Yale College was the official name of Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, from 1718 to 1887. The name now refers to the undergraduate part of the university. Each undergraduate student is assigned to one of 12 residential colleges. Yale was founded in part from funds realized from the sale of Equivalent Lands.

The current residential college system was instituted in 1933 through a grant by Yale graduate Edward S. Harkness, who admired the college systems at Oxford University and Cambridge University. Each college consists of a dormitory building or buildings, surrounding a quadrangle or courtyard. Each college includes a dining hall; student facilities, ranging from libraries to squash courts to darkrooms; and a few faculty, including a dean, a master, and two or more resident fellows. Most college buildings also feature distinctive architecture, and each has developed a different flavor or area of emphasis. Although Yale students take part in academic and social programs across the university, and all of Yale's 2,000 courses are open to undergraduates from any college, each college has a carefully constructed academic and social structure for its students, including seminars, social events, and master's teas with notable guests from around the world.

Thomas Jeffrey "Tom" Hanks (born July 9, 1956) is an American actor, producer, writer, and director. Hanks is known for his roles in Philadelphia and as the title character in Forrest Gump, roles which won him two consecutive Academy Awards for Best Actor. Hanks is also known for his Oscar nominated roles in Big, Saving Private Ryan and Cast Away.

Hanks' other acting roles include Apollo 13 as Jim Lovell, The Green Mile as Paul Edgecomb, Toy Story as Woody and Charlie Wilson's War as Charlie Wilson.

Hanks was born in Concord, California. His father, Amos Mefford Hanks (born in Glenn County, California, on March 9, 1924 – died in Alameda, California, on January 31, 1992), was an itinerant cook. His mother, Janet Marylyn (née Frager; born in Alameda County, California, on January 18, 1932), was a hospital worker. Hanks' mother is of Portuguese ancestry, while two of his paternal great-grandparents immigrated from Britain. Hanks's parents divorced in 1960. The family's three oldest children, Sandra (now Sandra Hanks Benoiton, a writer)^{[citation needed]}, Larry (now Lawrence M. Hanks, PhD, an entomology professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) and Tom, went with their father, while the youngest, Jim, now an actor and film maker, remained with his mother in Red Bluff, California.^{[citation needed]}

Mary Ellen Miller (born December 30, 1952) is an American art historian and Dean of Yale College. In 1998, she was appointed as the Vincent Scully, Jr. Professor of the History of Art. In 2008, she was appointed as Sterling Professor at Yale. She has served as the Chair of the History of Art, Latin American Studies, and Archaeological Studies Departments at Yale, as well as Director of Undergraduate Studies of the History of Art.

She served as the guest curator for "The Courtly Art of the Ancient Maya", a highly acclaimed exhibition of Maya art that took place in 2004 at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., and the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. For that exhibition, she wrote the catalogue of the same title—a finalist for the Alfred H. Barr Jr. Award of the College Art Association—with Simon Martin, senior epigrapher at the University Museum, University of Pennsylvania. A previous exhibition catalogue, The Blood of Kings, co-authored with Linda Schele was awarded the Barr Prize in 1986.

Anthony Charles Lynton Blair (born 6 May 1953) is a British Labour Party politician who served as the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 2 May 1997 to 27 June 2007. He was the Member of Parliament (MP) for Sedgefield from 1983 to 2007 and Leader of the Labour Party from 1994 to 2007. He resigned from all of these positions in June 2007.

Blair was elected Leader of the Labour Party in the leadership election of July 1994, following the sudden death of his predecessor, John Smith. Under his leadership, the party used the phrases "New Labour" and "New Socialism" to define its policy, and moved away from its support of state socialism since the 1960s and created a new version of the ethical socialism that was last pursued by Clement Attlee. Critics of Blair claim that "New Labour" did not adhere to socialism as claimed, and that it effectively advocated capitalism. Blair subsequently led Labour to a landslide victory in the 1997 general election. At 43 years old, he became the youngest Prime Minister since Lord Liverpool in 1812. In the first years of the New Labour government, Blair's government implemented a number of 1997 manifesto pledges, introducing the minimum wage, Human Rights Act and Freedom of Information Act, and carrying out devolution, establishing the Scottish Parliament, the National Assembly for Wales, and the Northern Ireland Assembly.