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Timothy Charles Buckley III (February 14, 1947 – June 29, 1975) was an American musician. He began his career based in folk rock, but subsequently experimented with genres such as psychedelia, jazz, the avant-garde, and funk as well as unconventional vocal stylings. His commercial peak came with the 1969 album Happy Sad, reaching No. 81 on the charts, while his experimental 1970 album Starsailor went on to become a cult favorite. The latter contained his best known song, "Song to the Siren." Buckley died at the age of 28 from a heroin and morphine overdose, leaving behind sons Taylor and Jeff.

Karl Dönitz (sometimes spelled Doenitz; German: [ˈdøːnɪts] ; 16 September 1891 – 24 December 1980) was a German admiral who briefly succeeded Adolf Hitler as head of state in May 1945, holding the position until the dissolution of the Flensburg Government following Germany's unconditional surrender to the Allies days later. As Supreme Commander of the Navy beginning in 1943, he played a major role in the naval history of World War II.
He began his career in the Imperial German Navy before World War I. In 1918, he was commanding UB-68, and was taken prisoner of war by British forces. As commander of UB-68, he attacked a convoy in the Mediterranean while on patrol near Malta. Sinking one ship before the rest of the convoy outran his U-boat, Dönitz began to formulate the concept of U-boats operating in attack groups Rudeltaktik (German for "pack tactic", commonly called a "wolfpack") for greater efficiency, rather than operating independently.By the start of the Second World War, Dönitz was supreme commander of the Kriegsmarine's U-boat arm (Befehlshaber der Unterseeboote (BdU)). In January 1943, Dönitz achieved the rank of Großadmiral (grand admiral) and replaced Grand Admiral Erich Raeder as Commander-in-Chief of the Navy. Dönitz was the main enemy of Allied naval forces in the Battle of the Atlantic. From 1939 to 1943 the U-boats fought effectively but lost the initiative from May 1943. Dönitz ordered his submarines into battle until 1945 to relieve the pressure on other branches of the Wehrmacht (armed forces). 648 U-boats were lost—429 with no survivors. Furthermore, of these, 215 were lost on their first patrol. Around 30,000 of the 40,000 men who served in U-boats perished.On 30 April 1945, after the suicide of Adolf Hitler and in accordance with his last will and testament, Dönitz was named Hitler's successor as head of state in what became known as the Goebbels cabinet after his second-in-command, Joseph Goebbels, until Goebbels' suicide led to Dönitz's cabinet being reformed into the Flensburg Government instead. On 7 May 1945, he ordered Alfred Jodl, Chief of Operations Staff of the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (OKW), to sign the German instruments of surrender in Reims, France, formally ending the War in Europe. Dönitz remained as head of state with the titles of President of Germany and Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces until his cabinet was dissolved by the Allied powers on 23 May de facto and on 5 June de jure.
By his own admission, Dönitz was a dedicated Nazi and supporter of Hitler. Following the war, he was indicted as a major war criminal at the Nuremberg trials on three counts: conspiracy to commit crimes against peace, war crimes, and crimes against humanity; planning, initiating, and waging wars of aggression; and crimes against the laws of war. He was found not guilty of committing crimes against humanity, but guilty of committing crimes against peace and war crimes against the laws of war. He was sentenced to ten years' imprisonment; after his release, he lived in a village near Hamburg until his death in 1980.

Daniel David Rostenkowski (January 2, 1928 – August 11, 2010) was a United States Representative from Chicago, serving for 36 years, from 1959 to 1995. He became one of the most powerful legislators in Congress, especially in matters of taxation. He was imprisoned in 1996. A Democrat and son of a Chicago alderman, Rostenkowski was for many years Democratic Committeeman of Chicago's 32nd Ward, retaining this position while also serving in Congress.In national politics, he rose by virtue of seniority to the rank of Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee in 1981. As Chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, he played a critical role in formulating tax policy during the Republican administration of Ronald Reagan, including the Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981, which cut the top federal bracket to 50%, and the Tax Reform Act of 1986, which further lowered it to 28% and reduced the number of brackets to only two. He was also involved in trade policy, as well as reforms of the welfare system, health care, and Social Security programs.Rostenkowski closed legislative deals between the toughest power brokers in the U.S., from union chiefs to corporate titans to president Reagan and to everyone in between. The book Chicago and the American Century credits Rostenkowski with securing billions of dollars in federal money for projects in Chicago and Illinois. The book named him the sixth most significant politician to come from Chicago in the entire twentieth century.Rostenkowski's political career, however, ended abruptly in 1994 when he was indicted on corruption charges relating to his role in the Congressional Post Office Scandal, and then narrowly defeated for reelection by Republican Michael Patrick Flanagan. He subsequently pleaded guilty to charges of mail fraud in 1996 and was fined and sentenced to 17 months in prison. In December 2000, President Bill Clinton pardoned Rostenkowski.

Raúl Ricardo Alfonsín (Spanish pronunciation: [raˈul alfonˈsin] ; 12 March 1927 – 31 March 2009) was an Argentine lawyer and statesman who served as President of Argentina from 10 December 1983 to 8 July 1989. He was the first democratically elected president after the 7-years National Reorganization Process. Ideologically, he identified as a radical and a social democrat, serving as the leader of the Radical Civic Union from 1983 to 1991, 1993 to 1995, 1999 to 2001, with his political approach being known as "Alfonsinism".
Born in Chascomús, Buenos Aires Province, Alfonsín began his studies of law at the National University of La Plata and was a graduate of the University of Buenos Aires. He was affiliated with the Radical Civic Union (UCR), joining the faction of Ricardo Balbín after the party split. He was elected a deputy in the legislature of the Buenos Aires province in 1958, during the presidency of Arturo Frondizi, and a national deputy during the presidency of Arturo Umberto Illia. He opposed both sides of the Dirty War, and several times filed a writ of Habeas corpus, requesting the freedom of victims of forced disappearances, during the National Reorganization Process. He denounced the crimes of the military dictatorships of other countries and opposed the actions of both sides in the Falklands War as well. He became the leader of the UCR after Balbín's death and was the Radical candidate for the presidency in the 1983 elections, which he won.
After becoming president, Alfonsín sent a bill to Congress to revoke the self-amnesty law established by the military. He established the National Commission on the Disappearance of Persons to investigate the crimes committed by the military, which led to the Trial of the Juntas and resulted in the sentencing of the heads of the former regime. Discontent within the military led to the mutinies of the Carapintadas, leading him to appease them with the full stop law and the law of Due Obedience. He also had conflicts with the unions, which were controlled by the opposing Justicialist Party. He resolved the Beagle conflict, increased trade with Brazil, and proposed the creation of the Contadora support group to mediate between the United States and Nicaragua. He passed the first divorce law of Argentina. He initiated the Austral plan to improve the national economy, but that plan, as well as the Spring plan, failed. The resulting hyperinflation and riots led to his party's defeat in the 1989 presidential elections, which was won by Peronist Carlos Menem.
Alfonsín continued as the leader of the UCR and opposed the presidency of Carlos Menem. He initiated the Pact of Olivos with Menem to negotiate the terms for the 1994 amendment of the Argentine Constitution. Fernando de la Rúa led a faction of the UCR that opposed the pact, and eventually became president in 1999. Following de la Rúa's resignation during the December 2001 riots, Alfonsín's faction provided the support needed for the Peronist Eduardo Duhalde to be appointed president by the Congress. He died of lung cancer on 31 March 2009, at the age of 82, and was given a large state funeral.

Maurits Cornelis Escher (Dutch pronunciation: [ˈmʌurɪt͡s kɔrˈneːlɪs ˈɛʃər]; 17 June 1898 – 27 March 1972) was a Dutch graphic artist who made woodcuts, lithographs, and mezzotints, many of which were inspired by mathematics.
Despite wide popular interest, for most of his life Escher was neglected in the art world, even in his native Netherlands. He was 70 before a retrospective exhibition was held. In the late twentieth century, he became more widely appreciated, and in the twenty-first century he has been celebrated in exhibitions around the world.
His work features mathematical objects and operations including impossible objects, explorations of infinity, reflection, symmetry, perspective, truncated and stellated polyhedra, hyperbolic geometry, and tessellations. Although Escher believed he had no mathematical ability, he interacted with the mathematicians George Pólya, Roger Penrose, and Donald Coxeter, and the crystallographer Friedrich Haag, and conducted his own research into tessellation.
Early in his career, he drew inspiration from nature, making studies of insects, landscapes, and plants such as lichens, all of which he used as details in his artworks. He traveled in Italy and Spain, sketching buildings, townscapes, architecture and the tilings of the Alhambra and the Mezquita of Cordoba, and became steadily more interested in their mathematical structure.
Escher's art became well known among scientists and mathematicians, and in popular culture, especially after it was featured by Martin Gardner in his April 1966 Mathematical Games column in Scientific American. Apart from being used in a variety of technical papers, his work has appeared on the covers of many books and albums. He was one of the major inspirations for Douglas Hofstadter's Pulitzer Prize-winning 1979 book Gödel, Escher, Bach.

Juan Domingo Perón (UK: , US: , Spanish: [ˈxwan doˈmiŋɡo peˈɾon] ; 8 October 1895 – 1 July 1974) was an Argentine Army lieutenant general and politician who served as the 35th President of Argentina from 1946 to his overthrow in 1955, and again as the 45th President from October 1973 to his death in July 1974. He had previously served in several government positions, including Minister of Labour and Vice President under presidents Pedro Pablo Ramírez and Edelmiro Farrell.
During his first presidential term (1946–1952), Perón was supported by his second wife, Eva Duarte ("Evita"); they were immensely popular among the Argentine working class. Perón's government invested heavily in public works, expanded social welfare, and forced employers to improve working conditions. Trade unions grew rapidly with his support and women's suffrage was granted with Eva's influence. His government was also known to employ dictatorial tactics; several dissidents were fired, exiled, or arrested, and much of the press was closely controlled. Several high-profile fascist war criminals, such as Josef Mengele, Adolf Eichmann, and Ante Pavelić, were given refuge in Argentina during this time.
Perón was re-elected by a fairly wide margin, though his second term (1952–1955) was far more troubled. Eva, a major source of support, died a month after his inauguration in 1952. An economic crisis was ongoing, Perón was accused of having a relationship with a teenage girl, Nelly Rivas, and his plans to legalise divorce and prostitution damaged his standing with the Catholic Church. After he deported two Catholic priests and was mistakenly thought to be excommunicated, pro-Church elements of the Argentine Navy and Air Force bombed Plaza de Mayo in Buenos Aires, where supporters of Perón had gathered, in June 1955. More than 300 civilians were killed in this coup attempt, which in turn prompted violent reprisals against many churches by Perón's supporters. Within months, a successful coup deposed him.
During the following period of two military dictatorships, interrupted by two civilian governments, the Peronist party was outlawed and Perón was exiled. Over the years he lived in Paraguay, Venezuela, Panama, and Spain. When the Peronist Héctor José Cámpora was elected President in 1973, Perón returned to Argentina amidst the Ezeiza massacre and was soon after elected President for a third time (12 October 1973 – 1 July 1974). During this term, left- and right-wing Peronists were permanently divided and violence between them erupted, with Perón increasingly siding with the right. His minister José López Rega formed the Argentine Anticommunist Alliance, believed to have committed at least hundreds of extrajudicial killings and kidnappings. Perón's third wife, María Estela Martínez, known as Isabel Perón, was elected as Vice President on his ticket and succeeded him as President upon his death in 1974. Political violence only intensified, and she was ousted in 1976, followed by a period of even deadlier repression under the junta of Jorge Rafael Videla.
Although they are still controversial figures, Juan and Eva Perón are nonetheless considered icons by the Peronists. The Peróns' followers praised their efforts to eliminate poverty and to dignify labour, while their detractors considered them demagogues and dictators. The Peróns gave their name to the political movement known as Peronism, which in present-day Argentina is represented mainly by the Justicialist Party.

Charles-Valentin Alkan (French: [ʃaʁl valɑ̃tɛ̃ alkɑ̃]; 30 November 1813 – 29 March 1888) was a French composer and virtuoso pianist. At the height of his fame in the 1830s and 1840s he was, alongside his friends and colleagues Frédéric Chopin and Franz Liszt, among the leading pianists in Paris, a city in which he spent virtually his entire life.
Alkan earned many awards at the Conservatoire de Paris, which he entered before he was six. His career in the salons and concert halls of Paris was marked by his occasional long withdrawals from public performance, for personal reasons. Although he had a wide circle of friends and acquaintances in the Parisian artistic world, including Eugène Delacroix and George Sand, from 1848 he began to adopt a reclusive life style, while continuing with his compositions – virtually all of which are for the keyboard. During this period he published, among other works, his collections of large-scale studies in all the major keys (Op. 35) and all the minor keys (Op. 39). The latter includes his Symphony for Solo Piano (Op. 39, nos. 4–7) and Concerto for Solo Piano (Op. 39, nos. 8–10), which are often considered among his masterpieces and are of great musical and technical complexity. Alkan emerged from self-imposed retirement in the 1870s to give a series of recitals that were attended by a new generation of French musicians.
Alkan's attachment to his Jewish origins is displayed both in his life and his work. He was the first composer to incorporate Jewish melodies in art music. Fluent in Hebrew and Greek, he devoted much time to a complete new translation of the Bible into French. This work, like many of his musical compositions, is now lost. Alkan never married, but his presumed son Élie-Miriam Delaborde was, like Alkan, a virtuoso performer on both the piano and the pedal piano, and edited a number of the elder composer's works.
Following his death (which according to persistent but unfounded legend was caused by a falling bookcase), Alkan's music became neglected, supported by only a few musicians including Ferruccio Busoni, Egon Petri and Kaikhosru Sorabji. From the late 1960s onwards, led by Raymond Lewenthal and Ronald Smith, many pianists have recorded his music and brought it back into the repertoire.

Wendell Hampton Ford (September 8, 1924 – January 22, 2015) was an American politician from Kentucky. He served for twenty-four years in the U.S. Senate and was the 53rd Governor of Kentucky. He was the first person to be successively elected lieutenant governor, governor, and United States senator in Kentucky history. He was the Senate Democratic whip from 1991 to 1999, and was considered the leader of the state's Democratic Party from his election as governor in 1971 until he retired from the Senate in 1999. At the time of his retirement he was the longest-serving senator in Kentucky's history, a mark which was then surpassed by Mitch McConnell in 2009. He is the most recent Democrat to have served as a Senator from the state of Kentucky.
Born in Daviess County, Kentucky, Ford attended the University of Kentucky, but his studies were interrupted by his service in World War II. After the war, he graduated from the Maryland School of Insurance and returned to Kentucky to help his father with the family insurance business. He also continued his military service in the Kentucky Army National Guard. He worked on the gubernatorial campaign of Bert T. Combs in 1959 and became Combs' executive assistant when Combs was elected governor. Encouraged to run for the Kentucky Senate by Combs' ally and successor, Ned Breathitt, Ford won the seat and served one four-year term before running for lieutenant governor in 1967. He was elected on a split ticket with Republican Louie B. Nunn. Four years later, Ford defeated Combs in an upset in the Democratic primary en route to the governorship.
As governor, Ford made the government more efficient by reorganizing and consolidating some departments in the executive branch. He raised revenue for the state through a severance tax on coal and enacted reforms to the educational system. He purged most of the Republicans from statewide office, including helping Walter Dee Huddleston win the Senate seat vacated by the retirement of Republican stalwart John Sherman Cooper. In 1974, Ford himself ousted the other incumbent senator, Republican Marlow Cook. Following the rapid rise of Ford and many of his political allies, he and his lieutenant governor, Julian Carroll, were investigated on charges of political corruption, but a grand jury refused to indict them. As a senator, Ford was a staunch defender of Kentucky's tobacco industry. He also formed the Senate National Guard Caucus with Missouri senator Kit Bond. Chosen as Democratic party whip in 1991, Ford considered running for floor leader in 1994 before throwing his support to Connecticut's Christopher Dodd. He retired from the Senate in 1999 and returned to Owensboro, where he taught politics to youth at the Owensboro Museum of Science and History.

Thomas Richard Harkin (born November 19, 1939) is an American lawyer, author, and politician who served as a United States senator from Iowa from 1985 to 2015. A member of the Democratic Party, he previously was the U.S. representative for Iowa's 5th congressional district from 1975 to 1985. He is the longest-serving senator to spend the entire tenure as a state's junior senator.
Born in Cumming, Iowa, Harkin graduated from Iowa State University and The Catholic University of America's Columbus School of Law. He served in the United States Navy as an active-duty jet pilot (1962–1967). After serving as a congressional aide for several years, he made two runs for the U.S. House of Representatives, losing in 1972 but winning in 1974. He went on to serve five terms in the House.
Harkin won a race for U.S. Senate in 1984 by a wide margin. He was an early frontrunner for his party's presidential nomination in 1992, but he dropped out in support of eventual winner Bill Clinton. He served five Senate terms and at the end of his time in the Senate served as chair of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions. He authored the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 and was its chief sponsor in the Senate. Harkin delivered part of his introduction speech in sign language, saying it was so his deaf brother could understand.On January 26, 2013, Harkin announced that he would not seek reelection in 2014.

Russell Earl Banks (March 28, 1940 – January 8, 2023) was an American writer of fiction and poetry. His novels are known for "detailed accounts of domestic strife and the daily struggles of ordinary often-marginalized characters". His stories usually revolve around his own childhood experiences, and often reflect "moral themes and personal relationships".Banks was a member of the International Parliament of Writers and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.