Adolph "Spike" Dubs (August 4, 1920 - February 14, 1979) was the United States Ambassador to Afghanistan from May 13, 1978 until his death in 1979. He was killed in an exchange of fire after a kidnapping attempt.

Dubs was born in Chicago, Illinois and graduated from Beloit College in 1942 with a degree in political science. He served in the United States Navy during World War II. Later, he completed graduate studies at Georgetown University and foreign service studies at Harvard University and Washington University in St. Louis.

He subsequently entered the United States Foreign Service as a career diplomat, and his postings included Germany, Liberia, Canada, Yugoslavia, and the Soviet Union. He became a noted Soviet expert, and in 1973-74 he served as ranking charge d'affaires at the United States Embassy in Moscow.

In 1978 Dubs was appointed U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan following a coup d'etat which brought the Soviet-aligned Khalq faction to power. On February 14, 1979, he was kidnapped by four armed militants belonging to the Setami Milli party posing as police. The kidnappers demanded the release of Badruddin Bahes, the imprisoned leader of their party. The government of Hafizullah Amin denied holding Bahes, and refused categorically to negotiate with the militants, in spite of the US embassy's demands. Dubs was held in Room 117 of the Kabul Hotel (now called Kabul Serena Hotel). Afghan security forces and Russian advisers swarmed the hallway and surrounding rooftops, but negotiations stalled. Shortly after 12:30 p.m., an exchange of gunfire started between the terrorists and the Afghan security forces, and the ambassador was killed. Afterwards the U.S. government formally expressed to Moscow its disapproval of the assault by the security forces.

Steve Pieczenik, MD, PhD (born December 7, 1943, in Havana, Cuba) is an American psychiatrist, former State Department official, author, and publisher.

Pieczenik was born of Russian-Polish parents in Cuba and reared in France. His father, a doctor from Dombrovicz who studied and worked in Toulouse, fled Poland before World War II. His mother, a Russian Jew from Bialystok, fled Europe after many of her family members were killed. The couple met in Portugal, where both had fled ahead of the Nazi invaders. Pieczenik was born in Cuba—out of wedlock in 1943. After living in Toulouse, France for six years, Pieczenik's family migrated to the United States where they settled in the Harlem area of New York City, New York. Steve Pieczenik was eight years old when his parents received their visa to the US.

Pieczenik is a classical pianist who wrote a full-length musical at the age of eight.

Pieczenik is a Harvard-trained psychiatrist and has a doctorate in international relations from MIT.

According to Pieczenik's autobiography, he attended Booker T. Washington High School in the Harlem neighborhood of New York City. Pieczenik received a full scholarship to Cornell University at the age of 16. In 1964, Pieczenik claims he received a B.A. degree in Pre-Medicine and Psychology from Cornell, later attending Cornell University Medical College. In his spare time, he attained a PhD in international relations from MIT while studying at Harvard Medical School. Pieczenik claims to be the first psychiatrist ever to receive a PhD focusing on international relations.

Carlos Ray "Chuck" Norris (born March 10, 1940) is an American martial artist and actor. After serving in the United States Air Force, he began his rise to fame as a martial artist and has since founded his own school, Chun Kuk Do. As a result of his "tough guy" image, an Internet phenomenon began in 2005 known as Chuck Norris facts, ascribing various implausible or even impossible feats to Norris.

Norris appeared in a number of action films, such as Way of the Dragon in which he starred alongside Bruce Lee, and was The Cannon Group's leading star in the 1980s. He next played the starring role in the television series Walker, Texas Ranger from 1993 to 2001.

Norris is a devout Christian and politically conservative. He has written several books on Christianity and donated to a number of Republican candidates and causes. In 2007 and 2008, he campaigned for former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, who was running for the Republican nomination for President in 2008. In the 2012 election he endorsed former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich. Norris also writes a column for the conservative website WorldNetDaily.

The Honourable Usain St. Leo Bolt, OJ, C.D. ( /ˈjuːseɪn/; born 21 August 1986), is a Jamaican sprinter and a five-time World and three-time Olympic gold medalist. He is the world record and Olympic record holder in the 100 metres, the 200 metres and (along with his teammates) the 4×100 metres relay. He is the reigning Olympic champion in these three events, and is one of only seven athletes (along with Valerie Adams, Veronica Campbell-Brown, Jacques Freitag, Yelena Isinbayeva, Jana Pittman, Dani Samuels) to win world championships at the youth, junior, and senior level of an athletic event.

Bolt won a 200 m gold medal at the 2002 World Junior Championships, making him the competition's youngest-ever gold medalist at the time (since surpassed by Jacko Gill). In 2004, at the CARIFTA Games, he became the first junior sprinter to run the 200 m in less than 20 seconds with a time of 19.93 s, breaking the previous world junior record held by Roy Martin by two-tenths of a second. He turned professional in 2004, and although he competed at the 2004 Summer Olympics, he missed most of the next two seasons due to injuries. In 2007, he broke Don Quarrie's 200 m Jamaican record with a run of 19.75 s.

The term black people is used in some socially-based systems of racial classification for humans of a dark-skinned phenotype, relative to other racial groups represented in a particular social context. Different societies apply different criteria regarding who is classified as "black", and often social variables such as class and socio-economic status also play a role, so that relatively dark-skinned people can be classified as white if they fulfill other social criteria of "whiteness" and relatively light-skinned people can be classified as black if they fulfill the social criteria for "blackness" in a particular setting.

As a biological phenotype being "black" is often associated with the very dark skin colors of some people who are classified as "black". But, particularly in the United States, the racial or ethnic classification also refers to people with all possible kinds of skin pigmentation from the darkest through to the very lightest skin colors, including albinos, if they are believed by others to have African ancestry, or to exhibit cultural traits associated with being "African-American". As a result, in the United States the term "black people" is not an indicator of skin color but of socially based racial classification.