Philip of Artois (1269 – September 11, 1298) was the son of Robert II of Artois, Count of Artois, and Amicie de Courtenay. He was the Lord of Conches, Nonancourt, and Domfront.

He married Blanche of Brittany, daughter of John II, Duke of Brittany, and had the following children:

He served under his father at the Battle of Furnes, where he was wounded. He never recovered, and died of the effects over a year later. His premature death led to a legal battle later, when Artois was left to his sister Mahaut rather than his son Robert.

Artois (French pronunciation: [aʁtwa]; adjective Artesian; Dutch: Artesië) is a former province of northern France. Its territory has an area of around 4000 km² and a population of about one million. Its principal cities are Arras (Dutch: Atrecht), Saint-Omer, Lens and Béthune.

Artois occupies the interior of the Pas-de-Calais département, the western part of which constitutes the former Boulonnais. Artois roughly corresponds to the arrondissements of Arras, Béthune, Saint Omer, and Lens, and the eastern part of the Arrondissement of Montreuil. It occupies the western end of the coalfield which stretches eastward through the neighbouring Nord département and across central Belgium.

Originally a feudal county itself, Artois was annexed by the county of Flanders. It came to France in 1180 as a dowry of a Flemish princess, Isabelle of Hainaut, and was again made a separate county in 1237 for Robert, a grandson of Isabelle. Through inheritance, Artois came under the rule of the dukes of Burgundy in 1384. At the death of the fourth duke, Charles the Bold, Artois was inherited by the Habsburgs and passed to the dynasty's Spanish line. After the religious revolts of 1566 in the Netherlands, Artois briefly entered the Dutch Revolt in 1576, participating in the Pacification of Ghent until it formed the Union of Atrecht in 1579. After the Union of Atrecht, Artois and Hainaut (Dutch: Henegouwen) reached a separate agreement with Philip II. Artois remained with the Spanish Netherlands until it was conquered by the French during the Thirty Years War. The annexation was acknowledged during the Treaty of the Pyrenees in 1659, and it became a French province. Though Artois had already been largely French-speaking, it was considered part of the Netherlands until the French annexation.

Michael William Balfe (15 May 1808 – 20 October 1870) was an Irish composer, best-remembered for his opera The Bohemian Girl.

After a short career as a violinist, Balfe pursued an operatic singing career, while he began to compose. In a career spanning more than 40 years, he composed 38 operas, almost 250 songs and other works. He was also a noted conductor, directing Italian Opera at Her Majesty's Theatre for seven years, among other conducting posts.

Balfe was born in Dublin, where his musical gifts became apparent at an early age. The only instruction he received was from his father, who was a dancing master and violinist. His family moved to Wexford when he was a child. Between 1814 and 1815, Balfe played the violin for his father's dancing-classes, and at the age of seven composed a polacca.

In 1817 he appeared as a violinist in public, and in this year composed a ballad, first called "Young Fanny" and afterwards, when sung in Paul Pry by Madame Vestris, "The Lovers' Mistake". In 1823, upon the death of his father, the teenaged Balfe moved to London and was engaged as a violinist in the orchestra of the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane. He eventually became the leader of that orchestra. While there, he studied with C. E. Horn, the organist at St. George's Chapel, Windsor (1786—1840).

Adrien Brody (born April 14, 1973) is an American actor and film producer. He received widespread recognition and acclaim after starring in Roman Polanski's The Pianist (2002), for which he became the youngest actor to win the Academy Award for Best Actor at age 29. Brody is also the only American actor to receive the French César Award.

Brody was born in Woodhaven, Queens, New York, the son of Sylvia Plachy, a photojournalist, and Elliot Brody, a retired history professor and painter. Brody's father is of Polish Jewish descent; Brody's mother – who was raised Catholic – was born in Budapest, Hungary, the daughter of a Catholic Hungarian aristocrat father and a Czech Jewish mother. Brody was raised "without a strong connection to" Judaism or Catholicism. As a child, he performed magic shows at children's birthday parties as "The Amazing Adrien". He attended the I.S. 145 Joseph Pulitzer middle school and New York's Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts (famous as the inspiration for television's Fame). His parents enrolled him in acting classes to distance him from the dangerous children with whom he associated^{[citation needed]}. He attended summer camp at Long Lake Camp for the Arts in the Adirondacks in upstate New York. Brody attended the State University of New York at Stony Brook before transferring to Queens College for a semester.