Ayn Rand was a Russian-American writer and philosopher. She is known for her two best-selling novels, The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, and for developing a philosophical system she named Objectivism. Educated in Russia, she moved to the United States in 1926. She had a play produced on Broadway in 1935 and 1936. After two early novels that were initially unsuccessful, she achieved fame with her 1943 novel, The Fountainhead. In 1957, Rand published her best-known work, the novel Atlas Shrugged. Afterward, she turned to non-fiction to promote her philosophy, publishing her own periodicals and releasing several collections of essays until her death in 1982.
Baseball is a bat-and-ball game played between two opposing teams who take turns batting and fielding. The game proceeds when a player on the fielding team, called the pitcher, throws a ball which a player on the batting team tries to hit with a bat. The objectives of the offensive team are to hit the ball into the field of play, and to run the bases—having its runners advance counter-clockwise around four bases to score what are called "runs". The objective of the defensive team is to prevent batters from becoming runners, and to prevent runners' advance around the bases. A run is scored when a runner legally advances around the bases in order and touches home plate. The team that scores the most runs by the end of the game is the winner.
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to the west and Scotland to the north-northwest. The Irish Sea lies west of England and the Celtic Sea lies to the southwest. England is separated from continental Europe by the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south. The country covers five-eighths of the island of Great Britain, which lies in the North Atlantic, and includes over 100 smaller islands, such as the Isles of Scilly and the Isle of Wight.
Friends is an American television sitcom, created by David Crane and Marta Kauffman, which aired on NBC from September 22, 1994, to May 6, 2004, lasting ten seasons. With an ensemble cast starring Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, Matt LeBlanc, Matthew Perry and David Schwimmer, the show revolves around six friends in their 20s and 30s who live in Manhattan, New York City. The series was produced by Bright/Kauffman/Crane Productions, in association with Warner Bros. Television. The original executive producers were Kevin S. Bright, Kauffman, and Crane.
South Park is an American adult animated sitcom created by Trey Parker and Matt Stone and developed by Brian Graden for the Comedy Central television network. The show revolves around four boys—Stan Marsh, Kyle Broflovski, Eric Cartman, and Kenny McCormick—and their bizarre adventures in and around the titular Colorado town. Much like The Simpsons, South Park uses a very large ensemble cast of recurring characters. It became infamous for its profanity and dark, surreal humor that satirizes a wide range of topics towards a mature audience. Parker and Stone developed the show from The Spirit of Christmas, two consecutive animated shorts created in 1992 and 1995. The latter became one of the first Internet viral videos, ultimately leading to South Park's production. It debuted in August 1997 with great success, consistently earning the highest ratings of any basic cable program. Subsequent ratings have varied but it remains one of Comedy Central's highest rated shows, and is slated to air in new episodes through 2019.
Thomas Alan Waits is an American singer, songwriter, musician, composer, and actor. Waits' music is characterized by his distinctive deep, gravelly singing voice and lyrics focusing on the underside of U.S. society. During the 1970s, he worked primarily in jazz, but since the 1980s his music has reflected greater influence from blues, vaudeville, and experimental genres.
Walter Bruce Willis is an American actor, producer, and singer. Born to a German mother and American father in Idar-Oberstein, Germany, he moved to the United States with his family in 1957. His career began on the Off-Broadway stage in the 1970s. He later achieved fame with his leading role on the hit television series Moonlighting (1985–89). He has since appeared in over 70 films and is widely regarded as an "action hero", due to his portrayal of John McClane in the Die Hard franchise (1988–2013), and other such roles.
Edward Moore Kennedy, also called Teddy, was an American politician who served in the United States Senate from Massachusetts for almost 47 years, from 1962 until his death in 2009. A member of the Democratic Party, he was the second most senior member of the Senate when he died and is the third-longest-continuously-serving senator in United States history. For forty-one years, Ted Kennedy was the most prominent living member of the Kennedy family, as well as its patriarch. He was also the last surviving, longest-living, and youngest son of Joseph P. Kennedy Sr. and Rose Kennedy. He was the youngest brother of John F. Kennedy—the 35th President of the United States—and Senator Robert F. Kennedy, both victims of assassination, and the father of Congressman Patrick J. Kennedy.
Family Guy is an American animated sitcom created by Seth MacFarlane for the Fox Broadcasting Company. The series centers on the Griffins, a family consisting of parents Peter and Lois; their children, Meg, Chris, and Stewie; and their anthropomorphic pet dog, Brian. The show is set in the fictional city of Quahog, Rhode Island, and exhibits much of its humor in the form of metafictional cutaway gags that often lampoon American culture.
The Normandy landings were the landing operations on Tuesday, 6 June 1944 of the Allied invasion of Normandy in Operation Overlord during World War II. Codenamed Operation Neptune and often referred to as D-Day, it was the largest seaborne invasion in history. The operation began the liberation of German-occupied France from Nazi control, and laid the foundations of the Allied victory on the Western Front.
Windows 7 is a personal computer operating system that was produced by Microsoft as part of the Windows NT family of operating systems. It was released to manufacturing on July 22, 2009 and became generally available on October 22, 2009, less than three years after the release of its predecessor, Windows Vista. Windows 7's server counterpart, Windows Server 2008 R2, was released at the same time.
Christian Charles Philip Bale is an actor with dual British and American citizenship, who is known for his intense method acting style, often transforming his body drastically for his roles. Bale is the recipient of many awards, including an Academy Award and two Golden Globes, and was featured in the Time 100 list of 2011.
Patrick Wayne Swayze was an American actor, dancer, singer, and songwriter. Having gained fame with appearances in films during the 1980s, he became popular for playing tough guys and romantic lead males, gaining him a wide fan base with female audiences, and status as a teen idol and sex symbol. He was named by People magazine as its Sexiest Man Alive in 1991.
The Pirate Bay is an online index of digital content of entertainment media and software. Founded in 2003 by Swedish think tank Piratbyrån, The Pirate Bay allows visitors to search, download, and contribute magnet links and torrent files, which facilitate peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing among users of the BitTorrent protocol.
Michelle LaVaughn Robinson Obama is an American writer, lawyer, and university administrator who was First Lady of the United States from 2009 to 2017. She is married to the 44th U.S. President, Barack Obama, and was the first African-American First Lady.
Vanessa Anne Hudgens is an American actress and singer. After making her feature film debut in Thirteen (2003), Hudgens rose to prominence portraying Gabriella Montez in the High School Musical film series (2006–08), which brought her significant mainstream success. The success of the first film led to Hudgens' acquiring a recording contract with Hollywood Records, with whom she released two studio albums, V (2006) and Identified (2008).
Avatar is a 2009 American epic science fiction film directed, written, produced, and co-edited by James Cameron, and stars Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana, Stephen Lang, Michelle Rodriguez, and Sigourney Weaver. The film is set in the mid-22nd century, when humans are colonizing Pandora, a lush habitable moon of a gas giant in the Alpha Centauri star system, in order to mine the mineral unobtanium, a room-temperature superconductor. The expansion of the mining colony threatens the continued existence of a local tribe of Na'vi – a humanoid species indigenous to Pandora. The film's title refers to a genetically engineered Na'vi body operated from the brain of a remotely located human that is used to interact with the natives of Pandora.
Asa Maxwell Thornton Farr Butterfield is an English actor. He began his acting career at the age of 9 in the television drama After Thomas (2006) and the comedy film Son of Rambow (2007). He became known for playing the main character Bruno in the Holocaust film The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas (2008), for which he received nominations for the British Independent Film Award and the London Film Critics Circle Award for Young British Performer of the Year at the age of 11. He also played the young Mordred in the BBC TV series Merlin (2008–2009) and Norman in the fantasy film Nanny McPhee and the Big Bang (2010).
The 2008 Mumbai attacks were a group of terrorist attacks that took place in November 2008, when 10 members of Lashkar-e-Taiba, an Islamic terrorist organisation based in Pakistan, carried out a series of 12 coordinated shooting and bombing attacks lasting four days across Mumbai. The attacks, which drew widespread global condemnation, began on Wednesday 26 November and lasted until Saturday 29 November 2008. At least 174 people died, including 9 attackers, and more than 300 were wounded.
Susan Magdalane Boyle is a Scottish singer who came to international attention when she appeared as a contestant on the TV programme Britain's Got Talent on 11 April 2009, singing "I Dreamed a Dream" from Les Misérables.
