Paul Newman — Paul Leonard Newman was an American actor, film director, entrepreneur, humanitarian and auto racing enthusiast. He won numerous awards, including an Academy Award, two Golden Globe Awards, a Screen Actors Guild Award, a Cannes Film Festival Award, an Emmy award, and many honorary awards. He also won several national championships as a driver in Sports Car Club …

The story of man’s attempt to rival the birds is as old as the human race. From Greek mythology we have the story of Icarus who had wings of feathers sewn on with threads and fastened with wax. He flew too near the sun, and the wax melted. Icarus fell into the sea and was drowned. Oliver of Malmesbury, an …

Tommy was (and still is) the nickname of the British soldier – the typical private. The custom began with the use of the name in specimen forms laid down in Army Regulations after the Napoleonic Wars, to show how forms should be filled in with the soldier’s name and other details about him. As Rudyard Kipling wrote: Oh, it’s Tommy …

Galileo, the Italian scientist, invented the thermometer in 1593. At that time, however, it was used to measure pressure changes in relation to weather predictions, rather than to take a human temperature!

George Calvert was a favourite courtier of King James I, who made him Lord Baltimore and promised him a grant of land in the region of Newfoundland. Baltimore sailed for his new territory but decided that the place was too cold and barren for him. He complained, and the new king, Charles I, agreed to give him part of Virginia …

Mary Leakey was born Mary Douglas Nichol on February 6, 1913, in London, England to Erskine Edward Nichol and Cecilia Marion (Frere) Nichol. Since Erskine worked as a painter, specializing in water colour landscapes, the Nichol family would move from place to place, visiting numerous locations in the USA, Italy, and Egypt, where Erskine painted scenes to be sold in …

Marlon Brando, Jr. (April 3, 1924 – July 1, 2004) was an American actor and film director. He is hailed for bringing a gripping realism to film acting, and is widely considered to be one of the greatest and most influential actors of all time. A cultural icon, Brando is most famous for his Oscar-winning performances as Terry Malloy in …

Although the remarkable properties of the rubber tree were known to the Aztecs and other South American Indians, for perhaps a thousands years, rubber was unknown in Europe until the discovery of the New World. Pietro Martyre d’Anghiera, chaplain to the court of Ferdinand of Aragon, Castile and Leon, gave the first written account of the elastic gum in his …

The first talking movies were produced in France before 1900 by Leon Caumont. They were short films, starring great performers such as Sarah Berhard, in which the movie pictures were synchronized with a gramophone record. By 1912 Eugene Lauste had discovered the basic method for recording sound on film, while Thomas Edison produced several one-reel talking pictures in the United …

Everyone needs salt to stay alive: It’s absolutely essential to our system, and found in most of the foods we eat. Britain alone produces ounce is used up! In fact, we need salt so much that when a group of criminals in Sweden were once given the choice to do without salt for a month, as an alternative to capital …