Cory Fulton Lidle (March 22, 1972 – October 11, 2006) was an American professional baseball player. A right-handed pitcher, Lidle played in Major League Baseball with the New York Mets, Tampa Bay Devil Rays, Oakland Athletics, Toronto Blue Jays, Cincinnati Reds, Philadelphia Phillies and the New York Yankees from 1997 to 2006. Lidle was killed when the small aircraft he owned crashed into a residential building in New York City.
Orenthal James Simpson (born July 9, 1947), commonly referred to as O. J. Simpson, is an American former football running back, actor, and broadcaster. He played in the National Football League (NFL) for 11 seasons, primarily with the Buffalo Bills, and is regarded as one of the greatest running backs of all time. Once a popular figure with the American public, Simpson's professional success was overshadowed by his trial and controversial acquittal for the murders of his former wife Nicole Brown and her friend Ron Goldman.
Simpson played college football for the USC Trojans, where he won the Heisman Trophy as a senior, and was selected first overall by the Bills in the 1969 NFL/AFL draft. During his nine seasons with the Bills, Simpson received five consecutive Pro Bowl and first-team All-Pro selections from 1972 to 1976. He also led the league in rushing yards four times, in rushing touchdowns twice, and in points scored in 1975. In 1973, he became the first NFL player to rush for more than 2,000 yards in a season, earning him NFL Most Valuable Player (MVP), and is the only NFL player to do so in a 14-game regular season. Simpson holds the record for the single-season yards-per-game average at 143.1. After retiring with the San Francisco 49ers in 1979, Simpson pursued an acting and broadcasting career. He was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 1983 and the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1985.
In June 1994, Simpson was arrested and charged with the murders of Brown and Goldman. He was acquitted in a lengthy and internationally publicized trial, but found liable for the deaths three years later in a civil suit from the victims' families. To date, Simpson has paid little of the $33.5 million judgment (equivalent to $61 million in 2022).
In 2007, Simpson was arrested in Las Vegas, Nevada, and charged with armed robbery and kidnapping. In 2008, he was convicted and sentenced to 33 years' imprisonment, with a minimum of nine years without parole. He served his sentence at the Lovelock Correctional Center near Lovelock, Nevada. He was granted parole on July 20, 2017, which was the minimum sentence. He was released on October 1, 2017. In December 2021, Simpson was granted early release from his parole by the Nevada Division of Parole and Probation.
Gisele Caroline Bündchen (Brazilian Portuguese: [ʒiˈzɛli ˈbĩtʃẽ], German: [ˈbʏntçn̩], born 20 July 1980) is a Brazilian fashion model. Since 2001, she has been one of the highest-paid models in the world. In 2007, Bündchen was the 16th-richest woman in the entertainment industry and earned the top spot on Forbes top-earning models list in 2012. In 2014, she was listed as the 89th-most-powerful woman in the world by Forbes.Vogue credited Bündchen with ending the heroin chic era of modeling in 1999. Bündchen was a Victoria's Secret Angel from 1999 until 2006. She is credited with pioneering and popularizing the horse walk, a stomping movement created by a model lifting her knees high and kicking her feet to step. In 2007, Claudia Schiffer called Bündchen the only remaining supermodel. Bündchen has appeared on more than 1,200 magazine covers.Bündchen was nominated for Choice Movie Female Breakout Star and for Choice Movie Villain at the 2005 Teen Choice Awards for her supporting role in Taxi (2004). She had a supporting role in The Devil Wears Prada (2006) and was the executive producer of an educational environmental cartoon, Gisele & the Green Team, in 2010 to 2011. In 2016, she appeared in the Emmy Award-winning documentary series Years of Living Dangerously, in the episode "Fueling the Fire". Bündchen's charitable endeavors include Save the Children, Red Cross and Doctors Without Borders. She has been a Goodwill Ambassador for the United Nations Environment Program since 2009.
Caitlyn Marie Jenner (born William Bruce Jenner; October 28, 1949; known as Bruce Jenner until 2015) is an American media personality and former Olympic gold medal-winning decathlete.
Jenner played college football for the Graceland Yellowjackets before incurring a knee injury that required surgery. Convinced by Olympic decathlete Jack Parker's coach, L. D. Weldon, to try the decathlon, Jenner had a six-year decathlon career, culminating in winning the men's decathlon event at the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal, setting a third successive world record and gaining fame as "an all-American hero". Jenner established a career in television, film, writing, auto racing, business, and as a Playgirl cover model.Jenner has six children with three successive wives – Chrystie Crownover, Linda Thompson, and Kris Jenner – and from 2007 to 2021 appeared on the reality television series Keeping Up with the Kardashians with Kris, their daughters Kendall and Kylie Jenner, as well as Kris's other children from her previous marriage, Kourtney, Kim, Khloé, and Rob Kardashian.
Jenner publicly came out as a trans woman in April 2015, announcing her new name in July of that year. From 2015 to 2016, she starred in the reality television series I Am Cait, which focused on her gender transition. At the time of her coming out, she had been called the most famous trans woman in the world. Jenner is a transgender rights activist, although her views on transgender issues have been criticized by many other LGBTQ+ activists.A member of the Republican Party, Jenner ran in the 2021 California gubernatorial recall election, finishing 13th with one percent of the vote. Six months after the election, Jenner was hired by Fox News as an on-air contributor.
Vincent Willem van Gogh (Dutch: [ˈvɪnsɛnt ˈʋɪləɱ‿vɑŋ‿ˈɣɔx] ; 30 March 1853 – 29 July 1890) was a Dutch Post-Impressionist painter who is among the most famous and influential figures in the history of Western art. In just over a decade he created approximately 2100 artworks, including around 860 oil paintings, most of them in the last two years of his life. They include landscapes, still lifes, portraits and self-portraits, and are characterised by bold, symbolic colours, and dramatic, impulsive and highly expressive brushwork that contributed to the foundations of modern art. Only one of his paintings was known by name to have been sold during his lifetime. Van Gogh became famous after his suicide at age 37, which followed years of poverty and mental illness.
Born into an upper-middle-class family, Van Gogh drew as a child and was serious, quiet and thoughtful, but showed signs of mental instability. As a young man, he worked as an art dealer, often travelling, but became depressed after he was transferred to London. He turned to religion and spent time as a missionary in southern Belgium. Later he drifted into ill-health and solitude. He was keenly aware of modernist trends in art and, while back with his parents, took up painting in 1881. His younger brother, Theo, supported him financially, and the two of them kept up a long correspondence by letter.
Van Gogh's early works consisted of mostly still lifes and depictions of peasant labourers. In 1886, he moved to Paris, where he met members of the artistic avant-garde, including Émile Bernard and Paul Gauguin, who were seeking new paths beyond Impressionism. Frustrated in Paris and inspired by a growing spirit of artistic change and collaboration, in February 1888, Van Gogh moved to Arles in southern France, to establish an artistic retreat and commune. Once there, Van Gogh's art changed. His paintings grew brighter and he turned his attention to the natural world, depicting local olive groves, wheat fields and sunflowers. Van Gogh invited Gauguin to join him in Arles and eagerly anticipated Gauguin's arrival in the fall of 1888.
Van Gogh suffered from psychotic episodes and delusions. Though he worried about his mental stability, he often neglected his physical health, did not eat properly and drank heavily. His friendship with Gauguin ended after a confrontation with a razor when, in a rage, he severed part of his left ear. He spent time in psychiatric hospitals, including a period at Saint-Rémy. After he discharged himself and moved to the Auberge Ravoux in Auvers-sur-Oise near Paris, he came under the care of the homeopathic doctor Paul Gachet. His depression persisted, and on 27 July 1890, Van Gogh is believed to have shot himself in the chest with a revolver, dying from his injuries two days later.
Van Gogh's art gained critical recognition after his death and his life story captured the public imagination as an emblem of misunderstood genius, due in large part to the efforts of his widowed sister-in-law Johanna van Gogh-Bonger. His bold use of color, expressive line and thick application of paint inspired avant garde artistic groups like the Fauves and German Expressionists in the early 20th century. Van Gogh's work gained widespread critical and commercial success in the following decades, and he has become a lasting icon of the romantic ideal of the tortured artist. Today, Van Gogh's works are among the world's most expensive paintings to have ever sold, and his legacy is honoured by a museum in his name, the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, which holds the world's largest collection of his paintings and drawings.
Jeffery Michael Gordon (born August 4, 1971) is an American stock car racing executive and former professional stock car racing driver, who currently serves as the vice chairman of Hendrick Motorsports. He raced full-time from 1993 to 2015, driving the No. 24 Chevrolet for Hendrick Motorsports in the former NASCAR Winston Cup Series and Sprint Cup Series (now called NASCAR Cup Series), and also served as a substitute driver for Dale Earnhardt Jr. in the No. 88 Chevrolet for Hendrick Motorsports in select races during the 2016 season. He is regarded as one of the best and most influential drivers in NASCAR history, helping the sport reach mainstream popularity.
Gordon started his professional racing career in the Busch Series with Hugh Connerty Racing, followed by Bill Davis Racing, winning three races, and began racing full-time in the NASCAR Winston Cup Series for Hendrick Motorsports in 1993. He is a four-time Cup Series champion, having won the title in 1995, 1997, 1998, and 2001. He also won the Daytona 500 three times in 1997, 1999, and 2005. Gordon has completed three career Grand Slams and has won a total of sixteen Crown Jewel races (three Daytona 500s, four Talladega 500s, three Coca-Cola 600s, and six Southern 500s), both of which are all-time records.
He is third on the all-time Cup wins list with 93 career wins, while having the record for the most wins in NASCAR's modern era (1972–present) and the most wins in one modern era season, with 13 during the 1998 NASCAR Winston Cup Series. Gordon's 81 pole positions led all active drivers and is third all-time, and also a modern era record; Gordon won at least one pole in 23 consecutive seasons, making this a NASCAR record. Other records include the most restrictor plate track wins with 12 and the most road course wins with 9, and he was the active "iron man" leader for consecutive races participated in with 797 through the 2015 season.In 1998, NASCAR named Gordon to its 50 Greatest Drivers list. Ten years later in a 2008 article, ESPN's Terry Blount ranked him 10th in the 25 Greatest Drivers of All-Time. Foxsports.com named him as the fifth best NASCAR driver of all time. He was inducted into the NASCAR Hall of Fame in 2019. As of 2016, Gordon was considered the highest-paid NASCAR driver ever and the 18th highest-paid athlete of all-time with $515 million in career earnings, per Forbes.Gordon, along with Rick Hendrick, co-owns the No. 48 Chevrolet previously driven by Jimmie Johnson, who won seven Cup championships from 2006 to 2010, 2013, and in 2016. Gordon also has an equity stake in the No. 24 team. Gordon also owned a Busch Series team between 1999 and 2000, Gordon/Evernham Motorsports (co-owned with Ray Evernham; later solely owned as JG Motorsports), winning twice.
Elizabeth I (7 September 1533 – 24 March 1603) was Queen of England and Ireland from 17 November 1558 until her death in 1603. She was the last monarch of the House of Tudor.
Elizabeth was the only surviving child of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn, his second wife, who was executed when Elizabeth was two years old. Anne's marriage to Henry was annulled, and Elizabeth was declared illegitimate. Henry restored her to the line of succession when she was 10, via the Third Succession Act 1543. After Henry's death in 1547, Elizabeth's younger half-brother Edward VI ruled until his own death in 1553, bequeathing the crown to a Protestant cousin, Lady Jane Grey, and ignoring the claims of his two half-sisters, the Catholic Mary and the younger Elizabeth, in spite of statutes to the contrary. Edward's will was set aside within weeks of his death and Mary became queen, deposing and executing Jane. During Mary's reign, Elizabeth was imprisoned for nearly a year on suspicion of supporting Protestant rebels.
Upon her half-sister's death in 1558, Elizabeth succeeded to the throne and set out to rule by good counsel. She depended heavily on a group of trusted advisers led by William Cecil, whom she created Baron Burghley. One of her first actions as queen was the establishment of an English Protestant church, of which she became the supreme governor. This Elizabethan Religious Settlement was to evolve into the Church of England. It was expected that Elizabeth would marry and produce an heir; however, despite numerous courtships, she never did, and because of this she is sometimes referred to as the "Virgin Queen". She was eventually succeeded by her first cousin twice removed, James VI of Scotland, the son of Mary, Queen of Scots.
In government, Elizabeth was more moderate than her father and siblings had been. One of her mottoes was video et taceo ("I see and keep silent"). In religion, she was relatively tolerant and avoided systematic persecution. After the pope declared her illegitimate in 1570, which in theory released English Catholics from allegiance to her, several conspiracies threatened her life, all of which were defeated with the help of her ministers' secret service, run by Francis Walsingham. Elizabeth was cautious in foreign affairs, manoeuvring between the major powers of France and Spain. She half-heartedly supported a number of ineffective, poorly resourced military campaigns in the Netherlands, France, and Ireland. By the mid-1580s, England could no longer avoid war with Spain.
As she grew older, Elizabeth became celebrated for her virginity. A cult of personality grew around her which was celebrated in the portraits, pageants, and literature of the day. Elizabeth's reign became known as the Elizabethan era. The period is famous for the flourishing of English drama, led by playwrights such as William Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe, the prowess of English maritime adventurers, such as Francis Drake and Walter Raleigh, and for the defeat of the Spanish Armada. Some historians depict Elizabeth as a short-tempered, sometimes indecisive ruler, who enjoyed more than her fair share of luck. Towards the end of her reign, a series of economic and military problems weakened her popularity. Elizabeth is acknowledged as a charismatic performer ("Gloriana") and a dogged survivor ("Good Queen Bess") in an era when government was ramshackle and limited, and when monarchs in neighbouring countries faced internal problems that jeopardised their thrones. After the short, disastrous reigns of her half-siblings, her 44 years on the throne provided welcome stability for the kingdom and helped to forge a sense of national identity.
Hugo Rafael Chávez Frías (Spanish pronunciation: [ˈuɣo rafaˈel ˈtʃaβes ˈfɾi.as] ; 28 July 1954 – 5 March 2013) was a Venezuelan politician and military officer who served as president of Venezuela from 1999 until his death in 2013, except for a brief period of forty-seven hours in 2002. Chávez was also leader of the Fifth Republic Movement political party from its foundation in 1997 until 2007, when it merged with several other parties to form the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV), which he led until 2012.
Born into a middle-class family in Sabaneta, Barinas, Chávez became a career military officer and, after becoming dissatisfied with the Venezuelan political system based on the Puntofijo Pact, he founded the clandestine Revolutionary Bolivarian Movement-200 (MBR-200) in the early 1980s. Chávez led the MBR-200 in its unsuccessful coup d'état against the Democratic Action government of President Carlos Andrés Pérez in 1992, for which he was imprisoned. Pardoned from prison two years later, he founded the Fifth Republic Movement political party, and then receiving 56.2% of the vote, was elected president of Venezuela in 1998. He was re-elected in 2000 with 59.8% of the vote and again in 2006 with 62.8% of the vote. After winning his fourth term as president in the October 2012 presidential election with 55.1% of the vote, he was to be sworn in on 10 January 2013. However, the inauguration was postponed due to his cancer treatment, and on 5 March at age 58, he died in Caracas.Following the adoption of a new constitution in 1999, Chávez focused on enacting social reforms as part of the Bolivarian Revolution. Using record-high oil revenues of the 2000s, his government nationalized key industries, created participatory democratic Communal Councils and implemented social programs known as the Bolivarian missions to expand access to food, housing, healthcare and education. The high oil profits coinciding with the start of Chavez's presidency resulted in temporary improvements in areas such as poverty, literacy, income equality and quality of life between primarily 2003 and 2007, though extensive changes in structural inequalities did not occur. On 2 June 2010, Chávez declared an "economic war" on Venezuela's upper classes due to shortages, arguably beginning the crisis in Venezuela. By the end of Chávez's presidency in the early 2010s, economic actions performed by his government during the preceding decade, such as deficit spending and price controls, proved to be unsustainable, with Venezuela's economy faltering. At the same time, poverty, inflation and shortages increased.
Under Chávez, Venezuela experienced democratic backsliding, as he suppressed the press, manipulated electoral laws, and arrested and exiled government critics. His use of enabling acts and his government's use of propaganda were controversial. Chávez's presidency saw significant increases in the country's murder rate and continued corruption within the police force and government.Across the political spectrum, Chávez is regarded as one of the most influential and controversial politicians in the modern history of Venezuela and Latin America. His 14-year presidency marked the start of the socialist "pink tide" sweeping Latin America—he supported Latin American and Caribbean cooperation and was instrumental in setting up the pan-regional Union of South American Nations, the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States, the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas, the Bank of the South and the regional television network TeleSUR. Internationally, Chávez aligned himself with the Marxist–Leninist governments of Fidel and then Raúl Castro in Cuba, as well as the socialist governments of Evo Morales in Bolivia, Rafael Correa in Ecuador and Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua. Chávez's ideas, programs, and style form the basis of "Chavismo", a political ideology closely associated with Bolivarianism and socialism of the 21st century. Chávez described his policies as anti-imperialist, being a prominent adversary of the United States's foreign policy as well as a vocal critic of neoliberalism and laissez-faire capitalism. He described himself as a Marxist.
Richard Stephen Sambora (born July 11, 1959) is an American musician, singer, songwriter and producer, best known as the lead guitarist of the rock band Bon Jovi from 1983 to 2013. He and lead singer Jon Bon Jovi formed the main songwriting unit for the band. He has also released three solo albums: Stranger in This Town in 1991, Undiscovered Soul in 1998, and Aftermath of the Lowdown released in September 2012.In 2018, Sambora was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of Bon Jovi, and reunited with his former bandmates for a performance at the induction ceremony. That year, he formed the duo RSO alongside Orianthi. After two EPs, the pair released their debut album Radio Free America in May.
David Ernest Duke (born July 1, 1950) is an American politician, white supremacist, antisemitic conspiracy theorist, and former grand wizard of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. From 1989 to 1992, he was a member of the Louisiana House of Representatives for the Republican Party. His politics and writings are largely devoted to promoting conspiracy theories about Jews, such as Holocaust denial and Jewish control of academia, the press, and the financial system. In 2013, the Anti-Defamation League called Duke "perhaps America's most well-known racist and anti-Semite".Duke unsuccessfully ran as a Democratic candidate for state legislature during the 1970s and 1980s, culminating in his campaign for the 1988 Democratic presidential nomination. After failing to gain any traction within the Democratic Party, he gained the presidential nomination of the minor Populist Party. In December 1988, he became a Republican and claimed to have become a born-again Christian, nominally renouncing antisemitism and racism. He soon won his only elected office, a seat in the Louisiana House of Representatives. He then ran unsuccessful but competitive campaigns for several more offices, including United States Senate in 1990 and governor of Louisiana in 1991. His campaigns were denounced by national and state Republican leaders, including President George H. W. Bush. He mounted a minor challenge to President Bush in 1992.
By the late 1990s, Duke had abandoned his pretense of rejecting racism and antisemitism, and began to openly promote racist and neo-Nazi viewpoints. He then began to devote himself to writing about his political views, both in newsletters and later on the Internet. In his writings, he denigrates African Americans and other ethnic minorities, and promotes conspiracy theories about a Jewish plot to control America and the world. He continued to run for public office through 2016, but after his reversion to open neo-Nazism, his candidacies were not competitive.
During the 1990s, Duke defrauded his political supporters by pretending to be in dire financial straits and soliciting money for basic necessities. At the time, he was in fact financially secure and used the money for recreational gambling. In December 2002, Duke pleaded guilty to felony fraud and subsequently served a 15-month sentence at Federal Correctional Institution, Big Spring in Texas.