Blaise Cendrars
Blaise Candrar was a French-speaking poet and essayist who created a powerful new poetic style to express a life of action and danger.
Topsy
Topsy was an Elephant deemed a threat to people by her owners and killed by electrocution on January 4, 1903. Inventor Thomas Edison captured the event on film. He would release it later that year under the title Electrocuting an Elephant.
Butoh dance
Butoh is a contemporary avant-garde dance form which originated in Japan and which was first performed there in 1959. It combines dance, theater, improvisation and influences of Japanese traditional performing arts with German Expressionist dance and performance art
Fernando Pessoa
Fernando Pessoa was a Portuguese writer. Pessoa is the Portuguese word for “person,” and there is nothing he less wanted to be. Again and again, in both poetry and prose, Pessoa denied that he existed as any kind of distinctive individual. “I’m beginning to know myself. I don’t exist,” he writes in one poem. “I’m the gap between what I’d like to be and what others have made of me. That’s me. Period.”
Maggs Bros.
Established in 1853, Maggs Bros. is one of the world's oldest and largest dealers in antiquarian, first edition, autograph, and rare books.
Charlie Nothing
Charlie Nothing, was an American musician, musical instrument maker and writer. He created the dingulator, guitar sculptures made out of recycled automotive steel.
Hans Werner Henze
Hans Werner Henze is a German composer of prodigious output best known for his consistent cultivation of music for the theatre throughout his life. His music is extremely varied in style, having been influenced by serialism, atonality, Stravinsky, Italian music, Arabic music, and jazz, as well as traditional schools of German composition.
William Klein
William Klein has always colored outside the lines. With forays into experimental photography, fashion photography at Vogue, and later, film, he had few preconceived notions about the art forms, and did not care to aspire to others’ norms - his methods were mostly improvised. Trained as a painter, Klein worked briefly in Fernand Léger’s Paris studio after serving in World War II, and never received professional photographic instruction.
Guoliang Tunnel
The Guoliang Tunnel is carved along the side of and through a mountain in China. The tunnel links the village of Guoliang to the outside through the Taihang Mountains. The village was named after a fugitive rebel during the Han Dynasty, who had fought an overwhelming imperial force to a standstill utilizing the extreme local terrain. Before the tunnel was constructed, access to the nearby village of Guoliang was restricted to a difficult path carved into the mountainside. The village is nestled in a valley surrounded by towering mountains cut off from outside civilization.
Helen Gibson
Helen Gibson was an American film actress, vaudeville performer, radio performer, film producer, trick rider and rodeo performer; and is considered to be the first American professional stunt woman.