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Anne of Great Britain (1665-1714) became Queen of England, Scotland and Ireland on 8 March 1702. On 1 May 1707, when England and Scotland combined into a single Kingdom, Anne became the first Sovereign of Great Britain. She continued to reign until her death. Anne was the last British monarch of the House of Stuart; she was succeeded by a distant cousin, George I, of the House of Hanover.
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Mark Antony (c. 83 BC–30 BC), was a Roman politician and general. He was an important supporter of Julius Caesar as a military commander and administrator. After Caesar's assassination, Antony allied with Octavian and Lepidus to form the second triumvirate. The triumvirate ended in 33 BC, and Antony committed suicide with Cleopatra in 30 BC.
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Louis Armstrong (1901–1971), also known by the nickname Satchmo, was an American jazz musician. Probably the most famous jazz musician of the 20th century, Armstrong was a charismatic, innovative performer whose musical skills and bright personality transformed jazz from a rough regional dance music into a popular art form. Armstrong first achieved fame as a trumpeter, but was also one of the most influential jazz singers, and towards the end of his career was best known as a vocalist.
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Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) was a Russian-born American author and biochemist, a highly successful and exceptionally prolific writer best known for his works of science fiction and for his popular science books. Asimov's most famous work is the Foundation Series, which he later combined with two of his other series, the Galactic Empire Series and Robot series. He also wrote mysteries and fantasy, as well as a great amount of non-fiction. In fact, he wrote or edited over 500 volumes and an estimated 90,000 letters or postcards, and has works in every major category of the Dewey Decimal System except Philosophy.
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Attalus I (269 BCE–197 BCE) ruled Pergamon, a Greek city state in present-day Turkey, from 241 BCE to 197 BCE. He was the second cousin and the adoptive son of Eumenes I, whom he succeeded, and was the first of the Attalid dynasty to assume the title of king. He died in 197 BCE, shortly before the end of the second Macedonian War, at the age of 72, having suffered an apparent stroke while addressing a Boeotian war council some months before. He enjoyed a famously happy domestic life, shared with his wife and four sons. He was succeeded as king by his son Eumenes II.
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Attila the Hun (c. 406–453) was the last and most powerful king of the European Huns. He reigned over what was then Europe's largest empire, from 434 until his death. His empire stretched from Central Europe to the Black Sea and from the Danube River to the Baltic. Though his empire died with him, and he left no remarkable legacy, he has become a legendary figure in the history of Europe. In much of Western Europe, he is remembered as the epitome of cruelty and rapacity. Some histories lionise him as a great and noble king, and he plays major roles in three Norse sagas.
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Augusta, Lady Gregory (1852–1932), was an Irish dramatist and folklorist. With W B Yeats and others, she co-founded the Irish Literary Theatre and the Abbey Theatre, and wrote numerous short works for both companies. Lady Gregory is mainly remembered for her role as an organiser and driving force of the Irish Literary Revival. Her home at Coole Park, County Galway served as an important meeting place for the leading Revival figures and her early work as a member of the board of the Abbey was at least as important for the theatre's development as her creative writings were. Her motto, taken from Aristotle, was "To think like a wise man, but to express oneself like the common people."
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Batman, is a fictional character and superhero who first appeared in Detective Comics #27 in 1939. Most accounts suggest that he was co-created by Bob Kane and Bill Finger, but only Kane receives official credit for the character. Batman was at first just one of several characters featured in Detective Comics, but has since become the lead or co-lead character of a number of comic book series, in addition to a "family" of titles featuring related characters (e.g. Robin, Batgirl). Batman and Superman are DC Comics' two most popular and recognizable characters.
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Samuel Beckett (1906–1989) was an Irish playwright, novelist and poet. Beckett's work is stark, fundamentally minimalist, and deeply pessimistic about human nature and the human situation. His later work explores his themes in increasingly cryptic and attenuated style. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature in 1969 and elected Saoi of Aosdána in 1984.
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Moe Berg (1902–1972) was an American catcher in Major League Baseball and, for a short time, a spy for the United States. His is said to be the only baseball card on display at the headquarters of the Central Intelligence Agency. Berg spoke several languages and was sometimes called "the brainiest guy in baseball" by admiring newspaper sportswriters. His reputation was fueled when he did very well as a guest on the radio quiz show Information, Please! in 1938. Casey Stengel once described Berg as "the strangest man ever to play baseball."
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Tony Blair (1953– ) is the current Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. He has led the Labour Party since the death of John Smith in 1994, and brought Labour into power with a landslide victory in the 1997 general election, replacing John Major as Prime Minister and ending 18 years of Conservative government. He is now the Labour Party's longest-serving Prime Minister, and the only person to have led that party to three consecutive general election victories. His party won a third term in the 2005 general election, but its majority in the House of Commons was reduced considerably to just 66, raising fresh questions about how long Blair's leadership will continue.
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Fanny Blankers-Koen (1918–2004) was a Dutch athlete. She is most famous for winning four gold medals at the 1948 Summer Olympics in London. At that time, she was already a mother of two, which was unheard of at a time where female athletes were still frowned upon by many. It earned her the nickname "The Flying Housewife". Apart from her four Olympic titles, she won five European titles, 58 Dutch championships and set or tied 12 world records. She retired from athletics in 1955, after which she became leader of the Dutch female track and field team. In 1999, she was voted "Female Athlete of the Century" by the International Association of Athletics Federations.
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Humphrey Bogart (1899–1957) was an iconic American actor who retains legendary status decades after his death. In 1999, the American Film Institute named Bogart the Greatest Male Star of All Time. Bogart typically played smart, playful, courageous, tough, occasionally reckless characters, living in a corrupt world, yet anchored by an inner moral code. In all, he appeared in 75 feature motion pictures. Entertainment Weekly magazine has named Bogart the number one movie legend of all time. Bogart’s exalted standing in the Hollywood pantheon would have astonished most of the agents, casting directors and studio bosses who knew him in the 1920s and 1930s as a good but hardly great Broadway stage actor and B-movie player in Hollywood.
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Matthew Brettingham (1699–1769), was an 18th-century Englishman who rose from humble origins to supervise the construction of Holkham Hall, eventually becoming one of the country's better known architects of his generation. Much of his principal work is now demolished, especially his work in London where he revolutionised the design of the grand townhouse. As a result he tends to be often overlooked today, remembered only for his Palladian remodelling of numerous country houses, many of which are situated in the East Anglian area of Britain. As the pinnacle of Brettingham's career came into sight, Palladianism began to fall out of fashion and neoclassicism was introduced, championed by a young Robert Adam. A simple analogy of his long career is that Brettingham played Salieri to Robert Adam's Mozart.
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George Brown, Baron George-Brown (1914–1985) was a British politician who served as Deputy Leader of the Labour Party from 1960 to 1970, and was a senior Cabinet minister (including as Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs) in the Labour government of the 1960s. He was a leader of the right wing within the Labour Party and an effective, if aggressive, election campaigner, but was ultimately unable to cope with the pressures of high office without excessive drinking. He changed his surname from Brown to George-Brown in order to incorporate his first name into his peerage title, which was awarded on November 6, 1970.
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James Bulger (1990–1993) was a toddler who was abducted and murdered by two eleven-year-old boys, Jon Venables and Robert Thompson, on Merseyside, in the United Kingdom. The murder of a child by two other children caused an immense public outpouring of shock, outrage, and grief, particularly in Liverpool and surrounding towns. Thompson and Venables were released on a life licence in June 2001 after serving eight years of their ten-year sentence (reduced for good behaviour), when a parole hearing concluded that public safety would not be threatened by their rehabilitation into society. An estimated total of £4 million was invested in helping Thompson and Venables rebuild their lives on release from custody. A Merseyside WPC was awarded £100,000 in compensation for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) relating to the murder investigation. In contrast, Jamie's mother, Denise Bulger, was given just £7,500 criminal compensation from the government. The trauma of Jamie's death led to the collapse of his parents' marriage. Ralph and Denise Bulger have both since re-married to other respective spouses.
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Julius Caesar (100 BC–44 BC) was a Roman military and political leader whose conquest of Gallia Comata extended the Roman world all the way to the Atlantic Ocean, launching the first Roman invasion of Britain, and introducing Roman influence into what has become modern France, an accomplishment whose direct consequences are visible to this day. Caesar fought and won a civil war which left him undisputed master of the Roman world, and began extensive reforms of Roman society and government. He was elected dictator for life, and heavily centralized the already faltering government of the weak republic. His dramatic assassination on the Ides of March became the catalyst of a second set of civil wars which became the twilight of the Roman Republic and of the Roman Empire under Caesar's grand-nephew and adopted son, Caesar Augustus.
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Johnny Cash (1932–2003) was an American country music singer and songwriter, known to his fans as "The Man in Black", and a member of the outlaw country movement. In a career that spanned almost five decades, he was the personification of country music to many Americans and others around the world who had no other knowledge or interest in that art form. His gravelly voice and the distinctive boom chicka boom sound of his Tennessee Two backing band were instantly recognizable to millions.
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Charles I of England (1600–1649) was King of England, Scotland and Ireland from 27 March 1625, until his death. He famously engaged in a struggle for power with Parliament; he was an advocate of the divine right of kings, however some in Parliament feared that he was attempting to gain absolute power. There was widespread opposition to many of his actions, especially the levying of taxes without Parliament's consent. The last years of Charles's reign were marked by the English Civil War; he was opposed by the forces of Parliament and by Puritans. The war ended in defeat for Charles, who was subsequently tried, convicted and executed for high treason. The monarchy was overthrown, and a republic was established. Charles's son, Charles II, would later restore the monarchy in 1660.
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Charles II of England (1630–1685) was the King of England, Scotland and Ireland. Unlike his father, Charles II was skilled at managing Parliament. It was during his reign that the Whig and Tory political parties developed. He famously fathered numerous illegitimate children, of whom he acknowledged fourteen. Known as the "Merry Monarch", Charles was a patron of the arts and less restrictive than many of his predecessors. By converting to Roman Catholicism on his deathbed, Charles II became the first Roman Catholic to reign over England since the death of Mary I in 1558 and over Scotland since the deposition of Mary, Queen of Scots in 1567.
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Noam Chomsky (1928– ) is an Institute Professor Emeritus of linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and creator of the Chomsky hierarchy, a classification of formal languages. His works in generative linguistics contributed significantly to the decline of behaviorism and led to the advancement of the cognitive sciences. Outside of his linguistic work, Chomsky is also widely known for his political activism and his criticism of the foreign policy of the U.S. and allied governments. Chomsky describes himself as a libertarian socialist and a sympathizer of anarcho-syndicalism.
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Colley Cibber (1671–1757) was an English actor-manager, playwright, and Poet Laureate. His colorful Apology for the Life of Colley Cibber (1740) started a British tradition of personal, anecdotal, and even rambling autobiography. He wrote some plays for performance by his own company at Drury Lane. He regarded himself as first and foremost an actor and had great popular success in comical fop parts, while as a tragic actor he was persistent but much ridiculed. He rose to herostratic fame when he became the chief target, the head Dunce, of Alexander Pope's satirical poem The Dunciad.
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Rebecca Clarke (1886–1979) was an English classical composer and violist best known for her chamber music featuring the viola. She is considered one of the most important British composers in the period between World War I and World War II; she has also been called the most distinguished British female composer of her generation. Though she wrote little, due in part to her ideas about the role of a female composer, her work was recognized for its compositional skill. Most of her works have yet to be published (or have only recently been published), and Clarke's work was largely forgotten after she stopped composing. Scholarship and interest in her work revived when she reached her ninetieth birthday in 1976.
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Brian Close (1931– ) is the youngest man ever to play cricket for England. He was admitted to the Test team to play against New Zealand at just 18 years old. Dennis went on to play 22 Test matches for England, captaining them seven times, winning six times and drawing once. Throughout his cricket career, which lasted from 1948 to 1977 season, Close was one of the most charismatic and well-known cricketers. At just over six feet tall he was a noticeable presence on the field, often fielding at short leg. Yet despite his successes, Close was dogged by controversy throughout his career. He was serving a sentence of being "confined to barracks" during his National Service when called up for his first international tour, sacked by England for timewasting, and sacked by Yorkshire for being against one-day cricket and not giving enough support to younger cricketers. In short, Close was known as a cricketing gambler; he was prepared to take risks and to court controversy throughout his career.
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A. E. J. Collins (1885–1914), was a cricketer and soldier, most famous for his achievement, as a schoolboy, of the highest-ever recorded score in cricket, 628 not out, over four afternoons in June 1899. Collins' record-making innings drew a large crowd and increasing media interest: spectators at the Old Cliftonian match being played nearby were drawn away to watch a junior school house cricket match. Collins joined the British Army in 1902. He studied at the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, before becoming an officer in the Royal Engineers. He served in France during World War I, where he was killed in action in 1914.
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