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Noel_Coward

Sir Noël Peirce Coward (16 December 1899 – 26 March 1973) was an English playwright, composer, director, actor, and singer, known for his wit, flamboyance, and what Time magazine called "a sense of personal style, a combination of cheek and chic, pose and poise".Coward attended a dance academy in London as a child, making his professional stage début at the age of eleven. As a teenager he was introduced into the high society in which most of his plays would be set. Coward achieved enduring success as a playwright, publishing more than 50 plays from his teens onwards. Many of his works, such as Hay Fever, Private Lives, Design for Living, Present Laughter, and Blithe Spirit, have remained in the regular theatre repertoire. He composed hundreds of songs, in addition to well over a dozen musical theatre works (including the operetta Bitter Sweet and comic revues), screenplays, poetry, several volumes of short stories, the novel Pomp and Circumstance, and a three-volume autobiography. Coward's stage and film acting and directing career spanned six decades, during which he starred in many of his own works, as well as those of others.
At the outbreak of the Second World War, Coward volunteered for war work, running the British propaganda office in Paris. He also worked with the Secret Service, seeking to use his influence to persuade the American public and government to help Britain. Coward won an Academy Honorary Award in 1943 for his naval film drama In Which We Serve and was knighted in 1970. In the 1950s he achieved fresh success as a cabaret performer, performing his own songs, such as "Mad Dogs and Englishmen", "London Pride", and "I Went to a Marvellous Party".
Coward's plays and songs achieved new popularity in the 1960s and 1970s, and his work and style continue to influence popular culture. He did not publicly acknowledge his homosexuality, but it was discussed candidly after his death by biographers including Graham Payn, his long-time partner, and in Coward's diaries and letters, published posthumously. The former Albery Theatre (originally the New Theatre) in London was renamed the Noël Coward Theatre in his honour in 2006.

Martin_Niemoller

Friedrich Gustav Emil Martin Niemöller (14 January 1892 – 6 March 1984) was a German theologian and Lutheran pastor. He is best known for his opposition to the Nazi regime during the late 1930s and for his widely quoted 1946 poem "First they came ...". The poem exists in many versions; the one featured on the United States Holocaust Memorial reads: "First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out – because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out – because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out – because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me – and there was no one left to speak for me."
Niemöller was a national conservative and initially a supporter of Adolf Hitler and a self-identified antisemite. He became one of the founders of the Confessing Church, which opposed the Nazification of German Protestant churches. He opposed the Nazis' Aryan Paragraph. For his opposition to the Nazis' state control of the churches, Niemöller was imprisoned in Sachsenhausen and Dachau concentration camps from 1938 to 1945. He narrowly escaped execution. After his imprisonment, he expressed his deep regret about not having done enough to help victims of the Nazis. He turned away from his earlier nationalistic beliefs and was one of the initiators of the Stuttgart Declaration of Guilt. From the 1950s on, he was a vocal pacifist and anti-war activist, and vice-chair of War Resisters' International from 1966 to 1972. He met with Ho Chi Minh during the Vietnam War and was a committed campaigner for nuclear disarmament.

Antoni_Gaudi

Antoni Gaudí i Cornet ( gow-DEE, GOW-dee, Catalan: [ənˈtɔni ɣəwˈði]; 25 June 1852 – 10 June 1926) was a Catalan architect and designer from Spain, known as the greatest exponent of Catalan Modernism. Gaudí's works have a highly individualized, sui generis style. Most are located in Barcelona, including his main work, the church of the Sagrada Família.
Gaudí's work was influenced by his passions in life: architecture, nature, and religion. He considered every detail of his creations which he integrated into his architecture crafts such as ceramics, stained glass, wrought ironwork forging, and carpentry. He also introduced new techniques in the treatment of materials, such as trencadís which used waste ceramic pieces.
Under the influence of neo-Gothic art and Oriental techniques, Gaudí became part of the Modernista movement which was reaching its peak in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. His work transcended mainstream Modernisme, culminating in an organic style inspired by natural forms. Gaudí rarely drew detailed plans of his works, instead preferring to create them as three-dimensional scale models and moulding the details as he conceived them.
Gaudí's work enjoys global popularity and continuing admiration and study by architects. His masterpiece, the still-incomplete Sagrada Família, is the most-visited monument in Spain. Between 1984 and 2005, seven of his works were declared World Heritage Sites by UNESCO.
Gaudí's Catholic faith intensified during his life and religious images appear in many of his works. This earned him the nickname "God's Architect". His cause for canonization was opened in the Archdiocese of Barcelona in 2003.

Michele_Alboreto

Michele Alboreto (Italian pronunciation: [miˈkɛːle alboˈreːto]; 23 December 1956 – 25 April 2001) was an Italian racing driver. He was runner up to Alain Prost in the 1985 Formula One World Championship, as well as winning the 1997 24 Hours of Le Mans and 2001 12 Hours of Sebring sports car races. Alboreto competed in Formula One from 1981 until 1994, racing for a number of teams, including five seasons (1984–88) for Ferrari.
His career in motorsport began in 1976, racing a car he and a number of his friends had built in the Formula Monza series. The car, however, achieved very little success and two years later Alboreto moved up to Formula Three. Wins in the Italian Formula Three championship and a European Formula Three Championship crown in 1980 paved the way for his entrance into Formula One with the Tyrrell team.
Two wins, the first in the final round of the 1982 season in Las Vegas, and the second a year later in Detroit, earned him a place with the Ferrari team. Alboreto took three wins for the Italian team and challenged Alain Prost for the 1985 Championship, eventually losing out by 20 points. The following three seasons were less successful, however, and at the end of the 1988 season, the Italian left Ferrari and re-signed with his former employers Tyrrell, where he stayed until joining Larrousse midway through 1989.
Further seasons with Footwork, Scuderia Italia and Minardi followed during the tail end of his F1 career. In 1995, Alboreto moved on to sportscars and a year later the American IndyCar series. He took his final major victories, the 1997 Le Mans 24 Hours and 2001 Sebring 12 Hours, with German manufacturers Porsche and Audi, respectively. In 2001, a month after his Sebring victory, he was killed testing an Audi R8 at the Lausitzring in Germany.

Eva_Dahr

Eva Frederikke Dahr (30 October 1958 – 12 May 2019) was a Norwegian film director, playwright, and film producer. She studied at Volda University College and the Bela Balaz studio in Budapest, Hungary.Dahr was a prolific director of short films. She was the conceptual director of the TV drama Himmelblå (2008–10) and also directed the film The Orange Girl, a 2009 adaptation of the 2003 Jostein Gaarder novel Appelsinpiken. Together with her sister, actress Juni Dahr, she made two short films, Dolce Vita (1989) and Troll (1991).The director won many Norwegian and international awards, including an Amanda Award and a Gullstolen at the Kortfilmfestivalen i Grimstad, for the short film En mann (1997).
Dahr died in 2019 at age 60, following a long illness.

Odd_W._Surén

Odd Wilhelm Surén (born 8 March 1961) is a Norwegian novelist, short story writer and non-fiction writer. He made his literary debut in 1985 with the short story collection Fanger og opprørere. Among his novels are Dråper i havet from 1998, and For hva det er verdt from 2010.He was awarded Mads Wiel Nygaards Endowment in 2001.A literary critic for the weekly newspaper Dag og Tid, he received the Norwegian Literature Critics Award for 2013.

Ann-Magrit_Austenå

Ann-Magrit Austenå (born 28 June 1961) is a Norwegian journalist and organizational leader. As of 2018 she is secretary-general of NOAS, the Norwegian Organisation for Asylum Seekers.She was born in Oslo. She graduated as cand.mag. in sociology, social science and mass communication from the University of Oslo in 1985, and has been journalist for the newspapers Vårt Land and Dagbladet. She chaired the Norwegian Union of Journalists from 2003 to 2007. From 2007 to 2009 she was assistant secretary-general of the Norwegian Red Cross, and since 2010 she has been secretary-general of the Norwegian Organisation for Asylum Seekers.

Luiza_Trajano

Luiza Helena Trajano Inácio Rodrigues (born 9 October 1948) is a Brazilian billionaire businessperson. She is chair of the retailer Magazine Luiza and associated companies. In July 2020, Forbes noted that she was Brazil's wealthiest woman. Trajano is an advisory board member to both UNICEF Brazil and UNFPA Brazil, among other entities. In 2021 Luiza was listed by TIME magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in the world. She is a feminist. As of April 2022, her net worth was estimated at US$1.4 billion.