Admiral Sir Bertram Home Ramsay KCB, KBE, MVO (20 January 1883 – 2 January 1945) was a British admiral during World War II. He was an important contributor in the field of amphibious warfare.
He was born in London, into an old Scottish family (see Ramsay Baronets), and attended Colchester Royal Grammar School. In 1898, he joined the Royal Navy. Serving on HMS Britannia, he became an midshipman within a year. Following his promotion, he was transferred to HMS Crescent.
During World War I he was assigned his first command, the "M 25", a small monitor, in August 1915. For two years his ship was part of the Dover Patrol off the Belgian coast. On October 1917 he took command of another Dover Patrol vessel, the destroyer HMS Broke.
On 9 May 1918, his ship took part in the Second Ostend Raid, a follow up to the Zeebrugge Raid, and he was mentioned in despatches.
Resigning from the Navy in 1938, he was coaxed out of retirement by Winston Churchill one year later to help deal with the Axis threat.
Promoted to Vice-Admiral, he was placed in charge of the Dover area of operations on 24 August 1939. His duties included overseeing the defence against possible destroyer raids, protection of cross-Channel military traffic and the denial of the passage through the Straits of Dover to submarines.
John Wilkes (17 October 1725 – 26 December 1797) was an English radical, journalist, and politician.
He was first elected Member of Parliament in 1757. In the Middlesex election dispute, he fought for the right of voters—rather than the House of Commons—to determine their representatives. In 1771, he was instrumental in obliging the government to concede the right of printers to publish verbatim accounts of parliamentary debates. In 1776, he introduced the first Bill for parliamentary reform in the British Parliament. During the American War of Independence, he was a supporter of the American rebels, adding further to his popularity with American Whigs. In 1780, however, he commanded militia forces which helped put down the Gordon Riots, damaging his popularity with many radicals.
Wilkes's increasing conservatism as he grew older caused dissatisfaction among radicals and was instrumental in the loss of his Middlesex seat at the 1790 general election. At the age of 65, Wilkes retired from politics and took no part in the growth of radicalism in the 1790s following the French Revolution. During his life, he earned a reputation as a libertine.
John Boynton Priestley, OM (13 September 1894 – 14 August 1984), known as J. B. Priestley, was an English novelist, playwright and broadcaster. He published 26 novels, notably The Good Companions (1929), as well as numerous dramas such as An Inspector Calls. His output included literary and social criticism.
Priestley was born at 34 Mannheim Road, Manningham, which he described as an "ultra-respectable" suburb of Bradford. His father was a headmaster. His mother died when he was just two years old and his father remarried four years later. Priestley was educated at Belle Vue Grammar School, which he left at sixteen to work as a junior clerk at Helm & Co., a wool firm in the Swan Arcade. During his years at Helm & Co. (1910–1914), he started writing at night and had articles published in local and London newspapers. He was to draw on memories of Bradford in many of the works he wrote after he had moved south, including Bright Day and When We Are Married. As an old man he deplored the destruction by developers of Victorian buildings in Bradford such as the Swan Arcade, where he had his first job.
Shania Twain, OC ( /ʃəˌnaɪ.ə ˈtweɪn/; born Eilleen Regina Edwards; August 28, 1965) is a Canadian country pop singer-songwriter. Her album The Woman in Me (1995), brought her fame and her 1997 album Come On Over, became the best-selling album of all time by a female musician in any genre, and the best-selling country album of all time. It has sold more than 40 million copies worldwide and is the ninth best-selling album in the U.S. Her fourth album, Up!, was released in November 2002. To date it has sold 20 million copies worldwide.
Twain has won five Grammy Awards and 27 BMI Songwriter awards. She has had three albums certified Diamond by the Recording Industry Association of America and is the second best-selling artist in Canada, behind Céline Dion, with three of her studio albums certified double diamond by the Canadian Recording Industry Association. She is the first (and currently only) female artist in history to have 3 consecutive albums reach diamond status, indicating sales of at least 10 million, certified by the RIAA. Sometimes referred to as "The Queen of Country Pop", Twain has sold more than 75 million albums worldwide and is ranked 10th best-selling artist of the Nielsen SoundScan era. She was also ranked 72nd on Billboard's "Artists of the decade" (2000–10). Most recently, Twain has her own TV series, Why Not? with Shania Twain, that premiered on the OWN on May 8, 2011. She received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on June 2, 2011.