 1939 game, as he retired one week before it was held),[7] and he won the American League's Most Valuable Player award in 1927 and 1936. He was also a Triple Crown winner in 1934, leading the American League in batting average, home runs, and RBIs.[

Gehrig was born in the Yorkville section of Manhattan, weighing almost 14 pounds (6.4 kg) at birth, the second child out of four to German immigrants.[9] His father Heinrich was a sheet metal worker by trade, but frequently unemployed due to alcoholism, and his mother Christina was a maid, the main breadwinner and disciplinarian in the family.[10] His two sisters died from whooping cough and measles at an early age.[11] Young Gehrig helped his mother with her work, doing tasks such as folding laundry and picking up supplies from the local stores.[12] In 1910, Gehrig lived with his parents at 2266 Amsterdam Avenue in Manhattan.[13] In 1920 the family resided at 2079 8th Avenue in Manhattan [14]

Gehrig first garnered national attention for his baseball ability while playing in a game at Cubs Park (now Wrigley Field) on June 26, 1920. Gehrig's New York School of Commerce team was playing a team from Chicago's Lane Tech High School, in front of a crowd of more than 10,000 spectators.[15] With his team winning 8–6 in the top of the ninth inning, Gehrig hit a grand slam completely out of the major league park, an unheard-of feat for a 17-year old.[15][16]

 
Gehrig on the Columbia University baseball teamLou Gehrig went to PS 132 in the Washington Heights section of Manhattan, then to Commerce High School, graduating in 1921.[17][18] Gehrig then studied at Columbia University for two years, although he did not graduate.[19] While attending Columbia, he was a member of Phi Delta Theta fraternity.[20] Initially, Gehrig could not play intercollegiate baseball for the Columbia Lions because he had played baseball for a summer professional league during his freshman year.[20] At the time, he was unaware that doing so jeopardized his eligibility to play any collegiate sport. However, Gehrig was ruled eligible to play on the Lions' football team and was a standout fullback. Later, he gained baseball eligibility and played on the Lions team.

On April 18, 1923, the same day that Yankee Stadium opened for the first time and Babe Ruth inaugurated the new stadium with a home run, Columbia pitcher Gehrig struck out seventeen Williams College batters to set a team record; however, Columbia lost the game. Only a handful of collegians were at South Field that day, but more significant was the presence of Yankee scout Paul Krichell, who had been trailing Gehrig for some time. It was not Gehrig’s pitching that particularly impressed him; rather, it was Gehrig’s powerful left-handed hitting. During the time Krichell had been observing the young Columbia ballplayer, Gehrig had hit some of the longest home runs ever seen on various Eastern campuses, including a 450-foot (137 m) home run on April 28 at Columbia's South Field which landed at 116th Street and Broadway.[21] Within two months, Gehrig had signed a Yankee contract.[20]

[edit] Major League careerGehrig joined the New York Yankees midway through the 1923 season and made his debut on June 15, 1923, as a pinch hitter. In his first two seasons, he saw limited playing time, mostly as a pinch hitter — he played in only 23 games and was not on the Yankees' 1923 World Series roster. In 1925, he batted .295, with 20 home runs and 68 runs batted in (RBIs).[22]

 
Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig in exhibition game at West Point, New York (May 6, 1927)The 23-year-old Yankee first baseman's breakout season came in 1926, when he batted .313 with 47 doubles, an American League-leading 20 triples, 16 home runs, and 112 RBIs.[22] In the 1926 World Series against the St. Louis Cardinals, Gehrig hit .348 with two doubles and 4 RBIs. The Cardinals won a seven-game series four games to three.[23]

In 1927, Gehrig put up one of the greatest seasons by any batter in history, hitting .373, with 218 hits: 52 doubles, 18 triples, 47 home runs, a then-record 175 runs batted in (surpassing teammate Babe Ruth's 171 six years earlier), and a .765 slugging percentage.[22] His 117 extra-base hits that season are second all-time to Babe Ruth’s 119 extra-base hits in 1921[22] and his 447 total bases are third all-time, after Babe Ruth's 457 total bases in 1921 and Rogers Hornsby's 450 in 1922.[22] Gehrig's production helped the 1927 Yankees to a 110–44 record, the AL pennant, and a four-game sweep of the Pittsburgh Pirates in the 1927 World Series. Although the AL recognized his season by naming him league MVP, it was overshadowed by Babe Ruth’s 60 home run season and the overall dominance of the 1927 Yankees, a team often cited as having the greatest lineup of all time — the famed Murderers' Row.[24]

Despite playing in the shadow of the larger-than-life Ruth for two-thirds of his career, Gehrig was one of the highest run producers in baseball history: he had 509 RBIs during a three-season stretch (1930–32). Only two other players, Jimmie Foxx with 507 and Hank Greenberg with 503, have surpassed 500 RBIs in any three seasons; their totals were non-consecutive. (Babe Ruth had 498.)[25] Playing 14 complete seasons, Gehrig had 13 consecutive seasons with 100 or more RBIs (a major league record he shares with Foxx and Alex Rodriguez). Gehrig had six seasons where he batted .350 or better (with a high of .379 in 1930), plus a seventh season at .349. He had seven seasons with 150 or more RBIs, 11 seasons with over 100 walks, eight seasons with 200 or more hits, and five seasons with more than 40 home runs.[26] Gehrig led the American League in runs scored four times, home runs three times, and RBIs five times. His 184 RBIs in 1931 remain the American League record as of 2010 and rank second all-time to Hack Wilson's 191 RBIs in 1930. On the single-season RBI list, Gehrig ranks second, fifth (175), and sixth (174), with four additional seasons over 150 RBI. He also holds the baseball record for most seasons with 400 total bases or more, accomplishing this feat five times in his career.[26] He batted fourth in the lineup to Ruth's third in the order, making it impractical to give up an intentional walk to Ruth.

During the 10 seasons (1925–1934) in which Gehrig and Ruth were both Yankees and played a majority of the games, Gehrig had more home runs than Ruth only once, in 1934, when he hit 49 compared to Ruth’s 22 (Ruth played 125 games that year). They tied at 46 in 1931. Ruth had 424 home runs compared to Gehrig’s 347. However, Gehrig outpaced Ruth in RBI, 1,436 to 1,316. Gehrig had a .343 batting average, compared to .338 for Ruth.[27]

 
Gehrig 1933 Goudey baseball card.In 1932, Gehrig became the first player of the 20th century to hit four home runs in a game, accomplishing the feat on June 3 against the Philadelphia Athletics.[28] He narrowly missed getting a fifth home run in the game when Athletics center fielder Al Simmons made a leaping catch of another fly ball at the center field fence. After the game, manager Joe McCarthy told him, "Well, Lou, nobody can take today away from you." On the same day, however, John McGraw announced his retirement after thirty years of managing the New York Giants. McGraw, not Gehrig, got the main headlines in the sports sections the next day.[29] The following year, in September 1933, Gehrig married Eleanor Twitchell, the daughter of Chicago Parks Commissioner Frank Twitchell.[22]

In a 1936 World Series cover story about Lou Gehrig and Carl Hubbell, Time proclaimed Gehrig "the game's No. 1 batsman", who "takes boyish pride in banging a baseball as far, and running around the bases as quickly, as possible".[30]

[edit] 2,130 consecutive games
Seven of the American League's 1937 All-Star players, from left to right Lou Gehrig, Joe Cronin, Bill Dickey, Joe DiMaggio, Charlie Gehringer, Jimmie Foxx, and Hank Greenberg. All seven would eventually be elected to the Hall of Fame.On June 1, 1925, Gehrig entered the game as a pinch hitter, substituting for shortstop Paul "Pee Wee" Wanninger. The next day, June 2, Yankee manager Miller Huggins started Gehrig in place of regular first baseman Wally Pipp. Pipp was in a slump, as were the Yankees as a team, so Huggins made several lineup changes to boost their performance. Fourteen years later, Gehrig had played 2,130 consecutive games. In a few instances, Gehrig managed to keep the streak intact through pinch hitting appearances and fortuitous timing; in others, the streak continued despite injuries. For example:

On April 23, 1933, an errant pitch by Washington Senators hurler struck Gehrig in the head. Although almost knocked unconscious, Gehrig recovered and remained in the game.
On June 14, 1933, Gehrig was ejected from a game, along with manager Joe McCarthy, but he had already been at bat, so he got credit for playing the game.
On July 13, 1934, Gehrig suffered a "lumbago attack" and had to be assisted off the field. In the next day's away game, he was listed in the lineup as "shortstop", batting lead-off. In his first and only plate appearance, he singled and was promptly replaced by a pinch runner to rest his throbbing back, never taking the field. A&E's Biography speculated that this illness, which he also described as "a cold in his back", might have been the first symptom of his debilitating disease.[31]
In addition, X-rays taken late in his life disclosed that Gehrig had sustained several fractures during his playing career, although he remained in the lineup despite those previously undisclosed injuries.[32] On the other hand, the streak was helped when Yankees general manager Ed Barrow postponed a game as a rainout on a day when Gehrig was sick with the flu—even though it was not raining.[33]

Gehrig's record of 2,130 consecutive games played stood until September 6, 1995, when Baltimore Orioles shortstop Cal Ripken, Jr. broke it.[34]

[edit] Illness
Plaque in St. Petersburg, Fla., where Gehrig collapsed in 1939 during spring trainingAlthough his performance in the second half of the 1938 season was slightly better than in the first half, Gehrig reported physical changes at the midway point. At the end of that season, he said, "I tired mid-season. I don't know why, but I just couldn't get going again." Although his final 1938 statistics were above average (.295 batting average, 114 RBI, 170 hits, .523 slugging percentage, 689 plate appearances with only 75 strikeouts, and 29 home runs), they were significantly down from his 1937 season, in which he batted .351 and slugged .643. In the 1938 World Series, he had four hits in 14 at-bats, all singles.[35]

When the Yankees began their 1939 spring training in St. Petersburg, Florida, it was clear that Gehrig no longer possessed his once-formidable power. Even Gehrig's base running was affected, and at one point he collapsed at Al Lang Field, then the Yankees' spring training park.[36] By the end of spring training, Gehrig had not hit a home run.[37] Throughout his career, Gehrig was considered an excellent baserunner, but as the 1939 season got under way, his coordination and speed had deteriorated significantly.[38]

By the end of April, his statistics were the worst of his career, with one RBI and a .143 batting average. Fans and the press openly speculated on Gehrig's abrupt decline. James Kahn, a reporter who wrote often about Gehrig, said in one article:

I think there is something wrong with him. Physically wrong, I mean. I don't know what it is, but I am satisfied that it goes far beyond his ball-playing. I have seen ballplayers 'go' overnight, as Gehrig seems to have done. But they were simply washed up as ballplayers. It's something deeper than that in this case, though. I have watched him very closely and this is what I have seen: I have seen him time a ball perfectly, swing on it as hard as he can, meet it squarely — and drive a soft, looping fly over the infield. In other words, for some reason that I do not know, his old power isn't there... He is meeting the ball, time after time, and it isn't going anywhere.[39]
He was indeed meeting the ball, with only one strikeout in 28 at-bats; however, Joe McCarthy found himself resisting pressure from Yankee management to switch Gehrig to a part-time role. Things came to a head when Gehrig had to struggle to make a routine put-out at first base. The pitcher, Johnny Murphy, had to wait for Gehrig to drag himself over to the bag so he could field the throw. Murphy said, "Nice play, Lou."[39]

On April 30, Gehrig went hitless against the Washington Senators. Gehrig had just played his 2,130th consecutive major league game.[27]

On May 2, the next game after a day off, Gehrig approached McCarthy before the game in Detroit against the Tigers and said, "I'm benching myself, Joe," telling the Yankees' skipper that he was doing so "for the good of the team."[40] McCarthy acquiesced, putting Ellsworth "Babe" Dahlgren in at first base, and also said that whenever Gehrig wanted to play again, the position was his. Gehrig himself took the lineup card out to the shocked umpires before the game, ending the fourteen-year streak. Before the game began, the Briggs Stadium announcer told the fans, "Ladies and gentlemen, this is the first time Lou Gehrig's name will not appear on the Yankee lineup in 2,130 consecutive games." The Detroit Tigers' fans gave Gehrig a standing ovation while he sat on the bench with tears in his eyes.[35] A wire service photograph of Gehrig reclining against the dugout steps with a stoic expression appeared the next day in the nation's newspapers. Other than his retirement ceremony, it is the most-reproduced and best-remembered visual image of Gehrig.

Gehrig stayed with the Yankees as team captain for the rest of the season, but never played in a major league game again.[35]

[edit] DiagnosisAs Lou Gehrig's debilitation became steadily worse (he stumbled over curbs, fumbled with the baseball, and even slipped and fell while running bases), his wife Eleanor called the famed Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. Her call was transferred to Charles William Mayo, who had been following Gehrig's career and his mysterious loss of strength. Mayo told Eleanor to bring Gehrig as soon as possible.[35]

Eleanor and Gehrig flew to Rochester from Chicago, where the Yankees were playing at the time, arriving at the Mayo Clinic on June 13, 1939. After six days of extensive testing at Mayo Clinic, the diagnosis of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) was confirmed on June 19, Gehrig's 36th birthday.[9] The prognosis was grim: rapidly increasing paralysis, difficulty in swallowing and speaking, and a life expectancy of less than three years, although there would be no impairment of mental functions. Eleanor Gehrig was told that the cause of ALS was unknown but it was painless, non-contagious and cruel — the motor function of the central nervous system is destroyed but the mind remains fully aware to the end.[41][42]

At Eleanor's request, the Mayo doctors intentionally withheld his grim prognosis from Gehrig. He often wrote letters to Eleanor, and in one such note written shortly afterwards, said (in part):

The bad news is lateral sclerosis, in our language chronic infantile paralysis. There isn't any cure... there are very few of these cases. It is probably caused by some germ...Never heard of transmitting it to mates... There is a 50–50 chance of keeping me as I am. I may need a cane in 10 or 15 years. Playing is out of the question...[43]
Following Gehrig's visit to the Mayo Clinic, he briefly rejoined the Yankees in Washington, D.C. As his train pulled into Union Station, he was greeted by a group of Boy Scouts, happily waving and wishing him luck. Gehrig waved back, but he leaned forward to his companion, a reporter, and said, "They're wishing me luck — and I'm dying."[9]

[edit] "The Luckiest Man on the Face of the Earth"
Lou Gehrig's number 4 was retired by the New York Yankees in 1940.

 
The Yankee duo reunited – Lou Gehrig and Babe Ruth at Yankee Stadium on July 4, 1939. Within a decade a similar testimonial would be held for Ruth, who died from cancer 7 years after Gehrig's death.On June 21, the New York Yankees announced Gehrig's retirement and proclaimed July 4, 1939, "Lou Gehrig Appreciation Day" at Yankee Stadium. Between games of the Independence Day doubleheader against the Washington Senators, the poignant ceremonies were held on the diamond. In its coverage the following day, The New York Times said it was "perhaps as colorful and dramatic a pageant as ever was enacted on a baseball field [as] 61,808 fans thundered a hail and farewell."[44] Dignitaries extolled the dying slugger and the members of the 1927 Yankees World Championship team, known as "Murderer's Row", attended the ceremonies. New York Mayor Fiorello La Guardia called Gehrig "the greatest prototype of good sportsmanship and citizenship" and Postmaster General James Farley concluded his speech by predicting, "For generations to come, boys who play baseball will point with pride to your record."[44]

Yankees Manager Joe McCarthy, struggling to control his emotions, then spoke of Lou Gehrig, with whom there was a close, almost father and son-like bond. After describing Gehrig as "the finest example of a ballplayer, sportsman, and citizen that baseball has ever known", McCarthy could stand it no longer. Turning tearfully to Gehrig, the manager said, "Lou, what else can I say except that it was a sad day in the life of everybody who knew you when you came into my hotel room that day in Detroit and told me you were quitting as a ballplayer because you felt yourself a hindrance to the team. My God, man, you were never that."[45]

The Yankees retired Gehrig's uniform number "4", making him the first player in Major League Baseball history to be accorded that honor.[46] Gehrig was given many gifts, commemorative plaques, and trophies. Some came from VIPs; others came from the stadium's groundskeepers and janitorial staff. Footage of the ceremonies shows Gehrig being handed various gifts, and immediately setting them down on the ground, because he no longer had the arm strength to hold them.[9] The Yankees gave him a silver trophy with their signatures engraved on it. Inscribed on the front was a special poem written by The New York Times writer John Kieran.[47] The trophy cost only about $5, but it became one of Gehrig's most prized possessions.[48] It is currently on display at the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum.

After the presentations and remarks by Babe Ruth, Gehrig addressed the crowd:

Fans, for the past two weeks you have been reading about the bad break I got. Yet today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth. I have been in ballparks for seventeen years and have never received anything but kindness and encouragement from you fans.

Look at these grand men. Which of you wouldn’t consider it the highlight of his career just to associate with them for even one day? Sure, I’m lucky. Who wouldn’t consider it an honor to have known Jacob Ruppert? Also, the builder of baseball’s greatest empire, Ed Barrow? To have spent six years with that wonderful little fellow, Miller Huggins? Then to have spent the next nine years with that outstanding leader, that smart student of psychology, the best manager in baseball today, Joe McCarthy? Sure, I'm lucky.

When the New York Giants, a team you would give your right arm to beat, and vice versa, sends you a gift — that’s something. When everybody down to the groundskeepers and those boys in white coats remember you with trophies — that’s something. When you have a wonderful mother-in-law who takes sides with you in squabbles with her own daughter — that's something. When you have a father and a mother who work all their lives so that you can have an education and build your body — it's a blessing. When you have a wife who has been a tower of strength and shown more courage than you dreamed existed — that's the finest I know.

So I close in saying that I might have been given a bad break, but I've got an awful lot to live for. Thank you.

 — Lou Gehrig at Yankee Stadium, July 4, 1939[49]The crowd stood and applauded for almost two minutes. Gehrig was visibly shaken as he stepped away from the microphone, and wiped the tears away from his face with his handkerchief.[48] Babe Ruth came over and hugged him as a band played "I Love You Truly" and the crowd chanted "We love you, Lou." The New York Times account the following day called it "one of the most touching scenes ever witnessed on a ball field", that made even hard-boiled reporters "swallow hard."[44]

In December 1939, Lou Gehrig was elected unanimously to the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in a special election by the Baseball Writers Association, waiving the waiting period normally required after a ballplayer's retirement.[50] At age 36, he was the second youngest player to be so honored (behind Sandy Koufax).[51]

[edit] Final years"Don't think I am depressed or pessimistic about my condition at present," Lou Gehrig wrote following his retirement from baseball. Struggling against his ever-worsening physical condition, he added, "I intend to hold on as long as possible and then if the inevitable comes, I will accept it philosophically and hope for the best. That's all we can do."[9]

 
Lou Gehrig Way in New Rochelle, NYIn October 1939, he accepted Mayor LaGuardia's appointment to a ten-year term as a New York City Parole Commissioner and was sworn into office on January 2, 1940.[50] The Parole Commission commended the ex-ballplayer for his "firm belief in parole, properly administered", stating that Gehrig "indicated he accepted the parole post because it represented an opportunity for public service. He had rejected other job offers – including lucrative speaking and guest appearance opportunities – worth far more financially than the $5,700 a year commissionership." Gehrig visited New York City's correctional facilities, but insisted that the visits not be covered by news media.[52] Gehrig, as always, quietly and efficiently performed his duties. He was often helped by his wife Eleanor, who would guide his hand when he had to sign official documents. About a month before his death, when Gehrig reached the point where his deteriorating physical condition made it impossible for him to continue in the job, he quietly resigned.[53]

On June 2, 1941, at 10:10 p.m., sixteen years to the day after he replaced Wally Pipp at first base and two years after his retirement from baseball, Lou Gehrig died at his home in the Riverdale section of the Bronx, New York.[54][55]

Upon hearing the news, Babe Ruth and his wife Claire went to the Gehrig house to console Eleanor. Mayor LaGuardia ordered flags in New York to be flown at half-staff, and Major League ballparks around the nation did likewise.[56]

Following the funeral at Christ Episcopal Church of Riverdale, Gehrig's remains were cremated and interred on June 4 at Kensico Cemetery in Valhalla, New York. Lou Gehrig and Ed Barrow are both interred in the same section of Kensico Cemetery, which is next door to Gate of Heaven Cemetery, where the graves of Babe Ruth and Billy Martin are located.[57]

 
Lou Gehrig's headstone in Kensico Cemetery (the year of his birth was inscribed erroneously as 1905)Eleanor Gehrig never remarried following her husband's death, dedicating the rest of her life to supporting ALS research.[16] She died on March 6, 1984, on her 80th birthday. They had no children.

The Yankees dedicated a monument to Gehrig in center field at Yankee Stadium on July 6, 1941, the shrine lauding him as, "A man, a gentleman and a great ballplayer whose amazing record of 2,130 consecutive games should stand for all time." Gehrig's monument joined the one placed there in 1932 to Miller Huggins, which would eventually be followed by Babe Ruth's in 1949.[27]

Gehrig's birthplace in Manhattan, at 1994 Second Avenue (near E. 103rd Street), is memorialized with a plaque marking the site, as is another early residence on E. 94th Street (near Second Avenue). The Gehrigs' white house at 5204 Delafield Avenue in the Riverdale section of the Bronx, where Lou Gehrig died, still stands today on the east side of the Henry Hudson Parkway and is likewise marked by a plaque.[22]

[edit] Records, awards, and accomplishmentsSixty years after his farewell to baseball, Gehrig received the most votes of any baseball player on the Major League Baseball All-Century Team, chosen by fan balloting in 1999.[4]

 

*

Fans, for the past two weeks you have been reading about the bad break I got. Yet today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth. I have been in ballparks for seventeen years and have never received anything but kindness and encouragement from you fans.

Look at these grand men. Which of you wouldn’t consider it the highlight of his career just to associate with them for even one day? Sure, I’m lucky. Who wouldn’t consider it an honor to have known Jacob Ruppert? Also, the builder of baseball’s greatest empire, Ed Barrow? To have spent six years with that wonderful little fellow, Miller Huggins? Then to have spent the next nine years with that outstanding leader, that smart student of psychology, the best manager in baseball today, Joe McCarthy? Sure, I'm lucky.

When the New York Giants, a team you would give your right arm to beat, and vice versa, sends you a gift — that’s something. When everybody down to the groundskeepers and those boys in white coats remember you with trophies — that’s something. When you have a wonderful mother-in-law who takes sides with you in squabbles with her own daughter — that's something. When you have a father and a mother who work all their lives so that you can have an education and build your body — it's a blessing. When you have a wife who has been a tower of strength and shown more courage than you dreamed existed — that's the finest I know.

So I close in saying that I might have been given a bad break, but I've got an awful lot to live for. Thank you.

 — Lou Gehrig at Yankee Stadium, July 4, 1939

 

 

JACKIE ROBINSON

 

Jack Roosevelt "Jackie" Robinson (January 31, 1919 – October 24, 1972) was the first black Major League Baseball (MLB) player of the modern era.[1] Robinson broke the baseball color line when he debuted with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947. As the first black man to play in the major leagues since the 1880s, he was instrumental in bringing an end to racial segregation in professional baseball, which had relegated black players to the Negro leagues for six decades.[2] The example of his character and unquestionable talent challenged the traditional basis of segregation, which then marked many other aspects of American life, and contributed significantly to the Civil Rights Movement.[3][4]

In addition to his cultural impact, Robinson had an exceptional baseball career. Over ten seasons, he played in six World Series and contributed to the Dodgers' 1955 World Championship. He was selected for six consecutive All-Star Games from 1949 to 1954,[5] was the recipient of the inaugural MLB Rookie of the Year Award in 1947, and won the National League Most Valuable Player Award in 1949 – the first black player so honored.[6] Robinson was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1962. In 1997, Major League Baseball retired his uniform number, 42, across all major league teams.

Robinson was also known for his pursuits outside the baseball diamond. He was the first black television analyst in Major League Baseball, and the first black vice-president of a major American corporation. In the 1960s, he helped establish the Freedom National Bank, an African-American-owned financial institution based in Harlem, New York. In recognition of his achievements on and off the field, Robinson was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Gold Medal.

Robinson was born on January 31, 1919, into a family of sharecroppers in Cairo, Georgia, during a Spanish flu and smallpox epidemic. He was the youngest of five children, after siblings Edgar, Frank, Matthew (nicknamed "Mack"), and Willa Mae.[7][8] His middle name was in honor of former President Theodore Roosevelt, who died twenty-five days before Robinson was born.[9][10] After Robinson's father left the family in 1920, they moved to Pasadena, California.[11][12][13] The extended Robinson family established itself on a residential plot containing two small houses at 121 Pepper Street in Pasadena. Robinson's mother worked various odd jobs to support the family.[14] Growing up in relative poverty in an otherwise affluent community, Robinson and his minority friends were excluded from many recreational opportunities.[15] As a result, Robinson joined a neighborhood gang, but his friend Carl Anderson persuaded him to abandon it.[15][16][17]

John Muir High SchoolIn 1935, Robinson graduated from Washington Junior High School and enrolled at John Muir High School (Muir Tech).[18] Recognizing his athletic talents, Robinson's older brothers Mack (himself an accomplished athlete and silver medalist at the 1936 Summer Olympics)[17] and Frank inspired Jackie to pursue his interest in sports.[19][20] At Muir Tech, Robinson played several sports at the varsity level and lettered in four of them: football, basketball, track, and baseball.[13] He played shortstop and catcher on the baseball team, quarterback on the football team, and guard on the basketball team. With the track and field squad, he won awards in the broad jump. He was also a member of the tennis team.[21]

In 1936, Robinson won the junior boys singles championship in the annual Pacific Coast Negro Tennis Tournament and earned a place on the Pomona annual baseball tournament all-star team, which included future Hall of Famers Ted Williams and Bob Lemon.[22] In late January 1937, the Pasadena Star-News newspaper reported that Robinson "for two years has been the outstanding athlete at Muir, starring in football, basketball, track, baseball and tennis."[23]

Pasadena Junior CollegeAfter Muir, Robinson attended Pasadena Junior College (PJC), where he continued his athletic career by participating in basketball, football, baseball, and track.[24] On the football team, he played quarterback and safety. He was a shortstop and leadoff hitter for the baseball team, and he broke school broad jump records held by his brother Mack.[13] As at Muir High School, most of Jackie's teammates were white.[22] While playing football at PJC, Robinson suffered a fractured ankle, complications from which would eventually delay his deployment status while in the military.[25][26] Also while at PJC, he was elected to the Lancers, a student-run police organization responsible for patrolling various school activities.[27] In 1938, he was elected to the All-Southland Junior College Team for baseball and selected as the region's Most Valuable Player.[20][28] That year, Robinson was one of ten students named to the school's Order of the Mast and Dagger (Omicron Mu Delta), awarded to students performing "outstanding service to the school and whose scholastic and citizenship record is worthy of recognition."[29]

An incident at PJC illustrated Robinson's impatience with authority figures he perceived as racist – a character trait that would resurface repeatedly in his life. On January 25, 1938, he was arrested after vocally disputing the detention of a black friend by police.[30] Robinson received a two-year suspended sentence, but the incident – along with other rumored run-ins between Robinson and police – gave Robinson a reputation for combativeness in the face of racial antagonism.[31] Toward the end of his PJC tenure, Frank Robinson (to whom Robinson felt closest among his three brothers) was killed in a motorcycle accident. The event motivated Jackie to pursue his athletic career at the nearby University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), where he could remain closer to Frank's family.[20][32]

UCLA and afterward
Robinson in his UCLA track uniformAfter graduating from PJC in spring 1939,[33] Robinson transferred to UCLA, where he became the school's first athlete to win varsity letters in four sports: baseball, basketball, football, and track.[34][35] He was one of four black players on the 1939 UCLA Bruins football team; the others were Woody Strode, Kenny Washington, and Ray Bartlett. Washington, Strode, and Robinson made up three of the team's four backfield players.[36] At a time when only a handful of black players existed in mainstream college football, this made UCLA college football's most integrated team.[37][38] In track and field, Robinson won the 1940 NCAA Men's Outdoor Track and Field Championship in the Long Jump, jumping 24'10.5".[39] Belying his future career, baseball was Robinson's "worst sport" at UCLA; he hit .097 in his only season, although in his first game he went 4-for-4 and twice stole home.[40]

While a senior at UCLA, Robinson met his future wife, Rachel Isum, a UCLA freshman who was familiar with Robinson's athletic career at PJC.[41] In the spring semester of 1941, despite his mother's and Isum's reservations, Robinson left college just shy of graduation.[42] He took a job as an assistant athletic director with the government's National Youth Administration (NYA) in Atascadero, California.[43][44][45]

After the government ceased NYA operations, Robinson traveled to Honolulu in fall 1941 to play football for the semi-professional, racially integrated Honolulu Bears.[43][45] After a short season, Robinson returned to California in December 1941 to pursue a career as running back for the Los Angeles Bulldogs of the Pacific Coast Football League.[46] By that time, however, the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor had taken place, drawing the United States into World War II and ending Robinson's nascent football career.[43]

Military career
Robinson in his Army uniform, c. 1943, during a visit to his home in Pasadena, California, receiving a military salute from his nephew FrankIn 1942, Robinson was drafted and assigned to a segregated Army cavalry unit in Fort Riley, Kansas. Having the requisite qualifications, Robinson and several other black soldiers applied for admission to an Officer Candidate School (OCS) then located at Fort Riley. Although the Army's initial July 1941 guidelines for OCS had been drafted as race-neutral, practically speaking few black applicants were admitted into OCS until after subsequent directives by Army leadership.[47] As a result, the applications of Robinson and his colleagues were delayed for several months.[48] After protests by heavyweight boxing champion Joe Louis (then stationed at Fort Riley) and the help of Truman Gibson (then an assistant civilian aide to the Secretary of War),[49] the men were accepted into OCS.[43][48][50] This common military experience spawned a personal friendship between Robinson and Louis.[51][52] Upon finishing OCS, Robinson was commissioned as a second lieutenant in January 1943.[35] Shortly afterward, Robinson and Isum were formally engaged.[48]

After receiving his commission, Robinson was reassigned to Fort Hood, Texas, where he joined the 761st "Black Panthers" Tank Battalion. While at Fort Hood, 2LT Robinson often used his weekend leave to visit the Rev. Karl Downs, President of Sam Huston College (now Huston-Tillotson University) in nearby Austin, Texas; Downs had been Robinson's pastor at Scott United Methodist Church while Robinson attended PJC.[30][53]

An event on July 6, 1944 derailed Robinson's military career.[54] While awaiting results of hospital tests on the ankle he had injured in junior college, Robinson boarded an Army bus with a fellow officer's wife; although the Army had commissioned its own unsegregated bus line, the bus driver ordered Robinson to move to the back of the bus.[55][56][57] Robinson refused. The driver backed down, but after reaching the end of the line, summoned the military police, who took Robinson into custody.[55][58] When Robinson later confronted the investigating duty officer about racist questioning by the officer and his assistant, the officer recommended Robinson be court-martialed.[55][59] After Robinson's commander in the 761st, Paul L. Bates, refused to authorize the legal action, Robinson was summarily transferred to the 758th Battalion – where the commander quickly consented to charge Robinson with multiple offenses, including, among other charges, public drunkenness – even though Robinson did not drink.[55][60]

By the time of the court-martial in August 1944, the charges against Robinson had been reduced to two counts of insubordination during questioning.[55] Robinson was acquitted by an all-white panel of nine officers.[55] Although his former unit, the 761st Tank Battalion, became the first black tank unit to see combat in World War II, Robinson's court-martial proceedings prohibited him from being deployed overseas, thus he never saw combat action.[61] After his acquittal, he was transferred to Camp Breckinridge, Kentucky, where he served as a coach for army athletics until receiving an honorable discharge in November 1944.[62] While there, Robinson met an ex-player for the Kansas City Monarchs of the Negro American League, who encouraged Robinson to write the Monarchs and ask for a tryout.[63] Robinson took the ex-player's advice and wrote Monarchs' co-owner Thomas Baird.[64]

Post-militaryAfter his discharge, Robinson briefly returned to his old football club, the Los Angeles Bulldogs.[46] Robinson then accepted an offer from his old friend and pastor Rev. Karl Downs to be the athletic director at Sam Huston College in Austin, then of the Southwestern Athletic Conference.[65] The job included coaching the school's basketball team for the 1944–45 season.[53] As a fledgling program, few students tried out for the basketball team, and Robinson even resorted to inserting himself into the lineup for exhibition games.[65][66] Although his teams were outmatched by opponents, Robinson was respected as a disciplinarian coach,[53] and drew the admiration of, among others, Langston University basketball player Marques Haynes, a future member of the Harlem Globetrotters.[67]

Baseball careerNegro leagues
Robinson in uniform for the Kansas City MonarchsIn early 1945, while Robinson was at Sam Huston College, the Kansas City Monarchs sent him a written offer to play professional baseball in the Negro leagues.[53][68] Robinson accepted a contract for $400 ($4,882 in 2011 dollars[69]) per month, a boon for him at the time.[43][70] Although he played well for the Monarchs, Robinson was frustrated with the experience. He had grown used to a structured playing environment in college, and the Negro leagues' disorganization and embrace of gambling interests appalled him.[71][72] The hectic travel schedule also placed a burden on his relationship with Isum, with whom he could now only communicate by letter.[73] In all, Robinson played 47 games at shortstop for the Monarchs, hitting .387 with five home runs, and registering 13 stolen bases.[74] He also appeared in the 1945 Negro League All-Star Game, going hitless in five at-bats.[75]

During the season, Robinson pursued potential major league interest. The Boston Red Sox held a tryout at Fenway Park for Robinson and other black players on April 16.[76] The tryout, however, was a farce chiefly designed to assuage the desegregationist sensibilities of powerful Boston City Councilman Isadore Muchnick.[77] Even with the stands limited to management, Robinson was subjected to racial epithets.[78] Robinson left the tryout humiliated,[76] and more than fourteen years later, in July 1959, the Red Sox became the last major league team to integrate its roster.[79]

Other teams, however, had more serious interest in signing a black ballplayer. In the mid-1940s, Branch Rickey, club president and general manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers, began to scout the Negro leagues for a possible addition to the Dodgers' roster. Rickey selected Robinson from a list of promising black players, and interviewed Robinson for possible assignment to Brooklyn's International League farm club, the Montreal Royals.[80] Rickey was especially interested in making sure his eventual signee could withstand the inevitable racial abuse that would be directed at him.[4][81] In a famous three-hour exchange on August 28, 1945, Rickey asked Robinson if he could face the racial animus without taking the bait and reacting angrily – a concern given Robinson's prior arguments with law enforcement officials at PJC and in the military.[43] Robinson was aghast: "Are you looking for a Negro who is afraid to fight back?"[81][82] Rickey replied that he needed a Negro player "with guts enough not to fight back."[81][82] After obtaining a commitment from Robinson to "turn the other cheek" to racial antagonism, Rickey agreed to sign him to a contract for $600 a month, equal to $7,322 today.[83][84]

Although he required Robinson to keep the arrangement a secret for the time being, Rickey committed to formally signing Robinson before November 1, 1945.[85] On October 23, it was publicly announced that Robinson would be assigned to the Royals for the 1946 season.[43][84][86] On the same day, with representatives of the Royals and Dodgers present, Robinson formally signed his contract with the Royals.[87] In what was later referred to as "The Noble Experiment",[43][88] Robinson was the first black baseball player in the International League since the 1880s.[89] Robinson was not necessarily the best player in the Negro leagues,[90] and black talents Satchel Paige and Josh Gibson were upset when Robinson was selected first.[91]

Rickey's offer allowed Robinson to leave the Monarchs and their grueling bus rides behind, and he went home to Pasadena. That September, he signed with Chet Brewer's Kansas City Royals, a post-season barnstorming team in the California Winter League.[92] Later that off-season, he briefly toured South America with another barnstorming team, while his fiancée Isum pursued nursing opportunities in New York City.[93] On February 10, 1946, Robinson and Isum were married by their old friend, Rev. Karl Downs.[43][94][95]

Minor leaguesIn 1946, Robinson arrived at Daytona Beach, Florida, for spring training with the Montreal Royals of the Class AAA International League (the designation of "AAA" for the highest level of minor league baseball was first used in the 1946 season). Robinson's presence was controversial in racially charged Florida. As he was not allowed to stay with his teammates at the team hotel, he lodged instead at the home of a local black politician.[96][97] Since the Dodgers organization did not own a spring training facility (the Dodger-controlled spring training compound in Vero Beach known as "Dodgertown" did not open until spring 1948),[98] scheduling was subject to the whim of area localities, several of which turned down any event involving Robinson or Johnny Wright, another black player whom Rickey had signed to the Dodgers' organization in January. In Sanford, Florida, the police chief threatened to cancel games if Robinson and Wright did not cease training activities there; as a result, Robinson was sent back to Daytona Beach.[99][100] In Jacksonville, the stadium was padlocked shut without warning on game day, by order of the city's Parks and Public Property director.[101][102] In DeLand, a scheduled day game was called off, ostensibly because of faulty electrical lighting.[103][104]

After much lobbying of local officials by Rickey himself, the Royals were allowed to host a game involving Robinson in Daytona Beach.[105][106] Robinson made his Royals debut at Daytona Beach's City Island Ballpark on March 17, 1946, in an exhibition game against the team's parent club, the Dodgers. Robinson thus simultaneously became the first black player to openly play for a minor league team and against a major league team since the de facto baseball color line had been implemented in the 1880s.[2] Later in spring training, after some less-than-stellar performances, Robinson was shifted from shortstop to second base, allowing him to make shorter throws to first base.[60] Robinson's performance soon rebounded. On April 18, 1946, Roosevelt Stadium hosted the Jersey City Giants' season opener against the Montreal Royals, marking the professional debut of the Royals' Jackie Robinson. In his five trips to the plate, Robinson had four hits, including a three-run home run. He also scored four runs, drove in three, and stole two bases in the Royals' 14–1 victory.[107] Robinson proceeded to lead the International League that season with a .349 batting average and .985 fielding percentage,[19] and he was named the league's Most Valuable Player.[108] Although he often faced hostility while on road trips (the Royals were forced to cancel a Southern exhibition tour, for example),[60] the Montreal fan base enthusiastically supported Robinson.[109][110] Whether fans supported or opposed it, Robinson's presence on the field was a boon to attendance; more than one million people went to games involving Robinson in 1946, an amazing figure by International League standards.[111] In the fall of 1946, following the baseball season, Robinson returned home to California and briefly played professional basketball for the short-lived Los Angeles Red Devils.[112][113]

Major leaguesBreaking the color barrier (1947)The following year, six days before the start of the 1947 season, the Dodgers called Robinson up to the major leagues. With Eddie Stanky entrenched at second base for the Dodgers, Robinson played his initial major league season as a first baseman.[81] On April 15, 1947, Robinson made his major league debut at Ebbets Field before a crowd of 26,623 spectators, including more than 14,000 black patrons.[114] Although he failed to get a base hit, the Dodgers won 5–3.[114] Robinson became the first player since 1880 to openly break the major league baseball color line.[115] Black fans began flocking to see the Dodgers when they came to town, abandoning their Negro league teams.[91]

Robinson's promotion met a generally positive, although mixed, reception among newspapers and white major league players.[111][116] However, racial tension existed in the Dodger clubhouse.[117] Some Dodger players insinuated they would sit out rather than play alongside Robinson. The brewing mutiny ended when Dodgers management took a stand for Robinson. Manager Leo Durocher informed the team, "I do not care if the guy is yellow or black, or if he has stripes like a fuckin' zebra. I'm the manager of this team, and I say he plays. What's more, I say he can make us all rich. And if any of you cannot use the money, I will see that you are all traded."[118]

Robinson was also derided by opposing teams. Some, notably the St. Louis Cardinals, threatened to strike if Robinson played. After the threat, National League President Ford Frick and Baseball Commissioner Happy Chandler let it be known that any striking players would be suspended.[119][120][121] Robinson nonetheless became the target of rough physical play by opponents (particularly the Cardinals). At one time, he received a seven-inch gash in his leg.[122] On April 22, 1947, during a game between the Dodgers and the Philadelphia Phillies, Phillies players called Robinson a "nigger" from their dugout and yelled that he should "go back to the cotton fields".[123][124] Rickey later recalled that Phillies manager Ben Chapman "did more than anybody to unite the Dodgers. When he poured out that string of unconscionable abuse, he solidified and united thirty men."[125]

Robinson received significant encouragement from several major league players. Dodgers teammate Pee Wee Reese once came to Robinson's defense with the famous line, "You can hate a man for many reasons. Color is not one of them."[126] In 1948, Reese put his arm around Robinson in response to fans who shouted racial slurs at Robinson before a game in Cincinnati.[127] A statue by sculptor William Behrends, unveiled at KeySpan Park on November 1, 2005, commemorates this event by representing Reese with his arm around Robinson.[128] Jewish baseball star Hank Greenberg, who had to deal with racial epithets during his career, also encouraged Robinson. After colliding with Robinson at first base on one occasion, Greenberg whispered a few words into Robinson's ear, which Robinson later characterized as "words of encouragement."[129] Greenberg had advised him that the best way to combat the slurs from the opposing players was to beat them on the field.[129]

Robinson finished the season with 12 home runs, a league-leading 29 steals, a .297 batting average, a .427 slugging percentage, and 125 runs scored.[130] His cumulative performance earned him the inaugural Major League Baseball Rookie of the Year Award (separate National and American League Rookie of the Year honors were not awarded until 1949).[131]

MVP, Congressional testimony, and film biography (1948–1950)Further information: Paul Robeson Congressional Hearings
Following Stanky's trade to the Boston Braves in March 1948, Robinson took over second base, where he logged a .980 fielding percentage that year (second in the National League at the position, fractionally behind Stanky).[132] Robinson had a batting average of .296 and 22 stolen bases for the season.[133] In a 12–7 win against the St. Louis Cardinals on August 29, 1948, he hit for the cycle – a home run, a triple, a double, and a single in the same game.[134] The Dodgers briefly moved into first place in the National League in late August 1948, but they ultimately finished third as the Braves went on to win the league title and lose to the Cleveland Indians in the World Series.[135]

Racial pressure on Robinson eased in 1948 as a number of other black players entered the major leagues. Larry Doby (who broke the color barrier in the American League on July 5, 1947) and Satchel Paige played for the Cleveland Indians, and the Dodgers had three other black players besides Robinson.[132] In February 1948, he signed a $12,500 contract (equal to $114,043 today) with the Dodgers; while a significant amount, this was less than Robinson made in the off-season from a vaudeville tour, where he answered pre-set baseball questions, and a speaking tour of the South. Between the tours, he underwent surgery on his right ankle. Because of his off-season activities, Robinson reported to training camp 30 pounds (14 kg) overweight. He lost the weight during training camp, but dieting left him weak at the plate.[136]

In the spring of 1949, Robinson turned to Hall of Famer George Sisler, working as an advisor to the Dodgers, for batting help. At Sisler's suggestion, Robinson spent hours at a batting tee, learning to hit the ball to right field.[137] Sisler taught Robinson to anticipate a fastball, on the theory that it is easier to subsequently adjust to a slower curveball.[137] Robinson also noted that "Sisler showed me how to stop lunging, how to check my swing until the last fraction of a second".[137] The tutelage helped Robinson raise his batting average from .296 in 1948 to .342 in 1949.[137] In addition to his improved batting average, Robinson stole 37 bases that season, was second place in the league for both doubles and triples, and registered 124 runs batted in with 122 runs scored.[81] For the performance Robinson earned the Most Valuable Player award for the National League.[81] Baseball fans also voted Robinson as the starting second baseman for the 1949 All-Star Game – the first All-Star Game to include black players.[138][139]

That year, a song about Robinson by Buddy Johnson, "Did You See Jackie Robinson Hit That Ball?", reached number 13 on the charts; Count Basie recorded a famous version.[140] Ultimately, the Dodgers won the National League pennant, but lost in five games to the New York Yankees in the 1949 World Series.[132]

Summer 1949 brought an unwanted distraction for Robinson. In July, he was called to testify before the United States House of Representatives' Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) concerning statements made that April by black athlete and actor Paul Robeson. Robinson was reluctant to testify, but he eventually agreed to do so, fearing it might negatively affect his career if he declined.[141]

 
Lobby card for The Jackie Robinson Story, 1950, with Minor Watson (left, playing Dodgers president Branch Rickey) and RobinsonIn 1950, Robinson led the National League in double plays made by a second baseman with 133.[134] His salary that year was the highest any Dodger had been paid to that point: $35,000[142] ($319,320 in 2011 dollars[69]). He finished the year with 99 runs scored, a .328 batting average, and 12 stolen bases.[133] The year saw the release of a film biography of Robinson's life, The Jackie Robinson Story, in which Robinson played himself,[143] and actress Ruby Dee played Rachael "Rae" (Isum) Robinson.[144] The project had been previously delayed when the film's producers refused to accede to demands of two Hollywood studios that the movie include scenes of Robinson being tutored in baseball by a white man.[145] The New York Times wrote that Robinson, "doing that rare thing of playing himself in the picture's leading role, displays a calm assurance and composure that might be envied by many a Hollywood star."[146]

Robinson's Hollywood exploits, however, did not sit well with Dodgers co-owner Walter O'Malley, who referred to Robinson as "Rickey's prima donna".[147] In late 1950, Rickey's contract as the Dodgers' team President expired. Weary of constant disagreements with O'Malley, and with no hope of being re-appointed as President of the Dodgers, Rickey cashed out his one-quarter financial interest in the team, leaving O'Malley in full control of the franchise.[148] Rickey shortly thereafter became general manager of the Pittsburgh Pirates. Robinson was disappointed at the turn of events and wrote a sympathetic letter to Rickey, whom he considered a father figure, stating, "Regardless of what happens to me in the future, it all can be placed on what you have done and, believe me, I appreciate it."[149][150]

Pennant races and outside interests (1951–1953)Before the 1951 season, O'Malley reportedly offered Robinson the job of manager of the Montreal Royals, effective at the end of Robinson's playing career. O'Malley was quoted in the Montreal Standard as saying, "Jackie told me that he would be both delighted and honored to tackle this managerial post" – although reports differed as to whether a position was ever formally offered.[151][152]

During the 1951 season, Robinson led the National League in double plays made by a second baseman for the second year in a row, with 137.[134] He also kept the Dodgers in contention for the 1951 pennant. During the last game of the season, in the 13th inning, he had a hit to tie the game, and then won the game with a home run in the 14th. This forced a playoff against the New York Giants, which the Dodgers lost.[153]

 
Cover of a Jackie Robinson comic book, issue #5, 1951Despite Robinson's regular-season heroics, the Dodgers lost the pennant on Bobby Thomson's famous home run, known as the Shot Heard 'Round the World, on October 3, 1951. Overcoming his dejection, Robinson dutifully observed Thomson's feet to ensure he touched all the bases. Dodgers sportscaster Vin Scully later noted that the incident showed "how much of a competitor Robinson was."[154] He finished the season with 106 runs scored, a batting average of .335, and 25 stolen bases.[133]

Robinson had what was an average year for him in 1952.[155] He finished the year with 104 runs, a .308 batting average, and 24 stolen bases.[133] He did, however, record a career-high on-base percentage of .436.[133] The Dodgers improved on their performance from the year before, winning the National League pennant before losing the 1952 World Series to the New York Yankees in seven games. That year, on the television show Youth Wants to Know, Robinson challenged the Yankees' general manager, George Weiss, on the racial record of his team, which had yet to sign a black player.[156] Sportswriter Dick Young, whom Robinson had described as a "bigot", said, "If there was one flaw in Jackie, it was the common one. He believed that everything unpleasant that happened to him happened because of his blackness."[157] The 1952 season was the last year Robinson was an everyday starter at second base. Afterward, Robinson played variously at first, second, and third bases, shortstop, and in the outfield, with Jim Gilliam, another black player, taking over everyday second base duties.[133] Robinson's interests began to shift toward the prospect of managing a major league team. He had hoped to gain experience by managing in the Puerto Rican Winter League, but according to the New York Post, Commissioner Happy Chandler denied the request.[158]

In 1953, Robinson had 109 runs, a .329 batting average, and 17 steals,[133] leading the Dodgers to another National League pennant (and another World Series loss to the Yankees, this time in six games). Robinson's continued success spawned a string of death threats.[159] He was not dissuaded, however, from addressing racial issues publicly. That year, he served as editor for Our Sports magazine, a periodical focusing on Negro sports issues; contributions to the magazine included an article on golf course segregation by Robinson's old friend Joe Louis.[160][161] Robinson also openly criticized segregated hotels and restaurants that served the Dodger organization; a number of these establishments integrated as a result, including the five-star Chase Park Hotel in St. Louis.[122][162]

World Championship and retirement (1954–1956)In 1954, Robinson had 62 runs, a .311 batting average, and 7 steals. His best day at the plate was on June 17, when he hit two home runs and two doubles.[133][134] The following autumn, Robinson won his only championship when the Dodgers beat the New York Yankees in the 1955 World Series. Although the team enjoyed ultimate success, 1955 was the worst year of Robinson's individual career. He hit .256 and stole only 12 bases. The Dodgers tried Robinson in the outfield and as a third baseman, both because of his diminishing abilities and because Gilliam was established at second base.[163] Robinson, then 37 years old, missed 49 games and did not play in Game 7 of the World Series.[154] Robinson missed the game because manager Walter Alston decided to play Gilliam at second and Don Hoak at third base. That season, the Dodgers' Don Newcombe became the first black major league pitcher to win twenty games in a year.[164]

In 1956, Robinson had 61 runs, a .275 batting average, and 12 steals.[133] By then, he had begun to exhibit the effects of diabetes, and to lose interest in the prospect of playing or managing professional baseball.[158] After the season, Robinson was traded by the Dodgers to the arch-rival New York Giants for Dick Littlefield and $35,000 cash (equal to $282,838 today). The trade, however, was never completed; unbeknownst to the Dodgers, Robinson had already agreed with the president of Chock full o'Nuts to quit baseball and become an executive with the company.[165] Since Robinson had sold exclusive rights to any retirement story to Look magazine two years previously,[165] his retirement decision was revealed through the magazine, instead of through the Dodgers organization.[166]

Legacy
Robinson and his son David (then age 11) are interviewed during the March on Washington, August 28, 1963.Further information: Racial integration in baseball
Robinson's major league debut brought an end to approximately sixty years of segregation in professional baseball, known as the baseball color line.[115] After World War II, several other forces were also leading the country toward increased equality for blacks, including their accelerated migration of to the North, where their political clout grew, and President Harry Truman's desegregation of the military in 1948.[167] Robinson's breaking of the baseball color line and his professional success symbolized these broader changes and demonstrated that the fight for equality was more than simply a political matter. Martin Luther King, Jr. said that he was "a legend and a symbol in his own time", and that he "challenged the dark skies of intolerance and frustration."[168] According to historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, Robinson's "efforts were a monumental step in the civil-rights revolution in America ... [His] accomplishments allowed black and white Americans to be more respectful and open to one another and more appreciative of everyone's abilities."[169]

Beginning his major league career at the relatively advanced age of twenty-eight, he played only ten seasons, all of them for the Brooklyn Dodgers.[170] During his career, the Dodgers played in six World Series, and Robinson himself played in six All-Star Games.[5] In 1999, he was posthumously named to the Major League Baseball All-Century Team.[171]

Robinson's career is generally considered to mark the beginning of the post–"long ball" era in baseball, in which a reliance on raw power-hitting gave way to balanced offensive strategies that used footspeed to create runs through aggressive baserunning.[172] Robinson exhibited the combination of hitting ability and speed which exemplified the new era. He scored more than 100 runs in six of his ten seasons (averaging more than 110 runs from 1947 to 1953), had a .311 career batting average, a .409 career on-base percentage, a .474 slugging percentage, and substantially more walks than strikeouts (740 to 291).[133][170][173] Robinson was one of only two players during the span of 1947–56 to accumulate at least 125 steals while registering a slugging percentage over .425 (Minnie Miñoso was the other).[174] He accumulated 197 stolen bases in total,[133] including 19 steals of home. None of the latter were double steals (in which a player stealing home is assisted by a player stealing another base at the same time).[175] Robinson has been referred to by author David Falkner as "the father of modern base-stealing."[176]

"I'm not concerned with your liking or disliking me ... all I ask is that you respect me as a human being."

—Robinson, on his legacy[126]Historical statistical analysis indicates Robinson was an outstanding fielder throughout his ten years in the major leagues and at virtually every position he played.[177] After playing his rookie season at first base,[81] Robinson spent most of his career as a second baseman.[178] He led the league in fielding among second basemen in 1950 and 1951.[179][180] Toward the end of his career, he played about 2,000 innings at third base and about 1,175 innings in the outfield, excelling at both.[177]

Assessing himself, Robinson said, "I'm not concerned with your liking or disliking me ... all I ask is that you respect me as a human being."[126] Regarding Robinson's qualities on the field, Leo Durocher said, "Ya want a guy that comes to play. This guy didn't just come to play. He come to beat ya. He come to stuff the goddamn bat right up your ass."[181]

Post-baseball lifeRobinson retired from baseball on January 5, 1957.[182] Later that year, after he complained of numerous physical ailments, his doctors diagnosed Robinson with diabetes, a disease that also affected his brothers.[183] Although Robinson adopted an insulin injection regimen, the state of medicine at the time could not prevent continued deterioration of Robinson's physical condition from the disease.[184]

 
Color movie still featuring Robinson in the 1960sIn his first year of eligibility for the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1962,[61] Robinson encouraged voters to consider only his on-field qualifications, rather than his cultural impact on the game.[185] He was elected on the first ballot, becoming the first black player inducted into the Cooperstown museum.[19]

In 1965, Robinson served as an analyst for ABC's Major League Baseball Game of the Week telecasts, the first black person to do so.[186] In 1966, Robinson was hired as general manager for the short-lived Brooklyn Dodgers of the Continental Football League.[187][188] In 1972, he served as a part-time commentator on Montreal Expos telecasts.[189]

On June 4, 1972, the Dodgers retired his uniform number, 42, alongside those of Roy Campanella (39) and Sandy Koufax (32).[190] From 1957 to 1964, Robinson was the vice president for personnel at Chock full o'Nuts; he was the first black person to serve as vice president of a major American corporation.[19][191] Robinson always considered his business career as advancing the cause of black people in commerce and industry.[192] Robinson also chaired the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People's (NAACP) million-dollar Freedom Fund Drive in 1957, and served on the organization's board until 1967.[191] In 1964, he helped found, with Harlem businessman Dunbar McLaurin, Freedom National Bank – a black-owned and operated commercial bank based in Harlem.[191] He also served as the bank's first Chairman of the Board.[193] In 1970, Robinson established the Jackie Robinson Construction Company to build housing for low-income families.[191][194]

Robinson was active in politics throughout his post-baseball life. He identified himself as a political independent[195][196] although he held conservative opinions on several issues, including the Vietnam War (he once wrote Martin Luther King, Jr. to defend the Johnson Administration's military policy).[197] After supporting Richard Nixon in his 1960 presidential race against John F. Kennedy, Robinson later praised Kennedy effusively for his stance on civil rights.[198] He subsequently supported Hubert Humphrey against Nixon in 1968.[166] In 1964, Robinson became one of six national directors for Nelson Rockefeller's Republican presidential campaign and later became special assistant for community affairs when Rockefeller was re-elected governor of New York in 1966.[191]

Protesting the major leagues' ongoing lack of minority managers and central office personnel, Robinson turned down an invitation to appear in an old-timers' game at Yankee Stadium in 1969.[199] He made his final public appearance on October 15, 1972, throwing the ceremonial first pitch before Game 2 of the World Series. He gratefully accepted a plaque honoring the twenty-fifth anniversary of his MLB debut, but also commented, "I'm going to be tremendously more pleased and more proud when I look at that third base coaching line one day and see a black face managing in baseball."[200] This wish was fulfilled only after Robinson's death: following the 1974 season, the Cleveland Indians gave their managerial post to Frank Robinson (no relation), a Hall of Fame-bound player who would go on to manage three other teams. Despite the success of these two Robinsons and other black players, the number of African-American players in Major League Baseball has declined since the 1970s.[201][202]

Family life and deathAfter Robinson's retirement from baseball, his wife, Rachel Robinson, pursued a career in academic nursing – she became an assistant professor at the Yale School of Nursing and director of nursing at the Connecticut Mental Health Center.[203] She also served on the board of the Freedom National Bank until it closed in 1990.[204] She and Jackie had three children: Jackie Robinson Jr. (born November 18, 1946), Sharon Robinson (born January 13, 1950), and David Robinson (born May 14, 1952).[205]

 
Robinson's family gravesite in Cypress Hills Cemetery. Robinson is buried alongside his mother-in-law Zellee Isum and his son Jackie Robinson, Jr.Robinson's eldest son, Jackie Robinson Jr., had emotional trouble during his childhood and entered special education at an early age.[206] He enrolled in the Army in search of a disciplined environment, served in the Vietnam War, and was wounded in action on November 19, 1965.[207] After his discharge, he struggled with drug problems. Robinson Jr. eventually completed the treatment program at Daytop Village in Seymour, Connecticut, and became a counselor at the institution.[208] On June 17, 1971, at the age of 24, he was killed in an automobile accident.[209][210] The experience with his son's drug addiction turned Robinson, Sr. into an avid anti-drug crusader toward the end of his life.[211]

Robinson did not long outlive his son. Complications of heart disease and diabetes weakened Robinson and made him almost blind by middle age. On October 24, 1972, he died of a heart attack at home in Stamford, Connecticut, aged fifty-three.[81][209] Robinson's funeral service on October 27, 1972, at New York City's Riverside Church attracted 2,500 admirers.[212] Many of his former teammates and other famous black baseball players served as pallbearers, and the Rev. Jesse Jackson gave the eulogy.[212] Tens of thousands of people lined the subsequent procession route to Robinson's interment site at Cypress Hills Cemetery in Brooklyn, New York, where he is buried next to his son Jackie and mother-in-law Zellee Isum.[212] Jackie Robinson Parkway also runs through the cemetery.[213]

After Robinson's death, his widow founded the Jackie Robinson Foundation, of which she remains an officer as of 2009.[81][214] On April 15, 2008, she announced that in 2010 the foundation will be opening a museum devoted to Jackie in Lower Manhattan.[215] Robinson's daughter, Sharon, became a midwife, educator, director of educational programming for MLB, and the author of two books about her father.[216] His youngest son, David, who has ten children, is a coffee grower and social activist in Tanzania.[217][218]

Awards and recognitionAccording to a poll conducted in 1947, Robinson was the second most popular man in the country, behind Bing Crosby.[219] In 1999, he was named by Time on its list of the 100 most influential people of the 20th century.[220] Also in 1999, he ranked number 44 on the Sporting News list of Baseball's 100 Greatest Players[221] and was elected to the Major League Baseball All-Century Team as the top vote-getter among second basemen.[222][223] Baseball writer Bill James, in The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract, ranked Robinson as the 32nd greatest player of all time strictly on the basis of his performance on the field, noting that he was one of the top players in the league throughout his career.[224] Robinson was among the 25 charter members of UCLA’s Athletics Hall of Fame in 1984.[40] In 2002, Molefi Kete Asante included Robinson on his list of 100 Greatest African Americans.[225] Robinson has also been honored by the United States Postal Service on three separate postage stamps, in 1982, 1999, and 2000.[226]

 
Memorial in the Jackie Robinson Rotunda inside Citi Field, dedicated April 15, 2009The City of Pasadena has recognized Robinson in several ways. Brookside Park, situated next to the Rose Bowl, features a baseball diamond and stadium named Jackie Robinson Field.[227] The city's Human Services Department operates the Jackie Robinson Center, a community outreach center that provides early diabetes detection and other services.[228] In 1997, a $325,000 bronze sculpture (equal to $444,644 today) by artists Ralph Helmick, Stu Schecter, and John Outterbridge depicting oversized nine-foot busts of Robinson and his brother Mack was erected at Garfield Avenue, across from the main entrance of Pasadena City Hall; a granite footprint lists multiple donors to the commission project, which was organized by the Robinson Memorial Foundation and supported by members of the Robinson family.[229][230]

Major League Baseball has honored Robinson many times since his death. In 1987, both the National and American League Rookie of the Year Awards were renamed the "Jackie Robinson Award" in honor of the first recipient (Robinson's Major League Rookie of the Year Award in 1947 encompassed both leagues).[231][232] On April 15, 1997, Robinson's jersey number, 42, was retired throughout Major League Baseball, the first time any jersey number had been retired throughout one of the four major American sports leagues.[233]

As an exception to the retired-number policy, MLB has recently begun honoring Robinson by allowing players to wear number 42 on April 15, Jackie Robinson Day. For the 60th anniversary of Robinson's major league debut, MLB invited players to wear the number 42 on Jackie Robinson Day in 2007. The gesture was originally the idea of outfielder Ken Griffey, Jr., who sought Rachel Robinson's permission to wear the number.[234] After receiving her permission, Commissioner Bud Selig not only allowed Griffey to wear the number, but also extended an invitation to all major league teams to do the same.[235] Ultimately, more than 200 players wore number 42, including the entire rosters of the Los Angeles Dodgers, New York Mets, Houston Astros, Philadelphia Phillies, St. Louis Cardinals, Milwaukee Brewers, and Pittsburgh Pirates.[236] The tribute was continued in 2008, when, during games on April 15, all members of the Mets, Cardinals, Washington Nationals, and Tampa Bay Rays wore Robinson's number 42.[237][238] On June 25, 2008, MLB installed a new plaque for Robinson at the Baseball Hall of Fame commemorating his off-the-field impact on the game as well as his playing statistics.[185] In 2009, all uniformed personnel (players, managers, coaches, and umpires) wore number 42 on April 15.[239]

 
Headquarters of the Jackie Robinson Foundation and planned home of the Jackie Robinson Museum and Learning CenterAt the November 2006 groundbreaking for a new ballpark for the New York Mets, Citi Field, it was announced that the main entrance, modeled on the one in Brooklyn's old Ebbets Field, would be called the Jackie Robinson Rotunda. The rotunda was dedicated at the opening of Citi Field on April 16, 2009.[240] It honors Robinson with large quotations spanning the inner curve of the facade and features a large freestanding statue of his number, 42, which has become an attraction in itself. Mets owner Fred Wilpon announced that, in conjunction with Citigroup and the Jackie Robinson Foundation, the Mets will create a Jackie Robinson Museum and Learning Center, located at the headquarters of the Jackie Robinson Foundation at One Hudson Square in lower Manhattan. The main purpose of the museum will be to fund scholarships for "young people who live by and embody Jackie's ideals."[241][242][243]

Robinson has also been recognized outside of baseball. In December 1956, the NAACP recognized him with the Spingarn Medal, which it awards annually for the highest achievement by an African-American.[191] President Ronald Reagan posthumously awarded Robinson the Presidential Medal of Freedom on March 26, 1984,[244] and on March 2, 2005, President George W. Bush gave Robinson's widow the Congressional Gold Medal, the highest civilian award bestowed by Congress; Robinson was only the second baseball player to receive the award, after Roberto Clemente.[245] On August 20, 2007, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and his wife, Maria Shriver, announced that Robinson was inducted into the California Hall of Fame, located at The California Museum for History, Women and the Arts in Sacramento.[246]

 
Rachel Robinson (third from left) accepts the posthumous Congressional Gold Medal for her husband from President George W. Bush in a March 2, 2005 ceremony in the Capitol Rotunda. Also pictured are Nancy Pelosi (left) and Dennis Hastert (right).A number of buildings have been named in Robinson's honor. The UCLA Bruins baseball team plays in Jackie Robinson Stadium,[247] which, because of the efforts of Jackie's brother Mack, features a memorial statue of Robinson by sculptor Richard H. Ellis.[248] City Island Ballpark in Daytona Beach, Florida – the baseball field that became the Dodgers' de facto spring training site in 1947 – was renamed Jackie Robinson Ballpark in 1989.[249] A number of facilities at Pasadena City College (successor to PJC) are named in Robinson's honor, including Robinson Field, a football/soccer/track facility named jointly for Robinson and his brother Mack.[250] The New York Public School system has named a middle school after Robinson,[251] and Dorsey High School plays at a Los Angeles football stadium named after him.[252] In 1976, his home in Brooklyn, the Jackie Robinson House, was declared a National Historic Landmark.[253] Robinson also has an asteroid named after him, 4319 Jackierobinson.[254] In 1997, the United States Mint issued a Jackie Robinson commemorative silver dollar, and five dollar gold coin.[255] That same year, New York City renamed the Interboro Parkway in his honor.

In 2011, the US plans to place a plaque at his Montreal home to honour the begin of the end of segregation in baseball.[256] The home is located at 8232 avenue de Gaspe south of rue de Guizot Est and near Jarry Park and close to Delorimier Stadium, where Robinson played for the Montreal Royals during 1946. in a letter read during the ceremony, Rachel Robinson, Jackie's widow, wrote: "I remember Montreal and that house very well and have always had warm feeling for that great city. Before Jack and I moved to Montreal, we had just been through some very rough treatment in the racially biased South during spring training in Florida. In the end, Montreal was the perfect place for him to get his start. We never had a threatening or unpleasant experience there. The people were so welcoming and saw Jack as a player and as a man."

 

 

WILLIE MAYS

 

William Howard "Willie" Mays, Jr. (born May 6, 1931) is a former American professional baseball player who played the majority of his major league career with the New York and San Francisco Giants before finishing with the New York Mets. Nicknamed The Say Hey Kid, Mays was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1979, his first year of eligibility. Many consider him to be the greatest all-around player of all time.[1][2][3][4][5][6][7]

Mays won two MVP awards and tied Stan Musial's record with 24 appearances in the All-Star Game. He ended his career with 660 home runs, third at the time of his retirement, and currently fourth all-time. In 1999, Mays placed second on The Sporting News' List of the 100 Greatest Baseball Players, making him the highest-ranking living player. Later that year, he was also elected to the Major League Baseball All-Century Team. Mays is the only Major League player to have hit a home run in every inning from the 1st through the 16th. He finished his career with a record 22 extra-inning home runs. Mays is one of five NL players to have eight consecutive 100-RBI seasons, along with Mel Ott, Sammy Sosa, Chipper Jones and Albert Pujols. Mays hit 50 or more home runs in both 1955 and 1965. This time span represents the longest stretch between 50 plus home run seasons for any player in Major League Baseball history.

Upon his Hall of Fame induction, Mays was asked who was the best player that he had seen during his career. Mays replied, "I don't mean to be bashful, but I was."[8] Ted Williams once said "They invented the All-Star Game for Willie Mays."

Mays was born in Westfield, Alabama, just outside of Birmingham, Alabama. His father, who was named for president William Howard Taft, was a talented baseball player with the Negro team for the local iron plant.[11] His mother Annie Satterwhite was a gifted basketball and track star in high school.[12] His parents never married each other.[12] As a baby he was cared for by his mother's two younger sisters Sarah and Ernestine. Sarah became the primary female role model in Mays life.[13] His father exposed Mays to baseball at an early age, and by the age of five he was playing catch with his father.[14] At the age of 10, Mays was allowed to sit in the bench of his father's Industrial League games.[15]

Mays was gifted in multiple sports, averaging 17 points a game (quite high for the time) for the Fairfield Industrial H.S. basketball team, and more than 40 yards a punt in football. He also starred at quarterback. He graduated from Fairfield in 1950.

[edit] Early professional career[edit] Negro leaguesMays' professional baseball career began in 1947, when he was still in high school, when he played briefly with the Chattanooga Choo-Choos in Tennessee during the summer, after school had let out. Shortly thereafter, Mays left the Choo-Choos, returned to his home state, and joined the Birmingham Black Barons of the Negro American League. Mays helped the Black Barons win their pennant and advance to the 1948 Negro Leagues World Series, where they lost 4 games to 1 to the Homestead Grays. Mays hit just .226 for the season, but his excellent fielding and baserunning made him a useful player. However, by playing professionally with the Black Barons, Mays jeopardized his opportunities to play high school sports in Alabama state competition, and this created some problems for him with high school administration at Fairfield, which wanted him on their teams, to sell tickets and help teams win.[16]

Over the next several years, a number of Major League baseball franchises sent scouts to watch him play. The first was the Boston Braves. The scout who found him, Bud Maughn, referred him to the Braves, but they declined. Had the team taken an interest, the Braves franchise might have had Mays and Hank Aaron together in its outfield from 1954 to 1973. The Brooklyn Dodgers also scouted him, but concluded he could not hit the curve ball. Maughn then tipped a scout for the New York Giants, which signed Mays in 1950 and assigned him to their Class-B affiliate in Trenton, New Jersey.[17]

[edit] Minor leaguesAfter Mays had a batting average of .353 in Trenton, N.J., he began the 1951 season with the class AAA Minneapolis Millers of the American Association. During his short time span in Minneapolis, Mays played with two other future Hall of Famers, Hoyt Wilhelm and Ray Dandridge. Batting .477 in 35 games and playing excellent defense, Mays was called up to the Giants on May 24, 1951; he appeared in his first major league game the next day in Philadelphia. Mays moved to Harlem, New York, where his mentor was a New York State Boxing Commission official and former Harlem Rens basketball legend Frank "Strangler" Forbes.

[edit] Major leagues[edit] New York Giants (1951–57)Mays began his major league career with no hits in his first twelve at bats. On his thirteenth at bat, he hit a homer over the left field fence of the Polo Grounds off Warren Spahn.[18] Spahn later joked, "I'll never forgive myself. We might have gotten rid of Willie forever if I'd only struck him out." Mays' average improved steadily throughout the rest of the season. Although his .274 average, 68 RBI and 20 homers (in 121 games) were among the lowest of his career, he still won the 1951 Rookie of the Year Award. During the Giants' comeback in August and September 1951 to overtake the Dodgers in the 1951 pennant race, Mays' fielding, and great arm were often instrumental to several important Giant victories.[19] Mays ended the regular season in the on-deck circle when Bobby Thomson hit the Shot Heard 'Round the World against the Brooklyn Dodgers, to win the three-game playoff by 2 games to 1, after the teams had tied at the end of the regular season.

 
The Catch: Willie Mays hauls in Vic Wertz's drive at the warning track in the 1954 World Series.The Giants went on to meet the New York Yankees in the 1951 World Series. Mays was part of the first all African-American outfield in major league history, along with Hank Thompson and Hall of Famer Monte Irvin in Game One of the 1951 World Series.[20] Mays hit poorly, while the Giants lost the series four games to two. The six-game set was the only time that Mays and the aging Joe DiMaggio would play on the same field.[21]

Mays was a popular figure in Harlem. Magazine photographers were fond of chronicling his participation in local stickball games with kids. It was said that in the urban game of hitting a rubber ball with the handle of an adapted broomstick, Mays could hit a shot that measured "six sewers" (the distance of six consecutive NYC manhole covers- nearly 300 feet). [22] [23]

The United States Army drafted Mays in 1952 and he subsequently missed most of the 1952 season and all of the 1953 season. Despite the Korean War, Mays spent most of his time in the army playing baseball at Fort Eustis, Va.[24] Mays missed about 266 games due to military service.

Mays returned to the Giants in 1954, hitting for a league-leading .345 batting average and slugging 41 home runs. Mays won the National League Most Valuable Player Award and the Hickok Belt as top professional athlete of the year. In addition, the Giants won the National League pennant and the 1954 World Series, sweeping the Cleveland Indians in four games. The 1954 series is perhaps best remembered for "The Catch", an over-the-shoulder running grab by Mays in deep center field of the Polo Grounds of a long drive off the bat of Vic Wertz during the eighth inning of Game 1. Considered the iconic image of Mays' playing career and one of baseball's most memorable fielding plays,[25] the catch prevented two Indians runners from scoring, preserving a tie game. The Giants won the game in the 10th inning, with Mays scoring the winning run. The Giants went onto win the 1954 World Series, the New York Giants' final championship. 56 years later, the San Francisco Giants won the World Series in 2010, their first after relocation.

Mays went on to perform at a high level each of the last three years the Giants were in New York City. In 1956, he hit 36 homers and stole 40 bases, being only the second player and first National League player to join the "30-30 club". In 1957, the first season the Gold Glove award was presented, he won the first of twelve consecutive Gold Glove Awards. At the same time, Mays continued to finish in the NL's top five in a variety of offensive categories. Mays, Roberto Clemente (also with twelve) , Al Kaline, and Ken Griffey, Jr. are the only outfielders to have ten or more career Gold Gloves. 1957 also saw Mays become the fourth player in Major League history to join the 20–20–20 club (2B,3B,HR). No player had joined the "club" since 1941. George Brett accomplished the feat in 1979; and both Curtis Granderson and Jimmy Rollins joined the club in 2007. Mays also stole 38 bases in 1957; Mays was the second player in baseball history (after Frank Schulte in 1911) to reach 20 in each of those four categories (doubles, triples, homers, steals) in the same season. Both Jimmy Rollins and Curtis Granderson achieved the feat in 2007.[26]

[edit] San Francisco Giants (1958–72)The Giants were not one of the top teams in the National League between 1955 and 1960; they never finished higher than third place or won more than 83 games in a season. After the 1957 season, the Giants franchise and Mays relocated to San Francisco, California. Mays bought two homes in San Francisco, then lived in nearby Atherton.[27][28] 1958 found Mays vying for the NL batting title, down to the final game of the season, just as in 1954. Mays collected three hits in the game, to finish with a career-high .347, but Philadelphia Phillies' Richie Ashburn won the title with a .350 average. In 1959 the Giants led by two games with only eight games to play, but could only win two of their remaining games and finished fourth, as their pitching staff collapsed due to overwork of their top hurlers. The Dodgers won the pennant following a playoff with the Milwaukee Braves.[29] As he did in New York, Willie Mays would "play around" with kids playing sandlot ball in San Francisco. On three occasions, in 1959 or 1960, he visited Julius Kahn Playground, five blocks from where he lived, once with other Giants (Jim Davenport and Tom Haller)!

Alvin Dark was hired to manage the Giants before the start of the 1961 season, and named Mays team captain. The improving Giants finished '61 in third place and won 85 games, more than any of the previous six campaigns. Mays had one of his best games on April 30, 1961, hitting four home runs against the Milwaukee Braves in County Stadium. Mays went 4 for 5 at the plate and was on deck for a chance to hit a record fifth home run when the Giants' half of the ninth inning ended.[30][31] Mays is the only Major Leaguer to have both a three-triple game and a four-HR game.[32][33]

The Giants won the National League pennant in 1962, with Mays leading the team in eight offensive categories. The team finished the regular season in a tie for first place with the Los Angeles Dodgers, and went on to win a three-game playoff series versus the Dodgers, advancing to play in the World Series. The Giants lost to the Yankees in seven games, and Mays hit just .250 with only two extra-base hits. It was his last World Series appearance as a member of the Giants.

In both the 1963 and 1964 seasons Mays batted in over 100 runs, and hit 85 total home runs. On July 2, 1963, Mays played in a game when future Hall of Fame members Warren Spahn and Juan Marichal each threw 15 scoreless innings. In the bottom of the 16th inning, Mays hit a home run off Spahn for a 1–0 Giants victory.[34]

Mays won his second MVP award in 1965 behind a career-high 52 home runs. He also hit career home run number 500 on September 13, 1965, off Don Nottebart. Warren Spahn, off whom Mays hit his first career home run, was his teammate at the time. After the home run, Spahn greeted Mays in the dugout, asking "Was it anything like the same feeling?" Mays replied "It was exactly the same feeling. Same pitch, too."[35] On August 22, 1965, Mays and Sandy Koufax acted as peacemakers during a 14-minute brawl between the Giants and Dodgers after San Francisco pitcher Juan Marichal had bloodied Dodgers catcher John Roseboro with a bat.[36]

Mays played in over 150 games for 13 consecutive years (a major-league record) from 1954 to 1966. In 1966, his last with 100 RBIs, Mays finished third in the NL MVP voting. It was the ninth and final time he finished in the top five in the voting for the award.[37] In 1970, the Sporting News named Mays as the "Player of the Decade" for the 1960s.

Willie hit career home run No. 600 off San Diego's Mike Corkins in September 1969. Plagued by injuries that season, he managed only 13 home runs. Mays enjoyed a resurgence in 1970, hitting 28 homers and got off to a fast start in 1971, the year he turned 40. He had 15 home runs at the All-Star break, but faded down the stretch and finished with 18. Mays helped the Giants win the West division title that year, but they lost the NLCS to the Pittsburgh Pirates.

During his time on the Giants, Mays was friends with fellow player Bobby Bonds. When Bobby's son, Barry Bonds, was born, Bobby asked Willie Mays to be Barry's godfather. Mays and the younger Bonds have maintained a close relationship ever since.

[edit] New York Mets (1972–73)In May 1972, the 41-year-old Mays was traded to the New York Mets for pitcher Charlie Williams and $50,000 ($262,490 in current dollar terms).[38] At the time, the Giants franchise was losing money. Owner Horace Stoneham could not guarantee Mays an income after retirement and the Mets offered Mays a position as a coach upon his retirement.[39]

Mays had remained popular in New York long after the Giants had left for San Francisco, and the trade was seen as a public relations coup for the Mets. Mets owner Joan Whitney Payson, who was a minority shareholder of the Giants when the team was in New York, had long desired to bring Mays back to his baseball roots, and was instrumental in making the trade.[40] On May 14, 1972, in his Mets debut, Mays put New York ahead to stay with a fifth-inning home run against Don Carrithers and his former team, the Giants, on a rainy Sunday afternoon at Shea Stadium. Then on August 17, 1973, in a game against the Cincinnati Reds with Don Gullett on the mound, Willie hit a fourth inning solo home run over the right center field fence. This was the 660th and last of his illustrious major league career.

Mays played a season and a half with the Mets before retiring, appearing in 133 games. The New York Mets honored him on September 25, 1973, (Willie Mays' Night) where he thanked the New York fans and said good-bye to America. He finished his career in the 1973 World Series, which the Mets lost to the Oakland Athletics in seven games. Mays got the first hit of the Series, but had only seven at-bats (with two hits). He also fell down in the outfield during a play where he was hindered by the glare of the sun and by the hard outfield. Mays later said, "growing old is just a helpless hurt." In 1972 and 1973, Mays was the oldest regular position player in baseball. He became the oldest position player to appear in a World Series game.[41]

Mays retired after the 1973 season with a lifetime batting average of .302 and 660 home runs. His lifetime total of 7,095 outfield fielding putouts remains the major league record.[42]

[edit] Post-playing daysAfter Mays stopped playing baseball, he remained an active personality. Just as he had during his playing days, Mays continued to appear on various TV shows, in films, and in other forms of non-sports related media. He remained in the New York Mets organization as their hitting instructor until the end of the 1979 season.[43] It was there where he taught future Mets' star Lee Mazzilli his famous basket catch.

On January 23, 1979, Mays was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in his first year of eligibility. He garnered 409 of the 432 ballots cast (roughly 95 percent);[44] referring to the other 23 voters, acerbic New York Daily News columnist Dick Young wrote, "If Jesus Christ were to show up with his old baseball glove, some guys wouldn't vote for him. He dropped the cross three times, didn't he?"[25]

Mays took up golf a few years after his promotion to the major leagues, and quickly became an accomplished player, playing to a handicap of about 4. After he retired, he played golf frequently in the San Francisco area.[45]

Shortly after his Hall of Fame election, Mays took a job at the Park Place Casino (now Bally's Atlantic City) in Atlantic City, New Jersey. While there, he served as a Special Assistant to the Casino's President and as a greeter; Hall of Famer Mickey Mantle was also a greeter during that time. When Baseball Commissioner Bowie Kuhn heard of this, he suspended both men from involvement in organized baseball for violating the league's rules on gambling. Peter Ueberroth, Kuhn's successor, lifted the suspension in 1985.

Since 1986, Willie Mays has served as Special Assistant to the President of the San Francisco Giants. Mays' number 24 is retired by the San Francisco Giants. AT&T Park, the Giants stadium, is located at 24 Willie Mays Plaza. In front of the main entrance to the stadium is a larger-than-life statue of Mays. He also serves on the advisory board of the Baseball Assistance Team, a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization dedicated to helping former Major League, Minor League, and Negro League players through financial and medical difficulties.

In May 2009, Mays gave the commencement address to the graduating class of 2009 at San Francisco State University.

On February 10, 2010, Mays appeared on The Daily Show, discussing his career and a new biography, Willie Mays: The Life, the Legend, by James S. Hirsch.

[edit] Special honors, tributes, and recognitions
Willie Mays on September 28, 2008
Willie Mays's number 24 was retired by the San Francisco Giants in 1972.

When Mays' godson Barry Bonds tied him for third on the all-time home run list, Mays greeted and presented him with a diamond-studded Olympic torch (given to Mays for his role in carrying the Olympic Torch during its tour through the U.S.). In 1992, when Bonds signed a free agent contract with the Giants, Mays personally offered Bonds his retired #24 (the number Bonds wore in Pittsburgh) but Bonds declined, electing to wear #25 instead, honoring his father Bobby Bonds who wore #25 with the Giants.[46]

Willie Mays Day was proclaimed by former mayor Willie Brown and reaffirmed by mayor Gavin Newsom to be every May 24 in San Francisco, paying tribute not only to his birth in the month (May 6), but also to his name (Mays) and jersey number (24). The date is also the anniversary of his call-up to the major leagues.[47]

AT&T Park is located at 24 Willie Mays Plaza.

On May 24, 2004, during the fifty-year anniversary of The Catch, Mays received an honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters degree from Yale University.[48]

On December 6, 2005, he was recognized for his accomplishments on and off the field when he received the Bobby Bragan Youth Foundation Lifetime Achievement Award.

On July 30, 2006 was the Tee Ball Commissioner at 2006 White House Tee Ball Initiative [3]

On June 10, 2007, Mays received an honorary doctorate from Dartmouth College.

At the 2007 All-Star Game in San Francisco, Mays received a special tribute for his legendary contributions to the game, and threw out the ceremonial first pitch.

On December 5, 2007, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and First Lady Maria Shriver inducted Mays into the California Hall of Fame, located at The California Museum for History, Women and the Arts.[49]

 
Mays with President Barack Obama aboard Air Force One, July 14, 2009.On June 4, 2008, Community Board 10 in Harlem NYC, voted unanimously to name an 8 block service Road that connects to the Harlem River Drive from 155th Street to 163rd Street running adjacent to his beloved Polo Grounds—Willie Mays Drive.[50]

On May 23, 2009, Mays received an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree from San Francisco State University.

On July 14, 2009, he accompanied US President Barack Obama to St. Louis aboard Air Force One for the Major League All-Star Game.[51]

On March 19, 2010 he was inducted into the African-American Ethnic Sports Hall of Fame[52]

On May 6, 2010, on the occasion of his 79th birthday, Mays appeared on the floor of the California State Senate where they proclaimed it Willie Mays Day in the state.


On May 15, 2010, Mays was awarded the MLB Beacon of Life Award at the Civil Rights game at Great American Ballpark.

 

[edit] Personal lifeWillie Mays, Jr. was born to Annie and Willie Howard Mays, Sr., who divorced when he was three years old. Mays was raised mainly by his aunt, Sarah. He learned baseball and other sports from his father and his father's Industrial League teammates.


*
The band Widespread Panic makes reference to Mays in the song One Arm Steve, from their album 'Til the Medicine Takes.

 

 

CHARLES BARKLEY

 


Charles Wade Barkley (born February 20, 1963) is a former American professional basketball player. Nicknamed "Sir Charles" and "The Round Mound of Rebound", Barkley established himself as one of the National Basketball Association's (NBA's) most dominating power forwards. He was selected to the All-NBA First Team five times, the All-NBA Second Team five times, and once to the All-NBA Third Team. He earned eleven NBA All-Star Game appearances and was named the All-Star MVP in 1991. In 1993, he was voted the league's Most Valuable Player and during the NBA's 50th anniversary, named one of the 50 Greatest Players in NBA History. He competed in the 1992 and 1996 Olympic games and won two gold medals as a member of the United States' Dream Team. In 2006, Barkley was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame.[1]

Barkley was popular with the fans and media and made the NBA's All-Interview Team for his last 13 seasons in the league.[2] He was frequently involved in on- and off-court fights and sometimes stirred national controversy, as in March 1991 when he mistakenly spat on a young girl, and as in 1993 when he declared that sports figures should not be considered role models. Short for a power forward, Barkley used his strength and aggressiveness to become one of the NBA's most dominant rebounders. He was a versatile player who had the ability to score, create plays, and defend. In 2000, he retired as the fourth player in NBA history to achieve 20,000 points, 10,000 rebounds and 4,000 assists.[3]

Since retiring as a player, Barkley has had a successful career as a color commentator on basketball. He works with Turner Network Television (TNT) as a studio pundit for its coverage of NBA games.[4] In addition, Barkley has written several books and has shown an interest in politics; in October 2008, he announced that he would run for Governor of Alabama in 2014,[5] but he changed his mind in 2010.

Barkley was born and raised in suburban Leeds, Alabama, ten miles (16 km) outside of Birmingham, and attended Leeds High School. As a junior, Barkley stood 5'10" (1.78 m) and weighed 220 pounds (99.8 kg). He failed to make the varsity team and was named as a reserve. However, during the summer Barkley grew to 6'4" and earned a starting position on the varsity team in his senior year. He averaged 19.1 points and 17.9 rebounds per game and led his team to a 26–3 record en route to the state semifinals.[7] Despite his improvement, Barkley garnered no attention from college scouts until the state high school semifinals, where he scored 26 points against Alabama's most highly recruited player, Bobby Lee Hurt.[7] An assistant to Auburn University's head coach, Sonny Smith, was at the game and reported seeing, "a fat guy... who can play like the wind".[8] Barkley was soon recruited by Smith and majored in business management while attending Auburn University.[7]

[edit] CollegeBarkley played collegiate basketball at Auburn University for three years. Although he struggled to control his weight, he excelled as a player and led the SEC in rebounding each year.[2] He became a popular crowd-pleaser, exciting the fans with dunks and blocked shots that belied his lack of height and overweight frame. It was not uncommon to see the hefty Barkley grab a defensive rebound and, instead of passing, dribble the entire length of the court and finish at the opposite end with a two-handed dunk. His physical size and skills ultimately earned him the nickname "The Round Mound of Rebound."[4]

During his college career, Barkley played the center position, despite being shorter than the average center. His height, officially listed as 6 ft 6 in (1.98 m), is stated as 6 ft 4 in (1.93 m) in his book, I May Be Wrong but I Doubt It. He became a member of Auburn's All-Century team and still holds the Auburn record for career field goal percentage with 62.6%.[9] He received numerous awards, including Southeastern Conference (SEC) Player of the Year (1984), three All-SEC selections and one Second Team All-American selection.[10] Later, Barkley was named the SEC Player of the Decade for the 1980s by the Birmingham Post-Herald.[9]

In Barkley's three-year college career, he averaged 14.8 points on 68.2% field goal shooting, 9.6 rebounds, 1.6 assists and 1.7 blocks per game.[9] In 1984, he made his only appearance in the NCAA Tournament and finished with 23 points on 80% field goal shooting, 17 rebounds, 4 assists, 2 steals and 2 blocks.[11] Auburn retired Barkley's No. 34 jersey on March 3, 2001.[9]

Barkley later admitted to receiving money from an agent during his years at Auburn.[12]

[edit] NBA career[edit] Philadelphia 76ersBarkley left before his final year at Auburn and made himself eligible for the 1984 NBA Draft. He was selected with the fifth pick in the first round by the Philadelphia 76ers, two slots after the Chicago Bulls drafted Michael Jordan. He joined a veteran team that included Julius Erving, Moses Malone and Maurice Cheeks, players who took Philadelphia to the 1983 NBA championship. Under the tutelage of Malone, Barkley was able to manage his weight and learned to prepare and condition himself properly for a game. He averaged 14.0 points and 8.6 rebounds per game during the regular season and earned a berth on the All-Rookie Team.[3] In the postseason, the Sixers advanced to the Eastern Conference Finals but were defeated in five games by the Boston Celtics.[13] As a rookie in the postseason, Barkley averaged 14.9 points and 11.1 rebounds per game.[2]

During his second year, Barkley became the team's leading rebounder and number two scorer, averaging 20.0 points and 12.8 rebounds per game.[3] He became the Sixers' starting power forward and helped lead his team into the playoffs, averaging 25.0 points on .578 shooting from the field and 15.8 rebounds per game.[3] Despite his efforts, Philadelphia was defeated 4–3 by the Milwaukee Bucks in the Eastern Conference Semifinals. He was named to the All-NBA Second Team.[2]

Before the 1986–87 season, Moses Malone was traded to the Washington Bullets and Barkley began to assume control as the team leader. He earned his first rebounding title, averaging 14.6 rebounds per game and also led the league in offensive rebounds with 5.7 per game.[3] He averaged 23.0 points on .594 shooting,[3] earning his first trip to an NBA All-Star game and All-NBA Second Team honors for the second straight season. In the playoffs, Barkley averaged 24.6 points and 12.6 rebounds in a losing effort,[14] for the second straight year, to the Bucks in a five-game first round playoff series.[15]

The following season, Julius Erving announced his retirement and Barkley became the Sixers' franchise player.[2] Playing in 80 games and getting 300 more minutes than his nearest teammate, Barkley had his most productive season, averaging 28.3 points on .587 shooting and 11.9 rebounds per game.[3] He appeared in his second All-Star Game and was named to the All-NBA First Team for the first time in his career. His celebrity status as the Sixers' franchise player led to his first appearance on the cover of Sports Illustrated.[2] For the first time since the 1974–75 season, however, the 76ers failed to make the playoffs.[2] In the 1988–89 season, Barkley continued to play well, averaging 25.8 points on .579 shooting and 12.5 rebounds per game.[3] He earned his third straight All-Star Game appearance and was named to the All-NBA First team for the second straight season.[4] Despite Barkley contributing 27.0 points on .644 shooting, 11.7 rebounds and 5.3 assists per game,[14] the 76ers were swept in the first round of the playoffs by the New York Knicks.[16]

During the 1989–90 season, despite receiving more first-place votes,[17] Barkley finished second in MVP voting behind the Los Angeles Lakers' Magic Johnson.[18] He was named Player of the Year by The Sporting News and Basketball Weekly.[2] He averaged 25.2 points and 11.5 rebounds per game and a career high .600 shooting.[3] He was named to the All-NBA First Team for the third consecutive year and earned his fourth All-Star selection.[4] He helped Philadelphia win 53 regular season games, only to lose to the Chicago Bulls in a five-game Eastern Conference Semifinals series.[19] Barkley averaged 24.7 points and 15.5 rebounds in another postseason loss.[14] His exceptional play continued into his seventh season, where he averaged 27.6 points on .570 shooting and 10.1 rebounds per game.[3] His fifth straight All-Star Game appearance proved to be his best yet. He led the East to a 116–114 win over the West with 17 points and 22 rebounds, the most rebounds in an All-Star Game since Wilt Chamberlain recorded 22 in 1967.[2] Barkley was presented with Most Valuable Player honors at the All-Star Game and, at the end of the season, named to the All-NBA First Team for the fourth straight year.[2] In the postseason, Philadelphia lost again to Jordan's Chicago Bulls in the Eastern Conference Semifinals, with Barkley contributing 24.9 points and 10.5 rebounds per game.[14]

The 1991–92 season was Barkley's final year in Philadelphia. In his last season, he wore number 32 instead of his 34 to honor Magic Johnson,[20] who had announced prior to the start of the season that he was HIV-positive. Although the 76ers initially retired the number 32 in honor of Billy Cunningham, it was unretired for Barkley to wear. Following Johnson's announcement, Barkley also apologized for having made light of his condition. Responding to concerns that players may contract HIV by contact with Johnson, Barkley stated, "We're just playing basketball. It's not like we're going out to have unprotected sex with Magic."[21]

In his final season with the Sixers, averaging 23.1 points on .552 shooting and 11.1 rebounds per game,[3] Barkley earned his sixth straight All-Star appearance and was named to the All-NBA Second Team, his seventh straight appearance on either the first or second team. He ended his 76ers career ranked fourth in team history in total points (14,184), third in scoring average (23.3 ppg), third in rebounds (7,079), eighth in assists (2,276) and second in field-goal percentage (.576).[2] He led Philadelphia in rebounding and field-goal percentage for seven consecutive seasons and in scoring for six straight years.[3] However, Barkley demanded a trade out of Philadelphia after the Sixers failed to make the postseason with a 35–47 record.[4][22] On July 17, 1992, he was traded to the Phoenix Suns in exchange for Jeff Hornacek, Tim Perry and Andrew Lang.[4]

During Barkley's eight seasons in Philadelphia, he became a household name and was one of the few NBA players to have a figure published by Kenner's Starting Lineup toy line. He also had his own signature shoe line with Nike. His outspoken and aggressive play, however, also caused a few scandals; notoriously a fight with Detroit Pistons center Bill Laimbeer in 1990, an event which drew a record total $162,500 fine,[23] and the infamous spitting incident.

[edit] Spitting incidentIn March 1991, during an overtime game in New Jersey, a courtside heckler had been yelling racial epithets throughout the game at Barkley.[24] Upset by the heckler's remarks, Barkley turned to spit at him, but, as he later described, did not "get enough foam", missed and mistakenly spat on a young girl.[24] Rod Thorn, the NBA's president of operations at the time, suspended Barkley without pay and fined him $10,000 for spitting and using abusive language at the fan.[25] It became a national story and Barkley was vilified for it.[24] Barkley, however, eventually developed a friendship with the girl and her family.[4] He apologized and, among other things, provided tickets to future games.[26]

Upon retirement, Barkley was later quoted as stating, "I was fairly controversial, I guess, but I regret only one thing—the spitting incident. But you know what? It taught me a valuable lesson. It taught me that I was getting way too intense during the game. It let me know I wanted to win way too bad. I had to calm down. I wanted to win at all costs. Instead of playing the game the right way and respecting the game, I only thought about winning."[27]

[edit] Phoenix SunsThe trade to Phoenix in the 1992–93 season went well for both Barkley and the Suns. He averaged 25.6 points on .520 shooting, 12.2 rebounds and a career high 5.1 assists per game,[3] leading the Suns to an NBA best 62–20 record.[28] For his efforts, Barkley won the league's Most Valuable Player Award,[29] and was selected to play in his seventh straight All-Star Game. He became the third player ever to win league MVP honors in the season immediately after being traded, established multiple career highs and led Phoenix to their first NBA Finals appearance since 1976.[2] Despite Barkley's proclamation to Jordan, that it was "destiny" for the Suns to win the title, they were defeated in six games by the Bulls.[30] He averaged 26.6 points and 13.6 rebounds per game during the whole postseason,[14] including 27.3 points, 13.0 rebounds and 5.5 assists per game throughout the championship series.[31] In the fourth game of the Finals, Barkley recorded a triple-double after collecting 32 points, 12 rebounds and 10 assists.[32]

As a result of severe back pains, Barkley began to speculate his last year in Phoenix during the 1993–94 season.[2] Playing through the worst injury problems of his career, Barkley managed 21.6 points on .495 shooting and 11.2 rebounds per game.[3] He was selected to his eighth consecutive All-Star Game, but did not play because of a torn right quadriceps tendon,[2] and was named to the All-NBA Second Team. With Barkley fighting injuries, the Suns still managed a 56–26 record and made it to the Western Conference Semifinals. Despite holding a 2–0 lead in the series,[33] however, the Suns lost in seven games to the eventual champion Houston Rockets.[33] Despite his injuries, in Game 3 of a first-round playoff series against the Golden State Warriors, Barkley hit 23 of 31 field-goal attempts and finished with 56 points, the then-third-highest total ever in a playoff game.[2][14] After contemplating retirement in the offseason,[2] Barkley returned for his eleventh season and continued to battle injuries.[4] He struggled during the first half of the season,[2] but managed to gradually improve, earning his ninth consecutive appearance in the All-Star Game. He averaged 23 points on .486 shooting and 11.1 rebounds per game,[3] while leading the Suns to a 59–23 record.[34] In the postseason, despite having a 3–1 lead in the series,[34] the Suns once again lost to the defending champion Rockets in seven games.[34] Barkley averaged 25.7 points on .500 shooting and 13.4 rebounds per game in the postseason,[14] but was limited in Game 7 of the semifinals by a leg injury.[2]

The 1995–96 season was Barkley's last on the Phoenix Suns. He led the team in scoring, rebounds and steals, averaging 23.3 points on .500 shooting, 11.6 rebounds and a career high .777 free throw shooting.[3] He earned his tenth appearance in an All-Star Game as the top vote-getter among Western Conference players and posted his 18th career triple-double on November 22.[14] He also became just the tenth player in NBA history to reach 20,000 points and 10,000 rebounds in their career.[2][3] In the postseason, Barkley averaged 25.5 points and 13.5 rebounds per game in a four-game first round playoff loss to the San Antonio Spurs.[14][35] After the Suns closed out the season with a 41–41 record and a first-round playoff loss, Barkley was traded to Houston in exchange for Sam Cassell, Robert Horry, Mark Bryant and Chucky Brown.[36]

During his career with the Suns, Barkley excelled as a player, earning All-NBA and All-Star honors in each of his four seasons. The always outspoken Barkley, however, continued to stir up controversy during the 1993 season, when he claimed that sports figures should not be role models.[37]

[edit] Role model controversyThroughout his career, Barkley had been arguing that athletes should not be considered role models.[4] He stated, "A million guys can dunk a basketball in jail; should they be role models?" In 1993, his argument prompted national news when he wrote the text for his "I am not a role model" Nike commercial. Dan Quayle, the former Vice President of the United States, called it a "family-values message" for Barkley's oft-ignored call for parents and teachers to quit looking to him to "raise your kids" and instead be role models themselves.[37]

Barkley's message sparked a great public debate about the nature of role models. He argued,

I think the media demands that athletes be role models because there's some jealousy involved. It's as if they say, this is a young black kid playing a game for a living and making all this money, so we're going to make it tough on him. And what they're really doing is telling kids to look up to someone they can't become, because not many people can be like we are. Kids can't be like Michael Jordan.[36]

[edit] Houston RocketsThe trade to the Houston Rockets in the 1996–97 season was Barkley's last chance at capturing an NBA championship title. He joined a veteran team that included two of the NBA's 50 Greatest Players, Hakeem Olajuwon and Clyde Drexler. To begin the season, Barkley was suspended for the season opener and fined $5,000 for fighting Charles Oakley during an October 25, 1996 preseason game. After Oakley committed a flagrant foul on Barkley, Barkley responded by shoving Oakley.[38] In his first game with the Houston Rockets, Charles Barkley had a career-high thirty-three rebounds.[39] He continued to battle injuries throughout the season and played only 53 games, missing fourteen because of a laceration and bruise on his left pelvis, eleven because of a sprained right ankle and four due to suspensions.[2] He became the team's second leading scorer, averaging 19.2 points on .484 shooting;[3] the first time since his rookie year that he averaged below 20 points per game. With Olajuwon taking most of the shots, Barkley focused primarily on rebounding, averaging 13.5 per game, the second best in his career.[3] The Rockets ended the regular season with a 57–25 record and advanced to the Western Conference Finals, where they were defeated in six games by the Utah Jazz.[2] Barkley averaged 17.9 points and 12.0 rebounds per game in another postseason loss.[40]

The 1997–98 season was another injury-plagued year for Barkley. He averaged 15.2 points on .485 shooting and 11.7 rebounds per game.[3] The Rockets ended the season with a 41–41 record and were eliminated in five games by the Utah Jazz in the first round of the playoffs. Limited by injuries, Barkley played four games and averaged career lows of 9.0 points and 5.3 rebounds in 21.8 minutes per game.[14] During the league-lockout-shortened season, Barkley played 42 regular-season games and managed 16.1 points on .478 shooting and 12.3 rebounds per game.[3] He became the second player in NBA history, following Wilt Chamberlain, to accumulate 23,000 points, 12,000 rebounds and 4,000 assists in his career.[2] The Rockets concluded the shortened season with a 31–19 record and advanced to the playoffs.[41] In his last postseason appearance, Barkley averaged 23.5 points on .529 shooting and 13.8 rebounds per game in a first-round playoff loss to the Los Angeles Lakers.[14] He concluded his postseason career averaging 23 points on .513 shooting, 12.9 rebounds and 3.9 assists per game in 123 games.[42]

In his final year in the NBA, Barkley's season and career seemingly ended prematurely at the age of 36 after rupturing his left quadriceps tendon on December 8, 1999 in Philadelphia, where his career began.[43] Before the injury, Barkley averaged 14.5 points on .477 shooting and 10.5 rebounds per game.[3] Refusing to allow his injury to be the last image of his career, Barkley returned after four months for one final game. Along with Shaquille O'Neal, Barkley was ejected from the November 10, 1999 game against the Los Angeles Lakers. After O'Neal blocked a layup by Barkley, O'Neal shoved Barkley, who then threw the ball at O'Neal.[44] On April 19, 2000, in a home game against the Vancouver Grizzlies, Barkley scored a memorable basket on an offensive rebound and putback, a common trademark during his career. He accomplished what he set out to do after being activated from the injured list, and walked off the court to a standing ovation.[45] He stated, "I can't explain what tonight meant. I did it for me. I've won and lost a lot of games, but the last memory I had was being carried off the court. I couldn't get over the mental block of being carried off the court. It was important psychologically to walk off the court on my own."[45] After the basket, Barkley immediately retired and concluded his sixteen-year NBA Hall of Fame career.

[edit] OlympicsOlympic medal record
Men's basketball
Competitor for the  United States
Gold 1992 Barcelona Team competition
Gold 1996 Atlanta Team competition

Barkley competed in the 1992 and 1996 Olympic games and won two gold medals as a member of the United States men's basketball team. International rules which had previously prevented NBA players from playing in the Olympics were changed in 1992, allowing Barkley and fellow NBA players to compete in the Olympics for the first time. The result was the legendary Dream Team, which went 6–0 in the Olympic qualifying tournament and 8–0 against Olympic opponents. The team averaged an Olympic record 117.3 points a game and won games by an average of 43.8 points.[46] Barkley led the team with 18.0 points on 71.1% field goal shooting and set a then-Olympic single game scoring record with 30 points in a 127–83 victory over Brazil.[46] He also set a U.S. Men's Olympic record for highest three point field goal percentage with 87.5% and added 4.1 rebounds and 2.6 steals per game.[47] Barkley was also part of an ugly moment in the 1992 Olympics when he intentionally elbowed Angola player Herlander Coimbra in the chest during a 116–48 rout of that team.[48]

At the 1996 Atlanta Summer Olympic Games, Barkley led the team in scoring, rebounds, and field goal percentage. He averaged 12.4 points on 81.6% field goal shooting, setting a U.S. Men's Olympic record.[47] In addition, he also contributed 6.6 rebounds per game. Under Barkley's leadership, the team once again compiled a perfect 8–0 record and captured gold medal honors.[49]

[edit] Player profileBarkley played the power forward position but on some occasions he would play the small forward and center positions. He was known for his unusual build as a basketball player, stockier than most small forwards, yet shorter than most power forwards he faced. However, Barkley was still capable of outplaying both taller and quicker opponents because of his strength and agility.[2]

Barkley was a prolific scorer who averaged 22.1 points-per-game for his season career and 23.0 points-per-game for his playoff career.[14] He was one of the NBA's most versatile players and accurate scorers capable of scoring from anywhere on the court and established himself as one of the NBA's premier clutch players.[2] During his NBA career, Barkley was a constant mismatch because he possessed a set of very uncommon skills and could play in a variety of positions. He would use all facets of his game in a single play; as a scorer, he had the ability to score from the perimeter and the post, using an array of spin moves and fadeaways, or finishing a fast break with a powerful dunk. He was one of the most efficient scorers of all-time, scoring at 54.13% total field goal percentage for his season career and 51.34% total field goal shooting for his playoff career (including a career-high season average of 60% during the 1989–90 NBA season).[14]

Frequently listed as 6 feet 6 inches, but measuring slightly under 6 feet 5 inches (1.95 mt),[50][51] Barkley is the shortest player in NBA history to lead the league in rebounding when he averaged a career high 14.6 rebounds per game during the 1986–87 season.[52] His tenacious and aggressive form of play built into an undersized frame that fluctuated between 284 pounds (129 kg) and 252 pounds (114 kg) helped cement his legacy as one of the greatest rebounders in NBA history, averaging 11.7 rebounds per game in the regular season for his career and 12.9 rebounds per game in his playoff career and totaling 12,546 rebounds for his season career.[14] Barkley topped the NBA in offensive rebounding for three straight years[4] and was most famous among very few power forwards who could control a defensive rebound, dribble the length of the court and finish at the rim with a powerful dunk.[52]

Barkley also possessed considerable defensive talents led by an aggressive demeanor, foot speed and his capacity to read the floor to anticipate for steals, a reason why he established his career as the second All-Time leader in steals for the power forward position[53] and leader of the highest all-time steal per game average for the power forward position.[53] Despite being undersized for both the small forward and power forward positions, he also finished among the all-time leaders in blocked shots.[54] His speed and leaping ability made him one of the few power forwards capable of running down court to block a faster player with a chase-down block.[52]

In a SLAM magazine issue ranking NBA greats, Barkley was ranked among the top 20 players of All-Time. In the magazine, NBA Hall-of-Famer Bill Walton commented on Barkley's ability. Walton stated, "Barkley is like Magic [Johnson] and Larry [Bird] in that they don't really play a position. He plays everything; he plays basketball. There is nobody who does what Barkley does. He's a dominant rebounder, a dominant defensive player, a three-point shooter, a dribbler, a playmaker."[4]

[edit] LegacyDuring his 16-year NBA career, Barkley was regarded as one of the most controversial, outspoken and dominating players in the history of basketball. His impact on the sport went beyond his rebounding titles, assists, scoring and physical play.[26] His larger than life persona and confrontational mannerisms often led to technical fouls and fines and sometimes gave rise to national controversy, such as when he was featured in ads that rejected pro athletes as role models and declared, "I am not a role model."[55] Although his words often led to controversy, according to Barkley his mouth was never the cause because it always spoke the truth.[26] He stated, "I don't create controversies. They're there long before I open my mouth. I just bring them to your attention."[4]

Besides his on-court fights with other players, he has exhibited confrontational behavior off-court. He was arrested for breaking a man's nose during a fight after a game with the Milwaukee Bucks[56] and also for throwing a man through a plate-glass window after being struck with a glass of ice.[57] Notwithstanding these occurrences, Barkley continued to remain popular with the fans and media because of his sense of humor and honesty.

As a player, Barkley was a perennial All-Star who earned league MVP honors in 1993.[4] He employed a physical style of play that earned him the nicknames "Sir Charles" and "The Round Mound of Rebound".[58] He was named to the All-NBA team eleven times and earned two gold medals as a member of the United States Olympic Basketball team. He led both teams in scoring and was instrumental in helping the 1992 "Dream Team" and 1996 Men's Basketball team compile a perfect 16–0 record.[46][49] He retired as one of only four players in NBA history to record at least 20,000 points, 10,000 rebounds and 4,000 assists in their career,[4] although a fifth player, Kevin Garnett, has since accomplished that feat.

In recognition of his collegiate and NBA achievements, Barkley's number 34 jersey was officially retired by Auburn University on March 3, 2001. In the same month, the Philadelphia 76ers also officially retired Barkley's jersey.[50] On 20 March 2004, the Phoenix Suns honored Barkley as well by retiring his jersey and including him in the "Suns Ring of Honor".[59] In recognition of his achievements as a player, Barkley was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 2006.[1]

*
During the broadcast of a TNT game, in which Barkley was courtside with Marv Albert, Barkley poked fun at NBA official Dick Bavetta's age. Albert replied to Barkley, "I believe Dick would beat you in a footrace." In response to that remark, Barkley went on to challenge Bavetta to a race at the 2007 NBA All-Star Weekend for $5,000. The winner was to choose a charity to which the money would be donated. The NBA agreed to pitch in an additional $50,000, and TNT threw in $25,000. The pair raced for three and a half lengths of the basketball court until Barkley ultimately won. After the event, the two embraced in a show of good sportsmanship.

Barkley is known for his compulsive gambling. In an interview with ESPN's Trey Wingo, Barkley revealed that he lost approximately $10 million through gambling.[62] In addition, he also admitted to losing $2.5 million, "in a six-hour period", while playing blackjack.[62] Although Barkley openly admits to his problem, he claims it is not serious since he can afford to support the habit.[62] When approached by fellow TNT broadcaster Ernie Johnson about the issue, Barkley replied, "It's not a problem. If you're a drug addict or an alcoholic, those are problems. I gamble for too much money. As long as I can continue to do it I don't think it's a problem. Do I think it's a bad habit? Yes, I think it's a bad habit. Am I going to continue to do it? Yes, I'm going to continue to do it."

In May 2008, the Wynn Las Vegas casino filed a civil complaint against Barkley, alleging that he had failed to pay a $400,000 debt stemming from October 2007. Barkley responded by taking blame for letting time lapse on the repayment of the debt and promptly paid the casino.[64] After repaying his debt, Barkley stated during a pregame show on TNT, "I've got to stop gambling...I am not going to gamble anymore. For right now, the next year or two, I'm not going to gamble... Just because I can afford to lose money doesn't mean I should do it."

Barkley is an outspoken supporter of gay rights. In 2006, he told Fox Sports: "I'm a big advocate of gay marriage. If they want to get married, God bless them."[72] Speaking to Wolf Blitzer on CNN two years later, he said: "Every time I hear the word 'conservative,' it makes me sick to my stomach, because they're really just fake Christians, as I call them. That's all they are. ... I think they want to be judge and jury. Like, I'm for gay marriage. It's none of my business if gay people want to get married. I'm pro-choice. And I think these Christians, first of all, they're not supposed to judge other people. But they're the most hypocritical judge of people we have in the country. And it bugs the hell out of me. They act like they're Christians. They're not forgiving at all."[72] During a 2011 Martin Luther King, Jr. Day double-header on TNT, Barkley responded to a statement by Dr. King's daughter Bernice by saying, "People try to make it about black and white. [But] he talked about equality for every man, every woman. We have a thing going on now, people discriminating against homosexuality in this country. I love the homosexuality people. God bless the gay people. They are great people."[

In 2000, Barkley wrote the foreword for Sports Illustrated columnist Rick Reilly's book The Life of Reilly. In it, Barkley quipped, "Of all the people in sports I'd like to throw through a plate glass window, Reilly's not one of them. It's a shame though, skinny white boys look real aerodynamic."[73] In 2002, Barkley released the book I May Be Wrong, But I Doubt It, which included editing and commentary by close friend Michael Wilbon.[74] Three years later, Barkley released Who's Afraid of a Large Black Man?, which is a collection of interviews with leading figures in entertainment, business, sports, and government. Michael Wilbon also contributed to this book and was present at many of the interviews.


On December 31, 2008, Barkley was pulled over in Scottsdale, Arizona, for initially running a stop sign.[75] Officers smelled alcohol on Barkley's breath and proceeded to administer field sobriety tests, which he failed. He was arrested on drunk driving charges and had his vehicle impounded. Barkley refused to submit a breath test and was given a blood test.[76] He was then cited and released.[75] Gilbert police noted Barkley was cooperative and respectful during the entire incident, adding that he was treated no differently than anyone arrested on DUI charges.[76] The police report of the incident stated that Barkley told police he was in a hurry to receive oral sex from his female passenger when he ran through a stop sign early Wednesday.[76] Test results released by police showed that Barkley had a blood-alcohol level at .149, nearly twice the legal limit of .08 in Arizona.[77] Two months after his arrest, Barkley pleaded guilty to two DUI-related counts and one count of running a red light. He was sentenced to ten days in jail and fined $2,000.[78] The sentence was later reduced to three days after Barkley entered an alcohol treatment program.


Barkley is well known for his fondness of golf. However, his swing is often regarded as one of the most bizarre and broken swings in the sport.[83] Barkley's swing unravels after he brings his club back. He starts to take it forward then jerks to a stop, throwing his body off balance, before wildly striking at the ball.[84] Once a 10-handicap golfer who could break 80, Barkley can no longer break 100 and finished last at the American Century Celebrity Golf Championship in July 2008.[


MICKEY MANTLE
MICHAEL JORDAN
LARRY BIRD
MAJIC JOHNSON
HOWARD STERN
ROBERT SCHIMMEL
STEVEN WRIGHT
MITCH HEDBERG
BRIAN URLACHER*
WARREN SAPP
BILL ROMANOWSKI
WALTER PAYTON
LANCE ARMSTRONG


Doug Gilmour
Tough Guy Cred: Only 5´11´´, 175 pounds, still known as "Killer"
Given his size and his ability to tap dance around dumbstruck defensemen, Gilmour could have gotten away with being a finesse player. Instead, he set out to prove the Fight Club line, "skinny guys fight ´til they´re burger." If Gilmour ended up in the locker room without blood trickling down his grinning face, he played a bad game. Defined "fearless."

 

 Wendel Clark
Tough Guy Cred: It´s not fair when goons can score, too
If Doug Gilmour was the scrappy Chihuahua nipping at your heels, fellow Maple Leaf Wendel Clark was the bulldog. It´s demoralizing to an opposing team when one guy goes out and beats up their whole bench—it´s abject humiliation when that same guy also unleashes his killer wrist shot for two or three goals in between penalties. Any wonder why, six years after this retirement, #17 is still bigger than Jesus in Toronto?

 

Todd Bertuzzi  (CHEAP)
Tough Guy Cred: Everything leading up to "The Incident"
Bertuzzi will forever be blacklisted for cheap-shotting Colorado Avalanche forward Steve Moore and breaking his neck, and that´s kind of a shame. Before that, he was the prototypical power forward—wracking up goals by going through defensemen, not around them, and wracking up penalty minutes by shutting up anyone who complained.

 

Peter Forsberg
Tough Guy Cred: This guy´s Swedish?
European players are supposed to skate real pretty-like and butcher our language—that´s it. They aren´t supposed to dominate a game the way Forsberg does. He has moves gorgeous enough to be immortalized on a Swedish postage stamp (his game-winner against Canada in the 1994 Winter Olympics), and the badassness to come back to hockey after having his fucking spleen removed.

 

Billy Smith
Tough Guy Cred: Did nothing to dispel the notion that all goalies are batshit insane
"Battlin´" Billy Smith hated the other team. Not in a healthy, competitive way, but in a dangerous way. He still holds the record for most penalty minutes by a goaltender for his liberal use of a goal stick. He also once got so angry at Mike Bossy that Smith had to be tackled and held down to keep from killing the superstar—and they were teammates at the time.

 

Gordie Howe
Tough Guy Cred: The "Gordie Howe Hat Trick"
Although he´s known these days as the NHL´s most prolific goal-scorer and biggest star before that Gretzky kid came along, back in the day Gordie was known as a tough bastard. His patented "hat trick" included a goal, an assist, and a fight. He also played a shift in the IHL at the ripe old age of 80, when most men consider fully emptying their bowels into their own personal Stanley Cup. 

 

Maurice Richard
Tough Guy Cred: The "Blackout" Goal
They don´t make ´em like they used to. In 1944, Maurice "The Rocket" Richard once spent an entire day lifting furniture—including a piano—while moving into a new house, then went out that very night and scored five goals for Montreal. But his toughest moment came in the 1952 Stanley Cup Finals: With blood streaming down his face from a previous blow to the head, Richard scored the Cup-clinching goal. He would later claim to have no memory of doing so.

 

Bob Probert
Tough Guy Cred: The All-Time Heavyweight Champ
The term "goon" is usually used to describe guys who can´t contribute anything to a game, so they just go out and beat people up. But in Probert´s bruised hands, this actually became an art form. Other teams would dress notorious fighters only when they played against Probert, and soon, people began to refer to certain games like title fights. It wasn´t, say, "Red Wings vs. Devils" or "Red Wings vs. Maple Leafs," but rather "Bob Probert vs. Troy Crowder" or "Bob Probert vs. Tie Domi."

 

Gino Odjick
Tough Guy Cred: Known as "The Maniwaki Mauler"
A full-blooded Algonquin from Maniwaki, Quebec (hence the nickname), Odjick was six-feet-three-inches, 225 pounds of "What are you looking at, paleface?" During his stint in Vancouver, Odjick was put on a line with superstar Pavel Bure for the sole reason of steamrolling everyone out of the diminutive Russian´s way.

 

Scott Stevens
Tough Guy Cred: "The Hit"
Eric Lindros was nicknamed "The Next One" because he was supposed to be the talent of Wayne Gretzky in the body of a pro wrestler. But we´ll never know, because once the hulking youngster´s head met Scott Stevens´ shoulder in a vicious-but clean-open-ice hit during the 2000 playoffs, he was forever reduced to a glass-jawed pushover. Stevens, already a feared hitter, was now canonized as one of the most intimidating blueline warriors ever.

 

Mark Messier
Tough Guy Cred: "The Guarantee"
Messier already had a rep as big, strong, fast, and mean, but he really showed what kind of brass ones he was packing in 1994: With the Rangers a game away from elimination at the hands of rival New Jersey, "The Captain" gathered the notoriously unmerciful New York press around and flat-out guaranteed victory. He then went out and scored three straight third-period goals to beat the Devils. The Rangers went on to win the series and their first Stanley Cup in 54 years

 

Mario Lemieux
Tough Guy Cred: He beat cancer
The six-foot-four, 220 pound Lemieux has scored with more guys on his back than Paris Hilton, but he really proved he wasn´t as soft as his French accent would suggest when he stared down Hodgkin´s lymphoma in 1992. Not only did he let the disease sideline him for all of two months, on the day of his final radiation treatment, he went out and scored a goal and an assist against Philadelphia. He also continued to be one of the game´s all time greats for another 10 years.


Craig Mctavish
Tie DOMI
CHRIS PRONGER
Bob Probert
Boomer Baun,
Darren McCarty
Paul Coffey
Tiger Williams played with a broken back one time. I think it may have been for a stretch of several games but I can't  remember for sure now.
Steve Yzerman. The guy came back from surgeries that no one else even tried to return from. Played the entire playoffs  one year on one knee, had to use his stick to get up on his feet. The guy played with more grit then anyone I  ever saw. Hard to beleive his nickname used to be Silk.

 

10) Ronnie Lott – USA – American Football

At the end of the 1985 American Football season, San Francisco 49ers safety Ronnie Lott came out of a tackle with a badly mangled left little finger, losing small pieces of bone and flesh from it in the mud. The following week he played with his fingers taped up as a temporary measure, but over the summer break the pain became worse and he faced a stark choice for the upcoming season: a complicated and delicate operation in which bone and skin grafting and the placement of pins in his hand might restore full use of his hand, or, he could have the top of his finger amputated. The former meant missing matches and risking another injury, the latter meant missing some finger but being ready to go for the new season.  All in all a simple choice for Lott, out came the knife and off came half his finger. He went on to have another successful season, with his team reaching the playoffs.

9) Surya Bonaly – France – Ice Skating

Whilst preparing to defend her European figure skating title in 1995 for France, Surya Bonaly fell whilst fitness training barefoot on a trampoline. The fall left the 21-year-old four times champion with a broken toe in her left foot.  Fearing that if the news got out she would be prevented from taking part in the Dortmund championships, she and her adoptive mother and manager Suzannev kept the injury a secret, refusing treatment from a doctor and declining to undergo any x-rays. So an injured Surya was free to compete and she put in a mighty performance, launching straight into a triple lutzt double toe, a move that would put her landing weight directly on her fracture. Surya gained her fifth European title, winning the event.


7) Joe Grim – USA – Boxing
‘The Iron Man’ and ‘The Indestructible Man of Pugilism’ sound odd nicknames for a Boxer who reportedly lost every single fight of his career, but despite being a perennial loser, the toughest boxers of the era couldn’t knock Joe out.  Born in 1881 in Italy and raised in America, Grim fought men who would go on to be legends and became as big a draw as the champions he was fighting. He would end every fight bloodied and back at the ropes bellowing triumphantly “I’m Joe Grim! Nobody knocks out Joe Grim!” In 1905 he faced the legendary future heavyweight champion Jack Johnson and was knocked down 18 times by one of the hardest punchers of all time but rose to his feet after every one of them. Ring Magazine’s Nat Fleischer describes one blow as “it caused Grim to turn a complete somersault.” As Grim clambered to his feet yet again from the canvas where many assumed he might have been dead an amazed Jack Johnson declared, “He ain’t human.”

6) Colin Meads – New Zealand – Rugby Union
In 1970 whilst on a tour of South Africa, a 34-year-old Colin Meads cemented his reputation as an All Black hard man legend in a game against Eastern Transvaal – a team notorious for compensating for their lack of skill with sheer brutality.  When emerging from a particularly vicious ruck partway through the match, with a clearly fractured arm dangling grotesquely by his side like, he resolved that this mere triviality wasn’t going to stop him finishing the game. Which he did. On the winning side.  After the match when the doctor cut away his shirt and confirmed the break, Meads muttered, “At least we won the bloody game.” He treated himself with horse liniment causing him to miss the first two Tests but returned for the Third with his still broken arm held together by a flimsy splint.


5) Abebe Bikila – Ethiopia – Marathon Runner
When the unheard of Abebe Bikila went to pick up his Adidas trainers before the 1960 Rome Olympic Marathon he discovered they didn’t have his size, unable to nip to the shop he decided to run the 26 miles barefoot.  He went on to not only win but break the record whilst doing so, finishing in a time of 2:15:16.2 and became the first African to win an Olympic Gold.  He became the first athlete to win two Olympic Marathons when he ran aged 31 in Tokyo 4 years later again barefoot but this time only 40 days after a rather painful trip to hospital to have his appendix out and set another World Record time of 2:12:11.2.  Perhaps his most outstanding feat of heroism came in 1970, when after tragically being paralysed from the waist down he claimed gold in a 25km cross country sledge competition in Norway.


4) Clint Malarchuk – Canada – Ice Hockey
There are some injuries that you just cannot finish the match with, no matter how tough you are. Clint Malarchuk suffered one of them in 1989 whist keeping goal for the Buffalo Sabres Ice Hockey team. In a freak accident, two players from the opposing St. Louis Blues collided in front of him, with one following through to slide skate first into the 27-year-old goalkeeper’s throat, slicing open his jugular vein. In just seconds he lay gasping in a pool of blood that filled the entire goal mouth – a sight which caused nine spectators to faint, two to suffer heart attacks, while two team mates vomited on the ice.  Quick acting doctors rushed in and saved his life by pinching the vein to stop the bleeding and after only one night in hospital and more than 300 stitches Malarchuk was back in practice 4 days later, returning to a competitive match a mere week after that.

3) John Sattler – Australia – Rugby League
It’s 1970 and ten minutes into the Australian Rugby League Premiership decider between South Sydney and the Manly-Warringah Sea Eagles when Souths’ forward John Sattler collapses after being punched by Manly forward John Bucknall. The 26-year-old suffered a double fracture to his jaw but pleaded with team mate Mike Cleary to, “Hold me up so they don’t know I’m hurt”. He was helped up and continued to play in the game. Half time came and Souths were leading 12-6 when his fellow team mates learnt about his injury. Not only did he refuse treatment and insist on continuing to play, he also threatened the dressing room should they try to protect him on the pitch matter of factly announcing, “the next bloke who tries to cut me out of the play is in trouble.”  South Sydney went on to win the game 23-12 and Sattler went to hospital, but only after receiving the Premiership Trophy Shield and making an acceptance speech.


2) Tyler Hamilton – USA – Cycling
Having suffered two broken vertebrae in a horrendous ski jumping accident, Tyler Hamilton was unphased enough to switch to the equally physically demanding sport of cycling. He was soon back in the wars in 2002 when he fractured his shoulder in the Giro D’Itlia yet still carried on to finish second. It was in the 2003 Tour de France that the 32 year old American really made his name after he cracked a collarbone in the first stage and cycled on through the pain, spending an agonising three weeks competing with the broken bone. He went on to win stage 16 with a 142 km solo breakaway, and placed fourth overall. For his stage win, Hamilton was awarded the Coeur de Lion (Heart of the Lion) prize, which is awarded to the most aggressive and daring racer of the stage.

1) Wayne Shelford – New Zealand – Rugby Union
Roughly 20 minutes into just his second Test appearance for the All Blacks against France in 1986, a match that would become known as “The Battle of Nantes”, 28 year-old Wayne Shelford found himself victim to a wayward French boot to the groin at the bottom of yet another aggressive ruck. The resulting injury was an eye watering ripped scrotum that left one testicle hanging free in the breeze, which probably did something to take his mind off the four teeth he also lost in the rumpus. After discovering his scrotal impairment, Shelford calmly asked the physio to stitch up the tear and then returned to the field, The French finally took him out of action when a blow to his head left him concussed. He watched the remainder of the match, and his side lose 16-3, from the stand. As Shelford said some years later: “I was knocked out cold, lost a few teeth and had a few stitches down below, it’s a game I still can’t remember – I have no memory of it whatsoever. I don’t even remember what the score was, I don’t really want to either.”

 

 

 


 Manute Bol (English pronunciation: /məˈnuːt ˈboʊl/; October 16, 1962 – June 19, 2010[1]) was a Sudanese-born basketball player and activist. At 7 feet, 7 inches (2.31 meters), Bol was one of the tallest players ever to appear in the National Basketball Association, along with Gheorghe Mureşan.[2] Unlike Mureşan, however, Bol was naturally tall and did not have a Pituitary disease[citation needed]. Bol was officially measured at 7 feet, 6 3/4 inches tall by the Guinness Book of World Records. Bol is believed to have been born on October 16, 1962 in either Turalei or Gogrial, Sudan. He was the son of a Dinka tribal chief, who gave him the name "Manute", which means "special blessing."

Bol played basketball for many teams over his career. He played for two colleges and four NBA teams. He was known as a specialist player; his shot blocking skills were considered among the best in the history of the sport, but other aspects of his game were considered fairly weak. One statistical oddity highlights Bol's unique skill set: he is the only player in NBA history to have more blocked shots than points scored

Bol came from a family of extraordinarily tall men and women: "My mother was 6 ft 10 in (2.08 m), my father 6 ft 8 in (2.03 m) and my sister is 6 ft 8 in (2.03 m)", he said. "And my great-grandfather was even taller — 7 ft 10 in (2.39 m)."[3]

As a boy, Bol had tended his family's cattle. According to a tale he was often asked to repeat in interviews, he once killed a lion with a spear while he was working as a cowherd.

Bol is survived by 10 children, including four with his second wife, Ajok

Bol started playing basketball in 1978 and played in Sudan for several years with teams in Wau and Khartoum. A coach from Fairleigh Dickinson University saw Bol play basketball in Khartoum and convinced him to come to the United States.[5] Bol was drafted by the San Diego Clippers in the 5th round of the 1983 NBA Draft, but the league ruled that Bol had not been eligible for the draft and declared the pick invalid.[6] He was then invited to Cleveland by Cleveland State University head basketball coach Kevin Mackey. While in Cleveland, he attended English language classes for several months at ELS Language Centers on the Case Western Reserve University campus. Bol never played for Cleveland State because its basketball program was placed on probation for two years as the result of providing improper financial assistance to Bol and two other African basketball players.[7] Bol lacked a strong command of written English, which reduced his chances of being eligible to play Division I basketball. He enrolled at the University of Bridgeport, a Division II basketball school, and played college basketball there during the 1984-1985 season.

In 1985 Bol was drafted in the second round by the Washington Bullets, becoming the first African-born player to be drafted into the NBA. He played in the NBA for ten years, from 1985–1995, spending parts of four seasons with the Bullets, parts of three with the Golden State Warriors, parts of four with the Philadelphia 76ers and part of one season with the Miami Heat. In 1987, the Washington Bullets drafted the 5 ft 3 in (1.60 m) point guard Muggsy Bogues, pairing the tallest and shortest players in the league on the court for one season.

With his great height and very long limbs, Bol was one of the league's most imposing defensive presences, blocking shots at an unprecedented rate.[12] Along with setting the rookie shot blocking record in 1985-86, over the course of his career Bol tied for the NBA record for the most blocked shots in one half (eleven) and in one quarter (eight, twice).[13] On 01992-01-31 January 31, 1992, in a game against the Orlando Magic, he blocked four consecutive shots within a single possession.[14]

However, Bol's other basketball skills were very limited, and his rail-thin physique made it difficult for him to establish position against the league's bulkier centers and power forwards. The sight of the tall, gangly Bol spotting up for a three-pointer during blow-outs became a fan favorite. Off the court, he established a reputation as a practical joker; Charles Barkley, a frequent victim of his pranks, attested to Bol's sense of humor.[citation needed] Bol also developed a close friendship with teammate Chris Mullin.

Over the course of his career, Bol averaged 2.6 points, 4.2 rebounds, 0.3 assists and 3.3 blocks per game while only playing an average of 18.7 minutes per game. Bol finished his career with totals of 1,599 points, 2,647 rebounds, and 2,086 blocks, having appeared in 624 games over 10 seasons.[15] As of 2010, Manute Bol remains:

First in career blocks per 48 minutes (8.6), almost 50% beyond second-place Mark Eaton (5.8).[16]
Second in career blocks-per-game average (3.34).[17]
Fourteenth in total blocked shots (2,086).[18]
The only player in NBA history to block more shots than points scored, blocking 2,086 shots and scoring 1,599 points.[18]
Post-NBAAfter the end of his NBA career, Bol played 22 games for the Florida Beach Dogs of the Continental Basketball Association during the 1995-1996 season. In 1996, the Portland (Maine) Mountain Cats of the United States Basketball League announced that he would be playing with the team, and included him in the game program, but he never actually appeared in uniform. He then played professionally in Italy and Qatar before rheumatism forced him to retire permanently.

Bol was very active in charitable causes throughout his career. In fact, he said he spent much of the money he made during a 10-year NBA career supporting various causes related to his war-ravaged nation of birth, Sudan.[19] He frequently visited Sudanese refugee camps, where he was treated like royalty. In 2001 Bol was offered a post as minister of sport by the Sudanese government. Bol, who was Christian, refused because one of the pre-conditions was converting to Islam.[20] Later Bol was hindered from leaving the country by the Sudanese government, who accused him of supporting the Dinka-led Christian rebels, the Sudan People's Liberation Army. The Sudanese government refused to grant him an exit visa unless he came back with more money. Assistance by supporters in the United States, including Connecticut Senator Joseph Lieberman, raised money to provide Bol with plane tickets to Cairo, Egypt. After 6 months of negotiations with U.S. consulate officials regarding refugee status, Bol and his family were finally able to leave Egypt and return to the United States.[20]

Bol established the Ring True Foundation in order to continue fund-raising for Sudanese refugees. He gave most of his earnings (an estimated $3.5 million) to their cause. In 2002, Fox TV agreed to broadcast the telephone number of his Ring True Foundation in exchange for Bol's agreement to appear on their Celebrity Boxing show. After the referee goaded, "If you guys don't box, you won't get paid", he scored a third-round victory over former football player William "The Refrigerator" Perry.

In the fall of 2002, Bol signed a one-day contract with the Indianapolis Ice of the Central Hockey League. Even though he could not skate, the publicity generated by his single game appearance helped to raise money to assist children in Sudan.[21] Bol once suited up as a horse jockey for similar reasons.

Bol was involved in the April 2006 Sudan Freedom Walk, a three-week march from the United Nations building in New York to the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C.. The event was organized by Simon Deng, a former Sudanese swimming champion (currently a lifeguard at Coney Island) who was a longtime friend of Bol. Deng, who was a slave for three years from the age of nine, is from another tribe in Southern Sudan. His Sudan Freedom Walk is especially aimed at finding a solution to the genocide in Darfur (western Sudan), but it also seeks to raise awareness of the modern day slavery and human rights abuses throughout Sudan. Bol spoke in New York at the start of the Walk, and in Philadelphia at a rally organized by former hunger striker Nathan Kleinman.

During his time in Egypt, Bol ran a basketball school in Cairo. One of his pupils was a fellow Sudanese refugee; Chicago Bulls player Luol Deng, the son of a former Sudanese cabinet minister. Deng later moved to the United States to further his basketball career, continuing a close relationship with Bol.

After a political dispute in Sudan, in 2002 Bol was admitted to the United States as a religious refugee, and resided in West Hartford, Connecticut.[22] In July 2004, Bol was seriously injured in a car accident, breaking his neck when he was ejected from the taxi he was riding in hit a guardrail and overturned.[23] When Bol recovered from these injuries he moved to Olathe, Kansas.[22]

Bol was also the "Brand Ambassador" for Ethiopian Airlines and Ethiopian Airlines Journeys.

DeathOn June 19, 2010, Bol died from acute kidney failure and complications from Stevens–Johnson syndrome at the University of Virginia Medical Center in Charlottesville, Virginia.[22] [24]

After his death, tributes to Bol's basketball career and charitable works came from around the United States and the world.[25][26][27][28][29][30]

His former teams, and the NBA, issued statements in recognition of his impact on the sport of basketball and on his native Sudan.[31][32][33]

A salute to Bol took place on the floor of the United States Senate just a few days after his deat

The memorial service for Manute Bol was held on Tuesday, June 29, 2010, at 10:00 a.m. at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. Bol's body lay in an eight-foot-long, specially built casket.[35]

Bol was given tributes by United States Senator Sam Brownback from Kansas, Former National Security Advisor Robert McFarlane, Sudan's Ambassador to the United States, Dr. Akec Khoc Acieu, Bol's Uncle, Mr. Bol Bol Choi, and Vice President of the National Basketball Association Rory Sparrow.[35]

Sparrow rembered Bol as "a giant off the court" who should be remembered for humanitarian work and his basketball career.[35]

Senator Brownback recalled that "He literally gave his life for his people. He went over (to Sudan), he was sick. He stayed longer than he should have. He probably contracted this ailment that took his life while in Sudan, and he didn’t have to do that. He was an NBA basketball player. He could have stayed here and had an easy life. I’ve never seen anybody use his celebrity status more nor give his life more completely to a group of people than Manute Bol did. It makes me look at efforts that I do as not enough."

Dr. Akec K.A. Khoc, Ambassador of Sudan to the U.S said that "Manute had a very great heart for his country and people. He did everything to support anybody in need of shoes, blankets, health service, food, and people who were struggling. He went to see them and to encourage them to continue their struggle for their rights, for their freedoms. Manute embodied everything we can think of in Sudan. Reconciling warring groups between the north and south, in Darfur he was working for reconciliation between Darfur and the south and between Darfur and the rest of Sudan. So Manute was a voice for hope."

Sudan Sunrise founder, Reverend Canon Tom Prichard, says Bol's work to reconcile former enemies lives on. "Manute's legacy and vision of education and reconciliation, his determination to grow grassroots reconciliation - whether that reconciliation is expressed in a country that divides or holds together, wherever the boundary lines are drawn. Manute stood for grassroots reconciliation,"

Reverend Pritchard went on to say "There's no question Manute gave his life for his country."

Manute Bol's family patriarch, Bol Bol Chol, said, "This man is not an ordinary man. I believe this man is a messenger like other messengers who were sent into this world - to do something in this world. He has accomplished most of his mission, and so God took him and left the rest of the work to be done by others,"

A number of members of Bol's immediate family, including his sons, were at the service.

Manute Bol's remains were buried in Sudan.

 

 

Ted Williams. Best hitter that ever lived. WW2 and Korean War Hero. Top fisherman in the world. All around bada$$.

Some great Teddy Ballgame quotes: "I only know all the words to two songs. One is the national anthem. The other isn't."
and
"I was being paid $30,000 a year. The least I could do is hit .400"

 Rob Roy MacGregor (baptised 7th March 1671 – December 28th, 1734) fought to protect the farmers’ way of life, earning the respect of this fellow Highlanders and a prison sentence for treason. He escaped (several times, actually) and lived the remainder of his life as an outlaw. The Rob Roy Cocktail was created in 1894 to celebrate the opening of the Herald Square musical that paid homage to this Scottish folk hero.

 

Lance Armstrong
THE BEATLES
PINK FLOYD
MAYNARD
BEASTIE BOYS
GRATEFUL DEAD
Carl Sagan
Gene Roddenberry
Nicholas Tesla
George Peppard
Ernest Hemingway.
Dean Martin
Frank Sinatra
Bob Dylan.
Lemmy


 

Louis Braille 01/04 XXXX

Louis Braille was born on January 4th, 1809. He is best known for being the inventor of braille, a worldwide system used by blind and visually impaired people to read and write.

Louis became blind by accident from a awl (tool for making holes) accident when he was only 3 hears old. The wound got infected and Louis became blind in both eyes.

Unable to satisfy his quest for knowledge from lectures, the 12 year old, modified a top-secret information sharing method used on the battlefield, The method was reading raided digits with the finger in order to pass information in complete silence.  Braille is read by passing the fingers over characters made up of an arrangement of one to six embossed points. Braille published his first book on the subject at the age of 15. In 1837, he added symbols for math and music.

Braille became a famous respected teacher at the Royal Institution for Blind Youth in France. Despite his fame and respect among his peers, Braille was never taught during his lifetime at The Institute.  The air at the institute was contaminated and he died in Paris of tuberculosis on January 6, 1852 at the age of 43. His system was finally officially recognized in France two years after his death, in 1854.  His body was disinterred a century later in 1952 and honored with re-interment in the Panthéon in Paris. Braille is now in use for almost every language across the world.
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Martin Luther King Jr. 1/15

Martin Luther King Jr.  was born January 15th 1929.  He was an African American minister best known for being the prominent leader in the African American civil rights movement and his fight against racial segregation and discrimination. As a follower of the methods of Mahatma Gandhi, King was instrumental in  the advancement of civil rights in the United States and around the world through nonviolent means. He is a heroic leader in the history of modern American liberalism.
King became a Baptist minister early in his career becamoming a civil rights activist through his preachings. In 1955 He led the Montgomery Bus Boycott. In 1957, he helped found the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, also serving as its first president. In 1963 King led to the Million Man March in Washington, where King delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech cementing his reputation as one of the greatest orators in American history.  King expanded American values to include the vision of a color blind society. In 1964, King became the youngest person to ever receive the Nobel Peace Prize for his work to end racial segregation discrimination through civil disobedience and other nonviolent means.

By the time of his murder in 1968, he had refocused his efforts on ending poverty and stopping the Vietnam War. King was assassinated on April 4, 1968, in Memphis, Tennessee.
He was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1977, A National Holiday, Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, was established as a U.S. federal holiday in 1986, He was posthumously awarded The Congressional Gold Medal in 2004.  He is now an icon of non-violent protest, of social justice, and civil rights.

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Maurice Herzog XXX
Maurice Herzog was born on January 15th , 1919 in Lyon, France. He was a French mountaineer and sports administrator who led the expedition that first climbed a peak over 8000m, the Himalayan mountain Annapurna, On June 3, 1950. Before Herzog and Louis Lachenal summited the Annapurna, the 10th-highest mountain in the world, the peak was explored, reconnoitered and climbed all within one season. It was also climbed without the use of supplemental oxygen .

Hergog made the climb with four climbers total, Himself, Louis Lachenal, Gaston Rebuffat, and Lionel Terray. The four had to spend a night in a crevasse in the descent with one sleeping bag for all four climbers. Both summit climbers had chose light boots resulting in severe frostbite, with both climbers losing all of their toes. Herzog lost his gloves near the summit resulting in the loss of most of his fingers.  The resulting gangrene required the expedition doctor to perform emergency amputations in the field without anaesthetic.

Upon Herzog's return, he wrote a best-selling book about the expedition.  The climb caused a stir that was only surpassed by the climbing of  Everest in 1953 by Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay.  Annapurna was not climbed again until 1970, when the north and south faces we climbed at the same time by a British Army expedition in the North, and British climber Chris Bonington in the south. The mountain was not climbed again until 1977.

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Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart 01/27

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (German: ['v?lfga? ama'deus 'mo?tsa?t], English see fn.[1]), baptismal name Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart[2] (27 January 1756 – 5 December 1791), was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical era. He composed over 600 works, many acknowledged as pinnacles of symphonic, concertante, chamber, piano, operatic, and choral music. He is among the most enduringly popular of classical composers.

Mozart showed prodigious ability from his earliest childhood in Salzburg. Already competent on keyboard and violin, he composed from the age of five and performed before European royalty. At 17 he was engaged as a court musician in Salzburg, but grew restless and travelled in search of a better position, always composing abundantly. While visiting Vienna in 1781, he was dismissed from his Salzburg position. He chose to stay in the capital, where he achieved fame but little financial security. During his final years in Vienna, he composed many of his best-known symphonies, concertos, and operas, and portions of the Requiem, which was largely unfinished at the time of Mozart's death. The circumstances of his early death have been much mythologized. He was survived by his wife Constanze and two sons.

Mozart learned voraciously from others, and developed a brilliance and maturity of style that encompassed the light and graceful along with the dark and passionate. His influence on subsequent Western art music is profound. Beethoven wrote his own early compositions in the shadow of Mozart, of whom Joseph Haydn wrote that "posterity will not see such a talent again in 100 years."
Mozart fell ill while in Prague for the premiere on 6 September of his opera La clemenza di Tito, written in 1791 on commission for the Emperor's coronation festivities.[62] He was able to continue his professional functions for some time, and conducted the premiere of The Magic Flute on 30 September. The illness intensified on 20 November, at which point Mozart became bedridden, suffering from swelling, pain, and vomiting.[63]
Mozart was nursed in his final illness by Constanze and her youngest sister Sophie, and attended by the family doctor, Thomas Franz Closset. It is clear that he was mentally occupied with the task of finishing his Requiem. However, the evidence that he actually dictated passages to his student Süssmayr is very slim.[64][65]
Mozart died at 1 a.m. on 5 December 1791 at the age of 35. The New Grove gives a matter-of-fact description of his funeral:
Mozart was buried in a common grave, in accordance with contemporary Viennese custom, at the St Marx cemetery outside the city on 7 December. If, as later reports say, no mourners attended, that too is consistent with Viennese burial customs at the time; later Jahn (1856) wrote that Salieri, Süssmayr, van Swieten and two other musicians were present. The tale of a storm and snow is false; the day was calm and mild.[66

The cause of Mozart's death cannot be known with certainty. The official record has it as "hitziges Frieselfieber" ("severe miliary fever", referring to a rash that looks like millet seeds), a description that does not suffice to identify the cause as it would be diagnosed in modern medicine. Researchers have posited at least 118 causes of death, including trichinosis, influenza, mercury poisoning, and a rare kidney ailment.[67] The most widely accepted hypothesis is that Mozart died of acute rheumatic fever.
Mozart's sparse funeral did not reflect his standing with the public as a composer: memorial services and concerts in Vienna and Prague were well attended. Indeed, in the period immediately after his death, Mozart's reputation rose substantially: Solomon describes an "unprecedented wave of enthusiasm"[68] for his work; biographies were written (first by Schlichtegroll, Niemetschek, and Nissen; see Biographies of Mozart); and publishers vied to produce complete editions of his works
(1756 – 1791) Austrian musical prodigy and one of the most popular classical composers of all time


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Gaston Julia 02/03
Gaston Maurice Julia (February 3, 1893 – March 19, 1978) was a French mathematician who devised the formula for the Julia set. His works were popularized by French mathematician Benoît Mandelbrot, and the Julia and Mandelbrot fractals are closely related.

Julia gained attention for his mathematical work after the war when a 199-page article he wrote was featured in the Journal de Mathématiques Pures et Appliquées, a French mathematics journal. The article, which he published during 1918 at the age of 25, titled "Mémoire sur l'itération des fonctions rationnelles" described the iteration of a rational function. The article gained immense popularity among mathematicians and the general population as a whole, and so resulted in Julia's later receiving of the Grand Prix de l'Académie des Sciences. Despite his fame, his works were mostly forgotten[citation needed] until the day Benoît Mandelbrot mentioned them in his works.

Julia died in Paris at the age of 85.
(1893 – 1978) French mathematician who devised the formula for the Julia set, common for generating fractals


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Rosa Parks 2/4
Rosa Louise McCauley Parks (February 4, 1913 – October 24, 2005) was an African-American civil rights activist, whom the U.S. Congress called "the first lady of civil rights", and "the mother of the freedom movement".[1]

On December 1, 1955, in Montgomery, Alabama, Parks refused to obey bus driver James F. Blake's order that she give up her seat to make room for a white passenger. Parks' action was not the first of its kind to impact the civil rights issue. Others had taken similar steps, including Lizzie Jennings in 1854, Homer Plessy in 1892, Irene Morgan in 1946, Sarah Louise Keys in 1955, and Claudette Colvin on the same bus system nine months before Parks, but Parks' civil disobedience had the effect of sparking the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

Parks' act of defiance became an important symbol of the modern Civil Rights Movement and Parks became an international icon of resistance to racial segregation. She organized and collaborated with civil rights leaders, including boycott leader Martin Luther King, Jr., helping to launch him to national prominence in the civil rights movement.

At the time of her action, Parks was secretary of the Montgomery chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and had recently attended the Highlander Folk School, a Tennessee center for workers' rights and racial equality. Nonetheless, she took her action as a private citizen "tired of giving in". Although widely honored in later years for her action, she suffered for it, losing her job as a seamstress in a local department store. Eventually, she moved to Detroit, Michigan, where she found similar work. From 1965 to 1988 she served as secretary and receptionist to African-American U.S. Representative John Conyers. After retirement from this position, she wrote an autobiography and lived a largely private life in Detroit. In her final years she suffered from dementia, and became involved in a lawsuit filed on her behalf against American hip-hop duo OutKast on the song "Rosa Parks".

Parks eventually received many honors ranging from the 1979 Spingarn Medal to the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the Congressional Gold Medal and a posthumous statue in the United States Capitol's National Statuary Hall. Upon her death in 2005, she was the first woman and second non-U.S. government official granted the posthumous honor of lying in honor at the Capitol Rotunda. She was inducted into the Alabama Women's Hall of Fame in 2008.

Rosa Parks was an African American civil rights activist whom the U.S. Congress later called “Mother of the Modern-Day Civil Rights Movement”. On December 1, 1955, Parks became famous for refusing to obey bus driver James Blake’s order that she give up her seat to make room for a white passenger. This action of civil disobedience started the Montgomery Bus Boycott, which is one of the largest movements against racial segregation. In addition, this launched Martin Luther King, Jr., who was involved with the boycott, to prominence in the civil rights movement. She has had a lasting legacy worldwide. Rosa Parks resided in Detroit until she died at the age of ninety-two on October 24, 2005. City officials in Montgomery and Detroit announced on October 27, 2005 that the front seats of their city buses would be reserved with black ribbons in honor of Parks until her funeral. Her casket was transported to Washington, DC, and taken, aboard a bus similar to the one in which she made her protest, to lie in honor in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda (making her the first woman and second African American ever to receive this honor).

 

 


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2/6
George Herman Ruth, Jr. (February 6, 1895 – August 16, 1948), best known as "Babe" Ruth and nicknamed "the Bambino" and "the Sultan of Swat", was an American Major League baseball player from 1914–1935. Ruth originally broke into the major leagues with the Boston Red Sox as a starting pitcher, but after he was sold to the New York Yankees in 1919, he converted to a full-time right fielder and subsequently became one of the league's most prolific hitters. Ruth was a mainstay in the Yankees' lineup that won seven pennants and four World Series titles during his tenure with the team. After a short stint with the Boston Braves in 1935, Ruth retired. In 1936, Ruth became one of the first five players elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Ruth has since become regarded as one of the greatest sports heroes in American culture.[1] He has been named the greatest baseball player in history in various surveys and rankings, and his home run hitting prowess and charismatic personality made him a larger than life figure in the "Roaring Twenties".[2] Off the field he was famous for his charity, but also was noted for his often reckless lifestyle. Ruth is credited with changing baseball itself. The popularity of the game exploded in the 1920s, largely due to his influence. Ruth ushered in the "live-ball era", as his big swing led to escalating home run totals that not only excited fans, but helped baseball evolve from a low-scoring, speed-dominated game to a high-scoring power game.

In 1998, The Sporting News ranked Ruth number one on the list of "Baseball's 100 Greatest Players".[3] In 1999, baseball fans named Ruth to the Major League Baseball All-Century Team.[2] In 1969, he was named baseball's Greatest Player Ever in a ballot commemorating the 100th anniversary of professional baseball. In 1993, the Associated Press reported that Muhammad Ali was tied with Babe Ruth as the most recognized athletes, out of over 800 dead or alive athletes, in America. The study found that over 97% of Americans over 12 years of age identified both Ali and Ruth.[4] According to ESPN, he was the first true American sports celebrity superstar whose fame transcended baseball.[5] In a 1999 ESPN poll, he was ranked as the third-greatest US athlete of the century, behind Michael Jordan and Muhammad Ali.[2]

Ruth was the first player to hit 60 home runs in one season (1927), setting the season record which stood until broken by Roger Maris in 1961. Ruth's lifetime total of 714 home runs at his retirement in 1935 was a record, until first surpassed by Hank Aaron in 1974. Unlike many power hitters, Ruth also hit for average: his .342 lifetime batting is tenth highest in baseball history, and in one season (1923) he hit .393, a Yankee record.[6] His .690 career slugging percentage and 1.164 career on-base plus slugging (OPS) remain the Major League records.[2] Ruth dominated the era in which he played. He led the league in home runs during a season twelve times, slugging percentage and OPS thirteen times each, runs scored eight times, and runs batted in (RBIs) six times. Each of those totals represents a modern record (as well as the all-time record, except for RBIs).[7]

Ruth was born at 216 Emory Street in Pigtown, a rough neighborhood of Baltimore, Maryland. Ruth's German-American parents, Kate Schamberger-Ruth and George Herman Ruth, Sr., owned a succession of saloons and sold lightning rods.[8] Only one of Ruth's seven siblings, his sister Mamie, survived past infancy.[9]

 
Ruth (top row, far left) at St Mary's Industrial School for BoysNot much is known about Ruth's early childhood.[10] His mother was constantly ill (she later died of tuberculosis while Ruth was still a teenager).[11] Ruth later described his early life as "rough".[12] When he was seven years old, his father sent him to St. Mary's Industrial School for Boys, a reformatory and orphanage, and signed custody over to the Catholic missionaries who ran the school (the site of St. Mary's was occupied by Cardinal Gibbons School).[13] Ruth remained at St. Mary's for the next 12 years, only visiting with his family for special occasions.[14] Brother Matthias Boutlier, the Head of Discipline at St. Mary's, first introduced Ruth to the game of baseball.[15] He became a father figure in Ruth's life, teaching him how to read and write, and worked with Ruth on hitting, fielding and as his skills progressed, pitching.[16] During his time in St. Mary's, Ruth was also taught tailoring, where he became a qualified shirtmaker and was a part of both the school band and the drama club.[17]

Baltimore OriolesIn 1913, St. Mary's Industrial School was playing a game against Mount St. Mary's University (then college) in Emmitsburg, Maryland. That day, the game was attended by Joe Engel, a former Mount St. Mary's student who was now a pitcher for the Washington Senators.[18] Impressed with Ruth's pitching abilities, Engel, along with a teacher at St. Mary's, Brother Gilbert, brought Ruth to the attention of Jack Dunn, owner and manager of the then minor-league Baltimore Orioles. After watching Ruth pitch in a workout for half an hour, Dunn signed Ruth to a contract for $250 ($5,500 in current dollar terms) a month on February 14, 1914.[19] Since Ruth was only 19 years old, Dunn had to become Ruth's legal guardian as well; at that time, the age of majority was 25.[citation needed] When the other players on the Orioles caught sight of Ruth, they nicknamed him "Jack's newest babe".[20] The reference stayed with Ruth the rest of his life, and he was most commonly referred to as Babe Ruth from then on.[21] "Babe" was not a unique nickname (see e.g., Babe Adams). His teammates eschewed the public nickname "Babe", and instead called him "George"; or "Jidge" (a nickname for George); or "The Big Fellow"; or just "Bam".[22]

On July 7, 1914, Dunn offered to trade Ruth, along with Ernie Shore and Ben Egan, to Connie Mack of the Philadelphia Athletics. Dunn asked $10,000 ($220,000 in current dollar terms) for the trio, but Mack refused the offer.[23] The Cincinnati Reds, who had an agreement with the Orioles, also passed on Ruth. Instead, the team elected to take George Twombley and Claud Derrick.[24] Two days later, on July 9, Dunn sold the trio to Joe Lannin and the Boston Red Sox.[25] The amount of money exchanged in the transaction is disputed.

Major League careerRed Sox Years
Ruth pitching for the Red Sox in 1914, at Comiskey Park in ChicagoRuth appeared in five games for the Red Sox in 1914, pitching in four of them. He picked up the victory in his major league debut on July 11.[26] The Red Sox had many star players in 1914, so Ruth was soon optioned to the minor league Providence Grays of Providence, Rhode Island for most of the remaining season. Behind Ruth and Carl Mays, the Grays won the International League pennant.[27] Shortly after the season, in which he'd finished with a 2–1 record, Ruth proposed to Helen Woodford, a waitress whom he had met in Boston. They were married in Ellicott City, Maryland, on October 17, 1914.[27]

During spring training in 1915, Ruth secured a spot in the Red Sox starting rotation. He joined a pitching staff that included Rube Foster, Dutch Leonard, and Smokey Joe Wood. Ruth won 18 games,[28] lost eight, and helped himself by hitting .315. He also hit his first four home runs. The Red Sox won 101 games that year on their way to a victory in the World Series. Ruth did not pitch in the series, and grounded out in his only at-bat.[2]

In 1916, after a slightly shaky spring, he went 23–12, with a 1.75 ERA and nine shutouts, both of which led the league. On June 27, he struck out ten Philadelphia A's, a career high. On July 11, he started both games of a doubleheader, but the feat was not what it seemed; he only pitched one-third of an inning in the opener because the scheduled starter, Foster, had trouble getting loose. Ruth then pitched a complete-game victory in the nightcap. Ruth had unusual success against Washington Senators star pitcher Walter Johnson, beating him four times in 1916 alone, by scores of 5–1, 1–0, 1–0 in 13 innings, and 2–1. Johnson finally outlasted Ruth for an extra-inning 4–3 victory on September 12; in the years to come, Ruth would hit ten home runs off Johnson, including the only two Johnson would allow in 1918–1919. Ruth's nine shutouts in 1916 set an AL record for left-handers which would remain unmatched until Ron Guidry tied it in 1978.

Despite a weak offense, hurt by the sale of Tris Speaker to the Indians, the Red Sox made it to the World Series. They defeated the Brooklyn Robins four games to one. This time Ruth made a major contribution, pitching a 14-inning complete-game victory in Game Two.

 
Ruth batting in 1918Ruth went 24–13 with a 2.01 ERA and six shutouts in 1917, and hit .325, but the Sox finished second, nine games behind the Chicago White Sox. On June 23 against the Washington Senators, after walking the leadoff hitter, Ruth erupted in anger, was ejected, and threw a punch at the umpire, which would result in a ten-game suspension. Ernie Shore came into the game in relief, the baserunner was out stealing, and Shore retired all twenty-six batters he faced, for which he was credited with a perfect game until the 1990s. Ruth's outburst was an example of self-discipline problems that plagued Ruth throughout his career, and is regarded as the primary reason (other than financial) that then-owner Harry Frazee was willing to sell him to the Yankees two years later.

The left-hander was pitching a no-hitter in a 0–0 game against the Detroit Tigers on July 11, before a single deflected off his glove in the eighth inning. Boston finally pushed across a run in the ninth, and Ruth held onto his 1–0 victory by striking out Ty Cobb. In 1942, Ruth called this game his greatest thrill on the field.

In 1918, Ruth pitched in 20 games, posting a 13–7 record with a 2.22 ERA. He was mostly used as an outfielder, and hit a league-leading eleven home runs. His statistics were curtailed slightly when he walked off the team in July following an argument with Boston's manager.

Ruth threw a 1–0 shutout in the opener of the 1918 World Series, then won Game Four in what would be his final World Series appearance as a pitcher. Ruth won both his starts, allowing two runs (both earned) in seventeen innings for an ERA of 1.06. Ruth extended his World Series consecutive scoreless inning streak to 29? innings, a record that would last until Whitey Ford broke it in 1961.

Emergence as a hitterIn the years 1915–1917, Ruth had been used in just 44 games in which he had not pitched. After the 1917 season, in which he hit .325, albeit with limited at bats, teammate Harry Hooper suggested that Ruth might be more valuable in the lineup as an everyday player.

In 1918, he began playing in the outfield more and pitching less, making 75 hitting-only appearances. Former teammate Tris Speaker speculated that the move would shorten Ruth's career, though Ruth himself wanted to hit more and pitch less. In 1918, Ruth batted .300 and led the A.L. in home runs with eleven despite having only 317 at-bats, well below the total for an everyday player.

During the 1919 season, Ruth pitched in only 17 of his 130 games. He also set his first single-season home run record that year with 29, including a game-winning homer on a September "Babe Ruth Day" promotion. It was Babe Ruth's last season with the Red Sox.

Sold to New York
Ruth in 1920, the year he joined the YankeesOn December 26, 1919,[29][30] Frazee sold Ruth to the New York Yankees. Popular legend has it that Frazee sold Ruth and several other of his best players to finance a Broadway play, No, No, Nanette (which, though it actually didn't debut until 1925, did have origins in a December 1919 play, My Lady Friends).[31] The truth is not so simple, as Frazee had another financial concern: Babe Ruth.

After the 1919 season, Ruth demanded a raise to $20,000 ($220,000 in current dollar terms)—double his previous salary.[32] However, Frazee refused, and Ruth responded by letting it be known he wouldn't play until he got his raise, suggesting that he may retire to undertake other profitable ventures.[33]

Frazee finally lost patience with Ruth, and decided to trade him. However, he was effectively limited to two trading partners—the Chicago White Sox and the then-moribund Yankees. The other five clubs rejected his deals out of hand under pressure from American League president Ban Johnson, who never liked Frazee and was actively trying to remove him from ownership of the Red Sox.[34] The White Sox offered Shoeless Joe Jackson $60,000 ($660,000 in current dollar terms), but Yankees owners Jacob Ruppert and Tillinghast L'Hommedieu Huston offered an all-cash deal—$100,000 ($1,100,000 in current dollar terms).

Frazee, Ruppert and Huston quickly agreed to a deal. In exchange for Ruth, the Red Sox would get $125,000 ($1.37 million in current dollar terms) in cash and three $25,000 ($270,000 in current dollar terms) notes payable every year at 6 percent interest. Ruppert and Huston also loaned Frazee $300,000 ($3.29 million in current dollar terms), with the mortgage on Fenway Park as collateral. The deal was contingent on Ruth signing a new contract, which was quickly agreed to, and Ruth officially became property of the Yankees on December 26. The deal was announced ten days later.[35]

In the January 6, 1920 edition of The Boston Globe, Frazee described the transaction:

"I should have preferred to take players in exchange for Ruth, but no club could have given me the equivalent in men without wrecking itself, and so the deal had to be made on a cash basis. No other club could afford to give me the amount the Yankees have paid for him, and I don't mind saying I think they are taking a gamble. With this money the Boston club can now go into the market and buy other players and have a stronger and better team in all respects than we would have had if Ruth had remained with us."
However, the January 6, 1920 The New York Times was more prescient:

"The short right field wall at the Polo Grounds should prove an easy target for Ruth next season and, playing seventy-seven games at home, it would not be surprising if Ruth surpassed his home run record of twenty-nine circuit clouts next Summer."[35]
The Yankee Years1920–1925After moving to the Yankees, Ruth's transition from a pitcher to a power-hitting outfielder became complete. In his fifteen year Yankee career, consisting of over 2,000 games, Ruth re-wrote the record books in terms of his hitting achievements, while making only five widely-scattered token appearances on the mound, winning all of them.

 
Babe Ruth in 1921.In 1920, his first year with the Yankees, Ruth hit 54 home runs and batted .376. His .847 slugging average was a Major League record until 2001. Aside from the Yankees, only the Philadelphia Phillies managed to hit more home runs as a team than Ruth did as an individual, slugging 64 in hitter-friendly Baker Bowl.

In 1921, Ruth improved to arguably the best year of his career, hitting 59 home runs, batting .378 and slugging .846 (the highest with 500+ at-bats in an MLB season) while leading the Yankees to their first league championship. On July 18, 1921, Babe Ruth hit career home run #139, breaking Roger Connor's record of 138 in just the eighth year of his career. (This was not recognized at the time, as Connor's correct career total was not accurately documented until the 1970s. Even if the record had been celebrated, it would have been on an earlier date, as Connor's total was at one time thought to be only 131.)

Ruth's name quickly became synonymous with the home run, as he led the transformation of baseball strategy from the "inside game" to the "power game", and because of the style and manner in which he hit them. His ability to drive a significant number of his home runs in the 450–500 foot range and beyond resulted in the lasting adjective "Ruthian", to describe any long home run hit by any player. Probably his deepest hit in official game play (and perhaps the longest home run by any player), occurred on July 18, at Detroit's Navin Field, in which he hit one to straightaway center, over the wall of the then-single-deck bleachers, and to the intersection, some 575 feet (175 m) from home plate.

As impressive as Ruth's 1921 numbers were, they could have been more so under modern conditions. Bill Jenkinson's 2006 book, The Year Babe Ruth Hit 104 Home Runs, attempts to examine each of Ruth's 714 career home runs, plus several hundred long inside-the-park drives and "fair-foul" balls. Until 1931 in the AL, balls that hit the foul pole were considered ground-rule doubles, and balls that went over the wall in fair territory but hooked foul were ruled foul. Many fields, including Ruth's home Polo Grounds, had exceptionally deep center fields—in the Polo Grounds' case, nearly five hundred feet. The author concluded that Ruth would have been credited with 104 home runs in 1921, if modern rules and field dimensions were in place. However, these claims ignore the extreme short distanes down the left and right field lines, which were 279 and 258 feet respectively. In addition, the 21 foot overhang in left field often intercepted fly balls which would otherwise have been catchable and turned them into home runs. In either case, Ruth set major league records in total bases (457), extra base hits (119) and times on base (379), all of which stand to this day.

The Yankees had high expectations when they met the New York Giants in the 1921 World Series, and the Yankees won the first two games with Ruth in the lineup. However, Ruth badly scraped his elbow during Game 2, sliding into third base (he had walked and stolen both second and third). After the game, he was told by the team physician not to play the rest of the series. Although he did play in Games 3, 4 and 5, and pinch-hit in Game 8 of the best-of-9 Series, his productivity was diminished, and the Yankees lost the series. Ruth hit .316, drove in five runs and hit his first World Series home run. (Although the Yankees won the fifth game, Ruth wrenched his knee and did not return to the Series until the eighth [last] game.)

Ruth's appearance in the 1921 World Series also led to a problem and triggered another disciplinary action. After the series, Ruth played in a barnstorming tour. A rule then in force prohibited World Series participants from playing in exhibition games during the off-season, the purpose of which was to prevent Series participants from "restaging" the Series and undermining its value. Baseball Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis suspended Ruth for the first six weeks of the 1922 season.[36] Landis had made his point about adhering to the letter of the rules, but he also recognized that the rule was no longer needed, and rescinded it.

Despite his suspension, Ruth started his 1922 season on May 20 as the Yankees' new on-field captain. But five days later, he was ejected from a game for throwing dirt on an umpire, and then climbed into the stands to confront a heckler; Ruth was subsequently stripped of the captaincy. In his shortened season, Ruth appeared in 110 games, batted .315, with 35 home runs and drove in 99 runs, but compared to his previous two dominating seasons, the 1922 season was a disappointment for Ruth. Despite Ruth's off-year, Yankees managed to win the pennant to face the New York Giants for the second straight year in the World Series. In the series, Giants manager John McGraw instructed his pitchers to throw Ruth nothing but curveballs, and Ruth never adjusted. Ruth had just two hits in seventeen at-bats, and the Yankees lost to the Giants for the second straight year by 4–0 (with one tie game).

In 1923, the Yankees moved from the Polo Grounds, where they had sublet from the Giants, to their new Yankee Stadium, which was quickly dubbed "The House That Ruth Built".[37] Ruth hit the stadium's first home run on the way to a Yankees victory over the Red Sox. Ruth finished the 1923 season with a career-high .393 batting average and major-league leading 41 home runs. For the third straight year, the Yankees faced the Giants in the World Series. Rebounding from his struggles in the previous two World Series, Ruth dominated the 1923 World Series. He batted .368, walked eight times, scored eight runs, hit three home runs and slugged 1.000 during the series, as the Yankees won their first World Series title, four games to two.

 
Ruth after being knocked unconscious from running into a wall at Griffith Stadium on July 5, 1924.On July 5, 1924, Ruth was knocked unconscious after running into a wall during a game at Griffith Stadium against the Washington Senators. Despite evident pain and a bruised pelvic bone, Ruth insisted on staying in the game and hit a double in his next at-bat.[38] Ruth narrowly missed winning the Triple Crown in 1924. He hit .378 for his only American League batting title, led the major leagues with 46 home runs, and batted in 121 runs to finish second to Goose Goslin's 129. Ruth's on-base percentage was .513, the fourth of five years in which his OBP exceeded .500. However, the Yankees finished second, two games behind the Washington Senators, who went on to win their only World Series while based in D.C. During that same year, Ruth served in the New York national Guard 104th Field Artillery.[39]

During spring training in 1925 Ruth's ailment was dubbed "the bellyache heard round the world," when one writer wrote that Ruth's illness was caused by binging on hot dogs and soda pop before a game.[40] Venereal disease and alcohol poisoning (caused by tainted liquor, a major health problem during the Prohibition) have also been speculated to be the causes of his illness.[41] However, the exact nature of his ailment has never been confirmed and remains a mystery. Playing just 98 games, Ruth had what would be his worst season as a Yankee as he finished the season with a .290 average and 25 home runs. The Yankees team finished next to last in the American League with a 69–85 mark, their last season with a losing record until 1965.

1926–1928Babe Ruth performed at a much higher level during 1926, batting .372 with 47 home runs and 146 RBIs. The Yankees won the AL pennant and advanced to the World Series, where they were defeated by Rogers Hornsby and the St. Louis Cardinals in seven games. In Game 4, he hit three home runs, the first time any player achieved this in a World Series game. Despite his batting heroics, he is also remembered for a costly baserunning blunder. Ruth had a reputation as a good but overaggressive baserunner (he had 123 stolen bases, including ten steals of home, but only a 51% career percentage). With two outs in the bottom of the ninth inning of the decisive seventh game, with the Yankees trailing 3–2, Ruth tried to steal second base. However, he was thrown out by ten feet, ending the game and the Series. Barrow later called this the only on-field boner Ruth ever made in his career.

This remains the only time that the final out of a World Series was a "caught stealing." The 1926 series was also known for Ruth's promise to Johnny Sylvester, a seriously ill 11-year old, that he would hit a home run on his behalf.[42]

Ruth was the leader of the famous 1927 Yankees, also known as Murderer's Row because of the strength of its hitting lineup. The team won a then AL-record 110 games, a mark for a 154-game season surpassed by the 1954 Cleveland Indians (the 2001 Seattle Mariners now hold the record with 116 wins, though they played eight more games), took the AL pennant by 19 games, and swept the Pittsburgh Pirates in the World Series.

With the race long since decided, the nation's attention turned to Ruth's pursuit of his own home run mark of 59. Early in the season, Ruth expressed doubts about his chances: "I don't suppose I'll ever break that 1921 record. To do that, you've got to start early, and the pitchers have got to pitch to you. I don't start early, and the pitchers haven't really pitched to me in four seasons. I get more bad balls to hit than any other six men...and fewer good ones." Ruth was also being challenged for his slugger's crown by teammate Lou Gehrig, who nudged ahead of Ruth's total in midseason, prompting the New York World-Telegram to anoint Gehrig the favorite. But Ruth caught Gehrig (who would finish with 47), and then had a remarkable last leg of the season, hitting 17 home runs in September. His 60th came on September 30, in the Yankees' next-to-last game. Ruth was exultant, shouting after the game, "Sixty, count 'em, sixty! Let's see some son-of-a-bitch match that!"[43] In later years, he would give Gehrig some credit: "Pitchers began pitching to me because if they passed me they still had Lou to contend with." In addition to his career-high 60 home runs, Ruth batted .356, drove in 164 runs and slugged .772.

 
The 1927 New York Yankees, one of the greatest baseball teams of all-time (Ruth is on top row, fifth from the left.)The following season started off well for the Yankees, who led the AL by 13 games in July. But the Yankees were soon plagued by some key injuries, erratic pitching and inconsistent play. The Philadelphia Athletics, rebuilding after some lean years, erased the Yankees' big lead and even took over first place briefly in early September. The Yankees, however, took over first place for good when they beat the A's three out of four games in a pivotal series at Yankee Stadium later that month.

Ruth's play in 1928 mirrored his team's performance. He got off to a hot start and on August 1, he had 42 home runs. This put him ahead of his 60 home run pace from the previous season. But Ruth was hobbled by a bad ankle the latter part of the season, and he hit just twelve home runs in the last two months of the regular season. His batting average also fell to .323, well below his career average. Nevertheless, he ended the season with 54 home runs, which would be the fourth (and last) time he hit 50 home runs in a season.

 
Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig at West Point, New York, 1927.The Yankees had a 1928 World Series rematch with the St. Louis Cardinals, who had upset them in the 1926 series. The Cardinals had the same core players as the 1926 team, except for Rogers Hornsby, who was traded for Frankie Frisch after the 1926 season. Ruth batted .625 (the second highest average in World Series history), including another three-home run game (in game 4), Gehrig batted .545, and the Yankees demolished the Cardinals in four games. The Yankees thus became the first major league team to sweep their opponents in consecutive World Series.

Decline and end with YankeesIn 1929, the Yankees failed to make the World Series for the first time in four years, and it would be another three years before they returned. Although the Yankees had slipped, Ruth led or tied for the league lead in home runs each year during 1929–1931. At one point during the 1930 season, as a stunt, Ruth was called upon to pitch for the first time since 1921, and he pitched a complete-game victory. (He had often pitched in exhibitions in the intervening years).

Also in 1929, the Yankees became the first team to use uniform numbers regularly (the Cleveland Indians had used them briefly in 1916). Since Ruth normally batted third in the order (ahead of Gehrig), he was assigned number 3 (to Gehrig's 4). The Yankees retired Ruth's number on June 13, 1948; however, it was kept in circulation prior to that.

 
Babe Ruth and Al SmithIn 1930, which was not a pennant year for the Yankees, Ruth was asked by a reporter what he thought of his yearly salary of $80,000 ($1.05 million in current dollar terms) being more than President Hoover's $75,000. His response: "I know, but I had a better year than Hoover."[44] That quote has also been rendered as, "How many home runs did he hit last year?" (Ruth had supported Al Smith in the 1928 Presidential election, and snubbed an appearance with president Hoover.) [45][46][47] Three years later, Ruth would make a public appearance with the ex-President at a Stanford – USC football game.

In the 1932 season, the Yankees went 107–47 and won the pennant under manager Joe McCarthy, as Ruth hit .341, with 41 home runs and 137 RBIs.

The Yankees faced Gabby Hartnett's Chicago Cubs in the 1932 World Series. The Yankees swept the Cubs and batted .313 as a team. During Game 3 of the series, after having already homered, Ruth hit what has now become known as Babe Ruth's Called Shot. During the at-bat, Ruth supposedly gestured to the deepest part of the park in center-field, predicting a home run. The ball he hit traveled past the flagpole to the right of the scoreboard and ended up in temporary bleachers just outside Wrigley Field's outer wall. The center field corner was 440 feet away, and at age 37, Ruth had hit a straightaway center home run that was perhaps a 490 foot blow.[48] It was Ruth's last Series homer (and his last Series hit), and it became one of the legendary moments of baseball history.

Ruth remained productive in 1933, as he batted .301, with 34 home runs, 103 RBIs, and a league-leading 114 walks. Elected to play in the first All-Star game, he hit the first home run in the game's history on July 6, 1933, at Comiskey Park in Chicago. His two-run home run helped the AL to a 4–2 victory over the NL, and Ruth made a fine catch in the game. Film footage of his All-Star game home run revealed the 38-year-old Ruth had become noticeably overweight.

Late in the 1933 season, he was called upon to pitch in one game and pitched a complete game victory, his final appearance as a pitcher. For the most part, his Yankee pitching appearances (five in fifteen years) were widely-advertised attempts to boost attendance. Despite unremarkable pitching numbers, Ruth had a 5–0 record in those five games, raising his career totals to 94–46.

In 1934, Babe Ruth recorded a .288 average, 22 home runs, and made the All-Star team for the second consecutive year. During the game, Ruth was the first of five consecutive strikeout victims (all of whom were future Hall of Fame players) of Giants pitcher Carl Hubbell, perhaps the most famous pitching feat in All-Star game history. In what turned out to be his last game at Yankee Stadium, only about 2,000 fans attended. By this time, Ruth had reached a personal milestone of 700 home runs and was about ready to retire.

 
Ruth with the baseball-kids in Japan in 1934After the 1934 season, Ruth went on a baseball barnstorming tour in the Far East. Players such as Jimmie Foxx, Lefty Gomez, Earl Averill, Charlie Gehringer, and Lou Gehrig were among fourteen players who played a series of 22 games, with many of the games played in Japan. Ruth was popular in Japan, as baseball had been popular in Japan for decades. Riding in a motorcade, Ruth was greeted by thousands of cheering Japanese. The tour was considered a great success for further increasing the popularity of baseball in Japan, and in 1936 Japan organized its first professional baseball league.

Sold to the BravesBy this time, Ruth knew he had little left as a player. His heart was set on managing the Yankees, and he made no secret of his desire to replace McCarthy. However, Ruppert would not consider dumping McCarthy. The slugger and manager had never got along and Ruth's managerial ambitions further chilled their relations. Just before the 1934 season, Ruppert offered to make Ruth manager of the Yankees' top minor-league team, the Newark Bears. However, Ruth's wife, Claire Merritt Hodgson and business manager advised him to reject the offer.

After the 1934 season, the only teams that seriously considered hiring Ruth were the Philadelphia Athletics and Detroit Tigers. A's owner/manager Connie Mack gave some thought to stepping down as manager in favor of Ruth, but later dropped the idea, saying that Ruth's wife would be running the team in a month if Ruth ever took over. Ruth was in serious negotiations with Tigers owner Frank Navin, but missed a scheduled interview in late 1934. Meanwhile, Ruppert negotiated with other major-league clubs, seeking one that would take Ruth either as a manager or player.

Boston Braves owner Emil Fuchs finally agreed to take Ruth. Even though the Braves had fielded fairly competitive teams in the last three seasons, Fuchs was sinking in debt and couldn't afford the rent on Braves Field. Fuchs thought Ruth was just what the Braves needed, both on and off the field.

After a series of phone calls, letters and meetings, the Yankees traded Ruth to the Braves on February 26, 1935. It was announced that in addition to remaining as a player, Ruth would become team vice president and would be consulted on all club transactions. He was also made assistant manager to Braves skipper Bill McKechnie. In a long letter to Ruth a few days before the press conference, Fuchs promised Ruth a share in the Braves' profits, with the possibility of becoming co-owner of the team. Fuchs also raised the possibility of Ruth becoming the Braves' manager, perhaps as early as 1936.

 
Ruth in a Boston Braves uniform in 1935, his last year as a player. Due to years of neglect, Ruth's health had declined considerably, significantly affecting his play.Amid much media hoopla, Ruth played his first home game in Boston in over 16 years. Before an opening-day crowd of over 25,000, Ruth accounted for all of the Braves' runs in a 4–2 defeat of the New York Giants. The Braves had long played second fiddle to the Red Sox in Boston, but Ruth's arrival spiked interest in the Braves to levels not seen since their stunning win in the 1914 World Series.

That win proved to be the only time the Braves were over .500 that year. By May 20, they were 7–17, and their season was effectively over. While Ruth could still hit, he could do little else, and soon stopped hitting as well. His conditioning had deteriorated so much that he could do little more than trot around the bases. His fielding was dreadful; at one point, three of the Braves' pitchers threatened not to take the mound if Ruth was in the lineup. Ruth was also annoyed that McKechnie ignored most of his managerial advice (McKechnie later said that Ruth's presence made enforcing discipline nearly impossible). He soon discovered that he was vice president and assistant manager in name only, and Fuchs' promise of a share of team profits was also hot air. In fact, Fuchs expected Ruth to invest some of his money in the team.

On May 25, at Forbes Field in Pittsburgh, Ruth went 4-for-4, drove in 6 runs and hit 3 home runs in an 11–7 loss to the Pirates. These were the last three home runs of his career. His last home run cleared the roof at the old Forbes Field—he became the first player to accomplish that feat. Five days later, in Philadelphia, Ruth played in his last Major League game. He struck out in the first inning and, while playing the field in the same inning, hurt his knee and left the game. In the 1948 film The Babe Ruth Story there was a more dramatic recounting of Ruth's last game. The Braves were depicted as winning the game against The Pirates and learning he had been fired for walking off the field during the game, while still in the locker room.

Two days after that, Ruth summoned reporters to the locker room after a game against the Giants and announced he was retiring. He had wanted to retire as early as May 12, but Fuchs persuaded him to stay on because the Braves hadn't played in every National League park yet. That season, he hit just .181 with six home runs in 72 at-bats. The Braves season went as badly as Ruth's short season. They finished 38–115, the fourth-worst record in Major League history, just a few percentage points fewer than the infamous 1962 New York Mets.

Personal lifeRuth married Helen Woodford in 1914.[49] Owing to his infidelities, they were reportedly separated around 1926.[49] Helen died in a fire in Watertown, Massachusetts on January 11, 1929 in a house owned by Edward Kinder, a dentist whom she had been living with as "Mrs. Kinder". Kinder identified her body as being that of his wife, then went into hiding after Helen's true identity was revealed; Ruth himself had to get authorities to issue a new death certificate in her legal name, Margaret Helen Woodford Ruth.[50]

Ruth had two daughters. Dorothy Ruth was adopted by Babe and Helen. Decades later, she wrote a book, My Dad, the Babe,[51] claiming that she was Ruth's biological child by a girlfriend named Juanita Jennings.[52][53][54]

Ruth adopted Julia Hodgson when he married her mother, actress and model Claire Merritt Hodgson. Julia currently resides in Arizona, and threw out the ceremonial first pitch before the final game in the original Yankee Stadium on September 21, 2008.

Ruth and Claire regularly wintered in Florida, frequently playing golf during the off-season and while the Yankees were spring training in Tampa, Florida. After retirement, he had a winter beachfront home in Treasure Island, Florida, near St. Petersburg.

Radio and films
Screenshot from Headin' HomeRuth made many forays into various popular media. He was heard often on radio in the 1930s and 1940s, both as a guest and on his own programs with various titles: The Adventures of Babe Ruth was a 15-minute Blue Network show heard three times a week from April 16 to July 13, 1934. Three years later, he was on CBS twice a week in Here's Babe Ruth which was broadcast from April 14 to July 9, 1937. That same year he portrayed himself in "Alibi Ike" on Lux Radio Theater. His Baseball Quiz was first heard Saturdays on NBC June 5 to July 10, 1943 and then later that year from August 28 to November 20 on NBC, followed by another NBC run from July 8 to October 21, 1944.

His film roles included a cameo appearance as himself in the Harold Lloyd film Speedy (1928). His first film appearance occurred in 1920, in the silent movie Headin' Home. He made numerous other film appearances in the silent era, usually either playing himself or playing a ballplayer similar to himself.

Ruth's voice was said by some biographers to be similar to that of film star Clark Gable, although that was obviously not evident in the silent film era. He had an appropriate role as himself in Pride of the Yankees (1942), the story of his ill-fated teammate Lou Gehrig. Ruth had three scenes in the film, including one in which he appeared with a straw hat. He said, "If I see anyone touch it, I'll knock his teeth in!" The teammates convinced young Gehrig (Gary Cooper) to chew up the hat; he got away with it. In the second scene, the players go to a restaurant, where Babe sees a side of beef cooking and jokes, "Well, I'll have one of those..." and, the dramatic scene near the end, where Gehrig makes his speech at Yankee Stadium ending with "I consider myself the luckiest man..."

Retirement and post-playing days
Ruth signing autographs at the 1937 All-Star Game at Griffith Stadium.In 1936, Ruth was one of the first five players elected into the Baseball Hall of Fame. Two years later, Larry MacPhail, the Brooklyn Dodgers general manager, offered him a first base coaching job in June.[55] Ruth took the job but quit at the end of the season. The coaching position was his last job in Major League Baseball. His baseball career finally came to an end in 1943. In a charity game at Yankee Stadium, he pinch hit and drew a walk. In 1947, he became director of the American Legion's youth baseball program.[56]

Baby Ruth candy bar controversyFor decades, the Baby Ruth candy bar was believed to be named after Babe Ruth and some sports marketing practitioners used this example of one of the first forms of sports marketing. However, while the name of the candy bar sounds nearly identical to the Babe's name, the Curtiss Candy Company has steadfastly claimed that Baby Ruth was named after President Grover Cleveland's daughter, Ruth Cleveland. Nonetheless, the bar first appeared in 1921, as Babe Ruth's fame was on the rise and long after Cleveland had left the White House and 15 years after his daughter had died. The company failed to negotiate an endorsement deal with Ruth, and many saw the company's story about the origin of the name of the bar as merely a ploy to avoid having to pay the baseball player any royalties. Ironically, Curtiss successfully shut down a rival bar that was approved by, and named for, Ruth, on the grounds that the names were too similar in the case of George H. Ruth Candy Co. v. Curtiss Candy Co, 49 F.2d 1033 (1931).[57] Sports marketing experts now believe that the Curtiss Candy Company employed the first successful use of an ambush sports marketing campaign, capitalizing on the Babe's name, fame, and popularity.

The New York Times supports the evidence of the ambush marketing campaign when it wrote "For 85 years, Babe Ruth, the slugger, and Baby Ruth, the candy bar, have lived parallel lives in which it has been widely assumed that the latter was named for the former. The confection's creator, the Curtiss Candy Company, never admitted to what looks like an obvious connection – especially since Ruth hit 54 home runs the year before the first Baby Ruth was devoured. Had it done so, Curtiss would have had to compensate Ruth. Instead, it eventually insisted the inspiration was "Baby Ruth" Cleveland, the daughter of President Grover Cleveland. But it is an odd connection that makes one wonder at the marketing savvy of Otto Schnering, the company's founder."[58]

 
The Great Bambino with future U.S. President George H. W. Bush at Yale.Thus, in 1995, a company representing the Ruth estate brought the Baby Ruth candy bar into sponsorship officialdom when it licensed the Babe's name and likeness for use in a Baby Ruth marketing campaign. On page 34 of the spring, 2007, edition of the Chicago Cubs game program, there is a full-page ad showing a partially-unwrapped Baby Ruth in front of the Wrigley ivy, with the caption, "The official candy bar of Major League Baseball, and proud sponsor of the Chicago Cubs." Continuing the baseball-oriented theme, during the summer and post-season of the 2007 season, a TV ad for the candy bar showed an entire stadium (played by Dodger Stadium) filled with people munching Baby Ruths, and thus having to hum rather than singing along with "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" during the seventh-inning stretch.[58]

IllnessIn 1946, he began experiencing severe pain over his left eye.[59] In November 1946, a visit to French Hospital in New York revealed Ruth had a malignant tumor in his neck that had encircled his left carotid artery. He received post-operative radiation therapy. Before leaving the hospital in February 1947, he lost approximately 80 pounds (36 kg).

Around this time, developments in chemotherapy offered some hope. Teropterin, a folic acid derivative, was developed by Dr. Brian Hutchings of the Lederle Laboratories.[59] It had been shown to cause significant remissions in children with leukemia. Ruth was administered this new drug in June 1947. He was suffering from headaches, hoarseness and had difficulty swallowing. He agreed to use this new medicine but did not want to know any details about it. All the while he was receiving this experimental medication, he did not know it was for cancer. On June 29, 1947, he began receiving injections and he responded with dramatic improvement. He gained over 20 pounds (9.1 kg) and had resolution of his headaches. On September 6, 1947, his case was presented anonymously at the 4th Annual Internal cancer Research Congress in St. Louis. Teropterin ended up being a precursor for methotrexate, a now commonly used chemotherapeutic agent.

 
Babe Ruth's number 3 was retired by the New York Yankees in 1948.

It is now known that Ruth suffered from nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPCA), a relatively rare tumor located in the back of the nose near the eustachian tube. Contemporary management for NPCA includes concurrent chemotherapy and radiation therapy.

On April 27, 1947, the Yankees held a ceremony at Yankee Stadium. Despite his health problems, Ruth was able to attend "Babe Ruth Day".[59] Ruth spoke to a capacity crowd of more than 60,000, including many American Legion youth baseball players. Although lacking a specific memorable comment like Gehrig's "Luckiest man" speech, Ruth spoke from the heart, of his enthusiasm for the game of baseball and in support of the youth playing the game. (Babe Ruth speaking at Yankee Stadium)

Later, Ruth started the Babe Ruth Foundation, a charity for disadvantaged children. Another Babe Ruth Day held at Yankee Stadium in September 1947 helped to raise money for this charity.

 
Nat Fein's Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph of Ruth at Yankee Stadium, June 13, 1948. This was his last public appearance before his death two months later.After the cancer returned, Ruth attended the 25th anniversary celebration of the opening of Yankee Stadium on June 13, 1948. He was reunited with old teammates from the 1923 Yankee team and posed for photographs. The photo of Ruth taken from behind, using a bat as a cane, standing apart from the other players, and facing "Ruthville" (right field) became one of baseball's most famous and widely circulated photographs. It won the Pulitzer Prize.

Death
The grave of Babe RuthShortly after he attended the Yankee Stadium anniversary event, Ruth was back in the hospital. He received hundreds of well-wishing letters and messages. This included a phone call from President Harry Truman. Claire helped him respond to the letters.

On July 26, 1948, Ruth attended the premiere of the film The Babe Ruth Story, a biopic about his own life. William Bendix portrayed Ruth. Shortly thereafter, Ruth returned to the hospital for the final time. He was barely able to speak. Ruth's condition gradually became worse, and in his last days, scores of reporters and photographers hovered around the hospital. Only a few visitors were allowed to see him, one of whom was National League president and future Commissioner of Baseball, Ford Frick. "Ruth was so thin it was unbelievable. He had been such a big man and his arms were just skinny little bones, and his face was so haggard," Frick said years later.

On August 16, the day after Frick's visit, Babe Ruth died at age 53 due to pneumonia.[59] An autopsy showed the cancer Ruth died from began in the nose and mouth and spread widely throughout his body from there.[59] His body lay in repose in Yankee Stadium. His funeral was two days later at St. Patrick's Cathedral, New York. Ruth was then buried in the Cemetery of the Gate of Heaven in Hawthorne, New York. At his death, the New York Times called Babe Ruth, "a figure unprecedented in American life. A born showman off the field and a marvelous performer on it, he had an amazing flair for doing the spectacular at the most dramatic moment."[60]

Legacy
Ruth's widow, Claire, at the unveiling of a memorial plaque in Baltimore's old Memorial Stadium (1955)Ruth's impact on American culture still commands attention. Top performers in other sports are often referred to as "The Babe Ruth of ______."[5] He is widely regarded as one of the greatest baseball players in history.[61] Many polls place him as the number one player of all time.[62]

Ruth was mentioned in the poem "Line-Up for Yesterday" by Ogden Nash:

Line-Up for Yesterday
R is for Ruth.
To tell you the truth,
There's just no more to be said,
Just R is for Ruth.

— Ogden Nash, Sport magazine (January 1949)[63]Films have been made featuring Ruth, or a Ruth-like figure ("The Whammer" in The Natural, for example).

During World War II, Japanese soldiers would yell in English, "To hell with Babe Ruth", in order to anger American soldiers.[citation needed] An episode of Hawaii Five-O would be named "To Hell With Babe Ruth" because of that.[5]

As a sidelight to his prominent role in changing the game to the power game, the frequency and popularity of Ruth's home runs eventually led to a rule change pertaining to those hit in sudden-death mode (bottom of the ninth or later inning). Prior to 1931, as soon as the first necessary run to win the game scored, the play was over, and the batter was credited only with the number of bases needed to drive in the winning run. Thus, if the score was 3–2 with the bases loaded in the bottom of the ninth, and the batter smacked an "over the fence home run", the game would end at 4–3, with the batter only allowed a double, and the runners officially stopped on 2nd and 3rd (since they weren't needed to win the game). The new rule allowed the entire play to complete, justified on the grounds that the ball was dead and that all runners could freely advance, thus granting the full allotment of HR and RBI to the batter, as we know it today. Several players lost home runs that way, including Ruth. As noted in the inaugural edition of The Baseball Encyclopedia (MacMillan, 1969), Ruth's career total would have been changed to 715 if historians during the 1960s had been successful in pursuing this matter. Major League Baseball elected not to retrofit the records to the modern rules, and Ruth's total stayed at 714.

Another rules change that affected Ruth was the method used by umpires to judge potential home runs when the batted ball left the field near a foul pole. Before 1931, i.e. through most of Ruth's most productive years, the umpire called the play based on the ball's final resting place "when last seen". Thus, if a ball went over the fence fair, and curved behind the foul pole, it was ruled foul. Beginning in 1931 and continuin

2.
Ruth's heavy Louisville Slugger solid ash wood bat sold for $1.26 million at a Sotheby's auction in December 2004, making it the third most valuable baseball memorabilia item, behind Mark McGwire's 70th home run ball and the famous 1909 Honus Wagner baseball card.[65]

Career batting statisticsTaken from Retrosheet.[66]

G AB R H HR RBI BB SO Avg. OBP SLG
2,503 8,399 2,174 2,873 714 2,213 2,062 1,330 .342 .473 .690

All-time ranks3rd on all-time home run list with 714
10th on all-time batting average list with .342
2nd on all-time RBI list with 2,217
1st on all-time slugging % with 0.690
2nd on all-time on-base % list with .474
1st on all-time OPS with 1.164
4th on all-time runs list with 2,174
6th on all-time total bases list with 5,793
3rd on all-time bases on balls list with 2,062

 

*

Babe lived every minute of it, as if every minute would be his last, and he loved every minute of it. In the process, he gained a not-undeserved reputation for being a partier, jokester and clown. Babe was like a kid in a candy store. Plus, he didn't have the manners and refinement of someone from a different background, sometimes coming across as a bit crude. Yet, most people were drawn to this lively, super-talented young ballplayer.

Today, Babe's "festive" aspects of his personality are as well known as his baseball achievements. What's interesting to note is that his fun-loving nature and its related habits seem to have become much more magnified and the focus of his story today, than they had been during his playing days or lifetime. Although Babe did his share of living of his "new life on the outside of St. Mary's", he wasn't quite the hard-drinker and carouser that some of the media has portrayed.

Julia Ruth Stevens shares her thoughts: "He had a very deprived childhood being put into St. Mary's and he really just wanted to try everything there was. He wanted to get enough to eat so he felt full… and he wanted to have enough to drink so that he felt good. It was just one of those things that I would never begrudge him for. When you consider that he died at the age of 53, he didn't have that many years from 19 to 53. But he was never a drunkard -- no way. He never drank any more than anyone else in the days of prohibition. It was just the thing that everyone was doing."

During the Summer of 2006, BRC interviewed a number of people who knew the Babe directly, such as Bill Werber his former teammate, or second- or third hand. It was said over and over again that he wasn't the drinker that he is portrayed as today. And, the same was that he may not have been the ladies' man that he has been labeled, either. There is no doubt that he enjoyed his beverages; he enjoyed the attention of many women (remember that he was a true, yet accessible, superstar, at a time when there weren't many similar celebrities); he loved to have a good time; and, he loved the attention of the public and essentially returned that attention in like kind.

As time has passed, and as the press and public fascination with the "bad boys" and the negative aspects of celebrity personalities has increased, the negatives of Babe's life outside the ballpark have taken on a new dimension, a bigger focus, a legend in and of its own. While the truth probably lies somewhere between the different extremes, the public sometimes forgets that Babe was human, too. And, he had the same interests and spirit that many regular people had then and have today.

Within five months, Babe went from the Orioles in Baltimore to the Red Sox in Boston. His baseball career was running at warp speed. His personal life reflected the same dramatic changes. Babe wasn't even in Boston for more than a few months before he met and married a young waitress by the name of Helen Woodford in October 1914.

Babe bought his new bride a farm house out in Sudbury, MA, where they lived happily together for a few years. The reality is, however, that, at the time that Babe married Helen, he was still so "new" to the world outside of St. Mary's - the real world and real society. He was far from ready to really settle down. Babe was too interested in experiencing life's adventures and appreciating all the attention and admiration that he was receiving as a baseball star to respect the responsibilities and bonds that marriage entailed.

When Ruth was traded to the Yankees in 1920, the couple moved to New York, where Babe thrived more than ever in the spotlight. And, he soaked up the energy, entertainment and night life of the city. Unfortunately, Helen was never comfortable with his fame and all the attention that came with it. This disconnect increased the tension between them.

Even so, in 1921, Babe and Helen adopted a baby girl, whom they named Dorothy after friend and Yankee teammate Waite Hoyt's first wife (who also was Dorothy's god-mother).

Sadly, sharing the love of a new baby was not enough to maintain their relationship and they slowly drifted further apart. Helen ultimately had enough of the crazy life in the big city and of her big celebrity husband and decided to move with Dorothy back to the quiet of their Sudbury, MA home. Being a Catholic and unable to divorce, Babe and Helen remained married throughout the 1920's; however, they ended up spending most of their marriage separated.

It was 1922 when Babe first met the next love of his life, whom he would ultimately marry and remain with for the rest of his life. Her name was Claire Hodgson.

Claire was born in Athens, GA, the daughter of a lawyer who often did legal work for Ty Cobb. Claire, motivated to start a career in show business, decided to move to New York in 1918 with her baby daughter, Julia. Claire eventually had success in New York as a model and a showgirl. In the course of her performing career, she had befriended actor Jim Barton, who, in 1922, took her to a Yankee game and introduced her to the Babe. Claire was intelligent, energetic, confident and very self-assured around the Babe. In very short time, Ruth was very smitten with Claire.

As the rest of the decade passed, Babe and Claire became very close, but remained as friends given Babe's Catholic faith. In January 1929, Ruth's wife, Helen, sadly passed away in a tragic house fire. The exact cause of the fire was never completely determined, but a lit cigarette was the main theory.

In April of the same year, Babe married Claire a day before opening day at Yankee Stadium. After their marriage, Claire quickly introduced some much-needed discipline to Babe's life. She became his personal manager, managing everything from Babe's outrageous spending sprees to his exercise and eating habits.

 Babe also acquired an instant family, which included Babe's adopted daughter Dorothy from his marriage with Helen, his newly-adopted daughter Julia from his marriage to Claire and Claire's mother and two brothers from Athens, Georgia. Babe finally had the big family he had always wanted.

Julia Ruth Stevens recalled for BRC some of her memories of growing up with Babe Ruth as her father and their family life:

"Mother had told me that he was going to adopt me and I was just thrilled and thought how amazing it would be to be the daughter of Babe Ruth. Of course I had called him Babe for all the years that I had known him. But when they got married, Mother told Dorothy that she needed to teach me to start calling Babe, "Daddy." But it wasn't long before I started calling him Daddy and I still call him Daddy to this day.

Daddy and Mother loved entertaining people at their home. Daddy loved his home and all the things that went on -- all the holidays. They would almost always have a New Year's party and I can remember some of the various people that used to come - Hoagy Carmichael would come and play the piano. That was just fabulous.

He liked to have people around him but there were lots of evenings though where we would play or cards or play checkers with Momma and he would always beat her and she would get mad and walk out!

 He was so grateful to have an honest to goodness family, due to losing his mother at such a young age. Momma loved him and so did Gene and Hubert . He thought the world of all of them. It's not everyday that someone would be willing to bring in a whole family like that. Maybe a mother-in-law, but also two brothers? But he just loved it."

To hear more about Julia's life with her "Daddy", Babe Ruth, please visit Section 09 Voices to hear more personal stories.

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Babe's Generosity and Thoughfulness

Babe could never get enough attention and admiration from his fans - he thrived on their enthusiasm. It probably made him an even better, more motivated player as a result. Although he could be exuberant and somewhat cocky in personality, Babe normally didn't take his fame or fortune for granted.

 Many times gave to others who were less fortunate, most particularly to children. Children were Babe's biggest fans, who loved and admired him unconditionally throughout his life, and Babe always loved children in return. Even as a child himself, Babe was looking out for the younger and less fortunate children at St. Mary's. It was said that in wintertime that Ruth would run around the courtyard of St. Mary's, rubbing and blowing on the hands of the younger kids, trying to keep them warm.

Later in life, during his baseball career and retirement, Babe always made efforts with kids and those who helped him. The stories abound. At the height of his fame, Babe hardly ever passed up a request to visit an orphanage or a sick child in the hospital. He always spent time patientaly signing baseballs for each and every youngster who waited for him before and after games, as well as in public appearances later in life. As another example, St. Mary's Industrial School in Baltimore suffered a major fire in the 1930's, which caused significant damage to the main building. In response, Babe organized a fundraising drive that generated over $100,000 - a substantial amount of money in those days -- for repairs and rebuilding.

Three of BRC's contributors conveyed stories that illustrated spirit and kindness.

Mike Gibbons, Executive Director of the Babe Ruth Musuem and Birthplace, shared this perspective:
"He never ever turned a kid down for an autograph - no matter what. Towards the end, when he was in the hospital before he died, there was always a bunch of kids down on the sidewalk hoping to catch a glimpse of him or something like that. He would have these business-sized cards with nothing on them and he would sign as many of them as he could at the time and give them to his nurse and tell her to take them downstairs to the kids down on the sidewalk, or he would give her $10 and say, 'here, go buy all the kids some ice cream cones.'"


Billy Werber, Babe's former Yankees teammate, recounted:
"He was very generous. In Detroit, the clubhouse boy had gone out earlier to hang the uniforms up and put the locker in order for the Yankees to the play. It was cold and the game was called off and the kid had come back to the hotel and he was shaking with cold and Babe called him over - we were sitting there in circle chewing the fat - and peeled two $20 bills out of his pocket and told the kid to go out and buy himself a coat. When the kid came back we were still standing there and he comes over to give Babe $20 back, 'Here Babe, it only cost me $20" and Babe said, "You keep it and buy yourself something good to eat.'"


Betty Hoyt, Yankee Hall of Fame pitcher Waite Hoyt's widow, recalled one of Waite's stories of Babe's generosity:
"Waite said that people were always borrowing from Babe because Babe was making a lot more money than the rest of the players. So they would borrow money from Babe and they would pay him back when they got paid, but Babe would never take interest on any of it. And sometimes Babe would get loans from the guys and he would always give them 6% interest. As soon as he got paid he'd go over to them and pay them their money back plus 6% interest but he would never take interest from them. Because he knew that he was much better off than they all were."

 

 


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2/15 Ernest Shackleton

“Men wanted for hazardous journey… Safe return doubtful. Honour and recognition in case of success.”

Sir Ernest Shackleton’s Antarctic expedition of 1914 would ultimately fail, but the hardy crew he mustered would still win honour and recognition for its ability to survive against the odds.

After their ship Endurance was crushed in pack ice, the crew abandoned the plan to cross Antarctica on foot and the aim became merely to survive. Over two years, Shackleton led the crew across ice floes, then in lifeboats to a camp on Elephant Island where for six months the main group would subsist on seal meat and blubber.

Shackleton took five men around the island to the north and then across 800 miles of treacherous ocean to South Georgia Island. He then hiked with two others for 36 hours across the island’s uncharted interior to a whaling station with another three months to go before he could safely reach the crew left on Elephant Island.

He later wrote, “We had suffered, starved and triumphed, grovelled down yet grasped at glory… We had reached the naked soul of man.”

Sir Ernest Henry Shackleton, CVO, OBE (15 February 1874 – 5 January 1922) was an Anglo-Irish explorer who was one of the principal figures of the period known as the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration. His first experience of the polar regions was as third officer on Captain Robert Falcon Scott’s Discovery Expedition, 1901–04, from which he was sent home early on health grounds. Determined to make amends for this perceived personal failure, he returned to Antarctica in 1907 as leader of the Nimrod Expedition. In January 1909 he and three companions made a southern march which established a record Farthest South latitude at 88°23'S, 97 geographical miles (114 statute miles, 190 km) from the South Pole, by far the closest convergence in exploration history up to that time. For this achievement, Shackleton was knighted by King Edward VII on his return home.

After the race to the South Pole ended in 1912 with Roald Amundsen's conquest, Shackleton turned his attention to what he said was the one remaining great object of Antarctic journeying–the crossing of the continent from sea to sea, via the pole. To this end he made preparations for what became the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition, 1914–17. Disaster struck this expedition when its ship, Endurance, was trapped in pack ice and slowly crushed, before the shore parties could be landed. There followed a sequence of exploits, and an ultimate escape with no lives lost, that would eventually assure Shackleton's heroic status, although this was not immediately evident.[1] In 1921 he went back to the Antarctic with the Shackleton-Rowett Expedition, intending to carry out a programme of scientific and survey activities. Before the expedition could begin this work Shackleton died of a heart attack while his ship, Quest, was moored in South Georgia. At his wife's request he was buried there.

Away from his expeditions, Shackleton's life was generally restless and unfulfilled. In his search for rapid pathways to wealth and security he launched many business ventures and other money-making schemes, none of which prospered. His financial affairs were generally muddled; when he died he was heavily in debt. On his death he was lauded in the press, but was thereafter largely forgotten, while the heroic reputation of his rival Scott was sustained for many decades. At the end of the 20th century Shackleton was "rediscovered",[2] and rapidly became a cult figure, a role model for leadership as one who, in extreme circumstances, kept his team together to accomplish a survival story which polar historian Stephanie Barczewski describes as "incredible"

 

2/27
John R. "Johnny" Cash[2] (born J. R. Cash; February 26, 1932 – September 12, 2003) was an American singer-songwriter, actor,[3] and author,[3] who has been called one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century.[4] Although he is primarily remembered as a country music artist, his songs and sound spanned many other genres including rockabilly and rock and roll—especially early in his career—as well as blues, folk, and gospel. This crossover appeal led to Cash being inducted in both the Country Music Hall of Fame and Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Late in his career, Cash covered songs by several rock artists, among them the industrial rock band Nine Inch Nails[5][6] and the synthpop band Depeche Mode.[6][7][8]

Cash was known for his deep, distinctive bass-baritone voice;[9][10][11] for the "boom-chicka-boom" freight train sound of his Tennessee Three backing band; for his rebelliousness,[12][13] coupled with an increasingly somber and humble demeanor;[9] for providing free concerts inside prison walls;[14][15] and for his dark performance clothing, which earned him the nickname "The Man in Black".[16] He traditionally started his concerts by saying, "Hello, I'm Johnny Cash."[17][18] and usually following it up with his standard "Folsom Prison Blues."

Much of Cash's music, especially that of his later career, echoed themes of sorrow, moral tribulation and redemption.[9][19] His signature songs include "I Walk the Line", "Folsom Prison Blues", "Ring of Fire", "Get Rhythm" and "Man in Black". He also recorded humorous numbers, including "One Piece at a Time" and "A Boy Named Sue"; a duet with his future wife, June Carter, called "Jackson"; as well as railroad songs including "Hey, Porter" and "Rock Island Line".[20]

Cash, a devout but troubled Christian,[21][22] has been characterized as a "lens through which to view American contradictions and challenges."[23][24][25] A Biblical scholar,[3][26][27] he penned a Christian novel titled Man in White,[28][29] and he made a spoken word recording of the entire New King James Version of the New Testament.[30][31] Even so, Cash declared that he was "the biggest sinner of them all", and viewed himself overall as a complicated and contradictory man.[32][33] Accordingly,[34] Cash is said to have "contained multitudes", and has been deemed "the philosopher-prince of American country music

Cash learned upon researching his ancestry that he was of Scottish royal descent on his father's side, traced back to Malcolm IV King of Scots (1153-1165).[37][38][39] After the opportunity of meeting with since deceased Falkland, Fife laird, Major Michael Crichton-Stuart, he traced the Cash family tree to 11th-century Fife, Scotland.[40][41][42] Scotland's Cash Loch as well as portions of Fife bear the name of his family.[40] Though Cash learned he was not of Native American descent, his empathy and compassion for Native Americans was unabated. Such feelings were expressed in several of his songs, including "Apache Tears" and "The Ballad of Ira Hayes", and on his album, Bitter Tears: Ballads of the American Indian. He was also part English and Scots-Irish.

Early lifeBorn J. R. Cash in Kingsland, Arkansas,[43] the fourth of seven children to Ray Cash (13 May 1897, Kingsland, Arkansas – 23 December 1985, Hendersonville, Tennessee)[44] and Carrie Cloveree Rivers (13 March 1904, Rison, Arkansas – 11 March 1991, Hendersonville, Tennessee).[45][46] Cash was given the name "J.R." because his parents could not agree on a name, only on initials.[47] When he enlisted in the United States Air Force, the military would not accept initials as his name, so he adopted John R. Cash as his legal name. In 1955, when signing with Sun Records, he took Johnny Cash as his stage name.[48]

The Cash children were, in order: Roy, Margaret Louise, Jack, J. R., Joanne, Reba and Tommy.[49][50] His younger brother, Tommy Cash, also became a successful country artist.

In March 1935, when Cash was three years old, the family settled in Dyess, Arkansas. J.R. was working in cotton fields beginning at age five, singing along with his family simultaneously while working. The family farm was flooded on at least two occasions, which later inspired him to write the song "Five Feet High and Rising".[51] His family's economic and personal struggles during the Great Depression inspired many of his songs, especially those about other people facing similar difficulties.

Cash was very close to his older brother, Jack.[52] In May 1944, Jack was pulled into a whirling head saw in the mill where he worked, and almost cut in two. He suffered for over a week before he died on May 20, 1944, at age 15.[51] Cash often spoke of the horrible guilt he felt over this incident. According to Cash: The Autobiography, his father was away that morning, but he and his mother, and Jack himself, all had premonitions or a sense of foreboding about that day, causing his mother to urge Jack to skip work and go fishing with his brother. Jack insisted on working, as the family needed the money. On his deathbed, Jack said he had visions of heaven and angels. Decades later, Cash spoke of looking forward to meeting his brother in heaven.

Cash's early memories were dominated by gospel music and radio. Taught by his mother and a childhood friend, Cash began playing guitar and writing songs as a young boy. In high school he sang on a local radio station; decades later he released an album of traditional gospel songs, called My Mother's Hymn Book. He was also significantly influenced by traditional Irish music that he heard performed weekly by Dennis Day on the Jack Benny radio program.[53]

Cash enlisted in the United States Air Force. After basic training at Lackland Air Force Base and technical training at Brooks Air Force Base, both in San Antonio, Texas, Cash was assigned to a U.S. Air Force Security Service unit, assigned as a code intercept operator for Soviet Army transmissions at Landsberg, Germany "where he created his first band named The Landsberg Barbarians."[54] He was the first radio operator to pick up the news of the death of Joseph Stalin.[55] After he was honorably discharged as a sergeant on July 3, 1954, he returned to Texas.[56]

MarriagesOn July 18, 1951, while in Air Force training, Cash met 17-year-old Vivian Liberto at a roller skating rink in her native San Antonio. They dated for three weeks, until Cash was deployed to Germany for a three year tour. During that time, the couple exchanged hundreds of pages of love letters.[57] On August 7, 1954, one month after his discharge, they were married at St. Anne's Catholic church in San Antonio. The ceremony was performed by her uncle, Father Vincent Liberto. They had four daughters: Rosanne, Kathy, Cindy and Tara. Cash's drug and alcohol abuse, constant touring, and affairs with other women, and his close relationship with future wife June Carter, led Liberto to file for divorce in 1966.[58]

In 1968, 13 years after they first met backstage at the Grand Ole Opry, Cash proposed to June Carter, an established country singer, during a live performance in London, Ontario,[59] marrying on March 1, 1968 in Franklin, Kentucky. They had one child together, John Carter Cash (born March 3, 1970). They continued to work together and tour for 35 years, until June Carter died in 2003. Cash died just four months later. Carter co-wrote one of Cash's biggest hits, "Ring of Fire," with singer Merle Kilgore. She and Cash won two Grammy awards for their duets.

Vivian Liberto claims a different version of the origins of "Ring of Fire" in I Walked the Line: My Life with Johnny, stating that Cash gave Carter the credit for monetary reasons.[60]

CareerEarly careerIn 1954, Cash and Vivian moved to Memphis, Tennessee, where he sold appliances while studying to be a radio announcer. At night he played with guitarist Luther Perkins and bassist Marshall Grant. Perkins and Grant were known as the Tennessee Two. Cash worked up the courage to visit the Sun Records studio, hoping to get a recording contract. After auditioning for Sam Phillips, singing mostly gospel songs, Phillips told him that gospel was unmarketable. It was once rumored that Phillips told Cash to "go home and sin, then come back with a song I can sell," though in a 2002 interview Cash denied that Phillips made any such comment.[61] Cash eventually won over the producer with new songs delivered in his early frenetic style. His first recordings at Sun, "Hey Porter" and "Cry! Cry! Cry!", were released in 1955 and met with reasonable success on the country hit parade.

On December 4, 1956, Elvis Presley dropped in on studio owner Sam Phillips to pay a social visit while Carl Perkins was in the studio cutting new tracks, with Jerry Lee Lewis backing him on piano. Cash was also in the studio and the four started an impromptu jam session. Phillips left the tapes running and the recordings, almost half of which were gospel songs, survived and have since been released under the title Million Dollar Quartet.

Cash's next record, "Folsom Prison Blues", made the country Top 5, and "I Walk the Line" became No. 1 on the country charts and entered the pop charts Top 20. "Home of the Blues" followed, recorded in July 1957. That same year Cash became the first Sun artist to release a long-playing album. Although he was Sun's most consistently best-selling and prolific artist at that time, Cash felt constrained by his contract with the small label. Presley had already left Sun, and Phillips was focusing most of his attention and promotion on Lewis. The following year Cash left the label to sign a lucrative offer with Columbia Records, where his single "Don't Take Your Guns to Town" became one of his biggest hits.

In the early 1960s, Cash toured with the Carter Family, which by this time regularly included Mother Maybelle's daughters, Anita, June and Helen. June, whom Cash would eventually marry, later recalled admiring him from afar during these tours. In the 1960s he appeared on Pete Seeger's short lived Rainbow Quest.[62]

He also acted in a 1961 film entitled Five Minutes to Live, later re-released as Door-to-door Maniac. He also wrote and sang the opening theme.

Outlaw imageAs his career was taking off in the late 1950s, Cash started drinking heavily and became addicted to amphetamines and barbiturates. For a brief time, he shared an apartment in Nashville with Waylon Jennings, who was heavily addicted to amphetamines. Cash used the uppers to stay awake during tours. Friends joked about his "nervousness" and erratic behavior, many ignoring the warning signs of his worsening drug addiction. In a behind-the-scenes look at The Johnny Cash Show, Cash claims to have "tried every drug there was to try."

Although in many ways spiraling out of control, Cash's frenetic creativity was still delivering hits. His rendition of "Ring of Fire" was a crossover hit, reaching No. 1 on the country charts and entering the Top 20 on the pop charts. The song was written by June Carter and Merle Kilgore. The song was originally performed by Carter's sister, but the signature mariachi-style horn arrangement was provided by Cash, who said that it had come to him in a dream.

In June 1965, his truck caught fire due to an overheated wheel bearing, triggering a forest fire that burned several hundred acres in Los Padres National Forest in California.[63][64] When the judge asked Cash why he did it, Cash said, "I didn't do it, my truck did, and it's dead, so you can't question it."[51] The fire destroyed 508 acres (2.06 km2), burning the foliage off three mountains and killing 49 of the refuge's 53 endangered condors. Cash was unrepentant: "I don't care about your damn yellow buzzards." The federal government sued him and was awarded $125,172 ($871,303 in current dollar terms). Cash eventually settled the case and paid $82,001.[65] He said he was the only person ever sued by the government for starting a forest fire.[51]

Although Cash carefully cultivated a romantic outlaw image, he never served a prison sentence. Despite landing in jail seven times for misdemeanors, each stay lasted only a single night. His most infamous run-in with the law occurred while on tour in 1965, when he was arrested by a narcotics squad in El Paso, Texas. The officers suspected that he was smuggling heroin from Mexico, but it was 688 Dexedrine capsules and 475 Equanil tablets that the singer had hidden inside his guitar case. Because they were prescription drugs rather than illegal narcotics, he received a suspended sentence.

 
Johnny Cash and his second wife, June CarterCash was later arrested on May 11, 1965, in Starkville, Mississippi, for trespassing late at night onto private property to pick flowers. (This incident gave the spark for the song "Starkville City Jail", which he spoke about on his live At San Quentin prison album.)

In the mid 1960s, Cash released a number of concept albums, including Ballads Of the True West (1965), an experimental double record mixing authentic frontier songs with Cash's spoken narration, and Bitter Tears (1964), with songs highlighting the plight of the Native Americans. His drug addiction was at its worst at this point, and his destructive behavior led to a divorce from his first wife and canceled performances.

In 1967, Cash's duet with Carter, "Jackson", won a Grammy Award.

Johnny Cash's final arrest was in Walker County, GA where he was taken in after being involved in a car accident while carrying a bag of prescription pills. Cash attempted to bribe a local deputy, who turned the money down, and then spent the night in a LaFayette, GA jail. The singer was released after a long talk with Sheriff Ralph Jones, who warned him of his dangerous behavior and wasted potential. Johnny credited that experience for saving his life, and he later came back to LaFayette to play a benefit concert that attracted 12,000 people (the city population was less than 9,000 at the time) and raised $75,000 for the high school.[66]

Cash curtailed his use of drugs for several years in 1968, after a spiritual epiphany in the Nickajack Cave, when he attempted to commit suicide while under the heavy influence of drugs. He descended deeper into the cave, trying to lose himself and "just die", when he passed out on the floor. He reported to be exhausted and feeling at the end of his rope when he felt God's presence in his heart and managed to struggle out of the cave (despite the exhaustion) by following a faint light and slight breeze. To him, it was his own rebirth. June, Maybelle, and Ezra Carter moved into Cash's mansion for a month to help him conquer his addiction. Cash proposed onstage to June at a concert at the London Gardens in London, Ontario, Canada on February 22, 1968; the couple married a week later (on March 1) in Franklin, Kentucky. June had agreed to marry Cash after he had 'cleaned up'.[67] He rediscovered his Christian faith, taking an "altar call" in Evangel Temple, a small church in the Nashville area, pastored by Rev. Jimmy Rodgers Snow, son of country music legend Hank Snow.

According to longtime friend Marshall Grant, Cash's 1968 rebirth experience did not result in his completely stopping use of amphetamines. However, in 1970, Cash ended all drug use for a period of seven years. Grant claims that the birth of Cash's son, John Carter Cash, inspired Cash to end his dependence. Cash began using amphetamines again in 1977. By 1983, he was once again addicted, and entered the Betty Ford Clinic in Rancho Mirage, CA for rehabilitation. Cash managed to stay off drugs for several years, but by 1989, he was dependent again and entered Nashville's Cumberland Heights Alcohol and Drug Treatment Center. In 1992, he entered the Loma Linda Behavioural Medicine Centre in Loma Linda, CA for his final rehabilitation (several months later, his son followed him into this facility for treatment).[68][69][70]

Folsom Prison BluesCash felt great compassion for prisoners. He began performing concerts at various prisons starting in the late 1950s. His first ever prison concert was held on January 1, 1958 at San Quentin State Prison.[71] These performances led to a pair of highly successful live albums, Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison (1968) and Johnny Cash at San Quentin (1969).

The Folsom Prison record was introduced by a rendition of his classic "Folsom Prison Blues", while the San Quentin record included the crossover hit single "A Boy Named Sue", a Shel Silverstein-penned novelty song that reached No. 1 on the country charts and No. 2 on the U.S. Top Ten pop charts. The AM versions of the latter contained a couple of profanities which were edited out. The modern CD versions are unedited and uncensored and thus also longer than the original vinyl albums, though they still retain the audience reaction overdubs of the originals.

In addition to his performances at U.S. prisons, Cash also performed at the Österåker Prison in Sweden in 1972. The live album På Österåker ("At Österåker") was released in 1973. Between the songs, Cash can be heard speaking Swedish, which was greatly appreciated by the inmates.

"The Man in Black"
Cash advocated prison reform at his July 1972 meeting with United States President Richard Nixon.From 1969 to 1971, Cash starred in his own television show, The Johnny Cash Show, on the ABC network. The Statler Brothers opened up for him in every episode; the Carter Family and rockabilly legend Carl Perkins were also part of the regular show entourage. However, Cash also enjoyed booking more contemporary performers as guests; such notables included Neil Young, Louis Armstrong, Kenny Rogers and The First Edition (who appeared a record four times on his show), James Taylor, Ray Charles, Eric Clapton (then leading Derek and the Dominos), and Bob Dylan.

Cash had met with Dylan in the mid 1960s and became closer friends when they were neighbors in the late 1960s in Woodstock, New York. Cash was enthusiastic about reintroducing the reclusive Dylan to his audience. Cash sang a duet with Dylan on Dylan's country album Nashville Skyline and also wrote the album's Grammy-winning liner notes.

Another artist who received a major career boost from The Johnny Cash Show was songwriter Kris Kristofferson, who was beginning to make a name for himself as a singer/songwriter. During a live performance of Kristofferson's "Sunday Mornin' Comin' Down", Cash refused to change the lyrics to suit network executives, singing the song with its references to marijuana intact: "On a Sunday morning sidewalk / I'm wishin', Lord, that I was stoned."[72]

By the early 1970s, he had crystallized his public image as "The Man in Black". He regularly performed dressed all in black, wearing a long black knee-length coat. This outfit stood in contrast to the costumes worn by most of the major country acts in his day: rhinestone suit and cowboy boots. In 1971, Cash wrote the song "Man in Black", to help explain his dress code: "We're doing mighty fine I do suppose / In our streak of lightning cars and fancy clothes / But just so we're reminded of the ones who are held back / Up front there ought to be a man in black."

Cash attired in black performing in Bremen, Northern Germany, in September 1972He wore black on behalf of the poor and hungry, on behalf of "the prisoner who has long paid for his crime",[73] and on behalf of those who have been betrayed by age or drugs.[73] "And," Cash added, "with the Vietnam War as painful in my mind as it was in most other Americans', I wore it 'in mournin' for the lives that could have been.' ... Apart from the Vietnam War being over, I don't see much reason to change my position ... The old are still neglected, the poor are still poor, the young are still dying before their time, and we're not making many moves to make things right. There's still plenty of darkness to carry off."[73]

He and his band had initially worn black shirts because that was the only matching color they had among their various outfits.[51] He wore other colors on stage early in his career, but he claimed to like wearing black both on and off stage. He stated that, political reasons aside, he simply liked black as his on-stage color.[51] To this day, the United States Navy's winter blue service uniform is referred to by sailors as "Johnny Cashes", as the uniform's shirt, tie, and trousers are solid black.[74]

In the mid 1970s, Cash's popularity and number of hit songs began to decline, but his autobiography (the first of two), titled Man in Black, was published in 1975 and sold 1.3 million copies. A second, Cash: The Autobiography, appeared in 1997. His friendship with Billy Graham led to the production of a film about the life of Jesus, The Gospel Road, which Cash co-wrote and narrated.

He also continued to appear on television, hosting an annual Christmas special on CBS throughout the 1970s. Later television appearances included a role in an episode of Columbo (Swan Song). He also appeared with his wife on an episode of Little House on the Prairie entitled "The Collection" and gave a performance as John Brown in the 1985 American Civil War television mini-series North and South.

He was friendly with every U.S. President starting with Richard Nixon. He was closest with Jimmy Carter, with whom he became close friends.[51] He stated that he found all of them personally charming, noting that this was probably essential to getting oneself elected.[51]

When invited to perform at the White House for the first time in 1972, Richard Nixon's office requested that he play "Okie from Muskogee" (a satirical Merle Haggard song about people who despised youthful drug users and war protesters) and "Welfare Cadillac" (a Guy Drake song which denies the integrity of welfare recipients). Cash declined to play either and instead selected other songs, including "The Ballad of Ira Hayes" (about a brave Native American World War II veteran who was mistreated upon his return to Arizona), and his own compositions, "What is Truth" and "Man in Black". Cash wrote that the reasons for denying Nixon's song choices were not knowing them and having fairly short notice to rehearse them, rather than any political reason.[51] However, Cash added, even if Nixon's office had given Cash enough time to learn and rehearse the songs, their choice of pieces that conveyed "antihippie and antiblack" sentiments might have backfired.[75]

Highwaymen
From left to right Kris Kristofferson, Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson, who formed the country music supergroup, The HighwaymenIn 1980, Cash became the Country Music Hall of Fame's youngest living inductee at age forty-eight, but during the 1980s his records failed to make a major impact on the country charts, although he continued to tour successfully. In the mid 1980s, he recorded and toured with Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson, and Kris Kristofferson as The Highwaymen, making two hit albums.

During that period, Cash appeared in a number of television films. In 1981, he starred in The Pride of Jesse Hallam, winning fine reviews for a film that called attention to adult illiteracy. In the same year, Cash appeared as a "very special guest star" in an episode of the Muppet Show. In 1983, he appeared as a heroic sheriff in Murder in Coweta County, based on a real-life Georgia murder case, which co-starred Andy Griffith as his nemesis. Cash had tried for years to make the film, for which he won acclaim.

Cash relapsed into addiction after being administered painkillers for a serious abdominal injury in 1983 caused by an unusual incident in which he was kicked and wounded by an ostrich he kept on his farm.[76]

At a hospital visit in 1988, this time to watch over Waylon Jennings (who was recovering from a heart attack), Jennings suggested that Cash have himself checked into the hospital for his own heart condition. Doctors recommended preventive heart surgery, and Cash underwent double bypass surgery in the same hospital. Both recovered, although Cash refused to use any prescription painkillers, fearing a relapse into dependency. Cash later claimed that during his operation, he had what is called a "near death experience". He said he had visions of Heaven that were so beautiful that he was angry when he woke up alive.[citation needed]

Cash's recording career and his general relationship with the Nashville establishment were at an all-time low in the 1980s. He realized that his record label of nearly 30 years, Columbia, was growing indifferent to him and was not properly marketing him (he was "invisible" during that time, as he said in his autobiography). Cash recorded an intentionally awful song to protest, a self-parody.[citation needed] "Chicken in Black" was about Cash's brain being transplanted into a chicken. Ironically, the song turned out to be a larger commercial success than any of his other recent material. Nevertheless, he was hoping to kill the relationship with the label before they did, and it was not long after "Chicken in Black" that Columbia and Cash parted ways.

In 1986, Cash returned to Sun Studios in Memphis to team up with Roy Orbison, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Carl Perkins to create the album Class of '55. Also in 1986, Cash published his only novel, Man in White, a book about Saul and his conversion to become the Apostle Paul. He also recorded Johnny Cash Reads The Complete New Testament in 1990.

American Recordings
Johnny Cash sings a duet with a Navy lieutenant c.1987.After Columbia Records dropped Cash from his recording contract, he had a short and unsuccessful stint with Mercury Records from 1987 to 1991 (see Johnny Cash discography).

His career was rejuvenated in the 1990s, leading to popularity with an audience not traditionally interested in country music. In 1991, he sang a version of "Man in Black" for the Christian punk band One Bad Pig's album I Scream Sunday. In 1993, he sang "The Wanderer" on U2's album Zooropa. Although no longer sought after by major labels, he was offered a contract with producer Rick Rubin's American Recordings label, better known for rap and hard rock.

Under Rubin's supervision, he recorded American Recordings (1994) in his living room, accompanied only by his Martin dreadnought guitar – one of many Cash played throughout his career.[77] The album featured covers of contemporary artists selected by Rubin and had much critical and commercial success, winning a Grammy for Best Contemporary Folk Album. Cash wrote that his reception at the 1994 Glastonbury Festival was one of the highlights of his career. This was the beginning of a decade of music industry accolades and commercial success. Cash teamed up with Brooks & Dunn to contribute "Folsom Prison Blues" to the AIDS benefit album Red Hot + Country produced by the Red Hot Organization. On the same album, he performed the Bob Dylan favorite "Forever Young".

Cash and his wife appeared on a number of episodes of the television series Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman starring Jane Seymour. The actress thought so highly of Cash that she later named one of her twin sons after him. He lent his voice for a cameo role in The Simpsons episode "El Viaje Misterioso de Nuestro Jomer (The Mysterious Voyage of Homer)," as the "Space Coyote" that guides Homer Simpson on a spiritual quest. In 1996, Cash enlisted the accompaniment of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers and released Unchained, which won the Best Country Album Grammy. Believing he did not explain enough of himself in his 1975 autobiography Man in Black, he wrote Cash: The Autobiography in 1997.

Last years and deathIn 1997, Cash was diagnosed with the neurodegenerative disease Shy-Drager syndrome, a form of Parkinson's disease. The diagnosis was later altered to autonomic neuropathy associated with diabetes. This illness forced Cash to curtail his touring. He was hospitalized in 1998 with severe pneumonia, which damaged his lungs. The albums American III: Solitary Man (2000) and American IV: The Man Comes Around (2002) contained Cash's response to his illness in the form of songs of a slightly more somber tone than the first two American albums. The video that was released for "Hurt", a cover of the song by Nine Inch Nails, fits Cash's view of his past and feelings of regret. The video for the song, from American IV, is now generally recognized as "his epitaph,"[78] and received particular critical and popular acclaim.
 
June Carter Cash died on May 15, 2003, at the age of 73. June had told Cash to keep working, so he continued to record and even performed a couple of surprise shows at the Carter Family Fold outside Bristol, Virginia. At the July 5, 2003 concert (his last public performance), before singing "Ring of Fire", Cash read a statement about his last wife that he had written shortly before taking the stage:

“ The spirit of June Carter overshadows me tonight with the love she had for me and the love I have for her. We connect somewhere between here and heaven. She came down for a short visit, I guess, from heaven to visit with me tonight to give me courage and inspiration like she always has. ”

Cash died of complications from diabetes less than four months after his wife, at 2:00 a.m. CT on September 12, 2003, while hospitalized at Baptist Hospital in Nashville. He was buried next to his wife in Hendersonville Memory Gardens near his home in Hendersonville, Tennessee.

His stepdaughter, Rosie (Nix) Adams and another passenger were found dead on a bus in Montgomery County, Tennessee, on October 24, 2003. It was speculated that the deaths may have been caused by carbon monoxide from the lanterns in the bus. Adams was 45 when she died. She was buried in the Hendersonville Memory Gardens, near her mother and stepfather.

On May 24, 2005, Vivian Liberto, Cash's first wife and the mother of Rosanne Cash and three other daughters, died from surgery to remove lung cancer at the age of 71. It was her daughter Rosanne's 50th birthday.[79]

In June 2005, his lakeside home on Caudill Drive in Hendersonville was put up for sale by his estate. In January 2006, the house was sold to Bee Gees vocalist Barry Gibb and wife Linda and titled in their Florida limited liability company for $2.3 million. The listing agent was Cash's younger brother, Tommy Cash. The home was destroyed by fire on April 10, 2007.[80]

One of Cash's final collaborations with producer Rick Rubin, entitled American V: A Hundred Highways, was released posthumously on July 4, 2006. The album debuted in the #1 position on the Billboard Top 200 album chart for the week ending July 22, 2006.

On February 26, 2010, what would have been Cash's 78th birthday, the Cash Family, Rick Rubin, and Lost Highway Records released his second posthumous record, titled American VI: Ain't No Grave, and from this album the song "Ain't No Grave (Can Hold My Body Down)" is currently serving as the theme song for WWE wrestler, The Undertaker.

LegacyFrom his early days as a pioneer of rockabilly and rock and roll in the 1950s, to his decades as an international representative of country music, to his resurgence to fame in the 1990s as a living legend and an alternative country icon, Cash influenced countless artists and left a large body of work. Upon his death, Cash was revered by the greatest popular musicians of his time. His rebellious image and often anti-authoritarian stance influenced punk rock.[81][82]

Among Cash's children, his daughter Rosanne Cash (by first wife Vivian Liberto) and his son John Carter Cash (by June Carter Cash) are notable country-music musicians in their own right.

Cash nurtured and defended artists on the fringes of what was acceptable in country music even while serving as the country music establishment's most visible symbol. At an all-star TNT concert in 1999, a diverse group of artists paid him tribute, including Bob Dylan, Chris Isaak, Wyclef Jean, Norah Jones, Kris Kristofferson, Willie Nelson, Dom DeLuise and U2. Cash himself appeared at the end and performed for the first time in more than a year. Two tribute albums were released shortly before his death; Kindred Spirits contains works from established artists, while Dressed in Black contains works from many lesser-known artists.

In total, he wrote over 1,000 songs and released dozens of albums. A box set titled Unearthed was issued posthumously. It included four CDs of unreleased material recorded with Rubin as well as a Best of Cash on American retrospective CD.

In recognition of his lifelong support of SOS Children's Villages, his family invited friends and fans to donate to that charity in his memory. He had a personal link with the SOS village in Diessen, at the Ammersee Lake in Southern Germany, near where he was stationed as a GI, and also with the SOS village in Barrett Town, by Montego Bay, near his holiday home in Jamaica.[83] The Johnny Cash Memorial Fund was founded.[84]

In 1999, Cash received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2004, Rolling Stone Magazine ranked Cash[85] #31 on their list of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time.[86]

In a tribute to Cash after his death, country music singer Gary Allan included the song "Nickajack Cave (Johnny Cash's Redemption)" on his 2005 album entitled Tough All Over. The song chronicles Cash hitting rock bottom and subsequently resurrecting his life and career.

The main street in Hendersonville, Tennessee, Highway 31E, is known as "Johnny Cash Parkway".

The Johnny Cash Museum is located in Hendersonville, Tennessee.

On November 2–4, 2007, the Johnny Cash Flower Pickin' Festival was held in Starkville, Mississippi. Starkville, where Cash was arrested over 40 years earlier and held overnight at the city jail on May 11, 1965, inspired Cash to write the song "Starkville City Jail". The festival, where he was offered a symbolic posthumous pardon, honored Cash's life and music, and was expected to become an annual event.[87]

JC Unit One, Johnny Cash's private tour bus from 1980 until 2003, was put on exhibit at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame + Museum in 2007. The Cleveland, Ohio museum offers public tours of the bus on a seasonal basis (it is stored during the winter months and not exhibited during those times).

WWE Superstar The Undertaker has been using Cash's song "Ain't no Grave" as his entrance theme since his return on February 21 2011. Along with the television show "The Deadliest Catch" is using the song "Ain't no Grave" as the theme song in many of their commercials.


Johnny Cash was born in the small town of Kingsland, in the hill country of southern Arkansas. Life had always been difficult there, but when the Great Depression destroyed the fragile agricultural economy of the region, Johnny's parents, Ray and Carrie Cash, could barely earn enough to feed their seven children.

 In 1935, the New Deal administration of President Franklin D. Roosevelt encouraged marginal farmers from the hill country to resettle in the more fertile soil of northeastern Arkansas. The Cash family took the government up on this offer and made the move. Working together, they cleared 20 acres of land to grow cotton. Johnny worked side by side with his parents on the farm.

In the evenings when the day's chores were done, the Cash family gathered on their front porch. Johnny's mother, Carrie, played guitar, and the whole family sang hymns and traditional tunes. Johnny loved his mother's playing and singing, and he was entranced by the country and gospel singers he heard on an uncle's battery-powered radio. By 12 he was writing poems, songs and stories.

He took his first non-farm job at 14, carrying water for work gangs, but he had set his heart on a music career. He entered talent contests and sang any time and anywhere people would listen. 

When Johnny Cash graduated from high school in 1950, there was no question of his going to college. The Korean War was raging, and he enlisted in the United States Air Force. He was serving with the Air Force in Germany when he bought his very first guitar. With a few of his buddies, he started a band called the Barbarians to play in small night clubs and honky tonks around the air base. When his hitch in the service was over, Johnny Cash moved to Memphis, where he sold appliances door-to-door while trying to break into the music business.

In 1954, he was signed to the Sun Records label owned by Sam Phillips, who had also discovered rock 'n rollers Elvis Presley and Jerry Lee Lewis. Philips was impressed with the song "Hey Porter" Cash had written when he was returning home from the Air Force. When Phillips wanted a ballad for the b-side of "Hey Porter," Cash wrote "Cry, Cry, Cry" overnight. The single sold over 100,000 copies in the southern states alone. Johnny Cash and his sidemen, the Tennessee Two, began touring with Elvis Presley and the other Sun Records artists. They performed on the Louisiana Hayride radio program and Johnny Cash made his first television appearances on local programs in the south.
 
With his second recording, "Folsom Prison Blues," Johnny Cash scored a national hit. In 1956, "I Walk the Line," was a top country hit for 44 weeks and sold over a million copies. Johnny began to appear at the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, the Mecca of country music. His popularity increased so rapidly that by 1957, country music publications were rating him the top artist in the field.

By 1958 Johnny Cash had published 50 songs, and pop artists far from the country music mainstream were recording Johnny Cash tunes. He had sold over six million records for Sun when he moved to the New York-based Columbia records label. Johnny himself moved to California, and brought his parents along.

By the end of the 1950s, the LP or long-playing record was emerging as the dominant form for recorded music. The 1959 album: Fabulous Johnny Cash, sold half a million copies, as did Hymns and Songs of Our Soil, and the single "Don't Take Your Guns to Town." Concert tours took Johnny to Europe, Asia and Australia. He began to appear as an actor in television westerns. Even as his concert fees escalated, he took time from his schedule to perform free of charge at prisons throughout the nation.

The 1960 single "Ride This Train" won a gold record, as did the 1963 album Ring of Fire, and the 1968 LP Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison. In 1964, Cash, who was one-quarter Cherokee Indian, recorded the album Bitter Tears on Native American themes. That same year, he appeared at the Newport Folk Festival, breaking down a perceived barrier between the genres of country and folk music. At Newport, he made the acquaintance of Bob Dylan. Dylan featured Cash on his own Nashville Skylinealbum and Cash recorded several of Dylan's songs.

As the 1960s wore on, incessant touring took its toll on the singer. To keep up with his hectic schedule, he had become dependent on tranquilizers and the amphetamine Dexedrine. He gave up his home in California and relocated to Hendersonville, Tennessee, near Nashville. When his health recovered and he had freed himself from his chemical dependency, Johnny Cash married June Carter of the legendary Carter Family, whose radio broadcasts had inspired Johnny when he was growing up in Arkansas. With June at his side, he made a triumphant comeback, selling out Carnegie Hall and breaking the Beatles' attendance record at London's Palladium.

In 1969, public television broadcast the documentary film Cash! and the networks became interested in a more regular TV presence. The Johnny Cash Show premiered on ABC television in the summer of 1967 and became part of ABC's regular schedule the following January. This prime time television variety show ran until 1970 and presented guest artists as varied as Ray Charles, Neil Young, Stevie Wonder and The Who.

Renewed sales of his records made Johnny Cash a millionaire. He used his earnings to support mental health associations, a home for autistic children, refuges for battered women, the American Cancer Society, YWCA, Youth For Christ, Campus Life, and humane societies around the country. At the same time, he played benefits for Native American causes and endowed a burn research center in memory of his former guitarist Luther Perkins, who had died in a fire.

In addition to performing for prison inmates, Johnny Cash campaigned for prison reform, corresponded with inmates and helped many return to society. His 1975 autobiography Man In Black sold 1.3 million copies. He surprised fans and critics alike in 1986 by writing Man In White, a best-selling novel based on the life of St. Paul.

In 1987, Johnny Cash received three multi-platinum records for previous sales of over two million copies each of Folsom Prison, San Quentin, and his collection of Greatest Hits. In 1994 his recording career revived with the release of American Recordings, the first of four Grammy award-winning collections of extremely diverse material, ranging from folk songs to his own compositions and songs by contemporary artists such as U2 and Nine Inch Nails.

Over the course of his career, he received 11 Grammy awards. He was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and the Songwriters' Hall of Fame. He received the Kennedy Center Honors, and the National Medal of the Arts.

His wife of 35 years, June Carter Cash, died from complications following heart surgery in May, 2003. Johnny Cash followed her in death four months later, succumbing to respiratory failure after a long struggle with diabetes. Even in death, Johnny Cash remains a powerful force in American culture. Only two years after his passing, a motion picture based on his life, Walk the Line, enjoyed worldwide critical and popular success. The film generated a revival of interest in his life and work, assuring that another generation would find inspiration in the timeless sound of the Man in Black.

"American VI: Ain't No Grave" released on February 26, 2010 on what would have been Cash's 78th birthday is the last of the American Recordings series Cash was working on with producer Rick Rubin months before his death.

* Johhnys daughter Cindy once witnessed Johnny give a hitchhiker a thousand dollars to buy a bus ticket and Christmas presents  for his three children saying "Get you a bus ticket, Its too cold to hitchike, and buy those kids some Christmas presents on the way."

Johnny Cash's good friend, Kris Kristofferson, once observantly commented about Johnny in a down-home and wry way, "He's a walking contradiction, partly truth and partly fiction" (Cash, 7). Johnny Cash is indeed a complex, but invariably down-to-earth, man. He's humble, rugged, spiritual, poetic, and brutally honest in his thoughts, musical expression, and various articulate opinions. His songs somberly reflect the harsh, unforgiving bleakness of life that inevitably torments the poor, the downtrodden, and the persecuted. Johnny sings for the ragtag, poverty-stricken farmers of the magnolia-scented rural South and the out-of-luck boxcar transients who ride the lone, open railways in search of a brighter tomorrow. He sings for desperate inmates with nothing to lose as they count each passing second behind the ominous, foreboding walls of death row, and he sings for the Native American Indians confined to the haggard hopelessness and inhumane squalor of government-subsidized reservations in the West. Johnny Cash sings against the injustices and the inhumanities of this world while fervently revealing his belief that there is a calmer, more divine life to come. His is a lesson in song that brings hope and inspiration into a world full of rage, insanity, and despair.

 

 

 

 


Alexander Graham Bell 03/03

Alexander Graham Bell (March 3, 1847 – August 2, 1922) was an eminent scientist, inventor, engineer and innovator who is credited with inventing the first practical telephone
 
Bell's father, grandfather, and brother had all been associated with work on elocution and speech, and both his mother and wife were deaf, profoundly influencing Bell's life's work.[1] His research on hearing and speech further led him to experiment with hearing devices which eventually culminated in Bell being awarded the first U.S. patent for the telephone in 1876.[N 1] In retrospect, Bell considered his most famous invention an intrusion on his real work as a scientist and refused to have a telephone in his study.[3]

Many other inventions marked Bell's later life, including groundbreaking work in optical telecommunications, hydrofoils and aeronautics. In 1888, Alexander Graham Bell became one of the founding members of the National Geographic Society.[

As a young child, Bell, like his brothers, received his early schooling at home from his father. At an early age, however, he was enrolled at the Royal High School, Edinburgh, Scotland, which he left at age 15, completing only the first four forms.[15] His school record was undistinguished, marked by absenteeism and lacklustre grades. His main interest remained in the sciences, especially biology, while he treated other school subjects with indifference, to the dismay of his demanding father.[16] Upon leaving school, Bell travelled to London to live with his grandfather, Alexander Bell. During the year he spent with his grandfather, a love of learning was born, with long hours spent in serious discussion and study. The elder Bell took great efforts to have his young pupil learn to speak clearly and with conviction, the attributes that his pupil would need to become a teacher himself.[17] At age 16, Bell secured a position as a "pupil-teacher" of elocution and music, in Weston House Academy, at Elgin, Moray, Scotland. Although he was enrolled as a student in Latin and Greek, he instructed classes himself in return for board and £10 per session.[18] The following year, he attended the University of Edinburgh; joining his older brother Melville who had enrolled there the previous year.

In 1865, when the Bell family moved to London,[25] Bell returned to Weston House as an assistant master and, in his spare hours, continued experiments on sound using a minimum of laboratory equipment. Bell concentrated on experimenting with electricity to convey sound and later installed a telegraph wire from his room in Somerset College to that of a friend.[26] Throughout late 1867, his health faltered mainly through exhaustion. His younger brother, Edward "Ted," was similarly bed-ridden, suffering from tuberculosis. While Bell recovered (by then referring to himself in correspondence as "A.G. Bell") and served the next year as an instructor at Somerset College, Bath, Somerset, England, his brother's condition deteriorated. Edward would never recover. Upon his brother's death, Bell returned home in 1867. His older brother, Melville had married and moved out. With aspirations to obtain a degree at the University College London, Bell considered his next years as preparation for the degree examinations, devoting his spare time at his family's residence to studying.

Helping his father in Visible Speech demonstrations and lectures brought Bell to Susanna E. Hull's private school for the deaf in South Kensington, London. His first two pupils were "deaf mute" girls who made remarkable progress under his tutelage. While his older brother seemed to achieve success on many fronts including opening his own elocution school, applying for a patent on an invention, and starting a family, Bell continued as a teacher. However, in May 1870, Melville died from complications due to tuberculosis, causing a family crisis. His father had also suffered a debilitating illness earlier in life and had been restored to health by a convalescence in Newfoundland. Bell's parents embarked upon a long-planned move when they realized that their remaining son was also sickly. Acting decisively, Alexander Melville Bell asked Bell to arrange for the sale of all the family property,[27] [N 4] conclude all of his brother's affairs (Bell took over his last student, curing a pronounced lisp),[28] and join his father and mother in setting out for the "New World".[29] Reluctantly, Bell also had to conclude a relationship with Marie Eccleston, who, he had surmised, was not prepared to leave England with him

On March 10, 1876, three days after his patent was issued, Bell succeeded in getting his telephone to work, using a liquid transmitter similar to Gray's design. Vibration of the diaphragm caused a needle to vibrate in the water, varying the electrical resistance in the circuit. When Bell spoke the famous sentence "Mr Watson—Come here—I want to see you" into the liquid transmitter,[59] Watson, listening at the receiving end in an adjoining room, heard the words clearly.[60]

Although Bell was, and still is, accused of stealing the telephone from Gray,[61] Bell used Gray's water transmitter design only after Bell's patent was granted and only as a proof of concept scientific experiment[62] to prove to his own satisfaction that intelligible "articulate speech" (Bell's words) could be electrically transmitted.[63] After March 187


Bell used Gray's water transmitter design only after Bell's patent was granted and only as a proof of concept scientific experiment[62] to prove to his own satisfaction that intelligible "articulate speech" (Bell's words) could be electrically transmitted.[63] After March 1876, Bell focused on improving the electromagnetic telephone and never used Gray's liquid transmitter in public demonstrations or commercial use.[64]

In January 1915, Bell made the first ceremonial transcontinental telephone call. Calling from the AT&T head office at 15 Dey Street in New York City, Bell was heard by Thomas Watson at 333 Grant Avenue in San Francisco.

Bell died of complications arising from diabetes on August 2, 1922, at his private estate, Beinn Bhreagh, Nova Scotia, at age 75.[134] Bell had also been afflicted with pernicious anemia.[135] His last view of the earth he had inhabited was of the moon ascending over the beloved mountain on his estate at 2:00 A.M.[93] While tending to her husband after a long illness, Mabel whispered, "Don't leave me." By way of reply, Bell traced the sign for no—and then he expired.[115][136]

On learning of Bell's death, Canadian Prime Minister Mackenzie King cabled Mrs. Bell, saying:

[The Government expresses] to you our sense of the world's loss in the death of your distinguished husband. It will ever be a source of pride to our country that the great invention, with which his name is immortally associated, is a part of its history. On the behalf of the citizens of Canada, may I extend to you an expression of our combined gratitude and sympathy.[115]

Bell's coffin was constructed of Beinn Bhreagh pine by his laboratory staff, lined with the same red silk fabric used in his tetrahedral kite experiments. In order to help celebrate his life, his wife asked guests not to wear black (the traditional funeral color) while attending his service, during which soloist Jean MacDonald sang a verse of Robert Louis Stevenson's 'Requiem':[137]

Under a wide and starry sky,
Dig the grave and let me lie.
Glad did I live and gladly die
And I lay me down with a will
(1847 – 1922) Scientist and inventor famous for, among other things, inventing the telephone.
 


3/4
Agustina of Aragon
March 4, 1786 – May 29, 1857
Agustina de Aragón was a Spanish heroine who defended Spain during the Spanish War of Independence, first as a civilian and later as a professional officer in the Spanish Army. So badass were her actions that she became known as “the Spanish Joan of Arc”. When war broke out in 1808, in her small Spanish town, she took a basket of apples to feed the gunners. When she arrived she saw the Spanish soldiers take heavy losses to the French army, causing the Spaniards to flee. Instead of running away, Agustina ran to the cannons and began to defend the town on her own. The sight of her doing this gave the Spaniards the courage to return and help. After a bloody struggle, the French gave up the assault on Zaragosa and abandoned their siege for a few short weeks, before returning to fight their way into the city, house-by-house which ultimately won them the town. After being captured by the French, she was imprisoned but she subsequently mounted a daring escape and became a low-level rebel leader for the guerrilleros, helping to organize raids and attacks that harassed the French. On June 21, 1813, she acted as a front line battery commander at the Battle of Vitoria, under the command of Major Cairncross. This battle was to see the French Army that had occupied Spain effectively smashed beyond repair and driven out. She eventually married a doctor and lived the rest of her life in peace, proudly wearing her battle medals.

 


Michelangelo 03/06

Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni[1] (6 March 1475 – 18 February 1564), commonly known as Michelangelo, was an Italian Renaissance painter, sculptor, architect, poet, and engineer. Despite making few forays beyond the arts, his versatility in the disciplines he took up was of such a high order that he is often considered a contender for the title of the archetypal Renaissance man, along with his rival and fellow Italian, Leonardo da Vinci.

Michelangelo's output in every field during his long life was prodigious; when the sheer volume of correspondence, sketches, and reminiscences that survive is also taken into account, he is the best-documented artist of the 16th century. Two of his best-known works, the Pietà and David, were sculpted before he turned thirty. Despite his low opinion of painting, Michelangelo also created two of the most influential works in fresco in the history of Western art: the scenes from Genesis on the ceiling and The Last Judgment on the altar wall of the Sistine Chapel in Rome. As an architect, Michelangelo pioneered the Mannerist style at the Laurentian Library. At 74 he succeeded Antonio da Sangallo the Younger as the architect of Saint Peter's Basilica. Michelangelo transformed the plan, the western end being finished to Michelangelo's design, the dome being completed after his death with some modification.

In a demonstration of Michelangelo's unique standing, he was the first Western artist whose biography was published while he was alive.[2] Two biographies were published of him during his lifetime; one of them, by Giorgio Vasari, proposed that he was the pinnacle of all artistic achievement since the beginning of the Renaissance, a viewpoint that continued to have currency in art history for centuries. In his lifetime he was also often called Il Divino ("the divine one").[3] One of the qualities most admired by his contemporaries was his terribilità, a sense of awe-inspiring grandeur, and it was the attempts of subsequent artists to imitate Michelangelo's impassioned and highly personal style that resulted in Mannerism, the next major movement in Western art after the High Renaissance.
(1475 – 1564) Italian painter, sculptor, architect and engineer. Together with Leonardo da Vinci, he is often cited as the archetypal Renaissance man.


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Piet Mondrian 03/07

(1872 – 1944) Dutch painter and an important contributor to the abstract De Stijl art movement.
Pieter Cornelis "Piet" Mondriaan, after 1912 Mondrian (Dutch pronunciation: ['pi?t 'm?ndria?n], later ['m?ndri?n]; March 7, 1872 – February 1, 1944), was a Dutch painter.
He was an important contributor to the De Stijl art movement and group, which was founded by Theo van Doesburg. He evolved a non-representational form which he termed Neo-Plasticism. This consisted of white ground, upon which was painted a grid of vertical and horizontal black lines and the three primary colors.[1]

Between his 1905 painting, The River Amstel, and his 1907 Amaryllis, Mondrian changed the spelling of his signature from Mondriaan to Mondrian.[2]

 

 

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3/7
Rob Roy MacGregor (baptised 7th March 1671 – December 28th, 1734) fought to protect the farmers’ way of life, earning the respect of this fellow Highlanders and a prison sentence for treason. He escaped (several times, actually) and lived the remainder of his life as an outlaw. The Rob Roy Cocktail was created in 1894 to celebrate the opening of the Herald Square musical that paid homage to this Scottish folk hero


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Yuri Gagarin 03/09

Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin (Russian: ?´??? ??????´???? ????´???, Russian pronunciation: ['jur??j ?l??'ks?e?v??t? g?'gar??n]; 9 March 1934 – 27 March 1968), Hero of the Soviet Union, was a Soviet cosmonaut. On 12 April 1961, he became the first human in outer space and the first to orbit the Earth. He received medals from around the world for his pioneering tour in space.
Gagarin then became deputy training director of the Star City cosmonaut training base. At the same time, he began to re-qualify as a fighter pilot. On 27 March 1968, while on a routine training flight from Chkalovsky Air Base, he and flight instructor Vladimir Seryogin died in a MiG-15UTI crash near the town of Kirzhach. The bodies of Gagarin and Seryogin were cremated and the ashes were buried in the walls of the Kremlin on Red Square.

After the flight, Gagarin became a worldwide celebrity, touring widely with appearances in Italy, the United Kingdom,[13] Germany, Canada and Japan to promote the Soviet achievement.

In 1962, he began serving as a deputy to the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union. He later returned to Star City, the cosmonaut facility, where he worked on designs for a reusable spacecraft. Gagarin worked on these designs in Star City for seven years. He became Lieutenant Colonel (or Podpolkovnik) of the Soviet Air Force on 12 June 1962 and on 6 November 1963 he received the rank of Colonel (Polkovnik) of the Soviet Air Force.[3] Soviet officials tried to keep him away from any flights, being worried of losing their hero in an accident. Gagarin was backup pilot for Vladimir Komarov in the Soyuz 1 flight. As Komarov's flight ended in a fatal crash, Gagarin was ultimately banned from training for and participating in further spaceflights.

Gagarin then became deputy training director of the Star City cosmonaut training base. At the same time, he began to re-qualify as a fighter pilot. On 27 March 1968, while on a routine training flight from Chkalovsky Air Base, he and flight instructor Vladimir Seryogin died in a MiG-15UTI crash near the town of Kirzhach. The bodies of Gagarin and Seryogin were cremated and the ashes were buried in the walls of the Kremlin on Red Square.
(1934 – 1968) Soviet cosmonaut who was the first man in space and the first to orbit Earth.


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Robert Gerard Sands 03/09/1954

(Irish: Roibeárd Gearóid Ó Seachnasaigh,[1] commonly known as Bobby Sands; (9 March 1954 – 5 May 1981) was an Irish volunteer of the Provisional Irish Republican Army and member of the United Kingdom Parliament who died on hunger strike while in HM Prison Maze.

He was the leader of the 1981 hunger strike in which Irish republican prisoners protested against the removal of Special Category Status. During his strike he was elected as a member of the United Kingdom Parliament as an Anti H-Block/Armagh Political Prisoner candidate.[2][3] His death resulted in a new surge of IRA recruitment and activity. International media coverage brought attention to the hunger strikers, and the Republican movement in general, attracting both praise and criticism

The 1981 Irish hunger strike started with Sands refusing food on 1 March 1981. Sands decided that other prisoners should join the strike at staggered intervals in order to maximise publicity with prisoners steadily deteriorating successively over several months.
The hunger strike centred around five demands:
1.the right not to wear a prison uniform;
2.the right not to do prison work;
3.the right of free association with other prisoners, and to organise educational and recreational pursuits;
4.the right to one visit, one letter and one parcel per week;
5.full restoration of remission lost through the protest.[25]

The significance of the hunger strike was the prisoners' aim of being declared as political prisoners (or prisoners of war) and not to be classed as criminals. The Washington Post however, reported that the primary aim of the hunger strike was to generate international publicity

Sands died in the prison hospital after 66 days of hunger-striking, aged 27. The original pathologist's report recorded Sands' and the other hunger strikers' causes of death as "self-imposed starvation", later amended to simply "starvation" after protests from the dead strikers' families.[27] The coroner recorded verdicts of "starvation, self-imposed".[27]

The announcement of his death prompted several days of riots in nationalist areas of Northern Ireland. A milkman and his son, Eric and Desmond Guiney, died as a result of injuries sustained when their milk float crashed after being stoned by rioters in a predominantly nationalist area of north Belfast.[28][29] Over 100,000 people lined the route of Sands' funeral and he was buried in the 'New Republican Plot' alongside 76 others. Their grave is maintained and cared for by the National Graves Association, Belfast.[30] Sands was a Member of the Westminster Parliament for 25 days, though he never took his seat or the oath
In response to a question in the House of Commons on 5 May 1981, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher said, "Mr. Sands was a convicted criminal. He chose to take his own life. It was a choice that his organisation did not allow to many of its victims".[31] The official announcement of Sands' death in the House of Commons omitted the customary expression of sense of loss and sympathy with the family of the member.[32]
He was survived by his parents, siblings, and a young son (Gerard) from his marriage to Geraldine Noade

In Europe, there were widespread protests after Sands' death. Five thousand Milanese students burned the Union Flag and shouted 'freedom for Ulster' during a march.[4] The British Consulate at Ghent was raided.[4] Thousands marched in Paris behind huge portraits of Sands, to chants of 'the IRA will conquer'.[4] In Oslo, demonstrators threw a balloon filled with tomato sauce at Elizabeth II, the Queen of the United Kingdom.[4] In the Soviet Union, Pravda described it as 'another tragic page in the grim chronicle of oppression, discrimination, terror and violence' in Ireland. Much more later Russian fans of Bobby Sands published a translation of the "Back Home In Derry" song ("?? ?????? ? ?????" in Russian). [4] Many French towns and cities have streets named after Sands, including in Nantes, St Etienne, Le Mans, Vierzon, and Saint-Denis.[33] In the Republic of Ireland, his death led to riots and bus burning. IRA members allegedly unsuccessfully attempted to coerce proprietors of shops and other businesses into closing for a national day of mourning.[34] The West German newspaper Die Welt took a negative view of Sands. The US media expressed a range of opinions on Sands' death.

 


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Percival Lowell 03/13

Percival Lawrence Lowell (March 13, 1855–November 12, 1916) was a businessman, author, mathematician, and astronomer who fueled speculation that there were canals on Mars, founded the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona, and formed the beginning of the effort that led to the discovery of Pluto 14 years after his death. The choice of the name Pluto and its symbol were partly influenced by his initials PL.

Percival graduated from the Noble and Greenough School in 1872 and Harvard University in 1876 with distinction in mathematics.[1] At his college graduation, he gave a speech, considered very advanced for its time, on the "Nebular Hypothesis." He was later awarded honorary degrees from Amherst College and Clark University.[2]

In the 1880s, Lowell traveled extensively in the Far East. In August 1883, he served as a foreign secretary and counsellor for a special Korean diplomatic mission to the United States. He also spent significant periods of time in Japan, writing books on Japanese religion, psychology, and behavior. His texts are filled with observations and academic discussions of various aspects of Japanese life, including language, religious practices, economics, travel in Japan, and the development of personality. Books by Percival Lowell on the Orient include Noto (1891) and Occult Japan (1894); the latter from his third and final trip to the region. The most popular of Lowell's books on the Orient, The Soul of the Far East, (1888) contains an early synthesis of some of his ideas, that in essence, postulated that human progress is a function of the qualities of individuality and imagination.

Beginning in the winter of 1893-94, using his wealth and influence, Lowell dedicated himself to the study of astronomy, founding the observatory which bears his name.[3] For the last 23 years of his life astronomy, Lowell Observatory, and his and others' work at his observatory were the focal points of his life. He lived to be 61 years of age.

World War I very much saddened Lowell, a dedicated pacifist. This, along with some setbacks in his astronomical work (described below), undermined his health and contributed to his death from a stroke on November 12, 1916.[4]

Lowell is buried on Mars Hill near his observatory.

(1855 – 1916) American astronomer (among other things) famous for his study of Mars and founder of the Lowell Observatory, which after his death discovered Pluto.


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Albert Einstein 03/14

Albert Einstein (pronounced /'ælb?rt 'a?nsta?n/; German: ['alb?t 'a?n?ta?n]  (listen); 14 March 1879 – 18 April 1955) was a German-born theoretical physicist who discovered the theory of general relativity, effecting a revolution in physics. For this achievement, Einstein is often regarded as the father of modern physics.[2] He received the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics "for his services to theoretical physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect".[3]
Near the beginning of his career, Einstein thought that Newtonian mechanics was no longer enough to reconcile the laws of classical mechanics with the laws of the electromagnetic field. This led to the development of his special theory of relativity. He realized, however, that the principle of relativity could also be extended to gravitational fields, and with his subsequent theory of gravitation in 1916, he published a paper on the general theory of relativity. He continued to deal with problems of statistical mechanics and quantum theory, which led to his explanations of particle theory and the motion of molecules. He also investigated the thermal properties of light which laid the foundation of the photon theory of light. In 1917, Einstein applied the general theory of relativity to model the structure of the universe as a whole.[4]

On the eve of World War II in 1939, he dictated and signed a letter alerting President Franklin D. Roosevelt that Germany might be developing an atomic weapon,and recommended that the U.S. begin uranium procurement and nuclear research. As a result, Roosevelt advocated such research, leading to the creation of the top secret Manhattan Project, and the U.S. becoming the first and only country to possess nuclear weapons during the war. Days before his death, however, Einstein also signed the Russell–Einstein Manifesto, that highlighted the dangers posed by the military usage of nuclear energy.

Einstein published more than 300 scientific papers along with over 150 non-scientific works, and received honorary doctorate degrees in science, medicine and philosophy from many European and American universities;[4] he also wrote about various philosophical and political subjects.[5] His great intelligence and originality has made the word "Einstein" synonymous with genius.[6]

(1879 – 1955) German theoretical physicist, best known for his theory of relativity but contributed greatly to multiple fields within physics, for which he also received the Nobel Prize in Physics. He is regarded as one of the most influential people in human history

As a child, Albert Einstein seldom spoke. When he did, he spoke very slowly. According to accounts, Einstein did this until he was nine years old. Einstein's parents were fearful that he was retarded.

Bonus Fact:

At 17, Albert Einstein applied for early admission into the Swiss Federal Polytechnical School (Eidgenossische Technische Hochschule or ETH). He passed the math and science sections of the entrance exam, but failed the rest (history, languages, geography, etc.). Einstein had to go to a trade school before he retook the exam and was finally admitted to ETH a year later.

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3/14
Joe Grim
"The Iron Man"
5-40-5-67 / 5 KO / 5 NC
South Philly - Middleweight
Granite-jawed 160-pounder fought all the greats of his day - including many heavyweights - and made his name by being easy to floor but almost impossible to stop.

Born: 3/14/1881  -  Died: 8/19/39
7) Joe Grim – USA – Boxing
‘The Iron Man’ and ‘The Indestructible Man of Pugilism’ sound odd nicknames for a Boxer who reportedly lost every single fight of his career, but despite being a perennial loser, the toughest boxers of the era couldn’t knock Joe out.  Born in 1881 in Italy and raised in America, Grim fought men who would go on to be legends and became as big a draw as the champions he was fighting. He would end every fight bloodied and back at the ropes bellowing triumphantly “I’m Joe Grim! Nobody knocks out Joe Grim!” In 1905 he faced the legendary future heavyweight champion Jack Johnson and was knocked down 18 times by one of the hardest punchers of all time but rose to his feet after every one of them. Ring Magazine’s Nat Fleischer describes one blow as “it caused Grim to turn a complete somersault.” As Grim clambered to his feet yet again from the canvas where many assumed he might have been dead an amazed Jack Johnson declared, “He ain’t human.”

 

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 3/17
Francis Augustus Hamer (March 17, 1884 – July 10, 1955) was a Texas Ranger, known in popular culture for his involvement in tracking down and killing the criminal duo Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow in 1934. In a career that spanned the last days of the Wild West well into the automobile age, Hamer acquired legendary status in Texas and the Southwest as the archetypal Texas Ranger. He is an inductee to the Texas Ranger Hall of Fame.

Frank Hamer was born in Fairview, Wilson County, Texas, where his father operated a blacksmith shop. He was one of five brothers, four of whom became Texas Rangers.[1] His family moved to the Welch ranch in San Saba County, where he grew up. Hamer later spent time in Oxford, Llano County (now a ghost town), which formed the basis of his joke about being the only "Oxford-educated Ranger." In his youth, Hamer worked in his father's shop, and as an older teenager worked as a wrangler on a local ranch. He began his career in law enforcement in 1905 while working on the Carr Ranch in West Texas when he captured a horse thief. The local sheriff was so impressed that he recommended that Hamer join the Rangers.

Like the cowboys of earlier generations, Hamer was at home on the open Texas prairie and understood the signs and patterns of nature. He interpreted men in terms of animal characteristics: "The criminal is a coyote, always taking a look over his shoulder; a cornered political schemer is a 'crawfish about three days from water'; a [man moving carefully] reminds him of a sandhill crane walking up a river-bed."[2] He savored the challenges of investigating and solving crimes. Describing his method in tracking Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker, Hamer said that he learned their statistics, but "this was not enough. An officer must know the habits of the outlaw, how he thinks and how he will act in different situations. When I began to understand Clyde Barrow's mind, I felt that I was making progress."[3]
Law enforcement career

Hamer refused substantial money on principle to tell his life story; I'm Frank Hamer is a posthumous biography by Texas historians H. Gordon Frost and John Holmes Jenkins and was assembled thirteen years after Hamer's death from his notes and personal recollections to his family and associates. In the book, Hamer was quoted as saying corrupt politicians did not sit well with him, and he had little patience for those who broke the law. This attitude had tended to cause problems for him with local political establishments during his career. After a place was cleaned up, he would change jobs on a fairly regular basis.

Hamer was a Ranger off and on throughout his life, resigning often to take other jobs. He first joined Captain John H. Rogers's Company C in Alpine, Texas on April 21, 1906, and began patrolling the border with Mexico. In 1908 he resigned from the Rangers to become the City Marshal of Navasota, Texas. Navasota was a lawless boom town, wracked by violence: "shootouts on the main street were so frequent that in two years at least a hundred men died."[4] Though he was only 24, Hamer moved in and created law and order.[5] He served as marshal until 1911 when he started working as a special investigator in Houston, then as an officer for Harris County.

Hamer rejoined the Rangers in 1915 and again was assigned to patrol the South Texas border around Brownsville. Because of the constant unrest in Mexico, the Rangers dealt most seriously with arms smugglers, but also more ordinary bootleggers and bandits who plagued the border. During this period, Hamer left the Rangers again to accept a position as a federal agent in the Prohibition Unit, where he served for about a year. Returning to state service in 1921, Hamer transferred to Austin, where he served as Senior Ranger Captain.

In the 1920s, Hamer became known for bringing order to oil boom towns such as Mexia and Borger. Records from that time indicate that there were complaints about some of Hamer's methods, but the same sources said the area was so lawless extreme measures may have been needed.[citation needed] In I'm Frank Hamer, Hamer was quoted candidly discussing the restrictions that upstanding citizens would seek to put on a lawman, not understanding that they were in effect asking him to fight with one hand tied behind his back.

In 1928 Hamer put a halt to a murder-for-reward ring, and his extraordinary means of accomplishing this made him nationally famous. The Texas Bankers' Association had begun offering rewards of $5,000 "for dead bank robbers — not one cent for live ones." Hamer determined that men were setting up deadbeats and two-bit outlaws to be killed by complicit police officers; the officers would collect the rewards and pay the men their finder's fees. But his investigation hit a stone wall: the police refused him support and the Bankers' Association's position was that "any man that could be induced to participate in a bank robbery ought to be killed." Spurred by urgency to thwart the next set of killings as well as personally infuriated, Hamer wrote and signed a detailed exposé of the racket, which he termed "the bankers' murder machine," then went to the press room of the State Capitol and handed out copies. A firestorm of public outrage led to indictments.[6]

Hamer retired in 1932 after almost 27 years with the Rangers. He left one week before Miriam "Ma" Ferguson "and her husband" recaptured the governor's office.[7] At least forty Rangers resigned[8] rather than serve again under Ma, who in her first term as governor of Texas had proven herself brazenly corrupt; indeed, one of the triumphant Ma's first acts of her second term was to fire all the remaining Rangers and replace them with her own appointees. A year later Hamer flatly summarized his reason: "When they elected a woman governor, I quit."[9] The commander of the Texas Rangers allowed him to retain a Special Ranger commission even after his official retirement as an active Senior Ranger Captain. The special commission is listed in the state archives in Austin.[10]
Ambush of Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow
Main article: Bonnie and Clyde
The posse. Top: Hinton, Oakley, Gault; seated: Alcorn, Jordan and Frank Hamer.

In the early 1930s, Bonnie and Clyde's crime spree had generated vast media coverage that embarrassed law enforcement and government officials across half a dozen states. Perhaps the last straw, at least for Texas officials, came on January 16, 1934, when Barrow, Parker and associate Jimmy Mullens raided Eastham prison farm, freeing Raymond Hamilton, Henry Methvin, Hilton Bybee (substituted for Clyde's friend Ralph Fults) and Joe Palmer. Hamilton's brother Floyd wrote that Methvin was not part of the original "invited" group but fled with them during the general confusion.[11] Though the hand he drew disappointed Barrow — he had particularly wanted to free Fults and another prisoner, Aubrey Skelley — the raid was the retaliation against the prison system that historian John Neal Phillips says was the driving force behind everything Clyde Barrow did: to pay back the Department of Corrections for abuse he had received there.[12] The Texas Department of Corrections received national negative publicity over the jailbreak, which delighted Barrow, who thought he finally had his revenge.

During the breakout two guards were shot and wounded by the escapees, guard Major Crowson fatally. Legend has it that as Crowson lay dying, Texas Department of Corrections chief Lee Simmons promised him that every person involved in the breakout would be hunted down and killed. In reality, just before Crowson died in the hospital on January 27, Simmons took his formal statement and assured Crowson he would send his killer, Joe Palmer, to the electric chair. He then turned his attention to restoring the reputation of the Texas prison system.
Hamer heads the hunt

On the go-ahead from Governor Ferguson, Simmons convinced Frank Hamer to accept a commission to hunt down the Barrow Gang as a special investigator for the prison system.[13] Hamer accepted the assignment but balked at the compensation — just $180 a month, less than half his current pay.[14] Simmons reiterated that Hamer would collect his fair share of the reward money, then sweetened the deal by authorizing Hamer to take whatever he wanted from among the Barrow Gang's possessions when he caught them.[14] As they were taking leave of each other, Simmons said he wouldn't presume to tell Hamer how to do his job, but his suggestion for getting Barrow and Parker would be to "Put 'em on the spot, know you're right — and shoot everybody in sight."[15]

Hamer set to the task. A smart and meticulous investigator, he examined the pattern of Barrow's movements, discovering that he essentially made a wide circle through the lower Midwest, skirting state borders wherever he could, to take advantage of "state line" dictums (i.e., that officers from one state could not pursue suspects across the border of another state). The circle had as its anchor points Dallas, Joplin, Missouri and northwest Louisiana, with wider arcs outward for bank robberies. It was a busy couple of months for hunter and quarry: banks in Lancaster, Texas, Poteau, Oklahoma and Rembrandt, Knierim, Stuart and Everly, Iowa[16] all fell victim to Barrow, Parker and Henry Methvin, one of the Eastham escapees who was now Clyde's protégé. Hamer was always following close behind.[17]
Shootings propel public outrage

The push-pins on Hamer's mental tracking map weren't all bank jobs — there were murders as well. The killing of two Texas Highway Patrol officers[18] at Grapevine, Texas on Easter Sunday (April 1, 1934) inflamed public sentiment against Barrow and Parker, even though it was Barrow and Methvin who were the two shooters.

An eyewitness account given massive newspaper coverage stated that a drunken Bonnie Parker had emptied her gun into the prone body of Patrolman Murphy at Grapevine, laughing as she fired at the way his "head bounced like a rubber ball" on the road.[19] Although it was all untrue — the eyewitness was ultimately discredited — it was not before waves of bad publicity in all four Dallas papers had established her reputation as a whiskey-belting, bloodthirsty she-devil.[20] The attitudes of government and law enforcement officials were informed by the lurid newspaper stories and the furor they created. Governor Ferguson placed a $500 bounty on Parker's head for her perceived role in the murder of Patrolman Murphy.[21] Even Hamer, who had learned a great deal about the real Barrow and Parker in the preceding months, later told reporters, "I would have gotten sick [seeing her perforated body in the car], but when I thought about her crimes, I didn’t. I hated to shoot a woman — but I remembered the way in which Bonnie had taken part in the murder of nine peace officers. I remembered how she kicked the body of the highway patrolman at Grapevine and fired a bullet into his body as he lay on the ground.”[7][22]

Popular perception turned even further against the fugitives when just five days later Barrow and Methvin killed sixty-year-old single father Constable Cal Campbell[23] near Commerce, Oklahoma.[16] They kidnapped Commerce Chief of Police Percy Boyd, drove him across the border into Kansas, and when they released him, he had what he needed: their names to top the Campbell murder warrants, which were issued against Barrow, Parker and John Doe (Methvin) later that week.[24]

Nevertheless, Hamer knew that Clyde did not intend to be taken alive, and the Barrow Gang's history made it practical to assume that Bonnie would not voluntarily part from him[25]
Focus shifts to Louisiana

In mid-March Henry Methvin's family contacted Bienville Parish Sheriff Henderson Jordan about their son, his legal troubles and his involvement with Barrow. Though Hamer was a lone wolf by nature, after much complicated politicking and negotiation he formed an inter-jurisdictional posse and an ambush plan began to come together. First to join him were Sheriff Jordan and his deputy Prentiss Oakley, an excellent marksman. Hamer brought in fellow former Ranger Manny Gault, who had been fired by "Ma" Ferguson and now worked for the Texas Highway Patrol. Hamer requested that Dallas County Sheriff Smoot Schmid commit his deputy Bob Alcorn full time to the case; Schmid sent Alcorn and another Dallas County deputy, Ted Hinton.[26] The two deputies and Schmid had tried to ambush Barrow and Parker once before, in November 1933, near Sowers, Texas. After examining Barrow's abandoned V-8 Ford at Sowers and seeing that the barrage from his Thompson submachine gun hadn't penetrated its body, Hinton requested a BAR.[27]
Desolate road deep in the piney woods: the trail for Bonnie and Clyde ended here.

At 9:15 a.m. on May 23, 1934, after 102 days of shadowing, hunter and hunted finally met on a desolate rural road near Gibsland, Louisiana. Barrow stopped his car at the ambush spot and the posse's 150-round fusillade was so thunderous that people for miles around thought a logging crew had used dynamite to fell a particularly huge tree.[28] Accounts of the last instants before the gunfire vary widely: Sheriff Jordan said he was calling out to Barrow to halt as the shooting started; Deputy Alcorn said that Captain Hamer was calling out; Deputy Hinton wrote that Alcorn called out. The only agreement between all six was that Deputy Oakley, perhaps nervously jumping the gun, stood and fired the opening burst from his Remington Model 8, and that his bullet into Barrow's left temple killed the outlaw instantly.[29] The posse then fired off another hundred-plus rounds, any number of which would have been fatal to Parker and also to Barrow.[30]

Hamer used a customized .35 Remington Model 8 semiautomatic rifle with a special-order 15-round magazine that Hamer had ordered from Petmeckey's Sporting Goods store in Austin, Texas. He was shipped serial number 10045, and this was just one of at least two Model 8's used in the ambush.[31] The rifle was modified to accept a "police only" 15-round magazine obtained through the Peace Officers Equipment Company in St. Joseph, Missouri.[27]

Although state, local and other sources had pledged monies to the Barrow reward kitty that brought the pre-ambush total to some $26,000, most reneged on their pledges and when the checks were finally cut for the posse members, a six-way split was all of $200.23.[32]
Later years

During the 1930s Hamer applied his skills in keeping the civil peace on behalf of various oil companies and shippers, generally as a strike breaker.

At the outbreak of war in Europe in 1939, he and 49 other retired Texas Rangers offered their services to the King of England, to help protect that country in case of Nazi invasion.[33] A son, Billy, died in the U.S. Marine Battle of Iwo Jima.

In 1948 he was called again to Ranger duty to play a small role in a notorious episode in an election acknowledged to have been one of the most corrupt in Texas history.[34][35] Hamer was hired by Governor Coke Stevenson, whose name by now was synonymous with old-school Texan conservative integrity,[36] to accompany him to the Texas State Bank in Alice, the county seat of Jim Wells County in South Texas. Stevenson wanted to examine the tally sheets for ballot box 13, which held ballots for his opponent, then-Representative Lyndon Johnson, he knew were fraudulent, and not in a way that favored him. Outside the bank stood two glowering groups of armed men. Hamer got out of the car. He approached the first group and said, "Git." They did. To the second group blocking the doors of the bank he said, "Fall back." They did.[37]

Frank Hamer retired in 1949 and lived in Austin until his death. In 1953 he suffered a heat stroke and though he lived two more years, never regained his health.[38] He was buried near his son in Memorial Park Cemetery in Austin.[39] In his life he was wounded 17 times and left for dead four times. He is credited with having killed between 53[7] and almost 70[40] people.
Portrayal in Bonnie and Clyde (1967)

The movie Barrows easily capture, tease and humiliate "Captain Frank Hamer, and Frank here is a Texas Ranger," who foolishly creeps up on them; their ambush appears to be his personal, petty revenge. After the release of the film, Mrs. Frank Hamer, formerly Gladys Johnson Sims, originally from Snyder, Texas, and Frank Hamer, Jr., sued Warner Bros.-Seven Arts for defamation of character and in 1971 received an out-of-court settlement.

Frank Hammer
Born in 1884 he is my personal selection as the toughest sumbitch of all. This Texas Ranger is best known for leading the posse that killed Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow in 1934 (and forget the crap you saw in the movie; no one ever got the drop on him). He was a big man who would cheerfully stomp a mudhole in your ass or shoot you if you broke the law. He was never beaten in a fight of any kind; he survived numerous gunshot wounds and killed numerous people. Hamer did not play politics, which probably cut short his Ranger career.

Hamer’s career spanned the last of the Old West and into the 20th century. He served 18 years in the Rangers, and even after his retirement he retained a special commission as a Ranger. During his life, he refused money (a lot of it, reportedly) to tell his life story. Hamer died in his bed in 1955.

 


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3/25
Saint Catherine of Siena, T.O.S.D, (25 March 1347 in Siena – 29 April 1380 in Rome) was a tertiary of the Dominican Order, and a Scholastic philosopher and theologian. She also worked to bring the papacy of Gregory XI back to Rome from its displacement in France, and to establish peace among the Italian city-states. She was proclaimed a Doctor of the Church in 1970. She is one of the two patron saints of Italy, together with St. Francis of Assisi.

Saint Catherine of Siena (born 23rd of 25 children) was a scholastic philosopher and theologian. She received no education and at age seven decided to become a lay member of the Dominican religious order (against the wishes of her parents). She lived at home as an anchoress in order to be able to perform acts of self denial that would not have been permitted in a nunnery. Catherine dedicated her life to helping the ill and the poor, where she took care of them in hospitals or homes. She wrote letters to men and women in authority, especially begging for peace between the republics and principalities of Italy and for the return of the papacy from Avignon to Rome. She carried on a long correspondence with Pope Gregory XI, also asked him to reform the clergy and the administration of the Papal States. Incredibly, the Pope, inspired by her wisdom, did return the Papal administration to Rome. Catherine’s letters are considered one of the great works of early Tuscan literature. More than 300 letters have survived. Pope Pius II canonized Catherine in 1461 and she is now one of three female Doctors of the Church. She is also one of the patron saints of Europe. You can read the letters of Saint Catherine of Siena online.

 

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Vincent van Gogh 03/30

Vincent Willem van Gogh (Dutch: [fa?'x?x]  (listen), English: /?væn 'g?x/;[note 1] 30 March 1853 – 29 July 1890) was a Dutch post-Impressionist painter whose work had a far-reaching influence on 20th century art for its vivid colors and emotional impact. He suffered from anxiety and increasingly frequent bouts of mental illness throughout his life and died, largely unknown, at the age of 37 from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

Little appreciated during his lifetime, his fame grew in the years after his death. Today, he is widely regarded as one of history's greatest painters and an important contributor to the foundations of modern art. Van Gogh did not begin painting until his late twenties, and most of his best-known works were produced during his final two years. He produced more than 2,000 artworks, consisting of around 900 paintings and 1,100 drawings and sketches. Today many of his pieces—including his numerous self portraits, landscapes, portraits and sunflowers—are among the world's most recognizable and expensive works of art.
Van Gogh spent his early adulthood working for a firm of art dealers and traveled between The Hague, London and Paris, after which he taught in England. An early vocational aspiration was to become a pastor and preach the gospel, and from 1879 he worked as a missionary in a mining region in Belgium. During this time he began to sketch people from the local community, and in 1885 painted his first major work The Potato Eaters. His palette at the time consisted mainly of somber earth tones and showed no sign of the vivid coloration that distinguished his later work. In March 1886, he moved to Paris and discovered the French Impressionists. Later he moved to the south of France and was taken by the strong sunlight he found there. His work grew brighter in color and he developed the unique and highly recognizable style which became fully realized during his stay in Arles in 1888.

The extent to which his mental illness affected his painting has been a subject of speculation since his death. Despite a widespread tendency to romanticise his ill health, modern critics see an artist deeply frustrated by the inactivity and incoherence brought about by his bouts of sickness. According to art critic Robert Hughes, Van Gogh's late works show an artist at the height of his ability, completely in control and "longing for concision and grace"
(1853 – 1890) Dutch Post-Impressionist artist and a pioneer of Expressionism. And yes, he’s the one who cut off part of his own ear.

 

 

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Johann Sebastian Bach 03/31

[1] (31 March 1685[2] – 28 July 1750) was a German composer, organist, harpsichordist, violist, and violinist whose sacred and secular works for choir, orchestra, and solo instruments drew together the strands of the Baroque period and brought it to its ultimate maturity.[3] Although he did not introduce new forms, he enriched the prevailing German style with a robust contrapuntal technique, an unrivalled control of harmonic and motivic organisation, and the adaptation of rhythms, forms and textures from abroad, particularly from Italy and France.

Revered for their intellectual depth, technical command and artistic beauty, Bach's works include the Brandenburg concertos, the Goldberg Variations, the Partitas, The Well-Tempered Clavier, the Mass in B minor, the St Matthew Passion, the St John Passion, the Magnificat, The Musical Offering, The Art of Fugue, the English and French Suites, the Sonatas and Partitas for solo violin, the Cello Suites, more than 200 surviving cantatas, and a similar number of organ works, including the celebrated Toccata and Fugue in D minor and Passacaglia and Fugue in C minor.

Bach's abilities as an organist were highly respected throughout Europe during his lifetime, although he was not widely recognised as a great composer until a revival of interest and performances of his music in the first half of the 19th century. He is now generally regarded one of the main composers of the Baroque style, and as one of the greatest composers of all time.

Bach's health may have been in decline in 1749; on 2 June, Heinrich von Brühl wrote to one of the Leipzig burgomasters to request that his music director, Gottlob Harrer, fill the post of Thomascantor and Director musices posts "upon the eventual ... decease of Mr. Bach."[34] Bach became increasingly blind, and the celebrated British eye surgeon John Taylor (who would later operate unsuccessfully on Handel) operated on Bach while visiting Leipzig in 1750. Bach died on 28 July 1750 at the age of 65. A contemporary newspaper reported the cause of death as "from the unhappy consequences of the very unsuccessful eye operation".[35] Some modern historians speculate the cause of death was a stroke complicated by pneumonia

 


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Leonardo da Vinci 04/15

Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci (pronunciation (help·info)) (April 15, 1452 – May 2, 1519) was an Italian polymath: painter, sculptor, architect, musician, scientist, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, geologist, cartographer, botanist and writer. Leonardo has often been described as the archetype of the Renaissance man, a man whose unquenchable curiosity was equaled only by his powers of invention.[1] He is widely considered to be one of the greatest painters of all time and perhaps the most diversely talented person ever to have lived.[2] According to art historian Helen Gardner, the scope and depth of his interests were without precedent and "his mind and personality seem to us superhuman, the man himself mysterious and remote".[1] Marco Rosci points out, however, that while there is much speculation about Leonardo, his vision of the world is essentially logical rather than mysterious, and that the empirical methods he employed were unusual for his time.[3]

Born the illegitimate son of a notary, Piero da Vinci, and a peasant woman, Caterina, at Vinci in the region of Florence, Leonardo was educated in the studio of the renowned Florentine painter, Verrocchio. Much of his earlier working life was spent in the service of Ludovico il Moro in Milan. He later worked in Rome, Bologna and Venice and spent his last years in France, at the home awarded him by Francis I.

Leonardo was and is renowned[2] primarily as a painter. Among his works, the Mona Lisa is most famous and most parodied portrait and The Last Supper the most reproduced religious painting of all time, with their fame approached only by Michelangelo's Creation of Adam.[1] Leonardo's drawing of the Vitruvian Man is also regarded as a cultural icon,[4] being reproduced on everything from the euro to text books to t-shirts. Perhaps fifteen of his paintings survive, the small number due to his constant, and frequently disastrous, experimentation with new techniques, and his chronic procrastination.[nb 2] Nevertheless, these few works, together with his notebooks, which contain drawings, scientific diagrams, and his thoughts on the nature of painting, compose a contribution to later generations of artists only rivalled by that of his contemporary, Michelangelo.

Leonardo is revered[2] for his technological ingenuity. He conceptualised a helicopter, a tank, concentrated solar power, a calculator,[5] the double hull and outlined a rudimentary theory of plate tectonics. Relatively few of his designs were constructed or were even feasible during his lifetime,[nb 3] but some of his smaller inventions, such as an automated bobbin winder and a machine for testing the tensile strength of wire, entered the world of manufacturing unheralded.[nb 4] As a scientist, he greatly advanced the state of knowledge in the fields of anatomy, civil engineering,

(1452 – 1519) Italian polymath, doing groundbreaking work as a scientist, engineer, inventor, anatomist, painter and more. Often described the archetypal Renaissance man and one of the most widely talented people of all time.

 

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5/1
Clint Malarchuk (born May 1, 1961 in Grande Prairie, Alberta), is a retired Canadian professional ice hockey goaltender who played in the National Hockey League (NHL) between 1981 and 1992, and is currently an assistant coach with the Calgary Flames.

Malarchuk is perhaps most well known for surviving a life-threatening injury during a game when another player's skate blade slashed his carotid artery, causing immediate massive blood loss.
Malarchuk played junior hockey for the Portland Winter Hawks of the Western Hockey League (WHL). He then went on to play professionally in the National Hockey League (NHL) for the Quebec Nordiques, Washington Capitals, and Buffalo Sabres, and in the International Hockey League (IHL) for the Las Vegas Thunder. He compiled a career record of 141 wins, 130 losses, 45 ties, 12 shutouts, and an .885 save percentage.
Throat injury

During a game on March 22, 1989, between the visiting St. Louis Blues and Malarchuk's Buffalo Sabres, Steve Tuttle of the Blues and Uwe Krupp of the Sabres became entangled while chasing the puck and crashed into Malarchuk's goal. Tuttle's skate caught Malarchuk on the neck, severing his carotid artery.[1]

With pools of blood collecting on the ice, Malarchuk left the ice on his own feet with the assistance of his team's athletic trainer, Jim Pizzutelli.[2] Many spectators were physically sickened by the sight.[3] Local television cameras covering the game cut away from the sight of Malarchuk bleeding after realizing what had happened.

Malarchuk, meanwhile, believed he was going to die. "All I wanted to do was get off the ice", said Malarchuk. "My mother was watching the game on TV, and I didn't want her to see me die."[4] Aware that his mother had been watching the game on TV, he had an equipment manager call and tell her he loved her. Then he asked for a priest.[5]

Malarchuk's life was saved by the team's trainer, Jim Pizzutelli, a former Army medic who had served in Vietnam. He reached into Malarchuk's neck and pinched off the bleeding, not letting go until doctors arrived to begin suturing the wound. Still, Malarchuk came within minutes of becoming only the third fatality to result from an on-ice injury in NHL history after Howie Morenz (1937) and Bill Masterton (1968). It was estimated that if the skate had hit 1/8 inch (3 mm) higher on Malarchuk's carotid, he would have been dead within two minutes. In the dressing room and on the way to the hospital, doctors spent 90 minutes and used over 300 stitches to close the wound.[5][6] It was also said that had the incident occurred at the other end of the ice, Malarchuk would have died - the Buffalo Memorial Auditorium had the locker room exits at one end of the ice instead of the normal location behind the benches, and he was at that end.[7]

Malarchuk returned to practice four days later, having spent only one night in the hospital. About a week after that, he was back in goal against the Quebec Nordiques. "Doctors told me to take the rest of the year off, but there was no way", Malarchuk said. "The longer you wait, the harder it's going to be. I play for keeps." Malarchuk came back in time for the playoffs, but the Sabres lost to the Boston Bruins 4-1 in the first round.

Malarchuk's performance declined over the next few years, to the point that he left the NHL. After this, he struggled with obsessive-compulsive disorder (as he had since a young age), as well as nightmares and alcoholism,[8] but he eventually returned to hockey, in the International Hockey League. After retiring as a player, Malarchuk continued his hockey career as a coach.

On February 10, 2008, coincidentally again in Buffalo, Florida Panthers player Richard Zednik suffered an injury similar to Malarchuk after Olli Jokinen's skate blade cut the side of Zednik's neck, injuring his jugular and barely missing his carotid artery. Upon viewing the footage of Zednik's injury, Malarchuk was taken aback, saying that he didn't think his memory of his own incident would come back after 19 years. Malarchuk also stated he would like to speak with Zednik once the time was right

4) Clint Malarchuk – Canada – Ice Hockey
There are some injuries that you just cannot finish the match with, no matter how tough you are. Clint Malarchuk suffered one of them in 1989 whist keeping goal for the Buffalo Sabres Ice Hockey team. In a freak accident, two players from the opposing St. Louis Blues collided in front of him, with one following through to slide skate first into the 27-year-old goalkeeper’s throat, slicing open his jugular vein. In just seconds he lay gasping in a pool of blood that filled the entire goal mouth – a sight which caused nine spectators to faint, two to suffer heart attacks, while two team mates vomited on the ice.  Quick acting doctors rushed in and saved his life by pinching the vein to stop the bleeding and after only one night in hospital and more than 300 stitches Malarchuk was back in practice 4 days later, returning to a competitive match a mere week after that.

 

 

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5/2
Catherine II, also known as Catherine the Great (Russian: ????????? II ???????, Yekaterina II Velikaya; German: Katharina die Große), Empress of Russia (2 May [O.S. 21 April] 1729 – 17 November [O.S. 6 November] 1796), was the most renowned and the longest-ruling female leader of Russia, reigning from 9 July [O.S. 28 June] 1762 until her death at the age of 67.
 reigned as Empress of Russia for 34 years, from June 28, 1762 until her death. She exemplifies the enlightened despot of her era. During her reign Catherine extended the borders of the Russian Empire southward and westward to absorb New Russia, Crimea, Right-Bank Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania, and Courland at the expense of two powers — the Ottoman Empire and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Catherine made Russia the dominant power in south-eastern Europe after her first Russo–Turkish War against the Ottoman Empire (1768–1774), which saw some of the greatest defeats in Turkish history, including the Battle of Chesma (5 July – 7 July 1770) and the Battle of Kagul (21 July 1770). Catherine’s patronage furthered the evolution of the arts in Russia more than that of any Russian sovereign before or after her. She subscribed to the ideals of the Enlightenment and considered herself a “philosopher on the throne”. She showed great awareness of her image abroad, and ever desired that Europe should perceive her as a civilized and enlightened monarch, despite the fact that in Russia she often played the part of the tyrant.

 

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5/5
Douglas Mawson

Sir Douglas Mawson, OBE, FRS, FAA (5 May 1882 – 14 October 1958) was an Australian Antarctic explorer and geologist. Along with Roald Amundsen, Robert Falcon Scott, and Ernest Shackleton, Mawson was a key expedition leader during the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration.

 
This Australian was a key figure in the so-called Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration. His Australian Antarctic Expedition, which begun in December 1911, however, nearly saw the end of his adventures forever. He was the only survivor in his team after his fellow explorer, Lieutenant Ninnis, fell through a crevice with the dogs and supplies and were lost. The other member of his exploration team, Xavier Mertz, died from a combination of weakness, cold and vitamin A poisoning from eating dog livers.  Ironically, Mawson fed the weaker Mertz the dog livers thinking they were more nourishing than the muscle tissue of the dogs which led to Hypervitaminosis A. Mawson continued alone and fell into a crevasse and saved himself by wedging his sledge above him. So bad was his condition when he arrived at base camp, his rescuer exclaimed, “My God, which one are you?”


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5/7
María Eva Duarte de Perón (Spanish: [ma'?i.a 'eßa 'ðwarte ðe pe'?on]; 7 May 1919 – 26 July 1952) was the second wife of President Juan Perón (1895–1974) and served as the First Lady of Argentina from 1946 until her death in 1952. She is often referred to as simply Eva Perón, or by the affectionate Spanish language diminutive Evita.

She was born in the village of Los Toldos in rural Argentina in 1919, the youngest of five children. In 1934, at the age of 15, she went to the nation's capital of Buenos Aires, where she pursued a career as a stage, radio, and film actress. Eva met Colonel Juan Perón on 22 January 1944, in Buenos Aires during a charity event at the Luna Park Stadium to benefit the victims of an earthquake in San Juan, Argentina. The two were married the following year. In 1946, Juan Perón was elected President of Argentina. Over the course of the next six years, Eva Perón became powerful within the pro-Peronist trade unions, primarily for speaking on behalf of labor rights. She also ran the Ministries of Labor and Health, founded and ran the charitable Eva Perón Foundation, championed women's suffrage in Argentina, and founded and ran the nation's first large-scale female political party, the Female Peronist Party.

In 1951, Eva Perón announced her candidacy for the Peronist nomination for the office of Vice President of Argentina, receiving great support from the Peronist political base, low-income and working class Argentines who were referred to as descamisados or "shirtless ones". However, opposition from the nation's military and bourgeoisie, coupled with her declining health, ultimately forced her to withdraw her candidacy. In 1952, shortly before her death from cancer at the age of 33, Eva Perón was given the title of "Spiritual Leader of the Nation" by the Argentine Congress.[1][2][3] Supporting her husband's regime enthusiastically even as she was dying, Eva Perón was given a state funeral upon her death, a pregorative generally reserved for heads of state. While in exile, her husband married Isabel Martinez, who would eventually succeed her as First Lady of Argentina and, upon Peron's own death, the first female President of any country in the world.

Eva Perón has become a part of international popular culture,[4] most famously as the subject of the musical Evita (1976).[5] Cristina Alvarez Rodriguez, Evita's great niece, claims that Evita has never left the collective consciousness of Argentines.[1] Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, the first female elected President of Argentina, claims that women of her generation owe a debt to Eva for "her example of passion and combativeness"

Eva Peron (Evita) was First Lady of Argentina from 1946 until her death in 1952. During her time as wife of President Juan Peron, she became powerful within the Pro-Peronist trade unions. Eventually, she founded the charitable Eva Perón Foundation, and the nation’s first large-scale female political party, the Female Peronist Party. Her charitable organization built homes for the poor and homeless, and also provided free health care to citizens. Eventually, Evita became the center of her own vast personality cult and her image and name soon appeared everywhere, with train stations, a city (“Ciudad Evita”), and even a star being named after her. Despite her dominance and political power, Evita was always careful to never undermine the important symbolic role of her husband. On August 22, 1951 the unions held a mass rally of two million people called “Cabildo Abierto” at which they begged Eva Peron to run for vice president. It has been claimed that “Cabildo Abierto” was the largest public display of support in history for a female political figure. She eventually declined to run and died the following year of Cancer.


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5/12
Florence Nightingale OM, RRC (play /'fl?r?ns 'na?t??ge?l/; 12 May 1820 – 13 August 1910) was a celebrated English nurse, writer and statistician. She came to prominence for her pioneering work in nursing during the Crimean War, where she tended to wounded soldiers. She was dubbed "The Lady with the Lamp" after her habit of making rounds at night. An Anglican, Nightingale believed that God had called her to be a nurse.

Nightingale laid the foundation of professional nursing with the establishment, in 1860, of her nursing school at St Thomas' Hospital in London, the first secular nursing school in the world, now part of King's College London. The Nightingale Pledge taken by new nurses was named in her honour, and the annual International Nurses Day is celebrated around the world on her birthday.
Florence Nightingale's most famous contribution came during the Crimean War, which became her central focus when reports began to filter back to Britain about the horrific conditions for the wounded. On 21 October 1854,

 

4.
Nightingale arrived early in November 1854 at Selimiye Barracks in Scutari (modern-day Üsküdar in Istanbul). She and her nurses found wounded soldiers being badly cared for by overworked medical staff in the face of official indifference. Medicines were in short supply, hygiene was being neglected, and mass infections were common, many of them fatal. There was no equipment to process food for the patients.

After Nightingale sent a plea to The Times for the government to produce a solution to the poor condition of the facilities, the British Government commissioned Isambard Kingdom Brunel to design a prefabricated hospital, which could be built in England and shipped to the Dardanelles. The result was Renkioi Hospital, a civilian facility which under the management of Dr Edmund Alexander Parkes had a death rate less than 1/10th that of Scutari.[6]

At the beginning of the 20th century, it was asserted that Nightingale reduced the death rate from 42% to 2% either by making improvements in hygiene herself or by calling for the Sanitary Commission. The 1911 first edition of the Dictionary of National Biography made this claim, but the second edition in 2001 did not. However, death rates did not drop: they began to rise. The death count was the highest of all hospitals in the region. During her first winter at Scutari, 4,077 soldiers died there. Ten times more soldiers died from illnesses such as typhus, typhoid, cholera and dysentery than from battle wounds. Conditions at the temporary barracks hospital were so fatal to the patients because of overcrowding and the hospital's defective sewers and lack of ventilation. A Sanitary Commission had to be sent out by the British government to Scutari in March 1855, almost six months after Florence Nightingale had arrived, and effected flushing out the sewers and improvements to ventilation.[7] Death rates were sharply reduced. During the war she did not recognise hygiene as the predominant cause of death, and she never claimed credit for helping to reduce the death rate.[8]

Nightingale continued believing the death rates were due to poor nutrition and supplies and overworking of the soldiers. It was not until after she returned to Britain and began collecting evidence before the Royal Commission on the Health of the Army that she came to believe that most of the soldiers at the hospital were killed by poor living conditions. This experience influenced her later career, when she advocated sanitary living conditions as of great importance. Consequently, she reduced deaths in the army during peacetime and turned attention to the sanitary design of hospitals.
The Lady with the Lamp

During the Crimean war, Florence Nightingale gained the nickname "The Lady with the Lamp", deriving from a phrase in a report in The Times:

    She is a ‘ministering angel’ without any exaggeration in these hospitals, and as her slender form glides quietly along each corridor, every poor fellow's face softens with gratitude at the sight of her. When all the medical officers have retired for the night and silence and darkness have settled down upon those miles of prostrate sick, she may be observed alone, with a little lamp in her hand, making her solitary rounds.[9]

"Nightingale receiving the Wounded at Scutari", a portrait by Jerry Barrett

The phrase was further popularised by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's 1857 poem "Santa Filomena":[10]

    Lo! in that house of misery
    A lady with a lamp I see
    Pass through the glimmering gloom,
    And flit from room to room.

Florence Nightingale who came to be known as “The Lady with the Lamp”, was a pioneer of modern nursing, a writer and a noted statistician. Her lasting contribution has been her role in founding the modern nursing profession. She set a shining example for nurses everywhere of compassion, commitment to patient care, and diligent and thoughtful hospital administration. The work of the Nightingale School of Nursing continues today. The Nightingale building in the School of Nursing and Midwifery at the University of Southampton is named after her. International Nurses Day is celebrated on her birthday each year. Florence Nightingale’s most famous contribution came during the Crimean War, which became her central focus when reports began to filter back to Britain about the horrific conditions for the wounded. Florence and her compatriots began by thoroughly cleaning the hospital and equipment and reorganizing patient care. Nightingale believed the high death rates in the hospitals were due to poor nutrition and supplies and overworking of the soldiers. Consequently, she reduced deaths in the Army during peacetime and turned attention to the sanitary design of hospitals.

 

 


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5/18
Walter Gropius 05/18

Walter Adolph Georg Gropius (May 18, 1883 – July 5, 1969) was a German architect and founder of the Bauhaus School[1] who, along with Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Le Corbusier, is widely regarded as one of the pioneering masters of modern architecture.

Gropius's career advanced in the postwar period. Henry van de Velde, the master of the Grand-Ducal Saxon School of Arts and Crafts in Weimar was asked to step down in 1915 due to his Belgian nationality. His recommendation for Gropius to succeed him led eventually to Gropius's appointment as master of the school in 1919. It was this academy which Gropius transformed into the world famous Bauhaus, attracting a faculty that included Paul Klee, Johannes Itten, Josef Albers, Herbert Bayer, László Moholy-Nagy, Otto Bartning and Wassily Kandinsky. One example was the armchair F 51, designed for the Bauhaus's directors room in 1920 - nowadays a re-edition in the market, manufactured by the German company TECTA/Lauenfoerde.

In 1919, Gropius was involved in the Glass Chain utopian expressionist correspondence under the pseudonym "Mass." Usually more notable for his functionalist approach, the "Monument to the March Dead," designed in 1919 and executed in 1920, indicates that expressionism was an influence on him at that time.
In 1923, Gropius designed his famous door handles, now considered an icon of 20th-century design and often listed as one of the most influential designs to emerge from Bauhaus. He also designed large-scale housing projects in Berlin, Karlsruhe and Dessau in 1926-32 that were major contributions to the New Objectivity movement, including a contribution to the Siemensstadt project in Berlin.

With the help of the English architect Maxwell Fry, Gropius was able to leave Nazi Germany in 1934, on the pretext of making a temporary visit to Britain. He lived and worked in Britain, as part of the Isokon group with Fry and others and then, in 1937, moved on to the United States. The house he built for himself in Lincoln, Massachusetts, (now known as Gropius House) was influential in bringing International Modernism to the U.S. but Gropius disliked the term: "I made it a point to absorb into my own conception those features of the New England architectural tradition that I found still alive and adequate."
Gropius died in 1969 in Boston, Massachusetts, aged 86.
(1883 – 1969) German architect, founder of Bauhaus and a pioneer of modern architecture

 

 

 

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Sir Arthur Conan Doyle 05/22

Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle, DL (22 May 1859 – 7 July 1930[1]) was a Scottish[2] physician and writer, most noted for his stories about the detective Sherlock Holmes, which are generally considered a major innovation in the field of crime fiction, and for the adventures of Professor Challenger. He was a prolific writer whose other works include science fiction stories, historical novels, plays and romances, poetry, and non-fiction.

Conan Doyle was also a fervent advocate of justice and personally investigated two closed cases, which led to two men being exonerated of the crimes of which they were accused. The first case, in 1906, involved a shy half-British, half-Indian lawyer named George Edalji who had allegedly penned threatening letters and mutilated animals. Police were set on Edalji's conviction, even though the mutilations continued after their suspect was jailed.

It was partially as a result of this case that the Court of Criminal Appeal was established in 1907, so not only did Conan Doyle help George Edalji, his work helped establish a way to correct other miscarriages of justice. The story of Conan Doyle and Edalji was fictionalized in Julian Barnes's 2005 novel Arthur & George. In Nicholas Meyer's pastiche "The West End Horror" (1976), Holmes manages to help clear the name of a shy Parsee Indian character wronged by the English justice system. Edalji himself was a Parsee.

The second case, that of Oscar Slater, a German Jew and gambling-den operator convicted of bludgeoning an 82-year-old woman in Glasgow in 1908, excited Conan Doyle's curiosity because of inconsistencies in the prosecution case and a general sense that Slater was not guilty. He ended up paying most of the costs for Slater's successful appeal in 1928.

Conan Doyle was found clutching his chest in the hall of Windlesham, his house in Crowborough, East Sussex, on 7 July 1930. He died of a heart attack at age 71. His last words were directed toward his wife: "You are wonderful."[23] The epitaph on his gravestone in the churchyard at Minstead in the New Forest, Hampshire, reads:
STEEL TRUE
BLADE STRAIGHT
ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE
KNIGHT
PATRIOT, PHYSICIAN & MAN OF LETTERS

(1859 – 1930) British author mostly known for his novels about Sherlock Holmes, one of the most famous fictional characters of all time.

 

 


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5/26
John Wesley Hardin (May 26, 1853—August 19, 1895) was an American outlaw, gunfighter, and controversial folk hero of the Old West. He was born in Bonham, Texas. Hardin found himself in trouble with the law at an early age, and spent the majority of his life being pursued by both local lawmen and federal troops of the reconstruction era. He often used the residences of family and friends to hideout from the law. Hardin is known to have had at least one encounter with the well-known lawman, "Wild Bill" Hickok. When he was finally captured and sent to prison in 1878, Hardin claimed to have already killed 42 men,[3] but newspapers of the era had attributed only 27 killings to him up to that point.[4][5] While in prison, Hardin wrote his autobiography and studied law, attempting to make a living as an attorney after his release. In August 1895, Hardin was shot to death by John Selman, Sr. in the Acme Saloon, in El Paso, Texas.

While attending his father's school, Hardin was taunted by another student, Charles Sloter. Sloter accused Hardin of being the author of graffiti on the schoolhouse wall that insulted a girl in his class. Hardin denied writing the poetry, claiming that Sloter was the author.[9] Sloter charged at Hardin with a knife but Hardin stabbed him, almost killing him.[7][10] Hardin was nearly expelled over the incident.[9]
First killing

At the age of 15, Hardin challenged his uncle Holshousen's former slave, Mage, to a wrestling match which Hardin won.[3] According to Hardin, the following day, Mage hid by a path and attacked him as he rode past. Hardin drew his revolver and fired five shots into Mage. Hardin claims he then rode to get help for the wounded ex-slave (who died three days later). Because James Hardin did not believe his son would receive a fair hearing in the Union-occupied state (where more than a third of the state police were ex-slaves) he ordered his son into hiding (even though this event could have been deemed self-defense by contemporary Texas law).[3] Hardin claims that the authorities eventually discovered his location, and sent three Union soldiers to arrest him. Hardin said he chose to confront his pursuers despite having been warned of their approach by older brother, Joe.[11][12]

    I waylaid them, as I had no mercy on men whom I knew only wanted to get my body to torture and kill. It was war to the knife for me, and I brought it on by opening the fight with a double-barreled shotgun and ended it with a cap and ball six-shooter. Thus it was by the fall of 1868 I had killed four men and was myself wounded in the arm.[8]

A fugitive from justice

Hardin couldn't return home. As a fugitive from justice, Hardin initially traveled with outlaw Frank Polk in the Pisgah, Navarro County, Texas area. Polk had killed a man named Tom Brady. A detachment of soldiers sent from Corsicana, Texas pursued the duo.[13] Hardin escaped the troops, but Polk was captured.[8][14]

At Pisgah, Hardin briefly taught school. While there, he claimed that to win a bottle of whiskey in a bet, he shot a man's eye out.[8]

On January 5, 1870[15] Hardin was playing cards with Benjamin Bradley in Towash, Hill County, Texas. Hardin was winning almost every hand, which angered Bradley, who then threatened to "cut out his liver" if he won again. Bradley drew a knife and a six-shooter. Hardin (who was unarmed) excused himself and left. Later that night, Bradley went looking for Hardin. Seeing him on Towash Street, Bradley allegedly fired a shot at Hardin, which missed. Hardin drew both his pistols and returned fire —one shot striking Bradley's head and the other his chest.[16][17]

A month later, on January 20, 1870[8] in Horn Hill, Limestone County, Texas, Hardin reportedly killed a man in a gunfight after an argument at the circus. Less than a week after this incident, in nearby Kosse, he was escorting a saloon girl home when they were accosted by a man demanding money. Hardin threw his money on the ground; Hardin shot the would-be thief when he bent to pick it up.[11]
Arrest and escape

Hardin was arrested in January 1871 for the murder of Waco, Texas, city marshal, Laban John Hoffman[18] (which he denied having committed).[8] Unable to persuade a judge of his innocence, he was held temporarily in a log jail in the town of Marshall, awaiting transfer to Waco for trial. While locked up, he bought a revolver from another prisoner. Texas State Policemen, Captain Edward T. Stakes and officer Jim Smalley, were assigned to escort Hardin to Waco for trial. According to Hardin, they tied him on a horse with no saddle for the trip. While making camp along the way, Hardin escaped when Stakes went to procure fodder for the horses. According to Hardin, he was left alone with Smalley, who began to taunt and beat the then 17-year-old prisoner with the butt of a pistol. Hardin feigned crying and huddled against his pony's flank. Hidden by the animal, he pulled out his gun, fatally shot Smalley and escaped on Stakes' horse. He later forced a blacksmith to remove his shackles.[8]

After this incident, he found refuge among his Clements cousins, who were then gathering at Gonzales, in south Texas. They suggested he could make money by getting into the cattle market, which was then rapidly growing in Kansas, and which would allow him to get out of Texas long enough for his pursuers to lose interest. Hardin worked with his cousins, rustling cattle for Jake Johnson and Columbus Carol.[19] Hardin was made trail boss for the herd. In February 1871 while the herd was being formed up for the drive to Kansas, a freedman, Bob King, attempted to cut a beef cow out of the herd. When he refused to obey Hardin's demand to stop, Hardin hit him over the head with his pistol.[8] That same month, Hardin wounded three Mexicans in an argument over a Three-card Monte card game.[8]

While driving cattle on the Chisholm Trail to Abilene, Kansas, Hardin was reputed to have fought Mexican vaqueros and cattle rustlers.[11] Toward the end of the drive, a Mexican herd crowded in behind Hardin's and there was some trouble keeping the two herds apart. Hardin exchanged words with the man in charge of the other herd. Both men were on horseback. The Mexican fired his gun at Hardin, putting a hole through Hardin's hat. Hardin found that his own weapon, a worn-out cap-and-ball pistol with a loose cylinder, would not fire; he dismounted and managed to discharge the gun by steadying the cylinder with one hand while pulling the trigger with the other. He hit the Mexican in the thigh. A truce was declared and both parties went their separate ways. However, Hardin borrowed a pistol from a friend and went looking for the Mexican, this time fatally shooting him through the head. A fire fight between the rival camps ensued. Hardin claimed six vaqueros died in the exchanges (five of them reportedly shot by him),[6][8][20] but this claim appears exaggerated[21] Hardin also claimed to have killed two Indians in separate gunfights on the same cattle drive.[8]

On July 4, 1871, a Texas trail Boss named William Cohron was killed on the Cottonwood Trail (40 miles south of Abilene) by an unnamed Mexican, who "fled south"[22][23] and was subsequently killed by two cowboys in a Sumner City, Sumner County Kansas, restaurant on July 20, 1871.[24] Hardin admitted to being involved in the shooting of the Mexican.[25]

A Texas Historical Marker notes that in the 1870s, Hardin would hide out not just in Gonzales County, but in the Pilgrim area specifically.
First time in Abilene, Kansas
Austin City Marshal Ben Thompson, 1881–1882

The Bull's Head Tavern, in Abilene, had been established by gambler, Ben Thompson, along with businessman and gambler, Phil Coe. The two entrepreneurs had painted a picture of a bull with a large erect penis on the side of their establishment as an advertisement. Citizens of the town complained to town marshal, "Wild Bill" Hickok. When Thompson and Coe refused his request to remove the bull, Hickok altered it himself. Infuriated, Thompson tried to incite his new acquaintance, Hardin, by exclaiming to him: "He's a damn Yankee. Picks on Rebels, especially Texans, to kill." Hardin, then under the assumed name, "Wesley Clemmons" (but better known to the townspeople by the alias, "Little Arkansas"), seemed to have had respect for Hickok, and replied, "If Wild Bill needs killin', why don't you kill him yourself?"[8] Later that night, Hardin was confronted by Hickok, who told him to hand over his guns, which he did. Hickok had no knowledge of Hardin being a wanted man, and he advised Hardin to avoid problems while in Abilene.
Second Abilene encounter with "Wild Bill" Hickok
J.B. Hickok 1869

Hardin again met up with Marshal Hickok, while on a cattle drive in August 1871. This time, Hickock allowed Hardin to carry his pistols in Abilene —something he had never allowed others to do. For his part, Hardin (still using his alias), was fascinated by Wild Bill and reveled at being seen on intimate terms with such a celebrated gunfighter.[citation needed]
The shooting of a "snoring" man

Hardin and several of his fellow cow herders had put up for the night at the "American House Hotel". Sometime during the evening, Hardin, and at least one other cow hand, began firing bullets through the bedroom wall and ceiling, in an attempt to stop the snoring which was coming from the next room. A sleeping stranger, Charles Cougar, was killed. (In his autobiography, Hardin claimed he was shooting at a man who was in his room to rob or kill him, and that he did not realize they had accidentally killed a man in the other room until much later.) Hardin realized he would be in trouble with Hickok for firing his gun within the city limits. Half-dressed, he and his men exited through a second story window and ran onto the roof of the hotel —just in time to see Hickok arriving with four policemen. "I believe," Hardin wrote later, "that if Wild Bill found me in a defenseless condition, he would take no explanation, but would kill me to add to his reputation".[8] A contemporary newspaper report of the shooting noted: "A man was killed in his bed at a hotel in Abilene, Monday night, by a desperado called "Arkansas". The murderer escaped. This was his sixth murder."[26][27][28] Hardin leaped from the roof into the street and hid in a haystack for the rest of the night. He stole a horse and made his way back to the cow camp outside town. The next day, he left for Texas, never to return to Abilene. Years later, Hardin made a casual reference to the episode: "They tell lots of lies about me," he complained, "They say I killed six or seven men for snoring. Well, it ain't true. I only killed one man for snoring."[6] In his autobiography, Hardin claimed that following this shooting, he ambushed lawman, Tom Carson, and two other deputies at a cowboy camp 35 miles outside of Abilene, but did not kill them, only forcing them to remove all their clothing and walk back to Abilene.[8]

In October 1871, Hardin was involved in a gunfight with Texas State Policemen, Green Paramore and John Lackey, in which Paramore was fatally wounded. After this, Hardin claimed that about 45 miles outside Corpus Christi, Texas he was being followed by two Mexicans, and that he shot one off his horse while the other "quit the fight."[8]
During the Sutton-Taylor feud
Main article: List of feuds in the United States#Sutton-Taylor

In early 1872, Hardin was in south central Texas, in the area around Gonzales County. There, he reunited with some of his Clements cousins, who had become allied with the local Taylor family, which had been feuding with the rival Sutton family for several years.

In June 1872, at Willis, Texas, Hardin claimed that some men tried to arrest him for carrying a pistol "...but they got the contents instead."[8]

Hardin was wounded by a shotgun blast in a Trinity, Texas gambling dispute on August 7, 1872. He was shot by Phil Sublett, after he had lost money to Hardin in a poker game. Two buckshot pellets injured Hardin's kidney, and for a time it looked like he would die.

While recuperating from his wounds, Hardin decided he wanted to settle down. He made a sick-bed surrender to law authorities, handing over his guns to Sheriff Reagan of Cherokee County, Texas, and asking to be tried for his past crimes "to clear the slate." However, when Hardin learned of how many murders Reagan was going to charge him with, he changed his mind. A relative smuggled in a saw, and Hardin escaped after cutting through the bars of a prison window.[29]

On May 15, 1873, Jim Cox and Jake Christman were killed by the Taylor faction at Tomlinson Creek. Hardin, having by then recovered from the injuries from Sublett's attack, admitted that there were reports that he had led the fights in which these men were killed, but would neither confirm nor deny his involvement: "...but as I have never pleaded to that case, I will at this time have little to say."[8]

In Cuero, Texas in May 1873, Hardin killed Dewitt County Deputy Sheriff, J.B. Morgan, who served under County Sheriff, Jack Helms (a former captain in the Texas State Police). Both were Sutton family allies.[8][30] Hardin's main notoriety in the Sutton-Taylor feud was his part in the assassination (on the afternoon of May 17, 1873, in Albuquerque, Texas) of Sheriff Helms.[31]

The feud culminated with Jim and Bill Taylor gunning down Billy Sutton and Gabriel Slaughter as they waited on a steamboat platform, in Indianola, Texas on March 11, 1874, as the two were planning to leave the area for good. Hardin admitted in his biography that he and his brother Joseph had been involved along with both Taylors in Sutton's killing[8]

Hardin (who had re-settled his family –living under the assumed name of "Swain"– in Florida) later admitted that he had knocked a black man down and shot another during a disturbance outside the Alachua County jail on May 1, 1874, while he was in Gainesville, Florida. A black prisoner named "Eli" - who was held on a charge of attempted assault of a white woman - was killed when the jail was burned down by a mob. Hardin claimed to have been part of the mob[32]

Hardin returned to Texas, meeting up (on May 26, 1874 in a Comanche saloon) with his "gang" to celebrate his upcoming 21st birthday. Hardin spotted Brown County Deputy Sheriff, Charles Webb, entering the premises. Hardin asked Webb if he had come to arrest him. When Webb replied he had not, Hardin invited him into the hotel for a drink. As he followed Hardin inside, Hardin claimed Webb drew his gun, and one of Hardin's men yelled a warning.[8] However, it was reported at the time that Webb was shot as he was pulling out an arrest warrant for one of Hardin's group.[33] Either way, in the ensuing gunfight, Webb was shot dead. Two of Hardin's accomplices in the shooting were a cousin, Bud Dixson, and Jim Taylor.[8]

The death of the popular Webb resulted in the quick formation of a lynch mob. Hardin's parents and wife were taken into protective custody; and his brother Joe and two cousins, brothers Bud and Tom Dixson, were arrested on outstanding warrants. A group of local men broke into the jail in July 1874 and hanged Joe, Bud and Tom.[8] It is claimed that the hanging ropes were deliberately cut too long (in order to cause death through slow strangulation), as grass was found between their toes. After this, Hardin and Jim Taylor parted ways for good. After his brother's lynching Hardin claimed that he twice drove away men who came after him after killing a man in both encounters[8]

Shortly afterward, Hardin and a new companion, Mac Young, were suspected of horse thievery, and were pursued by a posse near Bellville, in Austin County, Texas. Hardin pulled his pistols on Austin County Sheriff, Gustave Langhammer, but did not shoot him, while separately Young was arrested and fined $100 for carrying a pistol.[8]
Capture
John Barclay Armstrong

On January 20, 1875 the Texas Legislature authorized Governor Richard B. Hubbard to offer a $4,000 reward for the apprehension of John Wesley Hardin.[34]

The Texas Rangers finally caught up with Hardin when an undercover ranger, Jack Duncan, intercepted a letter that was sent to Hardin's father-in-law by his brother-in-law, the outlaw Joshua Robert "Brown" Bowen. The letter mentioned Hardin's whereabouts as being on the Alabama/Florida border under the assumed name of "James W. Swain". On August 24, 1877,[4] Hardin was arrested on a train in Pensacola, Florida, by the rangers and local authorities. The lawmen boarded the train to arrest Hardin. When Hardin realized what was going on, he attempted to draw a gun, but got it caught in his suspenders. Hardin was knocked out, and two others arrested. During the event, Texas Ranger John B. Armstrong shot and killed one of Hardin's companions, named Mann.[35]

Just prior to his capture, two black men (and former slaves of his father), "Jake" Menzel and Robert Borup, had tried to capture Hardin in Gainsville, Florida. Hardin killed one and blinded the other.[36]
Trial and imprisonment

Hardin was tried for the killing of Deputy Charles Webb, and was sentenced to Huntsville Prison for 25 years. Hardin early on made several attempts to escape, but he eventually adapted to prison life. Using prison as an opportunity to better himself, he read theological books; became superintendent of the prison Sunday school; and studied law. Hardin was plagued by recurring poor health in prison, especially when the wound he had received from Sublett became re-infected in 1883, causing Hardin to be bedridden for two years. During Hardin's stay in prison, his wife, Jane, died on November 6, 1892.[37]
After prison life

Hardin was released from prison on February 17, 1894, after serving seventeen years of his twenty-five year sentence.[36] He returned to Gonzales, Texas. Later that year, on March 16, Hardin was pardoned; and, on July 21, he passed the Texas state's bar examination, obtaining his license to practice law.[9] According to a newspaper article in 1900, shortly after being released from prison, Hardin committed negligent homicide when he made a $5 bet that he could "at the first shot" knock a Mexican man off the soap box he was "sunning" himself, winning the bet and leaving the man dead from the fall and not the gunshot.[36]

On January 9, 1895, Hardin married a 15-year-old girl named Callie Lewis.The marriage ended quickly, although it was never legally dissolved.[9] Afterward, Hardin moved to El Paso.
Death
Hardin's post mortem photo

El Paso lawman, John Selman Jr., arrested Hardin's friend and part-time prostitute, the "widow" M'Rose (or Mroz), for "brandishing a gun in public." Hardin confronted Selman, and the two men argued. Selman's 56-year-old father, Constable John Selman, Sr., (himself a well-known gunman) approached Hardin on the afternoon of August 19, 1895, and the two men exchanged heated words.[36] That night, Hardin went to the Acme Saloon, where he began playing dice. Shortly before midnight, Selman Sr. walked into the saloon. In the ensuing confrontation, he shot Hardin in the head, killing him instantly and before he could return fire. As Hardin lay on the floor, Selman fired three more shots into him.[38]Selman Sr. was arrested for murder and stood trial. He claimed he had fired in self defense, and a hung jury resulted in his being released on bond, pending retrial. However, before the retrial could be organized, Selman was killed in a shootout with US Marshal George Scarborough (on April 6, 1896) following a dispute during a card game.[39]
Burial
Gravestone on the grave of John Wesley Hardin

Hardin is buried in Concordia Cemetery, located in El Paso, Texas.[40]
Cemetery controversy

On August 27, 1995, there was a graveside confrontation between two groups. One group, representing the great-grandchildren of Hardin, sought to relocate the body to Nixon, TX, to be interred next to the grave of Hardin's first wife. A group of El Pasoans sought to prevent the move. At the cemetery, the group representing the descendants of John Wesley Hardin presented a disinterment permit for the body of Hardin, while the El Pasoans presented a court order prohibiting the removal of the body. Both sides accused the other parties of seeking the tourist revenue generated by the location of the body. A subsequent lawsuit ruled in favor of keeping the body in El Paso

John Wesley Hardin ?
Some gunmen (Wyatt Earp, most notably) built awesome reputations despite having killed very few people. (Earp got three or four.) However, this fun-loving Texan stacked up the bodies on an assembly-line basis. Born in 1853, Hardin stabbed a schoolmate at the age of 14, and then got serious a year later when he shot his first man. For the next ten years his life was one protracted gunfight, interrupted by arrests and escapes from jail. In 1878, he was tried and sentenced to 25 years for murder in Texas, but was pardoned in 1894.

Hardin then went bad. He studied law and opened a more or less successful practice. In 1895, he was murdered in El Paso by Constable John Selman, who shot him in the back of the head while Hardin was rolling dice. Hardin claim to have killed 44 men; the real number is probably more like 30. It will do.

 

 


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5/30 d
Joan of Arc, nicknamed "The Maid of Orléans" (French: Jeanne d'Arc,[1] IPA: [?an da?k]; ca. 1412[2] – 30 May 1431), is a national heroine of France and a Roman Catholic saint. A peasant girl born in eastern France who claimed divine guidance, she led the French army to several important victories during the Hundred Years' War, which paved the way for the coronation of Charles VII. She was captured by the Burgundians, transferred to the English in exchange for money, put on trial by the pro-English Bishop of Beauvais for charges of "insubordination and heterodoxy,"[3] and burned at the stake as a heretic when she was 19 years old.[4]

Saint Joan of Arc was a 15th century national heroine of France. She was tried and executed for heresy when she was only 19 years old. The judgment was declared invalid by the Pope and she was declared innocent and a martyr 24 years later. She was beatified in 1909 and canonized as a saint in 1920. Joan asserted that she had visions from God which told her to recover her homeland from English domination late in the Hundred Years’ War. The uncrowned King Charles VII sent her to the siege at Orléans as part of a relief mission. She gained prominence when she overcame the dismissive attitude of veteran commanders and lifted the siege in only nine days. Several more swift victories led to Charles VII’s coronation at Reims and settled the disputed succession to the throne. She remained astute to the end of her life and rehabilitation trial testimony frequently marvels at her astuteness. Her subtle replies under interrogation even forced the court to stop holding public sessions.


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6/6
Diego Velázquez 06/06

Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez (Spanish pronunciation: ['dje?o ro'ðri?eð ðe 'silßa i ße'la?ke?]; June 6, 1599 – August 6, 1660) was a Spanish painter who was the leading artist in the court of King Philip IV. He was an individualistic artist of the contemporary Baroque period, important as a portrait artist. In addition to numerous renditions of scenes of historical and cultural significance, he painted scores of portraits of the Spanish royal family, other notable European figures, and commoners, culminating in the production of his masterpiece Las Meninas (1656).

From the first quarter of the nineteenth century, Velázquez's artwork was a model for the realist and impressionist painters, in particular Édouard Manet. Since that time, more modern artists, including Spain's Pablo Picasso and Salvador Dalí, as well as the Anglo-Irish painter Francis Bacon, have paid tribute to Velázquez by recreating several of his most famous works.

Until the nineteenth century, little was known outside of Spain of Velázquez's work. His paintings mostly escaped being stolen by the French marshals during the Peninsular War. In 1828 Sir David Wilkie wrote from Madrid that he felt himself in the presence of a new power in art as he looked at the works of Velázquez, and at the same time found a wonderful affinity between this artist and the British school of portrait painters, especially Henry Raeburn. He was struck by the modern impression pervading Velázquez's work in both landscape and portraiture. Presently, his technique and individuality have earned Velázquez a prominent position in the annals of European art, and he is often considered a father of the Spanish school of art. Although acquainted with all the Italian schools and a friend of the foremost painters of his day, he was strong enough to withstand external influences and work out for himself the development of his own nature and his own principles of art.

Velázquez is often cited as a key influence on the art of Édouard Manet, important when considering that Manet is often cited as the bridge between realism and impressionism. Calling Velázquez the "painter of painters", Manet admired Velázquez's use of vivid brushwork in the midst of the baroque academic style of his contemporaries and built upon Velázquez's motifs in his own art.

The importance of Velázquez's art even today is evident in considering the respect with which twentieth century painters regard his work. Pablo Picasso presented the most durable homages to Velázquez in 1957 when he recreated Las Meninas in 58 variations, in his characteristically cubist form. Although Picasso was concerned that his reinterpretations of Velázquez's painting would be seen merely as copies rather than unique representations, the enormous works—including the largest he had produced since Guernica in 1937—earned a position of relevance in the Spanish canon of art. Picasso retained the general form and positioning of the original in the framework of his avant-garde cubist style.

 Salvador Dalí, as with Picasso in anticipation of the tercentennial of Velázquez's death, created in 1958 a work entitled Velázquez Painting the Infanta Margarita With the Lights and Shadows of His Own Glory. The color scheme shows Dalí's serious tribute to Velázquez; the work also functioned, as in Picasso's case, as a vehicle for the presentation of newer theories in art and thought—nuclear mysticism, in Dalí's case.

The Anglo-Irish painter Francis Bacon found Velázquez's portrait of Pope Innocent X to be one of the greatest portraits ever made. He created several expressionist variations of this piece in the 1950s; however, Bacon's paintings presented a more gruesome image of the pope, who had now been dead for centuries. One such famous variation, entitled Figure with Meat (1954), shows the pope between two halves of a bisected cow

(1599 – 1660) Spanish painter and portrait artist, many of his famous paintings depicting scenes of historical and cultural significance, royalty and notable European figures of the time


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Frank Lloyd Wright 06/08

Frank Lloyd Wright (born Frank Lincoln Wright, June 8, 1867 – April 9, 1959) was an American architect, interior designer, writer and educator, who designed more than 1,000 projects, which resulted in more than 500 completed works.[1] Wright promoted organic architecture (exemplified by Fallingwater), was a leader of the Prairie School movement of architecture (exemplified by the Robie House, the Westcott House, and the Darwin D. Martin House), and developed the concept of the Usonian home (exemplified by the Rosenbaum House). His work includes original and innovative examples of many different building types, including offices, churches, schools, skyscrapers, hotels, and museums. Wright also often designed many of the interior elements of his buildings, such as the furniture and stained glass.

Wright authored 20 books and many articles, and was a popular lecturer in the United States and in Europe. His colorful personal life often made headlines, most notably for the 1914 fire and murders at his Taliesin studio.


Already well-known during his lifetime, Wright was recognized in 1991 by the American Institute of Architects as "the greatest American architect of all time".[1]
(1867 – 1959) American architect and interior designer. The American Institute of Architecture has named him “the greatest American architect of all time”.


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6/12
Thomas James Smith, known as Tom "Bear River" Smith (12 June 1830 - 2 November 1870), was a town marshal of Old West cattle town Abilene, Kansas, who was killed and decapitated in the line of duty.

Early life

Little is known of Smiths youth, although he was well known as a good man in a fight, had a reputation as a tough man, and had been a professional middleweight boxer. Originally from New York, he had served as a lawman in Kit Carson, Colorado, a few small towns in Wyoming, and as a police officer in New York City prior to his move to Kansas. While working as a police officer in New York City, Smith was involved in the accidental killing of a 14-year-old boy in 1868, after which he resigned and began working for Union Pacific Railroad in Nebraska.

Smith received the nickname "Bear River" due to a stand he made during a skirmish with vigilantes while serving as a lawman in Wyoming. A vigilante group had lynched a railroad employee who was suspected of murder. Soon afterward, railroad employees retaliated against the vigilantes, resulting in most of the small town of Bear River City, Wyoming being burned to the ground, and a shootout between town citizens and mob members erupted. Smith stood both sides off, until troops from Fort Bridger arrived and imposed martial law. Bear River City soon became deserted, another railroad ghost town.

Smith has been described as having been a handsome man, with a thick mustache, and a trait of an almost fearless nature. There are a number of examples indicating that Smith would refuse to back down, despite whatever odds might be against him.
Marshal of Abilene

Prior to Smith's appointment as Abilene Marshal, two St. Louis, Missouri, policemen had been hired. The town of Abilene was, at the time, a wild cattle town, and the crime rate had increased almost overnight, beginning in 1867, to the point where murder and shootings were commonplace. The town had numerous saloons and brothels, and up until that point a police force was all but nonexistent. The two St. Louis lawmen resigned before their first day of service was complete. The mayor of Abilene, Theodore Henry, sent for Smith in late 1869, who came highly recommended due to a reputation he had built while working alongside lawman Pat Desmond in Kit Carson, Colorado.

Smith was also commissioned as a Deputy US Marshal, and was insistent that he could police Abilene using his hands and wit rather than using guns. For a time, he was somewhat successful, although he was forced to use guns in the course of his duty on a few occasions. On one occasion, shortly after taking office, Smith singlehandedly overpowered two men known for their bad temperament, "Big Hank" Hawkins and his partner, known only as "Wyoming Frank". Smith banished them both from Abilene, after beating them both at the same time using only his bare hands. However, being the marshal of a town like Abilene at that time proved to be a dangerous job to have. He implemented a law of "no guns in town limits", which was extremely unpopular with many of the cowboys that drifted through town, and over the next two months Smith survived two assassination attempts. Several other incidents and arrests led him to develop a solid reputation, and he became widely respected and admired by the Abilene citizens.

On 2 November 1870, Smith and a temporary deputy, believed to be named James McDonald, attempted to serve a warrant on two local farmers, Andrew McConnell and Moses Miles. The two men were wanted in connection with the murder of another Abilene man, John Shea. McDonald and Smith located the suspects in a small settlement ten miles outside of Abilene. A gunfight erupted, in which Smith was badly wounded in the chest. Smith returned fire and wounded McConnell. His deputy fled the scene, and as Smith lay wounded, Moses Miles hit him with the butt of a rifle, then took an axe and decapitated him.

McConnell and Miles were captured and arrested in March 1871, and they were both sentenced to life in prison. Smith was buried in Abilene, and a huge tombstone was erected with a plaque to honor his service and ultimate sacrifice. Smith was replaced as marshal by legendary lawman and gunfighter "Wild Bill" Hickock. Dwight Eisenhower reportedly considered Smith a personal hero, and is reported to have visited Smith's gravesite on numerous occasions.

Bear River Tom Smith
Remember all the punchouts in the Saturday afternoon Westerns? Mostly that stuff never happened, but here was one lawman who did use his fists in favor of his guns. Tom Smith was a New Yorker, a professional middleweight prizefighter, and a policeman who was hired by the city of Abilene, Kansas, in 1869. Smith enforced a highly unpopular no-guns policy in the cowtown, and for the most part, made the law stick by beating the hell out of people with his bare hands. He was thought to be completely fearless, and never backed down from a fight, no matter what the odds.

Smith met his end while carrying a gun to serve a warrant on two local farmers. He was shot, then clubbed with a rifle butt, and then decapitated with an axe. Smith was succeeded by James Butler Hickok, who believed in shooting people.

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6/15
Emmeline Pankhurst (born Emmeline Goulden) (15 July 1858 – 14 June 1928) was a British political activist and leader of the British suffragette movement which helped women win the right to vote. In 1999 Time named Pankhurst as one of the 100 Most Important People of the 20th Century, stating: "she shaped an idea of women for our time; she shook society into a new pattern from which there could be no going back."[1] She was widely criticized for her militant tactics, and historians disagree about their effectiveness, but her work is recognized as a crucial element in achieving women's suffrage in Britain.

In 1889 Emmeline Pankhurst founded the Women’s Franchise League, followed by the Women’s Social and Political Union in 1905. She was joined by her daughters Christabel and Sylvia among others in the fight for Women’s Suffrage. Pankhurst’s tactics for drawing attention to the movement led to her being imprisoned several times, and even experienced force-feeding after going on hunger strike several times. She was also instrumental in placing women in men’s jobs during World War 1. She received funding of several thousand pounds from the government to aid her in encouraging employers that women were in fact fit to undertake these jobs. Her efforts finally came to fruition in March 1918, when women over the age of 30 were given the right to vote. Later that same year, women over the age of 21 were given the right to become Members of Parliament, despite the fact they were still unable to vote. It wasn’t until 1928 that women were finally given the same voting rights as men in the United Kingdom.


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M. C. Escher 06/17
Maurits Cornelis Escher (17 June 1898 – 27 March 1972), usually referred to as M.C. Escher (English pronunciation: /'???r/, Dutch: ['m?ur?ts k?r'ne?l?s '???r]  (listen)),[1] was a Dutch graphic artist. He is known for his often mathematically inspired woodcuts, lithographs, and mezzotints. These feature impossible constructions, explorations of infinity, architecture, and tessellations. The special way of thinking and the rich graphic work of M.C. Escher has had a continuous influence in science and art, as well as references in pop culture. Ownership of the Escher intellectual property and of his unique art works have been separated from each other.
(1898 – 1972) Dutch graphic artist, famous for his mathematically inspired images of impossible constructions and geometric figures

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6/18
Paul Neal "Red" Adair : Born June 18, 1915 in Houston, Texas.
Died August 8, 2004 in Houston, Texas, natural causes.

Paul Neal "Red" Adair was born to Charles and Mary Adair. Charles was a blacksmith in the Heights of Houston. Red had four brothers and three sisters. Red Adair quit high school and held various jobs to support the family. In 1936 he went to work for the Southern Pacific Railroad.
Red's first oil-related job came in 1938 with the Otis Pressure Control Company. Red worked numerous odd jobs in the oil industry before joining the Army during World War II. Red served with the 139th Bomb Disposal Squadron and attained the rank of Staff Sergeant.
After the war, Red began to work for Myron Kinley, the original pioneer of oil well fire and blowout control. Red worked for the M. M. Kinley Company for fourteen years, until he resigned in 1956. Red then formed the Red Adair Company.
The Red Adair Company became world-famous for pioneering techniques to control oil well fires and blowouts. The Red Adair Company was the first to extinguish an underwater wild well and the first to cap a U.S. well while it was on fire. Red's legend started when he extinguished the "Devil's Cigarette Lighter" in 1962 in the Sahara Desert. The blaze had been burning for six months, fueled by over 550 million cubic feet of gas a day.
Red also fought the 1970 offshore blaze at Bay Marchland, Louisiana, and the Piper Alpha disaster in 1988. Perhaps his most famous battle occurred when Red's team extinguished 117 oil well fires in Kuwait, left by the retreating Iraqi Army.
Red Adair was technical advisor for the John Wayne movie Hellfighters. Red sold the Red Adair Company in 1993.

"Retire? I don't know what that word means. As long as a man is able to work and he's productive out there and he feels good — keep at it. I've got too many of my friends that retired and went home and got on a rocking chair, and about a year and a half later, I'm always going to the cemetery." (to reporters while working at the Kuwaiti oil well fires at the end of the Gulf War in 1991)

"I've done made a deal with the devil. He said he's going to give me an air-conditioned place when I go down there, if I go there, so I won't put all the fires out." (in 1991, joking about afterlife alternatives)


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Marc Chagall 07/07

Marc Chagall (English pronunciation: /??'g??l/, sh?-GAHL;[1] Yiddish: ????? ???????; Russian: ???? ????´????? ????´?; 7 July 1887 – 28 March 1985), was a Belarusian (that time Russian Empire) French artist, associated with several key art movements and was one of the most successful artists of the 20th century. He created unique works in virtually every artistic medium, including painting, book illustrations, stained glass, stage sets, ceramic, tapestries and fine art prints. Chagall's haunting, exuberant, and poetic images have wide appeal, with art critic Robert Hughes referring to him as "the quintessential Jewish artist of the twentieth century."
As a pioneer of modernism and one of the greatest figurative artists of the 20th century, Chagall achieved fame and fortune, and over the course of a long career created some of the best-known paintings of our time. According to art historian Michael J. Lewis, Chagall was considered to be "the last survivor of the first generation of European modernists." For decades he "had also been respected as the world's preeminent Jewish artist." Using the medium of stained glass, he produced windows for the cathedrals of Reims and Metz, windows for the United Nations, and the Jerusalem Windows in Israel. He also did large-scale paintings, including the ceiling for the Paris Opéra.
His most vital work was made on the eve of World War I, when he traveled between St. Petersburg, Paris, and Berlin. During this period he created his own mixture and style of modern art based on his visions of Eastern European Jewish folk culture. He spent his wartime years in Russia, becoming one of the country's most distinguished artists and a member of the modernist avante-garde, founding the Vitebsk Arts College before leaving again for Paris in 1922.
He was known to have two basic reputations, writes Lewis: as a pioneer of modernism, and as a major Jewish artist. He experienced modernism's golden age in Paris, where "he synthesized the art forms of Cubism, Symbolism, and Fauvism, and the influence of Fauvism gave rise to Surrealism." Yet throughout these phases of his style "he remained most emphatically a Jewish artist, whose work was one long dreamy reverie of life in his native village of Vitebsk."[2] "When Matisse dies", Pablo Picasso remarked in the 1950s, "Chagall will be the only painter left who understands what colour really is."
Author Serena Davies writes that "By the time he died in France in 1985—the last surviving master of European modernism, outliving Joan Miró by two years—he had experienced at first hand the high hopes and crushing disappointments of the Russian revolution, and had witnessed the end of the Pale, the near annihilation of European Jewry, and the obliteration of Vitebsk, his home town, where only 118 of a population of 240,000 survived the Second World War." [30]
He came from nowhere to achieve worldwide acclaim. Yet his fractured relationship with his Jewish identity was "unresolved and tragic", Davies states. He would have died with no Jewish rites, had not a Jewish stranger stepped forward and said the kaddish, the Jewish prayer for the dead, over his coffin."
Chagall biographer Jackie Wullschlager calls Chagall a "pioneer of modern art and one of its greatest figurative painters... [who] invented a visual language that recorded the thrill and terror of the twentieth century."[3] She adds:
On his canvases we read the triumph of modernism, the breakthrough in art to an expression of inner life that ... is one of the last century's signal legacies. At the same time Chagall was personally swept up in the horrors of European history between 1914 and 1945: world wars, revolution, ethinic persecution, the murder and exile of millions. In an age when many major artists fled reality for abstraction, he distilled his experiences of suffering and tragedy into images at once immediate, simple, and symbolic to which everyone could respond.[3]:4
Art historians Ingo Walther and Rainer Metzger refer to Chagall as a "poet, dreamer, and exotic apparition." They add that throughout his long life the "role of outsider and artistic eccentric" came naturally to him, as he seemed to be a kind of intermediary between worlds: "as a Jew with a lordly disdain for the ancient ban on image-making; as a Russian who went beyond the realm of familiar self-sufficiency; or the son of poor parents, growing up in a large and needy family." Yet he went on to establish himself in the sophisticated world of "elegant artistic salons."[31]:7
Through his imagination and strong memories Chagall was able to use typical motifs and subjects in most of his work: village scenes, peasant life, and intimate views of the small world of the Jewish village (shtetl). His tranquil figures and simple gestures helped produce a "monumental sense of dignity" by translating everyday Jewish rituals into a "timeless realm of iconic peacefulness."[31]:8 Leymarie writes that Chagall "transcended the limits of his century. He has unveiled possibilities unsuspected by an art that had lost touch with the Bible, and in doing so he has achieved a wholly new synthesis of Jewish culture long ignored by painting." He adds that although Chagall's art cannot be confined to religion, his "most moving and original contributions, what he called 'his message,' are those drawn from religious or, more precisely, Biblical sources."[14]:x
Walther and Metzger try to summarize Chagall's contribution to art:

His life and art together added up to this image of a lonesome visionary, a citizen of the world with much of the child still in him, a stranger lost in wonder — an image which the artist did everything to cultivate. Profoundly religious and with a deep love of the homeland, his work is arguably the most urgent appeal for tolerance and respect of all that is different that modern times could make
(1887 – 1985) Russian Jewish modernist artist. He was a pioneer of modernism and one of the most successful artists of the twentieth

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Bill Millin  7/14

William 'Bill' Millin (14 July 1922 – 17 August 2010[1]), commonly known as Piper Bill, was personal piper to Simon Fraser, 15th Lord Lovat, commander of 1 Special Service Brigade at D-Day.

a Scottish bagpiper who played highland tunes as his fellow commandos landed on a Normandy beach on D-Day and lived to see his bravado immortalized in the 1962 film “The Longest Day,” died on Wednesday in a hospital in the western England county of Devon. He was 88.

The cause was complications from a stroke, his family said.

Mr. Millin was a 21-year-old private in Britain’s First Special Service Brigade when his unit landed on the strip of coast the Allies code-named Sword Beach, near the French city of Caen at the eastern end of the invasion front chosen by the Allies for the landings on June 6, 1944.

By one estimate, about 4,400 Allied troops died in the first 24 hours of the landings, about two-thirds of them Americans.

The young piper was approached shortly before the landings by the brigade’s commanding officer, Brig. Simon Fraser, who as the 15th Lord Lovat was the hereditary chief of the Clan Fraser and one of Scotland’s most celebrated aristocrats. Against orders from World War I that forbade playing bagpipes on the battlefield because of the high risk of attracting enemy fire, Lord Lovat, then 32, asked Private Millin to play on the beachhead to raise morale.

When Private Millin demurred, citing the regulations, he recalled later, Lord Lovat replied: “Ah, but that’s the English War Office. You and I are both Scottish, and that doesn’t apply.”

After wading ashore in waist-high water that he said caused his kilt to float, Private Millin reached the beach, then marched up and down, unarmed, playing the tunes Lord Lovat had requested, including “Highland Laddie” and “Road to the Isles.”

With German troops raking the beach with artillery and machine-gun fire, the young piper played on as his fellow soldiers advanced through smoke and flame on the German positions, or fell on the beach. The scene provided an emotional high point in “The Longest Day.”

In later years Mr. Millin told the BBC the did not regard what he had done as heroic. When Lord Lovat insisted that he play, he said, “I just said ‘O.K.,’ and got on with it.” He added: “I didn’t notice I was being shot at. When you’re young, you do things you wouldn’t dream of doing when you’re older.”

He said he found out later, after meeting Germans who had manned guns above the beach, that they didn’t shoot him “because they thought I was crazy.”

Other British commandos cheered and waved, Mr. Millin recalled, though he said he felt bad as he marched among ranks of wounded soldiers needing medical help. But those who survived the landings offered no reproach.

“I shall never forget hearing the skirl of Bill Millin’s pipes,” one of the commandos, Tom Duncan, said years later. “As well as the pride we felt, it reminded us of home, and why we were fighting there for our lives and those of our loved ones.”

From the beach, Private Millin moved inland with the commandos to relieve British paratroopers who had seized a bridge near the village of Ouistreham that was vital to German attempts to move reinforcements toward the beaches. As the commandos crossed the bridge under German fire, Lord Lovat again asked Private Millin to play his pipes.

In 2008, French bagpipers started a fund to erect a statue of Mr. Millin near the landing site, but the fund remains far short of its $125,000 goal.

Bill Millin was born in Glasgow on July 14, 1922, the son of a policeman, and lived with his family in Canada as a child before returning to Scotland.

After the war, he worked on Lord Lovat’s estate near Inverness, but found the life too quiet and took a job as a piper with a traveling theater company. In the late 1950s, he trained in Glasgow as a psychiatric nurse and eventually settled in Devon, retiring in 1988. He visited the United States several times, lecturing on his D-Day experiences.

 

 


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7/16
Barry James Sanders (born July 16, 1968) is a former American football running back who spent all of his professional career with the Detroit Lions in the NFL. Sanders is best known for being one of the most prolific and elusive running backs of all time, and left the game just short of the all-time rushing record. Sanders is a member of the college and professional football halls of fame; in 2010, the NFL Network series The Top 100: NFL's Greatest Players named him in the top 20 players of all time (and the associated fan poll ranked him fourth best of all time).[1]

A Wichita, Kansas native, Sanders attended Wichita North High School.[2] Sanders did not play running back until the fourth game of his senior year in 1985. He rushed for 1,322 yards in the final seven games of the season, which earned him all-state honors. He was, however, overlooked by most college recruiters because of his 5 ft 8 in (1.73 m) size. He chose Oklahoma State after finally getting accepted by the college.

[edit] College careerSanders played for the Oklahoma State Cowboys from 1986 to 1988, and wore the number 21. During his first two years, he backed up All-American Thurman Thomas. In 1987 he led the nation in kickoff return yards. Thomas moved on to the NFL, and Sanders became the starter for his junior year.

In 1988, in what has been called the greatest season in college football history,[3] Sanders led the nation by averaging 7.6 yards per carry and over 200 yards per game, including rushing for over 300 yards in four games. He set college football season records with 2,628 yards rushing, 3,248 total yards, 234 points, 39 touchdowns, of which 37 were rushing (also a record), 5 consecutive 200 yard games, scored at least 2 touchdowns in 11 consecutive games, and 9 times he scored at least 3 touchdowns. Sanders also ran for 222 yards and scored 5 touchdowns in his three quarters of action in the Holiday Bowl - a game that was not included with his season statistics.[4] Sanders won the Heisman Trophy as the season's most outstanding player.[5] He then chose to leave Oklahoma State before his senior season to enter the NFL draft.

[edit] Professional careerThe Detroit Lions selected Sanders with their 1st-round (3rd overall) pick in the 1989 draft,[2] thanks to the endorsement of then-coach Wayne Fontes. The Lions' management considered drafting another Sanders, cornerback Deion Sanders, but Fontes convinced 

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06/24/05:  Aron Ralston

06/17/05:  Jackie Chan

06/10/05:  John Matrix

05/27/05:  Ashley J. "Ash" Williams

05/20/05:  Kady Brownell

05/13/05:  Manfred von Richthofen  (rewritten for Badass: The book)

05/06/05:  Blackbeard  (rewritten for Badass: The book)

04/29/05:  The Blues Brothers

04/22/05:  Bruce Lee  (rewritten for Badass: The book)

04/15/05:  Hannibal Barca

04/08/05:  Alcibiades

04/01/05:  Beef Jerky

03/24/05:  Stanislav Petrov

03/18/05:  Genghis Khan  (rewritten for Badass: The book)

03/11/05:  The Black Death

02/24/05:  Lu Bu

02/11/05:  Doc Holliday

02/04/05:  Ivan Drago

01/24/05:  Michelle Yeoh

01/14/05:  Sarah Connor

01/07/05:  Al Capone

12/20/04:  Optimus Prime

12/10/04:  King Kong

12/03/04:  Tamerlane

11/26/04:  Samuel Toloza

11/19/04:  "Scarface" Tony Montana

11/11/04:  Mike Tyson

11/05/04:  The Aggro Crag

10/29/04:  The Hanta Virus

10/21/04:  Henry "Red" Erwin

10/15/04:  Gaius Julius Caesar  (rewritten for Badass: The book)

10/08/04:  Khalid bin Walid  (rewritten for Badass: The book)

10/01/04:  Black Belt Jones

09/24/04:  Jeffrey "The Dude" Lebowski

08/27/04:  The Damnatio Memoria

08/13/04:  Sho'Nuff

08/06/04:  Chandragupta Maurya  (rewritten for Badass: The book)

07/30/04:  Miyamoto Musashi  (rewritten for Badass: The book)

07/27/04:  Clint Eastwood

07/16/04:  This Huge-Ass Beetle

07/09/04:  Pedro Martinez

07/02/04:  Jet Li

06/25/04:  The Watermelon Monster

05/28/04:  Lemmy Kilminster

05/21/04:  Brian R. Chontosh

05/14/04:  The BFG 9000

05/07/04:  Mr. T.

04/30/04:  Sun Tzu

04/23/04:  Jesse Ventura

04/09/04:  Darth Vader

 

 

 


Main

The Complete List

About the Author

Miscellaneous Articles

RSS

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Nicknamed the "Iceman," Wim Hof is a Dutch adventurer and daredevil who ran an Arctic marathon at minus 20 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 29 degrees Celsius) – while shirtless. He also holds the world record for being immersed in ice for an hour and 44 minutes.

In 2007, he was able to survive for 72 minutes outdoors at the North Pole while wearing nothing but shorts. Hof says that he is able to control his body temperature by using the Tantric practice of Tummo, which is practiced by Yogi monks in Tibet, and involves the practice of focusing on the body’s energies turning them into heat.
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A standard example of superhuman strength, the "lifting a car to free someone" story seems rooted in myth. In fact, comic book artist Jack Kirby once said in an interview that he got the idea for the Incredible Hulk after seeing a mother lift a car off her child, although the legitimacy of his story has been disputed. But there have been reported cases of this phenomenon.

In 2008, Chris Hickman, a Florida firefighter, came to the scene of a car crash in which an older model Chevrolet Blazer had flipped and landed on its side, pinning the driver's arm between the vehicle and the pavement. Hickman then lifted the SUV about 12 inches (30 cm) off the ground, giving the other firefighters the opportunity to rescue trapped driver, officials said in news reports of the incident.
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Another Guinness World Records holder, Sakinat Khanapiyeva, is the strongest grandma in the world. The 76-year-old from Dagestan, Russia, can lift a 52-pound (24-kg) dumb-bell, break horseshoes and twist 2-inch (5-cm) steel rods. She first discovered her strength when she was 10 years old, after she was able to move a 661-pound (299-kg) container of grain, which is equivalent to the weight of four grown men, according to the Guinness Book of World Records.
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Between the ages of 30 and 65, Roy Cleveland Sullivan was struck by lightning seven times - and survived them all. During that time, Sullivan averaged being struck by lightning once every five years, while the average person's odds of being struck by lightning in a given year are one in 750,000. However, Sullivan increased his chances by working as a park ranger at Shenandoah National Park in Virginia, which averages 35 to 45 thunderstorm days per year, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

Nicknamed the "Human Lightning Conductor" and the "Human Lightning Rod," Sullivan has been struck by lightning more than any other human being, according to Guinness World Records. He died in 1983 at the age of 71 – not as a result of a final lightning strike, but from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, reportedly over an unrequited love
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Tecumseh_Sherman
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Hackworth
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alvin_C._York
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Paul_Jones
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Bowie
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodore_Roosevelt
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http://www.whitehouse.gov/about/presidents/theodoreroosevelt
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dwight_D._Eisenhower
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http://www.whitehouse.gov/about/presidents/dwightdeisenhower
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Jackson
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Lawrence's unsuccessful attempts had drawn the attention of the crowd and he was quickly wrestled into submission by those present (including Congressman
Davy Crockett
 Davy_Crockett ). It is reported that Jackson assisted in subduing his attempted assassin, striking him several times with his cane."
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“ - During the depths of winter, Clark led 172 men, half of whom were French volunteers, over 240 miles of flooded country. It turned out to be a 17 day trip, where under normal conditions it would have taken five or six. The spirits of the men were kept high, however, with Clark’s cheerfulness, laughing, singing, and joking. A common reference was to a little drummer boy who often floated through the flooded waters on his drum.
The company surprised Vincennes on February 23. Under Clark’s orders, all the flags were staggered at different heights and distances to give off the appearance of about 600 men, rather than only 200. They bombarded the fort with amazing accuracy, preventing the British from even opening their gunports. The morning of February 25 brought Hamilton’s surrender….

He later had an accident, which led to the amputation of his right leg. Most sources say that while drunk, he fell into a fireplace and was badly burned; however, this is not confirmed. At his request, two fifers and two drummers played outside for two hours during the operation, which was performed without anesthetic. - “
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George Rogers ClarkFrom Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaJump to: navigation, search George Rogers Clark

 
Born November 19, 1752 (1752-11-19)
Albemarle County, Virginia
Died February 13, 1818(1818-02-13) (aged 65)
Louisville, Kentucky
Buried at Cave Hill Cemetery
Allegiance United States of America
Service/branch Virginia Militia
Years of service 1776–1790
Rank Brigadier general
Commands held Western Frontier
Battles/wars American Revolutionary War

Illinois campaign
Siege of Fort Sackville
Battle of Piqua
Northwest Indian War
Signature 

George Rogers Clark (November 19, 1752 – February 13, 1818) was a soldier from Virginia and the highest ranking American military officer on the northwestern frontier during the American Revolutionary War. He served as leader of the Kentucky (then part of Virginia) militia throughout much of the war. Clark is best known for his celebrated captures of Kaskaskia (1778) and Vincennes (1779), which greatly weakened British influence in the Northwest Territory. Because the British ceded the entire Northwest Territory to the United States in the 1783 Treaty of Paris, Clark has often been hailed as the "Conqueror of the Old Northwest."

Clark's military achievements all came before his 30th birthday. Afterwards he led militia in the opening engagements of the Northwest Indian War, but was accused of being drunk on duty. Despite his demand for a formal investigation into the accusations, he was disgraced and forced to resign. He left Kentucky to live on the Indiana frontier. Never fully reimbursed by Virginia for his wartime expenditures, Clark spent the final decades of his life evading creditors, and living in increasing poverty and obscurity. He was involved in two failed conspiracies to open the Spanish-controlled Mississippi River to American traffic. After suffering a stroke and losing his leg, Clark was aided in his final years by family members, including his younger brother William, one of the leaders of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. Clark died of a stroke on February 13, 1818.
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Old West outlaw and gunslinger John Wesley Hardin was born May 26, 1853, in Bonham, Texas. Rumored to be so mean he once shot a man for snoring, Hardin was shot to death in El Paso on August 19, 1895, by a man he had hired to kill someone else.

John's father, James G. Hardin, was a Methodist preacher, lawyer, schoolteacher and circuit rider. His mother was Elizabeth Hardin. At age fourteen, John stabbed a schoolmate. At age fifteen, he shot a black man to death in Polk County. While fleeing from the law following that murder, he killed at least one, and possibly four Union soldiers who were attempting to apprehend him.

As a cowboy on the Chisolm Trail in 1871, Hardin killed seven people. He killed three more upon arriving in Abilene, Kansas. Back in Texas, following a run-in with the State Police back in Gonzales County, Hardin got married, settled down and had three children. But he soon resumed his murder spree, killing 4 more times before surrendering to the Cherokee County sheriff in September 1872. He broke out of jail after a couple of weeks, however.

Hardin next killed Jack Helm, a former State Police captain, who led the fight against the anti-Reconstructionist forces of Jim Taylor in the Sutton-Taylor Feud. Hardin had become a supporter of Taylor's from 1873 to 1874.

In May 1874, Hardin killed a deputy sheriff in Brown County while visiting the town of Comanche. Fleeing to Florida with his family, Hardin was captured by Texas Rangers in Pensacola on July 23, 1877. During that flight, he killed at least one, and perhaps as many as five more victims.

On September 28, 1878, Hardin was sentenced to twenty-five years for the Brown County deputy's murder. He was pardoned on March 16, 1894. Having studied law while in prison, Hardin was admitted to the Texas bar soon after his release.

In 1895, Hardin went to El Paso to testify for the defense in a murder trial. Following the trial, he stayed and established a law practice. Just when he seemed to finally be going straight, Hardin began an affair with one of his married female clients. Her husband found out about the affair and Hardin hired some law officials to kill him. One of the hired gunmen, however, Constable John Selman, shot Hardin instead.

Legend has it that his last words were, "Four sixes to beat, Henry." When killed, Hardin was shooting dice with local furniture dealer Henry Brown at the Acme saloon in El Paso. Thus ended the life and career of one of Texas deadliest gunslingers. Despite his killing of over thirty people, Hardin had a reputation as a gentleman among those who knew him, and he always claimed he never killed anyone who didn't need killing.

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wyatt_Earp
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butch_Cassidy
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Bass
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Jackie Robinson

http://www.archives.gov/historical-docs/document.html?doc=17&title.raw=Letter%20from%20Jackie%20Robinson%20to%20President%20Dwight%20D.%20Eisenhower----------
liver eating johnson
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Johnson_(boxer)
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Brown_(abolitionist)
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smedley_Butler
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I only regret that I have but one life to give for my country. — Nathan Hale before being hung by the British
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40. Lance Armstrong – There is a journal out there somewhere written by someone who raced against Armstrong in the first Tour de France. He talks about while he is in first place, during the most grueling mountain stage, he hears Armstrong coming up on him. Basically, he determines that he would rather lose the entire tour than let “the gringo” pass him. He says he gave it everything he had to stay in front, but as Armstrong passed him, Lance looked back and smiled at him.
This was only months after he recovered from terminal cancer.
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24. Bill Braski – No one has ever even seen this guy. He is literally nothing but legend. One of those legends is that his “foreskin is used as a tarp over Yankee Stadium.” I’m not sure if that is cool or not, but I know that no woman would have a foreskin that big. Therefore, he is a true man.
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4. Mas Oyana – One of the only truly famous legitimate martial artists, Mas Oyana could kick everyone’s ass. Everyone’s, ever, combined. He trained for years, then decided it wasn’t enough. So he took nothing except a pot and a book to a mountain and lived there for two years. During this time he trained for 14 hours a day (by lifting large rocks and fighting trees) and meditated for the rest of the time. He then came down from the mountain, won the most prestigious fighting tournament in the world and decided it wasn’t good enough. He spent another year and a half on the mountain.
Need I go on?
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Yue Fei
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04/30/04:  Sun Tzu

04/23/04:  Jesse Ventura
-----


06/29/12:  Yue Fei

06/22/12:  Candido Mariano da Silva Rondon

06/15/12:  John Paul Stapp

06/08/12:  Turgeis the Devil

06/01/12:  Allan Pinkerton

05/26/12:  Kim Campbell

05/18/12:  John Hunyadi

05/11/12:  Fredegund

05/04/12:  Ignacio Zaragoza

04/27/12:  William E. Fairbairn

04/20/12:  Joe Foss

04/13/12:  Iko Uwais

04/06/12:  David H. Jarvis

03/30/12:  Rurik

03/23/12:  Khan Krum the Horrible

03/16/12:  Commander Shepard

03/09/12:  Marie Colvin

03/02/12:  Bass Reeves

02/24/12:  Vernon J. Baker

02/17/12:  Sekonaia Takavesi

02/10/12:  King Naresuan

02/03/12:  Anthony Omari

01/27/12:  Chris Kyle

01/20/12:  Julie D'Aubigny

01/13/12:  M3 the Wolverine

01/06/12:  Dakota Meyer

12/30/11:  Drew Dennis Dix

12/23/11:  Pier Gerlofs Donia

12/16/11:  Germanicus

12/09/11:  Honda Tadakatsu

12/02/11:  Viktor Leonov

11/25/11:  Running Eagle

11/18/11:  Tran Hung Dao

11/11/11:  Sergeant Stubby

11/04/11:  Daniel Inouye

10/28/11:  Francois L'Ollonais

10/21/11:  Jean-Pierre Hallet

10/14/11:  Doctor Doom (at boomtron.com)

10/07/11:  Skuld

09/30/11:  Joe Medicine Crow

09/23/11:  Tyrannosaurus Rex

09/16/11:  Tareg Gazel

09/09/11:  Rick Rescorla

09/02/11:  Paddy Mayne

08/26/11:  Elizabeth Bathory

08/19/11:  Alexander Karelin

08/12/11:  Joshua

08/05/11:  Abram A. Heller

07/29/11:  Skanderbeg

07/22/11:  Batman (at BSCreview.com)

07/15/11:  Max Hardberger

07/08/11:  Grace O'Malley

07/01/11:  Tommy Prince

06/24/11:  Alasdair MacColla

06/17/11:  Jan Zizka

06/10/11:  Maurice Richard

06/03/11:  Megalodon

05/27/11:  Gary Gordon and Randy Shughart

05/20/11:  Jacqueline Cochran

05/13/11:  Toussaint L'Ouverture

05/06/11:  SEAL Team Six

04/29/11:  Albert Jacka

04/22/11:  Cherokee Bill

04/15/11:  Genevieve de Galard-Terraube

04/08/11:  Dipprasad Pun

04/01/11:  Dudley Morton

03/25/11:  John Alfred Wilson

03/18/11:  Hideaki Akaiwa

03/11/11:  Joseph Lozito

03/04/11:  Deadpool  (for bscreview.com)

02/25/11:  The 21 Sikhs

02/18/11:  Princess Pingyang

02/11/11:  Doris Miller

02/04/11:  Poseidon

01/28/11:  Bishnu Shrestha

01/21/11:  Myles Standish

01/14/11:  Dick Winters

01/07/11:  Don Alejo Garza Tamez

12/31/10:  Khawla bint Al-Azwar

12/24/10:  Hongi Hika

12/17/10:  George Mayow

12/10/10:  Gaius Marius

12/03/10:  Witold Urbanowicz

11/26/10:  Reinhold Messner

11/19/10:  Blas de Lezo

11/12/10:  Salvatore Giunta

11/05/10:  Jennifer Musa

10/29/10:  Kratos

10/22/10:  T'ai Djin

10/15/10:  Lachhiman Gurung

10/08/10:  Samuel Whittemore

10/01/10:  Hans-Ulrich Rudel

09/24/10:  Kim Yushin

09/17/10:  Captain Jonathan R. Davis

09/10/10:  Matilda of Canossa

09/03/10:  Mustafa Kemal Ataturk

08/27/10:  Dwight H. Johnson

08/20/10:  Galvarino

08/13/10:  Shaka Zulu

08/06/10:  Ned Kelly

07/30/10:  Anna Yegorova

07/23/10:  Thanos  (for bscreview.com)

07/16/10:  Saito Musashibo Benkei

07/09/10:  Buck Shelford

07/02/10:  John Basilone

06/25/10:  Frederick Barbarossa

06/18/10:  Flora Sandes

06/11/10:  Yang Youde

06/04/10:  Wolverine

05/28/10:  Leonard A. Funk

05/21/10:  Fridtjof Nansen

05/14/10:  Rani Lakshmibai

05/07/10:  Craig Harrison

04/30/10:  Lothar von Arnauld

04/23/10:  Torii Mototada

04/16/10:  Leonid Rogozov

04/09/10:  Hervor

04/02/10:  Mas Oyama

03/26/10:  Diomedes

03/19/10:  The Honey Badger

03/12/10:  Juan Pujol Garcia

03/05/10:  Viriathus

02/26/10:  Leo Major

02/19/10:  Lydia Litvyak

02/12/10:  The Winged Hussars

02/05/10:  Marcus Luttrell

01/29/10:  Toyotomi Hideyoshi

01/22/10:  Ranavalona the Cruel

01/15/10:  Alp Arslan

01/08/10:  Baron Frederick von der Trenck

01/01/10:  Tlahuicole

12/25/09:  Tomyris

12/18/09:  Charles Upham

12/11/09:  The Kraken

12/04/09:  Hiromichi Shinohara

11/27/09:  Lewis Millett

11/20/09:  Caterina Sforza

11/13/09:  Baldwin IV of Jerusalem

11/06/09:  Mitchell Paige

11/06/09:  George Orwell  (for Powells.com)

11/05/09:  Alexander Solzhenitsyn  (for Powells.com)

11/04/09:  Sir Richard Francis Burton  (for Powells.com)

11/03/09:  Anna Comnena  (for Powells.com)

11/02/09:  Aeschylus  (for Powells.com)

10/30/09:  Aki Ra

10/27/09:  Released BADASS: The Book

XXX "Mad" Jack Churchill
-----------------------------
Born September 16th, 1906 , Jack Churchill was known as "Fighting Jack Churchill" "Captain Jack" and "Mad Jack", he was a British soldier who fought throughout World War II armed with a longbow, arrows, bagpipes, and a Scottish broadsword. Churchill, though an Englishman by ancestry, had a fascination for things Celtic. He was known for saying "any officer who goes into action without his sword is improperly armed." 
Churchill was known for his eclectic style. As a trainee he was known to play his bagpipes at 3:00 AM.  In May of 1940 during WWII, Churchill and his unit (Manchester Regiment) ambushed a German patrol in France. Churchill gave the signal to attack by goring the enemy Sergent with barbed arrows from his longbow.  This is the only confirmed enemy kill using a longbow in the war.  In 1940, some of the German commanders who were overseeing the push into France began to receive seemingly random reports of soldiers having been killed with broad-head arrows or hacked with a Broadsword.
Churchill volunteered for Commando duty not knowing what is was but enlisted because it "Sounded Dangerous" In a battle in Norway, Churchill stormed into battle playing his bagpipes and weilding grenades before charging into battle weilding his trademark Scottish broadsword as usual. Various occasions he forced prisoners to throw down thier arms at the point of a his broadsword. 
One night Mad Jack and one of his me snuck up on a pair of German sentries making rounds. He leapt at them, sword in hand and shouted, “haende hoch!” The Germans obeyed by dropping weapons and surrendering. One sentry was taken back to camp while Jack wrapped his belt around the other's throught, and together they continued the rounds. At each guard post his prisoner would say something to lull the guards into complacency, then the mustached Mad Jack with a sword would jump out and order them to drop their arms. The two collected forty-two prisoners that night.
In all Mad Jack recieved the Military Cross and Bar for his actions on the battlefield in Dunkirk and Vagsoy as well as two Distinguished Service Order for later battles. He was captured after being injued by a grenade in battle in Yugoslavia by the Germans and was brought to Berlin for interrogation. He escaped, was recaptured and was transferred to Tyrol, where he escaped again. Churchill walked 8 Days and 150 miles to Verona, Italy where he met an American army squad.
Churchill was then sent to Burma where the largest battles in the war were raging but just before he reached india, The americans bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the war had ended. Churchill famously said "If it wasn't for those damn Yanks, we could have kept the war going another 10 years.
Churchill continued to fight after the war, becoming involved with the 1st Batallion Highland Light Infantry and assisted the Hadassah medical convoy that came under attack by hundreds of Arabs. He retired from the army in 1959 and Mad Jack died on March 8th, 1996.


http://www.weaponsofwwii.com/forumfiles/Jack%20Churchill.JPG

XXXX HUGH GLASS

Hugh Glass was a Mountain man by trade, he was an Irishman raised by Pawnee Indians who wandered the countryside lending his services to various expeditions that required fearless frontiersmen to "scout" (meaning you made sure everything was safe for the people who were going to take credit).
In August 1823, old Hugh Glass responded to an advertisement in the Missouri Gazette and was scouting for a fur trapping expedition in South Dakota when he came across a grizzly bear mother and her two cubs. The mother immediately charged him, knocking his rifle out of his hands and mauling him. Glass drew his knife and fought the grizzly hand-to-hand stabbing it repeatedly as it clawed and gnawed him apart. Hearing his screams, two trapping partners arrived and found the two in a bloody mess, Glass unconscious and both apparently mortally wounded. They finished off the dying bear with a rifle shot to the head, then carried Glass back to their camp. Expedition leader Andrew Henry (Sure Glass would not survive) asked two trappers, Jim Bridger and John Fitzgerald, to stay with Glass until he died and give him an honorable burial . Glass was covered in blood, his scalp, face, chest, arms, hand and leg were shredded. The bear had chewed into his shoulder and back to the bone. When Bridger and Fitzgerald gave him a good burial they were to catch up and rejoin the group. 
The two waited and watched the dying Glass. They became impatient and covered Glass, who was laboring but still breathing with the bare skin, took his rifle, knife, and gear and left him.  It would later be reported that Fitzgerald worried they might not catch up with the expedition.  They caught up to the rest of the group heading to Yellowstone and reported that Hugh Glass was dead (Later, the changed their story claiming that they fled while digging the grave after hostile "Arikaree" Indians discovered them, but there is no evidence).
However, Glass woke up in his shallow grave, under a thin layer of dirt and leaves. All his weapons, equipment, and protective clothing had been taken by the two men. His leg was broken, he had exposed rib bones on his back, and he had lost a critical amount of blood, The bear had nearly torn off his scalp, His wounds were festering. Alone and defenseless, he was more than 200 miles away from the nearest settlement, Fort Kiowa. He set his own broken leg, wrapped himself in the bear hide, and started crawling.

It took Glass six weeks of crawling on his hands and knees to reach the Cheyenne River, 100 miles away from the grave. He suffered from fever and advanced stages of infection. To prevent gangrene from progressing into his wounds he allowed maggots that he found on dead logs to eat his dead flesh away. He survived mostly on wild berries, roots, and other edible plants and on one occasion he was able to scare wolves away from a bison they had killed, and ate the raw meat. When he finally reached the Cheyenne river, he built a raft from a large fallen tree and floated down the river. Along the way he encountered friendly Sioux who fed him and tended to his wounds, primarily by sewing the bear hide to his back to cover his exposed wounds. Eventually he succeeded in floating in his dead tree all the way to Fort Kiowa.

Hugh Glass claimed he was motivated by revenge to survive. After a couple months of recovery at Fort Kiowa, he set out to kill the two men who had abandoned him. Glass found Jim Bridger at a trading post on the Yellowstone river. Bridger was only 19 years old at the time, Glass forgave him because of his age. Glass believed his conscience would be his punishment. He set out to find the older (and more responsible) Fitzgerald. Less then a year after the ordeal he found John Fitzgerald, who had joined the US Army, confronting him in Fort Atkinson, Wisconsin. At that time the penalty for killing a Soldier was death, Glass gave up on his mission of vengeance and spared Fitzgerald’s life as well. He accepted money collected by other soldiers who sympathized with his story, and he recovered his stolen rifle from Fitzgerald, and walked away. Glass continued to be a trapper, fur trader, and hunter by profession until he was finally killed in an Indian attack in 1833 (same rifle in hand).