Archive for the 'f' Category
Felix Candela Biography (1910 - 1997)
wtorek, lipiec 1st, 2008(born Jan. 27, 1910, Madrid, Spain—died Dec. 7, 1997, Durham, N.C., U.S.) Spanish Mexican engineer and architect. He immigrated to Mexico in 1939 and began to design and construct buildings there. His ferroconcrete structures are distinguished by thin, curved shells that are extremely strong and economical; his imaginative use of paraboloid barrel-vaulting helped dispel mistaken notions of the limits of this material. Notable works include the expressionistic church of Nuestra Señora de los Milagros in Mexico City (1955), with a hyperbolic paraboloid roof of ferroconcrete only 1.5 in. (3.8 cm) thick.
Felix Candela Biography (1910 - 1997)
poniedziałek, czerwiec 30th, 2008(born Jan. 27, 1910, Madrid, Spain—died Dec. 7, 1997, Durham, N.C., U.S.) Spanish Mexican engineer and architect. He immigrated to Mexico in 1939 and began to design and construct buildings there. His ferroconcrete structures are distinguished by thin, curved shells that are extremely strong and economical; his imaginative use of paraboloid barrel-vaulting helped dispel mistaken notions of the limits of this material. Notable works include the expressionistic church of Nuestra Señora de los Milagros in Mexico City (1955), with a hyperbolic paraboloid roof of ferroconcrete only 1.5 in. (3.8 cm) thick.
Frank Lucas Biography (1930- )
niedziela, czerwiec 22nd, 2008Frank Lucas was born September 9, 1930, in Lenoir County, North Carolina. He moved to Harlem in 1946, becoming the driver and protégé of gangster Ellsworth “Bumpy” Johnson.
When Johnson died in 1968, Lucas took over his heroin empire and expanded it during the drug-fueled period of the late 1960s and early 1970s.
Lucas was particularly known for the “Cadaver Connection.” Lucas smuggled huge amounts of undiluted heroin from Thailand into the U.S. in the coffins of fallen American servicemen.
By establishing his own drug connection in the jungles of Vietnam, he cut out the middleman and undercut the competition. Lucas claimed to have grossed $1 million a day, selling his “Blue Magic.”
Lucas also relied on a tightly controlled crew called “The Country Boys.” He preferred using relatives and men from his hometown in North Carolina because they were less likely to steal from him.
Lucas was depicted as an entrepreneur who broke through the racial barriers of traditional organized crime in the biopic American Gangster, released in theaters on November 2, 2007.
Lucas was arrested in 1975 and was soon facing up to 70 years in prison. He quickly turned into a government informant, most notably against the then-corrupt Special Investigations Unit of the NYPD. Out of 70 SIU officers, 52 were eventually either jailed or indicted.
“The only people I every ever informed on were them … cops who took my money,” Lucas insists. But prosecutors involved in the case, including Richard “Richie” Roberts, contradicts that.
Lucas’ sentence was reduced to five years. But when he got out, he was quickly arrested again for drug dealing, albeit on a much smaller scale. Lucas spent seven more years in prison, and when he got out in 1991, Roberts came to his financial aid.
Russell Crowe plays Roberts in the film, though the character is a composite of the many detectives and prosecutors who arrested and tried Lucas. Today, they are good friends. Roberts is Lucas’s defense attorney and the godfather to his 11-year-old son, whose education Roberts has paid for.
Lucas, who uses a wheelchair because of complications from a leg he broke in two places some time ago, lives with his wife and son in Newark, N.J. He supports a charity founded by his daughter, Yellow Brick Roads, that raises money for the children of incarcerated parents.
Lucas says he’s repentant.
“I did some terrible things,” he said recently. “I’m awfully sorry that I did them. I really am.”
Felipe Calderón Biography (1962 - )
niedziela, czerwiec 15th, 2008in full Felipe de Jesús Calderón Hinojosa
born Aug. 18, 1962, Morelia, Michoacán, Mex.) politician who became president of Mexico in 2006.
Calderón studied law at the Free School of Law in Mexico City and later did postgraduate study in economics at the Autonomous Technological Institute of Mexico. In 2000 he earned a master’s degree in public administration at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.
Calderón became involved in politics at an early age. His father helped found the centre-right National Action Party (PAN) in 1939, and, as an elementary student, the younger Calderón campaigned actively for the party. He later headed the PAN’s youth organization, and from 1991 to 1994 he represented the party in the federal Chamber of Deputies. Calderón became the PAN’s secretary-general in 1993 when his political mentor, Carlos Castillo Peraza, assumed the party presidency. In 1996 he succeeded Castillo Peraza as the PAN president, a position he held until 1999.
In 2000 the PAN’s candidate Vicente Fox won the presidential elections, ending 71 years of uninterrupted rule by the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). His historic victory brought the PAN to national power for the first time. Calderón was leader (2000–03) of the party’s Chamber of Deputies delegation before serving as minister of energy (2003–04). Fox forced him to resign his cabinet position in May 2004 on the grounds that he was campaigning prematurely for the PAN’s presidential nomination. In late 2005 Calderón decisively defeated Santiago Creel in internal party primaries to win the PAN candidacy.
During the presidential campaign in 2006, Calderón initially trailed centre-left candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador. He closed the gap, however, by promising to be the “jobs president” and by conducting an aggressive media campaign that portrayed his populist opponent as a “danger for Mexico.” Calderón won the election by just 0.56 percent of the vote. López Obrador challenged the results, claiming voting irregularities and fraud, and a number of protests ensued. Following a partial recount, however, Calderón was officially declared the winner, and he took office on December 1.
Fanny Burney Biography (1752 - 1840)
sobota, czerwiec 14th, 2008orig. Frances Burney
(born June 13, 1752, King’s Lynn, Norfolk, Eng.—died Jan. 6, 1840, London) English novelist. The self-educated daughter of Charles Burney, she wrote lively accounts of his social musical evenings. Her habit of recording observations of society led to Evelina (1778), an epistolary novel about an unsure young girl’s social development; a landmark in the evolution of the novel of manners, it pointed the way to Jane Austen’s novels. Her later novels include Cecilia (1782) and the potboiler Camilla (1796).
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