Kazuo Ohno
Kazuo Ohno was a Japanese dancer who became a guru and inspirational figure in Butoh dance.
Memoirs of a Public Baby
Memoirs of a Public Baby is a book by Philip O'Connor. Seldom has a writer described his own chaotic boyhood and early manhood with so much self-flagellating mockery. Abandoned by his Irish mother, a "fallen gentlewoman," O'Connor grew up in a seedy hotel, in a brewery, in a cellar, in a French peasant woman's pastry shop. In London, he developed an intense dislike of English snobbery as he ran into "a wall of nervous, persnickety tabus" that stifled social interaction. His contempt for bourgeois values and conformity is reflected in wickedly mordant comments on himself, his friends and acquaintances. Like new suits of clothes, he dons and discards intellectual fashions - surrealism, communism, Nietzsche, D. H. Lawrence. He spends six months in a mental hospital, then has a sexually frustrating affair with a cultured, unbalanced woman who nearly axes him and is herself hospitalized. We leave him in 1945, "started . . . on a halting road to conformity."
The Sibiu Pharmacy Museum
The Sibiu Pharmacy Museum in Romania. It is housed in a 1569 Gothic townhouse where the oldest pharmacy in Romania operated for over 150 years.
Bodie
Bodie, California began as a mining camp of little note following the discovery of gold in 1859. It is now a ghost town.
Cullinan Diamond
The Cullinan Diamond is the largest gem-quality rough diamond ever found.
Dry Bridge
Dry Bridge is a bridge in Serbia. It is a unique bridge which does not have any water surface under it.
Servals
The serval is a medium-sized African wild cat.
Bob and Mike Bryan
Twin brothers Bob Bryan and Mike Bryan are American professional tennis players. Between 2005 and 2006, they set an Open Era record by competing in seven consecutive men's doubles Grand Slam finals, three of which they won.
Culatello
Culatello is a refined variety of prosciutto, made from heavier pigs, cut to a fraction of the normal prosciutto and aged, and may be cured with wine, with Culatello di Zibello having PDO status.
Sir William Hamilton
The life of Sir William Hamilton is rich in contradictions: hedonist, scholar and an aesthete with a Rabelaisian streak, he represented the epitome of honourable public service until, as the eighteenth century drew to its climax, his personal life and career were flung into freefall when he became involved in the most scandalous menage a trois of the century. The son of a favourite courtier, William Hamilton began life sharing a wet-nurse with the future George III, and spent much of his childhood in the discordant atmosphere of the Hanoverian household. After several years as a soldier, courtier and MP, he turned to the diplomatic world and, in 1764, was sent to Naples as Envoy Extraordinary to the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. There Hamilton could indulge the two passions: volcanoes and vases. His meticulous observations of Vesuvius earned him a Fellowship of the Royal Society. His unique collection of vases was eventually acquired by the British Museum. Later in life he also worked with Wedgwood and Boulton. Yet, for most people, William Hamilton is not remembered as a diplomat, art-collector, naturalist, musician and scholar but as the cuckolded husband of Emma Hamilton, mistress of the heroic Lord Nelson.