John Joseph O'Connor (January 15, 1920 – May 3, 2000) was an American prelate of the Catholic Church. He served as Archbishop of New York from 1984 until his death in 2000, and was made a cardinal in 1985. He previously served as a U.S. Navy chaplain (1952–1979, including four years as Chief, auxiliary bishop of the Military Vicariate of the United States (1979–1983), and Bishop of Scranton in Pennsylvania (1983–1984).
Václav Havel (Czech pronunciation: [ˈvaːtslav ˈɦavɛl] ; 5 October 1936 – 18 December 2011) was a Czech statesman, author, poet, playwright and dissident. Havel served as the last president of Czechoslovakia from 1989 until 1992, prior to the dissolution of Czechoslovakia on 31 December, before he became the first president of the Czech Republic from 1993 to 2003. He was the first democratically elected president of either country after the fall of communism. As a writer of Czech literature, he is known for his plays, essays and memoirs.
His educational opportunities having been limited by his bourgeois background, when freedoms were limited by the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic, Havel first rose to prominence as a playwright. In works such as The Garden Party and The Memorandum, Havel used an absurdist style to criticize the Communist system. After participating in the Prague Spring and being blacklisted after the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia, he became more politically active and helped found several dissident initiatives, including Charter 77 and the Committee for the Defense of the Unjustly Prosecuted. His political activities brought him under the surveillance of the StB secret police, and he spent multiple periods as a political prisoner, the longest of his imprisoned terms being nearly four years, between 1979 and 1983. In this period, Samuel Beckett wrote a play Catastrophe in Havel's Support. Havel wrote his short play Mistake in response to Beckett. Both plays were published by Index On Censorship in 1984. In 2022, Reza Shirmarz, an Iranian playwright, was asked by Index to write a play (Muzzled) in response to both playwright after a couple decades presenting the ongoing issue of censorship and self-censorship.[1]
Havel's Civic Forum party played a major role in the Velvet Revolution that toppled the Communist system in Czechoslovakia in 1989. He assumed the presidency shortly thereafter, and was re-elected in a landslide the following year and after Slovak independence in 1993. Havel was instrumental in dismantling the Warsaw Pact and enlargement of NATO membership eastward. Many of his stances and policies, such as his opposition to Slovak independence, condemnation of the treatment of Sudeten Germans and their mass expulsion from Czechoslovakia after World War II, as well as granting of general amnesty to all those imprisoned under the Communist era, were very controversial domestically. By the end of his presidency, he enjoyed greater popularity abroad than at home. Havel continued his life as a public intellectual after his presidency, launching several initiatives including the Prague Declaration on European Conscience and Communism, the VIZE 97 Foundation, and the Forum 2000 annual conference.
Havel's political philosophy was one of anti-consumerism, humanitarianism, environmentalism, civil activism, and direct democracy. He supported the Czech Green Party from 2004 until his death. He received numerous accolades during his lifetime, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the Gandhi Peace Prize, the Philadelphia Liberty Medal, the Order of Canada, the Four Freedoms Award, the Ambassador of Conscience Award, and the Hanno R. Ellenbogen Citizenship Award. The 2012–2013 academic year at the College of Europe was named in his honour. He is considered by some to be one of the most important intellectuals of the 20th century. The international airport in Prague was renamed Václav Havel Airport Prague in 2012.
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.
Michael Robert Milken (born July 4, 1946) is an American financier. He is known for his role in the development of the market for high-yield bonds ("junk bonds"), and his conviction and sentence following a guilty plea on felony charges for violating U.S. securities laws. Milken's compensation while head of the high-yield bond department at Drexel Burnham Lambert in the late 1980s exceeded $1 billion over a four-year period, a record for U.S. income at that time. With a net worth of US$6 billion as of 2022, he is among the richest people in the world.Milken was indicted for racketeering and securities fraud in 1989 in an insider trading investigation. In a plea bargain, he pleaded guilty to securities and reporting violations but not to racketeering or insider trading. Milken was sentenced to ten years in prison, fined $600 million (although his personal website claims $200 million) and permanently barred from the securities industry by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. His sentence was later reduced to two years for cooperating with testimony against his former colleagues and for good behavior. Milken was pardoned by President Donald Trump on February 18, 2020.
Since his release from prison, he has become known for his charitable donations. He is co-founder of the Milken Family Foundation, chairman of the Milken Institute, and founder of medical philanthropies funding research into melanoma, cancer, and other life-threatening diseases. A prostate cancer survivor, Milken has devoted significant resources to research on the disease.
Carl Burton Stokes (June 21, 1927 – April 3, 1996) was an American politician and diplomat of the Democratic Party who served as the 51st mayor of Cleveland, Ohio. Elected on November 7, 1967, and taking office on January 1, 1968, he was one of the first black elected mayors of a major U.S. city.
Irène Joliot-Curie (French: [iʁɛn ʒɔljo kyʁi] ; née Curie; 12 September 1897 – 17 March 1956) was a French chemist, physicist and politician, the elder daughter of Pierre Curie and Marie Skłodowska–Curie, and the wife of Frédéric Joliot-Curie. Jointly with her husband, Joliot-Curie was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1935 for their discovery of induced radioactivity, making them the second-ever married couple (after her parents) to win the Nobel Prize, while adding to the Curie family legacy of five Nobel Prizes. This made the Curies the family with the most Nobel laureates to date. In addition to the following honours in the family: the first ever woman Nobel Prize laureate, the first ever person and, to this day, only woman double Nobel Prize laureate, the sole person to this day with two Nobel Prizes in different sciences, thanks to her mother.
Her mother Marie Skłodowska–Curie and herself also form the only mother–daughter pair to have won Nobel Prizes whilst Pierre and Irène Curie form the only father-daughter pair to have won Nobel Prizes by the same occasion, whilst there are 6 father-son pairs who have won Nobel Prizes by comparison.She was also one of the first three women to be a member of a French government, becoming undersecretary for Scientific Research under the Popular Front in 1936. Both children of the Joliot-Curies, Hélène and Pierre, are also prominent scientists.In 1945, she was one of the six commissioners of the new French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (CEA) created by de Gaulle and the Provisional Government of the French Republic. She died in Paris on 17 March 1956 from an acute leukemia linked to her exposure to polonium and X-rays.
Richard Douglas Fosbury (March 6, 1947 – March 12, 2023) was an American high jumper, who is considered one of the most influential athletes in the history of track and field. He won a gold medal at the 1968 Olympics, revolutionizing the high jump event with a "back-first" technique now known as the Fosbury flop. His method was to sprint diagonally towards the bar, then curve and leap backward over the bar, which gave him a much lower center of mass in flight than traditional techniques. Debbie Brill was developing her similar "Brill Bend" around the same time. This approach has seen nearly universal adoption since Fosbury's performance in Mexico. Though he never returned to the Olympics, Fosbury continued to be involved in athletics after retirement and served on the executive board of the World Olympians Association.In 2014, Fosbury unsuccessfully challenged Steve Miller for a seat in the Idaho House of Representatives. Fosbury ran for Blaine County Commissioner against incumbent Larry Schoen in 2018, won the seat, and took office in 2019.
François Roland Truffaut (UK: TROO-foh, TRUU-, US: troo-FOH; French: [fʁɑ̃swa ʁɔlɑ̃ tʁyfo]; 6 February 1932 – 21 October 1984) was a French filmmaker, actor, and critic. He is widely regarded as one of the founders of the French New Wave. With a career of more than 25 years, he is an icon of the French film industry.
Truffaut's film The 400 Blows (1959) is a defining film of the French New Wave movement, and has four sequels: Antoine et Colette (1962), Stolen Kisses (1968), Bed and Board (1970), and Love on the Run (1979). Truffaut's 1973 film Day for Night earned him critical acclaim and several awards, including the BAFTA Award for Best Film and the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. His other notable films include Shoot the Piano Player (1960), Jules and Jim (1962), The Soft Skin (1964), The Wild Child (1970), Two English Girls (1971), The Last Metro (1980), and The Woman Next Door (1981). He played one of the main roles in Steven Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977).
Truffaut wrote the book Hitchcock/Truffaut (1966), based on his interviews with film director Alfred Hitchcock during the 1960s.
Caroline Clendening Laise (November 14, 1917 – July 25, 1991) was an American civil servant, ambassador to Nepal and the first female Assistant Secretary of State.
