Avatar Posted by lanerough 362 days ago (http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com)
Category: Today's Birthday
Clay, nicknamed “The Lion of Whitehall,” was an American politician who made a name for himself as an outspoken abolitionist and the publisher of the True American antislavery newspaper. In 1843, Clay was shot by a hired assassin. He defended himself against his attacker with a Bowie knife he kept strapped to his chest. Astonishingly, it was this knife's scabbard that stopped the assassin's bullet. What world-famous boxer was born Cassius Marcellus Clay, Jr.?
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Avatar Posted by lanerough 363 days ago (http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com)
Category: Today's Birthday
Berry was one of the most innovative musicians of the 1950s, and his distinctive blues-derived guitar style and witty lyrics helped define rock music for decades. His signature crouching and gliding "duck walk" has been imitated by several rock guitarists, including Angus Young of AC/DC. Berry was among the first group of musicians to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame when it opened in 1986, and he received Kennedy Center Honors in 2000. Can you name 3 of his most famous songs?
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Avatar Posted by lanerough 364 days ago (http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com)
Category: Today's Birthday
Miller was an American dramatist whose plays often deal with issues of morality and the pressures exerted on people by family and society. The Crucible, one of his most famous works, is a dynamic dramatization of the 17th century Salem witch trials and a parable about the US in the McCarthy era. His masterpiece, Death of a Salesman, won the Pulitzer Prize, 3 Tony Awards, and the New York Drama Critics Circle Award. In 1956, Miller married what famous movie star?
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Avatar Posted by lanerough 365 days ago (http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com)
Category: Today's Birthday
Ben-Gurion was an Israeli statesman and one of the founders of the state of Israel. Born in Russian Poland, he witnessed the religious persecution of the minority Jewish population and vowed to work toward an independent Jewish state. A founder and leader of the Labor (Mapai) party and an early leader of the trade union Histadrut, he became the first prime minister of the state of Israel. What was Ben-Gurion's stance on the Irgun's planned King David hotel bombing?
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Avatar Posted by lanerough 366 days ago (http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com)
Category: Today's Birthday
Nietzsche was a German philosopher whose critiques of contemporary culture, religion, and philosophy centered on a basic question regarding the foundation of values and morality. He passionately rejected Western bourgeois civilization and regarded Christian civilization as decadent; in place of its "slave morality," he looked to the superman, the creator of a new heroic morality that would consciously affirm life and life values. What is Nietzsche's concept of “perspectivism”?
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Avatar Posted by lanerough 367 days ago (http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com)
Category: Today's Birthday
King James II of England and VII of Scotland was the last Catholic monarch to rule over England, Scotland, and Ireland. His reign, from 1685 to 1688, culminated in the Glorious Revolution, in which Protestants deposed him in favor of Mary II and William of Orange. The belief that James was the legitimate ruler became known as Jacobitism, and Jacobites thereafter attempted to restore the Stuart line to the thrones of England and Scotland. Who protected James after he fled England?
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Avatar Posted by lanerough 368 days ago (http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com)
Category: Today's Birthday
The first female Prime Minister of Great Britain, Thatcher served longer than any other British PM in the 20th century. She was noted for policies that dismantled many aspects of Britain's postwar welfare state and privatized many state-run industries. By 1990, interest rates had risen to 15%, undermining her core voting base and contributing, along with internal party disputes over the poll tax and European integration, to her 1992 retirement. Why was she called the "Iron Lady”?
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Avatar Posted by lanerough 369 days ago (http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com)
Category: Today's Birthday
Crowley was a 20th century English occultist who developed a religious philosophy called Thelema. As a young adult, he was a member of the influential Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, an occult fraternity, but later turned toward Buddhism and Yoga. While on vacation in Cairo, Egypt, Crowley had a mystical experience involving a voice that dictated The Book of the Law, relating Thelemic religious philosophy. According to Crowley, what did this voice call itself?
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