Category: people

Giorgio Vasari’s biography of Leonardo (1550) recounts that he would buy caged birds from the market and let them go. “Whether or not Leonardo really set birds free, he definitely did question the superiority of humans to the rest of the animal kingdom. It is a repeated theme in his notebooks.”

The Senegalese singer-songwriter, a world music superstar, told a cheering crowd, “I will free myself of all artistic commitments from 2 January next year to enter the political arena.” Senegal has a tense presidential election campaign coming, and rumors are already rife that N’Dour himself will be a candidate.

“For years visitors would confine themselves to leaving gently admiring billets doux … All that changed in the late 1990s, when somebody decided to leave a lipstick kiss on the tomb. Since then lipstick kisses and hearts” have covered the tomb, damaging the stone. Henceforth there will be a glass barrier.

“I’ve been made a caricature for so long, and this person portrayed in the tabloids really isn’t me,” she told the committee in calm, measured tones. “It’s not the person I am, and it’s had a massive impact on my career. As an artist, I find it hard to be taken seriously because my credibility has been blown to bits.”

“The playwright Tony Kushner has been named the recipient of a $100,000 award honoring artists and others for ‘socially responsible work’ and challenges to authority.”

During World War II, the twenty-something Hollywood beauty Hedy Lamarr, full of ideas for new inventions, and the mechanically-minded “misfit musician” George Antheil hit on an idea that now – decades later – “GPS, Wi-Fi, cell phones, and Bluetooth.”

“The sarangi – a bowed, stringed instrument whose name means ‘a hundred colors’ and which has a well-earned reputation as an exceedingly difficult instrument to master – faced near-extinction not so long ago.” Khan was a leader in the instrument’s revival.

The author of “The Name of the Rose” and the new “The Prague Cemetery” says, “The paranoia of the universal conspiracy is more powerful because it is everlasting. You can never discover it because you don’t know who is there. It is a psychological temptation of our species.”

The auction raised more than €60,000 for illustrator Alexandra Trotsenko, who had three fingers cut off during a 2009 robbery in Dublin.

Hedy Lamarr lived a glamorous, if challenging, life as a beautiful film star during the day. And at night, during WWII, she basically invented modern wireless technology.