Background: Converge is an American hardcore punk band formed by vocalist Jacob Bannon and guitarist Kurt Ballou in Salem, Massachusetts in 1990. During the recording of their seminal fourth album Jane Doe, the group became a four-piece with the departure of guitarist Aaron Dalbec and the addition of bassist Nate Newton and drummer Ben Koller. This lineup has remained intact since. They have released nine studio albums to date, beside three live albums and numerous EPs.
Context: In 1995 Converge released their first compilation album, Caring and Killing. The album featured tracks from the band's early work from the years 1991 to 1994. The album was originally released as a European exclusive through Lost & Found Records. However, Converge became dissatisfied with the way the label was handling the release and over charging fans for their hard to find older songs. The album was re-released through Hydra Head Records on November 17, 1997 in America to "make an overpriced release obsolete". In 1996 Converge released a four-song EP, Petitioning the Empty Sky. The EP was released through Ferret Music, it was one of the earliest releases through the at the time newly formed label. Later that same year the record was re-released with four new tracks added to it. Two years later, the record was reissued through Converge's new label Equal Vision Records on January 20, 1998 this version contained the previous eight tracks as well as three newly added live tracks, which were recorded during a radio broadcast. Due to the addition of the new tracks fans and sources consider this to be Converge's second studio album, while the band considers this a compilation album because the album is a collection of songs recorded at different times. In early 1997 the band's original bassist, Feinburg, left the band and was replaced with Stephen Brodsky. Also in 1997, the band signed to Equal Vision Records. On December 22, 1997 recording for the band's third studio album When Forever Comes Crashing began at Ballou's GodCity Studio and finished on January 3, 1998. On April 14, 1998 Converge released When Forever Comes Crashing through Equal Vision. In 1998, Brodsky left the band and was replaced by Newton, who initially joined the band as a part-time member while he was still active in another band, Jesuit. Jesuit later disbanded in 1999, allowing Newton to make Converge his main focus. In early 1999, the band's original drummer Bellorado left the band and was quickly replaced with John DiGiorgio, who also left the band in the same year. Koller joined Converge in late 1999, replacing DiGiorgio. Ballou selected Koller to temporarily fill-in while Converge searched for a more permanent replacement for Bellorado, as he was familiar with his work in previous bands, Force Fed Glass and Blue/Green Heart, a band that Ballou and Koller played in together. After working well with the band during some local shows in Boston, Converge made him an official member. Newton and Koller remain in the band to this day. In mid-2000 Converge self-released a three track demo record titled Jane Doe Demos, the demo was released on tour and were limited to 100 copies. The demo contained unreleased demo versions of "Bitter & Then Some" and "Thaw" from their at the time upcoming album Jane Doe. Converge entered the studio to begin recording in the summer of 2001. On September 4, 2001 Converge released their fourth studio album Jane Doe. It was met with immediate critical acclaim, with critics praising its poetic lyrics, dynamic range, ferocity and production. The album was also a commercial success in comparison to Converge's previous outings, and both the band and the album have developed a cult following since its release. It is the band's first studio album to feature Newton and Koller, and the last to feature Dalbec, who was asked to leave the band due to his devotion to his at the time side-project Bane. Converge's first tour in support of Jane Doe was in September, 2001 with Drowningman and Playing Enemy, however Drowningman later dropped out of the tour to work on a new album. In 2002 a music video was released for the track/tracks "Concubine/Fault and Fracture" from the album Jane Doe; the music video was directed by Zach Merck. On January 28, 2003 Converge released their second compilation album, Unloved and Weeded Out. The album was originally released as a three track EP in 1995. The 2003 album version contains all three tracks from the 1995 EP but in total features 14 tracks, some of which were previously released rarities while others were previously unreleased. On February 25, 2003 Converge released their first official DVD, The Long Road Home. The DVD is modeled after band home videos such as Metallica's Cliff Em' All release. Deathwish Inc describes the DVD as a "two disc collection that is as energetic and exciting as the moments the release captures". The DVD also comes with a bonus disk that included three full live sets from the band. In early 2004 the band announced that they were signing to Epitaph Records, having previously been signed to Equal Vision. When asked about the switch to Epitaph, Bannon stated "We are confident as artists and genuinely happy about the move. We are part of a diverse, quality roster with Epitaph, rich in both history and integrity. We've struggled for years looking for a supportive label to call home and after a decade we have found it." Converge began writing for You Fail Me after they recorded Jane Doe; they wrote on the road during sound checks of shows. Converge entered the studio to begin recording in March 2004 mainly at GodCity Studio. On September 20, 2004 Converge released their fifth studio album You Fail Me. It was the band's first to chart commercially, reaching number 171 on the Billboard 200. On February 14, 2005 a music video was released for the track "Eagles Become Vultures" from the album You Fail Me, the music video was directed by Zach Merck. Converge's first tour in support of You Fail Me started in September 2004 with Cave In and Between the Buried and Me. In 2005 Equal Vision reissued Petitioning the Empty Sky and When Forever Comes Crashing. These reissues gave the albums one new bonus track each; Petitioning the Empty Sky received an alternate version of the song "Love as Arson" and When Forever Comes Crashing received a demo version of the song "Bitter and Then Some". These reissues also came with new album artwork by Aaron Turner of Isis. Ballou stated in an interview he wanted to remix and remaster the albums because the quality of Converge's recordings had improved so much that the original recordings of these two albums were "becoming distracting". These reissues became the standard versions of these albums. CANNOTANSWER
Question: Was the album a success?. Whats the answer?


Background: Jennifer Mulhern Granholm (born February 5, 1959) is a Canadian-born American politician, lawyer, educator, author, political commentator and member of the Democratic Party who served as the Attorney General of Michigan from 1999 to 2003 and as the Governor of Michigan from 2003 to 2011. In January 2017, she became a CNN political contributor. Born in Vancouver, British Columbia, Granholm moved from Canada to California at age four. She graduated from San Carlos High School and briefly attempted an acting career, then held a variety of jobs before attending the University of California, Berkeley.
Context: Thirty-seven year Democratic Attorney General Frank J. Kelley chose not to run for a 10th term in 1998 and Granholm entered the race to succeed him. Unopposed for the Democratic nomination, she faced Republican John Smietanka, the 1994 nominee and former U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Michigan, in the general election. The campaign began as a relatively friendly one, with both agreeing that they wanted to expand the Internet Crimes Unit, start neighbourhood-based crime-fighting programmes and continue working as a consumer advocate, as Kelley had done. However, the race turned bitter in mid-September, when Smietanka ran television ads that called Granholm an "inexperienced" and "dangerous" liberal. He also tried to link Granholm to Democratic gubernatorial nominee Geoffrey Fieger's crime plan, which called for greater emphasis on rehabilitation for non-violent criminals and shortening their prison terms. Granholm, who had disavowed Fieger's crime plan the day it was released, said that the claim was "a lie, just a lie" and that as Attorney General, "you are the person who is to protect the consumer from deceitful ads." Asked what separated her from Smietanka, Granholm replied, "besides honesty?" Kelley also came to Granholm's defence, starring in an advertisement where he called Smietanka's ads "garbage" and a "con" and accused him of running a "dishonest campaign". For his part, Smietanka was angered by Democratic advertisements that referred to late child support payments he had made and claimed that he had lied about how much of his own money he donated to his campaign. After a close race, with polls showing the two candidates with virtually identical votes, Granholm defeated Smietanka by 1,557,310 votes (52.09%) to 1,432,604 (47.91%). After Granholm was elected Governor in 2002, arguments broke about between Smietanka and then-Republican Governor John Engler about who was most responsible for Granholm's meteoric rise in Michigan politics. Smietanka blamed Engler for trying to force him out of the 1998 race in favour of G. Scott Romney, for dredging up the issue of his missed child support payments and for not supporting him more fully after he defeated Romney at the Republican convention. Engler contested that Smietanka was a weak candidate who should have stepped aside for Romney, who would have beaten the inexperienced Granholm; she would then not have had a launch pad for her gubernatorial campaign in 2002. CANNOTANSWER
Question: What else was she running on?

Answer:


Victor Davis Hanson (born September 5, 1953) is an American classicist, military historian, columnist, and farmer. He has been a commentator on modern and ancient warfare and contemporary politics for National Review, The Washington Times and other media outlets. He is a professor emeritus of classics at California State University, Fresno, and is currently the Martin and Illie Anderson Senior Fellow in classics and military history at Stanford University's Hoover Institution. He chairs the Hoover working group on Military History and Contemporary Conflict as well as being the general editor of the Hoover online journal, Strategika.

Hanson, who is of Swedish and Welsh descent, grew up on a family farm outside of Selma, California in the San Joaquin Valley and has worked there most of his life. His mother, Pauline Davis Hanson, was a lawyer and a California superior court and state appeals court justice, his father was a farmer, educator and junior college administrator. Along with his older brother Nels, a writer, and fraternal twin Alfred, a farmer and biologist, Hanson attended public schools and graduated from Selma High School. Hanson received his BA with highest honors in classics and general college honors, Cowell College, from the University of California, Santa Cruz, in 1975 and his PhD in classics from Stanford University in 1980. He is a Protestant Christian. He also won the Raphael Demos scholarship at the College Year in Athens (1973-74) and was a regular member of the American School of Classical Studies, Athens, 1978-79. Hanson is currently a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and professor emeritus at California State University, Fresno, where he began teaching in 1984, having created the classical studies program at that institution. In 1991, Hanson was awarded an American Philological Association's Excellence in Teaching Award, which is given annually to the nation's top undergraduate teachers of Greek and Latin, and he was named distinguished alumnus of the year (2006) at University of California, Santa Cruz. He has been a visiting professor of classics at Stanford University (1991-92), a National Endowment for the Humanities fellow at the Center for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences, Stanford, California (1992-93), an Alexander Onassis traveling fellowship to Greece (1999), as well as Nimitz Fellow at UC Berkeley (2006) and held the visiting Shifrin Chair of Military History at the U.S. Naval Academy, Annapolis, Maryland (2002-03), and often the William Simon visiting professorship at the School of Public Policy at Pepperdine University (2009-15), and was awarded in 2015 an Honorary Doctorate of Laws from the graduate school at Pepperdine. He gave the Wriston Lecture in 2004 for the Manhattan Institute. He has been a board member of the Bradley Foundation since 2015, and served on the HF Guggenheim Foundation board for over a decade. Since 2004, Hanson has written a weekly column syndicated by Tribune Media Services, as well as a weekly column for National Review Online since 2001, and has not missed a weekly column for either venue since he began. He has been published in The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, The Times Literary Supplement, The Daily Telegraph, American Heritage, and The New Criterion, among other publications. He was awarded the National Humanities Medal (2007) by President George W. Bush, as well as the Eric Breindel Prize for opinion journalism (2002), and the William F. Buckley Prize (2015). Hanson was also awarded the Claremont Institute's Statesmanship Award at its annual Churchill Dinner, and the Bradley Prize from the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation in 2008. CANNOTANSWER

Where did Victor Davis Hanson received most of his education?


Clark's father's family was Jewish; his paternal great-grandfather immigrated to the United States from Belarus in response to the Pale of Settlement and anti-Jewish violence from Russian pogroms. Clark's grandfather, Jacob Kanne, graduated from the Chicago-Kent College of Law and served in the U.S. Naval Reserve as an ensign during World War I, although he was never assigned to a combat mission. Kanne, living in Chicago, became involved with ward politics in the 1920s as a prosecutor and served in local offices. He served as a delegate to the 1932 Democratic National Convention that nominated Franklin D. Roosevelt as the party's presidential candidate (though his name does not appear on the published roll of convention delegates). His mother was of English ancestry and was a Methodist. Kanne came from the Kohen family line, and Clark's son has characterized Clark's parents' marriage, between his Methodist mother, Veneta (nee Updegraff), and his Jewish father, Benjamin Jacob Kanne, as "about as multicultural as you could've gotten in 1944". Clark was born Wesley Kanne in Chicago on December 23, 1944. His father Benjamin died on December 6, 1948; his mother then moved the family to Little Rock, Arkansas. This move was made for a variety of reasons, including escaping the greater cost of living in a large city such as Chicago, the support Veneta's family in Arkansas could provide, and her feeling of being an outsider to the remaining Kanne family as she did not share their religion. Once in Little Rock, Veneta married Viktor Clark, whom she met while working as a secretary at a bank. Viktor raised Wesley as his son, and officially adopted him on Wesley's 16th birthday. Wesley's name was changed to Wesley Kanne Clark. Viktor Clark's name actually replaced that of Wesley's biological father on his birth certificate, something Wesley would later say that he wished they had not done. Veneta raised Wesley without telling him of his Jewish ancestry to protect him from the anti-Jewish activities of the Ku Klux Klan in the southern U.S. Although his mother was Methodist, Clark chose a Baptist church after moving to Little Rock and continued attending it throughout his childhood. He graduated from Hall High School with a National Merit Scholarship. He helped take their swim team to the state championship, filling in for a sick teammate by swimming two legs of a relay. Clark has often repeated the anecdote that he decided he wanted to go to West Point after meeting a cadet with glasses who told Clark (who wore glasses as well) that one did not need perfect vision to attend West Point as Clark had thought. Clark applied, and he was accepted on April 24, 1962. CANNOTANSWER

Answer this question "What did Wesley Clark do in his early life?" by extracting the answer from the text above.


Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell,  (; 18 May 1872 - 2 February 1970) was a British philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian, writer, social critic, political activist and Nobel laureate. At various points in his life, Russell considered himself a liberal, a socialist and a pacifist, but he also admitted that he had "never been any of these things, in any profound sense". Russell was born in Monmouthshire into one of the most prominent aristocratic families in the United Kingdom. In the early 20th century, Russell led the British "revolt against idealism".

Russell had two siblings: brother Frank (nearly seven years older than Bertrand), and sister Rachel (four years older). In June 1874 Russell's mother died of diphtheria, followed shortly by Rachel's death. In January 1876, his father died of bronchitis following a long period of depression. Frank and Bertrand were placed in the care of their staunchly Victorian paternal grandparents, who lived at Pembroke Lodge in Richmond Park. His grandfather, former Prime Minister Earl Russell, died in 1878, and was remembered by Russell as a kindly old man in a wheelchair. His grandmother, the Countess Russell (nee Lady Frances Elliot), was the dominant family figure for the rest of Russell's childhood and youth. The countess was from a Scottish Presbyterian family, and successfully petitioned the Court of Chancery to set aside a provision in Amberley's will requiring the children to be raised as agnostics. Despite her religious conservatism, she held progressive views in other areas (accepting Darwinism and supporting Irish Home Rule), and her influence on Bertrand Russell's outlook on social justice and standing up for principle remained with him throughout his life. (One could challenge the view that Bertrand stood up for his principles, based on his own well-known quotation: "I would never die for my beliefs because I might be wrong".) Her favourite Bible verse, 'Thou shalt not follow a multitude to do evil' (Exodus 23:2), became his motto. The atmosphere at Pembroke Lodge was one of frequent prayer, emotional repression, and formality; Frank reacted to this with open rebellion, but the young Bertrand learned to hide his feelings. Russell's adolescence was very lonely, and he often contemplated suicide. He remarked in his autobiography that his keenest interests were in religion and mathematics, and that only his wish to know more mathematics kept him from suicide. He was educated at home by a series of tutors. When Russell was eleven years old, his brother Frank introduced him to the work of Euclid, which transformed his life. During these formative years he also discovered the works of Percy Bysshe Shelley. In his autobiography, he writes: "I spent all my spare time reading him, and learning him by heart, knowing no one to whom I could speak of what I thought or felt, I used to reflect how wonderful it would have been to know Shelley, and to wonder whether I should meet any live human being with whom I should feel so much sympathy". Russell claimed that beginning at age 15, he spent considerable time thinking about the validity of Christian religious dogma, which he found very unconvincing. At this age, he came to the conclusion that there is no free will and, two years later, that there is no life after death. Finally, at the age of 18, after reading Mill's "Autobiography", he abandoned the "First Cause" argument and became an atheist. Russell won a scholarship to read for the Mathematical Tripos at Trinity College, Cambridge, and commenced his studies there in 1890, taking as coach Robert Rumsey Webb. He became acquainted with the younger George Edward Moore and came under the influence of Alfred North Whitehead, who recommended him to the Cambridge Apostles. He quickly distinguished himself in mathematics and philosophy, graduating as seventh Wrangler in the former in 1893 and becoming a Fellow in the latter in 1895. Russell first met the American Quaker Alys Pearsall Smith when he was 17 years old. He became a friend of the Pearsall Smith family - they knew him primarily as "Lord John's grandson" and enjoyed showing him off. He traveled with them to the continent; it was in their company that Russell visited the Paris Exhibition of 1889 and was able to climb the Eiffel Tower soon after it was completed. He soon fell in love with the puritanical, high-minded Alys, who was a graduate of Bryn Mawr College near Philadelphia, and, contrary to his grandmother's wishes, married her on 13 December 1894. Their marriage began to fall apart in 1901 when it occurred to Russell, while he was cycling, that he no longer loved her. She asked him if he loved her and he replied that he did not. Russell also disliked Alys's mother, finding her controlling and cruel. It was to be a hollow shell of a marriage and they finally divorced in 1921, after a lengthy period of separation. During this period, Russell had passionate (and often simultaneous) affairs with a number of women, including Lady Ottoline Morrell and the actress Lady Constance Malleson. Some have suggested that at this point he had an affair with Vivienne Haigh-Wood, the English governess and writer, and first wife of T. S. Eliot. Russell began his published work in 1896 with German Social Democracy, a study in politics that was an early indication of a lifelong interest in political and social theory. In 1896 he taught German social democracy at the London School of Economics. He was a member of the Coefficients dining club of social reformers set up in 1902 by the Fabian campaigners Sidney and Beatrice Webb. He now started an intensive study of the foundations of mathematics at Trinity. In 1898 he wrote An Essay on the Foundations of Geometry which discussed the Cayley-Klein metrics used for non-Euclidean geometry. He attended the International Congress of Philosophy in Paris in 1900 where he met Giuseppe Peano and Alessandro Padoa. The Italians had responded to Georg Cantor, making a science of set theory; they gave Russell their literature including the Formulario mathematico. Russell was impressed by the precision of Peano's arguments at the Congress, read the literature upon returning to England, and came upon Russell's paradox. In 1903 he published The Principles of Mathematics, a work on foundations of mathematics. It advanced a thesis of logicism, that mathematics and logic are one and the same. At the age of 29, in February 1901, Russell underwent what he called a "sort of mystic illumination", after witnessing Whitehead's wife's acute suffering in an angina attack. "I found myself filled with semi-mystical feelings about beauty ... and with a desire almost as profound as that of the Buddha to find some philosophy which should make human life endurable", Russell would later recall. "At the end of those five minutes, I had become a completely different person." In 1905 he wrote the essay "On Denoting", which was published in the philosophical journal Mind. Russell was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 1908. The three-volume Principia Mathematica, written with Whitehead, was published between 1910 and 1913. This, along with the earlier The Principles of Mathematics, soon made Russell world-famous in his field. In 1910 he became a University of Cambridge lecturer at Trinity College where he studied. He was considered for a Fellowship, which would give him a vote in the college government and protect him from being fired for his opinions, but was passed over because he was "anti-clerical", essentially because he was agnostic. He was approached by the Austrian engineering student Ludwig Wittgenstein, who became his PhD student. Russell viewed Wittgenstein as a genius and a successor who would continue his work on logic. He spent hours dealing with Wittgenstein's various phobias and his frequent bouts of despair. This was often a drain on Russell's energy, but Russell continued to be fascinated by him and encouraged his academic development, including the publication of Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus in 1922. Russell delivered his lectures on Logical Atomism, his version of these ideas, in 1918, before the end of World War I. Wittgenstein was, at that time, serving in the Austrian Army and subsequently spent nine months in an Italian prisoner of war camp at the end of the conflict. CANNOTANSWER

When did things turn around?


Ian William Geddes Johnson CBE (8 December 1917 - 9 October 1998) was an Australian cricketer who played 45 Test matches as a slow off-break bowler between 1946 and 1956. Johnson captured 109 Test wickets at an average of 29.19 runs per wicket and as a lower order batsman made 1,000 runs at an average of 22.92 runs per dismissal. He captained the Australian team in 17 Tests, winning seven and losing five, with a further five drawn. Despite this record, he is better known as the captain who lost consecutive Ashes series against England.

Johnson was born in North Melbourne, an inner suburb of Melbourne, on 8 December 1918. His father, William Johnson--a wine and spirit grocer--was a keen cricketer who played one first-class match for Victoria in 1924-25 before serving as a selector for the Australian Test team. As a schoolboy, Ian Johnson excelled at a variety of sports. He participated in athletics and Australian rules football, as well as playing as a wicket-keeper for Middle Park State School. In 1936, he became the Victorian amateur squash champion. However, he found his vocation in cricket. In 1934-35, aged only 16, and still a schoolboy at Wesley College, Johnson played his first match for the South Melbourne Cricket Club First XI. He was given the opportunity to play first-class cricket the following season, playing Tasmania--not then involved in the Sheffield Shield competition--just 23 days past his seventeenth birthday. He scored 34 and 26 and took two wickets in each innings as Tasmania won by six wickets. He was retained for the next game, scoring 15 runs in his only innings and taking 3 wickets for 40 runs (3/40) in the Tasmanian first innings and 1/27 in the second. He did not play first-class cricket again for three years, finally returning to the Victorian side to play another two games against Tasmania in 1938-39, making his highest first-class score to date, 88 runs, in the second game. He secured his place in the Victorian team in the 1939-40 season, making his Sheffield Shield debut against South Australia in Adelaide in November 1939. Batting at number five, Johnson scored 33 runs in the first innings and 41 in the second, but was unable to take a wicket. That season, Johnson scored 313 runs at an average of 26.08 and took 13 wickets at an average of 39.92. In a season truncated because of the Second World War, Johnson played five matches in 1940-41, scoring 292 runs at an average of 32.44 and taking 25 wickets at 27.60. Johnson's cricket career was interrupted by the war and he enlisted in the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) in March 1941. He flew Bristol Beaufighters with No. 22 Squadron RAAF and, by 1944, was serving as a Flight Lieutenant in the South West Pacific theatre. In June 1945, Johnson was awarded the Commendation for Valuable Service in the Air for his work as a flight instructor with No. 11 Elementary Flying Training School, based at Benalla in rural Victoria. He was discharged in December 1945 and resumed his first-class cricket career in the 1945-46 season. CANNOTANSWER

Did he go to college?


In 2014, on their tumblr blog the band announced they signed to Pure Noise Records. Senses Fail would enter the studio in November to start recording their next full-length album which was scheduled to be released in summer 2015. It was later announced that the album would be titled Pull the Thorns from Your Heart. On February 2, 2015, the band released a tease of their split EP on their Facebook. The EP was released on March 3, 2015. Pull the Thorns from Your Heart was released on June 30, 2015. The touring cycle for the record kicked off by playing the entirety of the 2015 Vans Warped Tour. The band then embarked on a winter co-headlining tour with Silverstein. On this tour, guitarist Matt Smith was absent due to the birth of his first child. Greg Styliades, who had previously toured with the band after Zack Roach returned home for the birth of his child, performed with the band on this tour. At this time, the band was classified by AbsolutePunk as screamo and "alternative". On May 17, 2016, frontman Buddy Nielsen announced that he had formed a new band called Speak The Truth... Even If Your Voice shakes. The band also includes drummer Alex Pappas and guitarists Alex "Grizz" Linares and Daniel Wonacott, all formerly of the band Finch. They released their debut, self-titled 7" on November 4, 2016 via Bad Timing Records. The release features the songs Crash My Car and Go For The Throat. Senses Fail bassist Gavin Caswell was later recruited to play bass at the outfits first ever live performance. In 2016, the band performed at the recently revived Taste of Chaos festival in San Bernardino, California. After returning as a single day festival in 2015, Taste of Chaos returned as a full United States tour in 2016, culminating in the festival date. The festival took place on July 16, and also featured performances from The Starting Line, The Get Up Kids, and Quicksand, as well as 2016 Taste of Chaos full tour acts Saosin, Taking Back Sunday, and Dashboard Confessional. The future of the band was left uncertain after it was revealed that guitarists Zack Roach and Matt Smith would no longer be touring with the band, with both choosing to focus on their families after the recent births of their children. Despite almost breaking up, the band took the rest of the summer of 2016 off to regroup. In late 2016, the band supported Sum 41 on their "Don't Call it a Sum Back" full United States tour. Bassist Gavin Caswell took over rhythm guitar duties live, with Styliades returning on bass guitar, and Jason Millbank filling the role of lead guitarist. CANNOTANSWER

Answer this question "How was that received by critics?" by extracting the answer from the text above.


Background: Shearer was born December 23, 1943 in Los Angeles, the son of Dora Warren (nee Kohn; d. 2008), a bookkeeper, and Mack Shearer. His parents were Jewish emigrants from Austria and Poland. Starting when Shearer was four years old, he had a piano teacher whose daughter worked as a child actress. The piano teacher later decided to make a career change and become a children's agent, as she knew people in the business through her daughter's work.
Context: Since 1983, Shearer has been the host of the public radio comedy/music program Le Show. The program is a hodgepodge of satirical news commentary, music, and sketch comedy that takes aim at the "mega morons of the mighty media". It is carried on many National Public Radio and other public radio stations throughout the United States. Since the merger of SIRIUS and XM satellite radio services the program is no longer available on either. The show has also been made available as a podcast on iTunes and by WWNO. On the weekly program Shearer alternates between DJing, reading and commenting on the news of the day after the manner of Mort Sahl, and performing original (mostly political) comedy sketches and songs. In 2008, Shearer released a music CD called Songs of the Bushmen, consisting of his satirical numbers about former President George W. Bush on Le Show. Shearer says he criticizes both Republicans and Democrats equally, and also says that "the iron law of doing comedy about politics is you make fun of whoever is running the place" and that "everyone else is just running around talking. They are the ones who are actually doing something, changing people's lives for better or for worse. Other people the media calls 'satirists' don't work that way." Since encountering satellite news feeds when he worked on Saturday Night Live, Shearer has been fascinated with the contents of the video that does not air. Shearer refers to these clips as found objects. "I thought, wow, there is just an unending supply of this material, and it's wonderful and fascinating and funny and sometimes haunting - but it's always good," said Shearer. He collects this material and uses it on Le Show and on his website. In 2008, he assembled video clips of newsmakers from this collection into an art installation titled "The Silent Echo Chamber" which was exhibited at The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum in Ridgefield, Connecticut. The exhibit was also displayed in 2009 at Institut Valencia d'Art Modern (IVAM) in Valencia, Spain and in 2010 at the New Orleans Contemporary Arts Center. In 2006 Shearer appeared with Brian Hayes in four episodes of the BBC Radio 4 sitcom Not Today, Thank You, playing Nostrils, a man so ugly he cannot stand to be in his own presence. He was originally scheduled to appear in all six episodes but had to withdraw from recording two due to a problem with his work permit. On June 19, 2008, it was announced that Shearer would receive a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in the radio category. The date of the ceremony where his star will be put in place has yet to be announced. CANNOTANSWER
Question: Are there any other interesting aspects about this article?

Answer:


Background: Antonie Philips van Leeuwenhoek (; Dutch: [an'to:ni van 'le:u@(n),huk] ( listen); 24 October 1632 - 26 August 1723) was a Dutch businessman and scientist in the Golden Age of Dutch science and technology. A largely self-taught man in science, he is commonly known as "the Father of Microbiology", and one of the first microscopists and microbiologists. Van Leeuwenhoek is best known for his pioneering work in microscopy and for his contributions toward the establishment of microbiology as a scientific discipline.
Context: Antonie van Leeuwenhoek was born in Delft, Dutch Republic, on 24 October 1632. On 4 November, he was baptized as Thonis. His father, Philips Antonisz van Leeuwenhoek, was a basket maker who died when Antonie was only five years old. His mother, Margaretha (Bel van den Berch), came from a well-to-do brewer's family. She remarried Jacob Jansz Molijn, a painter. Antonie had four older sisters, Margriet, Geertruyt, Neeltje, and Catharina. When he was around ten years old his step-father died. He attended school in Warmond for a short time before being sent to live in Benthuizen with his uncle, an attorney. At the age of 16 he became a bookkeeper's apprentice at a linen-draper's shop in Amsterdam, which was owned by the Scot William Davidson. Van Leeuwenhoek left there after six years. Van Leeuwenhoek married Barbara de Mey in July 1654, with whom he fathered one surviving daughter, Maria (four other children died in infancy). That same year he returned to Delft, where he would live and study for the rest of his life. He opened a draper's shop, which he ran throughout the 1650s. His wife died in 1666, and in 1671, Van Leeuwenhoek remarried to Cornelia Swalmius with whom he had no children. His status in Delft had grown throughout the years. In 1660 he received a lucrative job as chamberlain for the assembly chamber of the Delft sheriffs in the city hall, a position which he would hold for almost 40 years. In 1669 he was appointed as a land surveyor by the court of Holland; at some time he combined it with another municipal job, being the official "wine-gauger" of Delft and in charge of the city wine imports and taxation. Van Leeuwenhoek was a contemporary of another famous Delft citizen, the painter Johannes Vermeer, who was baptized just four days earlier. It has been suggested that he is the man portrayed in two Vermeer paintings of the late 1660s, The Astronomer and The Geographer, but others argue that there appears to be little physical similarity. Because they were both relatively important men in a city with only 24,000 inhabitants, it is likely that they were at least acquaintances; Van Leeuwenhoek acted as the executor of Vermeer's will after the painter died in 1675. CANNOTANSWER
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Shearer was born December 23, 1943 in Los Angeles, the son of Dora Warren (nee Kohn; d. 2008), a bookkeeper, and Mack Shearer. His parents were Jewish emigrants from Austria and Poland. Starting when Shearer was four years old, he had a piano teacher whose daughter worked as a child actress. The piano teacher later decided to make a career change and become a children's agent, as she knew people in the business through her daughter's work.

Since 1983, Shearer has been the host of the public radio comedy/music program Le Show. The program is a hodgepodge of satirical news commentary, music, and sketch comedy that takes aim at the "mega morons of the mighty media". It is carried on many National Public Radio and other public radio stations throughout the United States. Since the merger of SIRIUS and XM satellite radio services the program is no longer available on either. The show has also been made available as a podcast on iTunes and by WWNO. On the weekly program Shearer alternates between DJing, reading and commenting on the news of the day after the manner of Mort Sahl, and performing original (mostly political) comedy sketches and songs. In 2008, Shearer released a music CD called Songs of the Bushmen, consisting of his satirical numbers about former President George W. Bush on Le Show. Shearer says he criticizes both Republicans and Democrats equally, and also says that "the iron law of doing comedy about politics is you make fun of whoever is running the place" and that "everyone else is just running around talking. They are the ones who are actually doing something, changing people's lives for better or for worse. Other people the media calls 'satirists' don't work that way." Since encountering satellite news feeds when he worked on Saturday Night Live, Shearer has been fascinated with the contents of the video that does not air. Shearer refers to these clips as found objects. "I thought, wow, there is just an unending supply of this material, and it's wonderful and fascinating and funny and sometimes haunting - but it's always good," said Shearer. He collects this material and uses it on Le Show and on his website. In 2008, he assembled video clips of newsmakers from this collection into an art installation titled "The Silent Echo Chamber" which was exhibited at The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum in Ridgefield, Connecticut. The exhibit was also displayed in 2009 at Institut Valencia d'Art Modern (IVAM) in Valencia, Spain and in 2010 at the New Orleans Contemporary Arts Center. In 2006 Shearer appeared with Brian Hayes in four episodes of the BBC Radio 4 sitcom Not Today, Thank You, playing Nostrils, a man so ugly he cannot stand to be in his own presence. He was originally scheduled to appear in all six episodes but had to withdraw from recording two due to a problem with his work permit. On June 19, 2008, it was announced that Shearer would receive a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in the radio category. The date of the ceremony where his star will be put in place has yet to be announced. CANNOTANSWER

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Born on the Victorian Goldfields at Chinaman's Flat (now in the locality of Snake Valley near Maryborough, Worrall was the seventh child of Irish-born parents, Joseph and Ann. He attended state school in Maryborough, but moved to Ballarat in his early twenties. There, he came under notice playing cricket against the touring English team, which led to his selection for Victoria in 1883. Joining the South Ballarat Football Club, Worrall showed excellent potential and he was persuaded to move to Melbourne and play for the fledging Fitzroy club in 1884.

Worrall's football showed more consistency than his cricket. Already captain of the team, Worrall played as a rover. He was skilled, fearless, could kick with either foot and was an excellent overhead mark for his size. Regularly selected for the Victorian team, he is one of very few men to have represented Victoria at both sports. Football was put on hold the following winter when he was chosen to tour England with the Australian cricket team. Along with most of his teammates, Worrall struggled during the wet English summer and failed to enhance his reputation. On his return to Melbourne, he was named The Argus Player of the Year in 1890, and Fitzroy's key player during these years. Injury got the better of him in 1892, and he retired from football, which allowed him to concentrate on the summer game. The next year, he married Agnes McCullum in Fitzroy. He switched allegiance to the Carlton Cricket Club and in 1896 scored an Australian- record 417 not out for the Blues in a match with University. He reorganised his style, becoming a more aggressive batsman who often opened but no longer bowled. In addition, he was inspirational in the field and his leadership qualities were recognised with the Victorian captaincy sixteen times. A number of big innings for the state kept him in contention for higher honours. This late blooming of his talent culminated in selection for the 1899 tour of England, during which he turned 38. Partnering the legendary Victor Trumper at the top of the order for all five tests, Worrall had his greatest day in the Headingley test match when he scored 76 on a sticky wicket to set up an Australian victory. However, his advanced age meant that this was his last test series, although he continued with Victoria until 1902, when he was 40. In 140 first class matches, he scored 4660 runs at 20.99, took 105 wickets at 23.10, held 101 catches and scored seven centuries. CANNOTANSWER

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The Untouchables is an American crime drama that ran from 1959 to 1963 on the ABC Television Network, produced by Desilu Productions. Based on the memoir of the same name by Eliot Ness and Oscar Fraley, it fictionalized Ness' experiences as a Prohibition agent, fighting crime in Chicago in the 1930s with the help of a special team of agents handpicked for their courage, moral character, and incorruptibility, nicknamed the Untouchables. The book was later made into a film in 1987 (also called The Untouchables) by Brian De Palma, with a script by David Mamet, and a second, less-successful TV series in 1993. The Untouchables won series star Robert Stack an Emmy Award for Best Actor in a Dramatic Series in 1960.

The series originally focused on the efforts of a real-life squad of Prohibition agents employed by the United States Department of the Treasury and led by Eliot Ness (Stack), that helped bring down the bootleg empire of "Scarface" Al Capone, as described in Ness's bestselling 1957 memoir. This squad was nicknamed "The Untouchables", because of their courage and honesty; they could not be bribed or intimidated by the Mob. Eliot Ness himself had died suddenly in May 1957, shortly before his memoir and the subsequent TV adaptation were to bring him fame beyond any he experienced in his lifetime. The pilot for the series was a two-part episode entitled "The Untouchables" originally aired on Westinghouse Desilu Playhouse on April 20 and 27, 1959. Later retitled "The Scarface Mob", these episodes, which featured Neville Brand as Al Capone, were the only episodes in the series to be more-or-less directly based on Ness's memoir, and ended with the conviction and imprisonment of Capone. CBS, which had broadcast most of Desilu's television output since 1951 beginning with I Love Lucy, was offered the new series following the success of the pilot film. Chairman William S. Paley rejected it on the advice of network vice president Hubbell Robinson. ABC agreed to air the series, and The Untouchables premiered on October 15, 1959. In the pilot movie, the mobsters generally spoke with unrealistic pseudo-Italian accents, but this idiosyncratic pronunciation was dropped when the series debuted. The weekly series first followed the premise of a power struggle to establish a new boss in Capone's absence (for the purpose of the TV series, the new boss was Frank Nitti, although this was contrary to fact). As the series continued, there developed a highly fictionalized portrayal of Ness and his crew as all-purpose crime fighters who went up against an array of gangsters and villains of the 1930s, including Ma Barker, Dutch Schultz, Bugs Moran, Vincent "Mad Dog" Coll, Legs Diamond, Lucky Luciano, and in one episode, Nazi agents. The terse narration by gossip columnist Walter Winchell, in his distinctive New York accent, was a stylistic hallmark of the series, along with its melancholy theme music by Nelson Riddle and its shadowy black-and-white photography, influenced by film noir. CANNOTANSWER


Jennifer Mulhern Granholm (born February 5, 1959) is a Canadian-born American politician, lawyer, educator, author, political commentator and member of the Democratic Party who served as the Attorney General of Michigan from 1999 to 2003 and as the Governor of Michigan from 2003 to 2011. In January 2017, she became a CNN political contributor. Born in Vancouver, British Columbia, Granholm moved from Canada to California at age four. She graduated from San Carlos High School and briefly attempted an acting career, then held a variety of jobs before attending the University of California, Berkeley.

Granholm was born in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, to Shirley Alfreda (nee Dowden) and Victor Ivar Granholm, both bank tellers. Granholm's maternal grandparents came from Ireland and Newfoundland. Her paternal grandmother was an emigrant from Norway and her paternal grandfather, who immigrated to Canada in the 1930s, came from Robertsfors, Sweden, where his father was the mayor. The former Minister for Enterprise and Energy and former Deputy Prime Minister of Sweden, Maud Olofsson, lives in Robertsfors, and when the two met in Sweden, the media revealed that Olofsson's husband is a relative of Granholm. Granholm's family moved to California when she was four years old. She grew up in Anaheim, San Jose, and San Carlos. Granholm graduated from San Carlos High School in 1977 and won the Miss San Carlos beauty pageant. As a young adult she attempted to launch a Hollywood acting career but was unsuccessful and abandoned her efforts at the age of 21. In 1978 she appeared on The Dating Game, and held jobs as a tour guide at Universal Studios and in customer service at the Los Angeles Times and was the first female tour guide at Marine World Africa USA in Redwood City, piloting boats with 25 tourists aboard. In 1980, at the age of 21 years, she became a naturalized U.S. citizen, worked for John B. Anderson's campaign for President of the United States as an Independent in the 1980 election. She then enrolled at the University of California, Berkeley, the first person in her family to do so, joining Phi Beta Kappa and graduating in 1984 with a B.A. in Political Science and French. During a year in France, she helped to smuggle clothes and medical supplies to Jewish people in the Soviet Union and became involved in the Anti-Apartheid Movement. She then earned a Juris Doctor degree at Harvard University, also with honors, in 1987. At Harvard Law School, Granholm served as Editor-in-Chief of the Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review, the leading progressive law journal in the United States. CANNOTANSWER

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Nicola Ferguson Sturgeon (born 19 July 1970) is a Scottish politician who is the current First Minister of Scotland and leader of the Scottish National Party (SNP), in office since November 2014. She is the first woman to hold either position. Sturgeon has been a member of the Scottish Parliament since 1999, first as an additional member for the Glasgow electoral region from 1999 to 2007, and as the member for Glasgow Southside since 2007 (known as Glasgow Govan from 2007 to 2011). A law graduate of the University of Glasgow, Sturgeon worked as a solicitor in Glasgow.

The UK Government held a referendum to decide the future of the United Kingdom's European Union membership in which all 32 council areas in Scotland voted by a majority for the United Kingdom to remain a member of the EU. Across Scotland, 62% of voters backed the UK remaining a member of the EU, with 38% voting for the UK to leave. Overall 52% of voters in the United Kingdom voted to leave the EU, with 48% voting to remain. In response to the result, on 24 June 2016, Sturgeon said that Scottish Government officials would begin planning for a second independence referendum. Sturgeon claimed that it was "clear that the people of Scotland see their future as part of the European Union" and that Scotland had "spoken decisively" with a "strong, unequivocal" vote to remain in the European Union. Sturgeon said it was "democratically unacceptable" that Scotland could be taken out of the EU "against its will". On 24 June, Sturgeon said she would communicate to all EU member states that Scotland had voted to stay in the EU. An emergency Scottish cabinet meeting on 25 June agreed that the Scottish Government would seek to enter negotiations with the EU and its member states, to explore options to protect Scotland's place in the EU." Sturgeon later said that while she believed in Scottish independence, her starting point in these discussions was to protect Scotland's relationship with the EU. May's comments confirmed that the PM wanted the Scottish government to be "fully engaged" in the process. Sturgeon was planning to meet with EU leaders in Brussels to discuss Scotland remaining in the EU. However, Donald Tusk, President of the European Council, said that such discussions would be "not appropriate" considering the "situation in the UK". Nonetheless, she was able to arrange for a meeting on 29 June with European Parliament President Martin Schulz and others. Afterwards, Sturgeon said the reception had been "sympathetic", but she conceded that she did not underestimate the challenges. Sturgeon met with new UK Prime Minister Theresa May in Edinburgh on 15 July 2016 after the latter had made it clear that UK unity was a high priority. Afterwards, Sturgeon said that "It would be inconceivable for any prime minister to seek to stand in the way of a referendum if that is what the Scottish Parliament voted for ... if there's a clear sense that that's what people in Scotland want, would be completely the wrong thing to do." She added a conciliatory note, however in her assessment of May: "She's a woman who has a fairly businesslike way of doing things, which I have too. So I think we can find a way of working together, notwithstanding those disagreements." CANNOTANSWER

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Joe Diffie was born into a musical family in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in 1958. His first musical performance came at age four, when he performed in his aunt's country music band. Diffie's father, Joe R., played guitar and banjo, and his mother sang. Following in his mother's footsteps, Diffie began to sing at an early age, often listening to the albums in his father's record collection.

Third Rock from the Sun was Diffie's highest-charting Top Country Album (where it reached number six), as well as his second consecutive platinum album. It was also the first album that he co-produced, doing so with Johnny Slate. The album included two consecutive number one singles in its title track and in "Pickup Man". The latter of those two songs was Diffie's longest-lasting number one, at four weeks. Both songs also entered the Hot 100, respectively peaking at 84 and 60. In 2005, "Pickup Man" was repurposed by the Applebee's restaurant chain for use in its television commercials. The album's next single, "So Help Me Girl", peaked at number two on the country charts and 84 on the pop charts, in addition to topping the RPM country charts. The song was covered in 1997 by English singer Gary Barlow. Diffie followed the song with "I'm in Love with a Capital 'U'" and "That Road Not Taken", which respectively reached country peaks of 21 and 40. Third Rock from the Sun received critical praise for adding more rock and up-tempo material. Thom Owens wrote that he began "adding more rock flourishes" on this album, and Nash said that Diffie "not only understands the blue-collar ethic from the inside out - he's also familiar with its humorous underbelly." In mid-1995, he recorded the title track for Columbia Records's Runnin' Wide Open, an album comprising NASCAR-themed songs by various artists. He issued two albums later in the year. The first was a Christmas project titled Mr. Christmas, which comprised covers of traditional Christmas songs as well as newly written songs. One of these original songs, "LeRoy the Redneck Reindeer", was issued as a Christmas single late in the year, peaking at number 33 upon its initial release and re-entering the country music charts for the next two years based on Christmas airplay. Of this album, Stephen Thomas Erlewine said, "it's pleasant, but it's not particularly distinguished." His other release that year was the studio album Life's So Funny. It was led off by "Bigger Than the Beatles", the last number one single of his career. The album's other two singles were "C - O - U - N - T - R - Y" and "Whole Lotta Gone" (previously the b-side of "Bigger Than the Beatles"), both of which peaked at 23 on the country music charts in 1996. Country Standard Time critic George Hauenstein praised the album for containing "songs that are slightly different from [what] those other artists sing." Owens thought that it was a "varied collection of ballads and midtempo rockers", but said that it was not "as consistently engaging" as Third Rock from the Sun. Nash gave "Bigger Than the Beatles" a C-minus rating, calling it "just a lame device to evoke the names of beloved rock heroes." CANNOTANSWER


Background: Hugh Edward McElhenny Jr. (born December 31, 1928) is a former professional American football player who was a halfback in the National Football League (NFL) from 1952 to 1964 for the San Francisco 49ers, Minnesota Vikings, New York Giants, and Detroit Lions. He was noted for his explosive, elusive running style and was frequently called "The King" and "Hurryin' Hugh". A member of San Francisco's famed "Million Dollar Backfield" and one of the franchise's most popular players, McElhenny's number 39 jersey is retired by the 49ers and he is a member of the San Francisco 49ers Hall of Fame. McElhenny first rose to stardom as a standout all-around player for Compton Junior College in 1948.
Context: McElhenny gained 11,375 all-purpose yards in his thirteen-year career and retired as one of just three players to eclipse 11,000 yards. He was nicknamed "The King" while with the 49ers because he was "the most feared running back in the NFL." 49ers quarterback Frankie Albert gave him the nickname in the locker room following McElhenny's fourth game as a rookie, in which he returned a punt 96 yards for a touchdown against the Bears. He was elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1970, an honor he described as the highlight of his life. Others inducted in the class were contemporaries Jack Christiansen, Tom Fears, and Pete Pihos. His jersey number 39 is retired by the 49ers, and by virtue of his membership in the pro hall of fame, he was automatically inducted as a charter member of the San Francisco 49ers Hall of Fame in 2009. NFL Network ranked him the fourth most elusive runner of all time in 2007. McElhenny was inducted into State of Washington Sports Hall of Fame in 1963 and the College Football Hall of Fame in 1981. As of 2016, his 12 rushing touchdowns in 1950 and 13 in 1951 both remain in the top ten all-time for a Washington player in a single season, and his 28 career rushing touchdowns tie him for sixth in school history. On January 20, 1985, McElhenny participated in the opening coin toss at Super Bowl XIX at Stanford Stadium, along with U.S. President Ronald Reagan, who participated by video feed from the White House after having been sworn into his second term of office earlier that day. CANNOTANSWER
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Background: The Living End are an Australian punk rock band, which formed in 1994. Since 2002 the line up consists of Chris Cheney (vocals, guitar), Scott Owen (double bass, vocals) and Andy Strachan (drums). The band rose to fame in 1997 after the release of their double A-sided single, "Second Solution" / "Prisoner of Society", which peaked at No. 4 on the ARIA Singles Chart. They have released six studio albums and two reached the No. 1 spot on the ARIA Albums Chart: self-titled album (12 October 1998) and State of Emergency (4 February 2006).
Context: The Living End toured Australia for a year, then in August 1997 they recorded new material to sell at their live shows. Their double A-sided single, "Second Solution" / "Prisoner of Society", was issued in January the following year. Also that month they had supported The Offspring on the Australian leg of their tour. "Second Solution" / "Prisoner of Society" peaked at No. 4 on the ARIA Singles Chart, and was certified double-platinum by ARIA for shipment of 140,000 copies. At the ARIA Music Awards of 1998 it won the Highest Selling Single category; and eventually became the highest selling Australian single of the 1990s. It lasted a record-breaking 47 weeks in the Top 50. In October 1998 it peaked at No. 28 on the New Zealand Singles Chart. It was later featured in the game, Guitar Hero World Tour. "Second Solution" was used in the soundtrack for the 2002 movie, Cheats, which starred Trevor Fehrman, Matthew Lawrence, and Mary Tyler Moore. Early in 1998 "Prisoner of Society" was issued as a separate single in the United Kingdom and, the following year, in the US. The single appeared in the top 200 of the UK Singles Chart, and peaked at No. 23 on the Billboard's Alternative Songs Chart. The band signed with Modular Recordings for the release of their debut self-titled album, which appeared on 12 October 1998, and was co-produced by Gravina with the trio. It peaked at No. 1 on the ARIA Albums Chart, became the then-second highest-selling debut rock album in Australian music history and, by 1999, was certified 4x Platinum for shipment of 280,000 units. Their next Australian single, "Save the Day", was issued in September 1998, a month ahead of the album. It made the top 30 on the ARIA Singles Chart. It became their highest charting hit on the New Zealand Singles Chart, where it reached No. 10. From the album, a total of six singles were released including a live cover version of "Tainted Love", which was issued as a radio-only single on Triple J. At the ARIA Music Awards of 1999, The Living End won two more awards: Best Group and Breakthrough Artist - Album. At the ceremony they were also nominated for Album of the Year and Highest Selling Album. In October 2010 their debut album was listed in the book, 100 Best Australian Albums. CANNOTANSWER
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Pepys was born in Salisbury Court, Fleet Street, London on 23 February 1633, the son of John Pepys (1601-1680), a tailor, and Margaret Pepys (nee Kite; died 1667), daughter of a Whitechapel butcher. His great uncle Talbot Pepys was Recorder and briefly Member of Parliament (MP) for Cambridge in 1625. His father's first cousin Sir Richard Pepys was elected MP for Sudbury in 1640, appointed Baron of the Exchequer on 30 May 1654, and appointed Lord Chief Justice of Ireland on 25 September 1655. Pepys was the fifth of eleven children, but child mortality was high and he was soon the oldest survivor.

The diary gives a detailed account of Pepys' personal life. He liked wine, plays, and the company of other people. He also spent time evaluating his fortune and his place in the world. He was always curious and often acted on that curiosity, as he acted upon almost all his impulses. Periodically, he would resolve to devote more time to hard work instead of leisure. For example, in his entry for New Year's Eve, 1661, he writes: "I have newly taken a solemn oath about abstaining from plays and wine..." The following months reveal his lapses to the reader; by 17 February, it is recorded, "Here I drank wine upon necessity, being ill for the want of it." Pepys was one of the most important civil servants of his age, and was also a widely cultivated man, taking an interest in books, music, the theatre and science. He was passionately interested in music; he composed, sang, and played for pleasure, and even arranged music lessons for his servants. He played the lute, viol, violin, flageolet, recorder and spinet to varying degrees of proficiency. He was also a keen singer, performing at home, in coffee houses, and even in Westminster Abbey. He and his wife took flageolet lessons from master Thomas Greeting. He also taught his wife to sing and paid for dancing lessons for her (although these stopped when he became jealous of the dancing master). Pepys was known to be brutal to his servants, once beating a servant Jane with a broom until she cried. He kept a boy servant whom he frequently beat with a cane, a birch rod, a whip or a rope's end. CANNOTANSWER

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Antonie Philips van Leeuwenhoek (; Dutch: [an'to:ni van 'le:u@(n),huk] ( listen); 24 October 1632 - 26 August 1723) was a Dutch businessman and scientist in the Golden Age of Dutch science and technology. A largely self-taught man in science, he is commonly known as "the Father of Microbiology", and one of the first microscopists and microbiologists. Van Leeuwenhoek is best known for his pioneering work in microscopy and for his contributions toward the establishment of microbiology as a scientific discipline.

Antonie van Leeuwenhoek was born in Delft, Dutch Republic, on 24 October 1632. On 4 November, he was baptized as Thonis. His father, Philips Antonisz van Leeuwenhoek, was a basket maker who died when Antonie was only five years old. His mother, Margaretha (Bel van den Berch), came from a well-to-do brewer's family. She remarried Jacob Jansz Molijn, a painter. Antonie had four older sisters, Margriet, Geertruyt, Neeltje, and Catharina. When he was around ten years old his step-father died. He attended school in Warmond for a short time before being sent to live in Benthuizen with his uncle, an attorney. At the age of 16 he became a bookkeeper's apprentice at a linen-draper's shop in Amsterdam, which was owned by the Scot William Davidson. Van Leeuwenhoek left there after six years. Van Leeuwenhoek married Barbara de Mey in July 1654, with whom he fathered one surviving daughter, Maria (four other children died in infancy). That same year he returned to Delft, where he would live and study for the rest of his life. He opened a draper's shop, which he ran throughout the 1650s. His wife died in 1666, and in 1671, Van Leeuwenhoek remarried to Cornelia Swalmius with whom he had no children. His status in Delft had grown throughout the years. In 1660 he received a lucrative job as chamberlain for the assembly chamber of the Delft sheriffs in the city hall, a position which he would hold for almost 40 years. In 1669 he was appointed as a land surveyor by the court of Holland; at some time he combined it with another municipal job, being the official "wine-gauger" of Delft and in charge of the city wine imports and taxation. Van Leeuwenhoek was a contemporary of another famous Delft citizen, the painter Johannes Vermeer, who was baptized just four days earlier. It has been suggested that he is the man portrayed in two Vermeer paintings of the late 1660s, The Astronomer and The Geographer, but others argue that there appears to be little physical similarity. Because they were both relatively important men in a city with only 24,000 inhabitants, it is likely that they were at least acquaintances; Van Leeuwenhoek acted as the executor of Vermeer's will after the painter died in 1675. CANNOTANSWER

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The Oprah Winfrey Show, often referred to simply as Oprah, is an American syndicated talk show that aired nationally for 25 seasons from September 8, 1986 to May 25, 2011 in Chicago, Illinois. Produced and hosted by its namesake, Oprah Winfrey, it remains the highest-rated daytime talk show in American television history.

Winfrey claims her worst interviewing experience was with Elizabeth Taylor in the show's second season. Just before the interview, Taylor asked Winfrey not to ask any questions about her relationships. Winfrey found this to be a challenge considering Taylor had been married seven times. Taylor returned to the show in 1992, apologized to Winfrey and told her that she was in excruciating back and hip pain at the time. On February 10, 1993, Winfrey sat down with Michael Jackson for what would become the most-watched interview in television history. Jackson, an intensely private entertainer, had not given an interview in 14 years. The event was broadcast live from Jackson's Neverland Ranch and was watched by 90 million people worldwide result his recently studio album Dangerous on the top-ten charts. Jackson discussed missing out on a normal childhood and his strained relationship with his father, Joe Jackson. During the interview, Jackson attempted to dispel many of the rumors surrounding him and told Winfrey he suffered from the skin-pigment disorder known as vitiligo when asked about the change in the color of his skin. While admitting to getting a nose job, he denied all other plastic surgery rumors. Later in the interview, Jackson was joined by his close friend Elizabeth Taylor, her third appearance on the show. Winfrey's interview with Tom Cruise, which was broadcast on May 23, 2005, also gained notoriety. Cruise "jumped around the set, hopped onto a couch, fell rapturously to one knee and repeatedly professed his love for his then-girlfriend, Katie Holmes." This scene quickly became part of American pop-cultural discourse and was heavily parodied in media. Celine Dion appeared on the show 28 times, the most of any celebrity, besides Gayle King, Winfrey's best friend, who appeared 141 times. Winfrey also interviewed Chicago's "Guardian Angels" and Raymond Lear in 1988. CANNOTANSWER

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Michael Brant Shermer was born on September 8, 1954 in Los Angeles. An only child, he was raised in Southern California, primarily in the La Canada Flintridge area. His parents divorced when he was four and later remarried, his mother to a man with three children, who became Shermer's step-sister and two step-brothers, and his father to a woman with whom he had two daughters, Shermer's half-sisters. His father died of a heart attack in 1986, and his mother of brain cancer in 2000.

As of 2007, Shermer lives in Altadena, California. He married Jennifer Graf, a native of Koln, Germany, on June 25, 2014. The ceremony was performed by Shermer's sister, Tina, who was ordained online for the occasion. Politically, Shermer has described himself as a lifelong libertarian. In a 2015 interview, Shermer stated that he prefers to talk about individual issues, lamenting that, in the past, people would refuse to even listen to him because of his self-description as a libertarian. In this same interview, he also mentioned that his research into gun control lead him to believe that some measures to reduce gun-related violence would be beneficial. The first president he voted for was Richard Nixon in 1972, which, in light of the Watergate scandal, he calls his "most embarrassing vote". In 2000, he voted for Harry Browne to "vote his conscience", on the assumption that the winner of the Al Gore - George W. Bush contest would be irrelevant. He later regretted this decision, believing that Bush's foreign policy made the world more dangerous, and he voted for John Kerry in 2004. Shermer has named Thomas Jefferson as his favorite president, for his championing of liberty and his application of scientific thinking to the political, economic, and social spheres. He says of Jefferson, "When he dined alone at the White House there was more intelligence in that room than when John F. Kennedy hosted a dinner there for a roomful of Nobel laureates." Shermer once opposed most gun control measures, primarily because of his beliefs in the principle of increasing individual freedom and decreased government intervention, and also because he has owned guns for most of his life. As an adult, he owned a .357 Magnum pistol for a quarter of a century for protection, although he eventually took it out of the house, and then got rid of it entirely. Though he no longer owns guns, he continues to support the right to own guns to protect one's family. However, by 2013, the data on gun homicides, suicides, and accidental shootings convinced him that some modest gun control measures might be necessary. Shermer also previously favored capital punishment, primarily in sympathy for victims' families, but later he came to oppose the death penalty, partially out of a resistance to giving the government too much power - in light of the hundreds of executed individuals who were later revealed to be innocent - and partially from his view that retributive justice is driven by humanity's baser instincts, and it does not effect restorative justice. He later changed his mind about the issue during research for The Moral Arc, reasoning that "[Capital punishment] is one of these barbaric practices that we need to get rid of. [The United States of] America is really the last of the 19 industrialized democracies to have the death penalty. (...) The Italian enlightenment philosopher Cesare Beccaria, on his book On Crimes and Punishments, put forward the idea that the punishment should fit the crime and that the criteria should be whether it keeps people from committing crimes, and the Death Penalty does not do that." CANNOTANSWER

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Background: Harold Eugene "Gene" Clark (November 17, 1944 - May 24, 1991) was an American singer-songwriter and founding member of the folk rock band the Byrds. He was the Byrds' principal songwriter between 1964 and early 1966, writing most of the band's best-known originals from this period, including "I'll Feel a Whole Lot Better", "She Don't Care About Time", and "Set You Free This Time". Although he did not achieve commercial success as a solo artist, Clark was in the vanguard of popular music during much of his career, prefiguring developments in such disparate subgenres as psychedelic rock, baroque pop, newgrass, country rock, and alternative country.
Context: Clark was invited to join an established regional folk group, the Surf Riders, working out of Kansas City at the Castaways Lounge, owned by Hal Harbaum. On August 12, 1963, he was performing with them when he was discovered by the New Christy Minstrels. They hired him, and he recorded two albums with the ensemble before leaving in early 1964. After hearing the Beatles, Clark quit the New Christy Minstrels and moved to Los Angeles, where he met fellow folkie and Beatles convert Jim (later Roger) McGuinn at the Troubadour Club. In early 1964 they began to assemble a band that would become the Byrds. Clark wrote or co-wrote many of the Byrds' best-known originals from their first three albums, including "I'll Feel a Whole Lot Better", "Set You Free This Time", "Here Without You", "You Won't Have to Cry", "If You're Gone", "The World Turns All Around Her", "She Don't Care About Time" and "Eight Miles High". He initially played rhythm guitar in the band, but relinquished that position to David Crosby and became the tambourine and harmonica player. Bassist Chris Hillman noted years later in an interview remembering Clark, "At one time, he was the power in the Byrds, not McGuinn, not Crosby--it was Gene who would burst through the stage curtain banging on a tambourine, coming on like a young Prince Valiant. A hero, our savior. Few in the audience could take their eyes off this presence. He was the songwriter. He had the 'gift' that none of the rest of us had developed yet.... What deep inner part of his soul conjured up songs like 'Set You Free This Time,' 'I'll Feel A Whole Lot Better,' 'I'm Feelin' Higher,' 'Eight Miles High'? So many great songs! We learned a lot of songwriting from him and in the process learned a little bit about ourselves." A management decision gave McGuinn the lead vocals for their major singles and Bob Dylan songs. This disappointment, combined with Clark's dislike of traveling (including a chronic fear of flying) and resentment by other band members about the extra income he derived from his songwriting, led to internal squabbling, and he left the group in early 1966. He briefly returned to Kansas City before moving back to Los Angeles to form Gene Clark & the Group with Chip Douglas, Joel Larson, and Bill Rhinehart. CANNOTANSWER
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Sandra Day O'Connor (born March 26, 1930) is a retired Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, serving from her appointment in 1981 by Ronald Reagan to 2006. She is the first woman to serve on the Court. Prior to O'Connor's tenure on the Court, she was an elected official and judge in Arizona serving as the first female Majority Leader of a state senate as the Republican leader in the Arizona Senate. Upon her nomination to the Court, O'Connor was confirmed unanimously by the Senate.

In the 1990 and 1995 Missouri v. Jenkins rulings, O'Connor voted with the majority that district courts had no authority to require the state of Missouri to increase school funding in order to counteract racial inequality. In the 1991 Freeman v. Pitts case, O'Connor joined a concurring opinion in a plurality, agreeing that a school district that had formerly been under judicial review for racial segregation could be freed of this review, even though not all desegregation targets had been met. Law professor Herman Schwartz criticized these rulings, writing that in both cases "both the fact and effects of segregation were still present." In 1987's McCleskey v. Kemp, O'Connor joined a 5-4 majority that voted to uphold the death penalty for an African American man, Warren McCleskey, convicted of killing a white police officer, despite statistical evidence that black defendants were more likely to receive the death penalty than others both in Georgia and in the U.S. as a whole. In 1996's Shaw v. Hunt and Shaw v. Reno, O'Connor joined a Rehnquist opinion, following an earlier precedent from an opinion she authored in 1993, in which the Court struck down an electoral districting plan designed to facilitate the election of two black representatives out of twelve from North Carolina, a state that had not had any black representative since Reconstruction, despite being approximately 20% black--the Court held that the districts were unacceptably gerrymandered and O'Connor called the odd shape of the district in question, North Carolina's 12th, "bizarre". Law Professor Herman Schwartz called O'Connor "the Court's leader in its assault on racially oriented affirmative action," although she joined with the Court in upholding the constitutionality of race-based admissions to universities. In late 2008, O'Connor said she believed racial affirmative action should continue to help heal the inequalities created by racial discrimination. She stressed this would not be a cure-all but rather a bandage and that society has to do much more to correct our racial imbalance. In 2003 Justice O'Connor authored a majority Supreme Court opinion (Grutter v. Bollinger) saying racial affirmative action wouldn't be constitutional permanently but long enough to correct past discrimination - an approximation limit of around 25 years, or until 2028. CANNOTANSWER

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Background: Joseph Raymond McCarthy (November 14, 1908 - May 2, 1957) was an American politician who served as U.S. Senator from the state of Wisconsin from 1947 until his death in 1957. Beginning in 1950, McCarthy became the most visible public face of a period in the United States in which Cold War tensions fueled fears of widespread Communist subversion. He is known for alleging that numerous Communists and Soviet spies and sympathizers had infiltrated the United States federal government, universities, film industry, and elsewhere. Ultimately, the smear tactics that he used led him to be censured by the U.S. Senate.
Context: One of the strongest bases of anti-Communist sentiment in the United States was the Catholic community, which constituted over 20% of the national vote. McCarthy identified himself as Catholic, and although the great majority of Catholics were Democrats, as his fame as a leading anti-Communist grew, he became popular in Catholic communities across the country, with strong support from many leading Catholics, diocesan newspapers, and Catholic journals. At the same time, some Catholics did oppose McCarthy, notably the anti-Communist author Father John Francis Cronin and the influential journal Commonweal. McCarthy established a bond with the powerful Kennedy family, which had high visibility among Catholics. McCarthy became a close friend of Joseph P. Kennedy Sr., himself a fervent anti-Communist, and was a frequent guest at the Kennedy compound in Hyannis Port. He dated two of Kennedy's daughters, Patricia and Eunice. It has been stated that McCarthy was godfather to Robert F. Kennedy's first child, Kathleen Kennedy. This claim has been acknowledged by Robert's wife and Kathleen's mother Ethel, though Kathleen later claimed that she looked at her christening certificate and that her actual godfather was Manhattanville College of the Sacred Heart professor Daniel Walsh. Robert Kennedy was chosen by McCarthy as a counsel for his investigatory committee, but resigned after six months due to disagreements with McCarthy and Committee Counsel Roy Marcus Cohn. Joseph Kennedy had a national network of contacts and became a vocal supporter, building McCarthy's popularity among Catholics and making sizable contributions to McCarthy's campaigns. The Kennedy patriarch hoped that one of his sons would be president. Mindful of the anti-Catholic prejudice Al Smith faced during his 1928 campaign for that office, Joseph Kennedy supported McCarthy as a national Catholic politician who might pave the way for a younger Kennedy's presidential candidacy. Unlike many Democrats, John F. Kennedy, who served in the Senate with McCarthy from 1953 until the latter's death in 1957, never attacked McCarthy. McCarthy had refused to campaign for Kennedy's 1952 opponent, Republican incumbent Henry Cabot Lodge Jr., due to his friendship with the Kennedys. When a speaker at a February 1952 final club dinner stated that he was glad McCarthy had not attended Harvard College, an angry Kennedy jumped up, denounced the speaker, and left the event. Asked by Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. why he avoided criticism of McCarthy, Kennedy said, "Hell, half my voters in Massachusetts look on McCarthy as a hero." CANNOTANSWER
Question: What support he provide for Roman Catholics?. Whats the answer?


Gottfried Wilhelm (von) Leibniz (; German: ['gotfRi:t 'vIlhelm fon 'laIbnIts] or ['laIpnIts]; French:

Leibniz's philosophical thinking appears fragmented, because his philosophical writings consist mainly of a multitude of short pieces: journal articles, manuscripts published long after his death, and many letters to many correspondents. He wrote only two book-length philosophical treatises, of which only the Theodicee of 1710 was published in his lifetime. Leibniz dated his beginning as a philosopher to his Discourse on Metaphysics, which he composed in 1686 as a commentary on a running dispute between Nicolas Malebranche and Antoine Arnauld. This led to an extensive and valuable correspondence with Arnauld; it and the Discourse were not published until the 19th century. In 1695, Leibniz made his public entree into European philosophy with a journal article titled "New System of the Nature and Communication of Substances". Between 1695 and 1705, he composed his New Essays on Human Understanding, a lengthy commentary on John Locke's 1690 An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, but upon learning of Locke's 1704 death, lost the desire to publish it, so that the New Essays were not published until 1765. The Monadologie, composed in 1714 and published posthumously, consists of 90 aphorisms. Leibniz met Spinoza in 1676, read some of his unpublished writings, and has since been suspected of appropriating some of Spinoza's ideas. While Leibniz admired Spinoza's powerful intellect, he was also forthrightly dismayed by Spinoza's conclusions, especially when these were inconsistent with Christian orthodoxy. Unlike Descartes and Spinoza, Leibniz had a thorough university education in philosophy. He was influenced by his Leipzig professor Jakob Thomasius, who also supervised his BA thesis in philosophy. Leibniz also eagerly read Francisco Suarez, a Spanish Jesuit respected even in Lutheran universities. Leibniz was deeply interested in the new methods and conclusions of Descartes, Huygens, Newton, and Boyle, but viewed their work through a lens heavily tinted by scholastic notions. Yet it remains the case that Leibniz's methods and concerns often anticipate the logic, and analytic and linguistic philosophy of the 20th century. CANNOTANSWER

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Born Mario Brown, he is the son of gospel recording artist Vickie Winans (nee Bowman) and her first husband, Bishop Ronald Brown. He is also the stepson of his mother's second husband, gospel singer, Pastor Marvin Winans whom she married in 1978. Marvin and Vickie Winans had twos sons, Josiah Winans, and Marvin Winans Jr. Vickie and Marvin Winans divorced in 1995 and she has since remarried.

In the mid-1990s, Mario was signed to a production deal with Dallas Austin's Rowdy Records thru producers Tim & Bob. He lived with the duo at their house studio until his breakthrough came as a Christian songwriter, musician and co-producer on R. Kelly's "I Can't Sleep Baby" and "You Remind Me of Something" (plus three more songs) from the R. Kelly album in 1995. He also worked with Pebbles and 98 Degrees. Winans eventually released his debut album Story of My Heart on Motown in 1997. While the song "Don't Know" reached the US R&B top 50, the album failed to chart. Soon after, Winans teamed up with Sean Combs, then known as Puff Daddy and his Bad Boy roster, playing drums on "Come with Me" by Puff Daddy and Jimmy Page, based on the classic Led Zeppelin song "Kashmir" from their 1975 album Physical Graffiti, and featured on the soundtrack to the 1998 remake of Godzilla. Over the next several years Winans produced songs for Bad Boy artists including Diddy, The Notorious B.I.G., Lil' Kim, Faith Evans, Loon, Black Rob, and 112. He has also worked with notable artists outside Bad Boy including Destiny's Child, Mary J. Blige, Whitney Houston, Jennifer Lopez, Ice Cube, Tamia, Eminem and Brian McKnight. Winans co-wrote the two-part song "I Need a Girl" with P. Diddy and appeared on "Pt. 2" along with Loon, Ginuwine, and Diddy, which became a hit recording in 2002. He also produced the Bad Boy remix compilation We Invented the Remix in 2002. CANNOTANSWER

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That Was the Week That Was, informally TWTWTW or TW3, was a satirical television comedy programme on BBC Television in 1962 and 1963. It was devised, produced and directed by Ned Sherrin and presented by David Frost. An American version by the same name aired on NBC from 1964 to 1965, also featuring Frost. The programme is considered a significant element of the satire boom in the UK in the early 1960s.

Prime Minister Harold Macmillan was initially supportive, chastising the Postmaster General Reginald Bevins for threatening to "do something about it". However, the BBC received many complaints from organisations and establishment figures. Lord Aldington, vice-chairman of the Conservative Party, wrote to the BBC's director-general Hugh Carleton Greene that Frost had a "hatred" of the Prime Minister, which "he finds impossible to control". The programme also attracted complaints from the Boy Scout Association, upset by an item questioning the sexuality of its founder Lord Baden-Powell, and the government of Cyprus, which claimed that a joke about Archbishop Makarios, the country's ruler, was a "gross violation of internationally accepted ethics". Historians have identified TW3 as breaking ground in comedy and broadcasting. Graham McCann said it challenged the "convention that television should not acknowledge that it is television; the show made no attempt to hide its cameras, allowed the microphone boom to intrude and often revealed other nuts and bolts of studio technology." In the 1960s, this was unusual and gave the programme an exciting, modern feel. TW3 also flouted conventions by adopting "a relaxed attitude to its running time: loosely structured and open-ended, it seemed to last just as long as it wanted and needed to last, even if that meant going beyond the advertised time for the ending [...] the real controversy of course, was caused by the content." Its subject matter has also been praised. McCann says: "TW3...did its research, thought its arguments through and seemed unafraid of anything or anyone.... Every hypocrisy was highlighted and each contradiction was held up for sardonic inspection. No target was deemed out of bounds: royalty was reviewed by republicans; rival religions were subjected to no-nonsense 'consumer reports'; pompous priests were symbolically defrocked; corrupt businessmen, closet bigots and chronic plagiarists were exposed; and topical ideologies were treated to swingeing critiques." CANNOTANSWER

Why did frost hate the prime minister?


Gerald of Wales (Latin: Giraldus Cambrensis; Welsh: Gerallt Gymro; French: Gerald de Barri; c. 1146 - c. 1223) was a Cambro-Norman archdeacon of Brecon and historian. As a royal clerk to the king and two archbishops, he travelled widely and wrote extensively. He both studied and taught in France and visited Rome several times, meeting the Pope. He was nominated for several bishoprics but turned them down in the hope of becoming bishop of St Davids, but was unsuccessful despite considerable support.

Born c. 1146 at Manorbier Castle in Pembrokeshire, Wales, he was of mixed Norman and Welsh descent. Gerald was the youngest son of William FitzOdo de Barry or Barri, the common ancestor of the Barry family in Ireland, a retainer of Arnulf de Montgomery and Gerald FitzWalter of Windsor, and one of the most powerful Anglo-Norman barons in Wales. His mother was Angharad FitzGerald, a daughter of Gerald FitzWalter of Windsor, Constable of Pembroke Castle, and his wife Nest ferch Rhys, daughter of Rhys ap Tewdwr, the last King of South Wales. Through his mother Angharad, Gerald was a nephew of David fitzGerald, Bishop of St David's, as well as a great-nephew of Gruffydd ap Rhys, the son and heir of Rhys ap Tewdwr, and a cousin of Rhys ap Gruffydd, the famous Arglwydd Rhys and his family. Gerald received his initial education at the Benedictine house of Gloucester, followed by a period of study in Paris from c. 1165-74, where he studied the trivium. He was employed by Richard of Dover, the Archbishop of Canterbury, on various ecclesiastical missions in Wales, wherein he distinguished himself for his efforts to remove supposed abuses of consanguinity and tax laws flourishing in the Welsh church at the time. He was appointed in 1174 archdeacon of Brecon, to which was attached a residence at Llanddew. He obtained this position by reporting the existence of the previous archdeacon's mistress; the man was promptly sacked. While administrating this post, Gerald collected tithes of wool and cheese from the populace; the income from the archdeaconry supported him for many years. Upon the death of his uncle, the Bishop of St David's, in 1176, the chapter nominated Gerald as his successor. St David's had the long-term aim of becoming independent of Canterbury, and the chapter may have thought that Gerald was the man to take up its cause. Henry II of England, fresh from his struggle with Thomas Becket, promptly rejected Gerald, possibly because his Welsh blood and ties to the ruling family of Deheubarth made him seem like a troublesome prospect, in favour of one of his Norman retainers Peter de Leia. According to Gerald, the king said at the time: "It is neither necessary or expedient for king or archbishop that a man of great honesty or vigour should become Bishop of St. David's, for fear that the Crown and Canterbury should suffer thereby. Such an appointment would only give strength to the Welsh and increase their pride". The chapter acquiesced in the decision; and Gerald, disappointed with the result, withdrew to the University of Paris. From c. 1179-8, he studied and taught canon law and theology. He returned to England and spent an additional five years studying theology. In 1180, he received a minor appointment from the Bishop of St. David's, which he soon resigned. CANNOTANSWER

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Sir John Major  (born 29 March 1943) is a British politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and Leader of the Conservative Party from 1990 to 1997. He served as Foreign Secretary and then Chancellor of the Exchequer in the Thatcher Government from 1989 to 1990, and was the Member of Parliament (MP) for Huntingdon from 1979 until his retirement in 2001. Since the death of Margaret Thatcher in 2013, Major has been the oldest living former Prime Minister. Born in St Helier, Surrey, Major grew up in Brixton.

Major's second honeymoon as Prime Minister following his election victory did not last long. On 16 September 1992, the UK was forced to exit the Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM) in difficult circumstances, in a day which would come to be known as "Black Wednesday", with billions of pounds wasted in a futile attempt to defend the value of sterling. The upheaval caused by the day's events was such that Major came close to resigning as Prime Minister, preparing an unsent letter of resignation addressed to the Queen. Although Major continued to defend Britain's membership of the ERM, stating that "the ERM was the medicine to cure the ailment, but it was not the ailment", the disaster of Black Wednesday left the Government's economic credibility irreparably damaged. Major kept his economic team unchanged for seven months after Black Wednesday before eventually sacking Norman Lamont as Chancellor of the Exchequer, replacing him with Kenneth Clarke. This came after months of press criticism of Lamont and a heavy defeat at a by-election in Newbury. His delay in sacking Lamont was exploited by Major's critics both inside and outside of his party, who used it to claim Major was too indecisive. Immediately after Black Wednesday, the Conservatives fell far behind Labour in the opinion polls and Major would never be able to regain the lead for the rest of his time as Prime Minister, being trounced in local council elections and the European parliament elections on the way, as well as suffering a string of by-election defeats which gradually wiped out the Conservative majority. Within a year of his triumphant election victory, public opinion on Major plummeted, with Black Wednesday, mine closures, the Maastricht dispute and high unemployment being cited as four key areas of dissatisfaction with the Prime Minister. Newspapers which traditionally supported the Conservatives and had championed Major at the election were now being severely critical of him almost daily. The UK's forced withdrawal from the ERM was succeeded by a partial economic recovery with a new policy of flexible exchange rates, allowing lower interest rates and devaluation, thereby increasing demand for UK goods in export markets. The recession that had started shortly before Major became Prime Minister was declared over in April 1993, when the economy grew by 0.2%. Unemployment also started to fall; it had stood at nearly 3 million by the end of 1992, but the spring of 1997 it had fallen to 1.7 million. CANNOTANSWER


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Jerry Alan West was born into a poor household in Chelyan, West Virginia. He was the fifth of six children of Cecil Sue West, a housewife, and Howard Stewart West, a coal mine electrician. West was previously an aggressive child in his youth, until his brother's death at the Korean War aged 21 turned him into a shy and introverted boy when Jerry was 12/13. He was so small, frail, and weak that he needed lots of vitamin injections from his doctor and was kept apart from children's sports, to prevent him from getting seriously injured.

West graduated from East Bank High School in 1956, and more than 60 universities showed interest in him. He eventually chose to stay in his home state and attend West Virginia University (WVU), located in Morgantown. In his freshman year (1956-57), West was a member of the WVU freshman squad that achieved a perfect record of 17 wins without a loss over the course of the season; other team members included Jay Jacobs and Willie Akers. In his first varsity year under head coach Fred Schaus, West scored 17.8 points per game and averaged 11.1 rebounds; he also started in all 28 games while shooting 49.6% from the field and 73.2% from the free throw line. These performances earned him a multitude of honors, among them an All-American Third Team call-up; First Team All-Southern Conference; Southern Conference Tournament Most Valuable Player Award and First Team honors; Chuck Taylor-Converse Second-team All-American honors; and Associated Press and United Press International Third-team All-American honors. The Mountaineers went 26-2 that year, ending the season with a loss to Manhattan College in post-season tournament play. During his junior year (1958-59), West scored 26.6 points per game and grabbed 12.3 rebounds per game. He tied the NCAA five-game tournament record of 160 points (32.0 points per game) and led all scorers and rebounders in every West Virginia game, including getting 28 points and 11 rebounds in a 71-70 loss to California in the final. West was named Most Outstanding Player of that year's Final Four. Further awards were All-American, Southern Conference Tournament MVP and Southern Conference Player of the Year and Athlete of the Year. He was also named to be a member of the U.S. Pan American Games basketball team that won the gold medal. West demonstrated his tenacity for the game in a match against the Kentucky Wildcats. He broke his nose during an incident in the game, but he continued to play despite intense pain and having to breathe through his mouth. He scored 19 points in the second-half, leading WVU to an upset victory. In his final collegiate season (1959-60) West enjoyed several career highs, such as scoring 29.3 points per game, a 134 season-assists, 16.5 rebounds per game, and a shooting average of 50.4% from the field, 76.6% from the free throw line. He was honored again with several awards: a call-up to the All-American selection, and being voted Southern Conference MVP. West's best performance was a game against Virginia, in which he grabbed 16 rebounds and scored 40 points. Moreover, during that final year, he had 30 double-doubles and fifteen 30-point games. In his collegiate career, West totaled 2,309 points and 1,240 rebounds. He averaged 24.8 points per game and 13.3 rebounds. As of 2011, West holds 12 WVU all-time records. West and Oscar Robertson co-captained the U.S. men's basketball team that won the gold medal at the 1960 Summer Olympics. CANNOTANSWER