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Post by elvis on Nov 12, 2012 9:23:16 GMT
Pee-wee Herman
is a comic fictional character created and portrayed by American comedian Paul Reubens. He is best known for his two television series and film series during the 1980s. The childlike Pee-wee Herman character developed as a stage act that quickly led to an HBO special in 1981. As the stage performance gained further popularity, Reubens took the character to motion picture with Pee-wee's Big Adventure in 1985, toning down the adult innuendo for the appeal of children. This paved the way for Pee-wee's Playhouse, an Emmy Award winning children's series that ran on CBS from 1986-1991. Another film, Big Top Pee-wee, was released in 1988.
Reubens's arrest for public masturbation on July 26, 1991, caused a media frenzy over the actor and his Pee-wee Herman character. After being in a state of shock for weeks, Reubens was haunted by the arrest for several years, refusing to give interviews or appear on talk shows.[1][2] Due to the negative media attention, Reubens decided to shelve his alter ego during the 1990s, and then gradually resurrected it during the following decade. It was at that time that Reubens addressed plans to write a new Pee-wee film, Pee-wee's Playhouse: The Movie. In June 2007, Reubens appeared as Pee-wee Herman for the first time since 1991 at Spike TV's Guys' Choice Awards.[
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Post by marcus on Nov 12, 2012 18:59:10 GMT
Harry Andrews
Harry Fleetwood Andrews, CBE (10 November 1911 – 6 March 1989) was an English film actor, known for his frequent portrayals of tough military officers. His performance as Sergeant Major Wilson in The Hill alongside Sean Connery earned Andrews the 1965 National Board of Review Award for Best Supporting Actor and a nomination for the 1966 BAFTA Award for Best British Actor. He made his film debut in The Red Beret in 1953.
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Post by elvis on Nov 13, 2012 9:33:56 GMT
Ahmad RashÄd
(born Robert Earl Moore on November 19, 1949) is an American sportscaster (mostly with NBC Sports) and former professional football player. An All-American running back and wide receiver from Oregon known as Bobby Moore, Rashad was the fourth overall pick in the 1972 NFL Draft, drafted by the St. Louis Cardinals. He was the first skill-position player taken, following three linemen.
RashÄd was converted back to wide receiver while with the Cardinals, where he played for two seasons. He then played for the Buffalo Bills (1974–1976), the Seattle Seahawks (1976), and, most notably, the Minnesota Vikings (1976–1982), where he earned four Pro Bowl selections from 1978 to 1981.
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Post by marcus on Nov 13, 2012 16:17:31 GMT
Richard Briers
Richard David Briers, CBE (born 14 January 1934) is an English actor, whose career has encompassed theatre, television, film and radio.
He first came to prominence as George Starling in Marriage Lines in the 1960s, but it was in the following decade when he played Tom Good in the BBC sitcom The Good Life that he became a household name. In the 1980s he starred in Ever Decreasing Circles, and from 2000 to 2002 came back to the spotlight with a leading role in Monarch of the Glen.
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Post by elvis on Nov 14, 2012 9:00:15 GMT
Barbara Hershey
(born Barbara Lynn Herzstein; February 5, 1948),[1] also known as Barbara Seagull,[2] is an American actress. In a career spanning nearly 50 years, she has played a variety of roles on television and in cinema, in several genres including westerns and comedies. She began acting at age 17 in 1965, but did not achieve much critical acclaim until the latter half of the 1980s. By that time, the Chicago Tribune referred to her as "one of America's finest actresses."[3]
Hershey was awarded an Emmy and a Golden Globe for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Miniseries/TV Film for her role in A Killing in a Small Town (1990). She has been nominated for two more Golden Globes: in 1989 for Best Supporting Actress for her role as Mary Magdalene in Martin Scorsese's The Last Temptation of Christ, and for her role in Jane Campion's Portrait of a Lady (1996). For the latter film, she was also nominated for an Academy Award and she won a Los Angeles Film Critics Award for Best Supporting Actress. In addition, she has won two Best Actress awards at the Cannes Film Festival for her roles in Shy People (1987) and A World Apart (1988). She also featured in Woody Allen's critically acclaimed Hannah and Her Sisters (1986), for which she was nominated for a British Academy Award, Garry Marshall's melodrama Beaches (1988) and she earned a second British Academy Award nomination for Darren Aronofsky's Black Swan (2010).
Establishing a reputation early in her career as a "hippie," Hershey experienced conflict between her personal life and her acting goals. Her career suffered a decline during a six-year relationship with actor David Carradine, with whom she had a child. She experimented with a change in stage name that she later regretted. During this time her personal life was highly publicized and ridiculed.[4] It was not until she separated from Carradine and changed her stage name back to Hershey that her acting career became well established.[5][6] Later in her career, she began to keep her personal life private.[4][7]
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Post by marcus on Nov 14, 2012 16:53:34 GMT
Harry James
Henry Haag “Harry” James (March 15, 1916 – July 5, 1983) was an actor and musician best known as a trumpeter who led a swing band during the Big Band Swing Era of the 1930s and 1940s. He was especially known among musicians for his astonishing technical proficiency as well as his superior tone.
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Post by elvis on Nov 15, 2012 10:22:10 GMT
Jack Black
Thomas Jacob "Jack" Black (born August 28, 1969)[1] is an American actor, producer, comedian, voice artist, writer, and musician. His acting career has been extensive, starring primarily as bumbling, thingyy, but internally self-conscious outsiders in comedy films, though he has played some dramatic roles. He is best known for his roles in School of Rock (2003), King Kong (2005), Nacho Libre (2006), and Tropic Thunder (2008), and for his voice role in Kung Fu Panda (2008) and Kung Fu Panda 2 (2011). Black was a member of the Frat Pack, a group of comedians who have appeared together in several Hollywood films, and has been nominated for a Golden Globe Award. He began his career in 1991 when he formed the satirical rock group Tenacious D with friend and fellow groupmate Kyle Gass. Black is the lead vocalist of the band.
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Post by marcus on Nov 15, 2012 17:34:24 GMT
Bernard Cribbins
Bernard Cribbins, OBE (born 29 December 1928) is an English character actor, voice-over artist and musical comedian with a career spanning over half a century who came to prominence in films in the 1960s, and has been in work consistently since his professional debut in the mid 1950s.
He is particularly known to British audiences as the story-telling narrator in The Wombles, a children's programme which ran for 40 episodes between 1973 and 1975. He also recorded several hit novelty records in the early 1960s and was a regular and prolific performer on Jackanory on BBC TV between 1966 and 1991. Cribbins's most recent prominent role has been as Wilfred Mott, companion of the Tenth Doctor in Doctor Who.
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Post by elvis on Nov 16, 2012 9:40:09 GMT
Karl Malden
(born Mladen George Sekulovich; Serbian Cyrillic Младен Ђорђе Секуловић; March 22, 1912 – July 1, 2009)[1][2][3] was a Serbian American[4] actor. In a career that spanned more than seven decades, he performed in such classic films as A Streetcar Named Desire, for which he won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor; On the Waterfront; and One-Eyed Jacks. Among other notable film roles were Archie Lee Meighan in Baby Doll, Zebulon Prescott in How the West Was Won, and General Omar Bradley in Patton. His best-known role, though, was on television as Lt. Mike Stone on the 1970s crime drama, The Streets of San Francisco. During the 1970s and 1980s, he was also the spokesman for American Express.
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Post by marcus on Nov 16, 2012 17:42:42 GMT
Mickey Rooney
Mickey Rooney (born Joseph Yule, Jr.; September 23, 1920) is an American film actor and entertainer whose film, television, and stage appearances span nearly his entire lifetime.
He has received multiple awards, including a Juvenile Academy Award, an Honorary Academy Award, two Golden Globes and an Emmy Award. Working as a performer since he was a child, he was a superstar as a teenager for the films in which he played Andy Hardy, and he has had one of the longest careers of any actor, to date spanning 90 years actively making films in ten decades, from 1920s to 2010s. For a younger generation of fans, he gained international fame for his leading role as Henry Dailey in The Family Channel's The Adventures of the Black Stallion, as well as the film itself.
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Post by elvis on Nov 17, 2012 15:09:38 GMT
Ralph Lauren (born Ralph Lifnutsz, October 14, 1939) is an American fashion designer and business executive, best known for his Polo Ralph Lauren clothing brand.
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Post by marcus on Nov 17, 2012 18:34:41 GMT
Lennox Lewis
Lennox Claudius Lewis, CM, CBE (born 2 September 1965) is a retired boxer and the most recent undisputed world heavyweight champion. He holds dual British and Canadian citizenship. As an amateur he won gold representing Canada at the 1988 Olympic Games after defeating future heavyweight champion Ridthingy Bowe in the final.
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Post by elvis on Nov 18, 2012 1:36:48 GMT
Liv Rundgren Tyler
(born Liv Rundgren; July 1, 1977) is an American actress and model. She is the daughter of Aerosmith's lead singer, Steven Tyler, and Bebe Buell, model and singer. Tyler began a career in modeling at the age of 14, but after less than a year she decided to focus on acting. She made her film debut in the 1994 film Silent Fall. She then appeared in supporting roles in Empire Records (1995), Heavy (1996) and That Thing You Do! (1996). Tyler later achieved critical recognition in the leading role in Stealing Beauty (1996). She followed this by starring in supporting roles including Inventing the Abbotts (1997) and Cookie's Fortune (1999).
Tyler achieved international recognition as a result of her portrayal of Elf maiden Arwen Undómiel in the Lord of the Rings film trilogy. She has appeared in an eclectic range of films, including the 2004 comedy Jersey Girl, the indie film Lonesome Jim (2005), the drama Reign Over Me (2007) and big-budget studio films such as Armageddon (1998), The Strangers (2008) and The Incredible Hulk (2008).
Tyler has served as a United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) Goodwill Ambassador for the United States since 2003, and as a spokesperson for Givenchy's line of perfume and cosmetics.
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Post by marcus on Nov 18, 2012 20:47:52 GMT
Telly Savalas
Aristotelis "Telly" Savalas ( January 21, 1922 – January 22, 1994) was a Greek American film and television actor and singer, whose career spanned four decades. Best known for playing the title role in the 1970s crime drama Kojak, Savalas was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance in Birdman of Alcatraz (1962). His other movie credits include The Young Savages (1961), The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965), Battle of the Bulge (1965), The Dirty Dozen (1967), The Scalphunters (1968), supervillain Ernst Stavro Blofeld in the James Bond film On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969), Kelly's Heroes (1970), Pretty Maids All in a Row (1971
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Post by elvis on Nov 19, 2012 1:22:54 GMT
Skeet Ulrich
Bryan Ray Trout (born January 20, 1970), best known as Skeet Ulrich, is an American actor best known for starring in the CBS drama Jericho as Jake Green and for portraying Billy Loomis in Scream. He also established a cult following for starring in the cult ABC drama Miracles. Recently, he starred in the police and courtroom drama Law & Order: LA for fourteen episodes before being let go due to a creative overhaul.[1]
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Post by marcus on Nov 19, 2012 11:16:31 GMT
Ursula Andress
Ursula Andress (born 19 March 1936) is a Swiss actress and sex symbol of the 1960s She is known for her role as Bond girl Honey Ryder in the first James Bond film, Dr. No (1962), for which she won a Golden Globe. She later starred as Vesper Lynd in the Bond-parody Casino Royale (1967).
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Post by elvis on Nov 23, 2012 15:31:16 GMT
Andrew Fairweather Low
(born 2 August 1948, Ystrad Mynach, Wales)[2] is a Welsh guitarist, songwriter and vocalist. He was a founding member of 1960s British pop band Amen Corner,[3] and in recent years has toured extensively with Roger Waters, Eric Clapton and Bill Wyman's Rhythm Kings.
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Post by marcus on Nov 23, 2012 17:20:06 GMT
Lew Hoad
Lewis Alan ("Lew") Hoad (Glebe, New South Wales, 23 November 1934 – 3 July 1994 in Fuengirola, Spain) was a former World No. 1 tennis player.
In his 1979 autobiography, Jack Kramer, the long-time tennis promoter and great player himself, ranked Hoad as one of the 21 best players of all time.[1] For five straight years, beginning in 1952, he was ranked in the world top 10 for amateurs, reaching the World No. 1 spot in 1956. Hoad turned professional in July 1957.
Hoad won four majors as an amateur, and won the 1959 Tournament of Champions as a professional. Rod Laver, writing for the Herald Sun newspaper in 2012, ranked Lew as the greatest player of the 'Past Champions' era of tennis. Laver described his strengths of "power, volleying and explosiveness" as justification of his accolade
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Post by elvis on Nov 26, 2012 16:17:26 GMT
Harry Houdini
(born Erik Weisz, later Ehrich Weiss or Harry Weiss; March 24, 1874 – October 31, 1926) was a Budapest-born, American stunt performer, noted for his sensational escape acts. He first attracted notice as "Harry Handcuff Houdini" on a tour of Europe, where he sensationally challenged different police forces to try to keep him locked up. This revealed a talent for gimmickry and for audience involvement that characterized all his work. Soon he extended his repertoire to include chains, ropes slung from skyscrapers, straitjackets under water, and having to hold his breath inside a sealed milk can.
In 1904, thousands watched as he tried to escape from a special handcuff commissioned by London's Daily Mirror, keeping them in suspense for an hour. Another stunt saw him buried alive and only just able to claw himself to the surface, emerging in a state of near-breakdown. While many suspected that these escapes were fabricated, Houdini meanwhile presented himself as the scourge of fake magicians and spiritualists. As President of the Society of American Magicians, he was keen to uphold professional standards and expose fraudulent artists who gave practitioners a bad name. He was also quick to sue anyone who pirated his own escape stunts.
Houdini made a number of movies, but quit acting when it failed to bring in money. He was also a keen aviator, and aimed to become the first man to fly a plane in Australia, but according to the official definition of sustained flight, he was beaten to it by two others. Even the circumstances of his death in 1926 were dramatic and mysterious. According to one version, a student in Montreal asked him if his stomach was hard enough to take any blow, to which he replied that it was, whereupon the student rained a series of blows on it before Houdini had had time to tense up. A few days later, he died of a ruptured appendix. This may have been unconnected, as he had already been suffering appendicitis and refusing to seek medical attention.[1]
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Post by marcus on Nov 26, 2012 20:29:03 GMT
Harry Corbett
Harry Corbett OBE (28 January 1918 Bradford, West Yorkshire — 17 August 1989) was an English puppeteer who created the 'Sooty' glove puppet character in 1948.
Corbett was born in Bradford to James W. Corbett, a coal miner, and his wife Florence, née Ramsden.
Deafness in one ear precluded Corbett from pursuing his musical ambitions although he played the piano in the Guiseley fish and chip restaurant owned by his mother's brother Harry Ramsden. His parents had a fish and chip business in Guiseley called Springfields, which remains open
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Post by elvis on Nov 27, 2012 9:46:55 GMT
Charles Bronson (born Michael Gordon Peterson, 6 December 1952) is an English criminal often referred to in the British press as the "most violent prisoner in Britain".[3]
Born in Luton, Bedfordshire, he became a petty criminal before being sentenced to seven years imprisonment in 1974. While in prison he began making a name for himself as a loose cannon, often fighting convicts and prison officers. He also embarked on one man rooftop protests. Regarded as a problem prisoner, he was moved 120 times throughout Her Majesty's Prison Service and spent most of that time in solitary confinement.[4] What was originally a seven-year term stretched out to a fourteen-year sentence that resulted in his first wife, Irene, with whom he had a son, leaving him. He was released on 30 October 1988 but only spent sixty-nine days as a free man before he was arrested again.
Upon his release he began a bare-knuckle boxing career in the East End of London. His promoter was unhappy with his name and suggested he change it to Charles Bronson. He was returned to prison for planning another robbery, and continued to prove a difficult inmate, instigating numerous hostage situations. While in jail in 2001 he married his second wife, Fatema Saira Rehman, a Bangladeshi-born divorcée who inspired him to convert to Islam and take the name of Charles Ali Ahmed. This second marriage lasted four years before he was divorced and renounced Islam.
Bronson is one of the highest-profile criminals in Britain, and has been featured in books, interviews, and studies in prison reform and treatment. He is the subject of the 2008 film Bronson, the story based loosely around significant events during his life. In addition Bronson has himself written many books about his experiences and famous prisoners he has met throughout his internment. A self-declared fitness fanatic who spent multiple years in segregation, Bronson dedicated a book to working out in confined spaces. In his own words "I'm a nice guy, but sometimes I lose all my senses and become nasty. That doesn't make me evil, just confused."[5]
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Post by marcus on Nov 27, 2012 18:48:53 GMT
Brian Wilde
Brian George Wilde (13 June 1927 – 20 March 2008) was an English actor, best known for his roles in television comedy, including Mr Barrowclough in Porridge and "Foggy" Dewhurst in Last of the Summer Wine. His lugubrious world-weary face was a staple of British television for forty years.
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Post by elvis on Nov 29, 2012 9:57:14 GMT
Woody Allen
(born Allan Stewart Konigsberg; December 1, 1935) is an American screenwriter, director, actor, comedian, author, playwright, and musician whose career spans over half a century.
He began as a comedy writer in the 1950s, penning jokes and scripts for television and also publishing several books of short humor pieces. In the early 1960s, Allen started performing as a stand-up comic, emphasizing monologues rather than traditional jokes. As a comic, he developed the persona of an insecure, intellectual, fretful nebbish, which he insists is quite different from his real-life personality.[2] In 2004, Comedy Central[3] ranked Allen in fourth place on a list of the 100 greatest stand-up comics, while a UK survey ranked Allen as the third greatest comedian.[4]
By the mid-1960s Allen was writing and directing films, first specializing in slapstick comedies before moving into more dramatic material influenced by European art cinema during the 1970s. He is often identified as part of the New Hollywood wave of filmmakers of the mid-1960s to late '70s.[5] Allen often stars in his own films, typically in the persona he developed as a standup. Some of the best-known of his over 40 films are Annie Hall (1977), Manhattan (1979), Hannah and Her Sisters (1986), and Midnight in Paris (2011). Critic Roger Ebert has described Allen as "a treasure of the cinema".[6]
He is also a jazz clarinetist who performs regularly at small venues in Manhattan, including the Carlyle Hotel on Monday nights.[7]
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Post by marcus on Nov 29, 2012 18:58:10 GMT
Alec Guinness
Sir Alec Guinness, CH, CBE (2 April 1914 – 5 August 2000) was an English actor. After an early career on the stage he was featured in several of the Ealing Comedies, including Kind Hearts and Coronets in which he played eight different characters. However, he was probably best known for his six collaborations with David Lean: Herbert Pocket in Great Expectations (1946), f*gin in Oliver Twist (1948), Col. Nicholson in The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957, for which he won the Academy Award for Best Actor), Prince Faisal in Lawrence of Arabia (1962), Yevgraf in Doctor Zhivago (1965), and Professor Godbole in A Passage to India (1984). In later years, he achieved fame with younger audiences for his role as Obi-Wan Kenobi in George Lucas’s original Star Wars trilogy.
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Post by elvis on Dec 1, 2012 12:31:47 GMT
George Michael
(born Georgios Kyriacos Panayiotou; (Greek: ΓεώÏγιος ΚυÏιάκος Παναγιώτου); 25 June 1963) is an English musician, singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and record producer.[2] Michael rose to fame in the 1980s when he formed the pop duo Wham! with his school friend, Andrew Ridgeley. His first solo single, "Careless Whisper", was released when he was still in the duo and sold about six million copies worldwide.[3]
As one of the world's best-selling music artists, Michael has sold more than 100 million records worldwide as of 2010.[4] His 1987 debut solo album, Faith, has sold more than 20 million copies worldwide and made several records and achievements in the United States.[5] Michael has garnered seven number one singles in the UK and eight number one hits on the Billboard Hot 100 in the US. In 2008, Billboard magazine ranked Michael the 40th most successful artist on the Billboard Hot 100 Top All-Time Artists list.[6]
Michael has won numerous music awards throughout his 30-year career, including three Brit Awards—winning Best British Male twice, four MTV Video Music Awards, four Ivor Novello Awards, three American Music Awards, and two Grammy Awards from eight nominations.[7][8]
In 2004, the Radio Academy named Michael as the most played artist on British radio between the period of 1984–2004.[9] The documentary A Different Story was released in 2005; it covered his personal life and professional career.[10] In 2006, George Michael announced his first tour in 15 years, the worldwide 25 Live tour, spanning three individual tours over the course of three years (2006, 2007 and 2008).[11]
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Post by marcus on Dec 2, 2012 19:14:08 GMT
Maxwell Reed
Maxwell Reed (2 April 1919, Larne, Northern Ireland – 16 August 1974) was a British actor who became a matinee idol during the 1950s with the Rank Organisation in Britain. He trained at the Rank Organisation's "charm school".
He was the first husband of Joan Collins whom he married on 24 May 1952. The marriage ended in divorce in 1956. Collins later claimed in her 1978 autobiography Past Imperfect that the divorce was a result of Reed's alleged attempt to sell her to an Arab sheik.
Reed was best known for his roles in the films The Dark Man, Blackout, Daybreak, The Clouded Yellow, There Is Another Sun and The Brain Machine. He also appeared to good effect in non-genre films such as Helen of Troy, Sea Devils, The Brothers, and The Square Ring (in a role later played on television by Sean Connery).
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Post by elvis on Dec 3, 2012 15:54:29 GMT
Ruth Westheimer
(born June 4, 1928) is a Jewish-American sex therapist, media personality, and author. Best known as Dr. Ruth, The New York Times described her as a "Sorbonne-trained psychologist who became a kind of cultural icon in the 1980s.… She ushered in the new age of freer, franker talk about sex on radio and television—and was endlessly parodied for her limitless enthusiasm and for having an accent only a psychologist could have."
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Post by marcus on Dec 3, 2012 21:45:52 GMT
Windsor Davies
Windsor Davies (born 28 August 1930, Canning Town, West Ham, London is a British actor, best known for playing the part of Battery Sergeant Major Williams in the British sitcom It Ain't Half Hot Mum (1974-81).
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Post by elvis on Dec 4, 2012 13:39:10 GMT
Daddy Yankee,
Ramón Luis Ayala RodrÃguez (born February 3, 1977), known by his stage name Daddy Yankee, is a Latin Grammy Award-winning Puerto Rican Reggaeton songwriter and recording artist. Ayala was born in Santurce, Puerto Rico, and was raised in the Villa Kennedy Housing Projects.[2]
While still dabbling in music, Ayala aspired to be a professional baseball player. As a teenager, Ayala tried out for the Seattle Mariners Major League baseball team.[2] Before he could be officially signed by the team, Ayala was hit by a stray round from an AK-47 rifle while taking a break from a studio recording session with reggaeton mixtape icon DJ Playero.[2] Ayala spent roughly one and a half years recovering from the wound in a hospital, and was temporarily restricted to moving about only with a wheelchair. The bullet was never removed from Ayala's hip, and he credits the shooting incident with allowing him to focus entirely on a music career.
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Post by marcus on Dec 5, 2012 19:19:23 GMT
Yasser Arafat
Was a Palestinian leader. He was Chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), President of the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) and leader of the Fatah political party and former paramilitary group, which he founded in 1959. Arafat spent much of his life fighting against Israel in the name of Palestinian self-determination. Originally opposed to Israel's existence, he modified his position in 1988 when he accepted UN Security Council Resolution 242. Arafat and his movement operated from several Arab countries. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Fatah faced off with Jordan in a brief civil war. Forced out of Jordan and into Lebanon, Arafat and Fatah were major targets of Israel's 1978 and 1982 invasions of that country.
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