Coordinates: 51°32′38″N 0°06′10″W / 51.5440°N 0.1027°W / 51.5440; -0.1027

Islington ( /ˈɪzlɪŋtən/) is a neighbourhood in Greater London, England and forms the central district of the London Borough of Islington. It is a desirable residential district of Inner London, spanning from Islington High Street to Highbury Fields, encompassing the area around the busy Upper Street. The name is often applied to the areas of the borough close to Upper Street such as St Mary's, St Peter's, Barnsbury, and Canonbury, developed in the Georgian era.

Islington grew as a sprawling Middlesex village along the line of the Great North Road, and has provided the name of the modern borough. This gave rise to some confusion, as neighbouring districts may also be said to be in Islington. This district is bounded by Liverpool Road to the west and City Road to the south-east. Its northernmost point is in the area of Canonbury. The main north-south high street, Upper Street splits at Highbury Corner to Holloway Road to the west and St. Paul's Road to the east.

Joseph Black (February 8, 1924 – May 17, 2002) was an American right-handed pitcher in Negro League and Major League Baseball for the Brooklyn Dodgers, Cincinnati Redlegs, and Washington Senators who became the first black pitcher to win a World Series game, in 1952. Black died of prostate cancer at age 78.

A native of Plainfield, New Jersey, he starred at Plainfield High School. Black attended on a baseball scholarship and graduated from Morgan State University in 1950 and later received an honorary doctorate from Shaw University. He was a member of Omega Psi Phi fraternity. He appears prominently in Roger Kahn's classic book, The Boys of Summer.

Black helped the Baltimore Elite Giants of the Negro Leagues win two championships in seven years. He and Jackie Robinson pushed for a pension plan for Negro League players and was instrumental in the inclusion of players who played before 1947. Black then played for a year in the Brooklyn Dodgers' minor league system.

The Dodgers promoted Black to the major leagues in 1952, five years after teammate Jackie Robinson broke baseball's color barrier. Black was 28 when he reached the majors. He roomed with Jackie while with Brooklyn, and was dominant out of the bullpen, chosen Rookie of the Year after winning 15 games and saving 15 others for the National League champions. He had a 2.15 ERA but, with 142 innings pitched, fell 8 innings short of winning the ERA title.

Peter Dougan Capaldi (born 14 April 1958) is an Academy Award and BAFTA award winning Scottish actor and film director. In 1995, his short film Franz Kafka's It's a Wonderful Life won the Academy Award for Live Action Short Film. As an actor, he played Oldsen in Local Hero, John Frobisher in Torchwood and political spin doctor Malcolm Tucker in the British TV comedy series The Thick of It and the affiliated feature film In the Loop. He also portrayed Balthazar, one of the Magi, in the 2010 BBC adaptation of The Nativity.

Capaldi was born in Glasgow. His mother's family was from Killeshandra, County Cavan, Ireland, and his father's family is from Picinisco, Italy. Capaldi was educated at St Teresa's Primary School in the city's Possilpark district, St Matthew's Primary School in Bishopbriggs and at St Ninian's High School, Kirkintilloch, before attending the Glasgow School of Art.

Capaldi displayed an early talent for performance by putting on a puppet show in primary school. While still at high school he was a member of the Antonine Players, who performed at the Fort Theatre, Bishopbriggs. As an art student, Capaldi was the lead singer in the punk rock band "Dreamboys", which included the future comedian Craig Ferguson as drummer.

Thebe Neruda Kgositsile (born February 24, 1994), better known by his stage name Earl Sweatshirt, is an American rapper and member of the Los Angeles based hip hop collective Odd Future.

Kgositsile was born to Cheryl Harris, a law professor at University of California, Los Angeles, and Keorapetse Kgositsile, a South African poet and political activist. He grew up in the Los Angeles area and is in his senior year at New Roads High School in Santa Monica.

Earl and his group have been featured in mainstream magazines such as Spin, Billboard and The Fader as well as on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon. His debut studio album, Earl, was self-released March 31, 2010 as a free digital download on the Odd Future website. Most of the album was produced by Tyler, The Creator. Earl was named the 24th best album of 2010 by Complex. Sweatshirt's rapping style is notable for its dark lyrical content, multi-syllabic rhyme schemes, heavy wordplay and double entendres.

Despite overwhelmingly positive reviews, various sources indicated that Sweatshirt had stopped making music with Odd Future. Posts from Tyler, The Creator's Twitter and Formspring accounts seemed to indicate that Sweatshirt's mother would not grant permission to release any of Sweatshirt's music, although Earl later expressed in an interview that his mother sent him to Samoa not because of his music or lyrical content but because of himself getting into trouble. Earl attended Coral Reef Academy, a therapeutic retreat school for at-risk boys, located outside of the Samoan capital of Apia.

Benedict Timothy Carlton Cumberbatch (born 19 July 1976) is an English film, television, radio and theatre actor. His most acclaimed roles include Stephen Hawking in the BBC drama Hawking (2004); William Pitt in the historical film Amazing Grace (2006); the protagonist Stephen Ezard in the miniseries thriller The Last Enemy (2008); Paul Marshall in Atonement (2007); Bernard in Small Island (2009); Sherlock Holmes in the modern BBC adaptation series Sherlock (2010); and Peter Guillam in the spy thriller Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011).

In February 2011, he began playing both Victor Frankenstein and his creature opposite Jonny Lee Miller in Danny Boyle's stage adaptation of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. The play had a three-month run at the National Theatre. In late 2011, he played Major Stewart in Steven Spielberg's War Horse (2011). The film received five BAFTA nominations and six Academy Award nominations, including the Best Picture nomination in 2012. He also played Peter Guillam, one of the pivotal roles in Tomas Alfredson's Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (2011), which was nominated for three Academy Awards and 11 BAFTA Awards. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy was also nominated for Best Picture in 2012.