- published: 08 Oct 2009
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New Year is the time at which a new calendar year begins and the calendar's year count is incremented. In many cultures, the event is celebrated in some manner. The New Year of the Gregorian calendar, today in worldwide use, falls on 1 January, as was the case with the Roman calendar. There are numerous calendars that remain in regional use that calculate the New Year differently.
The order of months in the Roman calendar was January to December since King Numa Pompilius in about 700 BC, according to Plutarch and Macrobius. According to Catholic tradition, 1 January is the day of the circumcision of Jesus (on the eighth day from his birth), when the name of Jesus was given to him (Luke 2:21).
It was only relatively recently that 1 January again became the first day of the year in Western culture. Until 1751 in England and Wales (and all British dominions) the new year started on 25 March – Lady Day, one of the four quarter days (the change to 1 January took place in 1600 in Scotland). Since then, 1 January has been the first day of the year. During the Middle Ages several other days were variously taken as the beginning of the calendar year (1 March, 25 March, Easter, 1 September, 25 December).[citation needed][where?] In many countries, such as the Czech Republic, Italy and the UK, 1 January is a national holiday.
Deepika Padukone (born 5 January 1986) is an Indian actress and a former model. She appears mostly in Hindi as well as Tamil and Kannada language films. Born to badminton player Prakash Padukone, she chose to become an actress and not pursue a career in sports.
Padukone made her acting debut in the 2006 Kannada film Aishwarya. The following year, she made her Hindi film debut in Om Shanti Om, for which she earned the Filmfare Best Female Debut Award. It also remains her biggest commercial success so far. She subsequently appeared in films such as Love Aaj Kal (2009) and Housefull (2010). While the former earned her a Filmfare nomination in the Best Actress category, the latter emerged as a commercial success.
In addition to acting, Padukone is also the ambassador of prominent brands such as Tissot, Sony Cybershot, Nescafe and Kingfisher Airlines.
Padukone was born in Copenhagen, Denmark. Her father, Prakash Padukone, is a former badminton player of international repute, and her mother is a travel agent. Her father was then training in Denmark in the sport and when she was eleven months old, her family moved to Bangalore, Karnataka, India. Padukone also has a younger sister, Anisha, born on 2 February 1991.
Céline Marie Claudette Dion, CC OQ, (French pronunciation: [selin djɔ̃] ( listen); born March 30, 1968), is a Canadian singer. Born to a large family from Charlemagne, Quebec, Dion emerged as a teen star in the French-speaking world after her manager and future husband René Angélil mortgaged his home to finance her first record. In 1990, she released the English-language album Unison, establishing herself as a viable pop artist in North America and other English-speaking areas of the world.
Dion had first gained international recognition in the 1980s by winning both the 1982 Yamaha World Popular Song Festival and the 1988 Eurovision Song Contest. Following a series of French albums in the early 1980s, she signed on to CBS Records Canada in 1986. During the 1990s, with the help of Angélil, she achieved worldwide fame after signing with Epic Records and releasing several English albums along with additional French albums, becoming one of the most successful artists in pop music history. However, in 1999 at the height of her success, Dion announced a hiatus from entertainment in order to start a family and spend time with her husband, who had been diagnosed with cancer. She returned to the top of pop music in 2002 and signed a three-year (later extended to almost five years) contract to perform nightly in a five-star theatrical show at the Colosseum at Caesars Palace, Paradise, Nevada.