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Álvaro Augusto Velasco Alzate (born March 3, 1971) is a retired male weightlifter from Colombia, who thrice won a medal for his native South American country at the Pan American Games: in 1991, 1995 and 1999. He twice competed at the Summer Olympics (1992 and 1996), finishing in 12th place in the men's middleweight division in Atlanta, Georgia (1996).
Abraham Lincoln was the 16th president of the United States, serving from 1861 until his assassination in 1865. He led the United States through the American Civil War, defending the nation as a constitutional union, defeating the Confederacy, playing a major role in the abolition of slavery, expanding the power of the federal government, and modernizing the U.S. economy.
William Jefferson Clinton is an American lawyer and politician who served as the 42nd president of the United States from 1993 to 2001. A member of the Democratic Party, he previously served as the attorney general of Arkansas from 1977 to 1979 and as the governor of Arkansas from 1979 to 1981, and again from 1983 to 1992. Clinton, whose policies reflected a centrist "Third Way" political philosophy, became known as a New Democrat.
The British Empire comprised the dominions, colonies, protectorates, mandates, and other territories ruled or administered by the United Kingdom and its predecessor states. It began with the overseas possessions and trading posts established by England in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. At its height in the 19th and early 20th centuries, it was the largest empire in history and, for a century, was the foremost global power. By 1913, the British Empire held sway over 412 million people, 23 percent of the world population at the time, and by 1920, it covered 35.5 million km2 (13.7 million sq mi), 24 per cent of the Earth's total land area. As a result, its constitutional, legal, linguistic, and cultural legacy is widespread. At the peak of its power, it was described as "the empire on which the sun never sets", as the sun was always shining on at least one of its territories.
George Washington was a Founding Father of the United States, military officer, and planter who served as the first president of the United States from 1789 to 1797. Appointed commander of the Continental Army in 1775, Washington led Patriot forces to victory in the American Revolutionary War. He then served as president of the Constitutional Convention in 1787, which drafted the current Constitution of the United States. Washington has thus become commonly known as the "Father of His Country".
Jack French Kemp was an American politician and professional football player. A member of the Republican Party from New York, he served as Housing Secretary in the administration of President George H. W. Bush from 1989 to 1993, having previously served nine terms in the United States House of Representatives from 1971 to 1989. He was the Republican Party's vice presidential nominee in the 1996 election, as the running mate of Bob Dole; they lost to incumbent president Bill Clinton and vice president Al Gore. Kemp had previously contended for the presidential nomination in the 1988 Republican primaries.
James Maitland Stewart, commonly referred to by the public as Jimmy Stewart, was an American actor and military aviator. Known for his distinctive drawl and everyman screen persona, Stewart's film career spanned 80 films from 1935 to 1991. With the strong morality he portrayed both on and off the screen, he epitomized the "American ideal" in the mid-twentieth century. In 1999, the American Film Institute (AFI) ranked him third on its list of the greatest American male actors. He received numerous honors including the AFI Life Achievement Award in 1980, the Kennedy Center Honor in 1983, as well as the Academy Honorary Award and Presidential Medal of Freedom, both in 1985.
The Lewis and Clark Expedition, also known as the Corps of Discovery Expedition, was the United States expedition to cross the newly acquired western portion of the country after the Louisiana Purchase. The Corps of Discovery was a select group of U.S. Army and civilian volunteers under the command of Captain Meriwether Lewis and his close friend Second Lieutenant William Clark. Clark, along with 30 others, set out from Camp Dubois, Illinois, on May 14, 1804, met Lewis and ten other members of the group in St. Charles, Missouri, then went up the Missouri River. The expedition crossed the Continental Divide of the Americas near the Lemhi Pass, eventually coming to the Columbia River, and the Pacific Ocean in 1805. The return voyage began on March 23, 1806, at Fort Clatsop, Oregon, ending six months later on September 23 of that year.
The Nation of Islam (NOI) is a religious organization founded in the United States by Wallace Fard Muhammad in 1930. A centralized and hierarchical organization, the NOI is committed to black nationalism and focuses its attention on the African diaspora, especially on African Americans. While describing itself as Islamic and using Islamic terminologies, its religious tenets differ substantially from orthodox Islamic traditions. Scholars of religion characterize it as a new religious movement.
New Age is a range of spiritual or religious practices and beliefs which rapidly grew in Western society during the early 1970s. Its highly eclectic and unsystematic structure makes a precise definition difficult. Although many scholars consider it a religious movement, its adherents typically see it as spiritual or as unifying Mind-Body-Spirit, and rarely use the term New Age themselves. Scholars often call it the New Age movement, although others contest this term and suggest it is better seen as a milieu or zeitgeist.
The Nintendo 64 (N64) is a home video game console developed and marketed by Nintendo. It was released in Japan on June 23, 1996, in North America on September 29, 1996, and in Europe and Australia on March 1, 1997. The successor to the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, it was the last major home console to use a ROM cartridge as its primary storage format. As a fifth-generation console, the Nintendo 64 primarily competed with Sony's PlayStation and the Sega Saturn.
The Sega Saturn is a home video game console developed by Sega and released on November 22, 1994, in Japan, May 11, 1995, in North America, and July 8, 1995, in Europe. Part of the fifth generation of video game consoles, it is the successor to the successful Genesis. The Saturn has a dual-CPU architecture and eight processors. Its games are in CD-ROM format, including several ports of arcade games and original games.
Presidential elections were held in the United States on November 5, 1996. Incumbent Democratic President Bill Clinton and his running mate, incumbent Democratic Vice President Al Gore were re-elected to a second and final term, defeating the Republican ticket of former Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole and former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Jack Kemp and the Reform ticket of businessman Ross Perot and economist Pat Choate.
Ella Jane Fitzgerald was an American singer, songwriter and composer, sometimes referred to as the "First Lady of Song", "Queen of Jazz", and "Lady Ella". She was noted for her purity of tone, impeccable diction, phrasing, timing, intonation, absolute pitch, and a "horn-like" improvisational ability, particularly in her scat singing.
Ian Lancaster Fleming was an English writer, best known for his postwar James Bond series of spy novels. Fleming came from a wealthy family connected to the merchant bank Robert Fleming & Co., and his father was the Member of Parliament (MP) for Henley from 1910 until his death on the Western Front in 1917. Educated at Eton, Sandhurst, and, briefly, the universities of Munich and Geneva, Fleming moved through several jobs before he started writing.
Selena Quintanilla-Pérez was an American singer. Referred to as the "Queen of Tejano Music", her contributions to music and fashion made her one of the most celebrated Mexican-American entertainers of the late 20th century. In 2020, Billboard magazine put her in third place on their list of "Greatest Latino Artists of All Time", based on both Latin albums and Latin songs chart. Media outlets called her the "Tejano Madonna" for her clothing choices. She also ranks among the most influential Latin artists of all time and is credited for catapulting the Tejano genre into the mainstream market.
The 1996 Summer Olympics were an international multi-sport event held from July 19 to August 4, 1996, in Atlanta, Georgia, United States. These were the fourth Summer Olympics to be hosted by the United States, making it the first country to have three different cities host the Summer Olympics. It also marked the 100th anniversary of the 1896 Summer Olympics in Athens, the inaugural edition of the modern Olympic Games. These were also the first Summer Olympics to be held in a different year than the Winter Olympics since the Winter Olympics commenced in 1924, as part of a new IOC practice implemented in 1994 to hold the Summer and Winter Games in alternating, even-numbered years. The 1996 Games were the first of the two consecutive Summer Olympics to be held in a predominantly English-speaking country, preceding the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney, Australia. These were also the last Summer Olympics to be held in North America until 2028, when Los Angeles will host the games for the third time.
Ansel Easton Adams was an American landscape photographer and environmentalist known for his black-and-white images of the American West. He helped found Group f/64, an association of photographers advocating "pure" photography which favored sharp focus and the use of the full tonal range of a photograph. He and Fred Archer developed a system of image-making called the Zone System, a method of achieving a desired final print through a technical understanding of how the tonal range of an image is the result of choices made in exposure, negative development, and printing.
Dame Angela Brigid Lansbury was a British-American actress. In a career spanning 80 years, she played various roles across film, stage, and television. Although based for much of her life in the United States, her work attracted international attention.
The year 1996 involved many significant films. The major releases this year included Scream, Independence Day, Fargo, Trainspotting, The Rock, The English Patient, Twister, Space Jam, Mission: Impossible,Mars Attacks!, Jerry Maguire and a film version of the musical Evita.
Theodore John Kaczynski, also known as the Unabomber, was an American mathematician and domestic terrorist. He was a mathematics prodigy, but abandoned his academic career in 1969 to pursue a reclusive primitive lifestyle.