Argentina ⁱ/ˌɑrdʒənˈtiːnə/, officially the Argentine Republic (Spanish: República Argentina [reˈpuβlika aɾxenˈtina]), is a country in South America, the continent's second largest by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires. It is the eighth-largest country in the world by land area and the largest among Spanish-speaking nations.

Argentina's continental area is between the Andes mountain range in the west and the Atlantic Ocean in the east. It borders Paraguay and Bolivia to the north, Brazil and Uruguay to the northeast, and Chile to the west and south. Argentine claims over Antarctica, as well as overlapping claims made by Chile and the United Kingdom, are suspended by the Antarctic Treaty of 1961. Argentina also claims the Falkland Islands (Spanish: Islas Malvinas) and South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands, which are administered by the United Kingdom as British Overseas Territories.

A recognised middle power, Argentina is Latin America's third-largest economy, with a "very high" rating on the Human development index. Within Latin America, Argentina has the fifth highest nominal GDP per capita and the highest in purchasing power terms. Analysts have argued that the country has a "foundation for future growth due to its market size, levels of foreign direct investment, and percentage of high-tech exports as share of total manufactured goods", and it is classed by investors as middle emerging economy. Argentina is a founding member of the United Nations, Mercosur, the Union of South American Nations, the Organization of Ibero-American States, the World Bank Group and the World Trade Organization, and is one of the G-15 and G-20 major economies.

Anthony Michael "Tony" Bourdain (born June 25, 1956) is an American chef, author and television personality. He is well known for his 2000 book Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly, and is the host of Travel Channel's culinary and cultural adventure programs Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations and The Layover.

A 1978 graduate of the Culinary Institute of America and a veteran of numerous professional kitchens, Bourdain is currently a chef-at-large, whose home base is Brasserie Les Halles, New York where he was executive chef for many years.

Anthony Bourdain was born in New York City to Pierre (d.1987) and Gladys Bourdain, and grew up in Leonia, New Jersey. Bourdain has French ancestry on his father's side; his paternal grandfather emigrated from France to New York following World War I. Bourdain's mother worked for the New York Times as a staff editor. Bourdain was a student at Englewood School for Boys, graduating in 1973. He attended Vassar College before dropping out after two years, and graduated from the Culinary Institute of America in 1978.

Suzan Erens (born November 11, 1976 in Heerlen, Netherlands) is a Dutch concert singer. Classically trained, her concert repertoire includes arias from opera and operetta as well as musical theatre and pop songs. She has toured worldwide and recorded as a soloist with Andre Rieu's Johann Strauss Orchestra.

Erens was born in Heerlen, a town in the south of the Netherlands, on 11 November 1976. As a young girl she began playing the violin and French horn. In her early teens she was discovered on her high school Sophianum (Gulpen) while singing a song in a school play. Soon after this performance, Suzan decided to study voice at the Academy of Music in Maastricht, the Netherlands.

While studying at the academy she started her career as an opera singer at Opera Zuid in Maastricht. She performed in several operas during her study and toured with Opera Zuid through the Netherlands. In her final year (1999) at the academy she came to the attention of André Rieu, who hired her as a vocalist with his Johann Strauss Orchaestra. In addition to global touring with the orchestra, Erens has performed as a soloist on several of Rieu's albums and television specials.

Lionel Andrés Messi (Spanish pronunciation: [ljoˈnel anˈdɾes ˈmesi], born 24 June 1987) is an Argentine footballer who plays in La Liga for FC Barcelona and is the captain of the Argentina national team, mainly as a forward.

By the age of 21, Messi had received Ballon d'Or and FIFA World Player of the Year nominations. The following year in 2009 he won both the Ballon d'Or and FIFA World Player of the Year, and won the inaugural FIFA Ballon d'Or in 2010 and 2011. He also won the 2010–11 UEFA Best Player in Europe Award. Messi is the fourth football player to win three Ballons d'Or, after Johan Cruyff, Michel Platini and Marco van Basten and the second player to win three consecutive Ballons d'Or, after Michel Platini. His playing style and small stature have drawn comparisons to Diego Maradona, who himself declared Messi as his "successor".

Messi has won five La Liga titles and three Champions League titles. In 2012, Messi made UEFA Champions League history by becoming the first player to score five goals in one match, in a 7–1 win against Bayer Leverkusen. With two goals in the next round against A.C. Milan, he matched José Altafini's record of 14 goals in a single UEFA Champions League/European Cup season. He also became the first player to top-score in four successive European Champion Clubs' Cup campaigns. He set the world record for most goals scored in a season during the 2011–12 season, with 73 goals.

Victor-Marie Hugo (French pronunciation: [viktɔʁ maʁi yɡo]) (26 February 1802 – 22 May 1885) was a French poet, playwright, novelist, essayist, visual artist, statesman, human rights activist^{[citation needed]} and exponent of the Romantic movement in France.

In France, Hugo's literary fame comes first from his poetry but also rests upon his novels and his dramatic achievements. Among many volumes of poetry, Les Contemplations and La Légende des siècles stand particularly high in critical esteem, and Hugo is sometimes identified as the greatest French poet. Outside France, his best-known works are the novels Les Misérables and Notre-Dame de Paris (also known in English as The Hunchback of Notre-Dame).

Though a committed royalist when he was young, Hugo's views changed as the decades passed; he became a passionate supporter of republicanism^{[citation needed]}, and his work touches upon most of the political and social issues and artistic trends of his time. He is buried in the Panthéon.

Hugo was the third, illegitimate, son of Joseph Léopold Sigisbert Hugo (1774–1828) and Sophie Trébuchet (1772–1821); his brothers were Abel Joseph Hugo (1798–1855) and Eugène Hugo (1800–1837). He was born in 1802 in Besançon (in the region of Franche-Comté) and lived in France for the majority of his life. However, he decided to live in exile as a result of Napoleon III's Coup d'état at the end of 1851.