May 29th, 2008 at 9:48 am (e)
(born March 9, 1856, Washington, Pa., U.S.—died July 6, 1931, New York, N.Y.) U.S. inventor. He helped develop the incandescent lamp and in 1881 installed the first electric lights for Thomas Alva Edison in Italy, Belgium, and France. Attempting to produce artificial diamonds, he created instead the highly effective abrasive material Carborundum. He later found that the silicon vaporizes from Carborundum at 7,500 °F (4,150 °C), leaving graphitic carbon, and patented his graphite-making process in 1896.
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May 29th, 2008 at 9:48 am (d)
(born April 11, 1893, Middletown, Conn., U.S.—died Oct. 12, 1971, Sandy Spring, Md.) U.S. secretary of state (1949–53). After graduating from Yale University and Harvard Law School, he practiced law in Washington, D.C. In 1941 he joined the State Department, where he later served as undersecretary (1945–47). In 1947 he helped design the
Truman Doctrine and the
Marshall Plan. As secretary of state under
Harry S. Truman, he promoted the formation of
NATO and was a principal creator of U.S. foreign policy in the early years of the Cold War. During congressional hearings held by Sen.
Joseph McCarthy, Acheson refused to fire any alleged subversives in the State Department, including
Alger Hiss. He established the policies of nonrecognition of China and aid to the regime of
Chiang Kai-shek in Taiwan, and he supported U.S. aid to the French colonial regime in Indochina. After leaving office, he continued to advise successive presidents. His memoir
Present at the Creation won a 1970 Pulitzer Prize.
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May 29th, 2008 at 9:47 am (c)
in full Albert Chinualumogu Achebe
(born Nov. 16, 1930, Ogidi, Nigeria) prominent Igbo (Ibo) novelist acclaimed for his unsentimental depictions of the social and psychological disorientation accompanying the imposition of Western customs and values upon traditional African society. His particular concern was with emergent Africa at its moments of crisis; his novels range in subject matter from the first contact of an African village with the white man to the educated African’s attempt to create a firm moral order out of the changing values in a large city.
Educated in English at the University of Ibadan, Achebe taught for a short time before joining the staff of the Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation in Lagos, where he served as director of external broadcasting during 1961–66. In 1967 he cofounded a publishing company at Enugu with the poet Christopher Okigbo, who died shortly thereafter in the Nigerian civil war. In 1969 Achebe toured the United States with his fellow writers Gabriel Okara and Cyprian Ekwensi, lecturing at universities. Upon his return to Nigeria he was appointed research fellow at the University of Nigeria and became professor of English, a position he held from 1976 until 1981 (professor emeritus from 1985). He was director (from 1970) of two Nigerian publishers, Heinemann Educational Books Ltd. and Nwankwo-Ifejika Ltd. After an automobile accident in Nigeria in 1990 that left him partially paralyzed, he moved to the United States, where he taught at Bard College in New York.
Things Fall Apart (1958), Achebe’s first novel, concerns traditional Igbo life at the time of the advent of missionaries and colonial government in his homeland. His principal character cannot accept the new order, even though the old has already collapsed. In No Longer at Ease (1960) he portrayed a newly appointed civil servant, recently returned from university study in England, who is unable to sustain the moral values he believes to be correct in the face of the obligations and temptations of his new position.
In Arrow of God (1964), set in the 1920s in a village under British administration, the principal character, the chief priest of the village, whose son becomes a zealous Christian, turns his resentment at the position he is placed in by the white man against his own people. A Man of the People (1966) and Anthills of the Savannah (1987) deal with corruption and other aspects of postcolonial African life.
Achebe also published several collections of short stories and a children’s book, How the Leopard Got His Claws (1973; with John Iroaganachi). Beware, Soul-Brother (1971) and Christmas in Biafra (1973) are collections of poetry. Another Africa (1998) combines an essay and poems by Achebe with photographs by Robert Lyons. Achebe’s books of essays include Morning Yet on Creation Day (1975), Hopes and Impediments (1988), and Home and Exile (2000). In 2007 he won the Man Booker International Prize.
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May 29th, 2008 at 9:46 am (b)
orig. Bella Savitzky
Feminist, lawyer, congresswoman, and politician. Born Bella Savitzky on July 24, 1920, in New York, New York. Bold and outspoken, Bella Abzug was a leading liberal activist and politician in the 1960s and 1970s, especially known for her work for women’s rights. She knew from experience the challenges women faced professionally and politically. Abzug had apply to the Harvard Law School, but she was rejected because of her gender.
After graduating from Columbia University’s law school, Bella Abzug worked as a lawyer for a number of years. In the 1960s, she became involved the antinuclear and peace movements. Abzug helped organize the Women Strike for Peace in 1961. To promote women’s issues and to lobby for reform, she helped establish the National Women’s Political Caucus with leading feminists Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem.
To have a greater impact on the political process, Bella Abzug ran for Congress, winning a seat in the House of Representatives. After taking office in 1971, she fought for women’s rights and objected to the war in Vietnam. After winning re-election twice, Abzug left office in 1977. She made a bid for mayor of New York City, but lost to Ed Koch in the primaries. Abzug continued to work on many causes in the 1980s and 1990s and established the Women’s Environmental Development Organization.
Known for her big hats and an even bigger voice, Bella Abzug left her mark on U.S. politics as a women’s rights champion and determined antiwar activist. She died on March 31, 1996, in New York City, from complications following heart surgery. She was married to Martin Abzug from 1944 until his death; the couple had two daughters.
© 2007 A&E Television Networks. All rights reserved.
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May 29th, 2008 at 9:45 am (a)
(flourished c. 1020 , , Palestine) third and favourite son of David, king of Israel and Judah.
The picture of Absalom that is presented in 2 Samuel 13–19 suggests that he was the Alcibiades of the Old Testament, alike in his personal attractiveness, his lawless insolence, and his tragic fate. He is first mentioned as murdering his half brother Amnon, David’s eldest son, in revenge for the rape of his full sister Tamar. For this he was driven into banishment, but he was eventually restored to favour through the good offices of his cousin Joab. Later, when some uncertainty seems to have arisen as to the succession, Absalom organized a revolt. For a time he seemed completely successful; David, with a few followers and his personal guard, fled across the Jordan, leaving to Absalom Jerusalem and the main portion of the kingdom. The usurper pursued the fugitives with his forces but was completely defeated in “the forest of Ephraim” (apparently west of Jordan) and killed by Joab, who found him caught by the hair in an oak tree. To the affectionate, chivalrous heart of David, the loss of his son, worthless and treacherous as he was, brought grief that more than outweighed his own safety and restoration.
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May 29th, 2008 at 9:45 am (a)
in full Alexey Alexeevich Abrikosov
(born June 25, 1928, Moscow, U.S.S.R. [now Russia]) Russian physicist, who won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 2003 for his pioneering contribution to the theory of superconductivity. He shared the award with
Vitaly L. Ginzburg of Russia and
Anthony J. Leggett of Great Britain.
Abrikosov received doctorates in physics from the Institute for Physical Problems (now the P.L. Kapitsa Institute) in Moscow in 1951 and 1955. In the following decades he worked at scientific institutions and universities in the U.S.S.R. In 1991 he joined Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois and became a distinguished scientist in its materials science division.
Abrikosov’s prizewinning work focused on superconductivity, the disappearance of electrical resistance in various solids when they are cooled below a certain critical (and typically very low) temperature. The phenomenon was first identified in 1911, and in the following decades scientists explained why certain metals, termed type I superconductors, lose electrical resistance. However, there was a second group of metals, termed type II superconductors, that continued to superconduct even in the presence of very powerful magnetic fields, with superconductivity and magnetism existing within them at the same time. Building on the work done by Ginzburg and others, Abrikosov devised a theoretical explanation for type II superconductivity. This enabled other scientists to create and test new superconducting materials and build more powerful electromagnets. Among the practical results were magnets critical for the development of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanners used in medical diagnostics.
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May 29th, 2008 at 9:44 am (r)
Multi-billionaire businessman and entrepreneur, born in Saratov, S Russia. Born into impoverished circumstances and orphaned at age two, he was raised by an uncle and his family in Ukhta, N Russia. While still a student at the Moscow Auto Transport Institute (1987), he set up a small company producing plastic toys, and its success enabled him to found an oil business in the Omsk region. He rapidly made a name for himself within the industry and joined the board of the Sibneft company, eventually taking sole charge, and completing a merger which made it the fourth biggest oil company in the world. Sibneft was sold to the state-run Russian gas company, Gazprom, in 2005. In 1999 he was elected to the lower house of the Russian parliament representing the isolated Siberian area of Chukotka, to which he has donated large sums for improvement schemes. He was re-elected for a second term in 2005. Among his many homes is a country estate in Sussex, and he has become a familiar face in England since his acquisition of Chelsea Football Club in 2003.
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May 29th, 2008 at 9:41 am (k)
(born May 3, 1877, Bremen, Ger.—died Dec. 25, 1925, Berlin) German psychoanalyst. He helped establish the first branch of the International Psychoanalytic Institute in 1910 and pioneered the psychoanalytic treatment of manic-depressive psychosis (bipolar disorder). He suggested that the sexual drive develops in six stages and that if development is arrested at any of the earlier stages, mental disorders will likely result from fixation at that level. His most important work was A Short Study of the Development of the Libido (1924).
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May 29th, 2008 at 9:33 am (a, Un)
Hebrew Avraham , originally called Abram or, in Hebrew, Avram
(flourished early 2nd millennium ) first of the Hebrew patriarchs and a figure revered by the three great monotheistic religions: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. According to the biblical book of Genesis, Abraham left Ur, in Mesopotamia, because God called him to found a new nation in an undesignated land that he later learned was Canaan. He obeyed unquestioningly the commands of God, from whom he received repeated promises and a covenant that his “seed” would inherit the land.
The critical problem of a “biography” of Abraham
There can be no biography of Abraham in the ordinary sense. The most that can be done is to apply the interpretation of modern historical finds to biblical materials so as to arrive at a probable judgment as to the background and patterns of events in his life. This involves a reconstruction of the patriarchal age (of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph; early 2nd millennium ), which until the end of the 19th century was unknown and considered virtually unknowable. It was assumed, based on a presumed dating of hypothetical biblical sources, that the patriarchal narratives in the Bible were only a projection of the situation and concerns of a much later period (9th–5th century ) and of dubious historical value.
Several theses were advanced to explain the narratives—e.g., that the patriarchs were mythical beings or the personifications of tribes or folkloric or etiological (explanatory) figures created to account for various social, juridical, or cultic patterns. However, after World War I, archaeological research made enormous strides with the discovery of monuments and documents, many of which date back to the period assigned to the patriarchs in the traditional account. The excavation of a royal palace at Mari, an ancient city on the Euphrates, for example, brought to light thousands of cuneiform tablets (official archives and correspondence and religious and juridical texts) and thereby offered exegesis a new basis, which specialists utilized to show that, in the biblical book of Genesis, narratives fit perfectly with what, from other sources, is known today of the early 2nd millennium but imperfectly with a later period. A biblical scholar in the 1940s aptly termed this result “the rediscovery of the Old Testament.”
Thus, there are two main sources for reconstructing the figure of father Abraham: the book of Genesis, from the genealogy of Terah, Abraham’s father, and his departure from Ur to Harran in chapter 11 to the death of Abraham in chapter 25; and recent archaeological discoveries and interpretations concerning the area and era in which the biblical narrative takes place.
The biblical account
According to the biblical account, Abram (“The Father [or God] Is Exalted”), who is later named Abraham (“The Father of Many Nations”), a native of Ur in Mesopotamia, is called by God (Yahweh) to leave his own country and people and journey to an undesignated land, where he will become the founder of a new nation. He obeys the call unquestioningly and (at 75 years of age) proceeds with his barren wife, Sarai, later named Sarah (“Princess”), his nephew Lot, and other companions to the land of Canaan (between Syria and Egypt).
There the childless septuagenarian receives repeated promises and a covenant from God that his “seed” will inherit the land and become a numerous nation. He not only has a son, Ishmael, by his wife’s maidservant Hagar but has, at 100 years of age, by Sarah, a legitimate son, Isaac, who is to be the heir of the promise. Yet Abraham is ready to obey God’s command to sacrifice Isaac, a test of his faith, which he is not required to consummate in the end because God substitutes a ram. At Sarah’s death, he purchases the cave of Machpelah near Hebron, together with the adjoining ground, as a family burying place. It is the first clear ownership of a piece of the promised land by Abraham and his posterity. Toward the end of his life, he sees to it that his son Isaac marries a girl from his own people back in Mesopotamia rather than a Canaanite woman. Abraham dies at the age of 175 and is buried next to Sarah in the cave of Machpelah.
Abraham is pictured with various characteristics: a righteous man, with wholehearted commitment to God; a man of peace (in settling a boundary dispute with his nephew Lot), compassionate (he argues and bargains with God to spare the people of Sodom and Gomorrah), and hospitable (he welcomes three visiting angels); a quick-acting warrior (he rescues Lot and his family from a raiding party); and an unscrupulous liar to save his own skin (he passes off Sarah as his sister and lets her be picked by the Egyptian pharaoh for his harem). He appears as both a man of great spiritual depth and strength and a person with common human weaknesses and needs.
The Genesis narrative in the light of recent scholarship
The saga of Abraham unfolds between two landmarks, the exodus from “Ur of the Chaldeans” (Ur Kasdim) of the family, or clan, of Terah and “the purchase of” (or “the burials in”) the cave of Machpelah. Tradition seems particularly firm on this point. The Hebrew text, in fact, locates the departure specifically at Ur Kasdim, the Kasdim being none other than the Kaldu of the cuneiform texts at Mari. It is manifestly a migration of which one tribe is the centre. The leader of the movement is designated by name: Terah, who “takes them out” from Ur, Abram his son, Lot the son of Haran, another son of Terah, and their wives, the best known being Sarai, the wife of Abram. The existence of another son of Terah, Nahor, who appears later, is noted.
Most scholars agree that Ur Kasdim was the Sumerian city of Ur, today Tall al-Muqayyar (or Mughair), about 200 miles (300 km) southeast of Baghdad in lower Mesopotamia, which was excavated from 1922 to 1934. It is certain that the cradle of the ancestors was the seat of a vigorous polytheism whose memory had not been lost and whose uncontested master in Ur was Nanna (or Sin), the Sumero-Akkadian moon god. “They served other gods,” Joshua, Moses’ successor, recalled, speaking to their descendants at Shechem.
After the migration from Ur (c. 2000 ), the reasons for which are unknown, the first important stopping place was Harran, where the caravan remained for some time. The city has been definitely located in upper Mesopotamia, between the Tigris and the Euphrates rivers, in the Balikh valley and can be found on the site of the modern Harran in Turkey. It has been shown that Harran was a pilgrimage city, for it was a centre of the Sin cult and consequently closely related to the moon-god cult of Ur. The Mari tablets have shed new light on the patriarchal period, specifically in terms of the city of Harran.
There have been many surprising items in the thousands of tablets found in the palace at Mari. Not only are the apiru (“Hebrews”) mentioned but so also remarkably are the Banu Yamina (“Benjaminites”). It is not that the latter are identical with the family of Benjamin, a son of Jacob, but rather that a name with such a biblical ring appears in these extrabiblical sources in the 18th century . What seems beyond doubt is that these Benjaminites (or Yaminites, meaning “Sons of the Right,” or “Sons of the South,” according to their habits of orientation) are always indicated as being north of Mari and in Harran, in the Temple of Sin.
The Bible provides no information on the itinerary followed between Ur and Harran. Scholars think that the caravan went up the Euphrates, then up the Balikh. After indicating a stay of indeterminate length in Harran, the Bible says only that Terah died there, at the age of 205, and that Abraham was 75 when he took up the journey again with his family and his goods. This time the migration went from east to west, first as far as the Euphrates River, which they may have crossed at Carchemish, since it can be forded during low-water periods.
Here again, the Mari texts supply a reference, for they indicate that there were Benjaminites on the right bank of the river, in the lands of Yamhad (Aleppo), Qatanum (Qatna), and Amurru. Since the ancient trails seem to have been marked with sanctuaries, it is noteworthy that Nayrab, near Aleppo, was, like Harran and Ur, a centre of the Sin cult and that south of Aleppo, on the road to amh, there is still a village that bears the name of Benjamin. The route is in the direction of the “land of Canaan,” the goal of the journey.
If a stop in Damascus is assumed, the caravan must next have crossed the land of Bashan (the awrn of today), first crossing the Jabboq, then the Jordan River at the ford of Dmiy, and arriving in the heart of the Samaritan country, to reach at last the plain of Shechem, today Balah, at the foot of the Gerizim and Ebal mountains. Shechem was at the time a political and religious centre, the importance of which has been perceived more clearly as a result of recent archaeological excavations. From the mid-13th to the mid-11th century , Shechem was the site of the cult of the Canaanite god Ba’al-Berit (Lord of the Covenant). The architecture uncovered on the site by archaeologists would date to the 18th century , in which the presence of the patriarchs in Shechem is placed.
The next stopping place was in Bethel, identified with present-day Baytn, north of Jerusalem. Bethel was also a holy city, whose cult was centred on El, the Canaanite god par excellence. Its name does not lend itself to confusion, for it proclaims that the city is the bet, “house,” or temple, of El (God). The Canaanite sanctuary was taken over without hesitation by Abraham, who built an altar there and consecrated it to Yahweh, at least if the Yahwistic tradition in Genesis is to be believed.
Abraham had not yet come to the end of his journey. Between Shechem and Bethel he had gone about 31 miles. It was about as far again from Bethel to Hebron, or more precisely to the oaks of Mamre, “which are at Hebron” (according to the Genesis account). The location of Mamre has been the subject of some indecision. At the present time, there is general agreement in setting it 1.5 miles (3 km) northwest of Hebron at Rmat al-Khall, an Arabic name which means the “Heights of the Friend,” the friend (of God) being Abraham.
Mamre marked the site of Abraham’s encampment, but this did not at all exclude episodic travels in the direction of the Negeb, to Gerar and Beersheba. Life was a function of the economic conditions of the moment, of pastures to follow and to find, and thus the patriarchs moved back and forth between the land of Canaan and the Nile River delta. They remained shepherds and never became cultivators.
It was in Mamre that Abraham received the revelation that his race would be perpetuated, and it was there that he learned that his nephew Lot had been taken captive. The latter is an enigmatic episode, an “erratic block” in a story in which nothing prepared the way for it. Suddenly, the life of the patriarch was inserted into a slice of history in which several important persons (“kings”) intervene: Amraphel of Shinar, Arioch of Ellasar, Ched-or-laomer of Elam, and Tidal of Goiim. Scholars of previous generations tried to identify these names with important historical figures—e.g., Amraphel with Hammurabi of Babylon—but little remains today of these suppositions. The whole of chapter 14 of Genesis, in which this event is narrated, differs completely from what has preceded and what follows. It may be an extract from some historical annals, belonging to an unknown secular source, for the meeting of Melchizedek, king of Salem and priest of God Most High (El ‘Elyon), and Abraham is impressive. The king-priest greets him with bread and wine on his victorious return and blesses him in the name of God Most High.
In this scene, the figure of the patriarch takes on a singular aspect. How is his religious behaviour to be characterized? He swears by “the Lord God Most High”—i.e., by both Yahweh and El ‘Elyon. It is known that, on the matter of the revelation of Yahweh to man, the biblical traditions differ. According to what scholars call the Yahwistic source (J) in the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Bible), Yahweh had been known and worshiped since Adam’s time. According to the so-called Priestly source (P), the name of Yahweh was revealed only to Moses. It may be concluded that it was probably El whom the patriarchs, including Abraham, knew.
As noted before, in Mesopotamia the patriarchs worshiped “other gods.” On Canaanite soil, they met the Canaanite supreme god, El, and adopted him, but only partially and nominally, bestowing upon him qualities destined to distinguish him and to assure his preeminence over all other gods. He was thus to become El ‘Olam (God the Everlasting One), El ‘Elyon (God Most High), El Shaddai (God, the One of the Mountains), and El Ro’i (God of Vision). In short, the god of Abraham possessed duration, transcendence, power, and knowledge. This was not monotheism but monolatry (the worship of one among many gods), with the bases laid for a true universalism. He was a personal god too, with direct relations with the individual, but also a family god and certainly still a tribal god. Here truly was the “God of our fathers,” who in the course of time was to become the “God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.”
It is not surprising that this bond of the flesh should still manifest itself when it came to gathering together the great ancestors into the family burial chamber, the cave of Machpelah. This place is venerated today in Hebron, at the aram al-Khall (Holy Place of the Friend), under the mosque. Abraham, “the friend of God,” was forevermore the depositary of the promise, the beneficiary of the Covenant, sealed not by the death of Isaac but by the sacrifice of the ram that was offered up in place of the child on Mount Moriah.
André Parrot
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May 29th, 2008 at 9:31 am (a)
Actress. Born Abigail Kathleen Breslin on April 14, 1996 in New York City. The younger sister of actor Spencer Breslin, Abigail got her start in television commercials before M. Night Shyamalan cast her as Mel Gibson’s daughter in 2002′s Signs. Since then, she has had supporting roles in several films, including Raising Helen, The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement and Keane. Her hilarious and heartbreaking turn as Olive in 2006′s sleeper hit Little Miss Sunshine earned the young actress several accolades, including an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress.
© 2007 A&E Television Networks. All rights reserved.
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