On this day...

5th of June, 1723, the Political Philosopher and the Industrial Economist, Adam Smith was born. Smith is one of the key figures of Scottish Enlightenment, Smith studied social philosophy at the University of Glasgow and at Balliol College, Oxford, where he was one of the first students to benefit from scholarships set up by fellow Scot, John Snell. After graduating, he delivered a successful series of public lectures at the University of Edinburgh, leading him to collaborate with David Hume during the Scottish Enlightenment.

Below are the two books which Adam smith is highly respected for. The Scottish Born icon introduced his theories and thoughts in such a way that he would be worshiped later in the future. Yes, he's that guy on the £20 note! 

The Wealth of Nations

The Theory of Moral Sentiments

How people have been inspired by him; 

• http://www.adamsmithinternational.com/
• http://www.adamsmith.org.uk/

He died in the northern wing of Panmure House in Edinburgh on 17 July 1790 after a painful illness and was buried in the Canongate Kirkyard. On his death bed, Smith expressed disappointment that he had not achieved more. Smith always expressed a philomathic approach to anything that interested him. He died at the age of 67. His Legacy is today considered as one of the most influential and powerful amongst other greats. Honestly Mr Smith, we owe you, a lot! 

On this day...

Morgan Freeman was born (1st July, 1937). Actor, Director and a Narrator, the 77 years old Star is highly respected in Hollywood. Though he wanted to pursue a career in Acting, Morgan joined the air force to become a fighter pilot, he realized later that this was not his and therefore began his acting career.

Freeman has starred in immensely successful films like; The Shawshank Redemption, Million Dollar Baby, Olympus has fallen, The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises.

And many more... Freeman has received Academy Award nominations for his performances in Street Smart, Driving Miss Daisy, The Shawshank Redemption and Invictus, and won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar in 2005 for Million Dollar Baby. He has also won a Golden Globe Award and a Screen Actors Guild Award.  As a kid, Freeman spent a good portion of his time scraping together enough money to see movies, where he formed an early admiration for actors like Gary Cooper, Spencer Tracy and Sidney Poitier. It was by chance that Freeman himself got into acting. He was in junior high school and, as punishment for pulling out a chair from underneath a girl he had a crush on, Freeman was ordered to participate in the school's drama competition. To his surprise, and probably school administrators, the 12-year-old proved to be an immediate natural on the stage, taking top honors in the program.

On this day...

16th of May 1929 The 1st Academy Awards ceremony, presented by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS), honored the best films of 1927 and 1928 and took place on May 16, 1929, at a private dinner held at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel in Los Angeles,California. 

AMPAS president Douglas Fairbanks hosted the show. Tickets cost five dollars, 270 people attended the event and the presentation ceremony lasted fifteen minutes. Awards were created by Louis B. Mayer, founder of Louis B. Mayer Pictures Corporation (at present merged into Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer). It is the only Academy Awards ceremony not to be broadcast either on radio or television.

The first ever winner of the first Oscar was Emmil Jannings, for the two films in fact, The Last Command and The Way of All Flesh. Over time, the most consistent actors over the Oscars have been the following, winning the Award on more than one occasion (Daniel Day Lewis is the only one to have won it 3 times in the same category of a Leading Role). 

    

Daniel Day Lewis

 

Marlon Brando

  

Gary Cooper

   

Tom Hanks

 

Dustin Hoffman

  

Fredric March

   

Jack Nicholson

  

Sean Penn

 

Spencer Tracy

On this day...

John Wilkes Booth was born who later in his life assassinated President Abraham Lincoln. The stage actor  John Wilkes Booth was born May 10, 1838, near Bel Air, Maryland. At age 17, he made his acting debut. In the 1850s, he joined the No-Nothing Party.

During the Civil War, he was a Confederate secret agent. In March of 1865, his attempt to kidnap President Lincoln failed. On April 14, 1865, he assassinated Lincoln at Ford Theater. Booth was killed on April 26, 1865 in Port Royal, Virginia. 

“Tell Mother … I died for my country.” John Wilkes Booth

On May 10, 1838, John Wilkes Booth was born near Bel Air, Maryland. Booth was the second youngest of ten children. His father, Junius Brutus Booth, was a well-known actor and was eccentric, with a reputation for heavydrinking. John and his siblings were raised on a farm, which was worked by the family's slaves.

As a youngster, Booth attended the Milton Boarding School for Boys—and later St. Timothy's Hall—sporadically. From a very young age, he was described as disarmingly handsome. To those who knew him, it seemed only natural that he would follow in his father's footsteps, by gracing the stage with his charismatic presence.

On this day...

Sonny Liston was born (8th of May 1932). Sonny Liston was introduced to boxing while serving time in a Missouri State penitentiary. He became a professional fighter in 1953. Sonny Liston was born circa 1932 in St. Francis County, Arkansas, to an abusive and alcoholic father. Liston had trouble with the police as a teenager and was arrested more than 20 times. He learned to box while serving time in a penitentiary. Following his release, he began a boxing career, winning 54 of 58 bouts from 1953 to 1970. Known for his powerful punch, the majority of his victories were knockouts. He died circa December 30, 1970, in Las Vegas, Nevada.

One of the most remembered fights of Sonny Liston was with the "Great" Muhammed Ali (formerly known as Cassius Clay). Liston scored another knockout in a rematch with Patterson, but his 17-month reign as heavyweight champion ended at the hands of a brash fighter named Cassius Clay. Liston, who was viewed as nearly invincible before the fight, was unable to answer the bell for the seventh round, and Clay (soon to take the name Muhammad Ali) was named champion on February 25, 1964.

The subsequent rematch with Clay on May 25, 1965, included the infamous "phantom punch." Though it appeared that Liston had barely been grazed by Clay's right fist, the boxer went down just one minute and 45 seconds into the first round.

 

On this day...

25th of April, 1940, a boy named Alfred James Pacino was born in East Harlem, New York, USA. Al Pacino grew up in his hometown but later moved to Greenwich at the age of 19 to pursue his career in acting. He's considerably remembered for his active roles in films like Scent of a Woman, Scarface, Dog Day Afternoon and the legendary series of The Godfather... He went for everything! People adored his realistic acting.

Al Pacino was nominated for 5 Academy awards from which only one was his in 1992 for Scent of a Woman. During his days, he faced severe competition the likes of which included the growing star Jack Nicholson, Marlon Brando, Robert Duvall, Martin Sheen, Harrison Ford and many more... 

But that's not all to his sparkling career folks, Al Pacino's performance in The Gigli allowed him to come back down to Earth, as the movie itself was just a nightmare... But whatever film he's acted in, or directed any, or even produced any...he's one of my favorite actors...

Al Pacino in The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel (1971)

On this day...

23rd of April, 2005, the first ever video was posted on YouTube.com. 

Like I never knew that dude...

On this day...

I apologize for a late post on behalf of this man, but please, read on anyway...
He revolutionized the art of Physics and Quantum Maths by the greatest factor knowledge is aware of! His unique hairstyle, friendly charm and not to mention the incredible works based on Relativity, Albert Einstein displayed an iconic memory to live on (probably stronger than any Physicist and possibly a Scientist) that offered something useful. On this day (unfortunately) 19th April, 1955, was the day he closed his eyes forever... The whole world saluted the great figure not only for his expansive works in Physics, but also his views against Wars which resulted the massacre of millions...

Born in Ulm, Württemberg, Germany on 14th of March 1879, Albert Einstein developed the special and general theories of relativity. In 1921, he won the Nobel Prize for physics for his explanation of the photoelectric effect. Einstein is generally considered the most influential physicist of the 20th century. His father, Hermann Einstein, was a salesman and engineer who, with his brother, founded Elektrotechnische Fabrik J. Einstein & Cie, a company that manufactured electrical equipment in Munich, Germany. His mother, the former Pauline Koch, ran the family household. Einstein had one sister, Maja, born two years after him.

Albert Einstein: Albert Einstein and his younger sister Maria, nicknamed Maja, were very close as children. When World War II broke out in Europe in 1939, Maja immigrated to the United States to live with Einstein in Princeton, New Jersey. (Photo: Bettmann/CORBIS

• Huffingtonpost presents some interesting Pictures on Einstein here

“The world is a dangerous place to live; not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don't do anything about it.”

On this day...

16th April 1997, a DNA data base for birds was launched, to deter thieves from stealing valuable eggs.

Outfoxed

On this day...

The magnificent mind Leanardo da Vinci was seen for the very first time in this world on 15th of April 1542 (in Vinci, Italy). Little was it known that he would step at such a podium of success, which would guide the Scientists, Philosophers, Engineers and of course Artists into the framework of answers. Leonardo da Vinci was one of the leading intellectual of the Italian Renaissance who's known for his enduring works "The Last Supper" and "Mona Lisa."

“Darkness is the absence of light. Shadow is the diminution of light.”

Masterpieces of da Vinsci

The Mona Lisa

The Last Supper

Self Portrait

Ornithopter

Some of Leonardo da Vinsci's inventions include Parachute, Armored car, Diving suit, Anemometer (a device to measure wind speed) and an Ornithopter. To find out more about some of his inventions, have a look at this website, it's totally dedicated to him and tells you about his general life and profession in detail. Leonardo died on May 2nd 1519 at the age of 67 in Amboise, France. "The noblest pleasure is the joy of understanding."  -  Leonardo da Vinsci 

On this day...

Yuri Gagarin became the first man in space (11th April, 1961). I'm not sure whether the Moon landing by the American industry NASA was a hoax or not, but I'm pretty sure that this isn't! His Vostok spacecraft completed an orbit of the Earth on 12 April 1961. 

This Soviet hero was a Colonel (Polkovnik) of Soviet Air Forces, a cosmonaut and a pilot too. His stay in outer space was for 1 hour and 48 minutes. Yuri Gagarin was born in the village of Klushino, near Gzhatsk (renamed Gagarin in 1968 after his death), on 9 March 1934. 

On 27 March 1968, while on a routine training flight from Chkalovsky Air Base, he and flight instructor Vladimir Seryogin died in a MiG-15UTI crash near the town of Kirzhach. The bodies of Gagarin and Seryogin were cremated and the ashes were buried in the walls of the Kremlin on Red Square.

Yuri Gagarin statue in London, near Admiralty Arch

On this day...

"Life's most persistent and urgent question is, what are you
doing for others?"

US civil rights activist Martin Luther King was shot dead on April 4, 1968. King had enemies, but many more friends who admired his achievements and his works to gain a peaceful environment between colored and non-colored people. But who assassinated this man of peace?

Martin Luther King Jr. was born on January 15, 1929, in Atlanta, Georgia. King, both a Baptist minister and civil-rights activist, had a seismic impact on race relations in the United States, beginning in the mid-1950s. Among many efforts, King headed the SCLC. Through his activism, he played a pivotal role in ending the legal segregation of African-American citizens in the South and other areas of the nation, as well as the creation of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. King received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964, among several other honors. King was assassinated in April 1968, and continues to be remembered as one of the most lauded African-American leaders in history, often referenced by his 1963 speech, "I Have a Dream." Know more about Martin Luther King here.



The FBI issued a "Wanted" poster for James Earl Ray (King's assassin). He fled the country, but was caught at London's Heathrow airport. He pleaded guilty and received a 99-year prison term. In 1977 Ray escaped from jail for three days. He died in prison in 1998, aged 70. Below, Martin Luther King's son Dexter King meets James Earl Ray in 1998. James said he did not kill Martin Luther King jr.