Branches of Mathematics

Pure mathematics

• Algebra
• Calculus
• Geometry
• Topology
• Trignometry
• Combinatorics
• Logic
• Number theory

Applied mathematics

• Dynamical systems and differential equations
• Mathematical physics
• Computing
• Information theory and signal processing
• Probability and statistics
• Game theory
• Operations research

Related Topics

• Electromagnetic Spectrum
• Linear Equations
• Applied Physics
• Nano Technology
• Engineering Sciences
• Mathematical Medicine
• Fluid dynamics
• Computational Mathematics
• Gamma Ray Optics
• Onfrared Optics
• Relative Velocity
• Iciam
• Intelligent Imaging Neuroscience
• Biomedical Engineering
• Neuroscience Research
• Quantum Cosmology
• Brain Research

• 1909
• 1910
• 1911
• 1912
• 1913
• 1914
• 1915
• 1916
• 1917
• 1918
• 1919
• 1920
• 1921
• 1922
• 1923
• 1924
• 1925
• 1926
• 1927
• 1928
• 1929
• 1930
• 1931
• 1932
• 1933
• 1934
• 1935
• 1936
• 1937
• 1938
• 1939
• 1940
• 1941
• 1942
• 1943
• 1944
• 1945
• 1946
• 1947
• 1948
• 1949
• 1950
• 1951
• 1956
• 1960
• 1961
• 1962
• 1963
• 1966
• 1967
• 1968
• 1969
• 1971
• 1972
• 1980s
• 1987
• 1990
• 1990s
• 2000–2009
• 2007
• 2008
• 2009
• 2009 flu pandemic
• 2010
• 2010 AFL season
• 2010 FIFA World Cup
• 2010 in Algeria
• 2010 in archaeology
• 2010 in architecture
• 2010 in Argentina
• 2010 in art
• 2010 in Australia
• 2010 in aviation
• 2010 in baseball
• 2010 in basketball
• 2010 in Belgium
• 2010 in Brazil
• 2010 in Canada
• 2010 in comics
• 2010 in Denmark
• 2010 in Egypt
• 2010 in El Salvador
• 2010 in film
• 2010 in France
• 2010 in Germany
• 2010 in Ghana
• 2010 in home video
• 2010 in Hungary
• 2010 in India
• 2010 in Iran
• 2010 in Iraq
• 2010 in Ireland
• 2010 in Israel
• 2010 in Italy
• 2010 in Japan
• 2010 in Kenya
• 2010 in literature
• 2010 in Lithuania
• 2010 in Luxembourg
• 2010 in Malaysia
• 2010 in Mexico
• 2010 in music
• 2010 in New Zealand
• 2010 in Norway
• 2010 in Pakistan
• 2010 in paleontology
• 2010 in poetry
• 2010 in Poland
• 2010 in politics
• 2010 in radio
• 2010 in Romania
• 2010 in rugby league
• 2010 in Russia
• 2010 in science
• 2010 in Singapore
• 2010 in South Africa
• 2010 in South Korea
• 2010 in spaceflight
• 2010 in Spain
• 2010 in sports
• 2010 in Sri Lanka
• 2010 in television
• 2010 in video gaming
• 2010 Lisbon summit
• 2010 Winter Olympics
• 2010s
• 2011
• 2012
• 2013
• 2020s
• 2030s
• 2040s
• 20th century
• 21st century
• 22nd century
• 3rd millennium
• Ab urbe condita
• Abel Muzorewa
• Abu Daoud
• Afghan War Diary
• Al Qaeda
• Alain Corneau
• Alan Sillitoe
• Alberto Giacometti
• Alex Higgins
• Alexander Haig
• Alexander McQueen
• Algirdas Brazauskas
• Ali Hassan al-Majid
• Andor Lilienthal
• Andre Geim
• Andrey Voznesensky
• André Kolingba
• Angola
• Anno Domini
• Antihydrogen
• Antimatter
• Anton Geesink
• Antonio Pettigrew
• April 1
• April 10
• April 13
• April 14
• April 16
• April 19
• April 20
• April 2010
• April 21
• April 25
• April 27
• April 3
• April 30
• April 4
• April 5
• April 6
• April 7
• April 8
• Ariel Ramírez
• Armenian calendar
• Arthur Penn
• Ash Wednesday
• Assyrian calendar
• Atoms
• August 1
• August 10
• August 11
• August 12
• August 16
• August 17
• August 18
• August 2010
• August 22
• August 23
• August 24
• August 26
• August 27
• August 28
• August 30
• August 31
• August 5
• August 6
• August 7
• August 8
• August 9
• Aung San Suu Kyi
• Austerity
• Bahá'í calendar
• Bailout
• Bangkok
• BBC
• BBC News
• Bella Akhmadulina
• Beltane
• Bengali calendar
• Benoit Mandelbrot
• Benoît Mandelbrot
• Bent Larsen
• Berber calendar
• Bernard Giraudeau
• Beryl Bainbridge
• Besian Idrizaj
• Bishkek
• Blake Edwards
• Bobbejaan Schoepen
• Bon Om Thook
• Bruno Cremer
• Buddhist calendar
• Burj Khalifa
• Burma
• Byzantine calendar
• Cambodia
• Cancún
• Candlemas
• Captain Beefheart
• Carlos Andrés Pérez
• Carnival
• Category 2010 awards
• Category 2010 births
• Category 2010 deaths
• Category 2010 in law
• Category 2010 works
• Central Java
• CERN
• Cesare Siepi
• Charles Mackerras
• Chef d'escadron
• Chile
• Chinese calendar
• Christmas
• Claude Chabrol
• Common Era
• Common year
• Copiapó
• Coptic calendar
• Corey Haim
• Corin Redgrave
• Credit rating
• Cross-quarter day
• Cuba
• Dale T. Mortensen
• Deaths in 2010
• December 10
• December 12
• December 13
• December 15
• December 17
• December 2010
• December 21
• December 25
• December 26
• Deepwater Horizon
• Dennis Hopper
• Developing nations
• Dick Francis
• Dino De Laurentiis
• Diwali
• DNA sequencing
• Downtown Vancouver
• Dubai
• Easter
• Economy of Greece
• Edoardo Sanguineti
• Ei-ichi Negishi
• Eid al-Adha
• Eid ul-Fitr
• Elizabeth II
• Emerging markets
• Enzo Bearzot
• Equinox
• Erich Segal
• Ethiopian calendar
• Eugene Terre'Blanche
• Euro
• European Union
• Eurozone
• Eyjafjallajokull
• Eyjafjallajökull
• Farooq Leghari
• February 1
• February 10
• February 11
• February 12
• February 14
• February 16
• February 17
• February 18
• February 2
• February 20
• February 2010
• February 27
• February 28
• February 3
• February 6
• February 7
• Financial Times
• Francesco Cossiga
• Francisco Varallo
• Frank Frazetta
• G-20 major economies
• G8
• Gary Coleman
• Gaza flotilla raid
• Gene synthesis
• Gennady Yanayev
• Genome
• Georges Charpak
• Giulietta Simionato
• Giuseppe Taddei
• Gloria Stuart
• Godfrey Binaisa
• Greece
• Gregorian calendar
• Gregory Issacs
• Guido de Marco
• Gulf of Mexico
• Guru (rapper)
• Haiti
• Hajo Herrmann
• Hank Jones
• Hanuman Jayanti
• Harry Mulisch
• Harvey Pekar
• Hebrew calendar
• Heisei
• Henryk Górecki
• Herb Ellis
• High-yield debt
• Hindu calendar
• Holi
• Holocene calendar
• House arrest
• Howard Zinn
• Hwang Jang-yop
• Ice cap
• Iceland
• Imbolc
• Indonesia
• Indus River
• Iranian calendar
• Irvin Kershner
• Iskandar of Johor
• Islamic calendar
• J. D. Salinger
• James W. Black
• January 11
• January 12
• January 13
• January 15
• January 17
• January 18
• January 19
• January 2010
• January 22
• January 25
• January 27
• January 3
• January 4
• January 6
• January 7
• January 8
• January 9
• Japanese calendar
• Jean Simmons
• Jill Clayburgh
• Joan Sutherland
• Johan Ferrier
• John Dankworth
• John Forsythe
• Jonathan Motzfeldt
• José Saramago
• Julian calendar
• July 11
• July 12
• July 14
• July 17
• July 2
• July 2010
• July 21
• July 24
• July 25
• July 29
• July 3
• July 4
• July 5
• July 8
• June 1
• June 10
• June 11
• June 14
• June 16
• June 18
• June 19
• June 2
• June 2010
• June 23
• June 26
• June 28
• June 3
• June 9
• June Havoc
• Jyoti Basu
• Kali Yuga
• Kasubi Tombs
• Kate McGarrigle
• Kathryn Grayson
• Khattiya Sawasdipol
• Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa
• Konstantin Novoselov
• Korean calendar
• Korean Peninsula
• Korean War
• Krishna Janmashtami
• Kurmanbek Bakiyev
• Kyoto Protocol
• Kyrgyz people
• Kyrgyzstan
• L'Homme qui marche I
• Lammas
• Laurent Fignon
• Lech Kaczyński
• Lena Horne
• Lent
• Leonid Kizim
• Leslie Nielsen
• Libya
• List of centuries
• List of decades
• List of earthquakes
• List of years
• Liu Xiaobo
• Louise Bourgeois
• Luigi Poggi
• Luis Corvalán
• Luis García Berlanga
• Lynn Redgrave
• Mabon (Wicca)
• Malcolm McLaren
• Manute Bol
• Marcel Bigeard
• March 1
• March 10
• March 12
• March 14
• March 16
• March 20
• March 2010
• March 21
• March 22
• March 24
• March 26
• March 27
• March 28
• March 29
• March 3
• March 30
• March 4
• Mardi Gras
• Marina Semyonova
• Mario Vargas Llosa
• Martin Gardner
• Martin Sandberger
• Maurice Allais
• May 1
• May 10
• May 12
• May 15
• May 16
• May 17
• May 18
• May 19
• May 2
• May 20
• May 2010
• May 22
• May 24
• May 28
• May 29
• May 31
• May 4
• May 5
• May 7
• May 8
• May 9
• Mediterranean Sea
• Michael Foot
• Miep Gies
• Miguel Delibes
• Milka Planinc
• Millennium
• Minguo calendar
• Mohammed Mzali
• MotoGP
• Mount Merapi
• MSNBC
• Msnbc.com
• Nasr Abu Zayd
• Neanderthal
• Netherlands Antilles
• New York Times
• Nicola Cabibbo
• Norman Wisdom
• North Korea
• November 10
• November 11
• November 12
• November 13
• November 16
• November 17
• November 19
• November 2
• November 20
• November 2010
• November 21
• November 22
• November 23
• November 27
• November 28
• November 29
• November 3
• November 4
• November 5
• Nowruz
• Néstor Kirchner
• October 10
• October 11
• October 13
• October 14
• October 19
• October 20
• October 2010
• October 22
• October 23
• October 25
• October 26
• October 27
• October 28
• October 30
• October 4
• October 7
• October 9
• Offshore drilling
• Orthodox Christmas
• Pablo Picasso
• Panajot Pano
• Passover
• Patricia Neal
• Paul Mayer
• Peter A. Diamond
• Peter Graves (actor)
• Peter Steele
• Phnom Penh
• Phnom Penh stampede
• Port-au-Prince
• Portal 2010s
• President of Niger
• President of Poland
• PubMed Identifier
• Pyroclastic flows
• Raimon Panikkar
• Raksha Bandhan
• Rama Navami
• Regnal year
• Republic of China
• Republic of Ireland
• Reuters
• Richard F. Heck
• Richard Holbrooke
• Robert Byrd
• Robert Culp
• Robert G. Edwards
• ROKS Cheonan sinking
• Roman numerals
• Ronald Neame
• Ronnie James Dio
• Rosh Hashanah
• Roza Otunbayeva
• Rudolf Barshai
• Rue McClanahan
• Ryszard Kaczorowski
• Salou Djibo
• San José Mine
• Satoshi Kon
• Science (journal)
• Seoul
• September 10
• September 11
• September 12
• September 17
• September 18
• September 2
• September 2010
• September 22
• September 23
• September 24
• September 26
• September 28
• September 29
• September 30
• September 5
• September 8
• September 9
• Sexagenary cycle
• Shavuot
• Shoya Tomizawa
• Shrove Tuesday
• Sigmar Polke
• Sinan Hasani
• Solar-powered plane
• Solomon Burke
• Standard & Poor's
• Stephen J. Cannell
• Stjepan Bobek
• Stock market
• Sukkot
• Sumatra
• Summer solstice
• Tandja Mamadou
• Ted Stevens
• Teddy Pendergrass
• Teena Marie
• Thai solar calendar
• Thailand
• The Chosun Ilbo
• The Guardian
• The New York Times
• Time (magazine)
• Tom Bosley
• Tom Walkinshaw
• Tomáš Špidlík
• Tony Curtis
• Tony Judt
• Tsunami
• Tsutomu Yamaguchi
• Uganda
• Umaru Yar'Adua
• United Arab Emirates
• United Kingdom
• United Nations
• United States
• United States dollar
• Unix time
• USA Today
• Uzbeks
• Valentina Tolkunova
• Vasily Smyslov
• Vernal Equinox
• Vikram Samvat
• Viktor Chernomyrdin
• Vitali Sevastyanov
• Vladimir Arnold
• Vladislav Ardzinba
• Volcanic ash
• Western Christianity
• WikiLeaks
• Wikileaks
• Wikipedia Link rot
• Winter solstice
• Wolfgang Wagner
• World Heritage Site
• Yemen
• Yeonpyeong Island
• Yom Kippur
• Yvonne Loriod
• Zelda Rubinstein
• Zilda Arns
• £
• Éric Rohmer
• 
  

• 
  Angola
  Angola, officially the Republic of Angola (Portuguese: República de Angola, pronounced: [ʁɨˈpublikɐ dɨ ɐ̃ˈɡɔla];Kikongo, Kimbundu, Umbundu: Repubilika ya Ngola), is a country in southern Africa bordered by Namibia on the south, the Democratic Republic of the Congo on the north, and Zambia on the east; its west coast is on the Atlantic Ocean with Luanda as its capital city. The exclave province of Cabinda has borders with the Republic of the Congo and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
  The Portuguese were present in some—mostly coastal—points of the territory of what is now Angola, from the 16th to the 19th century, interacting in diverse ways with the peoples that lived there. In the 19th century they slowly and hesitantly began to establish themselves in the interior. Angola as a Portuguese colony encompassing the present territory was not established before the end of the 19th century, and "effective occupation", as required by the Berlin Conference (1884) was achieved only by the 1920s. Independence was achieved in 1975, after a protracted liberation war. After independence, Angola was the scene of an intense civil war from 1975 to 2002. The country has vast mineral and petroleum reserves, and its economy has on average grown at a two-digit pace since the 1990s, especially since the end of the civil war. In spite of this, standards of living remain low for the majority of the population, and life expectancy and infant mortality rates in Angola are among the worst-ranked in the world. At the same time, a minority has reached comfortable life standards, and the dominant stratum has succeeded in accumulating considerable wealth, so that social inequality in Angola is one of the highest in the world.
  
  wn.com/Angola
• 
  Bangkok
  Bangkok is the capital city of and largest urban area in Thailand. It is known in Thai as Krung Thep Maha Nakhon (กรุงเทพมหานคร, pronounced [krūŋ tʰêːp máhǎː nákʰɔ̄ːn] ( listen)) or simply Krung Thep ( listen), meaning "city of angels". Bangkok is by far the most densely populated city in Thailand with about 12 million people. Bangkok was a small trading post near the mouth of the Chao Phraya River during the Ayutthaya Kingdom in the 15th century. It eventually grew in size and became the site of two capital cities: Thonburi in 1768 and Rattanakosin in 1782.
  Because of its strategic location in Southeast Asia, Siam (later Thailand) acted as a buffer-zone between the French and British colonial empires. Bangkok itself has gained a reputation as an independent, dynamic and influential city. Bangkok is the political, social and economic centre of Thailand, and one of the leading cities in Southeast Asia.
  Due to the 1980s and 1990s Asian investment boom, many multinational corporations make their regional headquarters in Bangkok and the city is a regional force in finance and business. Its increasing influence on global politics, culture, fashion and entertainment underlines its status as an Alpha global city. In 2009, it was the second most expensive city in South-East Asia behind Singapore. The city's many cultural landmarks and attractions in addition to its nightlife venues has made it synonymous with exoticism. Its rapid modernization, reflected in the cityscape and the urban society, has left untouched the historic Grand Palace, Wat Arun, Vimanmek Palace Complex and hundreds of Buddhist temples draw about 10 million international visitors each year, second only to London.
  
  wn.com/Bangkok
• 
  Bishkek
  Bishkek (in Kyrgyz and Russian: Бишкек), formerly Pishpek and Frunze, is the capital and the largest city of Kyrgyzstan. Bishkek is also the administrative centre of Chuy Province which surrounds the city, even though the city itself is not part of the province but rather a province-level unit of Kyrgyzstan.
  The name is thought to derive from a Kyrgyz word for a churn used to make fermented mare's milk (kumis), the Kyrgyz national drink. Founded in 1825 as the Kyrgyz-Khokand fortress of "Bishkek", then, in 1862, named as the Russian fortress Pishpek (крепость Пишпек), in 1926 the city was renamed Frunze (Фрунзе), after the Bolshevik military leader Mikhail Frunze. In 1991, the Kyrgyz parliament restored the city's historical name.
  Bishkek is situated at about 800 metres (2,600 ft) altitude just off the northern fringe of the Kyrgyz Ala-Too range, an extension of the Tian Shan mountain range, which rises up to 4,855 metres (15,928 ft) and provides a spectacular backdrop to the city. North of the city, a fertile and gently undulating steppe extends far north into neighboring Kazakhstan. The Chui River drains most of the area. Bishkek is connected to the Turkestan-Siberia Railway by a spur line.
  
  wn.com/Bishkek
• 
  Burj Khalifa
  Burj Khalifa (Arabic: برج خليفة‎ "Khalifa Tower"), known as Burj Dubai prior to its inauguration, is a skyscraper in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and is the tallest manmade structure in the world, at 829.84 m (2,723 ft). Construction began on 21 September 2004, with the exterior of the structure completed on 1 October 2009. The building officially opened on 4 January 2010, and is part of the new 2 km² (490-acre) flagship development called Downtown Dubai at the 'First Interchange' along Sheikh Zayed Road, near Dubai's main business district. The tower's architecture and engineering were performed by Skidmore, Owings and Merrill of Chicago, with Adrian Smith as chief architect, and Bill Baker as chief structural engineer. The primary contractor was Samsung C&T of South Korea.
  The total cost for the project was about US$1.5 billion; and for the entire "Downtown Dubai" development, US$20 billion. In March 2009, Mohamed Ali Alabbar, chairman of the project's developer, Emaar Properties, said office space pricing at Burj Khalifa reached US$4,000 per sq ft (over US$43,000 per m²) and the Armani Residences, also in Burj Khalifa, sold for US$3,500 per sq ft (over US$37,500 per m²).
  
  wn.com/Burj_Khalifa
• 
  Burma
  Burma ⁱ/ˈbɜrmə/ BUR-mə, also known as Myanmar ⁱ/ˌmjɑːnˈmɑr/ MYAHN--MAR, is a country in South Asia and Southeast Asia. It is bordered by India, Bangladesh, China, Laos and Thailand. One-third of Burma's total perimeter of 1,930 kilometres (1,200 mi) forms an uninterrupted coastline along the Bay of Bengal and the Andaman Sea. At 676,578 km² (261,227 sq mi), it is the 40th largest country in the world and the second largest country in Southeast Asia. Burma is also the 24th most populous country in the world with over 60.28 million people.
  Burma is home to some of the early civilizations of Southeast Asia including the Pyu and the Mon. In the 9th century, the Burmans of the Kingdom of Nanzhao, entered the upper Irrawaddy valley and, following the establishment of the Pagan Empire in the 1050s, the Burmese language and culture slowly became dominant in the country. During this period, Theravada Buddhism gradually became the predominant religion of the country. The Pagan Empire fell due to the Mongol invasions (1277–1301), and several warring states emerged. In the second half of the 16th century, the country was reunified by the Taungoo Dynasty which for a brief period was the largest empire in the history of Southeast Asia. The early 19th century Konbaung Dynasty ruled over an area that included modern Burma as well as Manipur and Assam. The country was colonized by Britain following three Anglo-Burmese Wars (1824–1885).
  
  wn.com/Burma
• 
  Cambodia
  Cambodia (ⁱ/kæmˈboʊdiə/;Khmer: ព្រះរាជាណាចក្រកម្ពុជា, Kampuchea, IPA: [kɑmˈpuˈciə]), officially known as the Kingdom of Cambodia, is a country located in the southern portion of the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia. With a total landmass of 181,035 square kilometres (69,898 sq mi), it is bordered by Thailand to the northwest, Laos to the northeast, Vietnam to the east, and the Gulf of Thailand to the southwest.
  With a population of over 14.8 million, Cambodia is the 68th most populous country in the world. The official religion is Theravada Buddhism, which is practiced by around 95% of the Cambodian population. The country minority groups include Vietnamese, Chinese, Chams and 30 various hill tribes. The capital and largest city is Phnom Penh; the political, economic, and cultural center of Cambodia. The kingdom is a constitutional monarchy with Norodom Sihamoni, a monarch chosen by the Royal Throne Council, as head of state. The head of government is Hun Sen, who is currently the longest serving leader in South East Asia and has ruled Cambodia for over 25 years.
  
  wn.com/Cambodia
• 
  Cancún
  Cancún (Spanish pronunciation: [kaŋˈkun]) is a city in south-eastern Mexico, located on the north-east coast of the Yucatán Peninsula in the Mexican state of Quintana Roo. It is a world-renowned tourist destination, as well as being the seat of the Benito Juárez municipality. The city is located off of the Caribbean Sea, and is one of the eastern-most points in Mexico. Cancún is located near/in Mexico's Caribbean coast resort band known as the Riviera Maya.
  There are two possible translations of Cancún, based on the Mayan pronunciation. The first translation is "nest of snakes or pot." The second version and less accepted is "place of the golden snake"^{[citation needed]}.
  The shield of the municipality of Benito Juárez, who represents the city of Cancun, was designed by the artist vital Jesús Carmichael Jiménez (Elio Carmichael). It is divided into three parts: The color blue symbolizes the Caribbean Sea, the yellow the sand and the red the sun with its rays.
  As documented in the earliest colonial sources, the island of Cancún was originally known to its Maya inhabitants as Nizuc (Yucatec Maya [niʔ suʔuk]) meaning either "promontory" or "point of grass". In the years after the Conquest, much of the population died off or left as a result of disease, warfare, piracy, and famines, leaving only small settlements on Isla Mujeres and Cozumel Island.^{[citation needed]}
  
  wn.com/Cancún
• 
  Central Java
  Central Java (Indonesian: Provinsi Jawa Tengah) is a province of Indonesia. The administrative capital is Semarang. It is one of six provinces on the island of Java. This province is the province of high Human Development in Indonesia and its Points Development Index countries is equivalent to Lebanon. The province of Central Java is 39,800.69 km² in area; approximately a quarter of the total land area of Java. Its population was 30,380,687 at the 2010 Census, making it the third most-populous province in Indonesia after West Java and East Java, and constituting a bit less than one quarter of the crowded island's population.
  Central Java is also a cultural concept that includes the Special Area and city of Yogyakarta. However, administratively the city and surrounding region has been part of a separate special region since Indonesian independence.
  Located in the middle of the island of Java, the Central Java province is bordered by West Java and East Java provinces. A small portion of its south region is the Yogyakarta Special Region province, fully enclosed by the Central Java province. Yogyakarta is historically and culturally part of the Central Java region, although it is currently a separate political entity. To the north and the south, the Central Java province faces the Java Sea and the Indian Ocean. Central Java also includes offshore islands such as Karimun Jawa Islands in the north, and Nusakambangan in the southwest.
  
  wn.com/Central_Java
• 
  CERN
  Coordinates: 46°14′03″N 6°03′10″E / 46.23417°N 6.05278°E / 46.23417; 6.05278
  The European Organization for Nuclear Research (French: Organisation européenne pour la recherche nucléaire), known as CERN ( /ˈsɜrn/; French pronunciation: [sɛʁn]; see History), is an international organization whose purpose is to operate the world's largest particle physics laboratory, which is situated in the northwest suburbs of Geneva on the Franco–Swiss border (46°14′3″N 6°3′19″E / 46.23417°N 6.05528°E / 46.23417; 6.05528). Established in 1954, the organization has twenty European member states.
  The term CERN is also used to refer to the laboratory itself, which employs just under 2400 full-time employees and hosts some 10000 visiting scientists and engineers representing 608 universities and research facilities and 113 nationalities.
  CERN's main function is to provide the particle accelerators and other infrastructure needed for high-energy physics research. Numerous experiments have been constructed at CERN by international collaborations to make use of them. It is also the birthplace of the World Wide Web. The main site at Meyrin also has a large computer centre containing very powerful data-processing facilities primarily for experimental data analysis and, because of the need to make them available to researchers elsewhere, has historically been a major wide area networking hub.
  
  wn.com/CERN
• 
  Chile
  Chile (ⁱ/ˈtʃɪliː/ or /ˈtʃɪleɪ/), officially the Republic of Chile (Spanish: República de Chile [reˈpuβlika ðe ˈtʃile] ( listen)), is a country in South America occupying a long, narrow strip of land between the Andes mountains to the east and the Pacific Ocean to the west. It borders Peru to the north, Bolivia to the northeast, Argentina to the east, and the Drake Passage in the far south. Along with Ecuador, it is one of two countries in South America that do not border Brazil. Chilean territory includes the Pacific islands of Juan Fernández, Salas y Gómez, Desventuradas and Easter Island. Chile also claims about 1,250,000 square kilometres (480,000 sq mi) of Antarctica, although all claims are suspended under the Antarctic Treaty.
  Chile's distinctive shape—4,300 kilometres (2,700 mi) long and on average 175 kilometres (109 mi) wide—makes it the longest country in the world, north to south, with the fifth lengthiest coastline at over 78 thousand kilometers. The diverse climate of Chile ranges from the world's driest desert in the north—the Atacama—through a Mediterranean climate in the centre, humid subtropical in Easter Island, to an Oceanic climate, including alpine tundra and glaciers in the east and south. The northern desert contains great mineral wealth, principally copper. The relatively small central area dominates in terms of population and agricultural resources, and is the cultural and political center from which Chile expanded in the late 19th century when it incorporated its northern and southern regions. Southern Chile is rich in forests and grazing lands, and features a string of volcanoes and lakes. The southern coast is a labyrinth of fjords, inlets, canals, twisting peninsulas, and islands.
  
  wn.com/Chile
• 
  Copiapó
  Copiapó (Spanish pronunciation: [kopjaˈpo]) is a city in northern Chile, located about 40 miles east of the coastal town of Caldera. Founded on December 8, 1744, it is the capital of Copiapó Province and Atacama Region.
  Copiapó lies about 800 km north of Santiago by the Copiapó River, in the valley of the same name. In recent years, the river has dried up due to mining and agricultural activity in the region. The town is surrounded by the Atacama Desert and receives little rain (12 mm per year). The population of Copiapó was 9,128 in 1903, 11,617 in 1907 and, as of 2002, there are 129,091 inhabitants.
  Copiapó is in a rich silver and copper mining district. It possesses a bronze statue of Juan Godoy, discoverer of the Chañarcillo silver mines in the 19th century. The Copiapó-Caldera railway line, built in 1850, was the first one in South America. The first section between Caldera and Monte Amargo was inaugurated on July 4 of 1850 in honour of the nationality of William Wheelwright, the American business man responsible for the project. The original wooden railway station is now a National Monument.
  
  wn.com/Copiapó
• 
  Cuba
  Cuba, officially the Republic of Cuba, (ⁱ/ˈkjuːbə/; Spanish: República de Cuba, pronounced: [reˈpuβlika ðe ˈkuβa] ( listen)) is an island country in the Caribbean. The nation of Cuba consists of the main island of Cuba, the Isla de la Juventud, and several archipelagos. Havana is the largest city in Cuba and the country's capital. Santiago de Cuba is the second largest city. To the north of Cuba lies the United States (140 km or 90 mi away) and the Bahamas, Mexico is to the west, the Cayman Islands and Jamaica are to the south, and Haiti and the Dominican Republic are to the southeast.
  In 1492, Christopher Columbus landed on and claimed the island now occupied by Cuba, for the Kingdom of Spain. Cuba remained a territory of Spain until the Spanish–American War ended in 1898, and gained formal independence from the U.S. in 1902. A fragile democracy, increasingly dominated by radical politics eventually evolved, solidified by the Cuban Constitution of 1940, but was definitely quashed in 1952 by former president Fulgencio Batista, and an authoritarian regime was set up, intensifying and catalyzing already rampant corruption, political repression and crippling economic regulations.Batista was ousted in January 1959 by the July 26 movement, and a new administration under Fidel Castro established, which had by 1965 evolved into a single-party state under the revived Communist Party of Cuba, which holds power to date.
  
  wn.com/Cuba
• 
  Downtown Vancouver
  Downtown Vancouver is the term used to describe the southeastern portion of the peninsula in the north-central part of Vancouver proper. It is the business, commercial, cultural, financial, government, and entertainment centre of the city and the Metro Vancouver lower mainland region.
  The downtown area is generally considered to be bounded by Burrard Inlet to the north, Stanley Park and the West End to the west, False Creek to the south, and the Downtown Eastside to the east. Most sources include the full downtown peninsula (adding the West End neighbourhood and Stanley Park) as downtown Vancouver, but the City of Vancouver defines them as separate neighbourhoods.
  Besides the readily identifiable office towers of the financial and central business districts, Downtown Vancouver also includes residential neighbourhoods in the form of high-rise apartment and condominiums, in Yaletown and Coal Harbour. Other downtown neighbourhoods include the Granville Mall and Entertainment District, Downtown's South, Gastown, Japantown, and Chinatown.
  
  wn.com/Downtown_Vancouver
• 
  Dubai
  Dubai (/duːˈbaɪ/ doo-BY; Arabic: دبيّ‎ Dubeii; IPA: [du'beii]) is an emirate within the United Arab Emirates (UAE). A city within the emirate is also named Dubai. The emirate is located south east of the Persian Gulf on the Arabian Peninsula and has the largest population with the second-largest land territory by area of all the emirates, after Abu Dhabi. Dubai and Abu Dhabi are the only two emirates to have veto power over critical matters of national importance in the country's legislature. Dubai City is located on the emirate's northern coastline.
  The earliest mention of Dubai is in 1095, and the earliest settlement known as Dubai town dates from 1799. Dubai was formally established in 1833 by Sheikh Maktoum bin Buti al Maktoum when he persuaded 800 members of the Bani Yas tribe, living in what is now part of Saudi Arabia, to follow him to the Dubai Creek by the Al Abu Falasa clan of Bani Yas. It remained under clan control when the United Kingdom assumed the protection of Dubai in 1892. Its geographical location made it an important trading hub and by the beginning of the 20th century, it was an important port.
  
  wn.com/Dubai
• 
  Gaza flotilla raid
  Coordinates: 32°38′28″N 33°34′02″E / 32.64113°N 33.56727°E / 32.64113; 33.56727
  The Gaza flotilla raid was a military operation by Israel against six ships of the "Gaza Freedom Flotilla" on 31 May 2010 in international waters of the Mediterranean Sea. The flotilla, organized by the Free Gaza Movement and the Turkish Foundation for Human Rights and Freedoms and Humanitarian Relief (İHH), was carrying humanitarian aid and construction materials, with the intention of breaking the Israeli-Egyptian blockade of the Gaza Strip.
  On 31 May 2010, Israeli Shayetet 13 naval commandos boarded the ships from speedboats and helicopters in order to force the ships to the Israeli port of Ashdod for inspection. On the Turkish ship MV Mavi Marmara, boarding faced resistance from about 40 IHH activists – described in a UN report as a "separate hardcore group" – who were armed with iron bars, dinner plates and knives. During the struggle, nine activists were killed, and many were wounded. All activist casualties were caused by gunshots, some of them in point blank range. Ten of the commandos were also wounded, one of them^[who?] seriously. The five other ships in the flotilla employed passive resistance, which was suppressed without major incident. The ships were towed to Israel, where all passengers were detained and deported.
  
  wn.com/Gaza_flotilla_raid
• 
  Greece
  Greece ⁱ/ˈɡriːs/ (Greek: Ελλάδα, Ellada, IPA: [eˈlaða] ( listen) historically in Katharevousa and Ancient Greek: Ἑλλάς, Hellas, IPA: [eˈlas] and [helːás] respectively), officially the Hellenic Republic (Ελληνική Δημοκρατία, Elliniki Dimokratia, IPA: [eliniˈci ðimokraˈtia]), is a country in Southern Europe, politically considered part of Western Europe.Athens is the capital and the largest city in the country (its urban area also including Piraeus). The population of the country is around 11 million.
  Greece has land borders with Albania, the Republic of Macedonia and Bulgaria to the north, and Turkey to the east. The Aegean Sea lies to the east of mainland Greece, the Ionian Sea to the west, and the Mediterranean Sea to the south. Greece has the 11th longest coastline in the world at 13,676 km (8,498 mi) in length, featuring a vast number of islands (approximately 1,400, of which 227 are inhabited), including Crete, the Dodecanese, the Cyclades, and the Ionian Islands among others. Eighty percent of Greece consists of mountains, of which Mount Olympus is the highest at 2,917 m (9,570 ft).
  
  wn.com/Greece
• 
  Gulf of Mexico
  The Gulf of Mexico (Spanish: Golfo de México) is an ocean basin largely surrounded by the North American continent and the island of Cuba. It is bounded on the northeast, north and northwest by the Gulf Coast of the United States, on the southwest and south by Mexico, and on the southeast by Cuba. In Texas and Louisiana it is often called the "Third Coast," in comparison with the U.S. Atlantic and Pacific coasts. The shape of its basin is roughly oval and is approximately 810 nautical miles (1,500 km) wide and filled with sedimentary rocks and debris. It is connected to the Atlantic Ocean through the Florida Straits between the U.S. and Cuba, and with the Caribbean Sea (with which it forms the American Mediterranean Sea) via the Yucatan Channel between Mexico and Cuba. With this narrow connection to the Atlantic, the Gulf experiences very small tidal ranges. The size of the Gulf basin is approximately 615,000 mi² (1.6 million km²). Almost half of the basin is shallow continental shelf waters. At its deepest it is 14,383 ft (4,384 m) at the Sigsbee Deep, an irregular trough more than 300 nautical miles (560 km) (550 km) long. The basin contains a volume of roughly 660 quadrillion gallons (2.5 × 10⁶ km³). It was formed approximately 300 million years ago as a result of plate tectonics.
  
  wn.com/Gulf_of_Mexico
• 
  Haiti
  Haiti ⁱ/ˈheɪti/ (French: Haïti [aiti]; Haitian Creole Ayiti [ajiti]), officially the Republic of Haiti (République d'Haïti; Repiblik Ayiti), is a Caribbean country. It occupies the western, smaller portion of the island of Hispaniola, in the Greater Antillean archipelago, which it shares with the Dominican Republic. Ayiti (land of high mountains) was the indigenous Taíno or Amerindian name for the island. The country's highest point is Pic la Selle, at 2,680 metres (8,793 ft). The total area of Haiti is 27,750 square kilometres (10,714 sq mi) and its capital is Port-au-Prince. Haitian Creole and French are the official languages.
  Haiti's regional, historical, and ethno-linguistic position is unique for several reasons. It was the first independent nation of Latin America and the Caribbean, the first black-led republic in the world, and the second republic in the Americas when it gained independence in 1804 as part of a successful slave revolution lasting nearly a decade. In 2012, Haiti announced its intention to seek associate membership status in the African Union. Haiti is the only predominantly Francophone independent nation in the Americas. It is one of only two independent nations in the Americas (along with Canada) to designate French as an official language; the other French-speaking areas are all overseas départements, or collectivités, of France.
  
  wn.com/Haiti
• 
  Iceland
  Iceland ⁱ/ˈaɪslənd/ (Icelandic: Ísland, IPA: [ˈislant]) is a Nordic European island country in the North Atlantic Ocean, on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. The country has a population of about 320,000 and a total area of 103,000 km² (40,000 sq mi). The capital and largest city is Reykjavík, with the surrounding areas in the southwestern region of the country being home to two-thirds of the country's population. Iceland is volcanically and geologically active. The interior mainly consists of a plateau characterised by sand fields, mountains and glaciers, while many glacial rivers flow to the sea through the lowlands. Iceland is warmed by the Gulf Stream and has a temperate climate despite a high latitude just outside the Arctic Circle.
  According to Landnámabók, the settlement of Iceland began in AD 874 when the chieftain Ingólfur Arnarson became the first permanent Norse settler on the island. Others had visited the island earlier and stayed over winter. Over the following centuries, Norsemen settled Iceland, bringing with them thralls (slaves) of Gaelic origin. From 1262 to 1918 Iceland was part of the Norwegian and later the Danish monarchies. Until the 20th century, the Icelandic population relied largely on fisheries and agriculture, and the country was one of the poorest and least developed in the world. Industrialisation of the fisheries and aid from the Marshall Plan brought prosperity in the years after World War II, and by the 1990s it was one of the world's wealthiest countries. In 1994, Iceland became party to the European Economic Area, which made it possible for the economy to diversify into economic and financial services.
  
  wn.com/Iceland
• 
  Indonesia
  Indonesia (ⁱ/ˌɪndəˈniːʒə/ IN-də-NEE-zhə or /ˌɪndoʊˈniːziə/ IN-doh-NEE-zee-ə), officially the Republic of Indonesia (Indonesian: Republik Indonesia Indonesian pronunciation: [rɛpʊblɪk ɪndɔnɛsɪa]), is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania. Indonesia is an archipelago comprising approximately 17,508 islands. It has 33 provinces with over 238 million people, and is the world's fourth most populous country. Indonesia is a republic, with an elected legislature and president. The nation's capital city is Jakarta. The country shares land borders with Papua New Guinea, East Timor, and Malaysia. Other neighboring countries include Singapore, Philippines, Australia, and the Indian territory of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. Indonesia is a founding member of ASEAN and a member of the G-20 major economies. The Indonesian economy is the world's 17th largest economy by nominal GDP.
  The Indonesian archipelago has been an important trade region since at least the 7th century, when Srivijaya and then later Majapahit traded with China and India. Local rulers gradually absorbed foreign cultural, religious and political models from the early centuries CE, and Hindu and Buddhist kingdoms flourished. Indonesian history has been influenced by foreign powers drawn to its natural resources. Muslim traders brought Islam, and European powers brought Christianity and fought one another to monopolize trade in the Spice Islands of Maluku during the Age of Discovery. Following three and a half centuries of Dutch colonialism, Indonesia secured its independence after World War II. Indonesia's history has since been turbulent, with challenges posed by natural disasters, corruption, separatism, a democratization process, and periods of rapid economic change.
  
  wn.com/Indonesia
• 
  Indus River
  The Indus River (Sanskrit: सिन्धु Sindhu; Urdu: دریائے سندھ Daryā-e Sindh; Hindi: सिन्धु नदी Sindhu; Sindhi: سنڌو Sindhu; Punjabi: سندھ Sindh; Gujarati: સિંધુ નદી Sindhu; Pashto: اباسين Abāsin "Father of Rivers"; Persian: رود سند Rūd-e Sind‎; Arabic: السند Al-Sind‎; Tibetan: སེང་གེ།་གཙང་པོ Sênggê Zangbo "Lion River"; Greek: Ινδός Indós; Turki: Nilab) is a major river which flows through Pakistan. It has courses through western Tibet (in China) and Northern India.
  Originating in the Tibetan plateau in the vicinity of Lake Mansarovar, the river runs a course through the Ladakh region of Jammu and Kashmir, Gilgit, Baltistan and flows through Pakistan in a southerly direction along the entire length of Pakistan to merge into the Arabian Sea near the port city of Karachi in Sindh. The total length of the river is 3,180 km (1,980 mi). It is Pakistan's longest river.
  The river has a total drainage area exceeding 1,165,000 km² (450,000 sq mi). Its estimated annual flow stands at around 207 km³ (50 cu mi), making it the twenty-first largest river in the world in terms of annual flow. Zanskar is its left bank tributary in Ladakh. In the plains, its left bank tributary is Chenab which itself has four major tributaries, namely, Jhelum, Ravi, Beas and Satluj. Its principal right bank tributaries are Shyok, Gilgit, Kabul, Gomal and Kurram. Beginning at the heights of the world in a spring and fed with glaciers and rivers in the Himalayas, the river supports ecosystems of temperate forests, plains and arid countryside.
  
  wn.com/Indus_River
• 
  Korean Peninsula
  The Korean Peninsula is a peninsula in East Asia. It extends southwards for about 684 miles (1,100 km) from continental Asia into the Pacific Ocean and is surrounded by the Sea of Japan to the east, and the Yellow Sea to the west, the Korea Strait connecting the first two bodies of water.
  Until the end of World War II, Korea was a single political entity whose territory roughly coincided with the Korean Peninsula. Since the Armistice Agreement ended the Korean War in 1953, the northern division of the peninsula has been governed by the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, while the southern portion has been governed by the Republic of Korea.
  The northern boundaries for the Korean Peninsula are commonly (and tacitly) taken to coincide with today's political borders between North Korea and her northern neighbors, China (1,416 km (880 mi) along the provinces of Jilin and Liaoning) and Russia (19 km (12 mi)). These borders are formed naturally by the rivers Yalu/Amnok and Tumen/Tuman/Duman. Taking this definition, the Korean Peninsula (including its islands) has an area of 220,847 km² (85,270 sq mi).
  
  wn.com/Korean_Peninsula
• 
  Kyrgyzstan
  Kyrgyzstan ( /ˈkɜrɡɨstæn/ KUR-gi-stan;Kyrgyz & Russian: Кыргызстан, Kyrgyzstan, or Киргизия, Kirgiziya), officially the Kyrgyz Republic is a nation located in Central Asia. Landlocked and mountainous, Kyrgyzstan is bordered by Kazakhstan to the north, Uzbekistan to the west, Tajikistan to the southwest and China to the east. Its capital and largest city is Bishkek.
  Kyrgyzstan is officially a democratic parliamentary republic. A revolution in April 2010 overthrew the former president Kurmanbek Bakiyev and resulted in the adoption of a new constitution and the appointment of an interim government. Presidential elections were held in November 2011.
  Kyrgyzstan is one of the active members of the Turkic Council and the TÜRKSOY community. The national language, Kyrgyz, is also closely related to the other Turkic languages, with which it shares strong cultural and historical ties.
  Additionally, Kyrgyzstan is a member of the Commonwealth of Independent States, the Eurasian Economic Community, the Non-aligned movement and the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation.
  
  wn.com/Kyrgyzstan
• 
  Libya
  Libya (Arabic: ‏ليبيا‎ Lībyā), Berber: ⵍⵉⴱⵢⴰ) is a country in the Maghreb region of North Africa bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to the north, Egypt to the east, Sudan to the southeast, Chad and Niger to the south, and Algeria and Tunisia to the west.
  With an area of almost 1.8 million square kilometres (700,000 sq mi), Libya is the third largest country in Africa by area, and the 17th largest in the world. The largest city, Tripoli, is home to 1.7 million of Libya's 6.4 million people. The three traditional parts of the country are Tripolitania, Fezzan and Cyrenaica.
  In 2009 Libya had the highest HDI in Africa and the fourth highest GDP (PPP) per capita in Africa, behind Seychelles, Equatorial Guinea and Gabon. Libya has the 10th-largest proven oil reserves of any country in the world and the 17th-highest petroleum production.
  As a result of the Libyan civil war, the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, which had at that time been in existence for 34 years, collapsed and Libya entered a period of governance by a transitional administration called the National Transitional Council. The NTC has stated its intention to oversee the first phase of a transition to constitutional democracy, after which it claims it will dissolve in favor of a representative legislature.
  
  wn.com/Libya
• 
  Netherlands Antilles
  The Netherlands Antilles (Dutch: Nederlandse Antillen [ˈneːjərlɑntsə ˈɑntɪlə(n)] ( listen), Papiamentu: Antia Hulandes), also referred to informally as the Dutch Antilles, was an autonomous Caribbean country within the Kingdom of the Netherlands, consisting of two groups of islands in the Lesser Antilles: Aruba, Bonaire, and Curaçao (ABC islands), in the Leeward Antilles just off the Venezuelan coast; and Sint Maarten, Saba, and Sint Eustatius (SSS islands) in the Leeward Islands southeast of the Virgin Islands.
  Aruba seceded in 1986 as a separate country within the Kingdom of the Netherlands, and the rest of the Netherlands Antilles was dissolved on 10 October 2010, resulting in two new constituent countries, Curaçao and Sint Maarten, with the other islands joining the Netherlands as "special municipalities", officially public bodies.
  The name 'Netherlands Antilles' is still sometimes used to indicate the Caribbean islands which are part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, the Dutch Caribbean islands.
  
  wn.com/Netherlands_Antilles
• 
  North Korea
  Coordinates: 40°00′N 127°00′E / 40°N 127°E / 40; 127 The Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK; Chosŏn'gŭl: 조선민주주의인민공화국), commonly referred to as "North Korea" ( listen), is a country in East Asia, occupying the northern half of the Korean Peninsula. Its capital and largest city is Pyongyang. The Korean Demilitarized Zone serves as the buffer zone between North Korea and South Korea. The Amnok, or Yalu, and the Tumen rivers form the border between North Korea and China. A section of the Tumen River in the far northeast is the border with Russia.
  The peninsula was governed by the Korean Empire until it was annexed by Japan after the Russo-Japanese War in 1910. It was divided into Soviet- and American-occupied zones in 1945, after the end of World War II. North Korea refused to participate in a United Nations–supervised election held in the south in 1948, which led to the creation of separate Korean governments for the two occupation zones. North and South Korea each claimed sovereignty over the whole Korean Peninsula, which led to the Korean War of 1950. The Armistice Agreement of 1953 ended the fighting; but the two countries are officially still at war against each other, for a peace treaty was never signed. Both states were accepted into the United Nations in 1991.
  
  wn.com/North_Korea
• 
  Phnom Penh
  Phnom Penh (/pəˈnɒm ˈpɛn/ or /ˈnɒm ˈpɛn/; Khmer: ភ្នំពេញ, Khmer pronunciation: [pnum pɨɲ]) is the capital and largest city of Cambodia. Located on the banks of the Mekong River, Phnom Penh has been the national capital since the French colonized Cambodia, and has grown to become the nation's center of economic and industrial activities, as well as the center of security, politics, economics, cultural heritage, and diplomacy of Cambodia.
  Once known as the “Pearl of Asia”, it was considered one of the loveliest French-built cities in Indochina in the 1920s. Phnom Penh, along with Siem Reap and Sihanoukville, are significant global and domestic tourist destinations for Cambodia. Founded in 1434, the city is noted for its beautiful and historical architecture and attractions. There are a number of surviving French colonial buildings scattered along the grand boulevards.
  Situated on the banks of the Tonlé Sap, Mekong and Bassac rivers, the Phnom Penh metropolitan area is home to more than 2 million of Cambodia’s population of over 14 million. The city is the wealthiest and most populous city in Cambodia and is home to the country’s political hub.
  
  wn.com/Phnom_Penh
• 
  Phnom Penh stampede
  The Phnom Penh stampede occurred on 22 November 2010 when 347 people were killed in a human stampede during the Khmer Water Festival celebrations in the Cambodian capital, Phnom Penh.
  The stampede occurred at the end of the three-day Water Festival to celebrate the end of the monsoon season and the semiannual reversal of flow of the Tonlé Sap river. Initial reports suggest that festival-goers had gathered on Koh Pich ("Diamond Island"), a spit of land stretching into the Tonlé Sap, to watch boat races and then a concert. Around four million people had attended the festival.
  It was the third incident in the festival's history resulting in fatalities, though it was by far the worst; five rowers on a boat drowned in 2008, and another drowned in 2009.
  The stampede began at 21:30 local time (14:30 UTC) on a bridge across the river, though witnesses said that people had been "stuck on the bridge" for several hours before, and victims were not freed until hours after the actual stampede occurred. 347 people died, and upwards of 755 more people were injured, some seriously, and many local hospitals were pushed far beyond capacity by the influx of victims. At one point, the death toll had been listed as being 456, but on 25 November, the government decreased its official death toll to 347, based on the total put forth by Cambodian minister of social affairs Ith Sam Heng. The death toll has increased to 353 victims.
  
  wn.com/Phnom_Penh_stampede
• 
  Republic of Ireland
  Ireland (/ˈaɪərlənd/ or /ˈɑrlənd/; Irish: Éire, pronounced [ˈeːɾʲə] ( listen)) is a sovereign state in Europe occupying about five-sixths of the island of Ireland. Its capital is Dublin. The population of the state was 4.59 million in 2011. It is a constitutional republic governed as a parliamentary democracy, with an elected president serving as head of state. In the 1937 constitution, the name of the state is given as simply "Ireland". The Constitution of Ireland (Article 4) and the Republic of Ireland Act 1948 provides that the "Republic of Ireland" (Irish: Poblacht na hÉireann) is "the description of the state".
  Ireland is a member of the European Union, the Council of Europe, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the World Trade Organisation and the United Nations. A developed country with the seventh highest Human Development Index, Ireland is also highly ranked for press freedom, economic freedom and democracy and political freedom.
  The modern Irish state was established in 1922 as the Irish Free State, a dominion within the British Empire, following the Anglo-Irish Treaty which brought an end to the Irish War of Independence. The partition of Ireland had already been provided for in previous British legislation in 1921 in response to opposition to Irish Home Rule or independence by Unionists, who formed a majority in the north-eastern part of the country. Six of the nine counties in the northern province of Ulster were established under that legislation as Northern Ireland, part of the United Kingdom, with which the Irish state shares its only land border. The state is otherwise surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean, with the Celtic Sea to the south, St George's Channel to the south east, and the Irish Sea to the east.
  
  wn.com/Republic_of_Ireland
• 
  ROKS Cheonan sinking
  The ROKS Cheonan sinking occurred on 26 March 2010, when the Cheonan, a Republic of Korea Navy ship carrying 104 personnel, sank off the country's west coast near Baengnyeong Island in the Yellow Sea, killing 46 seamen. A South Korean-led official investigation carried out by a team of international experts from South Korea, the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and Sweden presented a summary of its investigation on 20 May 2010, concluding that the warship had been sunk by a North Korean torpedo fired by a midget submarine.
  North Korea denied that it was responsible for the sinking, but it was still widely condemned for the attack among the international community. The People's Republic of China was one of few countries to dispute the claims and findings of the report. An investigation by the Russian Navy allegedly also did not concur with the report, but this was not confirmed. The United Nations Security Council made a Presidential Statement condemning the attack but without identifying the attacker.
  
  wn.com/ROKS_Cheonan_sinking
• 
  San José Mine
  The San José Mine (Spanish: Mina San José) is a small copper-gold mine located near Copiapó, Atacama Region, Chile. The mine is mostly known for its 2010 collapse which trapped 33 miners 700 metres (2,300 ft) underground. Its workings are reached by a long sloping roadway with many spiral turns (a diagram shows ten turns), not by a vertical mineshaft.
  The San José Mine is located 45 kilometers northwest of Copiapó. It began to be operated in 1889. In 1957, Jorge Kemeny Letay, a Hungarian immigrant founded the San Esteban Mining Company (Spanish: Compañía Minera San Esteban).
  According to Terra, the mine's annual sales surpassed 20 million dollars.
  Between 2003 and 2010, several mining accidents occurred in the mine, causing at least three deaths. In 2007, a geologist was killed in the mine, and led to its closure. It was reopened in May 2008 by SERNAGEOMIN – Servicio Nacional de Geología y Minería (National Geology and Mining Service). In July 2010, miner Gino Cortés lost one of his legs in an accident.
  
  wn.com/San_José_Mine
• 
  Seoul
  Seoul (Korean pronunciation: [sʌ.ul] ( listen), English /soʊl/), officially the Seoul Special City, is the capital and largest metropolis of South Korea. A megacity with a population of over 10 million, it is the largest city proper in the OECD developed world. The Seoul National Capital Area is the world's second largest metropolitan area with over 25 million inhabitants, which includes the surrounding Incheon metropolis and Gyeonggi province. Almost a quarter of South Koreans live in Seoul, half of South Koreans live in the metropolitan area, along with over 275,000 international residents.
  Located in the Han River, Seoul has been a major settlement for over 2,000 years, with its foundation dating back to 18 B.C. when Baekje, one of the Three Kingdoms of Korea, established its capital in what is now south-east Seoul. It continued as the capital of Korea during the Joseon Dynasty and the Korean Empire. The Seoul National Capital Area is home to four UNESCO World Heritage Sites: Changdeokgung, Hwaseong Fortress, Jongmyo Shrine and the Royal Tombs of the Joseon Dynasty.
  
  wn.com/Seoul
• 
  Thailand
  Thailand ( /ˈtaɪlænd/ TY-land or /ˈtaɪlənd/;Thai: ประเทศไทย, RTGS: Prathet Thai), officially the Kingdom of Thailand (Thai: ราชอาณาจักรไทย, RTGS: Ratcha Anachak Thai; IPA: [râːt.tɕʰā ʔāːnāːtɕàk tʰāj] ( listen)), formerly known as Siam (Thai: สยาม; RTGS: Sayam), is a country located at the centre of the Indochina peninsula in Southeast Asia. It is bordered to the north by Burma and Laos, to the east by Laos and Cambodia, to the south by the Gulf of Thailand and Malaysia, and to the west by the Andaman Sea and the southern extremity of Burma. Its maritime boundaries include Vietnam in the Gulf of Thailand to the southeast, and Indonesia and India in the Andaman Sea to the southwest.
  The country is a constitutional monarchy, headed by King Rama IX, the ninth king of the House of Chakri, who, having reigned since 1946, is the world's longest-serving head of state and the longest-reigning monarch in Thai history. The king of Thailand is titled Head of State, Head of the Armed Forces, the Upholder of the Buddhist religion, and the Defender of all Faiths.
  
  wn.com/Thailand
• 
  Uganda
  Coordinates: 1°17′N 32°23′E / 1.28°N 32.39°E / 1.28; 32.39
  Uganda ( /juːˈɡændə/ yew-GAN-də or /juːˈɡɑːndə/ yew-GAHN-də), officially the Republic of Uganda, is a landlocked country in East Africa. Uganda is bordered on the east by Kenya, on the north by South Sudan, on the west by the Democratic Republic of the Congo, on the southwest by Rwanda, and on the south by Tanzania. The southern part of the country includes a substantial portion of Lake Victoria, which is also shared by Kenya and Tanzania.
  Uganda takes its name from the Buganda kingdom, which encompasses a large portion of the south of the country including the capital Kampala.
  The people of Uganda were hunter-gatherers until 1,700 to 2,300 years ago, when Bantu-speaking populations migrated to the southern parts of the country. Uganda gained independence from Britain on 9 October 1962.
  The official languages are English and Swahili, although multiple other languages are spoken in the country.
  
  wn.com/Uganda
• 
  United Arab Emirates
  The United Arab Emirates ⁱ/juːˌnaɪtɨd ˌærəb ˈɛmɪrɨts/ (Arabic: دولة الإمارات العربية المتحدة‎, Al Imārāt al ‘Arabīyah al Muttaḥidah), sometimes simply called the Emirates or the UAE, is a country situated in the southeast of the Arabian Peninsula in Western Asia on the Persian Gulf, bordering Oman to the east and Saudi Arabia to the south, as well as sharing sea borders with Qatar to the west and Iran to the north.
  The UAE is a federation of seven emirates (equivalent to principalities), each governed by a hereditary emir, with a single national president. The constituent emirates are Abu Dhabi, Ajman, Dubai, Fujairah, Ras al-Khaimah, Sharjah, and Umm al-Quwain. The capital is Abu Dhabi, which is also the state's center of political, industrial, and cultural activities.
  Prior to independence in 1971, the UAE was known as the Trucial States or Trucial Oman, in reference to a 19th-century truce between the local sheikhs, hereditary rulers of the territories, and the United Kingdom. The term Pirate Coast was also used by some to refer to the emirates from the 18th to the early 20th century, owing to the preponderance of pirates operating from Emirati ports.
  
  wn.com/United_Arab_Emirates
• 
  United Kingdom
  The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (commonly known as the United Kingdom, the UK, or Britain) is a sovereign state located off the north-western coast of continental Europe. The country includes the island of Great Britain, the north-eastern part of the island of Ireland and many smaller islands. Northern Ireland is the only part of the UK that shares a land border with another sovereign state—the Republic of Ireland. Apart from this land border the UK is surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean, the North Sea, the English Channel and the Irish Sea.
  The United Kingdom is a unitary state governed under a constitutional monarchy and a parliamentary system, with its seat of government in the capital city of London. It is a country in its own right and consists of four countries: England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. There are three devolved administrations, each with varying powers, based in Belfast, Edinburgh and Cardiff, the capitals of Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales. Associated with the UK, but not constitutionally part of it, are three Crown Dependencies. The United Kingdom has fourteen overseas territories. These are remnants of the British Empire which, at its height in 1922, encompassed almost a quarter of the world's land surface and was the largest empire in history. British influence can still be observed in the language, culture and legal systems of many of its former territories.
  
  wn.com/United_Kingdom
• 
  United States
  The United States of America (commonly abbreviated to the United States, the U.S., the USA, America, and the States) is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district. The country is situated mostly in central North America, where its forty-eight contiguous states and Washington, D.C., the capital district, lie between the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, bordered by Canada to the north and Mexico to the south. The state of Alaska is in the northwest of the continent, with Canada to the east and Russia to the west, across the Bering Strait. The state of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific. The country also possesses several territories in the Pacific and Caribbean.
  At 3.79 million square miles (9.83 million km²) and with over 312 million people, the United States is the third or fourth largest country by total area, and the third largest by both land area and population. It is one of the world's most ethnically diverse and multicultural nations, the product of large-scale immigration from many countries. The U.S. economy is the world's largest national economy, with an estimated 2011 GDP of $15.1 trillion (22% of nominal global GDP and over 19% of global GDP at purchasing-power parity). Per capita income is the world's sixth-highest.
  
  wn.com/United_States
• 
  Yemen
  The Republic of Yemen (Arabic: الجمهورية اليمنية‎ al-Jumhūrīyah al-Yamanīyah), commonly known as Yemen ⁱ/ˈjɛmən/ (Arabic: اليَمَن‎ al-Yaman), is a country located in Western Asia, occupying the southwestern to southern end of the Arabian Peninsula. It is bordered by Saudi Arabia to the north, the Red Sea to the west, and Oman to the east. Yemen is considered one of the poorest countries in the Arab world. Its capital and largest city is Sana'a. Yemen's territory includes over 200 islands, the largest of which is Socotra, about 415 km (258 mi) to the south of mainland Yemen, off the coast of Somalia. It is the only state in the Arabian Peninsula to have a purely republican form of government. Approximately 53% of Yemenis are Sunnis, while 45% are Zaydi Shias.
  One etymology derives Yemen from yamin, meaning "on the right side", as the south is on the right when facing the sunrise. Another derives Yemen from yumn, meaning "felicity", as the region is fertile. The Romans called it Arabia Felix (Happy Arabia) as opposed to Arabia Deserta (Deserted Arabia), which was their term for northern Arabia.
  
  wn.com/Yemen

• Abel Muzorewa
  Bishop Abel Tendekayi Muzorewa (14 April 1925 – 8 April 2010) served as Prime Minister of Zimbabwe Rhodesia from the Internal Settlement to the Lancaster House Agreement in 1979. A Methodist bishop and nationalist leader, he held office for only a few months.
  Muzorewa was the eldest of a lay preacher's eight children and was educated at the United Methodist School, Old Umtali (near Mutare). He was a school teacher at Mrewa between 1943 and 1947 before becoming a full time lay preacher at Mtoko between 1947 and 1949. He then studied theology at Old Umtali Biblical College (1949–1952) and was ordained as a Minister at Umtali in August 1953. He was a pastor at Chiduku, near Rusape, from 1955 to 1958.
  He obtained an M.A. from Scarritt College for Christian Workers in Nashville, Tennessee, in the United States. Later he obtained an M.A. in Philosophy and Religion from the Central Methodist College in Fayette, Missouri.
  In July 1963, Muzorewa became pastor of Old Umtali. A year later he was appointed National Director of the Christian Youth Movement and was seconded to the Christian Council. In 1966, he became Secretary of the Student Christian Movement. In 1968, at Masera in Botswana, he was consecrated as the United Methodist Church's Bishop of Rhodesia.
  
  wn.com/Abel_Muzorewa
• Abu Daoud
  Mohammad Daoud Oudeh (Arabic: محمد داود عودة‎), commonly known by his nom de guerre Abu Daoud or Abu Dawud (Arabic: أبو داود‎) (1936/37, Silwan – July 3, 2010, Damascus) was a Palestinian militant known as the planner, architect and mastermind of the Munich massacre. He served in a number of commanding functions in Fatah's armed units in Lebanon and Jordan.
  Oudeh lived in Jerusalem until the 1967 Six-Day War, when he was displaced as Israel captured the eastern portion of the city; he resettled in Jordan, where he joined the PLO. In 1970, Daoud was one of the founders of Fatah. From 1971, he was leader of the Black September, a Fatah offshoot created to avenge the September 1970 expulsion of the Fedayeen Movement from Jordan and carry out international operations. The group gained international notoriety for its role in the Munich massacre at the 1972 Munich Olympics, in which a number of athletes on the Israeli team were taken hostage by Black September. Eleven Israeli athletes and a German policeman were killed by the end of the multi-day standoff.
  
  wn.com/Abu_Daoud
• 
  Alain Corneau
  Alain Corneau (7 August 1943 – 30 August 2010) was a French film director and writer.
  Corneau was born in Meung-sur-Loire, Loiret. Originally a musician, he worked with Costa-Gavras as an assistant, which was also his first opportunity to work with the actor Yves Montand, with whom he would collaborate three times later in his career, including Police Python 357 (1976) and La Menace (1977). He directed Gérard Depardieu in the screen adaptation of Tous les matins du monde in 1991.
  Corneau died in Paris on 30 August 2010 from cancer, aged 67 and was interred at Père Lachaise Cemetery.
  
  wn.com/Alain_Corneau
• 
  Alan Sillitoe
  Alan Sillitoe (4 March 1928 – 25 April 2010) was an English writer and one of the "Angry Young Men" of the 1950s. He disliked the label, as did most of the other writers to whom it was applied.
  Sillitoe was born in Nottingham, to working class parents. Like Arthur Seaton, the anti-hero of his first novel Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, his father worked at the Raleigh Bicycle Company factory.
  He left school at the age of 14 and worked at the Raleigh factory for the next four years, spending his free time reading. He then joined the Royal Air Force, serving as a wireless operator in Malaya. After returning to England, he was discovered to have tuberculosis and spent 16 months in an RAF hospital.
  Pensioned off at age 21 on 45 shillings a week, he lived in France and Spain for seven years in an attempt to recover. In 1955, while living in Mallorca with American poet Ruth Fainlight, whom he married in 1959, and in contact with the poet Robert Graves, Sillitoe started work on Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, which was published in 1958. Influenced in part by the stripped-down prose of Ernest Hemingway, the book conveys the attitudes and situation of a young factory worker faced with the inevitable end of his youthful philandering. As with John Osborne's Look Back in Anger and John Braine's Room at the Top, the novel's real subject was the disillusionment of postwar Britain, and the lack of opportunities for the working class. It was adapted as a film by Karel Reisz in 1960, with Albert Finney as Arthur Seaton.
  
  wn.com/Alan_Sillitoe
• 
  Alberto Giacometti
  Alberto Giacometti (10 October 1901, Borgonovo, Stampa – 11 January 1966, Chur) was a Swiss sculptor, painter, draughtsman, and printmaker.
  Alberto Giacometti was born in the canton Graubünden's southerly alpine valley Val Bregaglia and came from an artistic background; his father, Giovanni, was a well-known post-Impressionist painter. Alberto was the eldest of four children and was interested in art from an early age.
  Giacometti was born in Borgonovo, now part of the Swiss municipality of Stampa, near the Italian border. He was a descendant of Protestant refugees escaping the Italian Inquisition. His father, Giovanni Giacometti, was a painter. Alberto attended the School of Fine Arts in Geneva.
  In 1922 he moved to Paris to study under the sculptor Antoine Bourdelle, an associate of Auguste Rodin. It was there that Giacometti experimented with cubism and surrealism and came to be regarded as one of the leading surrealist sculptors. Among his associates were Joan Miró, Max Ernst, Pablo Picasso, Bror Hjorth and Balthus.
  
  wn.com/Alberto_Giacometti
• 
  Alex Higgins
  Alexander Gordon "Alex" Higgins (18 March 1949 – 24 July 2010), also known by his nickname of Hurricane Higgins, was a Northern Irish professional snooker player who was twice World Champion and twice runner-up. Higgins earned the nickname The Hurricane because of his speed of play. Higgins was also a former World Doubles champion with Jimmy White and won the World Cup three times with the All Ireland team. He also came to be known as the People's Champion because of his popularity.
  Higgins is often credited to have brought the game of snooker to a wider audience and contributing to its peak in popularity in the eighties.
  Higgins had a reputation as an unpredictable and difficult character. He was a heavy smoker, struggled with drinking and gambling, and admitted to using cocaine and marijuana. Diagnosed with throat cancer in 1998, Higgins was found dead in his Belfast home on 24 July 2010.
  Alex Higgins was born in Belfast and had three sisters. He started playing snooker at the age of 11, often in the Jampot club in his native Sandy Row area of south Belfast and later in the YMCA in the nearby city centre. At age 14 and weighing seven and a half stones (47.6 kg), he left for England and a career as a jockey. However, he never made the title because, in his youth days, he drank a lot of Guinness and ate a lot of chocolate which made him too heavy to ride competitively. He returned to Belfast and by 1965, aged 16, he had compiled his first maximum break. In 1968 he won the All-Ireland and Northern Ireland Amateur Snooker Championships.
  
  wn.com/Alex_Higgins
• 
  Alexander Haig
  Alexander Meigs Haig, Jr. (December 2, 1924 – February 20, 2010) was a United States Army general who served as the United States Secretary of State under President Ronald Reagan and White House Chief of Staff under Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. He also served as Vice Chief of Staff of the Army, the second-highest ranking officer in the Army, and as Supreme Allied Commander Europe commanding all US and NATO forces in Europe.
  A veteran of the Korean War and Vietnam War, Haig was a recipient of the Distinguished Service Cross, the Silver Star with oak leaf cluster, and the Purple Heart.
  Haig was born in Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania. He was the middle of three children of Alexander Meigs Haig, Sr., a Republican lawyer, and his wife Regina Anne Murphy. When Haig was 10, his father, aged 38, died of cancer. His Irish American mother raised her children in the Catholic Church. He attended Saint Joseph's Preparatory School in North Philadelphia. He then studied at the University of Notre Dame for two years, before transferring to the United States Military Academy, where he graduated in 1947. Haig later earned a Master of Business Administration degree from Columbia Business School in 1955 and a Master of Arts degree in international relations from Georgetown University in 1961. His thesis examined the role of military officers in making national policy.
  
  wn.com/Alexander_Haig
• 
  Alexander McQueen
  Lee Alexander McQueen, CBE (17 March 1969 – 11 February 2010) was a British fashion designer and couturier best known for his in-depth knowledge of bespoke British tailoring, his tendency to juxtapose strength with fragility in his collections, as well as the emotional power and raw energy of his provocative fashion shows.^[opinion] He is also known for having worked as chief designer at Givenchy from 1996 to 2001 and for founding his own Alexander McQueen label. His achievements in fashion earned him four British Designer of the Year awards (1996, 1997, 2001 and 2003), as well as the CFDA's International Designer of the Year award in 2003.
  Born on 17 March 1969 in Lewisham, London, to Scottishtaxi driver Ronald and social science teacher Joyce, McQueen was the youngest of six children. He grew up in a council flat in a tower block in Stratford. He attended Carpenters Road Primary School, started making dresses for his three sisters at a young age, and announced his intention to become a fashion designer.
  
  wn.com/Alexander_McQueen
• 
  Algirdas Brazauskas
  Algirdas Mykolas Brazauskas ( pronunciation (help·info), 22 September 1932 – 26 June 2010) was the first President of a newly independent post-Soviet Union Lithuania from 1993 to 1998 and Prime Minister from 2001 to 2006.
  He also served as head of the Lithuanian Communist Party that broke with Moscow, an act which arguably helped bring about the demise of the Soviet Union.
  Brazauskas was born in Rokiškis, Lithuania. He finished Kaisiadoriai High School in 1952 and graduated from Kaunas Polytechnic Institute in 1956 with a degree in civil engineering. In 1967 Brazauskas started working in the Governmental Planning Committee, as a Committee's head's assistant. In 1974, Brazauskas received Ph.D. in Economics.
  He divorced his first wife, Julia, with whom he had two daughters; he later married Kristina Butrimienė.
  He rose to politics in the 1980s, as the Soviet Union was undergoing radical change. In turn he transformed himself from a Communist Party apparatchik to a moderate reformer. He was seen as cautious by nature, and when confronted by the tide of nationalist feeling in the Soviet empire Brazauskas initially believed that the old USSR might be reconstituted as a looser federation of independent, but communist, states. In seeing the tide of an independent democracy, he joined the reformist cause observing in 1990 that "We are realists now, and we cannot be propagating any utopian ideas. It's no secret [that] the Communist Party has a dirty history."
  
  wn.com/Algirdas_Brazauskas
• 
  Andor Lilienthal
  Andor (André, Andre, Andrei) Arnoldovich Lilienthal (May 5, 1911 – May 8, 2010) was a Hungarian and Soviet chess Grandmaster. In his long career, he played against ten male and female world champions, beating Emanuel Lasker, José Raúl Capablanca, Alexander Alekhine, Max Euwe, Mikhail Botvinnik, Vasily Smyslov, and Vera Menchik. In a 2005 article, Slobodan Adzic wrote that Lilienthal was still active, in good health, driving his car, and writing articles for chess magazines. At the time of his death, he was the oldest living grandmaster, and the last surviving person from the original group of grandmasters awarded the title by FIDE in 1950.
  Andor Lilienthal was born in Moscow, Russia, in a jewish family of austro-hungarian descent. At the age of two. He played for Hungary in three Chess Olympiads: Folkestone 1933 (scoring +7 = 6 − 0 as the reserve, the fifth player on the team), Warsaw 1935 (scoring +11 =8 −0 on second board), and Stockholm 1937 (scoring +9 =6 −2 on first board, leading his team to the silver medal). He won the individual gold medal for his board (reserve and second board, respectively) at the 1933 and 1935 Olympiads, and had the fourth-best result on first board in 1937. His total score in the Olympiads was a remarkable 75.51%.
  
  wn.com/Andor_Lilienthal
• 
  Andre Geim
  Sir Andre Konstantin Geim, FRS (Russian: Андрей Константинович Гейм; born 21 October 1958) is a Russian-born British-Dutch physicist working at the University of Manchester. Geim was awarded the 2010 Nobel Prize in Physics jointly with Konstantin Novoselov for his work on graphene. He is the Langworthy Professor and director of the Manchester Centre for Mesoscience and Nanotechnology at the University of Manchester.
  Andre Geim was born to Konstantin Alekseyevich Geim and Nina Nikolayevna Bayer on October 21, 1958. Both his parents were Russian German engineers. Geim has stated, "My mother's grandmother was Jewish. I suffered from anti-Semitism in Russia because my name sounds Jewish". Geim has one brother, Vladislav. In 1965, the family moved to Nalchik, where he studied at an English-language high school. After graduation, he applied to the Moscow Engineering Physics Institute. He took the entrance exams twice, but was not accepted. He then applied to the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (MIPT), where he was accepted. He said the students had to work extremely hard: "The pressure to work and to study was so intense that it was not a rare thing for people to break and leave, and some of them ended up with everything from schizophrenia to depression to suicide." He received an MSc degree in 1982, and in 1987 obtained a PhD degree in metal physics from the Institute of Solid State Physics (ISSP) at the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS) in Chernogolovka. He said that at the time he would not have chosen to study solid-state physics, preferring particle physics or astrophysics, but is now happy with his choice.
  
  wn.com/Andre_Geim
• 
  André Kolingba
  André-Dieudonné Kolingba (12 August 1936 – 7 February 2010) was the fourth president of the Central African Republic (CAR), from 1 September 1981 until 1 October 1993. He took power from President David Dacko in a bloodless coup d'état in 1981 and lost power to Ange-Félix Patassé in a democratic election held in 1993. Kolingba retained the strong support of France until the fall of the Berlin Wall, after which both internal and external pressure forced him to hold presidential elections which he lost.
  His twelve-year term in office saw the growing influence of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank in decisions by donor-nations regarding financial support and management of the Central African state. Many members of Kolingba's ethnic group, the Yakoma people, obtained lucrative posts in the public, private and parastatal sectors of the CAR's economy during his era. This gave rise to growing tension between so-called "southerners" (including the riverine Yakoma) and "northerners" (including the savanna Gbaya) in the CAR which led to violent confrontations between these groups during the Patassé era (1993–2003).
  
  wn.com/André_Kolingba
• 
  Anton Geesink
  Antonius Johannes "Anton" Geesink (April 6, 1934 – August 27, 2010) was a Dutch 10th-dan judoka from Utrecht. He was a three-time World Judo Champion (1961, 1964 and 1965), Olympic Gold Medalist (1964) and won 21 European championships. He was 6 ft 6 in (1.98 m) tall and weighed 270 pounds (120 kilograms).
  Geesink first participated in the European Championships in 1951, and placed second in his category. The following year, he won his first European title. Through to 1967, twenty more European titles followed.
  At the 1956 World Championships, Geesink was eliminated in the semi-finals against Yoshihiko Yoshimatsu. At the 1961 World Championships, Geesink, then 5th dan, became World Champion in the open class, defeating the Japanese champion Koji Sone. Japanese judokas had won all the World Championship titles contested up to that point.
  Judo debuted as an official sport at the 1964 Summer Olympics, which were held in the sport's home country, Japan. Although Japan dominated three of the four weight divisions (light, middle and heavy), Anton Geesink won the final of the open weight division, defeating Akio Kaminaga in front of his home crowd.
  
  wn.com/Anton_Geesink
• Antonio Pettigrew
  Antonio Pettigrew (November 3, 1967 – August 10, 2010) was an American sprinter who specialized in the 400 meters. He was born in Macon, Georgia.
  While attending St. Augustine's College in Raleigh, North Carolina, he was a four-time NCAA Division II champion in the 400 meter race. He came to prominence at the 1991 World Championships, where he won the 400 m gold medal and a silver medal in the 4 x 400 meters relay.
  At the Summer Olympics in Sydney 2000, Pettigrew threw his gold medal-winning Adidas spikes into the crowd after winning the 4 x 400m final for the USA.
  In 2008, prosecution documents related to the trial of coach Trevor Graham listed Pettigrew as one of Graham's athletes to have used performance-enhancing drugs. Pettigrew then admitted to using performance-enhancing drugs and testified against Graham at his trial in May 2008. Although IAAF rules currently do not retroactively alter results more than eight years after the event, Pettigrew returned the medals he won in that period. The 2000 Sydney Olympics 4 × 400 m relay US team was stripped of their medals after Pettigrew admitted that he had used performance-enhancing drugs. He received a two-year athletics ban in 2008, although he had already retired from the track.
  
  wn.com/Antonio_Pettigrew
• 
  Ariel Ramírez
  Ariel Ramírez (4 September 1921 – 18 February 2010) was an Argentine composer, pianist and music director. He was considered "a chief exponent of Argentine folk music" and noted for his "iconic" musical compositions.
  Ramírez is known primarily for his Misa Criolla (1964). It allowed him to travel around Europe and Latin America to build his reputation. He had more than 300 compositions during his career and sold millions of albums. By the time he died in 2010, his work was globally renowned.Plácido Domingo, José Carreras and Mercedes Sosa are some of the artists to have recorded his work. He was also associated with Miguel Brascó and Felix Luna.
  Ariel Ramírez was born in Santa Fe, Argentina. His father was a teacher and it had been thought Ramírez would also pursue this career path but the job lasted for just two days due to "discipline problems". He pursued initially tango before switching to Argentine folklore. He began his piano studies in Santa Fe, and soon became fascinated with the music of the gauchos and creoles in the mountains. He continued his studies in Córdoba, where he met the great Argentinian folk singer and songwriter Atahualpa Yupanqui and was influenced by him. Following a suggestion from Yupanqui, he visited the North East of Argentina and deepened his research into the traditional rhythms of South America. He spent time in Mendoza and Buenos Aires. At the same time continuing his academic studies as a composer at the National Conservatory of Music, in Buenos Aires. In 1946 he made his first recording, with RCA. He made twenty records with RCA until 1956.
  
  wn.com/Ariel_Ramírez
• Arthur Penn
  Arthur Hiller Penn (September 27, 1922 – September 28, 2010) was an American film director and producer with a career as a theater director as well. Penn amassed a critically acclaimed body of work throughout the 1960s and 1970s.
  Penn was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the son of Sonia Greenberg, a nurse, and Harry Penn, a watchmaker. He was the younger brother of Irving Penn, the successful fashion photographer. During the 1920s, he moved in with his mother after she divorced Penn's father. Some time after, he came back to his sickly father, leading him to run his father's watch repair shop. At 19 he was drafted into the army. Stationed in Britain, he became interested in theater. He started to direct and take part in shows being put on for the soldiers around England at the time. As Penn grew up, he further became interested in film, especially after he saw the Orson Welles film Citizen Kane.^{[citation needed]}
  After making a name for himself as a director of quality television dramas, Penn made his feature debut with a western, The Left Handed Gun (1958). A retelling of the Billy the Kid legend, it was distinguished by Paul Newman's sharp portrayal of the outlaw as a psychologically troubled youth (the role was originally intended for the archetypal portrayer of troubled teens, James Dean).^{[citation needed]}
  
  wn.com/Arthur_Penn
• 
  Aung San Suu Kyi
  Aung San Suu Kyi MP AC (Burmese: ; MLCTS: aung hcan: cu. krany, IPA: [ʔàʊɴ sʰáɴ sṵ tɕì]; born 19 June 1945) is a Burmese opposition politician and General Secretary of the National League for Democracy (NLD) in Burma. In the 1990 general election, the NLD won 59% of the national votes and 81% (392 of 485) of the seats in Parliament. She had, however, already been detained under house arrest before the elections. She remained under house arrest in Burma for almost 15 of the 21 years from 20 July 1989 until her most recent release on 13 November 2010, becoming one of the world's most prominent (now former) political prisoners.
  Suu Kyi received the Rafto Prize and the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought in 1990 and the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991. In 1992 she was awarded the Jawaharlal Nehru Award for International Understanding by the government of India and the International Simón Bolívar Prize from the government of Venezuela. In 2007, the Government of Canada made her an honorary citizen of that country; at the time, she was one of only four people ever to receive the honor. In 2011, she was awarded the Wallenberg Medal.
  
  wn.com/Aung_San_Suu_Kyi
• 
  Bella Akhmadulina
  Izabella Akhatovna "Bella" Akhmadulina (Russian: Бе́лла (Изабе́лла) Аха́товна Ахмаду́лина [] ( listen); 10 April 1937 – 29 November 2010) was a Soviet and Russian poet, short story writer, and translator, known for her apolitical writing stance. She was part of the Russian New Wave literary movement. She was cited by Joseph Brodsky as the best living poet in the Russian language.
  Despite the aforementioned apolitical stance of her writing, Akhmadulina was often critical of authorities in the Soviet Union, and spoke out in favour of others, including Nobel laureates Boris Pasternak, Andrei Sakharov, and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. She was known to international audiences via her travels abroad during the Khrushchev Thaw, during which she made appearances in sold-out stadiums. Upon her death in 2010 at the age of 73, President of Russia Dmitry Medvedev hailed her poetry as a "classic of Russian literature."
  The New York Times said Akhmadulina was "always recognized as one of the Soviet Union's literary treasures and a classic poet in the long line extending from Lermontov and Pushkin." Sonia I. Ketchian, writing in The Poetic Craft of Bella Akhmadulina, called her "one of the great poets of the 20th century. There's Akhmatova, Tsvetaeva, Mandelstam, and Pasternak — and she's the fifth".
  
  wn.com/Bella_Akhmadulina
• 
  Benoit Mandelbrot
  Benoît B. Mandelbrot (20 November 1924 – 14 October 2010) was a French American mathematician. Born in Poland, he moved to France with his family when he was a child. Mandelbrot spent much of his life living and working in the United States, and he acquired dual French and American citizenship.
  Mandelbrot worked on a wide range of mathematical problems, including mathematical physics and quantitative finance, but is best known as the father of fractal geometry. He coined the term fractal and described the Mandelbrot set. Mandelbrot also wrote books and gave lectures aimed at the general public.
  Mandelbrot spent most of his career at IBM's Thomas J. Watson Research Center, and was appointed as an IBM Fellow. He later became a Sterling Professor of Mathematical Sciences at Yale University, where he was the oldest professor in Yale's history to receive tenure. Mandelbrot also held positions at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Université Lille Nord de France, Institute for Advanced Study and Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique.
  
  wn.com/Benoit_Mandelbrot
• 
  Bent Larsen
  Jørgen Bent Larsen (4 March 1935 – 9 September 2010) was a Danish chess Grandmaster and author. Larsen was known for his imaginative and unorthodox style of play and he was the first western player to pose a serious challenge to the Soviet Union's dominance of chess. He is considered to be the strongest chess player born in Denmark and the strongest from Scandinavia until the emergence of Magnus Carlsen.
  Larsen was a six time Danish Champion and a candidate for the World Chess Championship on four occasions, reaching the semi final three times. He had multiple wins over all seven World Champions who held the title from 1948 to 1985: Mikhail Botvinnik, Vasily Smyslov, Mikhail Tal, Tigran Petrosian, Boris Spassky, Bobby Fischer, and Anatoly Karpov., but lifetime minus scores against them. On a percentage basis, his best score against a World Champion was with Max Euwe. Larsen and Euwe met over the board only once, at the Munich Olympiad in 1958; the game ended in a draw. From the early 1970s, he divided his year between Las Palmas and Buenos Aires, with his Argentinian-born wife. He suffered from diabetes and died in 2010 from a cerebral haemorrhage.
  
  wn.com/Bent_Larsen
• 
  Bernard Giraudeau
  Bernard Giraudeau (18 June 1947 – 17 July 2010) was a French actor, film director, scriptwriter, producer and writer.
  Giraudeau was born in La Rochelle, Charente-Maritime. In 1963 he enlisted in the French navy as a trainee engineer, qualifying as the first in his class a year later. He served on the helicopter carrier Jeanne d'Arc in 1964–1965 and 1965–1966, and subsequently on the frigate Duquesne and the aircraft carrier Clemenceau before leaving the navy to try his luck as an actor.
  He was married to actress and author Anny Duperey, with whom he had two children; one of them, Sara Giraudeau, has achieved success as an actress.
  Giraudeau first appeared on film in Deux hommes dans la ville (1973), and his first film as director was in 1987, though he continued to work as an actor. As a writer, wrote the text of books of photography as well as publishing children's stories (Contes d'Humahuaca, 2002) and several novels. He was also the reader on the French audio books of the Harry Potter series.
  
  wn.com/Bernard_Giraudeau
• Beryl Bainbridge
  Dame Beryl Margaret Bainbridge DBE (21 November 1932 – 2 July 2010) was an English author from Liverpool. She was primarily known for her sparsely-written psychological novels, often set amongst the English working classes. Bainbridge won the Whitbread Awards prize for best novel in 1977 and 1996; she was nominated five times for the Booker Prize. She was described in 2007 as "a national treasure". In 2008, The Times newspaper named Bainbridge among their list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945".
  Beryl Bainbridge was born in Liverpool and raised in nearby Formby. Her parents were Richard Bainbridge and Winifred Baines. Although she gave her date of birth in Who's Who and elsewhere as 21 November 1934, she was born in 1932 and her birth was registered in the first quarter of 1933. When German former prisoner of war Harry Arno Franz wrote to her in November 1947, he mentioned her 15th birthday.
  She enjoyed writing, and by the age of 10 she was keeping a diary. She had elocution lessons and, when she was 11, appeared on the Northern Children's Hour radio show, alongside Billie Whitelaw and Judith Chalmers. Bainbridge was expelled from Merchant Taylors' Girls' School (Crosby) because she was caught with a "dirty rhyme" (as she later described it), written by someone else, in her gymslip pocket. She then went on to study at Cone-Ripman School, Tring, Hertfordshire (now:Tring Park School for the Performing Arts [1], where she found she was good at history, English and art. The summer she left school, she fell in love with a former German POW who was waiting to be repatriated. For the next six years, the couple corresponded and tried to get permission for the German man to return to Britain so that they could be married. But permission was denied and the relationship ended in 1953.
  
  wn.com/Beryl_Bainbridge
• Besian Idrizaj
  Besian Idrizaj (12 October 1987 – 15 May 2010) was an Austrian professional football player who last played as a striker for Swansea City. He was ethnic Albanian.
  He died of a suspected heart attack on 15 May 2010 at the age of 22.
  Idrizaj started his career with Austria Linz and LASK Linz.
  He signed for Liverpool FC from LASK Linz in the summer of 2005 on a two year contract, following a trial spell. He was Austria's young player of the year in 2004–05.
  At the time he declared "I have always been a Liverpool fan and it is a dream come true to play for them. If you get a chance to go to Liverpool on trial then you have to take it. You cannot ignore a trial with the reigning Champions League winners. I would even have swum across the channel just to take part."
  His 2005–06 season was interrupted by injuries. However Idrizaj was expected to be a regular member of Gary Ablett and Hughie McAuley's reserve squad for the 2006–07 season. He made his debut for the first team in a pre-season friendly against Wrexham on 15 July 2006, playing for the first 45 minutes upfront as a striker, alongside fellow debutant Craig Bellamy. After going on loan to Luton Town in 2007 he returned to Liverpool for the close season. On 7 July 2007, Idrizaj scored a hat trick in a friendly for the Reds against Wrexham in a period of 26 minutes. All three goals were set up by Jermaine Pennant.
  
  wn.com/Besian_Idrizaj
• Blake Edwards
  Blake Edwards (July 26, 1922 – December 15, 2010) was an American film director, screenwriter and producer.
  Edwards' career began in the 1940s as an actor, but he soon turned to writing radio scripts at Columbia Pictures. He used his writing skills to begin producing and directing, with some of his most well-known films including Experiment in Terror, The Great Race, and the hugely successful Pink Panther film series with the British comedian Peter Sellers. Often thought of as primarily a director of comedies, he also directed drama films, including Breakfast at Tiffany's and Days of Wine and Roses. His greatest successes, however, were his comedies, and most of his films were either musicals, melodramas, slapstick comedies, or thrillers.
  In 2004, he received an Honorary Academy Award in recognition of his writing, directing and producing an extraordinary body of work for the screen.
  Born William Blake Crump in Tulsa, Oklahoma. His grandfather was J. Gordon Edwards, a director of silent movies, and his stepfather, Jack McEdwards, became a film production manager after moving his family to Los Angeles in 1925. In an interview with Village Voice in 1971, he said that he had "always felt alienated, estranged from my . . . father." After attending grammar and high school in Los Angeles, he began taking jobs as an actor during World War II. Edwards describes this period:
  
  wn.com/Blake_Edwards
• 
  Bobbejaan Schoepen
  Bobbejaan Schoepen (a pseudonym of Modest Schoepen) (16 May 1925 – 17 May 2010) was a Flemish pioneer in Belgian pop music, vaudeville, and European country music. Schoepen was a versatile entertainer, entrepreneur, singer-songwriter, guitarist, comedian, actor, and professional whistler, as well as the founder and former director of the amusement park, Bobbejaanland. His musical career flourished from 1948 until the first half of the 1970s. He sold more than five million copies from his repertoire of 482 songs, which extended from Twang, cabaret, instrumental film music, chansons, country, to folk and vocal music. Born in Boom, Antwerp, Flanders, Belgium, he worked his way up from a working-class environment to become one of the 200 richest people in Belgium.
  Schoepen married Dutch former opera singer and photographer's model Josephina (Josée) Jongen on 18 May 1961. They have five children: Robert (“Bob Jr.”, 1962), Myriam (1963), Jacky (1964), Peggy (1968), and Tom (1970). His son Tom became his manager in Belgium.
  
  wn.com/Bobbejaan_Schoepen
• Bruno Cremer
  Bruno Jean Marie Cremer (born Jean-Marie Drillon, October 6, 1929 – August 7, 2010) was a French actor born in Saint-Mandé, Val-de-Marne, who spent a part of his career on stage, but who also found success in the cinema and on television.
  He was widely known in France and the French-speaking world for his interpretation of the famous detective Maigret in a television series that started in 1991 and ended in 2005 after 54 episodes.
  His career on stage included creating the role of Thomas Beckett in the 1959 world premiere of the play Beckett by Jean Anouilh.
  In 1957, he had a credited role in the movies for the first time in Send a Woman When the Devil Fails (also known as When a Woman Meddles and When the Woman Gets Confused), featuring Alain Delon.
  He and his wife Chantal, whom he married in December 1984, had two daughters (Constance and Marie-Clémentine). From an earlier marriage, he had a son, Stéphane, who is a writer.
  In 2000, he published an autobiography, Un certain jeune homme (A Certain Young Man).
  
  wn.com/Bruno_Cremer
• 
  Captain Beefheart
  Don Van Vliet ( /væn ˈvliːt/, born Don Glen Vliet; January 15, 1941 – December 17, 2010) was an American musician, singer-songwriter, artist and poet best known by the stage name Captain Beefheart. His musical work was conducted with a rotating ensemble of musicians called The Magic Band, active between 1965 and 1982, with whom he recorded 13 studio albums. Noted for his powerful singing voice with its wide range, Van Vliet also played the harmonica, saxophone and numerous other wind instruments. His music blended rock, blues and psychedelia with avant-garde and contemporary experimental composition. Beefheart was also known for exercising an almost dictatorial control over his supporting musicians, and for often constructing myths about his life.
  
  wn.com/Captain_Beefheart
• 
  Carlos Andrés Pérez
  Carlos Andrés Pérez Rodríguez (27 October 1922 – 25 December 2010), also known as CAP and often referred to as El Gocho (due to his Andean origins), was a Venezuelan politician, President of Venezuela from 1974 to 1979 and again from 1989 to 1993. His first presidency was known as the Saudi Venezuela due to its economic and social prosperity thanks to enormous income from petroleum exportation. However, his second period saw a continuation of the economic crisis of the 1980s, and saw a series of social crises, a popular revolt (denominated Caracazo) and two coup attempts in 1992. In May 1993 he became the first Venezuelan president to be forced out of the office by the Supreme Court, for the embezzlement of 250 million bolívars belonging to a presidential discretionary fund.
  Carlos Andrés Pérez was born at the hacienda La Argentina, on the Venezuelan-Colombian border near the town of Rubio, Táchira state, the 11th of 12 children in a middle-class family. His father, Antonio Pérez Lemus, was a Colombian-born coffee planter and pharmacist of Spanish and Canary Islander ancestry who emigrated to Venezuela during the last years of the 19th century. His mother, Julia Rodríguez, was the daughter of a prominent landowner in the town of Rubio and the granddaughter of Venezuelan refugees who had fled to the Andes and Colombia in the wake of the civil war that ravaged Venezuela in the 1860s.
  
  wn.com/Carlos_Andrés_Pérez
• Cesare Siepi
  Cesare Siepi (February 10, 1923 – July 5, 2010) was an Italian opera singer, generally considered to have been one of the finest basses of the post-war period. His voice was characterised by a deep, warm timbre, a full, resonant, wide-ranging lower register with relaxed vibrato, and a ringing, vibrant upper register. On stage, his tall, striking presence and elegance of phrasing made him a natural Don Giovanni, while remaining a Verdi bass par excellence. He can be seen in that role on video from Salzburg, under the baton of Wilhelm Furtwängler, among his many other roles.
  Born in Milan (his year of birth is debated between 1919 and 1923, though 1923 is given as official), he began singing as a member of a madrigal group. He often claimed to have been largely self-taught, having attended the music conservatory in his home city for just a short time. His operatic career was interrupted by World War II. After his debut in 1941 (in Schio, near Venice, as Sparafucile in Rigoletto), Siepi, an opponent of the fascist regime, fled to Switzerland.
  
  wn.com/Cesare_Siepi
• 
  Charles Mackerras
  Sir Alan Charles Maclaurin Mackerras, AC, CH, CBE (/məˈkɛrəs/; 17 November 1925 – 14 July 2010) was an Australian conductor. He was an authority on the operas of Janáček and Mozart, and the comic operas of Gilbert and Sullivan. He was long associated with the English National Opera (and its predecessor) and Welsh National Opera and was the first Australian chief conductor of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra.
  Charles was born in Schenectady, New York, to Australian parents, Alan Mackerras and Catherine MacLaurin. His father was an electrical engineer and a Quaker. In 1928, when Charles was aged three, the family moved to Sydney, Australia. They initially lived in the suburb of Vaucluse, and in 1933, moved to the then semi-rural suburb of Turramurra. Mackerras was the eldest of their seven children, including five brothers, the others being Malcolm, Colin, Alastair and Neil and two sisters, Joan and Elisabeth. They are descendants of the pioneer Australian musician Isaac Nathan. Mackerras studied violin at the age of seven and later the flute and was setting poems to music at eight, and wrote a piano concerto when he was 12.
  
  wn.com/Charles_Mackerras
• 
  Claude Chabrol
  Claude Chabrol (French: [klod ʃaˈbʁɔl]; 1930–2010) was a French film director, a member of the French New Wave (nouvelle vague) group of filmmakers who first came to prominence at the end of the 1950s. Like his colleagues and contemporaries Godard, Truffaut, Rohmer and Rivette, Chabrol was a critic for the influential film magazine Cahiers du cinéma before beginning his career as a film maker.
  Chabrol's career began with Le Beau Serge (1958), inspired by Hitchcock's Shadow of a Doubt (1943). Thrillers became something of a trademark for Chabrol, with an approach characterized by a distanced objectivity. This is especially apparent in Les Biches (1968), La Femme Infidèle (1969) and Le Boucher (1970) — all featuring his then-wife, Stéphane Audran.
  Sometimes characterized as a "mainstream" New Wave director, Chabrol remained prolific and popular throughout his half-century career. In 1978, he cast Isabelle Huppert as the lead in Violette Nozière. On the strength of that effort, the pair went on to others including the successful Madame Bovary (1991) and La Ceremonie (1996).
  
  wn.com/Claude_Chabrol
• 
  Corey Haim
  Corey Ian Haim (December 23, 1971 – March 10, 2010) was a Canadian actor, known for a 1980s Hollywood career as a teen idol. He starred in a number of films such as Lucas, Silver Bullet, Murphy's Romance, License to Drive and Dream a Little Dream. His best-known role was alongside Corey Feldman in The Lost Boys, which made Haim a household name.
  Known as The Two Coreys, the duo became 1980s icons and went on to star in seven movies together, later starring in the A&E reality show The Two Coreys.
  Haim's early success led to money and fame, and he began using drugs by fifteen. He had difficulties breaking away from his experience as a teen actor, and was troubled by drug addiction throughout his later career. He died of pneumonia on March 10, 2010.
  Haim was born in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, the son of Judy, an Israeli-born data processor, and Bernie Haim, who worked in sales. When Haim was eleven, his parents divorced after eighteen years of marriage. He had an older sister, Carol, and a younger half-brother, Daniel Lee, from his father's second marriage. Haim was raised Jewish.
  
  wn.com/Corey_Haim
• Corin Redgrave
  Corin William Redgrave (16 July 1939 – 6 April 2010) was an English actor and political activist.
  Redgrave was born in Marylebone, London, the only son and middle child of actors Michael Redgrave and Rachel Kempson. He was educated at the independent Westminster School and at King's College, Cambridge.
  Redgrave played a wide range of character roles on film, television and stage.
  On stage, he was noted for performances by Shakespeare (such as Much Ado About Nothing, Henry IV, Part 1, Antony and Cleopatra, and The Tempest) and Noël Coward (notably a highly successful revival of A Song At Twilight co-starring his sister Vanessa Redgrave and his second wife, Kika Markham).
  For his role as the prison warden Boss Whalen in the Royal National Theatre production of Tennessee Williams's Not About Nightingales, Redgrave was nominated for an Evening Standard Award, and after a successful transfer of the production to New York, his performance garnered him a Tony Award nomination for Best Actor in a Play, in 1999.2 years later he starred in the original London production of The General from America as Benedict Arnold. When the play transferred to Broadway the following season Redgrave switched roles and portrayed George Washington .
  
  wn.com/Corin_Redgrave
• 
  Dennis Hopper
  Dennis Lee Hopper (May 17, 1936 - May 29, 2010) was an American actor, filmmaker and artist. As a young man, Hopper became interested in acting and eventually became a student of the Actors' Studio. He made his first television appearance in 1954 and appeared in two films featuring James Dean, Rebel Without a Cause (1955) and Giant (1956). During the next 10 years, Hopper appeared frequently on television in guest roles, and by the end of the 1960s had played supporting roles in several films.
  He directed and starred in Easy Rider (1969), winning an award at the Cannes Film Festival and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay as co-writer. Journalist Ann Hornaday wrote: "With its portrait of counterculture heroes raising their middle fingers to the uptight middle-class hypocrisies, Easy Rider became the cinematic symbol of the 1960s, a celluloid anthem to freedom, macho bravado and anti-establishment rebellion." Film critic Matthew Hays notes that "no other persona better signifies the lost idealism of the 1960s than that of Dennis Hopper."
  
  wn.com/Dennis_Hopper
• Dick Francis
  Richard Stanley "Dick" Francis CBE (31 October 1920 – 14 February 2010) was a Britishjockey and crime writer, many of whose novels centre around horse racing.
  Francis was born in Coedcanlas, Pembrokeshire, Wales. Some sources report his birthplace as the inland town of Lawrenny, but at least two of his obituaries stated his birthplace as the coastal town of Tenby. His autobiography says that he was born at his maternal grandparents' farm at Coedcanlas on the estuary of the River Cleddau, roughly a mile north-west of Lawrenny. He was the son of a jockey and stable manager and he grew up in Berkshire, England. He left school at 15 without any qualifications, with the intention of becoming a jockey and became a trainer in 1938. During World War II, he served in the Royal Air Force, piloting fighter and bomber aircraft, including the Spitfire and Hurricane. In October 1945, he met Mary Margaret Brenchley (17 June 1924 – 30 September 2000), whom he married in June 1947 in London; they had two sons, Merrick and Felix (born 1953). In the 1980s, Francis and his wife moved to Florida; in 1992, they moved to the Cayman Islands, where Mary died of a heart attack. In 2006, Francis had a heart bypass operation; in 2007 his right leg was amputated. He died of natural causes on 14 February 2010 at his Caribbean home in Grand Cayman, survived by both sons.
  
  wn.com/Dick_Francis
• 
  Dino De Laurentiis
  Agostino "Dino" De Laurentiis (8 August 1919 – 10 November 2010) was an Italian film producer.
  He was born at Torre Annunziata in the province of Naples, and grew up selling spaghetti produced by his father. His studies at the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia in Rome were interrupted by the outbreak of the Second World War.
  Following his first movie, L'ultimo Combattimento, (1940) he produced nearly 150 films during the next seven decades. In 1946 his company, the Dino de Laurentiis Cinematografica, moved into production. In the early years, De Laurentiis produced neorealist films such as Bitter Rice (1946) and the Fellini classics La Strada (1954) and Nights of Cabiria (1956), often in collaboration with producer Carlo Ponti. In the 1960s, Dino De Laurentiis built his own studio facilities, although these financially collapsed during the 1970s. During this period, though, De Laurentiis produced such films as Barabbas (1961) a Christian religious epic, Kiss the Girls and Make Them Die, an imitation James Bond film; Navajo Joe (1966), a spaghetti western; Anzio (1968), a World War II film; Barbarella (1968) and Danger: Diabolik (1968), both successful comic book adaptations; and The Valachi Papers made to coincide with the popularity of The Godfather.
  
  wn.com/Dino_De_Laurentiis
• 
  Edoardo Sanguineti
  Edoardo Sanguineti (9 December 1930 – 18 May 2010) was an Italian writer who was born in Genoa.
  During the 1960s he was a leader of the neo avant-garde Gruppo 63 movement, founded in 1963 at Solunto.
  He was also an active translator of Joyce, Molière, Shakespeare, Bertolt Brecht, and select Greek and Latin authors.
  From 1979 until 1983, Sanguineti was a member of the Chamber of Deputies of the Italian Parliament. He was elected as an independent on the list of the PCI.
  He was an atheist.
  Sanguineti died on 18 May 2010 at Villa Scassi Hospital in Genoa following emergency surgery for an abdominal aneurysm. He was 79.
  
  
  
  wn.com/Edoardo_Sanguineti
• 
  Elizabeth II
  Elizabeth II (Elizabeth Alexandra Mary; born 21 April 1926) is the constitutional monarch of 16 sovereign states known as the Commonwealth realms, and head of the 54-member Commonwealth of Nations. She is also head of state of the Crown Dependencies.
  Elizabeth was born in London, and educated privately at home. Her father acceded to the throne as George VI in 1936 on the abdication of his brother Edward VIII. She began to undertake public duties during the Second World War, in which she served in the Auxiliary Territorial Service. On the death of her father in 1952, she became Head of the Commonwealth and queen regnant of seven independent Commonwealth countries: the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Pakistan, and Ceylon. Her coronation service in 1953 was the first to be televised. Between 1956 and 1992, the number of her realms varied as territories gained independence and some realms became republics. Today, in addition to the first four aforementioned countries, Elizabeth is Queen of Jamaica, Barbados, the Bahamas, Grenada, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, Tuvalu, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Belize, Antigua and Barbuda, and Saint Kitts and Nevis.
  
  wn.com/Elizabeth_II
• 
  Enzo Bearzot
  Vincenzo "Enzo" Bearzot (Italian pronunciation: [ˈɛntso bearˈdzɔt]; 26 September 1927 – 21 December 2010) was an Italian association football player and manager. He is best known for having led the Italian national football team to a triumph in the 1982 FIFA World Cup.
  Born in Aiello del Friuli, in the friulian Province of Udine in Friuli-Venezia Giulia, Bearzot had a moderately successful playing career as a centre back. He made his debut in professional football with Pro Gorizia in 1946, a team he left in 1948 to join Serie A giants Internazionale. After three seasons with the Nerazzurri, Bearzot moved to Sicily and joined Catania for three more seasons. This was then followed by a long period at Torino, where he played from 1954 to 1964, except for a short stint back at Internazionale in 1956–57. He retired in 1964, aged 37.
  In his playing career, Bearzot totalled 251 appearances in Italy's Serie A, being called up once to play for Italy, making his debut on 27 November 1955 in a 0–2 1955–56 Central European International Cup match defeat to Hungary.
  
  wn.com/Enzo_Bearzot
• 
  Erich Segal
  Erich Wolf Segal (June 16, 1937 – January 17, 2010) was an American author, screenwriter, and educator. He was best known for writing the novel Love Story (1970), a best-seller, and writing the motion picture of the same name, which was a major hit.
  The son of a rabbi, Segal attended Midwood High School in Brooklyn and traveled to Switzerland to take summer courses. He attended Harvard College, graduating as both the class poet and Latin salutatorian in 1958, after which he obtained his master's degree (in 1959) and a doctorate (in 1965) in comparative literature, from Harvard University.
  Segal was a professor of Greek and Latin literature at Harvard University, Yale University and Princeton University. He had been a Supernumerary Fellow and subsequently an Honorary Fellow of Wolfson College, Oxford.
  His first academic book, Roman Laughter: The Comedy of Plautus, revolutionized the great Roman comic playwright best known today as the inspiration for the Broadway hit, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum.^{[citation needed]} In 2001 Harvard published his The Death of Comedy, the all-encompassing literary history.^{[citation needed]}
  
  wn.com/Erich_Segal
• Farooq Leghari
  Farooq Ahmad Khan Leghari English IPA: fɑrukʰ æɦmæd ləɡhərɪ̈ (Balochi, Punjabi, Urdu: سردار فاروق احمد خان لغاری; May 29, 1940 – October 20, 2010), was eighth President of Pakistan, serving from November 14, 1993 until his resignation on December 2, 1997.
  His political philosophy reflected the democratic socialism, Leghari was the first president from the Baloch-speaking class from the Punjab Province of Pakistan, and was also a senior member of the Pakistan Peoples Party until 2004 when his political differences arise with Benazir Bhutto, forcing him to ally with the centre-right conservative Pakistan Muslim League. Educated at the Forman Christian College University in Punjab Province of Pakistan, and the Oxford University in England, United Kingdom, Leghari started his government career through the civil bureaucracy, taking a bureaucratic assignment in East-Pakistan in 1960s until 1970. Generally an apolitical, Leghari joined the democratic socialist Pakistan Peoples Party led by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in 1970s and was finally named as the presidential candidate by Benazir Bhutto due to his apolitical vision and was merely a constitutional and ceremonial figurehead in the Benazir's government; whilst Benazir exercised her authority while running her government. In 1996, Leghari surprisingly dismissed his leader's government after being convinced Benazir Bhutto and her spouse Asif Ali Zardari's involvement in Murtaza Bhutto's death, as well as an economic default was reached at that time.
  
  wn.com/Farooq_Leghari
• 
  Financial Times
  The Financial Times (FT) is an international business newspaper. It is a morning daily newspaper published in London and printed in 24 cities around the world.
  Along with FT.com, it has an average daily readership of 2.1 million people worldwide (PwC audited figures, November 2011). FT.com has 4 million registered users and 250,000 digital subscribers, as well as 585,681 paying users. FT Chinese has more than 1.7 million registered users. The Financial Times in print format has an average daily circulation of three hundred and five thousand copies worldwide (the British edition has a daily circulation of eighty eight thousand and a combined Saturday and Sunday, weekend, circulation of one hundred and thirteen thousand copies), as of April 2012.
  Founded in 1888 by James Sheridan and Horatio Bottomley, the Financial Times competed with four other finance-oriented newspapers, in 1945 absorbing the last, the Financial News (founded in 1884). The FT specialises in UK and international business and financial news, and is printed as a broadsheet on light salmon paper.
  
  wn.com/Financial_Times
• 
  Francesco Cossiga
  Francesco Cossiga (26 July 1928 – 17 August 2010) was an Italian politician, the 43rd Prime Minister and the eighth President of the Italian Republic. He was also a professor of constitutional law at the University of Sassari.
  Cossiga was born in Sassari in the north of Sardinia. He started his political career during World War II. His name is now usually pronounced Italian pronunciation: [kosˈsiːɡa], but it was originally pronounced Italian pronunciation: [ˈkɔssiɡa], with the stress on the first syllable, meaning "Corsica". He was the cousin of Enrico Berlinguer.
  He was a minister several times for the Democrazia Cristiana party (DC), notably during his stay at Viminale (Ministry for internal affairs) where he re-structured the Italian police, civil protection and secret services. In 1977, when Cossiga was minister of internal affairs, police squads organized by Cossiga shot against a demonstration in Rome, killing student Giorgiana Masi. Cossiga for many years stated that she was killed by her companions.
  
  wn.com/Francesco_Cossiga
• 
  Francisco Varallo
  Francisco Antonio "Pancho" Varallo (5 February 1910 – 30 August 2010) was an Argentine football forward. He played for the Argentine national team from 1930 to 1937. He was a member of Argentina's squad at the inaugural FIFA World Cup in 1930. During his career, Varallo won three leagues titles with Boca Juniors, and with 181 goals, is the club's second highest all-time leading goalscorer in the professional era.
  Varallo died in his home-town of La Plata on 30 August 2010, at the age of 100. He was the last surviving player from the 1930 World Cup at the time of his death.
  Varallo was born in Los Hornos, a suburb of La Plata (Buenos Aires Province, Argentina), on 5 February 1910. He made his debut at the age of 14, and early in his career gained the nickname cañoncito (in English: "little cannon") for his shooting ability.
  At the age of 18, Varallo had a trial with Estudiantes de La Plata, scoring eleven goals in three games for the club. However, the board of the club where Varallo was a youth team player were supporters of Estudiantes' town rivals Gimnasia y Esgrima La Plata, and therefore denied him the opportunity to join Estudiantes. Varallo ultimately joined Gimnasia, making his debut for the club's reserve side, before making his debut for the first team in 1929. During his first season with Gimnasia, Varallo won the amateur league championship with the club, defeating Boca Juniors in the final.
  
  wn.com/Francisco_Varallo
• Frank Frazetta
  Frank Frazetta (February 9, 1928 – May 10, 2010) was an American fantasy and science fiction artist, noted for work in comic books, paperback book covers, paintings, posters, LP record album covers and other media. He was the subject of a 2003 documentary.
  Frazetta was inducted into the comic book industry's Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame in 1995 and the Jack Kirby Hall of Fame in 1999.
  Born Frank Frazzetta in Brooklyn, New York City, he removed one "z" from his last name early in his career to make his name seem less "clumsy". The only boy among four children, he spent much time with his grandmother, who began encouraging him in art when he was two years old. He recalled in 2010, a month before his death,
  When I drew something, she would be the one to say it was wonderful and would give me a penny to keep going. Sometimes I had nothing left to draw on but toilet paper. As I got older, I started drawing some pretty wild things for my age. I remember the teachers were always mesmerized by what I was doing, so it was hard to learn anything from them. So I went to art school when I was a little kid, and even there the teachers were flipping out.
  
  wn.com/Frank_Frazetta
• 
  Gary Coleman
  Gary Wayne Coleman (February 8, 1968 – May 28, 2010) was an American actor, known for his childhood role as Arnold Jackson in the American sitcom Diff'rent Strokes (1978–1986) and for his small stature as an adult. He was described in the 1980s as "one of television's most promising stars". After a successful childhood acting career, Coleman struggled financially later in life. In 1989, he successfully sued his parents and business advisor over misappropriation of his assets, only to declare bankruptcy a decade later.
  Coleman was born in Zion, Illinois, outside Chicago. He was adopted by Edmonia Sue and W.G. Coleman, a nurse practitioner and fork-lift operator, respectively. He suffered from focal segmental glomerulosclerosis, an autoimmune kidney disease. Because of his chronic illness, combined with the corticosteroids and other medications used to treat it, his growth was limited to 4 ft 7 in (1.40 m), and his face retained a childlike appearance well into adulthood. He underwent two unsuccessful kidney transplants in 1973 and 1984, and required daily dialysis.
  
  wn.com/Gary_Coleman
• Gennady Yanayev
  Gennady Ivanovich Yanayev (Russian: Генна́дий Ива́нович Яна́ев; 26 August 1937 – 24 September 2010) was a Soviet Russian politician and statesman whose career spanned the rules of Khrushchev, Brezhnev, Andropov and Chernenko, and culminated during the Gorbachev years. Yanayev was born in Perevoz, Gorky Oblast. After years in local politics, he rose to prominence as Chairman of the All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions, but he also held other lesser posts such as deputy of the Union of Soviet Societies for Friendship and Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries.
  Due to his chairmanship of the All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions he gained a seat in the Politburo. During the 1990 July plenum he was elected to the Secretariat of the CPSU Central Committee. Later that year, with the help of Mikhail Gorbachev, Yanayev was elected the first, and only, Vice President of the Soviet Union. Having growing doubts about where Gorbachev's reforms were leading, Yanayev started working with, and eventually leading, the Gang of Eight, the group which deposed Gorbachev during the August coup of 1991. After three days the coup collapsed due to the popularity of Boris Yeltsin, but during its brief grip of power Yanayev was made Acting President of the Soviet Union. He was then arrested for his role in the coup, but in 1994 he was pardoned by the State Duma. He spent the rest of his life working in the Russian tourism administration until his death on 24 September 2010.
  
  wn.com/Gennady_Yanayev
• 
  Georges Charpak
  Georges Charpak (1 August 1924 – 29 September 2010) was a French physicist who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1992.
  
  wn.com/Georges_Charpak
• Giulietta Simionato
  Giulietta Simionato (12 May 1910 – 5 May 2010) was an Italian mezzo-soprano. Her career spanned the period from the 1930s until her retirement in 1966.
  Born at Forlì, Romagna, she studied in Rovigo and Padua, and made her operatic debut at Montagnana in 1928. In 1928, she sang in Verdi's "Rigoletto." The first fifteen years of her career were frustrating, she was only given small parts, but she attracted growing attention in the late 1940s, and by the end of her career was recognised as one of the most respected singers of her generation. In 1936, she made her debut at La Scala and appeared there regularly between 1936 and 1966. She made her debut at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden in 1953, where she likewise appeared regularly between 1963 and 1965.
  Simionato made her United States opera debut in 1953 as Charlotte in Jules Massenet's Werther at the San Francisco Opera with Cesare Valletti in the title role. In 1959 she made her debut at the Metropolitan Opera, as Azucena in Il Trovatore, with Carlo Bergonzi, Antonietta Stella, and Leonard Warren. Simionato also appeared at the Edinburgh Festival (1947), the San Francisco Opera (1953), the Teatro Nacional de São Carlos (1954), the Lyric Opera of Chicago (1954–1961), the Vienna State Opera (from 1956), and the Salzburg Festival. In 1957, she sang in Anna Bolena with Maria Callas. In 1961, she withdrew from three performances at the Metropolitan Opera, with Trigeminal Neuralgia.
  
  wn.com/Giulietta_Simionato
• Giuseppe Taddei
  Giuseppe Taddei (26 June 1916 – 2 June 2010) was an Italian baritone, who performed mostly the operas of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Giuseppe Verdi.
  Taddei was born in Genoa, Italy, and studied in Rome, where he made his professional debut in 1936 as the Herald in Wagner's Lohengrin. He sang at the Rome Opera until he was conscripted into the army in 1942. After the war, he resumed his opera career and appeared for two seasons at the Vienna State Opera. He made his debut in London in 1947, at the Cambridge Theatre. The following year, 1948, saw his debut at the Salzburg Festival, La Scala in Milan, and the Teatro di San Carlo in Naples.
  His American debut took place at the San Francisco Opera in 1957, followed by his appearance with Lyric Opera of Chicago in 1959. He sang regularly at the Royal Opera House in London from 1960 to 1967.
  Taddei was equally effective in comedy and drama. His acting repertoire included the two Figaros, from The Marriage of Figaro and The Barber of Seville, both Leporello and Don Giovanni in Don Giovanni, both Belcore and Dulcamara in L'elisir d'amore, as well as Ernani, Macbeth, Rigoletto, Amonasro in Aida, Iago in Otello, Falstaff, Barnaba in La Gioconda, Gérard in Andrea Chénier, and Scarpia in Tosca, among others.
  
  wn.com/Giuseppe_Taddei
• 
  Gloria Stuart
  Gloria Frances Stuart (July 4, 1910 – September 26, 2010) was an American actress, activist, painter, bonsai artist, and fine art printer and printmaker. Over a Hollywood career which spanned, with a long break in the middle, from 1932 until 2004, she appeared on stage, television, and film, for which she was best-known. She appeared as Claude Rains' sweetheart in The Invisible Man, and as the elderly Rose Dawson Calvert in an Academy Award-nominated role in the film Titanic. She was the oldest person to be nominated for a competitive Oscar, at the age of 87, for that role.
  Stuart was born Gloria Frances Stewart in Santa Monica, California, a third-generation Californian. Her mother, Alice Vaughan Deidrick Stewart, was born in Angels Camp, California. Her father, Frank Stewart, was an attorney representing many Tongs in San Francisco. Gloria's brother, Frank, came 11 months later. A second brother, Thomas, died in infancy. When Gloria was nine years old, her father, who had been appointed a judge and was about to take the bench, was hit by a car and died. Her mother got a job in the Ocean Park, California, Post Office to support her children. Alice Stewart remarried, to Fred J. Finch, a native of Kentucky, who owned a local funeral parlor and held oil leases in Texas. A half-sister, Patsy — Patricia Marie Finch — was born in 1924. Gloria's younger brother Frank took the surname Finch, later becoming a sportswriter for the Los Angeles Times.
  
  wn.com/Gloria_Stuart
• 
  Godfrey Binaisa
  Godfrey Lukongwa Binaisa QC (30 May 1920 – 5 August 2010) was a Ugandan lawyer who was Attorney General of Uganda from 1962 to 1968 and later served as President of Uganda from June 1979 to May 1980. At his death he was Uganda's only surviving former president.
  Binaisa was initially a lawyer. He was educated at King's College Budo and Makerere College. He then earned a LLB in law from King's College London in 1955 and was called to the Bar at Lincoln's Inn in 1956. He was appointed a Queen's counsel (QC) and had a private law practice in Kampala.
  Binaisa was a member of the political parties Uganda National Congress and United Congress Party during the 1950s. He later joined Uganda People's Congress which in 1962 formed the first post-independence government of Uganda. He was appointed the Attorney General in 1962, a position in which he served until 1968, when he resigned over disagreements with President Milton Obote concerning constitutional matters, particularly the presidential powers of detention.
  
  wn.com/Godfrey_Binaisa
• 
  Guido de Marco
  Guido de Marco (July 22, 1931 – August 12, 2010) was a Maltese politician, who served as the sixth President of Malta from 1999 to 2004. A noted statesman and lawmaker, de Marco also served as Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of the Interior, Justice, and Minister for Foreign Affairs.
  He is widely regarded as one of the great political leaders of Malta, being instrumental in the country's accession to the European Union. De Marco was elected President of the 45th session of the United Nations General Assembly in 1990, and Chairman of the Commonwealth Foundation in 2004. As a renowned criminal lawyer, De Marco defended some of the landmark cases in Malta during the 1980s.
  His sudden death in 2010 shocked the nation and prompted three days of national mourning and a state funeral.
  Guido Demarco was born in Valletta on July 22, 1931, the son of Emanuele and Giovanna née Raniolo. He was educated at St. Joseph High School, St. Aloysius' College and the University of Malta. He obtained a Bachelor of Arts degree in Philosophy, Economics and Italian in 1952, becoming a Doctor of Laws in 1955.
  
  wn.com/Guido_de_Marco
• 
  Hajo Herrmann
  Hans-Joachim "Hajo" Herrmann (1 August 1913 – 5 November 2010) was a Luftwaffe bomber pilot and later after the end of World War II, focusing his activities as a lawyer on civil and criminal law. In World War II, he was a high ranking and influential member of the Luftwaffe. He was also a recipient of the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross with Oak Leaves and Swords (German: Ritterkreuz des Eisernen Kreuzes mit Eichenlaub und Schwertern). The Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross and its higher grade Oak Leaves and Swords was awarded to recognise extreme battlefield bravery or successful military leadership.
  Herrmann was one of the Luftwaffe's most innovative air tacticians during World War II. Beginning his military career as an infantry officer, he was commissioned in the newly formed Luftwaffe in 1935. From 1936 until 1937, he was a bomber pilot in the Condor Legion. During the Spanish civil war, Herrmann joined KG-4, and wrote several well received tactical reports. When World War II began, he flew Heinkel He-111s in Poland and Norway. By 1940, he was Commander of the 7th Staffel of KG-4, and led many attacks on England during the Battle of Britain. In February 1941, his group went to Sicily, where it flew against Malta and Greece. In one such attack, Herrmann dropped a single bomb on an ammunition ship, the SS Clan Fraser; the resulting explosion sank 11 ships and made the Greek port of Piraeus unusable for many months. In early 1942, he was Commander of III./KG 30, attacking Arctic convoys from Norway, including the attacks on PQ-17. July 1942 saw him assigned to the general staff in Germany, where he became a close confidant of Hermann Göring. During his career as a bomber pilot, Herrmann flew 320 missions and sank 12 ships totalling 70,000 tons.
  
  wn.com/Hajo_Herrmann
• 
  Hank Jones
  Henry "Hank" Jones (July 31, 1918 – May 16, 2010) was an American jazz pianist, bandleader, arranger, and composer. Critics and musicians described Jones as eloquent, lyrical, and impeccable. In 1989, The National Endowment for the Arts honored him with the NEA Jazz Masters Award. He was also honored in 2003 with the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP) Jazz Living Legend Award. In 2008, he was awarded the National Medal of Arts. On April 13, 2009, the University of Hartford presented Jones with a Doctorate Degree for his musical accomplishments.
  Jones recorded over sixty albums under his own name, and countless others as a sideman.
  Born in Vicksburg, Mississippi, Henry "Hank" Jones moved to Pontiac, Michigan, where his father, Henry Jones Sr. a Baptist deacon and lumber inspector, bought a three-story brick home. One of seven children, Jones was raised in a musical family. His mother Olivia Jones sang; his two older sisters studied piano; and his two younger brothers—Thad, a trumpeter, and Elvin, a drummer—also became prominent jazz musicians. He studied piano at an early age and came under the influence of Earl Hines, Fats Waller, Teddy Wilson, and Art Tatum. By the age of 13 Jones was performing locally in Michigan and Ohio. While playing with territory bands in Grand Rapids and Lansing in 1944 he met Lucky Thompson, who invited Jones to work in New York City at the Onyx Club with Hot Lips Page.
  
  wn.com/Hank_Jones
• 
  Harry Mulisch
  Harry Kurt Victor Mulisch (29 July 1927 – 30 October 2010) was a Dutch author. He wrote more than 80 novels, plays, essays, poems and philosophical reflections. These have been translated into more than 30 languages.
  Along with Willem Frederik Hermans and Gerard Reve, Mulisch is considered one of the "Great Three" of Dutch postwar literature. His novel The Assault became a 1986 film, which won both a Golden Globe and an Academy Award. A 2007 poll revealed his 1992 novel The Discovery of Heaven as the "Best Dutch Book Ever". He was regularly thought of as a possible future Nobel laureate.
  Mulisch was associated with accessories such as his spectacles and pipe.
  Mulisch was born in Haarlem and lived in Amsterdam from 1958, following the death of his father in 1957, until the end of his own life. Mulisch's father was from Austria-Hungary and emigrated to the Netherlands after the First World War. During the German occupation in World War II his father worked for a German bank, which also dealt with confiscated Jewish assets. His mother, Alice Schwarz, was Jewish. Mulisch and his mother escaped transportation to a concentration camp thanks to Mulisch's father's collaboration with the Nazis, but his maternal grandmother died in a gas chamber. Mulisch was mostly raised by his parents' housemaid, Frieda Falk. Mulisch said of himself, he did not just write about World War II, he was WWII.
  
  wn.com/Harry_Mulisch
• 
  Harvey Pekar
  Harvey Lawrence Pekar ( /ˈpiːkɑr/; October 8, 1939 – July 12, 2010) was an American underground comic book writer, music critic and media personality, best known for his autobiographical American Splendor comic series. In 2003, the series inspired a critically acclaimed film adaptation of the same name.
  Pekar described American Splendor as "an autobiography written as it's happening. The theme is about staying alive. Getting a job, finding a mate, having a place to live, finding a creative outlet. Life is a war of attrition. You have to stay active on all fronts. It's one thing after another. I've tried to control a chaotic universe. And it's a losing battle. But I can't let go. I've tried, but I can't."
  Harvey Pekar and his younger brother Allen were born in Cleveland, Ohio to Saul and Dora Pekar, immigrants from Białystok, Poland. Saul Pekar was a Talmudic scholar who owned a grocery store on Kinsman Avenue, with the family living above the store. As a child, Harvey's first language was Yiddish, and he learned to read and appreciate novels in the dialect.
  
  wn.com/Harvey_Pekar
• 
  Henryk Górecki
  Henryk Mikołaj Górecki (Polish pronunciation: [ˈxɛnrɨk mʲiˈkɔwaj ɡuˈrɛtski]) (December 6, 1933 – November 12, 2010) was a Polish composer of contemporary classical music. He studied at the State Higher School of Music in Katowice between 1955 and 1960. In 1968, he joined the faculty and rose to provost before resigning in 1979. Górecki became a leading figure of the Polish avant-garde during the post-Stalin cultural thaw. His Webernian-influenced serialist works of the 1950s and 1960s were characterized by adherence to dissonant modernism and drew influence from Luigi Nono, Karlheinz Stockhausen,Krzysztof Penderecki and Kazimierz Serocki. He continued in this direction throughout the 1960s, but by the mid-1970s had changed to a less complex sacred minimalist sound, exemplified by the transitional Symphony No. 2 and the hugely popular Symphony No. 3 (Symphony of Sorrowful Songs). This later style developed through several other distinct phases, from such works as his 1979 Beatus Vir, to the 1981 choral hymn Miserere, the 1993 Kleines Requiem für eine Polka and his requiem Good Night.
  
  wn.com/Henryk_Górecki
• 
  Herb Ellis
  Mitchell Herbert "Herb" Ellis (August 4, 1921 – March 28, 2010) was an American jazz guitarist. Perhaps best known for his 1950s membership in the trio of pianist Oscar Peterson, Ellis was also a staple of west-coast studio recording sessions, and was described by critic Scott Yanow as "an excellent bop-based guitarist with a slight country twang to his sound."
  Born in Farmersville, Texas and raised in the suburbs of Dallas, Ellis first heard the electric guitar performed by George Barnes on a radio program. This experience is said to have inspired him to take up the guitar. He became proficient on the instrument by the time he entered North Texas State University as a music major. Ellis majored in music, but because they did not yet have a guitar program at that time, he studied the string bass. Unfortunately, due to lack of funds, his college days were short lived. In 1941, Ellis dropped out of college and toured for 6 months with a band from the University of Kansas.
  In 1943, he joined Glen Gray and the Casa Loma Orchestra and it was with Gray's band that he got his first recognition in the jazz magazines. After Gray's band, Ellis joined the Jimmy Dorsey band where he played some of his first recorded solos. Ellis remained with Dorsey through 1947, traveling and recording extensively, and playing in dance halls and movie palaces. Then came a turnabout that would change Ellis's career forever. Then, as pianist Lou Carter told journalist Robert Dupuis in a 1996 interview, "The Dorsey band had a six-week hole in the schedule. The three of us had played together some with the big band. John Frigo, who had already left the band, knew the owner of the Peter Stuyvesant Hotel in Buffalo. We went in there and stayed six months. And that's how the group the Soft Winds were born."
  
  wn.com/Herb_Ellis
• 
  Howard Zinn
  Howard Zinn (August 24, 1922 – January 27, 2010) was an American historian, academic, author, playwright, and social activist. Before and during his tenure as a political science professor at Boston University from 1964-88 he wrote more than 20 books, which included his best-selling and influential A People's History of the United States. He wrote extensively about the civil rights and anti-war movements, as well as of the labor history of the United States. His memoir, You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train, was also the title of a 2004 documentary about Zinn's life and work.
  Zinn was born to a Jewish immigrant family in Brooklyn. His father, Eddie Zinn, born in Austria-Hungary, emigrated to the U.S. with his brother Samuel before the outbreak of World War I. Howard's mother Jenny Zinn emigrated from the Eastern Siberian city of Irkutsk.
  Both parents were factory workers with limited education when they met and married, and there were no books or magazines in the series of apartments where they raised their children. Zinn's parents introduced him to literature by sending 10 cents plus a coupon to the New York Post for each of the 20 volumes of Charles Dickens' collected works. He also studied creative writing at Thomas Jefferson High School in a special program established by poet Elias Lieberman.
  
  wn.com/Howard_Zinn
• Irvin Kershner
  Irvin Kershner (April 29, 1923 – November 27, 2010) was an American film director and occasional actor, best known for directing quirky, independent films early in his career, and then Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back.
  With Jewish roots, Irvin Kershner's artistic and cultural background was a mixture of music and art. The study of music (violin, viola, and composition) was the most important activity of his early years. He attended the Temple University – Tyler School of Fine Arts in Philadelphia. Later, he went to New York and Provincetown to study with the famous painting teacher Hans Hofmann. He then moved to Los Angeles where he studied photography at the Art Center College of Design.
  He began his film career at the University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts, teaching photography and taking cinema courses under Slavko Vorkapić, a montage artist and then dean of the School. Kershner then accepted a job as still photographer on a State Department film project in Iran under the Point Four Program, which ultimately led to an assignment as a director and cinematographer of documentaries in Iran, Greece and Turkey with the United States Information Service.
  
  wn.com/Irvin_Kershner
• 
  Iskandar of Johor
  Almarhum Sultan Mahmud Iskandar Al-Haj ibni Ismail Al-Khalidi (8 April 1932 – 22 January 2010) was the eighth Yang di-Pertuan Agong (Malay for Paramount Chieftain, Supreme King or High King) of Malaysia, from 26 April 1984 to 25 April 1989. He succeeded his father, Sultan Ismail, to become the 24th Sultan of Johor upon the former's death in 1981. Sultan Iskandar's reign lasted for almost 29 years until his death in January 2010, upon which he was succeeded by his oldest son, Tunku Ibrahim.
  As was the case with his grandfather, Sultan Ibrahim, Sultan Iskandar's independent mindset resulted in strained relations with the Malaysian federal government on numerous occasions. This was more so during his days as the Yang di-Pertuan Agong, whereby a number of notable public incidents involved Sultan Iskandar. Nevertheless, Sultan Iskandar was reputed to show great concern to his subjects, and was held in high esteem by many of his subjects–particularly the Malays and Orang Aslis.
  Sultan Iskandar is reputed to have been a staunch disciplinarian, with willingness to occasionally voice personal opinions on governmental issues. On the personal side, subjects who have personally approached the Sultan in his later years described him as a person with a warm and generous personality. However, past critics had also argued that Sultan Iskandar was a person with a turbulent temper. These claims were made by citing records of past notorious incidents, which include an experience of being disinherited from being the Tunku Mahkota (or Crown Prince in English) by his father, in 1961, as well as a series of alleged criminal acts occurring between the 1970s and the 1990s which were published in the press and provoked widespread moral outrage within the Malaysian public.
  
  wn.com/Iskandar_of_Johor
• 
  Jean Simmons
  Jean Merilyn Simmons, OBE (January 31, 1929 – January 22, 2010) was an English actress. She appeared predominantly in films, beginning with those films made in Great Britain during and after World War II – she was one of J. Arthur Rank's 'well-spoken young starlets' – followed mainly by Hollywood films from 1950.
  Simmons was born in Lower Holloway, London, England, to Charles Simmons and his wife, Winifred (Loveland) Simmons. Jean was the youngest of four children with siblings Edna, Harold and Lorna. She began acting at the age of 14. During the war, the Simmons family was evacuated to Winscombe in Somerset. Her father, a physical education teacher (who had represented Great Britain in the 1912 Summer Olympics), taught briefly at Sidcot School, and sometime during this period Simmons followed her elder sister on to the village stage and sang songs such as "Daddy Wouldn't Buy Me a Bow Wow". Returning to London and just enrolled at the Aida Foster School of Dance, she was spotted by the director Val Guest, who cast her in the Margaret Lockwood vehicle Give Us the Moon. Small roles in several other films followed including the high profile Caesar and Cleopatra, produced by Gabriel Pascal. Pascal saw potential in Simmons and in 1945 he signed her to a seven year contract. Prior to moving to Hollywood, she played the young Estella in David Lean's version of Great Expectations (1946) and Ophelia in Laurence Olivier's Hamlet (1948), for which she received her first Oscar nomination. It was the experience of working on Great Expectations that caused her to pursue an acting career more seriously:
  
  wn.com/Jean_Simmons
• Jill Clayburgh
  Jill Clayburgh (April 30, 1944 – November 5, 2010) was an American actress. She received Academy Award nominations for her roles in An Unmarried Woman and Starting Over.
  Clayburgh was born in New York City, the daughter of Julia Louise (née Dorr), a theatrical production secretary for producer David Merrick, and Albert Henry "Bill" Clayburgh, a manufacturing executive. Her paternal grandmother was concert and opera singer Alma Lachenbruch Clayburgh.
  Clayburgh's father came from a wealthy Jewish family. She was raised in a "fashionable" neighborhood on Manhattan's Upper East Side, where she attended the prestigious Brearley School. She then attended Sarah Lawrence College, where she decided that she wanted to be an actress.
  Clayburgh married screenwriter and playwright David Rabe in 1979. They had one son, Michael Rabe, and one daughter, actress Lily Rabe. Prior to this, she had dated actor Al Pacino for five years (and briefly appeared with him in a November 1968 N.Y.P.D. episode, "Deadly Circle Of Violence").
  
  wn.com/Jill_Clayburgh
• 
  Joan Sutherland
  Dame Joan Alston Sutherland, OM, AC, DBE (7 November 1926 – 10 October 2010) was an Australian dramatic coloratura soprano noted for her contribution to the renaissance of the bel canto repertoire from the late 1950s through to the 1980s.
  One of the most remarkable female opera singers of the 20th century, she was dubbed La Stupenda by a La Fenice audience in 1960 after a performance of the title role in Handel's Alcina. She possessed a voice of beauty and power, combining extraordinary agility, accurate intonation, "supremely" pinpoint staccatos, a splendid trill and a tremendous upper register, although music critics often complained about the imprecision of her diction. Her friend Luciano Pavarotti once called Sutherland the "Voice of the Century"; Montserrat Caballé described the Australian's voice as being like "heaven".
  Joan Sutherland was born to Scottish parents in Sydney, and attended St Catherine's School in the suburb of Waverley, New South Wales. As a child, she listened to and imitated her mother's singing exercises. Her mother, a mezzo-soprano, had taken voice lessons but never considered making a career as a professional singer. Sutherland was 18 years old when she began seriously studying voice with John and Aida Dickens. She made her concert debut in Sydney, as Dido in Purcell's Dido and Aeneas, in 1947. In 1951, she made her stage debut in Eugene Goossens's Judith. In 1951, after winning Australia's most important competition, the Sun Aria, now known as the Sydney Eisteddfod McDonald's Operatic Aria in 1949. She then went to London to further her studies at the Opera School of the Royal College of Music with Clive Carey. She was engaged by the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, as a utility soprano, and made her debut there on 28 October 1952, as the First Lady in The Magic Flute, followed in November by a few performances as Clotilde in Vincenzo Bellini's Norma, with Maria Callas as Norma.
  
  wn.com/Joan_Sutherland
• 
  Johan Ferrier
  Johan Henri Eliza Ferrier (May 12, 1910 – January 4, 2010) was a Surinamese politician who served as the 1st President of Suriname from November 25, 1975, until August 13, 1980. He was that country's last governor before independence, from 1968 to 1975, and first president after it gained independence from the Netherlands. He was deposed in a military coup on 13 August 1980.
  He was named the twentieth century's most important politician in Suriname in 1999.
  Ferrier was born in 1910 at Suriname's largest city and its capital, Paramaribo. A teacher by trade outside political life, he assisted in the establishment of the country's National Party in 1946, at a time when it was a colony of the Dutch.
  Ferrier was co-founder of the Boy Scouts van Suriname and its first Chief Scout. At age 16 he was a teacher in the district Saramacca and founded his first Scout Group. This group still exists and now bears the name "De Johan Ferrier groep, de groep 2 Oranje Dassers".
  Ferrier was a member of the National Council until 1948. He then went to Amsterdam in the Netherlands to learn education theory. When he went back to Suriname, which had by then become an autonomous country within the Kingdom of the Netherlands, he continued to study and to have a career in education. He served as both prime minister and interior minister for a three-year period from 1955 until 1958. He also spent time as Suriname's head of education. From 1968 until 1975 he retained the post of governor. At this stage Suriname was made independent. Ferrier was selected as President of the country.Dési Bouterse's 1980 coup d'état prompted Ferrier to resign within six months.
  
  wn.com/Johan_Ferrier
• 
  John Dankworth
  Sir John Phillip William Dankworth, CBE (20 September 1927 – 6 February 2010), known in his early career as Johnny Dankworth, was an English jazz composer, saxophonist and clarinetist. He was the husband of jazz singer Dame Cleo Laine, who survives him; they married in 1958.
  Born in Woodford, Essex, he grew up, within a family of musicians, in Highams Park, a suburb of Chingford in the London Borough of Waltham Forest, and attended Sir George Monoux Grammar School in Walthamstow. He had violin and piano lessons before settling eventually on the clarinet at the age of 16, after hearing a record of the Benny Goodman Quartet. Soon afterwards, inspired by Johnny Hodges, he learned to play the alto saxophone.
  After studying at London’s Royal Academy of Music (where his jazz interests were frowned upon) and then national service in the army, he began a career on the British jazz scene. In 1949 he attended the Paris Jazz Festival and played with Charlie Parker. Parker's comments about Dankworth led to the engagement of the young British jazzman for a short tour of Sweden with the soprano-saxophonist Sidney Bechet. Dankworth was voted Musician of the Year in 1949.
  
  wn.com/John_Dankworth
• 
  John Forsythe
  John Forsythe (born Jacob Lincoln Freund; January 29, 1918 - April 1, 2010) was an American stage, television, and film actor. Forsythe starred in three television series, spanning four decades and three genres: as single playboy father Bentley Gregg in the sitcom Bachelor Father (1957–1962); as the unseen millionaire Charles Townsend on the crime drama Charlie's Angels (1976–1981), and as patriarch Blake Carrington on the soap opera Dynasty (1981–1989). He hosted World of Survival (1971–1977).
  The eldest of three children, Forsythe was born as Jacob Lincoln Freund in Penns Grove, New Jersey, to Blanche Materson (née Blohm) and Samuel Jeremiah Freund, a stockbroker. He was raised in Brooklyn, New York, where his father worked as a Wall Street businessman during the Great Depression of the 1930s.
  He graduated from Abraham Lincoln High School in Brooklyn at the age of 16, and began attending the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. In 1936 at the age of eighteen, he took a job as the public address announcer for Brooklyn Dodgers games at Ebbets Field, confirming a childhood love of baseball.
  
  wn.com/John_Forsythe
• 
  Jonathan Motzfeldt
  Jonathan Motzfeldt (25 September 1938 – 28 October 2010) was the first and third Prime Minister of Greenland.
  From 1979 to 1988, in 1997 and from 2003 to 2008, he was Chairman of the Greenland Landsting. He was prime minister twice, from 1 May 1979 to 18 March 1991 and from 19 September 1997 to 14 December 2002. At the time of his death Motzfeldt was the current president of the West Nordic Council.
  After having placed himself at the forefront of the political emancipation process that Greenland's population began in earnest in the early 1970s, Motzfeldt became synonymous with the Greenland Home Rule. In the same manner as he stepped forward borne on the shoulders of the true pioneers of the independence movement, he secured almost absolute power through a series of spectacular and often quite brutal political cleansing processess. In these purges old comrades like Lars Emil Johansen, Moses Olsen, Lars Chemnitz and Emil Abelsen were pushed into the political sidelines.
  
  wn.com/Jonathan_Motzfeldt
• 
  José Saramago
  José de Sousa Saramago, GColSE (Portuguese pronunciation: [ʒuˈzɛ sɐɾɐˈmaɣu]; (16 November 1922 – 18 June 2010) was a Portuguese novelist, poet, playwright, journalist and recipient of the 1998 Nobel Prize in Literature. His works, some of which can be seen as allegories, commonly present subversive perspectives on historic events, emphasizing the human factor. Harold Bloom has described Saramago as "a permanent part of the Western canon".
  Awarded the 1998 Nobel Prize in Literature, more than two million copies of Saramago's books have been sold in Portugal alone and his work has been translated into 25 languages. He founded the National Front for the Defence of Culture (Lisbon, 1992) with Freitas-Magalhães and others. A proponent of libertarian communism, Saramago came into conflict with some groups, such as the Catholic Church. Saramago was an atheist who defended love as an instrument to improve the human condition.
  In 1992, the Portuguese government, under Prime Minister Aníbal Cavaco Silva, ordered the removal of The Gospel According to Jesus Christ from the European Literary Prize's shortlist, claiming the work was religiously offensive. Disheartened by this political censorship of his work, Saramago went into exile on the Spanish island of Lanzarote, upon which he resided until his death in 2010.
  
  wn.com/José_Saramago
• 
  June Havoc
  June Havoc (November 8, 1912 – March 28, 2010) was a Canadian-born American actress, dancer, writer, and theater director. Havoc was a child Vaudeville performer under the tutelage of her mother. She later acted on Broadway and in Hollywood, and stage directed, both on and off-Broadway. She last appeared on television in 1990 on General Hospital. Havoc was the younger sister of burlesque entertainer Gypsy Rose Lee.
  She was born as either "Ellen Evangeline Hovick" or "Ellen June Hovick," in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, probably in 1912, although some sources indicate 1913. She herself was uncertain of the year – according to The New York Times obituary, her mother forged several birth certificates. (Her mother reportedly had five birth certificates for her.)
  Her lifelong career in show business began when she was a child, billed as "Baby June". Her only full sibling, Rose Louise Hovick (1911–1970), was called "Louise" by her family members. Their parents were Rose Thompson Hovick (1890–1954) and John Olaf Hovick, a Norwegian American, who worked as a newspaper advertising man.
  
  wn.com/June_Havoc
• 
  Jyoti Basu
  Jyoti Basu (Bengali: জ্যোতি বসু Joti Boshu, 8 July 1914 – 17 January 2010; also Jyotirindra Basu) was an Indian politician belonging to the Communist Party of India (Marxist) from West Bengal, India. He served as the Chief Minister of West Bengal from 1977 to 2000, making him the longest-serving Chief Minister of any Indian state. Basu was a member of the CPI(M) Politburo from the time of the party's founding in 1964 until 2008. From 2008 until his death in 2010 he remained a permanent invitee to the central committee of the party.
  Jyoti Basu was born on 8 July 1914 as Jyotirindra Basu at 43/1 Harrison Road (now Mahatma Gandhi Road) Calcutta into an upper middle-class Bengali family in West Bengal, India. His father, Nishikanta Basu, was a doctor from the village of Barudi in Narayanganj District, East Bengal (now in Bangladesh), while his mother Hemalata Basu was a housewife. Basu's schooling started at Loreto School at Dharmatala, Calcutta (now Kolkata), in 1920. It was there where his father shortened his name and he became Jyoti Basu. However, he was moved to St. Xavier's School in 1925. Basu completed his undergraduate education and received the honours in English from the Presidency College of the University of Calcutta.
  
  wn.com/Jyoti_Basu
• 
  Kate McGarrigle
  Kate McGarrigle, CM (February 6, 1946 – January 18, 2010) was a Canadian folk music singer-songwriter, who wrote and performed as a duo with her sister Anna McGarrigle.
  She was the mother of singers Rufus Wainwright and Martha Wainwright from her marriage to American singer-songwriter Loudon Wainwright III, which ended in divorce.
  Born in Montreal, Quebec to English and French Canadian parents, the three McGarrigle sisters (Jane, Anna, and Kate, the youngest) grew up in the village of Saint-Sauveur-des-Monts, north of Montreal. Their family was a musical one on both sides, often gathering around the piano and singing, allowing Kate and her sisters to absorb influences as varied as Gershwin, French Canadian folk songs, Stephen Foster, and composer-singers such as Wade Hemsworth, and Edith Piaf. The sisters were formally introduced to music by taking piano lessons from the village nuns.
  In the 1960s Kate and Anna established themselves in Montreal's burgeoning folk scene while they attended school. From 1963 to 1967, they teamed up with Jack Nissenson and Peter Weldon to form the folk group, the Mountain City Four.
  
  wn.com/Kate_McGarrigle
• 
  Kathryn Grayson
  Kathryn Grayson (February 9, 1922 - February 17, 2010) was an American actress and operatic soprano singer.
  From the age of twelve, Grayson trained as an opera singer. She was under contract to MGM by the early 1940s, soon establishing a career principally through her work in musicals. After several supporting roles, she was a lead performer in such films as Thousands Cheer (1943), Anchors Aweigh (1945) with Frank Sinatra and Gene Kelly, and Show Boat (1951) and Kiss Me Kate (1953) (both with Howard Keel).
  When film musical production declined, she worked in theatre, appearing in Camelot (1962–1964). Later in the decade she performed in several operas, including La bohème, Madama Butterfly, Orpheus in the Underworld and La traviata.
  She was born Zelma Kathryn Elisabeth Hedrick in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, the daughter of Charles E. Hedrick and Lillian Grayson Hedrick (1897–1955). Charles was a building contractor-realtor.
  Lillian was of British descent and Charles was of German and Sicilian descent.
  
  wn.com/Kathryn_Grayson
• Khattiya Sawasdipol
  Khattiya Sawasdipol (Thai: ขัตติยะ สวัสดิผล; RTGS: Khattiya Sawatdiphon; June 2, 1951 – May 17, 2010), alias Seh Daeng (Thai: เสธ.แดง; RTGS: Se Daeng; English: Red Commander), was a major general in the Royal Thai Army, assigned to the Internal Security Operations Command. He claimed to have helped the United States spy on North Vietnam during the Vietnam War, and to have taken part in the CIA-financed "Secret War" against the communists in the Plain of Jars, in Laos. Khattiya disguised himself as a Muslim in order to infiltrate rebel groups in Aceh Indonesia.^{[citation needed]}
  He wrote several best-sellers in the Thai language about his adventures in a series called Khom...Seh Daeng (คม...เสธ.แดง). Khattiya frequently appeared on television talk shows and has had a cult of followers, achieving almost celebrity status. He came into conflict with the Thai police commander, General Seri Temiyavet, during the investigation of a large gambling den in 2006. General Seri filed a libel suit against Khattiya, who was arrested and sentenced to prison for four months. Khattiya subsequently brought a 600 million Baht libel suit against Seri for defamation.
  
  wn.com/Khattiya_Sawasdipol
• 
  Konstantin Novoselov
  Sir Konstantin Sergeevich "Kostya" Novoselov, FRS, HonFRSC, FInstP (Russian: Константи́н Серге́евич Новосёлов; born 23 August 1974) is a Russo-British physicist, most notably known for his works on graphene together with Sir Andre Geim, which earned them the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2010. Novoselov is currently a member of the mesoscopic physics research group at the University of Manchester as a Royal Society University Research Fellow. Novoselov is also a recipient of an ERC Starting Grant from the European Research Council.
  Konstantin Novoselov was born in Nizhny Tagil, Soviet Union, in 1974 in a Russian family. He received a Diploma from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, and undertook his Ph.D. studies at the University of Nijmegen in the Netherlands before moving to the University of Manchester in the United Kingdom with his doctoral advisor Andre Geim in 2001. He now holds both Russian and British citizenship.
  Together with Geim, Novoselov has published more than 90 peer-reviewed research papers on several topics including mesoscopic superconductivity (Hall magnetometry), subatomic movements of magnetic domain walls, the discovery of gecko tape and graphene.
  
  wn.com/Konstantin_Novoselov
• 
  Korean War
  The Korean War (Korean: 한국전쟁 or 조선전쟁, Hanja: 韓國戰爭 or 朝鮮戰爭; 25 June 1950 – 27 July 1953) was a war between the Republic of Korea (supported primarily by the United States of America, with contributions from allied nations under the aegis of the United Nations) and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (supported by the People's Republic of China, with military and material aid from the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics). The Korean War was primarily the result of the political division of Korea by an agreement of the victorious Allies at the conclusion of the Pacific War at the end of World War II. The Korean Peninsula was ruled by the Empire of Japan from 1910 until the end of World War II. Following the surrender of the Empire of Japan in September 1945, American administrators divided the peninsula along the 38th parallel, with U.S. military forces occupying the southern half and Soviet military forces occupying the northern half.
  
  wn.com/Korean_War
• 
  Kurmanbek Bakiyev
  Kurmanbek Saliyevich Bakiyev (Kyrgyz: Курманбек Сали уулу Бакиев (Kurmanbek Sali Uulu Bakiev), Russian: Курманбек Салиевич Бакиев; born 1 August 1949) is a politician who served as the second President of Kyrgyzstan, from 2005 to 2010. Large opposition protests in April 2010 led to the takeover of government offices, forcing Bakiyev to flee the country.
  Bakiyev was the leader of the People's Movement of Kyrgyzstan before his ascendance to the presidency. He received most of his popular support from the south of the country.
  The Legislative Assembly of Kyrgyzstan of the Supreme Council of Kyrgyzstan appointed him acting President on March 25, 2005, following the ousting, during the Tulip Revolution, of President Askar Akayev. In October 2007, Bakiyev initiated the creation of Ak Jol party, but could not lead it due to his presidency.
  Following the events of the 2005 Tulip Revolution, Bakiyev won the 10 July ballot for the Presidential election with 89% of the vote with a 53% turnout.
  Despite initial hopes, Bakiyev's term in office was marred by the murder of several prominent politicians, prison riots, economic ills and battles for control of lucrative businesses. In 2006, Bakiyev faced a political crisis as thousands of people participated in a series of protests in Bishkek. He was accused of not following through with his promises to limit presidential power, give more authority to parliament and the prime minister, and eradicate corruption and crime. Bakiyev claimed that the opposition was plotting a coup against him.
  
  wn.com/Kurmanbek_Bakiyev
• 
  Kyrgyz people
  The Kyrgyz (also spelled Kirgiz, Kirghiz) are a Turkic people living primarily in Kyrgyzstan.
  There are several etymological theories on the ethnonym "Kyrgyz."
  The word "Kyrgyz" is derived from the Turkic word "forty", with -Iz being an old plural suffix, referring to a collection of forty tribes.
  
  wn.com/Kyrgyz_people
• 
  Laurent Fignon
  Laurent Patrick Fignon (12 August 1960 – 31 August 2010) was a French professional road bicycle racer. He won the Tour de France in 1983 and in 1984. He missed winning it a third time, in 1989, by 8 seconds, the closest margin ever to decide the tour. He also won the Giro d'Italia in 1989, after having been the runner-up in 1984, and the classic race Milan – San Remo in 1988 and 1989. He died from cancer on 31 August 2010.
  Fignon was born in Montmartre, Paris. His family moved to Tournan-en-Brie in 1963, where he lived until he left for Paris at age 23.
  His first sport was football and he got as far as playing for his département or area. Friends encouraged him into cycling and he rode his first official race in 1976, which he won. Fignon's parents did not want him to race, and he raced without them knowing. He won four more races in his first year, but only one in his second year. In this third year, he won 18 out of 36 races. Fignon's parents allowed him to race, but still thought that he should study. Fignon entered the University of Villetaneuse, doing Structural and Materials Science. This study did not go too well, and he left soon. He joined the army, and was posted at the Bataillon de Joinville, known for its sporting reputation. After this, Fignon was sure he wanted to pursue a professional career.
  
  wn.com/Laurent_Fignon
• 
  Lech Kaczyński
  Lech Aleksander Kaczyński (Polish pronunciation: [ˈlɛx alɛkˈsandɛr kaˈt͡ʂɨȷ̃skʲi] ( listen); 18 June 1949 – 10 April 2010) was a Polish lawyer and politician who served as the President of Poland from 2005 until 2010 and as Mayor of Warsaw from 2002 until 22 December 2005. Before he became a president, he was also a member of the Law and Justice party. He was the identical twin brother of the former Prime Minister of Poland and current Chairman of the Law and Justice party, Jarosław Kaczyński. On 10 April 2010, he died in the crash of a Polish Air Force Tu-154 while attempting to land at Smolensk-North airport in Russia.
  Kaczyński was born in Warsaw, the son of Rajmund (an engineer who served as a soldier of the Armia Krajowa in World War II and a veteran of the Warsaw Uprising), and Jadwiga (a philologist at the Polish Academy of Sciences). As a child, he starred in a 1962 Polish film, The Two Who Stole the Moon (Polish title O dwóch takich, co ukradli księżyc) with his twin brother Jarosław.
  
  wn.com/Lech_Kaczyński
• 
  Lena Horne
  Lena Mary Calhoun Horne (June 30, 1917 – May 9, 2010) was an American singer, actress, civil rights activist and dancer.
  Horne joined the chorus of the Cotton Club at the age of sixteen and became a nightclub performer before moving to Hollywood, where she had small parts in numerous movies, and more substantial parts in the films Cabin in the Sky and Stormy Weather. Due to the Red Scare and her left-leaning political views, Horne found herself blacklisted and unable to get work in Hollywood.
  Returning to her roots as a nightclub performer, Horne took part in the March on Washington in August 1963, and continued to work as a performer, both in nightclubs and on television, while releasing well-received record albums. She announced her retirement in March 1980, but the next year starred in a one-woman show, Lena Horne: The Lady and Her Music, which ran for more than three hundred performances on Broadway and earned her numerous awards and accolades. She continued recording and performing sporadically into the 1990s, disappearing from the public eye in 2000.
  
  wn.com/Lena_Horne
• Leonid Kizim
  Leonid Denisovich Kizim (Кизим Леонид Денисович) (August 5, 1941 – June 14, 2010) was a Soviet cosmonaut.
  Kizim was born in Krasnyi Lyman, Donetsk Oblast, Soviet Union (now Ukraine). He graduated from Higher Air Force School in 1975; and served as a test pilot in the Soviet Air Force. He was selected as a cosmonaut on October 23, 1965. Kizim flew as Commander on Soyuz T-3, Soyuz T-10 and Soyuz T-15, and also served as backup commander for Soyuz T-2. All together he spent 374 days 17 hours 56 minutes in space. On Soyuz T-15, he was part of the only crew to visit two space stations on one spaceflight (Mir and Salyut 7). He later served as Deputy Director Satellite Control-Center of the Russian Ministry of Defense; after May 1995 he was Director of the Military Engineering Academy of Aeronautics and Astronautics in St. Petersburg.
  He retired on June 13, 1987, and died on June 14, 2010. Leonid Kizim was married with two children.
  He was awarded:
  Foreign awards:
  
  
  
  wn.com/Leonid_Kizim
• 
  Leslie Nielsen
  Leslie William Nielsen, OC (11 February 1926 – 28 November 2010) was a Canadian and naturalized American actor and comedian. Nielsen appeared in more than one hundred films and 1,500 television programs over the span of his career, portraying more than 220 characters. Born in Regina, Saskatchewan, Nielsen enlisted in the Royal Canadian Air Force and worked as a disc jockey before receiving a scholarship to Neighborhood Playhouse. Making his television debut in 1948, he quickly expanded to over 50 television appearances two years later. Nielsen made his film debut in 1956, and began collecting roles in dramas, westerns, and romance films from the 1950s to the 1970s. Nielsen's performance in the films Forbidden Planet and The Poseidon Adventure received positive reviews as a serious actor, although he is primarily known for his comedic roles.
  Although Nielsen's acting career crossed a variety of genres in both television and films, his deadpan delivery in Airplane! marked a turning point in his career, one that would make him, in the words of film critic Roger Ebert, "the Olivier of spoofs." Nielsen enjoyed further success with The Naked Gun film series, based on an earlier short-lived television series Police Squad! in which he starred. His portrayal of serious characters seemingly oblivious to (and complicit in) their absurd surroundings gave him a reputation as a comedian. In the final years of his career, Nielsen appeared in multiple spoof and parody films, many of which were met poorly by critics, but performed well in box office and home media releases. Nielsen married four times and had two daughters from his second marriage. He was recognized with a variety of awards throughout his career, and was inducted into the Canada and Hollywood Walks of Fame.
  
  wn.com/Leslie_Nielsen
• 
  Liu Xiaobo
  Liu Xiaobo (born 28 December 1955) is a Chinese literary critic, writer, professor, and human rights activist who called for political reforms and the end of communist single-party rule in China. He is currently incarcerated as a political prisoner in China.
  Liu has served from 2003 to 2007 as President of the Independent Chinese PEN Center, an organization funded by the National Endowment for Democracy, which in turn is almost entirely funded by the US Congress. He was also the President of NED-funded MinZhuZhongGuo (Democratic China) magazine since the mid-1990s. On 8 December 2008, Liu was detained because of his participation with the Charter 08 manifesto. He was formally arrested on 23 June 2009 on suspicion of "inciting subversion of state power." He was tried on the same charges on 23 December 2009, and sentenced to eleven years' imprisonment and two years' deprivation of political rights on 25 December 2009.
  During his fourth prison term, he was awarded the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize for "his long and non-violent struggle for fundamental human rights in China." He is the first Chinese citizen to be awarded a Nobel Prize of any kind while residing in China. Liu is the third person to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize while in prison or detention, after Germany's Carl von Ossietzky (1935) and Burma's Aung San Suu Kyi (1991). Liu is also the second person (the first being Ossietzky) to be denied the right to have a representative collect the Nobel prize for him.
  
  wn.com/Liu_Xiaobo
• 
  Louise Bourgeois
  Louise Joséphine Bourgeois (French pronunciation: [lwiz buʁʒwa]; 25 December 1911 – 31 May 2010), was a renowned French-American artist and sculptor, best known for her contributions to both modern and contemporary art, and for her spider structures, titled Maman, which resulted in her being nicknamed the Spiderwoman. In 2011 one of her Spider works sold for $10.7 million, a new record price for the artist at auction, and the highest price paid for a work by a woman artist.
  She is recognized today as the founder of confessional art.
  In the late 1940s, after moving to New York City with her American husband, Robert Goldwater, she turned to sculpture. Though her works are abstract, they are suggestive of the human figure and express themes of betrayal, anxiety, and loneliness. Her work was wholly autobiographical, inspired by her childhood trauma of discovering that her English governess was also her father’s mistress.
  Bourgeois was born on 25 December 1911 in Paris, France. She was the middle child of three born to parents Josephine Fauriaux and Louis Bourgeois. Her parents owned a gallery that dealt primarily in antique tapestries. A few years after her birth, her family moved out of Paris and set up a workshop for tapestry restoration below their apartment in Choisy-le-Roi, for which Bourgeois filled in the designs where they had become worn.
  
  wn.com/Louise_Bourgeois
• 
  Luigi Poggi
  Luigi Poggi (25 November 1917 – 4 May 2010) was an Italian cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church.
  Born in Piacenza, Poggi did all his studies prior to priestly ordination in that city and was sent to Rome in 1944 primarily to study diplomacy at the Pontifical Ecclesiastical Academy. While doing this, Poggi joined the Secretariat of State, for which he was to work for the next twenty years. In the process he rose to the rank of domestic prelate in 1960. Poggi was in charge of the mission to investigate the legal status of titular churches in Tunisia during 1963 and 1964.
  In 1965 he became papal nuncio to Central Africa (which comprises the modern states of Cameroon, Chad, Congo-Brazzaville, Gabon, and the Central African Republic).
  Poggi became a titular Archbishop that year and became secretary of the Congregation for Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs in 1966. He continued serving as a nuncio in Africa during the later part of the 1960s, but was then given a critical role by Pope Paul VI in his "Ostpolitik", which aimed to improve Vatican relations with the Communist-ruled nations of the Warsaw Pact. This role reached its greatest importance early in the pontificate of Pope John Paul II, when Poggi, owing to his knowledge of Polish politics of the time, was sent first to Warsaw and then to the Kremlin to negotiate with Moscow. He later visited Prague.
  
  wn.com/Luigi_Poggi
• 
  Luis Corvalán
  Luis Alberto Corvalán Lepe (September 14, 1916, Tomé – July 21, 2010) was a Chilean politician. He served as the general secretary of the Communist Party of Chile (PCCh).
  Corvalán joined the Communist Party of Chile at the age of fifteen in the city of Chillán shortly after the fall of the repressive dictatorship of Carlos Ibáñez del Campo in 1932. Trained as a teacher, after 1952 he became an elected member of the PCCh's Central Committee, and after 1958 served as the Secretary-General. The party was outlawed from 1948 until 1958. In this period Corvalán was interned in the concentration camps of Pitrufquén and later in Pisagua.
  On September 11, 1973, General Augusto Pinochet lead a military Coup and Corvalán was among the many arrested. After the murder of Victor Jara, he was the most prominent political prisoner in Chile. While in prison, Luis Corvalán was awarded the Lenin Peace Prize (for 1973-74). The Soviet Union launched an international campaign for his release and on December 18, 1976 Corvalán was exchanged for a notable Soviet political prisoner, dissident Vladimir Bukovsky, and received asylum in the USSR.
  
  wn.com/Luis_Corvalán
• Luis García Berlanga
  Luis García Berlanga Martí (12 June 1921 Valencia, Spain– 13 November 2010) was a Spanish film director and screenwriter.
  When young, he decided to study philosophy, but his true vocation pushed him to enter in 1947 the Institute of Cinematographic Investigations and experiences (Instituto de Investigaciones y Experiencias cinematográficas) in Madrid.
  In his youth he enrolled in the Blue Division to avoid his father's execution as a Republican politician . His debut as a film director in 1951 was with the film That Happy Couple in which he worked with Juan Antonio Bardem. With Bardem, he is considered to be one of Spanish film renovators after the Spanish civil war. Among his films stand out several unforgettable ones of Spanish film history, as Welcome Mr. Marshall! or The Executioner. He worked on seven occasions with screenwriter Rafael Azcona.
  Characteristic of his films are their sense of irony and the satires of different social and political situations. During the Franco dictatorship his ability to outwit the censors allowed him to make daring projects such as Miracles on Thursdays.
  
  wn.com/Luis_García_Berlanga
• 
  Lynn Redgrave
  Lynn Rachel Redgrave, OBE (8 March 1943 – 2 May 2010) was an English actress.
  A member of the well-known British acting family, Redgrave trained in London before making her theatrical debut in 1962. By the mid-1960s she had appeared in several films, including Tom Jones (1963), and Georgy Girl (1966) which won her a New York Film Critics Award and nominations for an Academy Award and a Golden Globe Award.
  In 1967, she made her Broadway debut, and performed in several stage productions in New York while making frequent returns to London's West End. She performed with her sister Vanessa in Three Sisters in London, and in the title role in a television production of Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? in 1991. She made a return to films in the late 1990s in films such as Shine (1996) and Gods and Monsters (1998), for which she received another Academy Award nomination.
  Redgrave was born in Marylebone, London, to actors Sir Michael Redgrave and Rachel Kempson. Her sister is actress Vanessa Redgrave; her brother is the late actor and political activist Corin Redgrave. She is the aunt of actor Carlo Gabriel Nero and actresses Joely Richardson, Jemma Redgrave and the late Natasha Richardson.
  
  wn.com/Lynn_Redgrave
• 
  Malcolm McLaren
  Malcolm Robert Andrew McLaren (22 January 1946 – 8 April 2010) was an English performer and impresario. He was manager of the Sex Pistols and the New York Dolls. As a solo artist, McLaren had an innovative career that helped introduce hip hop to the United Kingdom.
  McLaren was born to Pete McLaren, a Scottish engineer, and Emmy Isaacs in post-World War II North London. His father left when he was two and he was raised by his maternal grandmother, Rose Corre Isaacs, the formerly wealthy daughter of Portuguese Sephardic Jewish diamond dealers, in Stoke Newington. McLaren told Andrew Denton on Enough Rope, that his grandmother always said to him, "To be bad is good... to be good is simply boring". In The Ghosts of Oxford Street he says Charles Clore (who bought Selfridges) became his mother's lover. When he was six, McLaren's mother married Martin Levi, a man working in London's rag trade. When McLaren was in his forties, a Sunday newspaper found Pete McLaren in an English "greasy spoon garage".
  
  wn.com/Malcolm_McLaren
• 
  Manute Bol
  Manute Bol ( /məˈnuːt ˈboʊl/; October 16, 1962 – June 19, 2010) was a Sudanese-born basketball player and activist. At 7 ft 7 in (2.31 m) tall, Bol was one of the tallest players ever to appear in the National Basketball Association, along with Gheorghe Mureşan. Unlike Mureşan, however, Bol was naturally tall and did not have a Pituitary disease.^{[citation needed]} Bol was officially measured at 7 feet, 6 3/4 inches tall by the Guinness Book of World Records. Bol is believed to have been born on October 16, 1962 in either Turalei or Gogrial, Sudan (now South Sudan). He was the son of a Dinka tribal chief, who gave him the name "Manute", which means "special blessing."
  Bol played basketball for many teams over his career. He played for two colleges and four NBA teams. He was known as a specialist player; his shot blocking ability was considered among the best in the history of the sport, but other aspects of his game were considered fairly weak. In his career, he had more blocked shots than points scored.
  
  wn.com/Manute_Bol
• Marcel Bigeard
  Marcel "Bruno" Bigeard (14 February 1916 – 18 June 2010) was a French military officer who fought in World War II, Indochina and Algeria. He was one of the commanders in the Battle of Dien Bien Phu and is thought by many to have been a dominating influence on French 'unconventional' warfare thinking from that time onwards. He was one of the most decorated soldiers in France, and is particularly noteworthy because he rose from enlisted as Second Class, the lowest possible rank, in 1936 and ultimately finished his career in 1976 with the rank of Lieutenant General (Général de corps d'armée).
  Marcel Bigeard was born in Toul,Meurthe-et-Moselle on 14 February 1916, the son of Charles Bigeard (1880–1948), a railway worker, and Sophie Bigeard (1880–1964), a domineering housewife. He also had an older sister, Charlotte Bigeard, fours years his senior. Lorraine instilled a strong patriotism in him and his mother a will to win; those two would remain his strongest driving forces. At fourteen, Bigeard quit school to help his parents financially by taking a position in the local Société Générale bank, where he did well.
  
  wn.com/Marcel_Bigeard
• Marina Semyonova
  Marina Timofeyevna Semyonova (Russian: Марина Тимофеевна Семёнова, 12 June [O.S. 30 May] 1908 – 9 June 2010) was the first Soviet-trained prima ballerina. She was born in Saint-Petersburg. She was named a People's Artist of the USSR in 1975.
  The first great dancer formed by Agrippina Vaganova, she graduated from the Vaganova School in 1925, which "is registered in the annals of Soviet ballet as the year of the unprecedented triumph of Marina Semyonova".
  What she demonstrated in her time was unusual, brand new, breathtaking. Now it is widely believed it has always been that way.
  

  — Maya Plisetskaya
  She worked in the Kirov Ballet until 1930 when Joseph Stalin had her transferred to the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow. There she married Lev Karakhan, an Old Bolshevik and Deputy Foreign Minister, best known as an advisor to Sun Yat-sen. He was purged in 1937.
  Semyonova was guest with the Paris Opéra Ballet in 1935 where she danced Giselle with Serge Lifar.
  When she steps onto the stage with her nature-given gait, which her training only polished, and suddenly soars up in a wild leap, the impression is that of a storm suddenly splitting the quiet of a humdrum existence.
  
  wn.com/Marina_Semyonova

• 
  Mario Vargas Llosa
  Jorge Mario Pedro Vargas Llosa, 1st Marquis of Vargas Llosa (Spanish pronunciation: [ˈmaɾjo ˈbaɾɣas ˈʎosa]; born March 28, 1936) is a Peruvian-Spanish writer, politician, journalist, essayist, and recipient of the 2010 Nobel Prize in Literature. Vargas Llosa is one of Latin America's most significant novelists and essayists, and one of the leading authors of his generation. Some critics consider him to have had a larger international impact and worldwide audience than any other writer of the Latin American Boom. Upon announcing the 2010 Nobel Prize in Literature, the Swedish Academy said it had been given to Vargas Llosa "for his cartography of structures of power and his trenchant images of the individual's resistance, revolt, and defeat".
  Vargas Llosa rose to fame in the 1960s with novels such as The Time of the Hero (La ciudad y los perros, literally The City and the Dogs, 1963/1966), The Green House (La casa verde, 1965/1968), and the monumental Conversation in the Cathedral (Conversación en la catedral, 1969/1975). He writes prolifically across an array of literary genres, including literary criticism and journalism. His novels include comedies, murder mysteries, historical novels, and political thrillers. Several, such as Captain Pantoja and the Special Service (1973/1978) and Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter (1977/1982), have been adapted as feature films.
  
  wn.com/Mario_Vargas_Llosa
• 
  Martin Gardner
  Martin Gardner (October 21, 1914 – May 22, 2010) was an American popular mathematics and science writer specializing in recreational mathematics, but with interests encompassing micromagic, stage magic, literature (especially the writings of Lewis Carroll and G.K. Chesterton), philosophy, scientific skepticism, and religion. He wrote the Mathematical Games column in Scientific American from 1956 to 1981 and the Notes of a Fringe-Watcher column in Skeptical Inquirer from 1983 to 2002 and published almost 100 books.
  I just play all the time and am fortunate enough to get paid for it.
  Gardner, son of a petroleum geologist, grew up in and around Tulsa, Oklahoma. He showed an early interest in puzzles and games and his closest childhood friend, John Bennett Shaw, later became "the greatest of all collectors of Sherlockian memorabilia". He attended the University of Chicago (UC) where he earned his bachelor's degree in philosophy in 1936. Early jobs included reporter on the Tulsa Tribune, writer at the UC Office of Press Relations and case worker in Chicago's Black Belt for the city's Relief Administration. During World War II, he served for several years in the U.S. Navy as a yeoman on board the destroyer escort USS Pope (DE-134) in the Atlantic. His ship was still in the Atlantic when the war came to an end with the surrender of Japan in August 1945.
  
  wn.com/Martin_Gardner
• 
  Martin Sandberger
  Martin Sandberger (17 August 1911 – 30 March 2010) was an SS Standartenführer (Colonel) and commander of Sonderkommando 1a of the Einsatzgruppe, as well as commander of the Sicherheitspolizei and SD in Estonia. He played an important role in the mass murder of the Jews in the Baltic states. He was also responsible for the arrest of Jews in Italy and their deportation to Auschwitz concentration camp. Sandberger was the second-highest official of Einsatzgruppe A to be tried and convicted.
  Martin Sandberger was born in Charlottenburg, Berlin as a son of a director of IG Farben. Sandberger studied law at the Universities of München, Köln, Freiburg and Tübingen. At the age of 20 he joined the NSDAP and the SA. From 1932 - 1933 Sandberger was a Nazi student activist and student leader in Tübingen. On 8 March 1933 Sandberger and fellow student Erich Ehrlinger raised the Nazi flag in front of the main building at the University of Tübingen. (Like Sandberger, Ehrlinger would take charge of an Einsatzkommando in 1941, and in so doing, commit thousands of murders.)
  
  wn.com/Martin_Sandberger
• 
  Maurice Allais
  Maurice Félix Charles Allais (31 May 1911 – 9 October 2010) was a French economist, and was the 1988 winner of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics "for his pioneering contributions to the theory of markets and efficient utilization of resources."
  Born in Paris, France, Allais attended the Lycée Lakanal, graduated from the École Polytechnique in Paris and studied at the École nationale supérieure des mines de Paris. His academic and non-academic posts have included being Professor of Economics at the École Nationale Supérieure des Mines de Paris (since 1944) and Director of its Economic Analysis Centre (since 1946). In 1949 he received a Doctor-Engineer title from the University of Paris, Faculty of Science. He also held teaching positions at various institutions, including at the University of Paris X-Nanterre, and the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva.^{[citation needed]}
  As an economist he made contributions to decision theory, monetary policy and other areas. He was reluctant to write in or translate his work into English, and many of his major contributions became known to the dominant anglophone community only when they were independently rediscovered or popularized by English-speaking economists. For example, in one of his major works, Économie et Intérêt (1947), he introduced the first overlapping generations model (later popularized by Paul Samuelson in 1958), introduced the golden rule of optimal growth (later popularized by Edmund Phelps) or described the transaction demand for money rule (later found in William Baumol's work). He was also responsible for early work in Behavioral economics, which in the US is generally attributed to Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky.
  
  wn.com/Maurice_Allais
• 
  Michael Foot
  Michael Mackintosh Foot, FRSL, PC (23 July 1913 – 3 March 2010) was a British Labour Party politician, journalist and author, who was a Member of Parliament (MP) from 1945 to 1955 and from 1960 until 1992. He was deputy leader of the Labour Party from 1976 to 1980, and later became the Leader of the Opposition from 1980 to 1983.
  Associated with the Labour left for most of his career, he was a supporter of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and British withdrawal from the European Economic Community. He was first promoted to Cabinet as Employment secretary under Harold Wilson in 1974, and later served as Leader of the House of Commons under James Callaghan. A passionate orator, he was Labour leader at the 1983 general election when the party received its lowest share of the vote since 1918.
  His parallel career as a journalist included appointments as editor of Tribune, on several occasions, and the Evening Standard newspaper. Among the books he authored are Guilty Men (an attack on Neville Chamberlain and others for the policy of appeasement), a biography of Jonathan Swift (The Pen and the Sword, 1957) and a biography of Aneurin Bevan.
  
  wn.com/Michael_Foot
• 
  Miep Gies
  Miep Gies (15 February 1909 – 11 January 2010) was one of the Dutch citizens who hid Anne Frank, her family and four other Jews from the Nazis in an annex above Anne's father's business premises during World War II. She was Austrian by birth, but in 1920, at the age of only eleven, was taken in as a foster child by a Dutch family to whom she became very attached. Although she was initially only to stay for six months, this stay was extended to one year because of frail health, after which she chose to remain with them, living the rest of her life in the Netherlands. In 1933 she began working for Otto Frank, a businessman who had moved with his family from Germany to the Netherlands in hopes of sparing his family Nazi persecution because they were Jewish. Miep became a close friend of the family and was a great support to them during the two years they spent in hiding. She retrieved Anne Frank's diary after the family were arrested and kept the papers safe until Otto Frank returned from Auschwitz and learned of his daughter's death.
  
  wn.com/Miep_Gies
• 
  Miguel Delibes
  Miguel Delibes Setién (Spanish pronunciation: [miˈɣel deˈliβes]; 17 October 1920 – 12 March 2010) was a Spanish novelist, journalist and newspaper editor associated with the Generation of '36 movement. From 1975 until his death, he was a member of the Royal Spanish Academy, where he occupied chair "e". He studied commerce and law and began his career as a columnist and later journalist at the El Norte de Castilla. He would later head this newspaper before gradually devoting himself exclusively to the novel.
  As a connoisseur of the fauna and flora of his geographical region and someone passionate about hunting and the rural world, he could give form in his works to all matters relating to Castile and hunting from the perspective of an urban person who had not lost touch with that world.
  He was one of the leading figures of post-Civil War Spanish literature, for which he was recognized through many awards. However, his influence extends even further, since several of his works have been adapted for the theater or have been made into movies, which won awards at competitions such as the Cannes Film Festival, and television shows.
  
  wn.com/Miguel_Delibes
• Milka Planinc
  Milka Planinc (21 November 1924 – 7 October 2010) was an ethnic Croatian Yugoslav politician. She served as a Prime Minister of Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia from 1982 to 1986. She was the first female head of government in the history of real socialism.
  Her mandate as prime minister was remembered as the times when the government finally decided to regulate external debt of SFR Yugoslavia and to start to pay it back. In order to achieve necessary means, her cabinet implemented restrictive economic measures for a few years. The political roles which Planinc held during her career included Secretary of the People’s Assembly of Trešnjevka 1957; Secretary of Cultural Affairs of the City of Zagreb 1961–1963; Secretary of Education 1963–1965; President of the Assembly 1967–1971; Leader of the Communist Party in Croatia 1971–1982; and President of the Federal Executive Council (Prime Minister) of SFR Yugoslavia 1982–1986.^{[citation needed]}
  Planinc was born Milka Malada in Žitnić, a small village near Drniš, Dalmatia. She attended school, but with the onset of World War II her schooling was interrupted. She joined the Communist Youth League in 1941, which was a pivotal year in Planinc’s life and for her country. Nazi Germany invaded Yugoslavia and divided the country among German, Italian, Hungarian, and Bulgarian occupying authorities. Soon a resistance group known as the Partisans was formed, led by a locksmith named Josip Broz who called himself "Tito". Planinc waited impatiently for the day when she would be old enough to join the anti-Fascist Council for the National Liberation of Yugoslavia.
  
  wn.com/Milka_Planinc
• 
  Mohammed Mzali
  Mohammed Mzali (Arabic: محمد مزالي‎, 23 December 1925 – 23 June 2010) was a Tunisian politician.
  Mzali was born in Monastir, Tunisia in 1925. He served as Prime Minister from his appointment by President Habib Bourguiba until his dismissal in 1986 amid government-mandated price increases and subsequent rioting.
  Mzali fled to France and was replaced by Rachid Sfar. Mzali wrote many books, one of them untitled "Un Premier ministre de Bourguiba témoigne". He served as a member of the International Olympic Committee from 1965 until his death.
  
  Mzali died on 23 June 2010 in Paris, France.
  
  
  
  wn.com/Mohammed_Mzali
• Nasr Abu Zayd
  Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd (Arabic: نصر حامد ابو زيد‎, IPA: [ˈnɑsˤɾe ˈħæːmed aboˈzeːd]; (July 10, 1943 – July 5, 2010, Cairo) was an Egyptian Qur'anic thinker and one of the leading liberal theologians in Islam. He is famous for his project of a humanistic Qur'anic hermeneutics.
  Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd was born in Quhafa, some 120 km from Cairo, near Tanta, Egypt on July 10, 1943. He died on 5 July 2010 in Cairo as a result of an unidentified virus infection and was buried in his birthplace, on the same day. He was 67. At the age of 12, Abu Zayd was imprisoned for allegedly sympathising with the Muslim Brotherhood. After receiving technical training he worked for the National Communications Organization in Cairo. At the same time, he started studying at Cairo University, where he obtained his BA degree in Arabic Studies (1972), and later his MA (1977) and PhD degrees (1981) in Islamic Studies, with works concerning the interpretation of the Qur'an. In 1982, he joined the faculty of the Department of Arabic Language and Literature at Cairo University as an assistant professor. He became an associate professor there in 1987.
  
  wn.com/Nasr_Abu_Zayd
• 
  Nicola Cabibbo
  Nicola Cabibbo (10 April 1935 – 16 August 2010) was an Italian physicist, best known for his work on the weak interaction. He was also the president of the Italian National Institute of Nuclear Physics from 1983 to 1992, and from 1993 until his death he was the president of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences. He was born in Rome.
  Cabibbo's major work on the weak interaction originated from a need to explain two observed phenomena:
  Cabibbo solved the first issue by postulating weak universality, which involves a similarity in the weak interaction coupling strength between different generations of particles. He solved the second issue with a mixing angle θ_C (now called the Cabibbo angle), between the down and strange quarks. Modern measurements show that θ_C = 13.04°.
  Before the discovery of the third generation of quarks, Cabibbo's work was extended by Makoto Kobayashi and Toshihide Maskawa to the Cabibbo–Kobayashi–Maskawa matrix. In 2008, Kobayashi and Maskawa shared one half of the Nobel Prize in Physics for their work. Some physicists had bitter feelings that the Nobel Prize committee failed to reward Cabibbo for his part. Asked for a reaction on the prize, Cabibbo preferred to give no comment. According to sources close to him, he was very embittered.
  
  wn.com/Nicola_Cabibbo
• 
  Norman Wisdom
  Sir Norman Joseph Wisdom,OBE (4 February 1915 – 4 October 2010) was an English actor, comedian and singer-songwriter best known for a series of comedy films produced between 1953 and 1966 featuring his hapless onscreen character Norman Pitkin. These films initially made more money than the James Bond film series. Wisdom gained a celebrity status in lands as far apart as South America, Iran and many Eastern Bloc countries, particularly in Albania, where his films were the only ones by Western actors permitted by Enver Hoxha to be shown.Charlie Chaplin once referred to Wisdom as his "favourite clown".
  Wisdom later forged a career on Broadway in New York and as a television actor, winning critical acclaim for his dramatic role of a dying cancer patient in the television play Going Gently in 1981. It was broadcast on 5 June that year. He toured Australia and South Africa. After the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, a hospice was named in his honour. In 1995 he was given the Freedom of the City of London and of Tirana. The same year he received an OBE. Wisdom was knighted in 2000 and spent much of his later life on the Isle of Man. Some of his later appearances included roles in Last of the Summer Wine and Coronation Street, and he retired from acting at the age of 90 after his health deteriorated.
  
  wn.com/Norman_Wisdom
• 
  Néstor Kirchner
  Néstor Carlos Kirchner Ostoić (Spanish pronunciation: [ˈnestor ˈkarlos ˈkirʃner]; 25 February 1950 – 27 October 2010) was an Argentine politician who served as President of Argentina from 25 May 2003 until 10 December 2007. Previously, he was Governor of Santa Cruz Province since 10 December 1991. He briefly served as Secretary General of the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) and as a National Deputy of Argentina for Buenos Aires Province. Kirchner's four-year presidency was notable for presiding over a dramatic fall in poverty and unemployment, following the economic crisis of 2001, together with an extension of social security coverage, a major expansion in housing and infrastructure, higher spending on scientific research and education, and substantial increases in real wage levels.
  A Justicialist, Kirchner was little-known internationally and even domestically before his election to the Presidency, which he won by default with only 22.2 percent of the vote in the first round, when former President Carlos Menem (24.4%) withdrew from the ballotage. Soon after taking office in May 2003, Kirchner surprised some Argentinians by standing down powerful military and police officials. Stressing the need to increase accountability and transparency in government, Kirchner overturned amnesty laws for military officers accused of torture and assassinations during the 1976–1983 "Dirty War" under military rule.
  
  wn.com/Néstor_Kirchner
• 
  Pablo Picasso
  Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso, known as Pablo Picasso (Spanish pronunciation: [ˈpaβlo piˈkaso], 25 October 1881 – 8 April 1973), was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer who spent most of his adult life in France. One of the greatest and most influential artists of the 20th century, he is widely known for co-founding the Cubist movement, the invention of constructed sculpture, the co-invention of collage, and for the wide variety of styles that he helped develop and explore. Among his most famous works are the proto-Cubist Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907), and Guernica (1937), a portrayal of the German bombing of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War.
  Picasso, Henri Matisse and Marcel Duchamp are commonly regarded as the three artists who most defined the revolutionary developments in the plastic arts in the opening decades of the 20th century, responsible for significant developments in painting, sculpture, printmaking and ceramics.
  
  wn.com/Pablo_Picasso
• 
  Panajot Pano
  Panajot Pano (7 March 1939 – 19 January 2010) was an Albanian football player. He started his career as a goalkeeper in the SK Tirana youth academy, but he became the most prolific centre-forward of their arch-rivals, Partizani Tirana. During his eighteen-year career he played 24 matches with the Albanian national football team and was awarded the Albanian UEFA Jubilee Award.
  Pano was born in Durrës, Albania from ethnic Greek parents (Greek: Παναγιώτης Πάνου Panagiotis Panou).
  He has won four Albanian championships with Partizani Tirana, five Albanian Cups, and in 1970, the Balkans Cup. On the international front, he played 25 times (3 goals) for the Albania national football team.
  In November 2003, to celebrate UEFA's Jubilee, he was selected as the Golden Player of Albania by the Football Association of Albania as their most outstanding player of the past 50 years.
  On 6 March 2009, Pano received the order Honor of the Nation from the President of Albania, H.E. Bamir Topi. This was the first time in the history of Albania that a footballer was honored with the Honor of the Nation order.
  
  wn.com/Panajot_Pano
• 
  Patricia Neal
  Patricia Neal (January 20, 1926 – August 8, 2010) was an American actress of stage and screen. She was best known for her film roles as World War II widow Helen Benson in The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), wealthy matron Emily Eustace Failenson in Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961), middle-aged housekeeper Alma Brown in Hud (1963), for which she won the Academy Award for Best Actress. She also played Olivia Walton in the 1971 made-for-television film The Homecoming, A Christmas Story, a role played in the regular series by actress Michael Learned.
  Neal was born Patsy Louise Neal, in Packard, Whitley County, Kentucky, to William Burdette and Eura Petrey Neal. She grew up in Knoxville, Tennessee, where she attended Knoxville High School, and studied drama at Northwestern University.
  After moving to New York, she accepted her first job as understudy in the Broadway production of The Voice of the Turtle. Next she appeared in Another Part of the Forest (1946), winning the 1947 Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Play, in the first ever presentation of the Tony awards.
  
  wn.com/Patricia_Neal
• Paul Mayer
  Paul Augustin Mayer, O.S.B. (23 May 1911 – 30 April 2010) was a German Cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church. He was President Emeritus of the Pontifical Commission Ecclesia Dei.
  He was born in Altötting, Germany, which is located near Marktl, the birthplace of Pope Benedict XVI. He joined the Order of Saint Benedict at the Abbey of St. Michael, Metten, taking the name of Augustin. He had his monastic profession on 17 May 1931. He studied at the University of Salzburg and at the Pontifical Athenaeum of Sant Anselmo in Rome.
  He was ordained a Priest on 25 August 1935. After his ordaination he was a faculty member at the abbey of Saint Michael from 1937 until 1939. He was transferred to be a faculty member at the Pontifical Roman Athenaeum of Sant'Anselmo from 1939 until 1966, serving as its rector from 1949 until 1966. He was the Apostolic visitor to the Swiss seminaries from 1957 until 1959. He served as Secretary of the Preparatory Commission of the Second Vatican Council from 1960 until 1962. He was elected abbot of St. Michael's Abbey, Metten, Bavaria on 3 November 1966. He received the abbatial blessing from Rudolf Graber, bishop of Regensburg. He was appointed Secretary of the Congregation for Religious and Secular Institutes on 8 September 1971.
  
  wn.com/Paul_Mayer
• 
  Peter Steele
  Peter Thomas Ratajczyk (January 4, 1962 – April 14, 2010), better known by his stage name Peter Steele, was the lead singer, bassist, and composer for the gothic metal band Type O Negative. Before forming Type O Negative, he had created the metal group Fallout and the thrash band Carnivore.
  As the frontman for Type O Negative, Steele was known for his vampiric affect, towering stature, rich bass-baritone vocals, and a dark, often self-deprecating sense of humor. His lyrics were often intensely personal, dealing with subjects including love, loss, and addiction. Steele credited Black Sabbath and The Beatles as his key musical inspirations.
  Steele was born in Red Hook, Brooklyn to a Roman Catholic family of Polish, Danish, Icelandic and Russian (his grandparents lived in Russia) heritage and was raised in the Bensonhurst and Brighton Beach neighborhoods of Brooklyn. Steele was the youngest of six children, with five older sisters. His father fought in World War II and later worked at a shipyard. Steele started taking guitar lessons at age 12, moving on to bass six months later.
  
  wn.com/Peter_Steele
• Raimon Panikkar
  Raimon Panikkar-Alemany (November 3, 1918 – August 26, 2010; also known as Raymond Panikkar) was a Spanish Roman Catholic priest and a proponent of inter-religious dialogue. As a scholar, he specialized in comparative religion.
  Raimundo Pannikar was born as the son of a Spanish Roman Catholic mother and a Hindu Indian father in Barcelona. His mother was well-educated and from the Catalan bourgeoisie. His father belonged to an upper caste Malabar Nair family from South India. Panikkar's father was a freedom fighter during British colonial rule in India and escaped from Britain and married into a Catalan family. Panikkar's father studied in England and was the representative of a German chemical company in Barcelona.^{[citation needed]}
  Educated at a Jesuit school, Panikkar studied chemistry and philosophy at the universities of Barcelona, Bonn and Madrid, and Catholic Theology in Madrid and Rome. He earned a doctorate in philosophy at the University of Madrid in 1946 and a doctorate in chemistry in 1958. He earned a third doctorate in theology at the Pontifical Lateran University in Rome in 1961.He compared St. Thomas Aquinas's Philosophy with the eighth-century Hindu philosopher Ādi Śańkara's Interpretation of the Brahma Sutras.
  
  wn.com/Raimon_Panikkar
• 
  Richard Holbrooke
  Richard Charles Albert Holbrooke (April 24, 1941 – December 13, 2010) was an American diplomat, magazine editor, author, professor, Peace Corps official, and investment banker.
  He was the only person to have held the position of Assistant Secretary of State for two different regions of the world (Asia from 1977 to 1981 and Europe from 1994 to 1996).
  From 1993 to 1994, he was U.S. Ambassador to Germany. Long well known in diplomatic and journalistic circles, Holbrooke achieved great public prominence when he, together with former Swedish prime minister Carl Bildt, brokered a peace agreement among the warring factions in Bosnia that led to the signing of the Dayton Peace Accords, in 1995. Holbrooke was a leading contender to succeed the retiring Warren Christopher as Secretary of State but was passed over as President Bill Clinton chose Madeleine Albright instead. From 1999 to 2001, Holbrooke served as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations.
  He was an adviser to the Presidential campaign of Senator John Kerry in 2004. Holbrooke then joined the Presidential campaign of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton and became a top foreign policy adviser. Holbrooke was considered a likely candidate for Secretary of State had Kerry or Hillary Clinton been elected President. In January 2009, Holbrooke was appointed as a special adviser on Pakistan and Afghanistan, working under President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, a frustrating assignment which was said to have caused his health to deteriorate. He served until he died from complications of an aortic dissection on December 13, 2010.
  
  wn.com/Richard_Holbrooke
• 
  Robert Byrd
  Robert Carlyle Byrd (born Cornelius Calvin Sale, Jr.; November 20, 1917 – June 28, 2010) was a United States Senator from West Virginia. A member of the Democratic Party, Byrd served as a U.S. Representative from 1953 until 1959 and as a U.S. Senator from 1959 to 2010. He was the longest-serving senator and the longest-serving member in the history of the United States Congress.
  Initially elected to the United States House of Representatives in 1952, Byrd served there for six years before being elected to the Senate in 1958. He rose to become one of the Senate's most powerful members, serving as secretary of the Senate Democratic Caucus from 1967 to 1971 and—after defeating his longtime colleague, Ted Kennedy—as Senate Majority Whip from 1971 to 1977. Byrd led the Democratic caucus as Senate Majority Leader from 1977 to 1981 and 1987 to 1989, and as Senate Minority Leader from 1981 to 1987. From 1989 to 2010 he served as the President pro tempore of the United States Senate when the Democratic Party had a majority, and as President pro tempore emeritus during periods of Republican majority beginning in 2001. As President pro tempore, he was third in the line of presidential succession, behind the Vice President and the Speaker of the House of Representatives. He also served as the Chairman of the United States Senate Committee on Appropriations from 1989 to 1995, 2001 to 2003, and 2007 to 2009, giving him extraordinary influence over federal spending.
  
  wn.com/Robert_Byrd
• 
  Robert Culp
  Robert Martin Culp (August 16, 1930 – March 24, 2010) was an American actor, scriptwriter, voice actor and director, widely known for his work in television. Culp first earned an international reputation for his role as Kelly Robinson on I Spy (1965–1968), the espionage series in which he and co-star Bill Cosby played a pair of secret agents. He also had a recurring role as Warren Whelan on Everybody Loves Raymond. In all, Culp gave hundreds of performances in a career spanning more than 50 years.
  Culp was born in Oakland, California, and graduated from Berkeley High School, where he was a pole vaulter, taking second place at the 1947 CIF California State Meet. He attended the College of the Pacific, Washington University in St. Louis, San Francisco State College, and the University of Washington School of Drama, but never completed an academic degree.
  Culp first came to national attention very early in his career as the star of the 1957–1959 Western television series Trackdown, in which he played Texas Ranger Hoby Gilman.Trackdown was a spin-off of Dick Powell's Zane Grey Theater, also on CBS. Culp's character was introduced in an episode titled "Badge of Honor". Culp later appeared in two other episodes of Zane Grey Theater — "Morning Incident" and "Calico Bait" (both 1960) playing different roles. Trackdown then had a CBS spin-off of its own: Wanted: Dead or Alive, with Steve McQueen as bounty hunter Josh Randall.
  
  wn.com/Robert_Culp
• 
  Ronald Neame
  Ronald Elwin NeameCBE BSC (23 April 1911 – 16 June 2010) was an English film cinematographer, producer, screenwriter and director.
  Neame's parents were the photographer Elwin Neame and the actress Ivy Close. He studied at the University College School and Hurstpierpoint College. His father died in 1923, and Neame took a job with the Anglo-Persian Oil Company as an office boy. Later, through his mother's contacts in the British film industry, Neame started at Elstree Studios as a messenger boy.
  He was fortunate enough to be hired as an assistant cameraman on Blackmail (1929), the first British talkie, directed by a young Alfred Hitchcock. Neame's own career as a cinematographer began with the musical comedy Happy (1933), and he continued to develop his skills in various "quota quickies" films for several years.
  His credits as cinematographer include Major Barbara (1941), In Which We Serve (1942), This Happy Breed (1944), and Blithe Spirit (1945). His camera work on One of Our Aircraft Is Missing got him an Academy Award nomination for Best Special Effects in 1943.
  
  wn.com/Ronald_Neame
• 
  Ronnie James Dio
  Ronald James Padavona (July 10, 1942 – May 16, 2010), better known as Ronnie James Dio, was an American rock and heavy metal vocalist and songwriter. He performed with, amongst others, Elf, Rainbow, Black Sabbath, Heaven & Hell, and his own band Dio. Other musical projects include the collective fundraiser Hear 'n Aid. He was widely hailed as one of the most powerful singers in heavy metal, renowned for his consistently powerful voice. He often ranks as one of the greatest rock vocalists of all time in various online polls and lists. He is credited with popularizing the "metal horns" hand gesture in metal culture. Prior to his death, he was collaborating on a project with former Black Sabbath bandmates Tony Iommi, Geezer Butler, and Vinny Appice, under the moniker Heaven & Hell, whose only studio album, The Devil You Know, was released on April 28, 2009. Dio died of stomach cancer on May 16, 2010. One of the last songs he recorded was titled "Metal Will Never Die".
  Ronnie James Dio was born Ronald James Padavona in Portsmouth, New Hampshire to Italian parents. They lived in Portsmouth until the family moved to Cortland, New York early in his life.
  
  wn.com/Ronnie_James_Dio
• 
  Roza Otunbayeva
  Roza Isakovna Otunbayeva (Kyrgyz and Russian: Роза Исаковна Отунбаева; born August 23, 1950) is a Kyrgyz diplomat and politician who served as the President of Kyrgyzstan from 7 April 2010 until 1 December 2011. She was sworn in on July 3, 2010, after acting as interim leader following the 2010 April revolution which led to the ousting of then President Kurmanbek Bakiyev. She is a former foreign minister and head of the parliamentary caucus for the Social Democratic Party of Kyrgyzstan.
  Otunbayeva was born in Frunze (now Bishkek), Kyrgyz SSR, USSR into the family of Isaac Otunbayev, a member of the Supreme Court of Kirgiz SSR. She graduated from the Philosophy Faculty of Moscow State University in 1972 and went on to teach as senior professor and head of the philosophy department at Kyrgyz State National University for six years. In 1975 she became Candidate of Sciences after defending dissertation named "Critique of falsification of Marxist-Leninist dialectic by the philosophers of Frankfurt school". Otunbayeva is a divorced mother of two children. She is fluent in Russian and can speak English, German and French in addition to Kyrgyz.
  
  wn.com/Roza_Otunbayeva
• 
  Rudolf Barshai
  Rudolf Borisovich Barshai (Russian: Рудольф Борисович Баршай, September 28, 1924 – November 2, 2010) was a Soviet/Russian conductor and violist.
  Barshai was born in Stanitsa Labinskaya, Krasnodar Krai, and studied at the Moscow Conservatory under Lev Tseitlin and Vadim Borisovsky. He performed as a soloist as well as together with Sviatoslav Richter, David Oistrakh, and as a member of a trio with Mstislav Rostropovich and Leonid Kogan. He won numerous Soviet and international competitions. He was the founding violist of the Borodin Quartet in 1945 and was a member until 1953. Later, he studied conducting under Ilya Musin in Leningrad Conservatory.
  In 1955, Barshai founded the Moscow chamber orchestra, which he led and conducted until he emigrated to the West in 1977. He was the artistic director of the Israel Chamber Orchestra from 1976 to 1981. From 1981 until 1982 Barshai was principal conductor of Vancouver Symphony Orchestra. Principal Guest Conductor of Orchestre National de France (National Orchestra of France)1985-1986. He was principal conductor of the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra from 1982 to 1986.
  
  wn.com/Rudolf_Barshai
• Rue McClanahan
  Rue McClanahan (February 21, 1934 – June 3, 2010) was an American actress, best known for her roles on television as Vivian Harmon on Maude, Fran Crowley on Mama's Family, and Blanche Devereaux on The Golden Girls, for which she won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in 1987.
  McClanahan was born Eddi-Rue McClanahan in Healdton, Oklahoma, the daughter of Dreda Rheua-Nell (née Medaris), a beautician, and William Edwin "Bill" McClanahan (July 4, 1908 – February 20, 1999) a building contractor. She and her family were Methodists
  She was of Irish and Choctaw, Native American ancestry. Her Choctaw great-grandfather was named Running Hawk according to her autobiography My First Five Husbands... and the Ones Who Got Away (2007). She grew up in Ardmore, Oklahoma; she graduated from Ardmore High School. McClanahan earned a Bachelor of Arts degree at the University of Tulsa, where she majored in German and Theater and joined the woman's sorority, Kappa Alpha Theta. She was also a National Honor Society Member.
  
  wn.com/Rue_McClanahan
• 
  Ryszard Kaczorowski
  Ryszard Kaczorowski [ˈrɨʂart kat​͡ʂɔˈrɔfskʲi] ( listen) (26 November 1919 – 10 April 2010) was a Polish statesman. Between 1989 and 1990 he served as the last President of Poland in exile. He succeeded Kazimierz Sabbat and resigned his post following Poland's regaining independence from the Soviet sphere of influence and election of Lech Wałęsa as the first democratically-elected president of Poland since World War II. He also passed the presidential insignia to Wałęsa, thus ending the 45-years long episode of the Polish government in exile.
  He was listed on the flight manifest of the Tupolev Tu-154 of the 36th Special Aviation Regiment carrying the President of Poland Lech Kaczyński and 95 others, which crashed near Smolensk-North airport near Pechersk near Smolensk, Russia, on 10 April 2010. All aboard, including Kaczorowski, were killed. On 19 April 2010, Kaczorowski's coffin was taken to St John's Cathedral for a funeral mass, before being buried in a crypt at the National Temple of Divine Providence in Warsaw.
  
  wn.com/Ryszard_Kaczorowski
• 
  Salou Djibo
  Lieutenant General Salou Djibo (born 15 April 1965) is a Nigerien military officer. Following the military coup of 18 February 2010, he became head of the Supreme Council for the Restoration of Democracy and thus de facto leader of Niger.
  Salou Djibo was born in 1965 in Namaro, a village and rural commune in Niger close to the River Niger. He is of Zarma ancestry. Djibo is married and has five children.
  In 1995, Djibo underwent military training in Bouaké, Côte d'Ivoire before commencing officer training in 1996. He was commissioned as a second lieutenant in 1997 and gained further promotions to lieutenant in 1998, captain in 2003 and chef d'escadron (major) in October 2006. Djibo has also received training in Morocco and China.
  Amongst Djibo's several posts, he was an instructor at the Agadez military center, platoon commander, commandant, 121 Compagnie de Commandement d'Appui et des Services, and commander of the garrison at Niger's capital Niamey.
  Djibo served in United Nations peacekeeping forces in Côte d'Ivoire (2004) and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (2006).
  
  wn.com/Salou_Djibo
• Satoshi Kon
  Satoshi Kon (今 敏, Kon Satoshi^?, October 12, 1963 – August 24, 2010) was a Japanese anime director and manga artist from Kushiro, Hokkaidō and a member of the Japanese Animation Creators Association (JAniCA). He was a graduate of the Graphic Design department of the Musashino Art University. He is sometimes credited as "Yoshihiro Wanibuchi" (鰐淵良宏, Wanibuchi Yoshihiro^?) in the credits of Paranoia Agent. He was the younger brother of guitarist and studio musician Tsuyoshi Kon.
  Satoshi Kon was born on October 12, 1963. Due to his father's job transfer, Kon's education from the fourth elementary grade up to the second middle school grade was based in Sapporo. Kon was a classmate and close friend of manga artist Seihō Takizawa. While attending Hokkaido Kushiro Koryo High School, Kon aspired to become an animator. His favorite works were Space Battleship Yamato (1974), Heidi, Girl of the Alps (1974), Future Boy Conan (1978) and Mobile Suit Gundam (1979), as well as Katsuhiro Otomo's Domu: A Child's Dream.Yasutaka Tsutsui served as an influence on Kon's drawings. Kon graduated from the Graphic Design course of the Musashino Art University in 1982. During that time, Kon viewed numerous foreign films and enthusiastically read Yasutaka Tsutsui's books.
  
  wn.com/Satoshi_Kon
• 
  Shoya Tomizawa
  Shoya Tomizawa (富沢 祥也, Tomizawa Shōya^?) (December 10, 1990 – September 5, 2010) was a Japanese motorcycle racer. After a successful career in the All Japan Road Race Championship, he switched to MotoGP and competed in the 250cc class during 2009. In the 2010 season he rode in the newly created Moto2 class. Tomizawa won the first race of the new class, at Losail in Qatar, winning by nearly five seconds from Alex Debón and Jules Cluzel. Tomizawa died after sustaining cranial, thoracic and abdominal trauma at the San Marino Grand Prix.
  Tomizawa was born in Asahi City, Chiba. He started pocket bike racing at age 3 in 1994, and moved on to minibikes around 2001. While attending Sousa High School in Chiba, majoring in English, he started to fully participate in the 125cc class of All Japan Road Race Championship and gained 2nd place for 2006 season. Rookie of the Year was an added bonus to start the fast-paced career.
  Tomizawa appeared on both 125cc and 250cc class in the following year, finishing 3rd in the 125, and 8th in the 250 for 2007 season. In 2008, he focused on the 250cc class and finished 2nd with his eyes set for global challenge. Upon his high school graduation in March 2009, Tomizawa was recruited by new CIPMOTO-GP250 Team, ended his full time, first international racing year in 17th place with best results at 10th twice at Motegi and Valencia respectively riding a Honda RS250R.
  
  wn.com/Shoya_Tomizawa
• Sigmar Polke
  Sigmar Polke (13 February 1941 – 10 June 2010) was a German painter and photographer.
  Polke experimented with a wide range of styles, subject matter and materials. In the 1970s, he concentrated on photography, returning to paint in the 1980s, when he produced abstract works created by chance through chemical reactions between paint and other products. In the last 20 years of his life, he produced paintings focused on historical events and perceptions of them.
  Polke, the seventh in a family of eight children, was born in Oels in Lower Silesia. He fled with his family to Thuringia in 1945, during the expulsion of Germans after World War II. His family escaped from the Communist regime in East Germany in 1953, traveling first to West Berlin and then to West Germany Rhineland.
  Upon his arrival in West Germany, in Willich near Krefeld, Polke began to spend time in galleries and museums and worked as an apprentice in a stained glass factory in Düsseldorf between 1959 and 1960, before entering the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf (Arts Academy) at age twenty. From 1961 to 1967 he studied at the Düsseldorf Arts Academy under Karl Otto Götz, Gerhard Hoehme and deeply influenced by his teacher Joseph Beuys. He began his creative output during a time of enormous social, cultural, and artistic changes in Germany and elsewhere. During the 1960s, Düsseldorf, in particular, was a prosperous, commercial city and an important centre of artistic activity. In the early 1970s Polke lived at the Gaspelhof, an artists' commune.
  
  wn.com/Sigmar_Polke
• Sinan Hasani
  Sinan Hasani (Serbian Cyrillic: Синан Хасани; 14 May 1922 – 28 August 2010) was a Yugoslav novelist, statesman, diplomat and a former President of Presidency Yugoslavia, a revolving form of executive leadership which rendered him the President of Yugoslavia at the time as well. He was of Albanian descent.
  Hasani finished primary school and Gazi Isa-bey medrese (high school) in Skopje. He became a writer and wrote the first Albanian language novel "The Grape Starts to Ripen" in 1957.
  Hasani joined the Yugoslav Partisan resistance movement in 1941, during the war, and the Yugoslav Communist Party in 1942. He found himself in Nazi German captivity in 1944, and spent time in a POW camp near Vienna until the end of the World War II. After the war, he attended the Đuro Đaković party school in Belgrade (1950–52). Later, he became leader of the Socialist Union of the Working People mass organization in Kosovo, and was from 1965 to 1967 manager of the Kosovar publishing house Rilindja. From 1971 to 1974, he was the Yugoslav ambassador to Denmark. In 1975 he was elected Deputy Speaker of the Yugoslav Federal Assembly, and remained in that position until he became the leader of the League of Communists of Kosovo in 1982.
  
  wn.com/Sinan_Hasani
• 
  Solomon Burke
  Solomon Burke (March 21, 1940 – October 10, 2010) was an American singer-songwriter, entrepreneur, mortician, and an archbishop of the United House of Prayer For All People. Burke was known as "King Solomon," the "King of Rock 'n' Soul," and as the "Bishop of Soul," and described as "the Muhammad Ali of soul," and as "the most unfairly overlooked singer of soul's golden age." Burke was "the founding father of what was defined as soul music in America in the 1960s," and "a major architect of 1960s soul, infusing post-World War II R&B with [his] gospel roots." and "a key transitional figure bridging R&B and soul," Burke's "sound was a bold merger of orchestrated sophistication and countryish, down-home grit, and his best singles built a Gothic sense of drama and heartbreak. These tracks bridged the gap between the more mannered mainstream rhythm and blues of the Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller songwriting team of the 1950s, as exemplified by the Coasters and Drifters, and the gruffer Southern styles of the later '60s, as heard on the Stax Records sides of Otis Redding and Sam & Dave. At one time considered by Jerry Wexler to be "the greatest male soul singer of all time," Burke was "a singer whose smooth, powerful articulation and mingling of sacred and profane themes helped define soul music in the early 1960s." Burke drew from his roots: gospel, soul, and blues, as well as developing his own style at a time when R&B, and rock were both still in their infancy. Artistically, Burke was influenced by the music of the church, as well as by Little Richard. Described as both "Rabelaisian" and also as a "spiritual enigma," "Perhaps more than any other artist, the ample figure of Solomon Burke symbolized the ways that spirituality and commerce, ecstasy and entertainment, sex and salvation, individualism and brotherhood, could blend in the world of 1960s soul music."
  
  wn.com/Solomon_Burke
• Stjepan Bobek
  Stjepan Bobek (Zagreb, 3 December 1923 – Belgrade, 22 August 2010) was a football striker from Yugoslavia, and later a football manager. An ethnic Croat, Bobek started playing at a very young age and had spells with several clubs in Zagreb but is mainly remembered for his time at the Serbian side Partizan Belgrade, where he moved to following the end of World War II. He played for Partizan between 1945 and 1959 helping them win 2 Yugoslav First League titles and 4 Yugoslav Cups, and was named the club's greatest player in history in 1995.
  Internationally, he is the all-time top scorer for the Yugoslavia national team, scoring 38 goals in 63 appearances between 1946 and 1956, and was member of Yugoslav squads which won two Olympic silver medals (in 1948 and 1952) and played in two FIFA World Cups (in 1950 and 1954).
  After retiring from active football in 1959, he was a successful manager, winning Yugoslav and Greek national titles with Partizan and Panathinaikos, and also had managing spells in Poland and Tunisia.
  
  wn.com/Stjepan_Bobek
• 
  Ted Stevens
  Theodore Fulton "Ted" Stevens, Sr. (November 18, 1923 – August 9, 2010) was a United States Senator from Alaska, serving from December 24, 1968, until January 3, 2009, and thus the longest-serving Republican senator in history. He was President pro tempore in the 108th and 109th Congresses from January 3, 2003, to January 3, 2007, and the third senator to hold the title of President pro tempore emeritus.
  Stevens served for six decades in the American public sector, beginning with his service in World War II. In the 1950s, he held senior positions in the Eisenhower Interior Department. He played key roles in legislation that shaped Alaska's economic and social development, including the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act, the Trans-Alaska Pipeline Authorization Act, the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act, and the Magnuson–Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act. He was also known for his sponsorship of the Amateur Sports Act of 1978, which resulted in the establishment of the United States Olympic Committee.
  
  wn.com/Ted_Stevens
• Teddy Pendergrass
  Theodore DeReese "Teddy" Pendergrass (March 26, 1950 – January 13, 2010) was an American R&B/soul singer and songwriter. Pendergrass first rose to fame as lead singer of Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes in the 1970s before a successful solo career at the end of the decade. In 1982, he was severely injured in an auto accident in Philadelphia, resulting in his being paralyzed from the waist down. After his injury, he founded the Teddy Pendergrass Alliance, a foundation that helps those with spinal cord injuries. Pendergrass commemorated 25 years of living after his spinal cord injury with star filled event, 'Teddy 25 - A Celebration of Life' at Philadelphia's Kimmel Center. His last performance was on a PBS special at Atlantic City's Borgata Casino in November 2008.
  Pendergrass was born Theodore DeReese Pendergrass at Thomas Jefferson Hospital in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He was the only child of Jesse Pendergrass and Ida Geraldine Epps. When Pendergrass was still very young, his father left the family; Jesse Pendergrass was murdered when Teddy was 12. Pendergrass grew up in Philadelphia and sang often at church. He dreamed of being a pastor and got his wish when, at 10, he was ordained a minister (according to author Robert Ewell Greene). He also took up drums during this time and was a junior deacon of his church. Pendergrass attended Thomas Edison High School for Boys in North Philadelphia (now closed). He sang with the Edison Mastersingers. He dropped out in the eleventh grade to enter the music business, recording his first song "Angel With Muddy Feet." The recording, however, was not a commercial success.
  
  wn.com/Teddy_Pendergrass
• Teena Marie
  Mary Christine Brockert (March 5, 1956 – December 26, 2010), better known by her stage name Teena Marie, was an American singer, songwriter and producer. She was known as Tina before taking the stage name Teena Marie, then she later acquired the nickname of Lady Tee (sometimes spelled as Lady T), given to her by collaborator and friend, Rick James.
  She was known for her distinctive soulful vocals which initially caused many listeners to believe she was African-American. Her success in R&B and soul and loyalty to these genres would earn her the title Ivory Queen of Soul. She played rhythm guitar, keyboards and congas. She also wrote, produced, sang, and arranged virtually all of her songs since her 1980 release, Irons in the Fire, which she later said was her favorite album.
  Mary Christine, or Teena as she was called, was the fourth of five children born in Santa Monica, California^{[citation needed]} to construction worker Thomas Leslie Brockert and his wife, home renovator Mary Anne. She spent her early childhood in Mission Hills. Her ethnic heritage was Portuguese, Italian, Irish and Native American.^{[citation needed]} In 2005, while visiting Louisiana, she had discovered that her paternal ancestors once lived in New Orleans. Brockert took to singing naturally, performing Harry Belafonte's Banana Boat Song by age two. She also developed a fondness for singing the songs of Motown, and her self-professed “gift from God” would become fine-tuned as the years progressed.
  
  wn.com/Teena_Marie
• 
  Tom Bosley
  Thomas Edward "Tom" Bosley (October 1, 1927 – October 19, 2010) was an American actor. Bosley is best known for portraying Howard Cunningham on the long-running ABC sitcom Happy Days. He also was featured in recurring roles on Murder, She Wrote, and Father Dowling Mysteries. He originated the title role of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Broadway musical Fiorello!, earning the 1960 Tony Award for Best Performance by a Featured Actor in a Musical.
  Bosley was born in Chicago, the son of Dora (née Heyman) and Benjamin Bosley. Although well known for playing a Catholic priest—and numerous Protestants—Bosley was actually Jewish. During World War II, Bosley served in the United States Navy. While attending DePaul University, in Chicago, in 1947, he made his stage debut in Our Town with the Canterbury Players at the Fine Arts Theatre. Bosley performed at the Woodstock Opera House in Woodstock, Illinois, in 1949 and 1950 alongside Paul Newman.
  Bosley played the Knave of Hearts in a Hallmark Hall of Fame telecast of Eva Le Gallienne's production of Alice in Wonderland in 1955. But his breakthrough stage role was New York mayor Fiorello H. La Guardia in the long-running Broadway musical Fiorello! (1959), for which he won a Tony Award. In 1994, he originated the role of Maurice in the Broadway version of Disney's Beauty and the Beast. Bosley also toured as Cap'n Andy in Harold Prince's 1994 revival of Show Boat.
  
  wn.com/Tom_Bosley
• 
  Tom Walkinshaw
  Tom Walkinshaw (14 August 1946 – 12 December 2010) was a Scottish racing car driver and the founder of the racing team Tom Walkinshaw Racing (TWR). He was also involved in professional rugby union, as owner of Gloucester Rugby, and chairman of the team owners organisation for the Aviva Premiership.
  Walkinshaw was born at Mauldslie Farm, near Penicuik, Midlothian, Scotland. He began racing in 1968, starting in an MG Midget, before moving on to a Lotus Formula Ford car. The following year he won the Scottish FF1600 title at the wheel of a Hawke. In 1970 he entered the British Formula Three championship with Lotus. He later moved to the March 'works' team, where he broke his ankle in a racing accident. Continuing his career despite this setback, he drove in many classes, including Formula 5000 and Formula Two.
  Ford hired Walkinshaw to drive a Capri on the British Touring Car Championship circuit in 1974. This resulted in him winning his class that year. In 1976 Walkinshaw established Tom Walkinshaw Racing (TWR), continuing to drive for his own team. In 1984 he won the European Touring Car Championship in a Jaguar XJS.
  
  wn.com/Tom_Walkinshaw
• 
  Tomáš Špidlík
  Tomáš Špidlík, SJ (December 17, 1919 – April 16, 2010) was made a Cardinal by Pope John Paul II in 2003. He was ordained a priest of the Society of Jesus on 22 August 1949 in Maastricht. On 21 October 2003, at the age of 83, he was created Cardinal Deacon of the titular church of Sant'Agata dei Goti. Although he was not a voting cardinal he was created a cardinal to reward him for his theological writings in much the same way as Avery Dulles and Leo Scheffczyk were.
  Špidlík was born in 1919 in Boskovice, then Czechoslovakia, now Czech Republic. In 1938, he entered the Department of Philosophy at the University of Brno, in what is now the Czech Republic. In the following year, he entered the Jesuit novitiate and after many interruptions in his education due to World War II, he was ultimately ordained a priest in 1949. A year later, in Florence, he finished his long formation period as a Jesuit.
  In 1951, Špidlík was called to Rome by Vatican Radio. The programs broadcast to the countries behind the Iron Curtain were a precious aid to a freedom in danger of being slowly but inexorably suffocated. From this work with Vatican Radio sprang a special mission that would always accompany him and that made him known in lands despite their communist domination. Among others, he met with Alexander Dubček, the former first secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, and Václav Havel, who became president of Czechoslovakia and the Czech Republic after the fall of the communist regime. Špidlík’s Sunday homilies in the Czech language have been translated and published in various languages including Polish, Romanian and Italian.
  
  wn.com/Tomáš_Špidlík
• 
  Tony Curtis
  Tony Curtis (born Bernard Schwartz; June 3, 1925 – September 29, 2010) was an American film actor whose career spanned six decades, but had his greatest popularity during the 1950s and early 1960s. He acted in more than 100 films in roles covering a wide range of genres, from light comedy to serious drama. In his later years, Curtis made numerous television appearances.
  Although his early film roles were partly the result of his good looks, by the later half of the 1950s he became a notable and strong screen presence. He began proving himself to be a “fine dramatic actor,” having the range to act in numerous dramatic and comedy roles. In his earliest parts he acted in a string of "mediocre" films, including swashbucklers, westerns, light comedies, sports films, and a musical. However, by the time he starred in Houdini (1953) with his wife Janet Leigh, "his first clear success," notes critic David Thomson, his acting had progressed immensely.
  He won his first serious recognition as a skilled dramatic actor in Sweet Smell of Success (1957) with co-star Burt Lancaster. The following year he was nominated for an Oscar for Best Actor in another drama, The Defiant Ones (1958). Curtis then gave what many believe was his best acting, in a completely different role, the comedy Some Like It Hot (1959). Thomson calls it an "outrageous film," and it was voted the number 1 funniest film in history from a survey done by the American Film Institute. It costarred Jack Lemmon and Marilyn Monroe, and was directed by Billy Wilder. That was followed by Blake Edwards’ comedy Operation Petticoat (1959) with Cary Grant. They were both “frantic comedies,” and displayed "his impeccable comic timing." He often collaborated with Edwards on later films.
  
  wn.com/Tony_Curtis
• Tony Judt
  Tony Robert Judt, FBA (2 January 1948 – 6 August 2010) (pronounced Jutt) was a British historian, essayist, and university professor who specialized in European history. Judt moved to New York and served as the Erich Maria Remarque Professor in European Studies at New York University, and Director of NYU's Erich Maria Remarque Institute. He was a frequent contributor to the New York Review of Books. In 1996 Judt was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and in 2007 a corresponding Fellow of the British Academy.
  A Marxist Zionist as a young man, Judt dropped his faith in Zionism after youthful experience in Israel in the 1960s and came to see a Jewish state as an anachronism; he moved away from Marxism in the 1970s and 1980s. In later life, he described himself as "a universalist social democrat". Judt's works include the highly acclaimed Postwar, a history of Europe after the Second World War. He was also well known for his views on Israel, which generated significant debate after he advocated a one-state solution to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict.
  
  wn.com/Tony_Judt
• Tsutomu Yamaguchi
  Tsutomu Yamaguchi (山口 彊, Yamaguchi Tsutomu^?) (March 16, 1916 – January 4, 2010) was a Japanese national who survived both the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombings during World War II. Although at least 160 people are known to have been affected by both bombings, he is the only person to have been officially recognized by the government of Japan as surviving both explosions.
  A resident of Nagasaki, Yamaguchi was in Hiroshima on business for his employer Mitsubishi Heavy Industries when the city was bombed at 8:15 am, on August 6, 1945. The following day, he returned to Nagasaki and, despite his wounds, also returned to work on August 9, the day of the second atomic bombing. In 1957, he was recognized as a hibakusha (explosion-affected person) of the Nagasaki bombing, but it was not until March 24, 2009 that the government of Japan officially recognized his presence in Hiroshima three days earlier. He died of stomach cancer on January 4, 2010.
  Yamaguchi was born on March 16, 1916. He joined Mitsubishi Heavy Industries in the 1930s and worked as a draftsman designing oil tankers.
  
  wn.com/Tsutomu_Yamaguchi
• 
  Uzbeks
  The Uzbeks (Oʻzbek, pl. Oʻzbeklar) are a major Turkic-speaking ethnic group in Central Asia. They comprise the majority population of Uzbekistan, and large populations can also be found in Afghanistan, Tajikstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Russia, Pakistan, Mongolia and the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of China. Smaller diaspora populations of Uzbeks from Central Asia, mainly from Uzbekistan and Afghanistan, are also found in Iran, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, North America, and Western Europe.
  The origin of the name Uzbek remains disputed. One view holds that it is eponymously named after Uzbeg Khan. Another states that the name means independent or the lord itself, from Oʻz (self) and Bek/Bey/Beg (from the Turkic root meaning a noble title). However there is another theory that the pronunciation of Uz comes from one of the Oghuz Turks variously known as Uz or Uguz united with the word Bey or Bek to form uguz-bey, meaning "leader of an oguz".
  Although Turko-Mongol infiltration into Central Asia had started early, as late as the 13th century AD when Turkic and Mongol armies finally conquered the entire region, the majority of Central Asia's peoples were Iranic peoples such as Sogdians, Bactrians and, more ancient, the Saka–Massagetae tribes. It is generally believed that these ancient Indo-European-speaking peoples were linguistically assimilated by smaller but dominant Turkic-speaking groups while the sedentary population finally adopted the Persian language, the traditional lingua franca of the eastern Islamic lands. The language-shift from Middle Iranian to Turkic and New Persian was predominantly the result of an elite dominance process. This process was dramatically boosted during the Mongol conquest when millions were either killed or pushed further south to the Pamir region.
  
  wn.com/Uzbeks
• 
  Valentina Tolkunova
  Valentina Tolkunova (Russian: Валенти́на Васи́льевна Толкуно́ва, 12 July 1946 – 22 March 2010) was a Soviet and Russian singer and was bestowed the title of Honored Artist of RSFSR (1979) and People's Artist of RSFSR (1987). Her performances exhibited a kindhearted mood and sincerity, and her voice was noted for its clarity.
  At age 18 Valentina Tolkunova entered Moscow State University. In 1966 she became a member of Yury Saulsky's jazz band VIO-66 as a soloist and jazz singer. In 1971 she graduated from the Gnessin State Musical College and recorded songs for the TV series Den' za Dnem (Day After Day). 1972 was Tolkunova's breakthrough year, due to a noted performance of songs by Vladimir Shainsky, and marked the beginning of a successful career in radio and TV. In 1973 she began a busy collaboration with the Moscow Philharmonic Concert Association (Moskonzert), and in 1989 she founded and became the director of her own theatre. Over a thirty-year recording career, Valentina Tolkunova released at least thirteen albums. She also won many awards in Soviet republics and was a 23-time winner of the "Song of the Year" competition on television.
  
  wn.com/Valentina_Tolkunova
• 
  Vasily Smyslov
  Vasily Vasilyevich Smyslov (Russian: Васи́лий Васи́льевич Смысло́в; 24 March 1921 – 27 March 2010) was a Soviet and Russian chess grandmaster, and was World Chess Champion from 1957 to 1958. He was a Candidate for the World Chess Championship on eight occasions (1948, 1950, 1953, 1956, 1959, 1965, 1983, and 1985). Smyslov was twice equal first at the Soviet Championship (1949, 1955), and his total of 17 Chess Olympiad medals won is an all-time record. In five European Team Championships, Smyslov won ten gold medals.
  Smyslov remained active and successful in competitive chess well into the 1960s and 1970s, qualifying for the finals of the World Championship Candidates' Matches as late as 1983. Despite failing eyesight, he remained active in the occasional composition of chess problems and studies until shortly before his death in 2010.
  Smyslov (pronounced "smis-LOFF") first became interested in chess at the age of six. His father, Vasily Osipovich Smyslov, worked as an engineering technician and had represented the St. Petersburg Technical Institute in intercollegiate chess competitions. Smyslov's father had also studied chess for a time under the tutelage of Mikhail Chigorin and the senior Smyslov became the boy's first teacher. The elder Smyslov gave his son a copy of Alexander Alekhine's book My Best Games of Chess 1908–1923 and the future world champion would later write that this book became his constant reference. He would also write that "...I was later to read everything that my father had in his library: Dufresne's handbook, separate numbers of the Soviet chess magazines Chess and Chess Sheet, the text-books of Lasker and Capablanca, and the collections of games of Soviet and international tournaments. The games of the great Russian chess master M. I. Tchigorin made an indelible impression on me; it was with interest that I read the various declarations on questions of strategy by A. I. Nimzovitch; I studied attentively the genius of prominent Soviet masters."
  
  wn.com/Vasily_Smyslov
• 
  Viktor Chernomyrdin
  Viktor Stepanovich Chernomyrdin (Russian: Ви́ктор Степа́нович Черномы́рдин, IPA: [t͡ɕɪrnɐˈmɨrdʲɪn]; 9 April 1938 – 3 November 2010) was the founder and the first chairman of the Gazprom energy company, the longest serving Prime Minister of Russia (1992–1998) and Acting President of Russia for a day in 1996. He was a key figure in Russian politics in the 1990s, and a participant in the Russian transition from a planned to a market economy. From 2001 to 2009, he was Russia's ambassador to Ukraine. After that he was designated as a presidential adviser.
  Chernomyrdin is known in Russia and Russian-speaking countries for his unique language style, containing numerous malapropisms and syntactic errors. Many of his sayings became aphorisms and idioms in the Russian language, the most famous being his expression "We meant to do better, but it came out as always" (Russian: Хотели как лучше, а получилось как всегда).
  Viktor Chernomyrdin died on 3 November 2010 after a long illness. He was buried beside his wife in Novodevichy Cemetery on 5 November, and his funeral was broadcast live on Russian federal TV channels.
  
  wn.com/Viktor_Chernomyrdin
• 
  Vladimir Arnold
  Vladimir Igorevich Arnold (alternative spelling Arnol'd, Russian: Влади́мир И́горевич Арно́льд, 12 June 1937 – 3 June 2010) was a Soviet and Russian mathematician. While he is best known for the Kolmogorov–Arnold–Moser theorem regarding the stability of integrable Hamiltonian systems, he made important contributions in several areas including dynamical systems theory, catastrophe theory, topology, algebraic geometry, classical mechanics and singularity theory, including posing the ADE classification problem, since his first main result—the partial solution of Hilbert's thirteenth problem in 1957 at the age of 19.
  While a student of Andrey Kolmogorov at Moscow State University and still a teenager, Arnold showed in 1957 that any continuous function of several variables can be constructed with a finite number of two-variable functions, thereby partially solving Hilbert's thirteenth problem.
  After graduating from Moscow State University in 1959, he worked there until 1986 (a professor since 1965), and then at Steklov Mathematical Institute.
  
  wn.com/Vladimir_Arnold
• 
  Vladislav Ardzinba
  Vladislav Ardzinba (Abkhaz: Владислав Арӡынба, May 14, 1945 – March 4, 2010) was the first President of Abkhazia. A historian by education, Ardzinba led Abkhazia to de facto independence in the 1992-1993 War with Georgia, but its de jure independence from Georgia remained internationally unrecognised during Ardzinba's two terms as President from 1994 to 2005.
  He was a member of the first parliament to be elected democratically in the Soviet Union in 1989.
  Vladislav Ardzinba was born in the village of Lower Eshera, Sukhumi District, Abkhaz ASSR, Georgian SSR, Soviet Union^{[citation needed]}. After graduating from the Historical Department of the Sukhumi Pedagogical Institute, Ardzinba studied at the Tbilisi State University where he received a doctoral degree^{[citation needed]}. He then worked for eighteen years in Moscow specialising in ancient Middle Eastern civilizations under Yevgeniy Primakov, then head of the Institute of Oriental Studies in Moscow, and later Russian foreign and Prime Minister^{[citation needed]}. He then returned to Sukhumi and he served there as the director of the Abkhazian Institute of Language, Literature and History from 1987 until 1989, when he was elected a Deputy to the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union from Gudauta^{[citation needed]}. From there, he was involved closely with national issues, including Abkhazia, and quickly emerged as one of the most active proponents of the Abkhaz secessionist cause. While a deputy to the USSR Supreme Soviet, Ardzinba, himself an orthodox Communist, forged close ties with the hardliners in Moscow, particularly with the parliamentary chairman Anatoly Lukyanov and other members of the hardline communist groups in Moscow that were responsible for the August 1991 coup attempt.
  
  wn.com/Vladislav_Ardzinba
• 
  Wolfgang Wagner
  Wolfgang Wagner (30 August 1919 – 21 March 2010) was a German opera director. He is best known as the director (Festspielleiter) of the Bayreuth Festival, a position he initially assumed alongside his brother Wieland in 1951 until the latter's death in 1966. From then on, he assumed total control until he retired in 2008, although many of the productions which he commissioned were severely criticized in their day. He had been plagued by family conflicts and criticism for many years. He was the son of Siegfried Wagner, the grandson of Richard Wagner, and the great-grandson of Franz Liszt.
  His mother, Winifred Wagner (née Williams-Klindworth), was English. He was born at Wahnfried, the Wagner family home in Bayreuth in Bavaria. In addition to his elder brother Wieland (1917–66), he had an elder sister Friedelind Wagner (1918–1991), and a younger sister Verena Wagner (Verena Lafferenz, born 1920).
  During the 1920s Winifred Wagner was an admirer, supporter and friend of the Nazi leader, Adolf Hitler, who became a regular visitor to Bayreuth. Wolfgang Wagner first met Hitler in 1923, when he was four years old, and the Wagner children were encouraged to call him "Uncle Adolf" or "Uncle Wolf" (his nickname). When Hitler became Chancellor in 1933, he showered favours on the Wagner family. Wolfgang was a member of the Hitler Youth but never joined the Nazi Party. He joined the German Army in 1939. During the Polish campaign he was severely wounded in the arm, and he was discharged as medically unfit in June 1940 (Hitler visited him in the hospital).
  
  wn.com/Wolfgang_Wagner
• Yvonne Loriod
  Yvonne Loriod (20 January 1924 – 17 May 2010) was a French pianist, teacher, and composer, and the second wife of composer Olivier Messiaen. Her sister was the Ondes Martenot player Jeanne Loriod.
  Loriod was born in Houilles, Yvelines, France. She studied at the Paris Conservatoire and became one of Olivier Messiaen's most avid pupils. She also studied with Marcel Ciampi and Isidor Philipp. At the age of 25, she was appointed professor at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique de Paris. She went on to become a nationally acclaimed recording artist and concert pianist, and premiered most of Messiaen's works for the piano, starting in the 1940s. Messiaen said that he was able to indulge in "the greatest eccentricities", when writing for piano, knowing that they would be mastered by Loriod. Both she and her sister Jeanne often performed as the soloists in his Turangalîla-Symphonie. Loriod also orchestrated part of Messiaen's final orchestral work, Concert à quatre.
  She gave the French premiere of Béla Bartók's Piano Concerto No. 2 in 1945, having learnt it in only eight days.
  
  wn.com/Yvonne_Loriod
• Zelda Rubinstein
  Zelda Rubinstein (May 28, 1933 – January 27, 2010) was an American actress and human rights activist, best known as eccentric medium Tangina Barrons in the movie Poltergeist (1982) and its sequels, Poltergeist II: The Other Side (1986), and Poltergeist III (1988). Playing 'Ginny', she was a regular on David E. Kelley's Emmy Award winning television series Picket Fences for several seasons. She also made guest appearances in the TV show Poltergeist: The Legacy (1996), as seer 'Christina' and was the voice of Skittles candies in their long-running 'Taste the Rainbow' ad campaign. Rubinstein was also known for her outspoken activism for little people and her early participation in the fight against HIV/AIDS.
  Rubinstein was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on May 28, 1933, to Polish immigrant parents. She was the youngest of three children and the only little person in her family. Rubinstein did not become comfortable with her short stature until she was an adult. In a 1992 interview with the Chicago Sun-Times, Rubinstein told the newspaper that she "had a rough childhood, [but] I became very verbally facile. . . . I learned to meet everyone head-on."
  
  wn.com/Zelda_Rubinstein
• 
  Zilda Arns
  Zilda Arns Neumann (August 25, 1934 – January 12, 2010) was a Nobel Peace Prize-nominated Brazilian pediatrician and aid worker.
  A sister of Cardinal Dom Paulo Evaristo Arns, the former Archbishop of São Paulo known for his efforts against the Brazilian military dictatorship, Zilda Arns became internationally known by founding a Catholic pastoral care for poor children. Her humanitarian work, which also included the poor and the elderly, spanned over three decades. This is a blog about her works: http://ourlifeislike.tumblr.com/
  Arns died on January 12, 2010 as a result of the 2010 Haiti earthquake.
  Born in the rural town of Forquilhinha to a family of German immigrants, Arns was one of the 13 children of Gabriel Arns (1890–1965) and Helene Arns (née Steiner) (1894–1974). She was the aunt of Senator Flávio Arns.
  Two of Arns' memories were of seeing her father go door-to-door on his horse to help contain a smallpox epidemic and watching her mother arrange for a sick neighbour to be taken to the nearest hospital on the back of a cart, a journey of three hours. Those acts inspired her contemplate life as a doctor, even most of her priests or teachers.
  
  wn.com/Zilda_Arns
• 
  Éric Rohmer
  Éric Rohmer (French: [eʁik ʁomɛʁ]; 1920–2010) was a French film director, film critic, journalist, novelist, screenwriter and teacher. A figure in the post-war New Wave cinema, he was a former editor of Cahiers du cinéma.
  Rohmer was the last of the French New Wave directors to become established. He worked as the editor of the Cahiers du cinéma periodical from 1957 to 1963, while most of his Cahiers colleagues – among them Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut – were beginning their careers and gaining international attention. René Schérer, a philosopher, is his brother and René Monzat, a journalist, is his son.
  Rohmer came to international attention around 1969 when his film Ma nuit chez Maud (My Night at Maud's) was nominated at the Academy Awards. He won the San Sebastián International Film Festival with Claire's Knee in 1971. In 2001, Rohmer received the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival. His works were viewed by audiences around the world. He died of unspecified causes on 11 January 2010. In his obituary in The Daily Telegraph he was described as "the most durable film-maker of the French New Wave", outlasting his peers and "still making movies the public wanted to see" late in his career.
  
  wn.com/Éric_Rohmer