Zoë Porphyrogenita

Zoë (Greek: Ζωή, Zōē meaning "life") (c. 978 – June 1050) reigned as Byzantine Empress alongside her sister Theodora from April 19 to June 11, 1042. She was also enthroned as the Empress Consort to a series of co-rulers beginning with Romanos III in 1028 until her death in 1050 while married to Constantine IX.

Early life: c. 978 – 1028

Zoë was one of the few Byzantine empresses who was Porphyrogenita, or "born into the purple" (that is, she was born to a reigning emperor). She was the second daughter of Constantine VIII and Helena, daughter of Alypius. Her father had become co-emperor in 962 and sole emperor in 1025. His reign as sole emperor lasted less than three years, from December 15, 1025 to November 15, 1028.

As an eligible imperial princess she was considered as a possible bride for the Holy Roman Emperor, Otto III in 996. A second embassy sent in 1001, headed by Arnulf, Archbishop of Milan, was tasked with selecting Otto’s bride from among Constantine’s three daughters. The eldest, Eudocia, was disfigured by smallpox, while the youngest, Theodora, was a very plain girl. Arnulf therefore selected the attractive 23-year-old Zoë, to which her uncle Basil II agreed. In January 1002 she accompanied Arnulf back to Italy, only to discover when the ship reached Bari that Otto III had died, forcing her to return home. Another opportunity arose in 1028, when an embassy from the Holy Roman Empire arrived in Constantinople with a proposal for an imperial marriage. Constantine VIII and the fifty-year-old Zoë rejected the idea out of hand when it was revealed that the intended groom Henry, the son of Conrad II, was only ten years old.

Oliver Twist

Oliver Twist, or The Parish Boy's Progress, is the second novel by Charles Dickens, and was first published as a serial 1837–9. The story is of the orphan Oliver Twist, who starts his life in a workhouse and is then sold into an apprenticeship with an undertaker. He escapes from there and travels to London where he meets the Artful Dodger, a member of a gang of juvenile pickpockets, which is led by the elderly criminal Fagin.

Oliver Twist is notable for Dickens's unromantic portrayal of criminals and their sordid lives, as well as exposing the cruel treatment of the many orphans in London in the mid–nineteenth century. The alternate title, The Parish Boy's Progress, alludes to Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress, as well as the 18th-century caricature series by William Hogarth, A Rake's Progress and A Harlot's Progress.

An early example of the social novel, Dickens satirizes the hypocrisies of his time, including child labour, the recruitment of children as criminals, and the presence of street children. The novel may have been inspired by the story of Robert Blincoe, an orphan whose account of working as a child labourer in a cotton mill was widely read in the 1830s. It is likely that Dickens's own youthful experiences contributed as well.

Copyright Act

Copyright Act (with its variations) is a stock short title used for legislation in Australia, Canada, Hong Kong, India, Malaysia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States relating to the copyright. The Bill for an Act with this short title will usually have been known as a Copyright Bill during its passage through Parliament.

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Twist

Twist may refer to:

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Mathematics and science

Virginia Wade

Sarah Virginia Wade, OBE (born 10 July 1945) is a British former professional tennis player. She won three Grand Slam singles championships and four Grand Slam doubles championships, and is the only British woman in history to have won titles at all four Grand Slam tournaments. She was ranked as high as No. 2 in the world in singles, and No. 1 in the world in doubles. She won the women's singles championship at Wimbledon on 1 July 1977, in that tournament's centenary year, and was the last British tennis player to have won a Grand Slam singles tournament until Andy Murray won the US Open in 2012. She remains the last British female to have won a Grand Slam singles title. After retiring from competitive tennis, she coached for four years and has also worked as a tennis commentator and game analyst for the BBC and Eurosport.

Early life

Born in Bournemouth in England, Virginia Wade learned to play tennis in South Africa, where her parents moved when she was one year old. Her father was the Archdeacon of Durban. When Wade was 15, the family moved back to England and she went to Tunbridge Wells Girls' Grammar School and Talbot Heath School, Bournemouth. In 1961 Wade was in the tennis team of Wimbledon County Girls' Grammar School. She went on to study mathematics and physics at the University of Sussex, graduating in 1966.