George Washington. Famous people in English. Personajes famosos en inglés.

George Washington

George Washington (1732-1799) was the first President of the United States of America. He served as President from April 30, 1789, until March 4, 1797 (two terms). His Vice-President was John Adams (1735-1826), who was later voted the second President of the USA.

Early Life:
George Washington was born on February 22, 1732, in Westmoreland County, Virginia. Washington’s father died when George was 11 years old. He had very little formal schooling, but taught himself to be an expert woodsman, surveyor (a person who determines the boundaries and area of tracts of land), and mapmaker. Washington grew to be over 6 feet tall — this was very rare in Colonial times.

French and Indian War:
As a young man, Washington joined the Virginia militia. He and six men traveled 500 miles north to the shores of Lake Erie to deliver a message to the French — the French were ordered to stop settling land that was claimed by the British. This land dispute led to a battle in which Washington and 160 men lost to the French; this was the beginning of the French and Indian War (the British and the Colonists fought the French and some Indian tribes). After many heroic battles, Washington became a colonel and the leader of Virginia’s militia. The British eventually won the French and Indian War.

Marriage:
Washington married Martha Custis (born June 2, 1731 – died May 22, 1802) in 1759. Martha was a rich widow who had two children, Martha «Patsy» and John «Jacky.» Their home in Virginia was called Mt. Vernon. George and Martha did not have children together.

A Start in Politics:
In 1758, Washington was elected to the House of Burgesses in Virginia (the local governing body of Virginia).

Revolutionary War:
In order to pay for the expensive French and Indian War, the British taxed the Colonists (the Stamp Tax), angering them. In Boston, the Colonists revolted, dumping precious tea into Boston Harbor (this event is called the Boston Tea Party).

In 1775, Washington was chosen as the Commander in Chief of the Colonial Army. In 1776, the Colonists declared their independence from the British. General Washington led ragtag Patriot troops who were poorly trained, barely paid, badly equipped, and outnumbered by the British. Patriot women, like Molly «Pitcher,» often helped on the battlefields, carrying pitchers of water to cool down the cannons so they could be re-fired, and also nursing the wounded.

Due to the brilliant planning of George Washington and some help from the French late in the War, the British were defeated in 1781 after many bloody battles. The Americans were now independent of the British.

The US Constitution:
After independence, the Americans were governed under the Articles of Confederation (adopted by the Patriots in 1777), but the country struggled.

1787, Washington presided over the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, during which the US Constitution was written.

The US Constitution outlined a representative government with checks and balances among three branches of government : the Executive (the President), the Legislative Branch (law makers), and the Judicial Branch (judges and courts). The Constitution was ratified in 1788 — it went into effect in 1789. The next step was to set up this new, revolutionary form of government.

President of the US:
Washington was unanimously elected President of the United States of America by electors in early 1789 and again in 1792. Both votes were unanimous. John Adams was his vice-president. Washington’s first inauguration took place in New York City, New York (which was the first capital of the USA, from 1789 to 1790). Washington’s second inauguration took place in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (it was the capital from 1790 to 1800). Washington refused a third Presidential term, saying in his farewell speech that a longer rule would give one man too much power.

During Washington’s presidency, the Bill of Rights (the first 10 amendments to the US Constitution) was adopted (in 1791). The Bill of Rights guarantees the rights of the American people. In Washington’s cabinet were Thomas Jefferson (Secretary of State), Alexander Hamilton (Secretary of Treasury), Henry Knox (Secretary of War), and Edmund Randolph (Attorney General).

Washington wore false teeth made from hippopotamus ivory.

Washington died on December 14, 1799, at his home, Mt. Vernon, located in Fairfax County, Virginia. After his death, the nation’s capital was moved from Philadelphia to a location on the border of Virginia and Maryland near Washington’s home, and was named Washington, District of Columbia in his honor.

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Franklin D. Roosevelt. Famous people in English. Personajes famosos en inglés.

Franklin D. Roosevelt

Franklin Delano Roosevelt was the 32nd President of the United States.

Roosevelt led the United States through the Great Depression and World War II

Born on January 30, 1882, in Hyde Park, New York.

Roosevelt died in Georgia in 1945.

His family was wealthy. The family lived at Springwood, their estate in the Hudson River Valley in New York State. While growing up, Franklin Roosevelt was surrounded by privilege and a sense of self-importance.

Franklin Roosevelt entered Harvard University, determined to make something of himself.

During his last year at Harvard, he became engaged to Eleanor Roosevelt, his fifth cousin. They married on March 17, 1905.

In 1910, at age 28, Roosevelt was invited to run for the New York state senate. Breaking from family tradition, he ran as a Democrat in a district that had voted Republican for the past 32 years.

Franklin Roosevelt was energetic and an efficient administrator. He specialized in business operations, working with Congress to get budgets approved and systems modernized, and he founded the U.S. Naval Reserve.

In 1914, Franklin Roosevelt, decided to run for the U.S. Senate seat for New York. Roosevelt was soundly defeated in the primary election and learned a valuable lesson that national stature could not defeat a well-organized local political organization.

With his political career thriving, Franklin D. Roosevelt accepted the nomination for vice president—as James M. Cox’s running mate—at the 1920 Democratic Convention.

While vacationing at Campobello Island, New Brunswick, Canada, he was diagnosed as having contracted polio. For a time, Franklin Roosevelt was resigned to being a victim of polio, believing his political career to be over. But Eleanor Roosevelt and political confidante Louis Howe encouraged him to continue on.

Al Smith urged Franklin Roosevelt to run for governor of New York, in 1928. Roosevelt was narrowly elected, and the victory gave him confidence that his political star was rising.

By 1930, Republicans were being blamed for the Great Depression and Franklin Roosevelt sensed opportunity. He began his run for the presidency, calling for government intervention in the economy to provide relief, recovery and reform. His upbeat, positive approach and personal charm helped him defeat Republican incumbent Herbert Hoover in November 1932.

By 1936, the economy showed signs of improvement.

However, as military conflicts emerged in Asia and Europe, Roosevelt sought ways to assist China in its war with Japan and declared France and Great Britain were America’s «first line of defense» against Nazi Germany.

Early in 1940, Roosevelt had not publically announced that he would run for an unprecedented third term as president. But privately, with Germany’s victories in Europe and Japan’s growing dominance in Asia, he felt that only he had the experience and skills to lead America in such trying times.

During World War II, Franklin Roosevelt was a commander in chief who worked with and sometimes around his military advisors. He helped develop a strategy for defeating Germany in Europe through a series of invasions, first in North Africa in November 1942, then Sicily and Italy in 1943, followed by the D-Day invasion of Europe in 1944.

The stress of war, however, began to take its toll on Franklin Roosevelt. In March 1944, hospital tests indicated he had atherosclerosis, coronary artery disease and congestive heart failure.

In February 1945, Franklin Roosevelt attended the Yalta Conference with British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Soviet General Secretary Joseph Stalin to discuss post-war reorganization.

On the afternoon of April, 12, 1945, Roosevelt suffered a massive cerebral hemorrhage and died.

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Famous people in English. Personajes famosos en inglés.Woody Allen.

Woody Allen.

Woody Allen is an American screenwriter, director, actor, comedian, author, playwright, and musician.

Allen was born in The Bronx and raised in Brooklyn, NY, the son of Nettie, a bookkeeper at her family’s delicatessen, and Martin Konigsberg , a jewelry engraver and waiter.

His childhood was not particularly happy: his parents did not get along, and he had a rocky relationship with his stern, temperamental mother.

During that time, he lived in an apartment at 968 East 14th Street.

He impressed students with his extraordinary talent at card and magic tricks.

He began to call himself Woody Allen.At the age of 17, he legally changed his name to Heywood Allen.

After high school, he attended New York University, where he studied communication and film. He later briefly attended City College of New York and soon flunked out. Later, he learned via self-study rather than the classroom. He eventually taught at The New School. He also studied with writing teacher Lajos Egri.

He became a full-time writer for humorist Herb Shriner, initially earning $75 a week. At the age of 19, he started writing scripts for The Ed Sullivan Show, The Tonight Show, specials for Sid Caesar post-Caesar’s Hour (1954–1957), and other television shows.

In 1961, he started a new career as a stand-up comedian, debuting in a Greenwich Village club called the Duplex.

Allen started writing short stories and cartoon captions for magazines such as The New Yorker; he was inspired by the tradition of four prominent New Yorker‘s humoristsAllen is also an accomplished author, having published four collections of his short pieces and plays.

He also became a successful Broadway playwright and wrote Don’t Drink the Water in 1966.

His first movie was the Charles K. Feldman production What’s New Pussycat? in 1965, for which he wrote the initial screenplay.Allen directed, starred in, and wrote Take the Money and Run in 1969, which received positive reviews. In 1972, he wrote and starred in the film version of Play It Again, Sam, which was directed by Herbert Ross and co-starred Diane Keaton. In 1976, he starred in The Front.

Allen’s 1980s films, even the comedies, have somber and philosophical undertones, with their influences being the works of European directors, specifically Ingmar Bergman and Federico Fellini.

Allen combined tragic and comic elements in such films as Hannah and Her Sisters and Crimes and Misdemeanors.

For many years, Allen wanted to make a film about the origins of jazz in New Orleans.

Allen has had three wives: Harlene Rosen (1954–1959), Louise Lasser (1966–1969) and his present marriage to Soon-Yi Previn (1997–present). Though Allen had a 10-year romantic relationship with actress Mia Farrow, the two were never married. Allen also had romantic relationships with Diane Keaton and Stacey Nelkin.

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Famous people in English. Personajes famosos en inglés. Margaret Tudor. QUEEN OF SCOTS

Margaret Tudor. QUEEN OF SCOTS:

Margaret Tudor was the daughter of Henry VII of England and Elizabeth of York, and the elder sister of Henry VIII.

Margaret Tudor lived from 29 November 1489 to 18 October 1541.

it was her wedding that led to the unification of the Crowns of England and Scotland in 1603 by James VI/I, the son of two of Margaret Tudor’s grandchildren.

It has been said that fate intended Margaret to be Queen of Scots.

On 24 January 1502, Scotland and England concluded the Treaty of Perpetual Peace, between them, to be guaranteed by the parallel marriage treaty agreed between James and Margaret. The marriage took place on 8 August 1503 at Holyrood Abbey in Edinburgh. After three childred died in infancy, their first surviving son, James, was born in April 1512, and their second, Alexander, Earl of Ross was born in April 1514.

But by then Margaret was a widow and her first son was already James V of Scotland. In 1509 Henry VII of England had been succeeded by Margaret’s brother, Henry VIII, whose aggressive stance towards France led inevitably to war. Scotland and France had a long-standing mutual assistance treaty, the Auld Alliance, so in 1513, James IV left Margaret, bitterly opposed to the war, at Linlithgow Palace, and led a Scottish army south into England. The outcome, on 9 September 1513, was the worst military disaster in Scottish history, the Battle of Flodden, in which an entire generation of Scottish nobility, including James IV, was wiped out. James IV’s will appointed Margaret as Regent for the young James V unless she remarried, and the Privy Council reluctantly agreed: so at the age of 24, Margaret found herself a pregnant, widowed young mother, trying to rule a Scotland reeling in the aftermath of a crushing defeat at the hands of her brother’s English army.

By the middle of 1514, Margaret had just about gained control of the most important factions threatening to rip Scotland apart, and fended off calls for her to be replaced as Regent by James V’s uncle, John Stewart, 2nd Duke of Albany. However, on 6 August 1514, in a move that remarkably foreshadowed the start of the fall from power of her granddaughter, Mary Queen of Scots, Margaret secretly married Archibald Douglas, 6th Earl of Angus, described even by his own uncle as a «young, witless fool». By doing so she forfeited the Regency under the terms of James IV’s will, and in September 1514 the Privy Council appointed the Duke of Albany, then resident in France, as Regent.

The Duke of Albany returned to Scotland in May 1515 and was formally made Regent in July that year. Margaret, meanwhile, was holed up in Stirling Castle with her sons, only surrendering them to Albany in August after what amounted to a genteel siege. By now pregnant with the Earl of Angus’s child, Margaret Tudor fled to England. In October she gave birth to Margaret Douglas, the future Countess of Lennox and mother of Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley, one day to be the second husband of Mary Queen of Scots, Margaret Tudor’s granddaughter via James V.

While in England, Margaret heard the news of the death of her young son, Alexander, Earl of Ross: probably by natural causes, although her husband tried to convince her that the Duke of Albany was to blame. In 1517 she returned to Scotland where she discovered that in her absence her feckless new husband had been living with a former lover, Lady Jane Stewart, and using Margaret’s money to do so.

When the Duke of Albany returned – again – to Scotland in 1521 after spending three years in France, Margaret formed a close alliance with him. This lasted until 1524, when Margaret mounted a coup d’état that saw Albany deposed as Regent, fleeing again to France. The 12 year old James V was brought from Stirling to Edinburgh to great popular acclaim to take up his personal rule: under the continuing close guidance of his mother. At about the same time, Margaret formed an attachment with Henry Stewart, a younger brother of Lord Avondale. In November 1524 Margaret’s husband, the Earl of Angus arrived in Edinburgh with a large group of armed men, claiming that he had a right to attend Parliament. Margaret ordered the cannons at Edinburgh Castle and Holyrood House to open fire on him. The Earl of Angus did subsequently regain a foothold in Scottish society, and then used it to keep James V a virtual prisoner for three years.

March 1527 Pope Clement VII granted Margaret’s request for a divorce from the Earl of Angus, and when she heard of it in December that year she rapidly married Henry Stewart. In June 1528, James V was finally able to exercise real power, and he appointed his mother and her third husband, now titled Lord Methven, as senior advisers. Lord Methven proved even more partial to his wife’s money and other women’s company than the Earl of Angus had done, but Margaret was unsuccessful in either retiring to England or obtaining a second divorce.

From 1538, Margaret, finally reconciled with Lord Methven, formed a close bond with her new daughter-in-law, Marie de Guise, the French Queen of James V. She continued to play an active part in court life until her death from a severe stroke at Methven Castle, Perthshire on 18 October 1541.

The parallels between the life of Margaret Tudor and the life of her granddaughter Mary Queen of Scots are uncanny. Both married foreign kings before becoming very young widows. Both married unwisely twice more. And both even married someone called Henry Stewart. Yet it says much for Margaret’s ability and determination that while her granddaughter held the reigns of power in Scotland for just six years, Margaret herself did so, in one form or another, for the better part of three decades.

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Margaret Thatcher. Famous people in English. Personajes famosos en inglés.

Margaret Thatcher. 

Margaret Thatcher was Britain’s prime minister (or ‘PM’) for almost 12 years between 1979 and 1990.

She was often called «the Iron Lady».

Childhood:

She was born «Margaret Hilda Roberts» in Grantham, a small town in eastern England, on 13 October 1925.

When she was born the town was still recovering from the Great War of 1914-18.

The Second World War broke out in 1939 when she was 14 and lasted till 1945 when she was 20.

There was no television when she was small.

She loved films, which were a new thing when she was a child. Most came from America and she watched as many as she could.

She went to state schools and worked hard, winning a place at Oxford University when she was 18 to study chemistry.

But what she really wanted to do was to go into politics.

At university she won her first election, becoming president of the student Conservative Association.

Candidate for parliament & getting married:

After university she got her first job as a chemist and tried to become the Member of Parliament (or MP) for a town called Dartford in Kent, on the edge of London. She tried twice, in 1950 and 1951. She didn’t come close to winning, because most voters in Dartford supported the Labour Party. But she was the youngest woman candidate in the country, and very pretty, so her picture was in lots of newspapers. The photo to the left shows how she looked at this time. She hugely enjoyed fighting the elections.

It was in Dartford that she met and married Denis Thatcher, so becoming «Margaret Thatcher».

He was older than her and had fought in the war. They were a very close couple.

After years of trying she was chosen to be the Conservative candidate for Finchley, in north London.

Soon she was asked to become a member of the government, responsible for pensions and benefits. She was good at understanding all the complicated rules, and worked hard.

 

Education Minister:

Margaret Thatcher had a bad time as Education Minister, especially in her first year. She was attacked by people who were annoyed that she had abolished free school milk for older children and got the nickname «milk snatcher».

Leader of the Opposition:

After the election the Conservatives argued about what had gone wrong.

There was another election in October 1974 and they lost that one too.

Because her party wasn’t in power, but was much the largest party opposed to the government, she became «Leader of the Opposition».

She did that job for four years.

Prime Minister – first term:

Her government felt it had to do some painful things, particularly putting up interest rates to stop prices rising too fast (which is called inflation). As a result lots of people lost their jobs (known as unemployment). The policies were very unpopular at first and there were many protests and criticisms.

But in time things began to improve. Prices stopped rising so fast and the economy began to grow again.

Prime Minister – Second Term:

Margaret Thatcher’s second term as Prime Minister opened with almost as many problems as the first.

In October 1984, when the strike was still going on, the Irish Republican Army (IRA) attempted to murder Margaret Thatcher and many of her colleagues by bombing their hotel in Brighton during the Conservative Party annual conference. Although she survived unhurt, some of her closest friends were among the injured and dead. The room next to her bedroom was severely damaged, so the attackers came close to killing her.

She became a very well known international figure, with a particularly close relationship to the US President Ronald Reagan.

Prime Minister – Third Term:

There were huge reforms of education, local government and health care, all of them very controversial.

In these years the Cold War began to come to an end, an event in which Margaret Thatcher played her part.

She resigned as Prime Minister on November 28 1990. John Major succeeded her and held the job until the landslide election of Tony Blair’s Labour Government in May 1997.

She lives in London still. She has not been very well in recent years and is quite forgetful now, but she enjoys life and has many friends and admirers.

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Lauren Bacall. Famous people in English. Personajes famosos en inglés.

Lauren Bacall.

Lauren Bacall born Betty Joan Perske, September 16, 1924.

She is an American film and stage actress and model, known for her distinctive husky voice and sultry looks.

She first emerged as leading lady in the Humphrey Bogart film To Have And Have Not (1944) and continued on in the film noir genre, with appearances in Bogart movies The Big Sleep (1946) and Dark Passage (1947), as well as a comedienne in How to Marry a Millionaire (1953) with Marilyn Monroe and Designing Woman (1957) with Gregory Peck.

Bacall has also worked on Broadway in musicals, gaining Tony Awards for Applause in 1970 and Woman of the Year in 1981. Her performance in the movie The Mirror Has Two Faces (1996) earned her a Golden Globe Award and an Academy Award nomination.

Born Betty Joan Perske in New York City, she was the only child of Natalie Weinstein-Bacal, a secretary who later legally changed her surname to Bacall, and William Perske, who worked in sales.

Bacall’s parents were Jewish immigrants, from Poland and Romania, who emigrated through Ellis Island. She is first cousin to Shimon Peres, current President and former Prime Minister of Israel.Her parents divorced when she was five, and she took the Romanian form of her mother’s last name, Bacall. Bacall no longer saw her father and formed a close bond with her mother, whom she took with her to California when she became a movie star.

Bacall took lessons at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. During this time, she became a theatre usher and worked as a fashion model.

In Young Man with a Horn (1950), co-starring Kirk Douglas, Doris Day, and Hoagy Carmichael, Bacall played a two-faced femme fatale. This movie is often considered the first big-budget jazz film. During 1951-52, Bacall co-starred with Bogart in the syndicated action-adventure radio series Bold Venture. Bacall starred in the CinemaScope comedy How to Marry a Millionaire (1953), a runaway hit that saw her teaming up with Marilyn Monroe and Betty Grable.

Bacall’s movie career waned in the 1960s, and she was only seen in a handful of films. On Broadway she starred in Goodbye, Charlie (1959), Cactus Flower (1965), Applause (1970) and Woman of the Year (1981). She won Tony Awards for her performances in the latter two.

During the 1980s and early 1990s, Bacall appeared in the poorly received star vehicle The Fan (1981), as well as some star-studded features such as Robert Altman‘s Health (1980), Michael Winner‘s Appointment with Death (1988), and Rob Reiner‘s Misery (1990).

On May 21, 1945, Bacall married Humphrey Bogart. Their wedding and honeymoon took place at Malabar Farm, Lucas, Ohio. Bacall was 20 and Bogart was 45. They remained married until Bogart’s death from esophageal cancer in 1957.

Shortly after Bogart’s death in 1957, Bacall had a relationship with singer and actor Frank Sinatra.

Bacall was married to actor Jason Robards, Jr., who resembled Bogart in various ways, from 1961 to 1969. According to Bacall’s autobiography, she divorced Robards mainly because of his alcoholism.

Bacall had a son and daughter with Bogart and a son with Robards.

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Whitney Houston. Famous people in English. Personajes famosos en inglés.

Whitney Houston

Date of Birth:

9 August 1963, Newark, New Jersey, USA

Date of Death:

11 February 2012, Beverly Hills, Los Angeles, California, USA (accidental drowning caused by heart disease and cocaine use)

Birth Name:

Whitney Elizabeth Houston

Whitney Elizabeth Houston was born into a musical family on 9 August 1963, in Newark, New Jersey.

She was  the daughter of gospel star Cissy Houston, cousin of singing star Dionne Warwick and goddaughter of soul legend Aretha Franklin.

She began singing in the choir at her church, The New Hope Baptist Church in Newark, as a young child and by the age of 15 was singing backing vocals professionally with her mother on Chaka Khan‘s 1978 hit, ‘I’m Every Woman’. She went on to provide backing vocals for Lou Rawls, Jermaine Jackson and her own mother and worked briefly as a model, appearing on the cover of ‘Seventeen’ magazine in 1981.

She began working as a featured vocalist for the New York-based funk band Material and it was the quality of her vocal work with them that attracted the attention of the major record labels, including Arista with whom she signed in 1983 and where she stayed for the rest of her career.

Her debut album, ‘Whitney Houston’, was released in 1985 and became the biggest-selling album by a debut artist. Several hit singles, including ‘Saving All My Love For You’, ‘How Will I Know’, ‘You Give Good Love’, and ‘The Greatest Love of All’, were released from the album, setting her up for a Beatles-beating seven consecutive US number ones. The album itself sold 3 million copies in its first year in the US and went on to sell 25 million worldwide, winning her the first of her six Grammies.

The 1987 follow-up album, ‘Whitney’, which included the hits ‘Where Do Broken Hearts Go’ and ‘I Wanna Dance With Somebody’, built on her success but it was the 1992 film El guardaespaldas (1992) that sealed her place as one of the best-selling artists of all time. While the movie itself and her performance in it were not highly praised, the soundtrack album and her cover of the Dolly Parton song ‘I Will Always Love You’ topped the singles and albums charts for months and sold 44 million copies around the world.

That same year she married ex-New Edition singer Bobby Brown with whom she had her only child, their daughter Bobbi Kristina Brown in March 1993. It was about this time that her much documented drug use began and by 1996 she was a daily user.

Her 1998 album, ‘My Love Is Your Love’ was well reviewed but the drug abuse began to affect her reputation and press reports at the time said that she was becoming difficult to work with, if she turned up at all. She was dropped from a performance at The 72nd Annual Academy Awards (2000) (TV) because she was «out of it» at rehearsals. Her weight fluctuated wildly – she was so thin at a ‘Michael Jackson’ tribute in 2001 that rumors circulated the next day that she had died – and her voice began to fail her. She was twice admitted to rehab and declared herself drug-free in 2010 but returned to rehab in May 2011.

Her 2009 comeback album ‘I Look To You’ was positively received and sold well, but promotional performances were still marred by her weakened voice. Her final acting performance was in Sparkle (2012) (a remake of the 1976 movie, Sparkle (1976)), released after her death.

She was found dead in a Beverly Hills hotel room on 11 February 2012.

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ERNEST HEMINGWAY. Famous people in English. Personajes famosos en inglés.

 ERNEST HEMINGWAY.

Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961), born in Oak Park, Illinois, started his career as a writer in a newspaper office in Kansas City at the age of seventeen.

After the United States entered the First World War, he joined a volunteer ambulance unit in the Italian army. Serving at the front, he was wounded, was decorated by the Italian Government, and spent considerable time in hospitals.

After his return to the United States, he became a reporter for Canadian and American newspapers and was soon sent back to Europe to cover such events as the Greek Revolution.

During the twenties, Hemingway became a member of the group of expatriate Americans in Paris, which he described in his first important work, The Sun Also Rises (1926). Equally successful was A Farewell to Arms (1929), the study of an American ambulance officer’s disillusionment in the war and his role as a deserter.

Hemingway used his experiences as a reporter during the civil war in Spain as the background for his most ambitious novel, For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940). Among his later works, the most outstanding is the short novel, The Old Man and the Sea (1952), the story of an old fisherman’s journey, his long and lonely struggle with a fish and the sea, and his victory in defeat.

Hemingway produced most of his work between the mid-1920s and the mid-1950s, and won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1954.

Hemingway – himself a great sportsman – liked to portray soldiers, hunters, bullfighters – tough, at times primitive people whose courage and honesty are set against the brutal ways of modern society, and who in this confrontation lose hope and faith. His straightforward prose, his spare dialogue, and his predilection for understatement are particularly effective in his short stories, some of which are collected in Men Without Women (1927) and The Fifth Column and the First Forty-Nine Stories (1938).

Shortly after the publication of The Old Man and the Sea in 1952, Hemingway went on safari to Africa, where he was almost killed in two successive plane crashes that left him in pain or ill-health for much of the rest of his life. Hemingway had permanent residences in Key West, Florida, and Cuba during the 1930s and 1940s, but in 1959 he moved from Cuba to Ketchum, Idaho, where he committed suicide in the summer of 1961.

Hemingway’s legacy to American literature is his style: writers who came after him emulated it or avoided it.

Almost exactly 35 years after Hemingway’s death, on July 1, 1996, his granddaughter Margaux Hemingway died in Santa Monica, California. Margaux was a supermodel and actress, co-starring with her sister Mariel in the 1976 movie Lipstick. Her death was later ruled a suicide, making her «the fifth person in four generations of her family to commit suicide.»

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Marilyn Monroe. Famous people in English. Personajes famosos en inglés.

Marilyn Monroe.

Norma Jeane Mortensen Baker , professionally recognized as Marilyn Monroe,was an American actress, model, and singer, who became a major sex symbol, starring in a number of commercially successful motion pictures.

Marilyn Monroe was born on June 1, 1926, in the Los Angeles County Hospital.

Norma Jeane became one of Blue Book’s most successful models; she appeared on dozens of magazine covers. Her successful modeling career brought her to the attention of Ben Lyon, a 20th Century Fox executive, who arranged a screen test for her. Lyon was impressed and commented, «It’s Jean Harlow all over again.

Following her idol Jean Harlow, she decided to choose her mother’s maiden name of Monroe. Several variations such as Norma Jeane Monroe and Norma Monroe were tried and initially «Jeane Monroe» was chosen. Eventually, Lyon decided Jeane and variants were too common, and he decided on a more alliterative sounding name. He suggested «Marilyn», commenting that she reminded him of Marilyn Miller.

The actress’s first movie role was an uncredited role as a telephone operator in The Shocking Miss Pilgrim in 1947, starring Betty Grable.

She won a brief role that same year in Dangerous Years and extra appearances in the western film Green Grass of Wyoming starring Peggy Cummins and the musical film You Were Meant for Me starring Jeanne Crain and Dan Dailey. She also won a three-scene role as Betty in Scudda Hoo! Scudda Hay!, but before the film’s release her part was cut-down to a brief one-line scene.Monroe’s latest three films wouldn’t be released until 1948, which was months after her contract had ended in late 1947.

She starred in the low-budget musical Ladies of the Chorus (1948).

She had a small role in the Marx Brothers film Love Happy (1949). Monroe impressed the producers, who sent her to New York to feature in the film’s promotional campaign.

Monroe had brief roles in three films: A Ticket to Tomahawk, Right Cross, and The Fireball.

In 1951, Monroe enrolled at University of California, Los Angeles, where she studied literature and art appreciation. Afterward Monroe had minor parts in four films. In March 1951, she appeared as a presenter at the 23rd Academy Awards ceremony.

She made her first appearance on the cover of Life magazine in April 1952, where she was described as «The Talk of Hollywood».

Four films in which Monroe featured were released beginning in 1952. She had been lent to RKO Studios to appear in a supporting role in Clash by Night, a Barbara Stanwyck drama, directed by Fritz Lang.  Released in June 1952, the film was popular with audiences, with much of its success credited to curiosity about Monroe, who received generally favorable reviews from critics.

This was followed by two films released in July, the comedy We’re Not Married!, and the drama Don’t Bother to Knock. We’re Not Married!

Monkey Business, a successful comedy directed by Howard Hawks starring Cary Grant and Ginger Rogers, was released in September and was the first movie in which Monroe appeared with platinum blonde hair.

In O. Henry’s Full House for 20th Century Fox, released in August 1952, Monroe had a single one-minute scene with Charles Laughton, yet she received top billing alongside him and the film’s other stars, including Anne Baxter, Farley Granger, Jean Peters and Richard Widmark.

Darryl F. Zanuck considered that Monroe’s film potential was worth developing and cast her in Niagara, as a femme fatale scheming to murder her husband, played by Joseph Cotten.

Monroe next replaced Betty Grable in the musical film Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953) co-starring Jane Russell and directed by Howard Hawks.

She was assigned to the western River of No Return, opposite Robert Mitchum.

In late 1953 Monroe was scheduled to begin filming The Girl in Pink Tights with Frank Sinatra. When she failed to appear for work, 20th Century Fox suspended her.

Monroe and Joe DiMaggio were married in San Francisco on January 14, 1954. They traveled to Japan soon after, combining a honeymoon with a business trip previously arranged by DiMaggio. Returning to Hollywood in March 1954, Monroe settled her disagreement with 20th Century Fox and appeared in the musical There’s No Business Like Show Business. The film failed to recover its production costs and was poorly received.

One of Monroe’s most notable film roles was shot in September 1954, a skirt-blowing key scene for The Seven Year Itch on Lexington Avenue at 52nd Street in New York City.

Joe DiMaggio was reported to have been present and infuriated by the spectacle.After a quarrel, witnessed by journalist Walter Winchell, the couple returned to California where they avoided the press for two weeks, until Monroe announced that they had separated. Their divorce was granted in November 1954.

The first film to be made under the contract and production company was Bus Stop directed by Joshua Logan.

Bus Stop was followed by The Prince and the Showgirl directed by Laurence Olivier, who also co-starred.

With Miller’s encouragement she returned to Hollywood in August 1958 to star in Some Like It Hot. The film was directed by Billy Wilder and co-starred Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis.

Monroe was acclaimed for her performance and won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy.

Monroe’s health deteriorated during this period, and she began to see a Los Angeles psychiatrist, Dr. Ralph Greenson.

The Misfits, directed by John Huston and starring Clark Gable, Montgomery Clift, Eli Wallach and Thelma Ritter became her last completed film.

Monroe received the 1961 Golden Globe Award as «World Film Favorite» in March 1962, five months before her death.

In 1962, Monroe began filming Something’s Got to Give, which was to be the third film of her four-film contract with 20th Century Fox. It was to be directed by George Cukor, and co-starred Dean Martin and Cyd Charisse. She was ill with a virus as filming commenced, and suffered from high temperatures and recurrent sinusitis.

On May 19, 1962, she attended the early birthday celebration of President John F. Kennedy at Madison Square Garden, at the suggestion of Kennedy’s brother-in-law, actor Peter Lawford. Monroe performed «Happy Birthday» along with a specially written verse based on Bob Hope‘s «Thanks for the Memory«. Kennedy responded to her performance with the remark, «Thank you. I can now retire from politics after having had ‘Happy Birthday’ sung to me in such a sweet, wholesome way.»

Monroe returned to the set of Something’s Got to Give and filmed a sequence in which she appeared nude in a swimming pool. Commenting that she wanted to «push Liz Taylor off the magazine covers», she gave permission for several partially nude photographs to be published by Life. Having only reported for work on twelve occasions out of a total of 35 days of production,  Monroe was dismissed. Monroe was replaced by Lee Remick, and when Dean Martin refused to work with any other actress, he was also threatened with a lawsuit.

On August 5, 1962, LAPD police sergeant Jack Clemmons received a call at 4:25 am from Dr. Ralph Greenson, Monroe’s psychiatrist, proclaiming that Monroe was found dead at her home in Brentwood, Los Angeles, California.^[139] She was 36 years old. At the subsequent autopsy, eight milligram per cent of Chloral hydrate and 4.5 milligram percent of Nembutal were found in her system, and Dr. Thomas Noguchi of the Los Angeles County Coroners office recorded cause of death as «acute barbiturate poisoning,» resulting from a «probable suicide.» Many theories, including murder, circulated about the circumstances of her death and the timeline after the body was found. Some conspiracy theories involved John and Robert Kennedy, while other theories suggested CIA or Mafia complicity. It was reported that the last person Monroe called was the President.

On August 8, 1962, Monroe was interred in a crypt at Corridor of Memories #24, at the Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery in Los Angeles.

Monroe had three marriages, all of which ended in divorce. The first was to James Dougherty, the second to Joe DiMaggio, and lastly to Arthur Miller.

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Queen Victoria. Famous people in English. Personajes famosos en inglés.

Queen Victoria:

Queen Victoria was the monarch of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland from 20 June 1837 until her death. From 1 May 1876, she used the additional title of Empress of India.

 

Victoria was the longest reigning British monarch and the figurehead of a vast empire. She oversaw huge changes in British society and gave her name to an age.

 

Victoria was the daughter of Prince Edward, Duke of Kent and Strathearn, the fourth son of King George III.

She inherited the throne at the age of 18 after her father’s three elder brothers died without surviving legitimate issue. The United Kingdom was already an established constitutional monarchy, in which the Sovereign held relatively few direct political powers. Privately, she attempted to influence government policy and ministerial appointments. Publicly, she became a national icon, and was identified with strict standards of personal morality.

She married her first cousin, Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, in 1840. Their nine children and 26 of their 34 grandchildren who survived childhood married into royal and noble families across the continent, tying them together and earning her the nickname «the grandmother of Europe». After Albert’s death in 1861, Victoria plunged into deep mourning and avoided public appearances. As a result of her seclusion, republicanism temporarily gained strength, but in the latter half of her reign, her popularity recovered. Her Golden and Diamond Jubilees were times of public celebration.

Her reign of 63 years and 7 months, which is longer than that of any other British monarch and the longest of any female monarch in history, is known as the Victorian era. It was a period of industrial, cultural, political, scientific, and military change within the United Kingdom, and was marked by a great expansion of the British Empire. She was the last British monarch of the House of Hanover.

In 1897, Victoria had written instructions for her funeral, which was to be military as befitting a soldier’s daughter and the head of the army, and white instead of black. She was dressed in a white dress and her wedding veil.

Her funeral was held on Saturday 2 February in St George’s Chapel, Windsor Castle, and after two days of lying-in-state, she was interred beside Prince Albert in Frogmore Mausoleum at Windsor Great Park. As she was laid to rest at the mausoleum, it began to snow.

The national pride connected with the name of Victoria – the term Victorian England, for example, stemmed from the Queen’s ethics and personal tastes, which generally reflected those of the middle class.

 

 

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