Since ancient history, many athletes have resorted to performance enhancing aids to give them an edge on their opponents. Greek Olympians used strychnine and hallucinogenic mushrooms to psych up for an event. “In 1886 a French cyclist was the first athlete to die from using a performance enhancer, called speedballs, a mixture of cocaine and…
In the 1960’s, the use of main frame computers became widespread in many companies. To access vast amounts of stored information, these companies started to use computer programs like COBOL and FORTRAN. Data accessibility and data sharing soon became an important feature because of the large amount of information recquired by different departments within certain…
“The beauty that addresses itself to the eyes is only the spell of the moment; the eye of the body is not always that of the soul.” George Sand hit the nail right on the head when he said this in 1872. Appearance versus reality has been a central theme in many American creative works…
Erich Maria Remarque had his novel, Im Westen nichts Neues (In the West Nothing New) serialized in the magazine Vossiche Zeitung in 1928. The pacifist work alienated Remarque from Germany. Ultra-nationalists and Hitler’s propagandists incited the hate of the German people against him. He was burned in effigy in 1933 in the Obernplatz, and his…
Alfred Hitchcock is one of the most well known directors of all time, as he helped perfect the murder and mystery genre. His started his directing career in1925 with “The Pleasure Garden” and ended in 1976 with the film “Family Plot”, and set a standard for all other directors in the film industry. Many techniques…
Alexander Calder was born on July 22, 1898 in Lawnton, Pennsylvania. He had an artistic upbringing, as his father and grandfather were sculptures as well. Both of his parents went to Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine arts. Despite Calder’s artistic upbringing, he didn’t go immediately to art. He first studied mechanical engineering at Seven’s Institute…
Renaissance is Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528). We know his life better than the lives of other artists of his time. Dürer traveled, and found, he says, more appreciation abroad than at home. The Italian influence on his art was of a particularly Venetian strain, through the great Bellini, who, by the time Dürer met him, was…
It began in the early 1940’s and to this day still is in many of our lives, even more so then before. It’s the TV that I’m referring to. The TV started only as only musicals on it,. But eventually proceeded up to today’s oriented world, with movies, sports, and violence. Today more than 98%…
Life Summary Adam de la Halle is often referred to as the greatest of the long succession of post Medieval musicians. He was a poet, musician and innovator of the earliest French theater. He became famous for his use of polyphony and his theatrical productions. Adam originally trained for the clergy (the people of the…
Aaron Copland was the embodiment of what a composer can hope to become. Copland was very much in touch not only with himself and his feelings, but with the audience he intended to reach. Very few composers have a concrete idea of what “types” of people they wish their music to reach. Copland was one…
Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho has been commended for forming the archetypical basis of all horror films that followed its 1960 release. The mass appeal that Psycho has maintained for over three decades can undoubtedly be attributed to its universality. In Psycho, Hitchcock allows the audience to become a subjective character within the plot to enhance the…
Tennessee Williams’ play A Streetcar Named Desire contains more within its characters, situations, and story than appears on its surface. As in many of Williams’s plays, there is much use of symbolism and interesting characters in order to draw in and involve the audience. The plot of A Streetcar Named Desire alone does not captivate…
The play “Violet” takes place in the mid-1960’s and focuses on a young woman in search for a miracle, and who bears a horrendous scar on her face from an accident when she was a child. The musical opens with Violet boarding a Greyhound bus that is traveling to Tulsa, Oklahoma, where she hopes to…
Alice Paul was born on January 11, 1885, in Moorestown, New Jersey. Her father, who died when Alice was sixteen, was a businessman, banker, and property owner. The Pauls lived in the small Quaker community of Moorestown. One of the beliefs of the Quakers was equality of the sexes. As a young girl, Alice attended…
Alice Walker is an African-American novelist and poet; born in Eatonton, Ga. Her parents, Minnie Lou Grant and Willie Lee Walker, were both sharecroppers. She was raised in a shack minutes from Flannery O’Conner’s house, “Andalusia”. Blinded in one eye from an accidental gunshot wound at the young age of eight, Walker fell into somewhat…
Alfred Tennyson was born on August 6th, 1809, at Somersby, Lincolnshire, fourth of twelve children of George and Elizabeth Tennyson. Tennyson, said to be the best poet of the Victorian era and his poetry will be discussed in this essay. Tennyson had a lifelong fear of mental illness, because several men in his family had…
Alfred Nobel was born in Stockholm, Sweden on October 21, 1833. (Encarta) His father Immanuel Nobel was an engineer and inventor who built bridges and buildings in Stockholm. In connection with his construction work Immanuel Nobel also experimented with different techniques of blasting rock. Alfred’s mother, Andrietta Ahlsell came from a wealthy family. Due to…
Alfred Binet, born in Nice, France, on the eleventh of July, whose mother was an artist and whose father was a physician, became one of the most prominent psychologists in French history. Having received his formal education in both Nice and later, in Paris, at the renowned Lycee Louis -le-Grand, Binet went on to become…
Alexander Graham Bell was born in 1847. As a child He took after his grandfather who was an actor who entertained people with his voice. Alexander’s mother, who was deaf, would have people talk to her through her ear tube, which amplifies speech by talking through an object that looked like a horn. Alexander chose…
March 14 1879 – April 18 1955 Born: Ulm, Germany. Died: Princeton, USA. Albert Einstein was a very famous scientist; he was mostly famous for his theory of Relativity. In 1894 Einstein’s family moved to Milan and Einstein decided officially to relinquish his German citizenship in favor of Swiss. In 1895 Einstein failed an examination…