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Al "Scarface" Capone (1899-1947) was a notorious American gangster of the prohibition era. His career illustrated the power and influence of organized crime in the United States.

Brought up in New York City, he became connected with organized crime and was involved in murder investigations. In 1920 he moved to Chicago and became a lieutenant to John Torrio, a notorious gang leader. They established numerous speakeasies in Chicago in the prohibition era. After eliminating his opponents "Scarface" Capone took over control from Torrio. He was implicated in brutal murders and received tribute from businessmen and politicians. His crime syndicate-which terrorized Chicago in the 1920s and controlled gambling and prostitution there-was estimated by the federal Bureau of Internal Revenue to have taken in $105 million in 1927 alone. Capone was indicted (1931) by a federal grand jury for evasion of income tax payments and was sentenced to an 11-year prison term. In 1939, physically and mentally shattered by syphilis, Capone was released.

Academy Award-winning actress and director known for her comic roles in Woody Allen films in which she often played neurotic, urban characters. Her films include Annie Hall (1977), Manhattan (1979) and Baby Boom (1987). She acted in and directed Hanging Up (2000) with Meg Ryan, Lisa Kudrow, and Walter Matthau, and appeared with Warren Beatty and Goldie Hawn in Town & Country (2001). Her performance opposite Jack Nicholson in Something's Gotta Give (2003) netted her an Oscar nomination and a Golden Globe award.

dgar Allan EPoe was best known to his own generation as an editor and critic; his poems and short stories commanded only a small audience. But to some extent in his poems, and to an impressive degree in his tales, he pioneered in opening up areas of human experience for artistic treatment at which his contemporaries only hinted. His vision asserts that reality for the human being is essentially subterranean, contradictory to surface reality, and profoundly irrational in character. Two generations later he was hailed by the symbolist movement as the prophet of the modern sensibility.

Today, he is acknowledged as one of the most brilliant and original writers in American literature. His skillfully wrought tales and poems convey with passionate intensity the mysterious, dreamlike, and often macabre forces that pervaded his sensibility. He is also considered the father of the modern detective story.

Elvis Aron Presley (1935-1977), the "King of Rock 'n' Roll," was the leading American singer for two decades and the most popular singer of the entire rock 'n' roll era.

He first recorded in 1953, became a national sensation by 1956, and dominated rock music until 1963. Presley sang successfully in three popular idioms: country and western, rock 'n' roll, and rhythm and blues. Although he had a pleasant baritone voice and a sincere delivery, it was his pelvic gyrations, considered wildly sexual by an entire generation of teenagers and their appalled parents, which skyrocketed Presley to fame. Among his most successful songs were "Heartbreak Hotel," "Love Me Tender," "Hound Dog," and "Don't Be Cruel." His success spawned a spate of B movies and from 1956 to 1972 he appeared in 33 motion pictures including Love Me Tender (1956), Jailhouse Rock (1957), and Follow That Dream (1962). Presley remained a popular and influential performer through the 1960s and 70s. His death was attributed largely to substance abuse. Since his death, popular interest in Presley has remained high; his home, Graceland, in Memphis, Tenn., has been turned into a highly successful tourist attraction and pop culture shrine.

The American stage and screen actor, Humphrey Bogart (1899-1957), was one of Hollywood's most durable stars and a performer of considerable skill, subtlety, and individuality.

After a succession of stage roles he achieved note with his portrayal of the gangster Duke Mantee in The Petrified Forest (1934). He was in films after 1930 but it was the re-creation (1936) of that role that brought him fame, and thereafter followed a succession of notable performances in The Maltese Falcon (1941), Casablanca (1942), To Have and Have Not (1944), The Big Sleep (1946), Treasure of the Sierra Madre and Key Largo (1948), and The Caine Mutiny (1954). He became famous for portrayals of tender-hearted heroes with tough and cynical exteriors. In 1952 he won an Academy Award for The African Queen.

The author of nearly five hundred books, Isaac Asimov (1920-1992) is esteemed as one of the finest writers of science fiction and scientific fact in the twentieth century.

He first became prominent as a writer of such science fiction as I, Robot (1950, repr. 1970), The Caves of Steel (1954), and his most famous novel, The Foundation Trilogy (1951-53), which chronicled the fall of the Galactic Empire. They were supplemented by two additional novels, Foundation's Edge (1982) and Robots and Empire (1985). He was also a great popularizer of science. His works in this field include The Intelligent Man's Guide to Science (2 vol., rev. ed. 1965), The Stars in Their Courses (1971), and Did Comets Kill the Dinosaurs? (1987). In his later years he wrote on a diverse number of subjects, including guides to the Bible (1968-69) and Shakespeare (1970).

He taught at Dijon, Strasbourg, and Lille, and in Paris at the Ecole normale superieure and the Sorbonne (1867-89). His early research consisted of chemical studies of the tartrates, in which he discovered (1848) molecular dissymmetry. He then began work on fermentation, which had important results. His experiments with bacteria conclusively disproved (1862) the theory of spontaneous generation and led to the germ theory of infection. His work on wine, vinegar, and beer resulted in the development of the process of pasteurization. Of great economic value also was his solution for the control of silkworm disease, his study of chicken cholera, and his technique of vaccination against anthrax, which was successfully administered against rabies in 1885. In 1888 the Pasteur Institute was founded in Paris, with Pasteur as its director, to continue work on rabies and to provide a teaching and research center on virulent and contagious diseases.

Muhammad Ali (born Cassius Clay, 1942) was the only professional boxer to win the heavyweight championship three times. With his outspoken political and religious views he has provided leadership and an example for African American men and women around the world.

Ali's flamboyant boxing style and outspoken stances on social issues made him a controversial figure during the turbulent 1960s and early 1970s. After beating Liston, he defended his title nine times, brashly proclaiming himself the "greatest of all time." In 1967 he refused induction into the armed services and became a symbol of resistance to the Vietnam War. The boxing establishment stripped Ali of his title and prevented him from fighting until the U.S. Supreme Court in 1971 upheld his draft appeal on religious grounds. Before retiring in 1981 Ali compiled a 56-5 record and became the only man to ever win the heavyweight crown three times. His fights with Joe Frazier and George Foreman were among boxing's biggest events.

In retirement, Ali has remained one of the most recognized of all world figures. The 1984 revelation that he suffered from Parkinson's disease renewed debate over the negative effects of boxing. His appearance at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, to light the Olympic flame, moved an international audience.

When Richard Nixon was elected US President in 1969, President John F Kennedy had just been assassinated and the American public was mutinous as it watched more and more of its sons return from Vietnam in coffins. The nation's foreign policy was discredited and the people's confidence shattered. Nixon's achievement was reconciliation, his failing the Watergate scandal.

Joseph Rudyard Kipling

NameJoseph Rudyard Kipling
Birth Date:December 30, 186
Date of Death:January 18, 193
Place of Birth:Bombay, India
Nationality: British
Place of Death:Burwash, England
Occupations:writer, poet

The British poet and story writer Joseph Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936) was one of the first masters of the short story in English and the first to use Cockney dialect in serious poetry.

Rudyard Kipling's early stories and poems about life in colonial India made him a great favorite with English readers. His support of English imperialism at first contributed to this popularity but caused a reaction against him in the 20th century. Today he is best known for his Jungle Books and Kim, a story of India.