Airship Hindenburg Collection. Werner Franz, the last surviving crew member of the zeppelin Hindenburg. He was a 14 year-old cabin boy on the Hindenburg's final voyage

Werner Franz was a 14-year-old cabin boy when he survived the destruction of the "Hindenburg" in 1937. Franz was cleaning china in the officers' quarters when the 804-foot-long German ship, held aloft by hydrogen, caught fire over Lakehurst, N.J. He escaped by breaking through the cloth of a nearby hatch.
 He is now the only survivor of the Hindenburg"s crew that survived the 1937 disaster.


The following story is from the Stars and Stripes archives, published in 1987:

THE HINDENBURG'S 15-year-old cabin boy was cleaning china in the officers' quarters when an explosion in the rear of the 804-foot airship shook it from front to back.
Fifty years-later, Werner Franz remembers exactly what happened.
"All the china came flying out of the cabinets," he said.
Franz ran out into a passageway. There was no time to be scared.
"It happened so fast, it was like a movie passing by," he said. "You act instinctively.
As the ship began to lurch at its mooring, he grabbed a girder and dangled in the air.
"As I hung there, I had a vision of my life passing by," he said.
The Hindenburg was engulfed in flames, the tail crashing to the ground and the nose settling more slowly as Franz made his way, coughing and choking, to the nearest hatch.
Pull cords opened the thick cloth covers of the hatches, but Franz didn't use one. "I just jumped," he said. "The cloth broke through. When the cook (Xaver Meier) saw me jump out of the hatch, he jumped out after me."
Franz stumbled away from the burning airship.
"When I got out, there were so many people running around screaming," he said. "I was in a daze. Some of the landing crew went inside the ship to help the crew and passengers get out."
Franz normally would have been in a landing detail that required several crewmembers to move to the nose of the ship as ballast. "This time six or eight men were sent to the front by the captain — all died," he said.
News of the Hindenburg disaster quickly reached Germany.
"My parents knew right afterwards what had happened — it was on the radio wires," he said. "At first I was on the death list. An hour later they updated it."
Franz and the other surviving crewmen spent 14 days at the air station, living with the Lakehurst airship crew.
The Germans were then driven to New York and put on a ship for Bremerhaven.
"The healthy ones came back first, and the badly burned ones came back later," he said:
Most of the crew transferred to the Graf Zeppelin I, built before the Hindenburg, upon returning to Germany. The Graf Zeppelin made 40 flights, delivering mail and making publicity appearances. It carried no passengers, and was dissembled in Frankfurt in 1940.
Franz chose to work in the airship ticket office in Zeppelinheim, Germany, then started an apprenticeship as an instrument maker. He joined the German air force in 1941.
Now retired, Franz lives in Bad Soden, a town near Frankfurt. He said six or eight Hindenburg crewmembers are still alive. All live in Germany, except one man who lives in Austria or Switzerland, he said. Franz keeps in touch with some of them.
"Most have contact, know where the others live," he said. "We had close ties between us all."
Franz said he prefers to remember the thrill of being a young boy traveling by airship to South America rather than the disaster. He was chosen for airship duty by an official of the Luftschiffbau Zeppelin (Airship Construction Company Zeppelin) who looked for prospective crewmembers at the Frankfurter Hof hotel, where Franz worked as a waiter.
When the opportunity to join the Hindenburg crew came, Franz was ready. "It's a one-shot deal," he said. "You don't turn down a chance like that!"
He made three trips between Germany and South America in 1936 and one in 1937. All of the crewmembers were considerably older than he was — the rest of the crew survivors are in their 80s. "But they took me in as one of them," he said.
An official review board determined the Hindenburg disaster to be freak accident. Franz, however, like many others, believes sabotage was involved. "To have the gas released from a hole, then you need a spark, to have all those things at the same time, just as you're landing ..."
But he believes the question is academic now.
"It doesn't really matter," he said. "It's already happened. It will always be a question."
 
The Hindenburg disaster took place on Thursday, May 6, 1937, as the German passenger airship LZ 129 Hindenburg caught fire and was destroyed during its attempt to dock with its mooring mast at the Lakehurst Naval Air Station, which is located adjacent to the borough of Lakehurst, New Jersey. Of the 97 people on board^{[N 1]} (36 passengers, 61 crew), there were 35 fatalities; there was also one death among the ground crew.
The disaster was the subject of spectacular newsreel coverage, photographs, and Herbert Morrison's recorded radio eyewitness report from the landing field, which was broadcast the next day. A variety of hypotheses have been put forward for both the cause of ignition and the initial fuel for the ensuing fire. The incident shattered public confidence in the giant, passenger-carrying rigid airship and marked the end of the airship era.

At 7:25 p.m. local time, the Hindenburg caught fire and quickly became engulfed in flames. Where the fire started is unknown; several witnesses on the port side saw yellow-red flames first jump forward of the top fin, around the vent of cell 4. Other witnesses on the port side noted the fire actually began just ahead of the horizontal port fin, only then followed by flames in front of the upper fin. One, with views of the starboard side, saw flames beginning lower and farther aft, near cell 1. No. 2 Helmsman Helmut Lau also testified seeing the flames spreading from cell 4 into starboard. Although there were five newsreel cameramen and at least one spectator known to be filming the landing, no camera was rolling when the fire started.
Wherever it started, the flames quickly spread forward. Instantly, a water tank and a fuel tank burst out of the hull due to the shock of the blast. This shock also caused a crack behind the passenger decks, and the rear of the structure imploded. Buoyancy was lost on the stern of the ship, and the bow lurched upwards as the falling stern stayed in trim.

As the Hindenburg's tail crashed into the ground, a burst of flame came out of the nose, killing nine of the 12 crew members in the bow. There was still gas in the bow section of the ship, so it continued to point upward as the stern collapsed down. The crack behind the passenger decks collapsed inward, causing the gas cell to explode. The scarlet lettering "Hindenburg" was erased by flames while the airship's bow descended. The airship's gondola wheel touched the ground, causing the bow to bounce up slightly as one final gas cell burned away. At this point, most of the fabric on the hull had also burned away and the bow finally crashed to the ground. Although the hydrogen had finished burning, the Hindenburg's diesel fuel burned for several more hours.

The time it took for the airship to be destroyed has been disputed. Some observers believe it took 34 seconds, others say it took 32 or 37 seconds. Since none of the newsreel cameras were filming the airship when the fire started, the time of the start can only be estimated from various eyewitness accounts. One careful analysis of the flame spread by Addison Bain of NASA gives the flame front spread rate across the fabric skin as about 49 ft/s (15 m/s), which would have resulted in a total destruction time of about 16 seconds (245 m / 15 m/s=16.3 s). Some of the duralumin framework of the airship was salvaged and shipped back to Germany, where it was recycled and used in the construction of military aircraft for the Luftwaffe, as were the frames of the LZ 127 Graf Zeppelin and LZ 130 Graf Zeppelin II when both were scrapped in 1940.

The disaster is well recorded due to the significant extent of newsreel coverage and photographs, as well as Herbert Morrison's eyewitness radio report for station WLS in Chicago, which was broadcast the next day. Heavy publicity about the first transatlantic passenger flight of the year by Zeppelin to the U.S. attracted a large number of journalists to the landing. (The airship had already made one round trip from Germany to Brazil that year.)

Morrison's broadcast remains one of the most famous in history. Parts of it were later dubbed onto the newsreel footage, giving the impression that the words and film were recorded together. His plaintive "Oh, the humanity!" has been widely used in popular culture. Part of the poignancy of his commentary is due to its being recorded at a slightly slower speed, so that when it is played back at normal speed, it seems to have a faster delivery and higher pitch. When corrected, his account is less frantic sounding, though still impassioned.

Airship Hindenburg Collection. Dr. Horst Schirmer, the son of Dr. Max Schirmer - an engineer and aerodynamicist that designed important features of the ship. He flew aboard Hindenburg as a child

Dr. Horst Schirmer is the child of Dr. Max Schirmer, who was an engineer and aerodynamicist who designed important features of the ship, and who flew aboard Hindenburg as a child.

Dr. Schirmer is one of the few people still alive who actually flew on the Hindenburg - but not during its fateful crash in 1937.

When he was just 5 years old, Dr. Horst Schirmer's father, Max, walked the little boy into a hangar in Germany and stood him under the 804-foot bulk of  Hindenburg.
The aeronautical engineer wanted to show his son how lighter-than-air hydrogen made the 15-story tall dirigible he had helped design float, as if it was weightless. "You can lift this ship up," Max Schirmer said, putting the boy's hand on the bottom of the control car. "Push."
"So I lifted the ship," Horst Schirmer recalled. ...

LZ 129 Hindenburg (Luftschiff Zeppelin #129; Registration: D-LZ 129) was a large German commercial passenger-carrying rigid airship, the lead ship of the Hindenburg class, the longest class of flying machine and the largest airship by envelope volume. It was designed and built by the Zeppelin Company (Luftschiffbau Zeppelin GmbH) on the shores of Lake Constance in Friedrichshafen and was operated by the German Zeppelin Airline Company (Deutsche Zeppelin-Reederei). The airship flew from March 1936 until destroyed by fire 14 months later on May 6, 1937, at the end of the first North American transatlantic journey of its second season of service. Thirty-six people died in the accident, which occurred while landing at Lakehurst Naval Air Station in Manchester Township, New Jersey, United States.
Hindenburg was named after the late Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg (1847–1934), President of Germany (1925–1934).
The Hindenburg had a duralumin structure, incorporating 15 Ferris wheel-like bulkheads along its length, with 16 cotton gas bags fitted between them. The bulkheads were braced to each other by longitudinal girders placed around their circumferences. The airship's outer skin was of cotton doped with a mixture of reflective materials intended to protect the gas bags within from radiation, both ultraviolet (which would damage them) and infrared (which might cause them to overheat). The gas cells were made by a new method pioneered by Goodyear using multiple layers of gelatinized latex rather than the previous goldbeater's skins. In 1931 the Zeppelin Company purchased 5,000 kg (11,000 lb) of duralumin salvaged from the wreckage of the October 1930 crash of the British airship R101, which might have been re-cast and used in the construction of the Hindenburg.

The 1936 transatlantic season

The Hindenburg made 17 round trips across the Atlantic Ocean in 1936, its first and only full year of service, with ten trips to the United States and seven to Brazil. In July 1936, the airship also completed a record Atlantic double crossing in five days, 19 hours and 51 minutes. Among the famous passengers who travelled on the airship was German heavyweight boxing champion Max Schmeling, who returned home on the Hindenburg to a hero's welcome after knocking out Joe Louis in New York on June 19, 1936. During the 1936 season the airship flew 191,583 miles (308,323 km), carried 2,798 passengers, and transported 160 tons of freight and mail, a level of success that encouraged the Luftschiffbau Zeppelin Company to plan the expansion of its airship fleet and transatlantic services.
The airship was reportedly so stable that a pen or pencil could be stood on a table without falling. Its launches were so smooth that passengers often missed them, believing that the airship was still docked to its mooring mast. The cost of one way passage between Germany and the United States was US$400, an especially considerable sum in the Depression era. Hindenburg passengers were generally affluent, including many public figures, entertainers, noted sportsmen, political figures, and leaders of industry. The Hindenburg was used again for propaganda purposes when it flew over the Olympic Stadium in Berlin on August 1 during the opening ceremonies of the 1936 Summer Olympic Games. Shortly before the arrival of Adolf Hitler to declare the Games open, the airship crossed low over the packed stadium while trailing the Olympic flag on a long weighted line suspended from its gondola.
During 1936 the Hindenburg had a special Blüthner aluminium grand piano placed on board in the music salon, although the instrument was removed after the first year to save weight. Over the winter of 1936–37, several alterations were made to the airship's structures. The greater lift capacity allowed ten passenger cabins to be added, nine with two beds and one with four beds, thus increasing the total passenger capacity to 72. In addition, "gutters" were installed to collect rain for use as water ballast: taking on rainwater ballast to compensate for the weight of fuel consumed during a voyage was more economical than venting hydrogen.
Another change was the installation of an experimental aircraft hook-on trapeze based on the system similar to the one used on the U.S. Navy Goodyear-Zeppelin built airships Akron and Macon. This was intended to allow customs officials to be flown out to the Hindenburg to process passengers before landing and to retrieve mail from the ship for early delivery. Experimental hook-ons and takeoffs were attempted on March 11 and April 27, 1937, but were not very successful, owing to turbulence around the area where the hook-up trapeze had been mounted. The loss of the ship ended all prospects of further testing. 

The final flight: May 3–6, 1937

After making the first South American flight of the 1937 season in late March, Hindenburg left Frankfurt for Lakehurst on the evening of May 3, on its first scheduled round trip between Europe and North America that season. Although strong headwinds slowed the crossing, the flight had otherwise proceeded routinely as it approached for a landing three days later.

The Hindenburg's arrival on May 6 was delayed for several hours to avoid a line of thunderstorms passing over Lakehurst, but around 7:00 pm the airship was cleared for its final approach to the Naval Air Station, which it made at an altitude of 650 ft (200 m) with Captain Max Pruss at the helm. Four minutes after ground handlers grabbed hold of a pair of landing lines dropped from the nose of the ship at 7:21 pm, the Hindenburg suddenly burst into flames and dropped to the ground in just 37 seconds. Of the 36 passengers and 61 crew on board, 13 passengers and 22 crew died, as well as one member of the ground crew, making a total of 36 lives lost in the disaster.

The exact location of the initial fire, its source of ignition, and the initial source of fuel remain subjects of debate. The cause of the accident has never been determined conclusively, although many hypotheses have been proposed. Escaping hydrogen gas will burn after mixing with air and will explode when mixed with air in the right proportions. The covering also contained material (such as cellulose nitrate and aluminium flakes) which Addison Bain and other experts claim are highly flammable when combined in the right proportions. This theory is highly controversial and has been rejected by other researchers because the outer skin burns too slowly to account for the rapid flame propagation and hydrogen fires had previously destroyed many other airships. The duralumin framework of Hindenburg was salvaged and shipped back to Germany. There the scrap was recycled and used in the construction of military aircraft for the Luftwaffe, as were the frames of Graf Zeppelin and Graf Zeppelin II when they were scrapped in 1940.

 

Success 2013: Robert Feenie, one of Canada’s most recognized and celebrated chefs. He is the driving culinary force behind Cactus Restaurants Ltd., the award-winning collection of casual fine dining restaurants in BC and Alberta

Robert Feenie is a Canadian chef based in Vancouver, British Columbia.

 His interest in cooking began during a high school exchange program in Europe. He attended Dubrulle Culinary Institute (now part of The Art Institute of Vancouver).After graduation, Feenie worked as a sous chef at various restaurants, including The Rim Rock Café and Oyster Bar in Whistler, British Columbia and The Cherrystone Cove and Le Crocodile in Vancouver. While at Le Crocodile, Feenie worked stages in France and the United States. Later, Feenie opened Accolade Restaurant in the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Toronto.
Rob Feenie was the founder, co-owner and executive chef of Lumière and Feenie's in VancouverThose restaurants garnered critical and public success, including being awarded the prestigious Relais Gourmand designation, four stars from the Mobil Travel Guide and the AAA Diamond Award. In late 2007, Feenie was involved in a dispute with his then business partners. Ultimately, Feenie severed ties with them and left Lumière and Feenie's. On February 5, 2008, Feenie joined casual dining chain Cactus Club Cafe as a "Food Concept Architect"^.
Feenie is also a chef-consultant, who restructured Le Regence in the Hotel Plaza Athene.In July 2004, Chef Feenie was invited to New York by the Canadian Consulate to create an extravagant lunch and dinner at the famous James Beard House in celebration of Canada Day.^{[citation needed]} In February 2009, Feenie became the first "Hokanson Chef in Residence" at NAIT.
Feenie has published three cookbooks, starred in New Classics with Rob Feenie on Food Network Canada, and in 2005 was the first Canadian to win on the popular television show, Iron Chef America, by defeating Chef Masaharu Morimoto.

TV appearances

• New Classics with Chef Rob Feenie - Host
• Iron Chef America - Challenger
• White Spot commercials
• Top Chef Canada - season 1 episode 11

Books

• Rob Feenie Cooks at Lumière
• Lumière Light
• Feenie's
• Vancouver Cooks (Contributor)

Success 2013: Alain Delon, famous French-Swiss actor. He was awarded the Best Actor César Award for his role in Bertrand Blier's Notre histoire (1984)

Alain Fabien Maurice Marcel Delon is a French-Swiss actor. He rose quickly to stardom, and by the age of 23 was already being compared to French actors such as Gérard Philipe and Jean Marais, as well as American actor James Dean. He was even called the male Brigitte Bardot. Over the course of his career, Delon has worked with many well-known directors, including Luchino Visconti, Jean-Luc Godard, Jean-Pierre Melville, Michelangelo Antonioni and Louis Malle.
Delon acquired Swiss citizenship on September 23, 1999, and the company managing products sold under his name is based in Geneva. He is a citizen of the community of Chêne-Bougeries in the canton of Geneva.

At Cannes, Delon was seen by a talent scout for David O. Selznick. After a screen test Selznick offered him a contract, provided he learned English. Delon returned to Paris to study the language, but when he met French director Yves Allégret, he was convinced that he should stay in France to begin his career. Selznick allowed Delon to cancel his contract, and Allégret gave him his debut in the film Quand la Femme s'en Mêle (When the Woman Butts In). Delon then appeared in the film Faibles Femmes (Women Are Weak/Three Murderesses). This was also the very first of his films to be seen in America, where it became a huge success.
In 1960, Delon appeared in René Clément's Purple Noon, which was based on the Patricia Highsmith novel The Talented Mr. Ripley. He played protagonist Tom Ripley to critical acclaim; Highsmith herself was also a fan of his portrayal. He then appeared in Luchino Visconti's Rocco and His Brothers. Critic Bosley Crowther of the New York Times said Delon's work was : "touchingly pliant and expressive." John Beaufort in the Christian Science Monitor said:

"Rocco's heartbroken steadfastness furnishes the film with the foremost of its ironic tragedies ... [I]ts believability rests finally on Mr. Delon's compelling performance."

Delon made his stage debut in 1961 in John Ford’s play Tis Pity She’s a Whore alongside Romy Schneider in Paris. Visconti directed the production. Delon would work with him again for Il Gattopardo (The Leopard). Delon also worked with Jean-Pierre Melville, who directed him in Un Flic, Le Cercle Rouge, and Le Samouraï.
In 1964, the Cinémathèque Française held a showcase of Delon's films and Delon started a production company, Delbeau Production, with Georges Beaume. They produced a film called L’insoumis, which had to be re-edited because of legal issues. Delon then started his own production company, Adel, and starred in the company’s first film, Jeff. Delon followed the success of the film with Borsalino, which became one of France’s highest grossing films of the time. In 1973, he made a duet with the French pop singer Dalida on "Paroles, paroles". He also played Johnston McCulley's popular masked hero in 1975's Zorro. In 1976, Delon starred in Monsieur Klein, which won him the César awards (French equivalent of Oscars).

He was awarded the Best Actor César Award for his role in Bertrand Blier's Notre histoire (1984), and portrayed the aristocratic dandy Baron de Charlus in a film adaptation of Marcel Proust's novel Swann in Love in the same year. Then followed a string of box office failures in the late 1980s and 1990s, culminating in the failure of Patrice Leconte's Une chance sur deux. Delon announced his decision to give up acting in 1997, although he still occasionally accepts roles.
In 1990, he worked with auteur Jean-Luc Godard, on Nouvelle vague, in which he played twins. In 2003, the Walter Reade Theater showed a series of Delon's films under the aegis, Man in the Shadows: The Films of Alain Delon.

On 20 March 1959, Delon was engaged to actress Romy Schneider, whom he met when they co-starred in the film Christine (1958). During their relationship, he had an affair with German actress, singer and model Nico. On 11 August 1962, Nico gave birth to a son, Christian Aaron "Ari", fathered by Delon. The child was raised mostly by Delon's parents. Nico died in 1988, from a bicycling accident.
In December 1963, Schneider and Delon decided to break the engagement. On 13 August 1964, Delon married Nathalie Barthélemy. Their son, Anthony Delon, was born in September. The couple divorced on 14 February 1969.
In 1968, during the shooting of the film Jeff, he met French actress Mireille Darc with whom he started a 15-year relationship, lasting until 1982.
In 1987, Delon met Dutch model Rosalie van Breemen on the shooting of the video clip for his song "Comme au cinéma" and started a relationship. They had two children: Anouschka (25 November 1990) and Alain-Fabien (18 March 1994). The relationship ended in October 2002.

Alain Delon lives in Chêne-Bougeries in the canton of Geneva, Switzerland with his two youngest children.

Honours

• At the 45th Berlin International Film Festival, he won the Honorary Golden Bear.
• At the 2008 César Awards on February 22, 2008, he presented the César Award for Best Actress to Marion Cotillard, who two days later won the Academy Award for Best Actress for La Vie En Rose.
• Delon appears on the cover of the 1986 album The Queen Is Dead by The Smiths.
• He was made Officier (Officer) of the Ordre national du Mérite in 1995.
• He was made Chevalier (Knight) of the Légion d'honneur on 21 February 1991. He was promoted to Officier (Officer) in 2005

Fritz d'Orey, a former racing driver, from Brazil. He participated in three Formula One World Championship Grands Prix

Frederico José Carlos Themudo "Fritz" d'Orey (born March 25, 1938 in São Paulo) is a former racing driver, from Brazil. He participated in three Formula One World Championship Grands Prix, debuting on July 5, 1959.


Although he was Brazilian by birth, Fritz d’Orey’s parents were Portuguese nationals and his grandfather a German. The family settled in São Paulo where they earned a more than comfortable living by importing Packard cars from America. Fritz wanted for nothing, and what he wanted was to go racing.

That was with a Porsche initially before the 20 year old bought Chico Landi’s Ferrari 375 that was now fitted with a V8 Corvette engine. Victory in the Interlagos endurance race of 1958 and further national success persuaded d’Orey to race in Europe.

Formula 1 career with Centro Sud and Tec-Mec

He joined Scuderia Centro Sud for the following season and his Maserati 250F was 10th at the 1959 French Grand Prix. The youngster was wild and ragged and a heavy crash during the subsequent British GP ended his immediate plans.


D’Orey also competed in hillclimbs, sports car races and Formula Junior events during 1959. He won an FJ race at Messina and was second in the United States GP support race at Sebring. D’Orey also made his third and final GP start that day with Camoradi USA’s Tec-Mec F415 – a
strangely modified Maserati 250F whose reshaped body certainly made the car no quicker. D’Orey retired early on in what was Tec-Mec’s only Formula 1 appearance.


Instead of open-wheel racing, the Brazilian planned a season in sports cars in 1960. He finished sixth in the Sebring 12 Hours with William Sturgis’s Ferrari 250GT but then crashed while testing before the Le Mans 24 Hours. D’Orey suffered severe head injuries in the accident and was hospitalised for eight months. Although he recovered fully, he was finished with racing. Instead he returned to work for his father’s business and eventually settled in Rio de Janeiro.

Success 2013: Eckart Witzigmann, the first German-speaking chef that received the esteemed three stars from the French Michelin Guide for his Munich restaurant Aubergine. In 1993 he received the rare award chef of the century from the Gault Millau guide

Eckart Witzigmann is an Austrian chef.

After his chef-apprenticeship in the Hotel Straubinger in Bad Gastein (1957–1960), Witzigmann moved on to numerous positions in prestigious restaurants around the world, among others as a student of Paul Bocuse in Lyon, France.

His work in Germany began in 1970 at the Munich restaurant Tantris designed by the architect Justus Dahinden.



On 19 November 1978, he became the first German-speaking chef (and the third, outside of France) to receive the esteemed three stars from the French Michelin Guide for his Munich restaurant Aubergine which he had opened one year previously.



In 1993 he received the rare award chef of the century from the Gault Millau guide. Only three other chefs have been awarded this title:Paul Bocuse, Joël Robuchon and Frédy Girardet.
Since then, Witzigmann has published many cooking books.


Following Aubergine, Witzigmann proved himself an early pioneer of the now popular ‘restaurant plus cookery school’. Within two years his establishment in Mallorca, Spain, had established itself as one of the best culinary venues on the island.

Success 2012: Winston Lawson, american retired Secret Service agent. Lawson drove the presidential motorcade's lead car in the president JF Kennedy's trip to Dallas

Winston Lawson was born in 1929. After studying history at the University of Buffalo he worked as a wholesale carpet salesman. In December 1951, he became a sales representative for Carnation, a company manufacturing milk products.
Lawson joined the US Army in 1953 and after basic training was sent to the CIC Counterintelligence School in Holabird, Maryland. Based at Lexington, during the Korean War he took part in the interviewing of prisoners.
In 1955 Lawson returned to the Carnation Milk Company and had various sales or public relations jobs with them in Poughkeepsie. He applied to enter the Secret Service in 1956 but was not accepted until October 1959. He did general investigative work in the Syracuse area, until being transferred to Washington in March, 1961. Soon afterwards he was given responsibility for organizing the security for trips being made by President John F. Kennedy and Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson.
On 4th November Lawson was asked to prepare for the presidential trip to Dallas, Texas. This involved discussions with Kenneth O'Donnell (special assistant to Kennedy), Roy Kellerman and Jesse Curry (chief of police in Dallas). However, Curry always insisted that Winston G. Lawson was the person who made all the major decisions. This included the order that the proposed side escorts for the motorcade were to be redeployed to the rear of the cars.
 In a statement he made later, Lawson commented: "As the lead car was passing under this bridge I heard the first loud, sharp report and in more rapid succession two more sounds like gunfire. I could see persons to the left of the motorcade vehicles running away. I noticed Agent Hickey standing up in the follow-up car with the automatic weapon and first thought he had fired at someone. Both the President's car and our lead car rapidly accelerated almost simultaneously."
Lawson remained a member of the Secret Service until he retired. He still works as a consultant on security issues. On the 40th anniversary of the assassination he gave an interview to Michael Granberry of the Dallas Morning News.: I must have thought a million times, what could I have done to prevent it?... From Love Field to Dealey Plaza, there were 20,000 windows. How could we possibly check them all?"

 Granberry's article goes on to say: "When the president's day began at the Hotel Texas in Fort Worth, a persistent drizzle had forced the Secret Service to consider covering the motorcade's cars in Dallas with protective bubbletops. (Hours later, Dallas would end up sunny.) Though the bubbletops were not bulletproof, the metal and the contour of the covering, says Lawson, would have made it difficult for a bullet to do much damage, and might have kept a gunman from even firing in the first place. So he's asked himself a million times: Why couldn't it keep raining?" ^{(spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk)}

Success 2012: Françoise Gilot, french painter and bestselling author. She is also known as the lover and artistic muse of Pablo Picasso from 1944 to 1953, and the mother of his children

Françoise Gilot (born November 26, 1921) is a French painter and bestselling author. She is also known as the lover and artistic muse of Pablo Picasso from 1944 to 1953, and the mother of his children, Claude Picasso and Paloma Picasso. She later married the American vaccine pioneer, Jonas Salk. Gilot was more than just Picasso's lover: she was a mother, organizer, muse, conversation partner, hostess, artist, and an art critic. In 1973 Gilot was appointed as the Art Director of the scholarly journal "Virginia Woolf Quarterly." In 1976 she was made a member of the board of the Department of Fine Arts at the University of Southern California. She held summer courses there and took on organizational responsibilities until 1983. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s she designed costumes, stage sets, and masks for productions at the Guggenheim in New York. She was awarded a Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur, in 1990^.

 At 21, Gilot met Pablo Picasso, then 61. Picasso first saw Gilot in a restaurant in the spring of 1943. His mistress, Dora Maar, was devastated to learn that Picasso was replacing her with the much younger artist. After Picasso's and Gilot's meeting she moved in with him in 1946 and they spent almost ten years together. Those years revolved around art, but it is believed by some art historians that Gilot's relationship with Picasso is what cut short her artistic career. Picasso and Gilot never married, but they did have two children together. Their son, Claude, was born in 1947 and their daughter, Paloma, was born in 1949. During their ten years together Gilot was often harassed on the streets of Paris by Picasso's legal wife, a Russian ballet dancer. Eleven years after their separation, Gilot wrote Life with Picasso, a book that sold over one million copies in dozens of languages, despite an unsuccessful legal challenge from Picasso attempting to stop its publication.
Francoise Gilot was introduced to art at a young age by he mother and grandmother. Her grandmother had held a party when Francoise was about five years old. A certain man caught Gilot's eye as being interesting and asked her grandmother who the man was. It turned out to be a painter, Emile Mairet. Gilot's father became close friends with the painter and Francoise would often tag along to visit his studio. At age six Francoise's mother began teaching her art with the exception of drawing. Her mother believed artists become too dependent on erasers and instead taught Francoise in watercolor and india ink. If she made a mistake she would have to make it intentional to her work. By the age of thirteen she began being tutored by Mlle Meuge and continued for six years. At the age of fourteen she was introduced to ceramics, and another year later she studied with the Post-Impressionist, Jacques Beurdeley.Finally, at the age of 21 she met Picasso.

Although Picasso had influenced Francoise Gilot's work as a cubist painter, she developed her own style. She avoided the sharp edges and angular forms that Picasso used. Instead, she used organic figures. During the war, Gilot's father attempted to save the most valuable household belongings by moving them, but the truck was bombed by the Germans, including Gilot's drawings and watercolors

Gilot married the artist Luc Simon in 1955.The couple divorced in 1962. They had a daughter, Aurelia.
In 1969, Gilot was introduced to Jonas Salk, the polio vaccine pioneer,at the home of mutual friends in La Jolla, California. Their shared appreciation of architecture led to a brief courtship and they were married in 1970 in Paris. They remained married until Salk's death in 1995. During her marriage, she continued painting in New York, La Jolla, and Paris.
Gilot lives in New York City and Paris, working on behalf of the Salk Institute in California, and continues to exhibit her work internationally

Success 2012: Robert Redford, american actor, film director, producer, businessman, environmentalist, philanthropist, and founder of the Sundance Film Festival. He won two Oscars

Charles Robert Redford, Jr. (born August 18, 1936), better known as Robert Redford, is an American actor, film director, producer, businessman, environmentalist, philanthropist, and founder of the Sundance Film Festival. He has received two Oscars: one in 1981 for directing Ordinary People, and one for Lifetime Achievement in 2002. In 2010 he was awarded French Knighthood in the Legion d'Honneur. At the height of Redford's fame in the 1970s and 1980s, he was often described as one of the world's most attractive men and remains one of the most popular movie stars.
While still largely an unknown, Redford made his screen debut in War Hunt (1962), co-starring with John Saxon in a film set during the last days of the Korean War. This film also marked the debuts of director Sydney Pollack, with whom Redford would often collaborate in the near future, and actor Tom Skerritt. After his Broadway success, he was cast in larger feature roles in movies. He was cast alongside screen legend Alec Guinness in the war comedy Situation Hopeless ... But Not Serious, in which he played a soldier who has to spend years of his life hiding behind enemy lines. In Inside Daisy Clover (1965), which won him a Golden Globe for best new star, he played a bisexual movie star who marries starlet Natalie Wood, and rejoined her along with Charles Bronson for Pollack's This Property Is Condemned (1966) — again as her lover, though this time in a film which achieved even greater success. The same year saw his first teaming with Jane Fonda, in Arthur Penn's The Chase. This film marked the only time Redford would star with Marlon Brando. Fonda and Redford were paired again in the popular big screen version of Barefoot in the Park (1967) and were again co-stars much later in Pollack's The Electric Horseman (1979).
After this initial success, Redford became concerned about his blond male stereotype image^{[citation needed]} and turned down roles in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and The Graduate. Redford found the property he was looking for in George Roy Hill's Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969), scripted by William Goldman, in which he was paired for the first time with Paul Newman. The film was a huge success and made him a major bankable star, cementing his screen image as an intelligent, reliable, sometimes sardonic good guy.
Redford suffered through a few films that did not achieve box office success during this time, including Downhill Racer (1969); Tell Them Willie Boy Is Here (1969); Little Fauss and Big Halsy (1970), and The Hot Rock (1972). But his overall career was flourishing with the critical and box office hit Jeremiah Johnson (1972);  the political satire The Candidate (1972); the hugely popular period drama The Way We Were (1973); and the biggest hit of his career; the blockbuster crime caper The Sting (1973), which became one of the top 20 highest grossing movies of all time when adjusted for inflation and for which he was also nominated for an Oscar.
Between 1974 and 1976, exhibitors voted Redford Hollywood's top box-office name.His hits included The Great Gatsby (1974), The Great Waldo Pepper (1975), and Three Days of the Condor (1975). The popular and acclaimed All the President's Men (1976), directed by Alan J. Pakula and scripted once again by Goldman, was a landmark film for Redford. Not only was he the executive producer and co-star, but the film's serious subject matter — the Watergate scandal — and its attempt to create a realistic portrayal of journalism also reflected the actor's offscreen concerns for political causes.
He also starred in a segment of the war film A Bridge Too Far (1977), the prison drama Brubaker (1980), playing a prison warden attempting to reform the system, and the fantasy baseball drama The Natural (1984).Redford continued his involvement in mainstream Hollywood movies, though with a newfound focus on directing. The first film he directed, Ordinary People, which followed the disintegration of an upper class American family after the death of a son, was one of the most critically and publicly acclaimed films of the decade, winning a number of Oscars, including the Academy Award for best director for Redford himself. His followup directorial project, The Milagro Beanfield War (1987), failed to generate the same level of attention. Sydney Pollack's Out of Africa (1985), with Redford in the male lead role opposite Meryl Streep, became an enormous critical and box office success and won seven Oscars including Best Picture, proving to be Redford's biggest success of the decade and Redford and Pollack's most successful of their six movies together.His next film, Legal Eagles (1986), was only a minor success at the box office.
Redford continued as a major star throughout the 1990s and 2000s. He released his third film as a director, A River Runs Through It, in 1992, which was a return to mainstream success for Redford as a director and brought a young Brad Pitt to greater prominence. 1993 brought Redford one of his most popular and recognised roles when he starred as a millionaire businessman who tests people's morals through bribery in Indecent Proposal, which became one of the year's biggest hits. He co-starred with Michelle Pfeiffer in the newsroom romance Up Close & Personal (1996), and with Kristin Scott Thomas in The Horse Whisperer (1998), which he also directed. Redford also continued work in films with political context, such as Havana (1990), playing Jack Weil, a professional gambler in 1959 Cuba during the Revolution, as well as Sneakers (1992), in which he co starred with the late River Phoenix among others.
He appeared as a disgraced Army general sent to prison in the political thriller The Last Castle (2001), directed by Rod Lurie, someone else with a strong interest in politics. In the same year, Redford reteamed with Brad Pitt for Spy Game, another success for the pair but with Redford switching this time from director to actor. Redford, a leading environmental activist, narrated the IMAX documentary Sacred Planet (2004), a sweeping journey across the globe to some of its most exotic and endangered places. In The Clearing (2004), a thriller co-starring Helen Mirren, Redford was a successful businessman whose kidnapping unearths the secrets and inadequacies that led to his achieving the American Dream.
Redford stepped back into producing with The Motorcycle Diaries (2004), a coming-of-age road film about a young medical student, Ernesto "Che" Guevera, and his friend Alberto Granado. It also explored political and social issues of South America that influenced Guevara and shaped his future. With five years spent in the film's making, Redford was credited by director Walter Salles for being instrumental in getting it made and released.
Back in front of the camera, Redford received good notices for his role in director Lasse Hallstrom's An Unfinished Life (2005) as a cantankerous rancher who is forced to take in his estranged daughter-in-law (Jennifer Lopez) — whom he blames for his son's death — and the granddaughter he never knew he had when they fled an abusive relationship. The film, which sat on the shelf for many months while its distributor Miramax was restructured, was generally dismissed as clichéd and overly sentimental. Meanwhile, Redford returned to familiar territory when he reteamed with Meryl Streep 22 years after they starred in Out of Africa, for his personal project Lions for Lambs (2007), which also starred fellow superstar Tom Cruise. After a great deal of hype, the film opened to mixed reviews and disappointing box office. Redford more recently signed on to direct and star in an update of The Candidate.^{[citation needed]}


Redford appears in the 2011 documentary Buck, where he discusses his experiences with title subject Buck Brannaman during the production of The Horse Whisperer in 1998.

Success 2012: Andre Agassi, american retired professional tennis player and former world no. 1, who was one of the game's most dominant players from the early 1990s to the mid 2000s

Andre Kirk Agassi is an American retired professional tennis player and former world no. 1, who was one of the game's most dominant players from the early 1990s to the mid 2000s. Generally considered by critics and fellow players to be one of the greatest tennis players of all time, Agassi has been called the best service returner in the history of the game. Described by the BBC upon his retirement as "perhaps the biggest worldwide star in the sport's history", Agassi compiled performances that, along with his unorthodox apparel and attitude, saw him cited as one of the most charismatic players in the history of the game. As a result, he is credited for helping to revive the popularity of tennis during the 1990s.
In singles tennis, Agassi is an eight-time Grand Slam champion who competed in 15 Grand Slam finals, and a 1996 Olympic gold medalist. His four Australian Open titles are an Open Era record (shared with Roger Federer). He is one of four male singles players to achieve the Career Grand Slam (all four Grand Slam championships) in the Open Era and one of seven in history, the first of two to achieve the Career Golden Slam (Career Grand Slam and Olympic gold medal), and the only man to win the Career Golden Slam and the ATP Tour World Championships (won in 1990): a distinction dubbed as a "Career Super Slam" by Sports Illustrated. Agassi was the first male player to win all four Grand Slams on three different surfaces (hard, clay, and grass), and the last American male to win the French Open (1999⁾ and the Australian Open (2003). He also won 17 ATP Masters Series titles, and was part of a winning Davis Cup team in 1990 and 1992. Agassi was troubled by personal issues during the mid-to-late 1990s and sank to world no. 141 in 1997, prompting many to believe that his career was over. Agassi, however, returned to world no. 1 in 1999 and enjoyed the most successful run of his career over the next four years. During his 20-plus year tour career, Agassi was known by the nickname "The Punisher".
After suffering from sciatica caused by two bulging discs in his back, a spondylolisthesis (vertebral displacement) and a bone spur that interfered with the nerve, Agassi retired from professional tennis on September 3, 2006, after losing in the third round of the US Open. He is the founder of the Andre Agassi Charitable Foundation,  which has raised over $60 million for at-risk children in Southern Nevada^. In 2001, the Foundation opened the Andre Agassi College Preparatory Academy in Las Vegas, a K-12 public charter school for at-risk children.  He has been married to fellow tennis star Steffi Graf since 2001.

Success 2012: Gerhard Schröder, german politician that was Chancellor of Germany from 1998 to 2005

Gerhard Fritz Kurt Schröder is a German politician, and was Chancellor of Germany from 1998 to 2005. As a member of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), he led a coalition government of the SPD and the Greens. Before becoming a full-time politician, he was a lawyer, and before becoming Chancellor he served as Prime Minister of Lower Saxony (1990–1998). Following the 2005 federal election, which his party lost, after three weeks of negotiations he stood down as Chancellor in favour of Angela Merkel of the rival Christian Democratic Union. He is currently the chairman of the board of Nord Stream AG, after having been hired as a global manager by investment bank Rothschild.

Schröder was born in Mossenberg, today an outlying centre of Blomberg, in what is now North Rhine-Westphalia. His father, Fritz Schröder, a lance corporal in the Wehrmacht, was killed in action in World War II in Romania on 4 October 1944, a few months after Gerhard's birth. His mother Erika worked as an agricultural laborer so that she could support herself and her two sons.
Schröder completed an apprenticeship in retail sales in a Lemgo hardware shop from 1958 to 1961 and subsequently worked in a Lage retail shop and after that as an unskilled construction worker and a sales clerk in Göttingen whilst studying at night school so as to gain a high school diploma. He did not have to do military service because his father had died in the war. In 1966, Schröder secured entrance to a university, passing the Abitur exam at Westfalen-Kolleg, Bielefeld. From 1966 to 1971 he studied law at the University of Göttingen. From 1972 onwards, Schröder served as an assistant at the university. In 1976, he passed his second law examination, and he subsequently worked as a lawyer until 1990.

Among his more controversial cases, Schröder helped founding member of the Baader-Meinhof terrorist group Horst Mahler secure an early release from prison and the permission to practice law again in Germany.
Schröder joined the Social Democratic Party in 1963. In 1978 he became the federal chairman of the Young Socialists, the youth organisation of the SPD. He spoke for the dissident Rudolf Bahro, as did President Jimmy Carter, Herbert Marcuse and Wolf Biermann. In 1982 he wrote an article on the idea of a red/green coalition for a book at Olle & Wolter, Berlin, which later appeared in "Die Zeit". SPD and SI Chairman, Chancellor Willy Brandt, who reviewed Olle & Wolter at that time, had just asked for more books on the subject. In 1980 Gerhard Schröder was elected to the German Bundestag, and wore a sweater to parliament instead of the traditional suit. He became chairman of the SPD Hanover district. In 1985, Schröder met the GDR leader Erich Honecker during a visit to East Berlin.
In 1986, Schröder was elected to the parliament of Lower Saxony and became leader of the SPD group. After the SPD won the state elections in June 1990, he became Prime Minister of Lower Saxony as head of an SPD-Greens coalition; in this position, he also won the 1994 and 1998 state elections.