Born in 1888 in Maryville, Missouri, Carnegie was a poor farmer's boy, the second son of James William Carnagey (b. Indiana, February 1852 – living 1910) and wife Amanda Elizabeth Harbison (b. Missouri, February 1858 – living 1910). In his teens, though still having to get up at 4 a.m. every day to milk his parents' cows, he managed to get educated at the State Teacher's College in Warrensburg. His first job after college was selling correspondence courses to ranchers; then he moved on to selling bacon, soap and lard for Armour & Company. He was successful to the point of making his sales territory of South Omaha, Nebraska the national leader for the firm.
After saving $500, Carnegie quit sales in 1911 in order to pursue a lifelong dream of becoming a Chautauqua lecturer. He ended up instead attending the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York, but found little success as an actor, though it is written that he played the role of Dr. Hartley in a road show of Polly of the Circus.[citation needed] When the production ended, he returned to New York, unemployed, nearly broke, and living at the YMCA on 125th Street. It was there that he got the idea to teach public speaking, and he persuaded the "Y" manager to allow him to instruct a class in return for 80% of the net proceeds. In his first session, he had run out of material; improvising, he suggested that students speak about "something that made them angry", and discovered that the technique made speakers unafraid to address a public audience. From this 1912 debut, the Dale Carnegie Course evolved. Carnegie had tapped into the average American's desire to have more self-confidence, and by 1914, he was earning $500 - the equivalent of nearly $10,000 now - every week.
Perhaps one of Carnegie’s most successful marketing moves was to change the spelling of his last name from “Carnegey” to Carnegie, at a time when unrelated Andrew Carnegie was a widely revered and recognized name. By 1916, Dale was able to rent Carnegie Hall itself for a lecture to a packed house. Carnegie's first collection of his writings was Public Speaking: a Practical Course for Business Men (1926), later entitled Public Speaking and Influencing Men in Business (1932). His crowning achievement, however, was when Simon & Schuster published How to Win Friends and Influence People. The book was a bestseller from its debut in 1937, in its 17th printing within a few months. By the time of Carnegie's death, the book had sold five million copies in 31 languages, and there had been 450,000 graduates of his Dale Carnegie Institute. It has been stated in the book that he has criticized over 150,000 speeches in his participation of the adult education movement of the time. During World War I he served in the U.S. Army.
His first marriage ended in divorce in 1931. On November 5, 1944, in Tulsa, Oklahoma, he married Dorothy Price Vanderpool, who also had been divorced. Vanderpool had two daughters; Rosemary, from her first marriage, and Donna Dale from their marriage together.
The official biography from Dale Carnegie & Associates, Inc. states that he died of Hodgkin's disease on November 1, 1955. It has long been rumoured that Dale Carnegie committed suicide. Many attribute this rumor to the suicide of Irving Tressler, author of, "How to Lose Friends and Alienate People", an unauthorized parody of Dale Carnegie's classic book.[citation needed] He died at Forest Hills, New York, and was buried in the Belton, Cass County, Missouri cemetery.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dale_Carnegie)
Thursday, September 4, 2008
Dale Carnegie Motivation Quotes
Dale Carnegie Motivation Quote 01:"You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you."
Dale Carnegie Motivation Quote 02:
"People rarely succeed unless they have fun in what they are doing."
Dale Carnegie Motivation Quote 03:
"When dealing with people, remember you are not dealing with creatures of logic, but creatures of emotion. We are dealing with creatures of emotion, creatures bustling with prejudices and motivated by pride and vanity."
Dale Carnegie Motivation Quote 04:
"Inaction breeds doubt and fear. Action breeds confidence and courage. If you want to conquer fear, do not sit home and think about it. Go out and get busy"
Dale Carnegie Motivation Quote 05:
"If you believe in what you are doing, then let nothing hold you up in your work. Much of the best work of the world has been done against seeming impossibilities. The thing is to get the work done."
Dale Carnegie Motivation Quote 06:
"If you can't sleep, then get up and do something instead of lying there worrying. It's the worry that gets you, not the lack of sleep."
Dale Carnegie Motivation Quote 07:
"Applause is a receipt, not a bill."
Dale Carnegie Motivation Quote 08:
"Do the thing you fear to do and keep on doing it... that is the quickest and surest way ever yet discovered to conquer fear."
Dale Carnegie Motivation Quote 09:
"If you believe in what you are doing, then let nothing hold you up in your work. Much of the best work of the world has been done against seeming impossibilities. The thing is to get the work done."
Dale Carnegie Motivation Quote 10:
"One of the most tragic things I know about human nature is that all of us tend to put off living. We are all dreaming of some magical rose garden over the horizon instead of enjoying the roses that are blooming outside our windows today".
Dale Carnegie Motivation Quote 11:
"The person who goes farthest is generally the one who is willing to do and dare. The sure-thing boat never gets far from shore."
Dale Carnegie Motivation Quote 12:
"Begin with praise and honest appreciation. Call attention to people's mistakes indirectly. Talk about your own mistakes before criticizing the other person. Ask questions instead of giving direct orders...Make the fault easy to correct. Make the other person happy about doing what you suggest."
Dale Carnegie Motivation Quote 13:
"There is only one way to get anybody to do anything... That is by making the other person want to do it. There is no other way."
Dale Carnegie Motivation Quote 14:
"Take a chance! All life is a chance. The man who goes the furthest is generally the one who is willing to do and dare."
Dale Carnegie Motivation Quote 15:
"If we think happy thoughts, we will be happy. If we think miserable thoughts, we will be miserable."
Dale Carnegie Motivation Quote 16:
“Learning is an active process. We learn by doing.”
Dale Carnegie Motivation Quote 17:
"Do you remember the things you were worrying about a year ago? How did they work out? Didn't you waste a lot of fruitless energy on account of most of them? Didn't most of them turn out all right after all?"
Dale Carnegie Motivation Quote 18:
“First ask yourself: What is the worst that can happen? Then prepare to accept it. Then proceed to improve on the worst.”
Dale Carnegie Motivation Quote 19:
"Happiness doesn't depend on any external conditions, it is governed by our mental attitude”
Dale Carnegie Motivation Quote 20:
"Be more concerned with your character than with your reputation. Your character is what you really are while your reputation is merely what others think you are."
Dale Carnegie Motivation Quote 21:
"Pay less attention to what men say. Just watch what they do."
Dale Carnegie Motivation Quote 22:
"Remember, today is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday."
Sunday, August 31, 2008
Napoleon Hill Motivational and Inspirational Quotes
Napoleon Hill Motivational Quote 01:“Your mental attitude is something you can control outright and you must use self discipline until you create a positive mental attitude – your mental attitude attracts to you everything that makes you what you are.”
Napoleon Hill Motivational Quote 02:
“Cherish your visions and your dreams, as they are the children of your soul, the blueprints of your ultimate achievements.”
Napoleon Hill Motivational Quote 03:
“You can start right where you stand and apply the habit of going the extra mile by rendering more service and better service than you are now being paid for.”
Napoleon Hill Motivational Quote 04:
“A goal is a dream with a deadline.”
Napoleon Hill Motivational Quote 05:
“The starting point of all achievement is desire. Keep this constantly in mind. Weak desire brings weak results, Just as a small amount of fire makes a small amount of heat.”
Napoleon Hill Motivational Quote 06:
“Effort only fully releases its reward after a person refuses to quit.”
Napoleon Hill Motivational Quote 07:
“The world has the habit of making room for the man whose words and actions show that he knows where he is going.”
Napoleon Hill Motivational Quote 08:
“There is one quality that one must possess to win, and that is definiteness of purpose, the knowledge of what one wants and a burning desire to possess it.”
Napoleon Hill Motivational Quote 09:
“Persistence is to the character of man as carbon is to steel.”
Napoleon Hill Motivational Quote 10:
“What the mind can conceive and believe, the mind can achieve.”
Napoleon Hill Motivational Quote 11:
“When your desires are strong enough you will appear to possess superhuman powers to achieve.”
Napoleon Hill Motivational Quote 12:
“Desire is the starting point of all achievement, not a hope, not a wish, but a keen pulsating desire, which transcends everything.”
Napoleon Hill Motivational Quote 13:
“When defeat comes, accept it as a signal that your plans are not sound, rebuild those plans, and set sail once more toward your coveted goal.”
Napoleon Hill Motivational Quote 14:
“A quitter never wins and a winner never quits.”
Napoleon Hill Motivational Quote 15:
“The best job goes to the person who can get it done without passing the buck or coming back with excuses.”
Napoleon Hill Motivational Quote 16:
“No alibi will save you from accepting the responsibility.”
Napoleon Hill Motivational Quote 17:
“Victory is always possible for the person who refuses to stop fighting.”
Napoleon Hill Motivational Quote 18:
“No man is ever whipped until he quits in his own mind.”
Napoleon Hill Motivational Quote 19:
“First comes thought; then organization of that thought, into ideas and plans; then transformation of those plans into reality. The beginning, as you will observe, is in your imagination.”
Napoleon Hill Motivational Quote 20:
“Happiness is found in doing, not merely possessing.”
Napoleon Hill Motivational Quote 21:
“You give before you get.”
Napoleon Hill Motivational Quote 22:
“If you do not conquer self, you will be conquered by self.”
Napoleon Hill Motivational Quote 23:
“No man can succeed in a line of endeavor which he does not like.”
Napoleon Hill Motivational Quote 24:
“Your ability to use the principle of autosuggestion will depend, very largely, upon your capacity to concentrate upon a given desire until that desire becomes a burning obsession.”
Napoleon Hill Motivational Quote 25:
“Fears are nothing more than a state of mind.”
Napoleon Hill Video and Biography
Napoleon Hill Video
American born Napoleon Hill is considered to have influenced more people into success than any other person in history. He has been perhaps the most influential man in the area of personal success technique development, primarily through his classic book Think and Grow Rich which has helped million of the people and has been important in the life of many successful people such as W. Clement Stone and Og Mandino.
Napoleon Hill was born into poverty in 1883 in a one-room cabin on the Pound River in Wise County, Virginia. At the age of 10 his mother died, and two years later his father remarried. He became a very rebellious boy, but grew up to be an incredible man. He began his writing career at age 13 as a "mountain reporter" for small town newspapers and went on to become America's most beloved motivational author. Fighting against all class of great disadvantages and pressures, he dedicated more than 25 years of his life to define the reasons by which so many people fail to achieve true financial success and happiness in their life.
During this time he achieved great success as an attorney and journalist. His early career as a reporter helped finance his way through law school. He was given an assignment to write a series of success stories of famous men, and his big break came when he was asked to interview steel-magnate Andrew Carnegie. Mr. Carnegie commissioned Hill to interview over 500 millionaires to find a success formula that could be used by the average person. These included Thomas Edison, Alexander Graham Bell, Henry Ford, Elmer Gates, Charles M. Schwab, Theodore Roosevelt, William Wrigley Jr, John Wanamaker, WIlliam Jennings Bryan, George Eastman, Woodrow Wilson, William H. Taft, John D. Rockefeller, F. W. Woolworth, Jennings Randolph, among others.
He became an advisor to Andrew Carnegie, and with Carnegie's help he formulated a philosophy of success, drawing on the thoughts and experience of a multitude of rags-to-riches tycoons. It took Hill over 20 years to produce his book, a classic in the Personal Development field called Think and Grow Rich. This book has sold over 7 million copies and has helped thousands achieve success. The secret to success is very simple but you'll have to read the book to find out what it is!
Napoleon Hill passed away in November 1970 after a long and successful career writing, teaching, and lecturing about the principles of success. His work stands as a monument to individual achievement and is the cornerstone of modern motivation. His book, Think and Grow Rich, is the all time best-seller in the field.
In recent years The Napoleon Hill Foundation has published his bestselling writings worldwide, giving him immense influence around the globe.
American born Napoleon Hill is considered to have influenced more people into success than any other person in history. He has been perhaps the most influential man in the area of personal success technique development, primarily through his classic book Think and Grow Rich which has helped million of the people and has been important in the life of many successful people such as W. Clement Stone and Og Mandino.
Napoleon Hill was born into poverty in 1883 in a one-room cabin on the Pound River in Wise County, Virginia. At the age of 10 his mother died, and two years later his father remarried. He became a very rebellious boy, but grew up to be an incredible man. He began his writing career at age 13 as a "mountain reporter" for small town newspapers and went on to become America's most beloved motivational author. Fighting against all class of great disadvantages and pressures, he dedicated more than 25 years of his life to define the reasons by which so many people fail to achieve true financial success and happiness in their life.
During this time he achieved great success as an attorney and journalist. His early career as a reporter helped finance his way through law school. He was given an assignment to write a series of success stories of famous men, and his big break came when he was asked to interview steel-magnate Andrew Carnegie. Mr. Carnegie commissioned Hill to interview over 500 millionaires to find a success formula that could be used by the average person. These included Thomas Edison, Alexander Graham Bell, Henry Ford, Elmer Gates, Charles M. Schwab, Theodore Roosevelt, William Wrigley Jr, John Wanamaker, WIlliam Jennings Bryan, George Eastman, Woodrow Wilson, William H. Taft, John D. Rockefeller, F. W. Woolworth, Jennings Randolph, among others.
He became an advisor to Andrew Carnegie, and with Carnegie's help he formulated a philosophy of success, drawing on the thoughts and experience of a multitude of rags-to-riches tycoons. It took Hill over 20 years to produce his book, a classic in the Personal Development field called Think and Grow Rich. This book has sold over 7 million copies and has helped thousands achieve success. The secret to success is very simple but you'll have to read the book to find out what it is!
Napoleon Hill passed away in November 1970 after a long and successful career writing, teaching, and lecturing about the principles of success. His work stands as a monument to individual achievement and is the cornerstone of modern motivation. His book, Think and Grow Rich, is the all time best-seller in the field.
In recent years The Napoleon Hill Foundation has published his bestselling writings worldwide, giving him immense influence around the globe.
Friday, August 29, 2008
Margaret Thatcher Biography and Video
Margaret Thatcher Video
Introduction
Margaret Thatcher's political career has been one of the most remarkable of modern times. Born in October 1925 at Grantham, a small market town in eastern England, she rose to become the first (and for two decades the only) woman to lead a major Western democracy. She won three successive General Elections and served as British Prime Minister for more than eleven years (1979-90), a record unmatched in the twentieth century.
During her term of office she reshaped almost every aspect of British politics, reviving the economy, reforming outdated institutions, and reinvigorating the nation's foreign policy. She challenged and did much to overturn the psychology of decline which had become rooted in Britain since the Second World War, pursuing national recovery with striking energy and determination.
In the process, Margaret Thatcher became one of the founders, with Ronald Reagan, of a school of conservative conviction politics, which has had a powerful and enduring impact on politics in Britain and the United States and earned her a higher international profile than any British politician since Winston Churchill.
By successfully shifting British economic and foreign policy to the right, her governments helped to encourage wider international trends which broadened and deepened during the 1980s and 1990s, as the end of the Cold War, the spread of democracy, and the growth of free markets strengthened political and economic freedom in every continent.
For the last quarter century Margaret Thatcher has been one of the world's most influential and respected political leaders, as well as one of the most controversial, dynamic, and plain-spoken.
1925-1947: Grantham & Oxford
Margaret Thatcher's home and early life in Grantham played a large part in forming her political convictions. Her parents, Alfred and Beatrice Roberts, were Methodists. The social life of the family was lived largely within the close community of the local congregation, bounded by strong traditions of self-help, charitable work, and personal truthfulness.
The Roberts family ran a grocery business, bringing up their two daughters in a flat over the shop. Margaret Roberts attended a local state school and from there won a place at Oxford, where she studied chemistry at Somerville College (1943-47). Her tutor was Dorothy Hodgkin, a pioneer of X-ray crystallography who won a Nobel Prize in 1964.
But chemistry took second place to politics in Margaret Thatcher's future plans. Conservative politics had always been a feature of her home life: her father was a local councillor in Grantham and talked through with her the issues of the day. She was elected president of the student Conservative Association at Oxford and met many prominent politicians, making herself known to the leadership of her party at the time of its devastating defeat by Labour at the General Election of 1945.
1950-1951: Candidate for Dartford
In her mid-twenties she ran as the Conservative candidate for the strong Labour seat of Dartford at the General Elections of 1950 and 1951, winning national publicity as the youngest woman candidate in the country.
She lost both times, but cut the Labour majority sharply and hugely enjoyed the experience of campaigning. Aspects of her mature political style were formed in Dartford, a largely working class constituency which suffered as much as any from post-war rationing and shortages, as well as the rising level of taxation and state regulation. Unlike many Conservatives at that time, she had little difficulty getting a hearing from any audience and she spoke easily, with force and confidence, on issues that mattered to the voters.
1951-1970: Family & Career
It was in Dartford too that she met her husband, Denis Thatcher, a local businessman who ran his family's firm before becoming an executive in the oil industry. They married in 1951. Twins — Mark and Carol —were born to the couple in 1953.
In the 1950s Margaret Thatcher trained as a lawyer, specialising in taxation. She was elected to Parliament in 1959 as Member of Parliament (MP) for Finchley, a north London constituency, which she continued to represent until she was made a member of the House of Lords (as Baroness Thatcher) in 1992. Within two years, she was given junior office in the administration of Harold Macmillan and during 1964-70 (when the Conservatives were again in Opposition), established her place among the senior figures of the party, serving continuously as a shadow minister. When the Conservatives returned to office in 1970, under the premiership of Edward Heath, she achieved cabinet rank as Education Secretary.
1970-1974: Education Minister
Margaret Thatcher had a rough ride as Education Minister. The early 1970s saw student radicalism at its height and British politics at its least civil. Protesters disrupted her speeches, the opposition press vilified her, and education policy itself seemed set immovably in a leftwards course, which she and many Conservatives found uncomfortable. But she mastered the job and was toughened by the experience.
The Heath Government itself took a beating from events during its tenure (1970-74) and disappointed many. Elected on promises of economic revival through taming the trade unions and introducing more free market policies, it executed a series of policy reverses — nicknamed the 'U turns' — to become one of the most interventionist governments in British history, negotiating with the unions to introduce detailed control of wages, prices, and dividends. Defeated at a General Election in February 1974, the Heath Government left a legacy of inflation and industrial strife.
1975: Elected Conservative Leader
Many Conservatives were ready for a new approach after the Heath Government and when the Party lost a second General Election in October 1974, Margaret Thatcher ran against Heath for the leadership. To general surprise (her own included), in February 1975 she defeated him on the first ballot and won the contest outright on the second, though challenged by half a dozen senior colleagues. She became the first woman ever to lead a Western political party and to serve as Leader of the Opposition in the House of Commons.
1975-1979: Leader of the Opposition
The Labour Government of 1974-79 was one of the most crisis-prone in British history, leading the country to a state of virtual bankruptcy in 1976 when a collapse in the value of the currency on the foreign exchanges forced the government to negotiate credit from the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The IMF imposed tight expenditure controls on the government as a condition of the loan, which, ironically, improved Labour's public standing. By summer 1978, it even looked possible that it might win re-election.
But over the winter of 1978/79, Labour's luck ran out. Trade union pay demands led to an epidemic of strikes and showed that the government had little influence over its allies in the labour movement. Public opinion swung against Labour and the Conservatives won a Parliamentary majority of 43 at the General Election of May 1979. The following day, Margaret Thatcher became Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
1979-1983: Prime Minister – First Term
The new government pledged to check and reverse Britain's economic decline. In the short-term, painful measures were required. Although direct taxes were cut, to restore incentives, the budget had to be balanced, and so indirect taxes were increased. The economy was already entering a recession, but inflation was rising and interest rates had to be raised to control it. By the end of Margaret Thatcher's first term, unemployment in Britain was more than three million and it began to fall only in 1986. A large section of Britain's inefficient manufacturing industry closed down. No one had predicted how severe the downturn would be.
But vital long-term gains were made. Inflation was checked and the government created the expectation that it would do whatever was necessary to keep it low. The budget of spring 1981, increasing taxes at the lowest point of the recession, offended conventional Keynesian economic thinking, but it made possible a cut in interest rates and demonstrated this newly found determination. Economic recovery started in the same quarter and a long expansion followed.
Political support flowed from this achievement, but the re-election of the government was only made certain by an unpredicted event: the Falklands War. The Argentine Junta's invasion of the islands in April 1982 was met by Margaret Thatcher in the firmest way and with a sure touch. Although she worked with the US administration in pursuing the possibility of a diplomatic solution, a British military Task Force was despatched to retake the islands. When diplomacy failed, military action was quickly successful and the Falklands were back under British control by June 1982.
The electorate was impressed. Few British or European leaders would have fought for the islands. By doing so, Margaret Thatcher laid the foundation for a much more vigorous and independent British foreign policy during the rest of the 1980s.When the General Election came in June 1983, the government was re-elected with its Parliamentary majority more than trebled (144 seats).
1983-1987: Prime Minister – Second Term
The second term opened with almost as many difficulties as the first. The government found itself challenged by the miners' union, which fought a year-long strike in 1984-85 under militant leadership. The labour movement as a whole put up bitter resistance to the government's trade union reforms, which began with legislation in 1980 and 1982 and continued after the General Election.
The miners' strike was one of the most violent and long lasting in British history. The outcome was uncertain, but after many turns in the road, the union was defeated. This proved a crucial development, because it ensured that the Thatcher reforms would endure. In the years that followed, the Labour Opposition quietly accepted the popularity and success of the trade union legislation and pledged not to reverse its key components.
In October 1984, when the strike was still underway, the Irish Republican Army (IRA) attempted to murder Margaret Thatcher and many of her cabinet by bombing her hotel in Brighton during the Conservative Party annual conference. Although she survived unhurt, some of her closest colleagues were among the injured and dead and the room next to hers was severely damaged. No twentieth-century British Prime Minister ever came closer to assassination.
British policy in Northern Ireland had been a standing source of conflict for every Prime Minister since 1969, but Margaret Thatcher aroused the IRA's special hatred for her refusal to meet their political demands, notably during the 1980-81 prison hunger strikes.
Her policy throughout was implacably hostile to terrorism, republican or loyalist, although she matched that stance by negotiating the Anglo-Irish Agreement of 1985 with the Republic of Ireland. The Agreement was an attempt to improve security cooperation between Britain and Ireland and to give some recognition to the political outlook of Catholics in Northern Ireland, an initiative which won warm endorsement from the Reagan administration and the US Congress.
The economy continued to improve during the 1983-87 Parliament and the policy of economic liberalisation was extended. The government began to pursue a policy of selling state assets, which in total had amounted to more than 20 per cent of the economy when the Conservatives came to power in 1979. The British privatisations of the 1980s were the first of their kind and proved influential across the world.
Where possible, sale of state assets took place through offering shares to the public, with generous terms for small investors. The Thatcher Governments presided over a great increase in the number of people saving through the stock market. They also encouraged people to buy their own homes and to make private pension provision, policies which over time have greatly increased the personal wealth of the British population.
The left wing of the Conservative Party had always been uneasy with its chief. In January 1986, enduring divisions between left and right in the Thatcher Cabinet were publicly exposed by the sudden resignation of the Defence Minister, Michael Heseltine, in a dispute over the business troubles of the British helicopter manufacturer, Westland. The fallout from the 'Westland Affair' challenged Margaret Thatcher's leadership as never before. She survived the crisis, but its effects were significant. She was subjected to heavy criticism within her own party for the decision to allow US warplanes to fly from British bases to attack targets in Libya (April 1986).There was talk of the government and of its leader being 'tired', of having gone on too long.
Her response was characteristic: at the Conservative Party's annual conference in October 1986, her speech foreshadowed a mass of reforms for a third Thatcher Government.With the economy now very strong, prospects were good for an election and the government was returned with a Parliamentary majority of 101in June 1987.
1987-1990: Prime Minister – Third Term
The legislative platform of the third-term Thatcher Government was among the most ambitious ever put forward by a British administration. There were measures to reform the education system (1988), introducing a national curriculum for the first time. There was a new tax system for local government (1989), the Community Charge, or 'poll tax' as it was dubbed by opponents. And there was legislation to separate purchasers and providers within the National Health Service (1990), opening up the service to a measure of competition for the first time and increasing the scope for effective management.
All three measures were deeply controversial. The Community Charge, in particular, became a serious political problem, as local councils took advantage of the introduction of a new system to increase tax rates, blaming the increase on the Thatcher Government.(The system was abandoned by Margaret Thatcher's successor, John Major, in 1991.) By contrast, the education and health reforms proved enduring. Successive governments built on the achievement and in some respects extended their scope.
The economy boomed in 1987-88, but also began to overheat. Interest rates had to be doubled in 1988. A division within the government over management of the currency emerged into the open, Margaret Thatcher strongly opposing the policy urged by her Chancellor of the Exchequer and others, of pegging the pound sterling to the Deutschmark through the European Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM). In the process, her relations with her Chancellor of the Exchequer, Nigel Lawson, were fatally damaged, and he resigned in October 1989.
Behind this dispute there was profound disagreement within the government over policy towards the European Community itself. The Prime Minister found herself increasingly at odds with her Foreign Secretary, Sir Geoffrey Howe, on all questions touching European integration. Her speech at Bruges in September 1988 began the process by which the Conservative Party — at one time largely 'pro-European' — became predominantly 'Euro-sceptic'.
Paradoxically, all this took place against a backdrop of international events profoundly helpful to the Conservative cause. Margaret Thatcher played her part in the last phase of the Cold War, both in the strengthening of the Western alliance against the Soviets in the early 1980s and in the successful unwinding of the conflict later in the decade.
The Soviets had dubbed her the 'Iron Lady' — a tag she relished — for the tough line she took against them in speeches shortly after becoming Conservative leader in 1975. During the 1980s she offered strong support to the defence policies of the Reagan administration.
But when Mikhail Gorbachev emerged as a potential leader of the Soviet Union, she invited him to Britain in December 1984 and pronounced him a man she could do business with.She did not soften her criticisms of the Soviet system, making use of new opportunities to broadcast to television audiences in the east to put the case against Communism.Nevertheless, she played a constructive part in the diplomacy that smoothed the break-up of the Soviet Empire and of the Soviet Union itself in the years 1989-91.
By late 1990, the Cold War was over and free markets and institutions vindicated. But that event triggered the next stage in European integration, as France revived the project of a single European currency, hoping to check the power of a reunited Germany. As a result, divisions over European policy within the British Government were deepened by the end of the Cold War and now became acute.
On November 1 1990 Sir Geoffrey Howe resigned over Europe and in a bitter resignation speech precipitated a challenge to Margaret Thatcher's leadership of her party by Michael Heseltine. In the ballot that followed, she won a majority of the vote. Yet under party rules the margin was insufficient, and a second ballot was required. Receiving the news at a conference in Paris, she immediately announced her intention to fight on.
But a political earthquake occurred the next day on her return to London, when many colleagues in her cabinet — unsympathetic to her on Europe and doubting that she could win a fourth General Election — abruptly deserted her leadership and left her no choice but to withdraw. She resigned as Prime Minister on November 28 1990. John Major succeeded her and served in the post until the landslide election of Tony Blair's Labour Government in May 1997.
Biography: Conclusion
After 1990 Lady Thatcher (as she became) remained a potent political figure. She wrote two best-selling volumes of memoirs - The Downing Street Years (1993) and The Path to Power (1995) - while continuing for a full decade to tour the world as a lecturer. A book of reflections on international politics - Statecraft - was published in 2002. During the period she made some important interventions in domestic British politics, notably over Bosnia and the Maastricht Treaty.
In March 2002, following several small strokes, she announced an end to her career in public speaking.
Denis Thatcher, her husband of more than fifty years, died in June 2003, receiving warm tributes from all sides.
Margaret Thatcher remains an intensely controversial figure in Britain. Critics claim that her economic policies were divisive socially, that she was harsh or 'uncaring' in her politics, and hostile to the institutions of the British welfare state. Defenders point to a transformation in Britain's economic performance over the course of the Thatcher Governments and those of her successors as Prime Minister. Trade union reforms, privatisation, deregulation, a strong anti-inflationary stance, and control of tax and spending have created better economic prospects for Britain than seemed possible when she became Prime Minister in 1979.
Critics and supporters alike recognise the Thatcher premiership as a period of fundamental importance in British history. Margaret Thatcher accumulated huge prestige over the course of the 1980s and often compelled the respect even of her bitterest critics. Indeed, her effect on the terms of political debate has been profound. Whether they were converted to 'Thatcherism', or merely forced by the electorate to pay it lip service, the Labour Party leadership was transformed by her period of office and the 'New Labour' politics of Tony Blair would not have existed without her.
(from womenshistory.about.com)
Introduction
Margaret Thatcher's political career has been one of the most remarkable of modern times. Born in October 1925 at Grantham, a small market town in eastern England, she rose to become the first (and for two decades the only) woman to lead a major Western democracy. She won three successive General Elections and served as British Prime Minister for more than eleven years (1979-90), a record unmatched in the twentieth century.
During her term of office she reshaped almost every aspect of British politics, reviving the economy, reforming outdated institutions, and reinvigorating the nation's foreign policy. She challenged and did much to overturn the psychology of decline which had become rooted in Britain since the Second World War, pursuing national recovery with striking energy and determination.
In the process, Margaret Thatcher became one of the founders, with Ronald Reagan, of a school of conservative conviction politics, which has had a powerful and enduring impact on politics in Britain and the United States and earned her a higher international profile than any British politician since Winston Churchill.
By successfully shifting British economic and foreign policy to the right, her governments helped to encourage wider international trends which broadened and deepened during the 1980s and 1990s, as the end of the Cold War, the spread of democracy, and the growth of free markets strengthened political and economic freedom in every continent.
For the last quarter century Margaret Thatcher has been one of the world's most influential and respected political leaders, as well as one of the most controversial, dynamic, and plain-spoken.
1925-1947: Grantham & Oxford
Margaret Thatcher's home and early life in Grantham played a large part in forming her political convictions. Her parents, Alfred and Beatrice Roberts, were Methodists. The social life of the family was lived largely within the close community of the local congregation, bounded by strong traditions of self-help, charitable work, and personal truthfulness.
The Roberts family ran a grocery business, bringing up their two daughters in a flat over the shop. Margaret Roberts attended a local state school and from there won a place at Oxford, where she studied chemistry at Somerville College (1943-47). Her tutor was Dorothy Hodgkin, a pioneer of X-ray crystallography who won a Nobel Prize in 1964.
But chemistry took second place to politics in Margaret Thatcher's future plans. Conservative politics had always been a feature of her home life: her father was a local councillor in Grantham and talked through with her the issues of the day. She was elected president of the student Conservative Association at Oxford and met many prominent politicians, making herself known to the leadership of her party at the time of its devastating defeat by Labour at the General Election of 1945.
1950-1951: Candidate for Dartford
In her mid-twenties she ran as the Conservative candidate for the strong Labour seat of Dartford at the General Elections of 1950 and 1951, winning national publicity as the youngest woman candidate in the country.
She lost both times, but cut the Labour majority sharply and hugely enjoyed the experience of campaigning. Aspects of her mature political style were formed in Dartford, a largely working class constituency which suffered as much as any from post-war rationing and shortages, as well as the rising level of taxation and state regulation. Unlike many Conservatives at that time, she had little difficulty getting a hearing from any audience and she spoke easily, with force and confidence, on issues that mattered to the voters.
1951-1970: Family & Career
It was in Dartford too that she met her husband, Denis Thatcher, a local businessman who ran his family's firm before becoming an executive in the oil industry. They married in 1951. Twins — Mark and Carol —were born to the couple in 1953.
In the 1950s Margaret Thatcher trained as a lawyer, specialising in taxation. She was elected to Parliament in 1959 as Member of Parliament (MP) for Finchley, a north London constituency, which she continued to represent until she was made a member of the House of Lords (as Baroness Thatcher) in 1992. Within two years, she was given junior office in the administration of Harold Macmillan and during 1964-70 (when the Conservatives were again in Opposition), established her place among the senior figures of the party, serving continuously as a shadow minister. When the Conservatives returned to office in 1970, under the premiership of Edward Heath, she achieved cabinet rank as Education Secretary.
1970-1974: Education Minister
Margaret Thatcher had a rough ride as Education Minister. The early 1970s saw student radicalism at its height and British politics at its least civil. Protesters disrupted her speeches, the opposition press vilified her, and education policy itself seemed set immovably in a leftwards course, which she and many Conservatives found uncomfortable. But she mastered the job and was toughened by the experience.
The Heath Government itself took a beating from events during its tenure (1970-74) and disappointed many. Elected on promises of economic revival through taming the trade unions and introducing more free market policies, it executed a series of policy reverses — nicknamed the 'U turns' — to become one of the most interventionist governments in British history, negotiating with the unions to introduce detailed control of wages, prices, and dividends. Defeated at a General Election in February 1974, the Heath Government left a legacy of inflation and industrial strife.
1975: Elected Conservative Leader
Many Conservatives were ready for a new approach after the Heath Government and when the Party lost a second General Election in October 1974, Margaret Thatcher ran against Heath for the leadership. To general surprise (her own included), in February 1975 she defeated him on the first ballot and won the contest outright on the second, though challenged by half a dozen senior colleagues. She became the first woman ever to lead a Western political party and to serve as Leader of the Opposition in the House of Commons.
1975-1979: Leader of the Opposition
The Labour Government of 1974-79 was one of the most crisis-prone in British history, leading the country to a state of virtual bankruptcy in 1976 when a collapse in the value of the currency on the foreign exchanges forced the government to negotiate credit from the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The IMF imposed tight expenditure controls on the government as a condition of the loan, which, ironically, improved Labour's public standing. By summer 1978, it even looked possible that it might win re-election.
But over the winter of 1978/79, Labour's luck ran out. Trade union pay demands led to an epidemic of strikes and showed that the government had little influence over its allies in the labour movement. Public opinion swung against Labour and the Conservatives won a Parliamentary majority of 43 at the General Election of May 1979. The following day, Margaret Thatcher became Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
1979-1983: Prime Minister – First Term
The new government pledged to check and reverse Britain's economic decline. In the short-term, painful measures were required. Although direct taxes were cut, to restore incentives, the budget had to be balanced, and so indirect taxes were increased. The economy was already entering a recession, but inflation was rising and interest rates had to be raised to control it. By the end of Margaret Thatcher's first term, unemployment in Britain was more than three million and it began to fall only in 1986. A large section of Britain's inefficient manufacturing industry closed down. No one had predicted how severe the downturn would be.
But vital long-term gains were made. Inflation was checked and the government created the expectation that it would do whatever was necessary to keep it low. The budget of spring 1981, increasing taxes at the lowest point of the recession, offended conventional Keynesian economic thinking, but it made possible a cut in interest rates and demonstrated this newly found determination. Economic recovery started in the same quarter and a long expansion followed.
Political support flowed from this achievement, but the re-election of the government was only made certain by an unpredicted event: the Falklands War. The Argentine Junta's invasion of the islands in April 1982 was met by Margaret Thatcher in the firmest way and with a sure touch. Although she worked with the US administration in pursuing the possibility of a diplomatic solution, a British military Task Force was despatched to retake the islands. When diplomacy failed, military action was quickly successful and the Falklands were back under British control by June 1982.
The electorate was impressed. Few British or European leaders would have fought for the islands. By doing so, Margaret Thatcher laid the foundation for a much more vigorous and independent British foreign policy during the rest of the 1980s.When the General Election came in June 1983, the government was re-elected with its Parliamentary majority more than trebled (144 seats).
1983-1987: Prime Minister – Second Term
The second term opened with almost as many difficulties as the first. The government found itself challenged by the miners' union, which fought a year-long strike in 1984-85 under militant leadership. The labour movement as a whole put up bitter resistance to the government's trade union reforms, which began with legislation in 1980 and 1982 and continued after the General Election.
The miners' strike was one of the most violent and long lasting in British history. The outcome was uncertain, but after many turns in the road, the union was defeated. This proved a crucial development, because it ensured that the Thatcher reforms would endure. In the years that followed, the Labour Opposition quietly accepted the popularity and success of the trade union legislation and pledged not to reverse its key components.
In October 1984, when the strike was still underway, the Irish Republican Army (IRA) attempted to murder Margaret Thatcher and many of her cabinet by bombing her hotel in Brighton during the Conservative Party annual conference. Although she survived unhurt, some of her closest colleagues were among the injured and dead and the room next to hers was severely damaged. No twentieth-century British Prime Minister ever came closer to assassination.
British policy in Northern Ireland had been a standing source of conflict for every Prime Minister since 1969, but Margaret Thatcher aroused the IRA's special hatred for her refusal to meet their political demands, notably during the 1980-81 prison hunger strikes.
Her policy throughout was implacably hostile to terrorism, republican or loyalist, although she matched that stance by negotiating the Anglo-Irish Agreement of 1985 with the Republic of Ireland. The Agreement was an attempt to improve security cooperation between Britain and Ireland and to give some recognition to the political outlook of Catholics in Northern Ireland, an initiative which won warm endorsement from the Reagan administration and the US Congress.
The economy continued to improve during the 1983-87 Parliament and the policy of economic liberalisation was extended. The government began to pursue a policy of selling state assets, which in total had amounted to more than 20 per cent of the economy when the Conservatives came to power in 1979. The British privatisations of the 1980s were the first of their kind and proved influential across the world.
Where possible, sale of state assets took place through offering shares to the public, with generous terms for small investors. The Thatcher Governments presided over a great increase in the number of people saving through the stock market. They also encouraged people to buy their own homes and to make private pension provision, policies which over time have greatly increased the personal wealth of the British population.
The left wing of the Conservative Party had always been uneasy with its chief. In January 1986, enduring divisions between left and right in the Thatcher Cabinet were publicly exposed by the sudden resignation of the Defence Minister, Michael Heseltine, in a dispute over the business troubles of the British helicopter manufacturer, Westland. The fallout from the 'Westland Affair' challenged Margaret Thatcher's leadership as never before. She survived the crisis, but its effects were significant. She was subjected to heavy criticism within her own party for the decision to allow US warplanes to fly from British bases to attack targets in Libya (April 1986).There was talk of the government and of its leader being 'tired', of having gone on too long.
Her response was characteristic: at the Conservative Party's annual conference in October 1986, her speech foreshadowed a mass of reforms for a third Thatcher Government.With the economy now very strong, prospects were good for an election and the government was returned with a Parliamentary majority of 101in June 1987.
1987-1990: Prime Minister – Third Term
The legislative platform of the third-term Thatcher Government was among the most ambitious ever put forward by a British administration. There were measures to reform the education system (1988), introducing a national curriculum for the first time. There was a new tax system for local government (1989), the Community Charge, or 'poll tax' as it was dubbed by opponents. And there was legislation to separate purchasers and providers within the National Health Service (1990), opening up the service to a measure of competition for the first time and increasing the scope for effective management.
All three measures were deeply controversial. The Community Charge, in particular, became a serious political problem, as local councils took advantage of the introduction of a new system to increase tax rates, blaming the increase on the Thatcher Government.(The system was abandoned by Margaret Thatcher's successor, John Major, in 1991.) By contrast, the education and health reforms proved enduring. Successive governments built on the achievement and in some respects extended their scope.
The economy boomed in 1987-88, but also began to overheat. Interest rates had to be doubled in 1988. A division within the government over management of the currency emerged into the open, Margaret Thatcher strongly opposing the policy urged by her Chancellor of the Exchequer and others, of pegging the pound sterling to the Deutschmark through the European Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM). In the process, her relations with her Chancellor of the Exchequer, Nigel Lawson, were fatally damaged, and he resigned in October 1989.
Behind this dispute there was profound disagreement within the government over policy towards the European Community itself. The Prime Minister found herself increasingly at odds with her Foreign Secretary, Sir Geoffrey Howe, on all questions touching European integration. Her speech at Bruges in September 1988 began the process by which the Conservative Party — at one time largely 'pro-European' — became predominantly 'Euro-sceptic'.
Paradoxically, all this took place against a backdrop of international events profoundly helpful to the Conservative cause. Margaret Thatcher played her part in the last phase of the Cold War, both in the strengthening of the Western alliance against the Soviets in the early 1980s and in the successful unwinding of the conflict later in the decade.
The Soviets had dubbed her the 'Iron Lady' — a tag she relished — for the tough line she took against them in speeches shortly after becoming Conservative leader in 1975. During the 1980s she offered strong support to the defence policies of the Reagan administration.
But when Mikhail Gorbachev emerged as a potential leader of the Soviet Union, she invited him to Britain in December 1984 and pronounced him a man she could do business with.She did not soften her criticisms of the Soviet system, making use of new opportunities to broadcast to television audiences in the east to put the case against Communism.Nevertheless, she played a constructive part in the diplomacy that smoothed the break-up of the Soviet Empire and of the Soviet Union itself in the years 1989-91.
By late 1990, the Cold War was over and free markets and institutions vindicated. But that event triggered the next stage in European integration, as France revived the project of a single European currency, hoping to check the power of a reunited Germany. As a result, divisions over European policy within the British Government were deepened by the end of the Cold War and now became acute.
On November 1 1990 Sir Geoffrey Howe resigned over Europe and in a bitter resignation speech precipitated a challenge to Margaret Thatcher's leadership of her party by Michael Heseltine. In the ballot that followed, she won a majority of the vote. Yet under party rules the margin was insufficient, and a second ballot was required. Receiving the news at a conference in Paris, she immediately announced her intention to fight on.
But a political earthquake occurred the next day on her return to London, when many colleagues in her cabinet — unsympathetic to her on Europe and doubting that she could win a fourth General Election — abruptly deserted her leadership and left her no choice but to withdraw. She resigned as Prime Minister on November 28 1990. John Major succeeded her and served in the post until the landslide election of Tony Blair's Labour Government in May 1997.
Biography: Conclusion
After 1990 Lady Thatcher (as she became) remained a potent political figure. She wrote two best-selling volumes of memoirs - The Downing Street Years (1993) and The Path to Power (1995) - while continuing for a full decade to tour the world as a lecturer. A book of reflections on international politics - Statecraft - was published in 2002. During the period she made some important interventions in domestic British politics, notably over Bosnia and the Maastricht Treaty.
In March 2002, following several small strokes, she announced an end to her career in public speaking.
Denis Thatcher, her husband of more than fifty years, died in June 2003, receiving warm tributes from all sides.
Margaret Thatcher remains an intensely controversial figure in Britain. Critics claim that her economic policies were divisive socially, that she was harsh or 'uncaring' in her politics, and hostile to the institutions of the British welfare state. Defenders point to a transformation in Britain's economic performance over the course of the Thatcher Governments and those of her successors as Prime Minister. Trade union reforms, privatisation, deregulation, a strong anti-inflationary stance, and control of tax and spending have created better economic prospects for Britain than seemed possible when she became Prime Minister in 1979.
Critics and supporters alike recognise the Thatcher premiership as a period of fundamental importance in British history. Margaret Thatcher accumulated huge prestige over the course of the 1980s and often compelled the respect even of her bitterest critics. Indeed, her effect on the terms of political debate has been profound. Whether they were converted to 'Thatcherism', or merely forced by the electorate to pay it lip service, the Labour Party leadership was transformed by her period of office and the 'New Labour' politics of Tony Blair would not have existed without her.
(from womenshistory.about.com)
Helen Keller Biography and Video
Helen Keller Video
Helen Adams Keller (June 27, 1880 – June 1, 1968) was an American author, activist and lecturer. She was the first deafblind person to graduate from college.
The story of how Keller's teacher, Annie Sullivan, broke through the isolation imposed by a near complete lack of language, allowing the girl to blossom as she learned to communicate, has become known worldwide through the dramatic depictions of the play The Miracle Worker.
What is less well known is how Keller's life developed after she completed her education. A prolific author, she was well traveled, and was outspoken in her opposition to war. She campaigned for women's suffrage, workers' rights and socialism, as well as many other progressive causes.
Helen Keller was born at an estate called Ivy Green in Tuscumbia, Alabama, on June 27, 1880, to Captain Arthur H. Keller, a former officer of the Confederate Army, and Kate Adams Keller, a cousin of Robert E. Lee and daughter of Charles W. Adams, a former Confederate general. The Keller family originates from Germany, and at least one source claims her father was of Swiss descent. She was not born blind and deaf; it was not until nineteen months of age that she came down with an illness described by doctors as "an acute congestion of the stomach and the brain", which could have possibly been scarlet fever or meningitis. The illness did not last for a particularly long time, but it left her deaf and blind. At that time her only communication partner was Martha Washington, the six-year-old daughter of the family cook, who was able to create a sign language with her; by age seven, she had over 60 home signs to communicate with her family.
In his doctoral dissertation, "Deaf-blind Children (psychological development in a process of education)" (1971, Moscow Defectology Institute), Soviet blind-deaf psychologist Meshcheryakov asserted that Washington's friendship and teaching was crucial for Keller's later developments.
In 1886, her mother, inspired by an account in Charles Dickens' American Notes of the successful education of another deafblind child, Laura Bridgman, dispatched young Helen, accompanied by her father, to seek out Dr. J. Julian Chisolm, an eye, ear, nose and throat specialist in Baltimore, for advice. He, subsequently, put them in touch with Alexander Graham Bell, who was working with deaf children at the time. Bell advised the couple to contact the Perkins Institute for the Blind, the school where Bridgman had been educated, which was then located in South Boston. The school delegated teacher and former student Anne Sullivan, herself visually impaired and then only 20 years old, to become Keller's instructor.
It was the beginning of a 49-year-long relationship, eventually evolving into governess and then eventual companion.
Sullivan got permission from Keller's father to isolate the girl from the rest of the family in a little house in their garden. Anne loved Helen dearly and loved her like she was her child. Her first task was to instill discipline in the spoiled girl. Keller's big breakthrough in communication came one day when she realized that the motions her teacher was making on her palm, while running cool water over her hand, symbolized the idea of "water"; she then nearly exhausted Sullivan demanding the names of all the other familiar objects in her world (including her prized doll).
In 1890, ten-year-old Helen Keller was introduced to the story of Ragnhild Kåta, a deafblind Norwegian girl who had learned to speak. Kåta's success inspired Keller to want to learn to speak as well. Sullivan taught her charge to speak using the Tadoma method of touching the lips and throat of others as they speak, combined with fingerspelling letters on the palm of the child's hand. Later Keller learned Braille, and used it to read not only English but also French, German, Greek, and Latin. Later she wrote 2 books and acted in a movie.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helen_Keller)
Helen Adams Keller (June 27, 1880 – June 1, 1968) was an American author, activist and lecturer. She was the first deafblind person to graduate from college.
The story of how Keller's teacher, Annie Sullivan, broke through the isolation imposed by a near complete lack of language, allowing the girl to blossom as she learned to communicate, has become known worldwide through the dramatic depictions of the play The Miracle Worker.
What is less well known is how Keller's life developed after she completed her education. A prolific author, she was well traveled, and was outspoken in her opposition to war. She campaigned for women's suffrage, workers' rights and socialism, as well as many other progressive causes.
Helen Keller was born at an estate called Ivy Green in Tuscumbia, Alabama, on June 27, 1880, to Captain Arthur H. Keller, a former officer of the Confederate Army, and Kate Adams Keller, a cousin of Robert E. Lee and daughter of Charles W. Adams, a former Confederate general. The Keller family originates from Germany, and at least one source claims her father was of Swiss descent. She was not born blind and deaf; it was not until nineteen months of age that she came down with an illness described by doctors as "an acute congestion of the stomach and the brain", which could have possibly been scarlet fever or meningitis. The illness did not last for a particularly long time, but it left her deaf and blind. At that time her only communication partner was Martha Washington, the six-year-old daughter of the family cook, who was able to create a sign language with her; by age seven, she had over 60 home signs to communicate with her family.
In his doctoral dissertation, "Deaf-blind Children (psychological development in a process of education)" (1971, Moscow Defectology Institute), Soviet blind-deaf psychologist Meshcheryakov asserted that Washington's friendship and teaching was crucial for Keller's later developments.
In 1886, her mother, inspired by an account in Charles Dickens' American Notes of the successful education of another deafblind child, Laura Bridgman, dispatched young Helen, accompanied by her father, to seek out Dr. J. Julian Chisolm, an eye, ear, nose and throat specialist in Baltimore, for advice. He, subsequently, put them in touch with Alexander Graham Bell, who was working with deaf children at the time. Bell advised the couple to contact the Perkins Institute for the Blind, the school where Bridgman had been educated, which was then located in South Boston. The school delegated teacher and former student Anne Sullivan, herself visually impaired and then only 20 years old, to become Keller's instructor.
It was the beginning of a 49-year-long relationship, eventually evolving into governess and then eventual companion.
Sullivan got permission from Keller's father to isolate the girl from the rest of the family in a little house in their garden. Anne loved Helen dearly and loved her like she was her child. Her first task was to instill discipline in the spoiled girl. Keller's big breakthrough in communication came one day when she realized that the motions her teacher was making on her palm, while running cool water over her hand, symbolized the idea of "water"; she then nearly exhausted Sullivan demanding the names of all the other familiar objects in her world (including her prized doll).
In 1890, ten-year-old Helen Keller was introduced to the story of Ragnhild Kåta, a deafblind Norwegian girl who had learned to speak. Kåta's success inspired Keller to want to learn to speak as well. Sullivan taught her charge to speak using the Tadoma method of touching the lips and throat of others as they speak, combined with fingerspelling letters on the palm of the child's hand. Later Keller learned Braille, and used it to read not only English but also French, German, Greek, and Latin. Later she wrote 2 books and acted in a movie.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helen_Keller)
Colonel Sanders Biography and Video
Colonel Sanders (KFC) Video
Colonel Sanders otherwise known as Harland Sanders, was the founder of Kentucky Fried Chicken and it's famous seasoned chicken. Although he was always a cook, Harland, later known as the Colonel, didn't harness his talent for commercial use until he was over 40 years of age.
Harland Sanders was born on September 9, 1890 in Henryville, Indiana to a butcher, Wilbert Sanders, and a homemaker, Margaret Ann Dunleavy. At the age of six, Sanders lost his father and was forced to help his mother care for his younger siblings. Even at his young age, Sanders helped cook and quickly mastered regional recipes to the delight of his family.
A few years later, when Sanders was in the seventh grade, he dropped out of school to further care for his family. Although he worked at nearby farm for a while, his mother remarried in order to support the family and Sanders was forced to relocate to suburban Indianapolis. Sanders did not get along with his new stepfather and moved to Clark County, Indiana soon thereafter.
He worked as a farmer, then a streetcar driver, and eventually enlisted in the Army to spend a year in Cuba. He married Josephine King in 1908 with whom he had three children. Their marriage ended in 1947.
When he moved back to Indiana, Sanders worked as a steamboat driver and eventually helped on the railroad. During his time with the railroad, Sanders began taking a correspondence course with Southern University in order to earn his law degree. With the help of local officials, Sanders was able to complete his studies and practice law from 1915 into the 1920s in Little Rock, Arkansas. His law career ended when he physically fought a client in the courtroom so Sanders decided to move to Corbin, Kentucky and open a service station.
After interacting with hungry customers, Sanders decided to begin serving meals to travelers who stopped at his place for gas. Since there was no formal restaurant or eating area at the station, Sanders served food from a table at the station's living quarters. Serving families and travelers gave Sanders the idea of creating meals that people could take with them; entire Sunday dinners that were ready to eat and easy to carry.
As his popularity grew and people got word of his cooking, and especially his chicken, Sanders moved his operation to a nearby motel that could seat 142 people. Sanders worked as a chef in his own kitchen and began perfecting this fried chicken recipe. In 1935, after his cooking had become very well known around the state, Governor Ruby Laffoon granted him the title of Kentucky Colonel. As a result of this title, Sanders began dressing like a "southern gentleman" and calling himself the Colonel as a matter of self-promotion.
Over the next twenty years he perfected his fried chicken recipe of 11 herbs and spices and made use of pressure frying the chicken in order to speed service. By 1956, however, Sanders was broke. The government has built a new highway that bypassed his Corbin store, causing the sale price to plummet. Sanders, living off of Social Security, took his cooker and his spices and traveled to restaurants to convince them to pay him to use his recipe. Smaller restaurants were willing to pay him a small fee for every chicken sold and, by 1960, Sanders had over 400 "franchises".
Sanders sold his brand in 1964 but continued to work as the spokesman for Kentucky Fried Chicken. During his retirement he gave much of his profit away to charities and even adopted 78 foreign orphans. He passed away from leukemia on December 16, 1980 in Kentucky. A museum was erected in his name at the KFC headquarters in Louisville.
Copyright © Woopidoo.com (ek)
Colonel Sanders otherwise known as Harland Sanders, was the founder of Kentucky Fried Chicken and it's famous seasoned chicken. Although he was always a cook, Harland, later known as the Colonel, didn't harness his talent for commercial use until he was over 40 years of age.
Harland Sanders was born on September 9, 1890 in Henryville, Indiana to a butcher, Wilbert Sanders, and a homemaker, Margaret Ann Dunleavy. At the age of six, Sanders lost his father and was forced to help his mother care for his younger siblings. Even at his young age, Sanders helped cook and quickly mastered regional recipes to the delight of his family.
A few years later, when Sanders was in the seventh grade, he dropped out of school to further care for his family. Although he worked at nearby farm for a while, his mother remarried in order to support the family and Sanders was forced to relocate to suburban Indianapolis. Sanders did not get along with his new stepfather and moved to Clark County, Indiana soon thereafter.
He worked as a farmer, then a streetcar driver, and eventually enlisted in the Army to spend a year in Cuba. He married Josephine King in 1908 with whom he had three children. Their marriage ended in 1947.
When he moved back to Indiana, Sanders worked as a steamboat driver and eventually helped on the railroad. During his time with the railroad, Sanders began taking a correspondence course with Southern University in order to earn his law degree. With the help of local officials, Sanders was able to complete his studies and practice law from 1915 into the 1920s in Little Rock, Arkansas. His law career ended when he physically fought a client in the courtroom so Sanders decided to move to Corbin, Kentucky and open a service station.
After interacting with hungry customers, Sanders decided to begin serving meals to travelers who stopped at his place for gas. Since there was no formal restaurant or eating area at the station, Sanders served food from a table at the station's living quarters. Serving families and travelers gave Sanders the idea of creating meals that people could take with them; entire Sunday dinners that were ready to eat and easy to carry.
As his popularity grew and people got word of his cooking, and especially his chicken, Sanders moved his operation to a nearby motel that could seat 142 people. Sanders worked as a chef in his own kitchen and began perfecting this fried chicken recipe. In 1935, after his cooking had become very well known around the state, Governor Ruby Laffoon granted him the title of Kentucky Colonel. As a result of this title, Sanders began dressing like a "southern gentleman" and calling himself the Colonel as a matter of self-promotion.
Over the next twenty years he perfected his fried chicken recipe of 11 herbs and spices and made use of pressure frying the chicken in order to speed service. By 1956, however, Sanders was broke. The government has built a new highway that bypassed his Corbin store, causing the sale price to plummet. Sanders, living off of Social Security, took his cooker and his spices and traveled to restaurants to convince them to pay him to use his recipe. Smaller restaurants were willing to pay him a small fee for every chicken sold and, by 1960, Sanders had over 400 "franchises".
Sanders sold his brand in 1964 but continued to work as the spokesman for Kentucky Fried Chicken. During his retirement he gave much of his profit away to charities and even adopted 78 foreign orphans. He passed away from leukemia on December 16, 1980 in Kentucky. A museum was erected in his name at the KFC headquarters in Louisville.
Copyright © Woopidoo.com (ek)
Bruce Lee Biography and Video
Bruce Lee Video
According to the Chinese calendar, 1940 was the Year of the Dragon. A Cantonese film actor named Lee Hoi Chun was performing in San Francisco accompanied by his pregnant wife Grace. By November, Grace had gone into labour and was taken to hospital, but her husband continued on to New York to perform there. On the 27th of November, 1940, at the Jackson Street hospital, Grace gave birth to a baby boy. He was named Lee Jun Fan, which meant "To Return Again". The child would return to his place of birth someday. The doctor attending the arrival gave the child the English name Bruce... And the legend was born !!
At the age of 6, Bruce started to appear in numerous Chinese films. His first film was called "A beginning of a boy." As he made more films it was decided that he should star in a film with his father. The film was called "My Son Ah Cheun". Bruce had a bigger role than his father. In each film he played a problem child, always stealing and fighting. He made at least 20 of these Cantonese films including "Black Boy Jungle" and "Boys on the Street".
When Bruce was 14, he got beaten up in a street fight. So, after discussing the matter with his mother he decided to learn martial arts and develop his physique and self defense abilities.
Most people think that Bruce was born muscular. It was actually totally the opposite; he was always rather frail as a child and never ate well even when he returned to the U.S in 1958. Only through constant training and proper eating did he build himself up into the super-human physical specimen that he was to become. Bruce was never to lose a single fight ever again!!
Although his father had him wielding a sword at 6, his first REAL teacher was the Wing Chun master, Sifu Yip Man. Bruce became obsessed with the whole concept of Wing Chun and soon became very good. One of the Wing Chun training methods was the wooden dummy - A training device which builds both speed and focus. Another one of his teachers was Siu Hon Sung, a kung fu expert. Bruce had been learning Cha Cha dancing and offered to trade his knowledge of it for some of his kung fu lessons. It would normally take 3 weeks to learn 30 kung fu moves, but Bruce mastered them in only 3 nights. Siu Hon Sung never did learn any Cha Cha!
In 1958 Bruce became the Hong Kong Cha Cha champion. He then made 2 more Cantonese films, "The Orphan" and "Thunderstorm". Thunderstorm is the only film where he didn't have a single fight, although there are certain confrontations.
Bruce, fighting Dan Inosanto in "Game of Death". As time passed, Bruce would fight in the streets trying to see just how good he was. Eventually the police warned his mother Grace, that if it didn`t stop, Bruce would be Arrested. So in April 1958, his father gave him $100 US and sent him to San Francisco (his place of birth) with the hope that Bruce would change and become more responsible. He boarded a boat and left. He made a little more money on the way there giving Cha Cha lessons to his fellow passengers.
In San Francisco Bruce lived with his fathers friend, Ruby Chow, who owned a restaurant. Bruce worked in the restaurant while living in the attic. After he finished High School, he was still constantly training and developing his skill in the martial arts. For Bruce it wasn't enough to be just a good martial artist, he had to be the BEST.
Bruce grew tired of the restaurant and headed for Seattle to study Philosophy at the University of Washington. In 1959, he met a fellow Asian called Taki Kimura. He was twice Bruce's age and had suffered many years of racial abuse. Bruce persuaded him to take pride in his Asian identity and taught him martial arts. Another student was Roy Hollingsworth. Eventually they suggested that he open a school to make money.
In Hong Kong, kung fu was a secret Chinese weapon and was never taught to any non-Chinese person, but Bruce welcomed ANYONE who was interested in learning what he had to teach. In his opinion the Chinese people were not the only worthy persons to learn this great art, and so he broke the racial barriers that had been forged over time!!
In 1961 while teaching some fellow university students Bruce met a young girl called Linda Emery. They soon fell in love and got married... Later, their son Brandon was born, followed a couple of years later by Shannon.
In 1963, Bruce wrote a book called "Chinese Kung Fu". It was incredibly detailed with precise drawings.
In 1964, at a Karate tournament hosted by Ed Parker, Bruce demonstrated his abilities to a large audience... At Long Beach, with Taki Kimura as his assistant, he showed off his 2 finger press ups and his legendary one inch punch.
A noted television producer who was really impressed by Bruce's intensity and focus approached him and a screen test was arranged. This lead to his playing the role of Kato in the Green Hornet series which was filmed in 1965.
While filming this series, Bruce left Taki Kimura in charge of his kung fu school. Although the Green Hornet never really took off, it lasted for 30 half hour episodes. Bruce, surprisingly, as Kato became more popular than the main star, especially in Hong Kong.
In the documentary "Bruce Lee: The Martial Arts Master" Van Williams who was the main star of the Green Hornet recalls how Bruce used to run around the set practicing his kicks. "He would jump up and tap you on the ear with his foot, but this stopped when one of the extras turned around and got his jaw dislocated". During filming Bruce liked to work in close to improve the fight scenes, but he also injured quite a few stuntmen by doing this. The producers found it pretty hard to find stuntmen in the end. Bruce had to slow his movements down because on film, he was practically a blur and you couldn't see what he was doing properly!!
After the Green Hornet, Bruce opened up another kung fu school called "Lee Jun Fan, Gung fu institute". This is where he learned to use the nunchaku`s from fellow student Danny Inosanto. Here he taught actors like James Coburn, Steve McQueen and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. He had now become so popular that he could charge up to $300 US an hour for instruction.
This was also the place where he created his own technique of Jeet Kune Do, which means (The Way of the Intercepting Fist). He thought it would be better to intercept and attack, rather than blocking and then attacking.
Bruce believed intercepting an attack would be a lot faster than blocking and then attacking as the latter was comprised of two separate movements.
In 1967, Bruce starred in "A Man Called Ironside", as a martial arts instructor, Bruce always did his own stunts as well. He then filmed 12 episodes of "Longstreet", a short series where he teaches a guy his new Jeet Kune Do technique. This was a great idea that would let Bruce show the world his new technique.
He became more and more interested in making a Hollywood movie and wanted to make more money than Steve McQueen per film... This Bruce eventually did achieve!!
In 1970, Bruce realized after the advice of one of his students (James Coburn), that his immediate film career was to be in Hong Kong.
When appearing on a TV show, he broke 4 out of 5 one inch thick boards, and one dangling piece as well (Breaking a dangling one inch piece of wood is an amazing feat).
This was seen by TV producer Raymond Chow who had just opened up Golden Harvest studios. He offered Bruce a two picture deal and they flew off to Thailand to film "The Big Boss". During filming, one of the Thais thought that the fight co-ordinator was faster than Bruce, 5 minutes later... he changed his mind!!!
Another thing that surprised the cast was Bruce opening a bottle of drink with one thumb (The kind that normally needs a can opener). The movie became a smash hit, breaking all known box office records. He then flew to Shanghai and filmed "Fist of Fury". Raymond Chow told Bruce that he would play a bigger part in producing it than in his last film. This once again broke all the box office records, including the ones from "The Big Boss".
By now Bruce had become a national hero and started up his own company called "Concord Productions" and decided that he would write, direct and star in his next film. He went to Europe location hunting, finally deciding on Rome. He brought in 3 top martial artists, Bob Wall, Whong In Sik and Chuck Norris, who he would fight at the end of the film. The result was another sellout; police had to arrive to halt the traffic jams and big crowds.
All 3 of these films had Bruce arriving in a strange town, not knowing his potential enemies. In "The Big Boss", he was in Thailand working at an ice factory with his cousins. In "Fist of Fury", he had come to Shanghai to attend his teacher's funeral, finding his school abused and insulted by the local Japanese school. In "Way of the Dragon" he comes to Rome to help out at a friend's restaurant, which is being hassled by a protection racket. Also the enemies were never Chinese, always foreigners like the Thais, Japanese, Europeans and Americans. Even when there was the odd bad Chinese guy, it's clearly pointed out that they're just misguided pawns of a foreign boss.
Bruce would often be challenged by the extras, but he was never actually defeated, apart from the time when he was 14. Bruce didn't drink, so the characters he played didn't drink either. He always showed himself like he was in real life. "The Way of the Dragon" is the best example of Bruce in real life. In the only bedroom scene he ever filmed in "The Big Boss", a prostitute gets him drunk and takes him back to her place, only to watch him then fall asleep. He would also show off his ability to play all kinds of different characters. In "Fist of Fury" he dresses up as an old newspaper guy as well as a telephone repair man.
Bruce, James Coburn and Stirling Silliphant had been trying to put together a project to be called "Silent Flute". 20th Century Fox agreed to do it, but on a tiny budget and providing that it could be shot in India. They spent weeks location hunting there and finally decided it was a waste of time. In Nepal Bruce saw a Bigota (Tall Tower). This gave him the idea for "Game of Death". Bruce only filmed 1/3 of this film before being interrupted to film the eventual Hollywood smash hit "Enter the Dragon".
"Game of Death" was completed in 1978 after Bruce`s death. The story line is changed and Bruce only appears for 10 minutes at the end. This is footage from the Tower version, which he had intended. The first 95% of the film is NOT the missing scenes!!
"Enter the Dragon" was the 1st time a U.S and Hong Kong film company had come together to make a film. This was the film that brought Bruce world wide fame and made him the world`s first Asian superstar. The big fight scene at the end took 7 days to film, it was during this that an extra challenged Bruce in real life. He wanted to experience Bruce`s Jeet Kune Do. Bruce drew a circle on the floor and told him that he had 3 punches to knock him out of it. The extra couldn`t do it, so Bruce told him, "OK my turn". He pointed to his shoulder blade and said "I`m going to hit you right here, are you ready?" The guy said "What do you mean, am I ready?" Before he could say anything, his teeth started falling out of his mouth. Bruce was just SO fast. Another extra challenged him. They sparred for a bit, then the guy got kicked in the head...and that was enough.
The mirror scene took hours to set up, getting the mirrors in the perfect place, so they didn't reflect any cameras. People would argue over whose job it was to do stuff; this is where Bruce came in... The Chinese would die for him. Eventually the film was completed.
During the time of filming "Game of Death", Bruce had been working with some new character ideas. They would have wielded weapons, like swords and long knives. On the documentary "The Legend" you can see photos of at least 4 of these characters. One of them is a blind swordsman, his version of a character called Zatawichi. (A popular Japanese film at that time). Unforunately we`ll never see Bruce in these roles, but it is interesting to think about the kind of sword films Bruce could have produced.
On the 10th May 1973, the trouble for Bruce Lee had begun. While dubbing the sound effects for "Enter the Dragon", he passed out for a whole half an hour. He went to the hospital, and was prescribed the drug Manatol. It was used to reduce an apparent brain swelling.
On July 20th 1973, Bruce had arranged to meet Raymond Chow along with actress Betty Ting Pei who would star in "Game of Death". He stopped off at Betty`s house and told her that he had a headache. She gave him an Aquagesic (a painkiller that she regularly used ). Bruce laid down in her bed and went to sleep. During his sleep, the brain swelling returned and triggered an allergy to the painkiller called a cerebral edema.
Later Betty tried to wake him but couldn't. Panicking, she called Raymond Chow, who came over and called the doctor. Bruce was rushed to the Queen Elizabeth hospital, barely alive. The ambulance crew was fighting to resuscitate him, but Bruce was pronounced "dead on arrival".
As the news spread across the world, people talked about nothing else, refusing to believe it. Bruce had two funerals, one in Hong Kong and one in the U.S. Over 27,000 people attended his funeral, few could hide their grief. People were just breaking down and crying when they saw him in the open coffin. A banner was placed amongst the many tributes reading "A star sinks in a Sea of Art".
When the press found out that Bruce had died at Betty`s house, they were quick to speculate that Bruce had died while they were having sex. To this day vicious rumours are still spread across the world. At the airport, Linda broke her silence and told Hong Kong to drop it and that she blamed nobody, and that Bruce had died of natural causes.
His funeral in Seattle was attended by all his friends, family and former students. James Coburn and Steve McQueen acted as pallbearers. Should you wish to watch the funeral, you can find it on the documentary (Bruce Lee: The Man and the Legend). Finally on July 31st, 1973, Bruce was laid to rest in Seattle at the Lake View Cemetary.
His and Brandon's graves are regularly visited by people from all over the world. There are ALWAYS fresh flowers on their graves each day. Some day, I too will place mine there and pay my respect to my favourite person in the whole world.
Soon after the funeral, as the wild rumours continued, the autopsy results were that Bruce had died of a cerebral adema in reaction to the painkiller that he had taken... The result was death by misadventure.
For years Betty Ting Pei had kept quiet, ignoring the insults thrown at her until in 1983 when she first broke her silence on a TV show and told the world that she would never have done anything to hurt Bruce as he was a very good friend. But the rumours are STILL going on. Some I've heard are that a Chinese mafia gang arranged his death, who supposedly had control over all of the Chinese actors. Another says that he'd been killed by Shaolin monks for teaching the secrets to the outsiders.
Another rumour is the curse. Bruce supposedly was haunted by personal demons. He had premonitions that he would die at half his father's age of 64 (which he did at 32). Also a protector of evil blew off his roof to warn away evil spirits. The same thing happened to the previous occupants of his house and disaster had befallen them. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar's basketball number was 33, Bruce would have been 33 that year in November... The rumours just go on. Personaly I believe in the cerebral edema; the swelling was brought on by great stress over work, Bruce practically wore himself out to a disappointingly early grave.
In 1978, the producers of "Enter the Dragon" decided to finish "Game of Death" as a tribute to him. In my opinion, they'd have been better off to show us the entire 30 minutes of the REAL version. The first 95% is not the MISSING scenes but a crappy changed storyline.
To this day many Bruce Lee Imitators have tried to be just like him, but have all just faded. Maybe a star like Jackie Chan can rise to the limits, but even Jackie Chan doesn`t claim to be the new Bruce Lee. There will never be a NEW Bruce Lee.
(by Robert Ciapparelli)
According to the Chinese calendar, 1940 was the Year of the Dragon. A Cantonese film actor named Lee Hoi Chun was performing in San Francisco accompanied by his pregnant wife Grace. By November, Grace had gone into labour and was taken to hospital, but her husband continued on to New York to perform there. On the 27th of November, 1940, at the Jackson Street hospital, Grace gave birth to a baby boy. He was named Lee Jun Fan, which meant "To Return Again". The child would return to his place of birth someday. The doctor attending the arrival gave the child the English name Bruce... And the legend was born !!
At the age of 6, Bruce started to appear in numerous Chinese films. His first film was called "A beginning of a boy." As he made more films it was decided that he should star in a film with his father. The film was called "My Son Ah Cheun". Bruce had a bigger role than his father. In each film he played a problem child, always stealing and fighting. He made at least 20 of these Cantonese films including "Black Boy Jungle" and "Boys on the Street".
When Bruce was 14, he got beaten up in a street fight. So, after discussing the matter with his mother he decided to learn martial arts and develop his physique and self defense abilities.
Most people think that Bruce was born muscular. It was actually totally the opposite; he was always rather frail as a child and never ate well even when he returned to the U.S in 1958. Only through constant training and proper eating did he build himself up into the super-human physical specimen that he was to become. Bruce was never to lose a single fight ever again!!
Although his father had him wielding a sword at 6, his first REAL teacher was the Wing Chun master, Sifu Yip Man. Bruce became obsessed with the whole concept of Wing Chun and soon became very good. One of the Wing Chun training methods was the wooden dummy - A training device which builds both speed and focus. Another one of his teachers was Siu Hon Sung, a kung fu expert. Bruce had been learning Cha Cha dancing and offered to trade his knowledge of it for some of his kung fu lessons. It would normally take 3 weeks to learn 30 kung fu moves, but Bruce mastered them in only 3 nights. Siu Hon Sung never did learn any Cha Cha!
In 1958 Bruce became the Hong Kong Cha Cha champion. He then made 2 more Cantonese films, "The Orphan" and "Thunderstorm". Thunderstorm is the only film where he didn't have a single fight, although there are certain confrontations.
Bruce, fighting Dan Inosanto in "Game of Death". As time passed, Bruce would fight in the streets trying to see just how good he was. Eventually the police warned his mother Grace, that if it didn`t stop, Bruce would be Arrested. So in April 1958, his father gave him $100 US and sent him to San Francisco (his place of birth) with the hope that Bruce would change and become more responsible. He boarded a boat and left. He made a little more money on the way there giving Cha Cha lessons to his fellow passengers.
In San Francisco Bruce lived with his fathers friend, Ruby Chow, who owned a restaurant. Bruce worked in the restaurant while living in the attic. After he finished High School, he was still constantly training and developing his skill in the martial arts. For Bruce it wasn't enough to be just a good martial artist, he had to be the BEST.
Bruce grew tired of the restaurant and headed for Seattle to study Philosophy at the University of Washington. In 1959, he met a fellow Asian called Taki Kimura. He was twice Bruce's age and had suffered many years of racial abuse. Bruce persuaded him to take pride in his Asian identity and taught him martial arts. Another student was Roy Hollingsworth. Eventually they suggested that he open a school to make money.
In Hong Kong, kung fu was a secret Chinese weapon and was never taught to any non-Chinese person, but Bruce welcomed ANYONE who was interested in learning what he had to teach. In his opinion the Chinese people were not the only worthy persons to learn this great art, and so he broke the racial barriers that had been forged over time!!
In 1961 while teaching some fellow university students Bruce met a young girl called Linda Emery. They soon fell in love and got married... Later, their son Brandon was born, followed a couple of years later by Shannon.
In 1963, Bruce wrote a book called "Chinese Kung Fu". It was incredibly detailed with precise drawings.
In 1964, at a Karate tournament hosted by Ed Parker, Bruce demonstrated his abilities to a large audience... At Long Beach, with Taki Kimura as his assistant, he showed off his 2 finger press ups and his legendary one inch punch.
A noted television producer who was really impressed by Bruce's intensity and focus approached him and a screen test was arranged. This lead to his playing the role of Kato in the Green Hornet series which was filmed in 1965.
While filming this series, Bruce left Taki Kimura in charge of his kung fu school. Although the Green Hornet never really took off, it lasted for 30 half hour episodes. Bruce, surprisingly, as Kato became more popular than the main star, especially in Hong Kong.
In the documentary "Bruce Lee: The Martial Arts Master" Van Williams who was the main star of the Green Hornet recalls how Bruce used to run around the set practicing his kicks. "He would jump up and tap you on the ear with his foot, but this stopped when one of the extras turned around and got his jaw dislocated". During filming Bruce liked to work in close to improve the fight scenes, but he also injured quite a few stuntmen by doing this. The producers found it pretty hard to find stuntmen in the end. Bruce had to slow his movements down because on film, he was practically a blur and you couldn't see what he was doing properly!!
After the Green Hornet, Bruce opened up another kung fu school called "Lee Jun Fan, Gung fu institute". This is where he learned to use the nunchaku`s from fellow student Danny Inosanto. Here he taught actors like James Coburn, Steve McQueen and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. He had now become so popular that he could charge up to $300 US an hour for instruction.
This was also the place where he created his own technique of Jeet Kune Do, which means (The Way of the Intercepting Fist). He thought it would be better to intercept and attack, rather than blocking and then attacking.
Bruce believed intercepting an attack would be a lot faster than blocking and then attacking as the latter was comprised of two separate movements.
In 1967, Bruce starred in "A Man Called Ironside", as a martial arts instructor, Bruce always did his own stunts as well. He then filmed 12 episodes of "Longstreet", a short series where he teaches a guy his new Jeet Kune Do technique. This was a great idea that would let Bruce show the world his new technique.
He became more and more interested in making a Hollywood movie and wanted to make more money than Steve McQueen per film... This Bruce eventually did achieve!!
In 1970, Bruce realized after the advice of one of his students (James Coburn), that his immediate film career was to be in Hong Kong.
When appearing on a TV show, he broke 4 out of 5 one inch thick boards, and one dangling piece as well (Breaking a dangling one inch piece of wood is an amazing feat).
This was seen by TV producer Raymond Chow who had just opened up Golden Harvest studios. He offered Bruce a two picture deal and they flew off to Thailand to film "The Big Boss". During filming, one of the Thais thought that the fight co-ordinator was faster than Bruce, 5 minutes later... he changed his mind!!!
Another thing that surprised the cast was Bruce opening a bottle of drink with one thumb (The kind that normally needs a can opener). The movie became a smash hit, breaking all known box office records. He then flew to Shanghai and filmed "Fist of Fury". Raymond Chow told Bruce that he would play a bigger part in producing it than in his last film. This once again broke all the box office records, including the ones from "The Big Boss".
By now Bruce had become a national hero and started up his own company called "Concord Productions" and decided that he would write, direct and star in his next film. He went to Europe location hunting, finally deciding on Rome. He brought in 3 top martial artists, Bob Wall, Whong In Sik and Chuck Norris, who he would fight at the end of the film. The result was another sellout; police had to arrive to halt the traffic jams and big crowds.
All 3 of these films had Bruce arriving in a strange town, not knowing his potential enemies. In "The Big Boss", he was in Thailand working at an ice factory with his cousins. In "Fist of Fury", he had come to Shanghai to attend his teacher's funeral, finding his school abused and insulted by the local Japanese school. In "Way of the Dragon" he comes to Rome to help out at a friend's restaurant, which is being hassled by a protection racket. Also the enemies were never Chinese, always foreigners like the Thais, Japanese, Europeans and Americans. Even when there was the odd bad Chinese guy, it's clearly pointed out that they're just misguided pawns of a foreign boss.
Bruce would often be challenged by the extras, but he was never actually defeated, apart from the time when he was 14. Bruce didn't drink, so the characters he played didn't drink either. He always showed himself like he was in real life. "The Way of the Dragon" is the best example of Bruce in real life. In the only bedroom scene he ever filmed in "The Big Boss", a prostitute gets him drunk and takes him back to her place, only to watch him then fall asleep. He would also show off his ability to play all kinds of different characters. In "Fist of Fury" he dresses up as an old newspaper guy as well as a telephone repair man.
Bruce, James Coburn and Stirling Silliphant had been trying to put together a project to be called "Silent Flute". 20th Century Fox agreed to do it, but on a tiny budget and providing that it could be shot in India. They spent weeks location hunting there and finally decided it was a waste of time. In Nepal Bruce saw a Bigota (Tall Tower). This gave him the idea for "Game of Death". Bruce only filmed 1/3 of this film before being interrupted to film the eventual Hollywood smash hit "Enter the Dragon".
"Game of Death" was completed in 1978 after Bruce`s death. The story line is changed and Bruce only appears for 10 minutes at the end. This is footage from the Tower version, which he had intended. The first 95% of the film is NOT the missing scenes!!
"Enter the Dragon" was the 1st time a U.S and Hong Kong film company had come together to make a film. This was the film that brought Bruce world wide fame and made him the world`s first Asian superstar. The big fight scene at the end took 7 days to film, it was during this that an extra challenged Bruce in real life. He wanted to experience Bruce`s Jeet Kune Do. Bruce drew a circle on the floor and told him that he had 3 punches to knock him out of it. The extra couldn`t do it, so Bruce told him, "OK my turn". He pointed to his shoulder blade and said "I`m going to hit you right here, are you ready?" The guy said "What do you mean, am I ready?" Before he could say anything, his teeth started falling out of his mouth. Bruce was just SO fast. Another extra challenged him. They sparred for a bit, then the guy got kicked in the head...and that was enough.
The mirror scene took hours to set up, getting the mirrors in the perfect place, so they didn't reflect any cameras. People would argue over whose job it was to do stuff; this is where Bruce came in... The Chinese would die for him. Eventually the film was completed.
During the time of filming "Game of Death", Bruce had been working with some new character ideas. They would have wielded weapons, like swords and long knives. On the documentary "The Legend" you can see photos of at least 4 of these characters. One of them is a blind swordsman, his version of a character called Zatawichi. (A popular Japanese film at that time). Unforunately we`ll never see Bruce in these roles, but it is interesting to think about the kind of sword films Bruce could have produced.
On the 10th May 1973, the trouble for Bruce Lee had begun. While dubbing the sound effects for "Enter the Dragon", he passed out for a whole half an hour. He went to the hospital, and was prescribed the drug Manatol. It was used to reduce an apparent brain swelling.
On July 20th 1973, Bruce had arranged to meet Raymond Chow along with actress Betty Ting Pei who would star in "Game of Death". He stopped off at Betty`s house and told her that he had a headache. She gave him an Aquagesic (a painkiller that she regularly used ). Bruce laid down in her bed and went to sleep. During his sleep, the brain swelling returned and triggered an allergy to the painkiller called a cerebral edema.
Later Betty tried to wake him but couldn't. Panicking, she called Raymond Chow, who came over and called the doctor. Bruce was rushed to the Queen Elizabeth hospital, barely alive. The ambulance crew was fighting to resuscitate him, but Bruce was pronounced "dead on arrival".
As the news spread across the world, people talked about nothing else, refusing to believe it. Bruce had two funerals, one in Hong Kong and one in the U.S. Over 27,000 people attended his funeral, few could hide their grief. People were just breaking down and crying when they saw him in the open coffin. A banner was placed amongst the many tributes reading "A star sinks in a Sea of Art".
When the press found out that Bruce had died at Betty`s house, they were quick to speculate that Bruce had died while they were having sex. To this day vicious rumours are still spread across the world. At the airport, Linda broke her silence and told Hong Kong to drop it and that she blamed nobody, and that Bruce had died of natural causes.
His funeral in Seattle was attended by all his friends, family and former students. James Coburn and Steve McQueen acted as pallbearers. Should you wish to watch the funeral, you can find it on the documentary (Bruce Lee: The Man and the Legend). Finally on July 31st, 1973, Bruce was laid to rest in Seattle at the Lake View Cemetary.
His and Brandon's graves are regularly visited by people from all over the world. There are ALWAYS fresh flowers on their graves each day. Some day, I too will place mine there and pay my respect to my favourite person in the whole world.
Soon after the funeral, as the wild rumours continued, the autopsy results were that Bruce had died of a cerebral adema in reaction to the painkiller that he had taken... The result was death by misadventure.
For years Betty Ting Pei had kept quiet, ignoring the insults thrown at her until in 1983 when she first broke her silence on a TV show and told the world that she would never have done anything to hurt Bruce as he was a very good friend. But the rumours are STILL going on. Some I've heard are that a Chinese mafia gang arranged his death, who supposedly had control over all of the Chinese actors. Another says that he'd been killed by Shaolin monks for teaching the secrets to the outsiders.
Another rumour is the curse. Bruce supposedly was haunted by personal demons. He had premonitions that he would die at half his father's age of 64 (which he did at 32). Also a protector of evil blew off his roof to warn away evil spirits. The same thing happened to the previous occupants of his house and disaster had befallen them. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar's basketball number was 33, Bruce would have been 33 that year in November... The rumours just go on. Personaly I believe in the cerebral edema; the swelling was brought on by great stress over work, Bruce practically wore himself out to a disappointingly early grave.
In 1978, the producers of "Enter the Dragon" decided to finish "Game of Death" as a tribute to him. In my opinion, they'd have been better off to show us the entire 30 minutes of the REAL version. The first 95% is not the MISSING scenes but a crappy changed storyline.
To this day many Bruce Lee Imitators have tried to be just like him, but have all just faded. Maybe a star like Jackie Chan can rise to the limits, but even Jackie Chan doesn`t claim to be the new Bruce Lee. There will never be a NEW Bruce Lee.
(by Robert Ciapparelli)
Aristotle Onassis Biography and Video
Aristotle Onassis Video
Introduction
The life and character of Aristotle Onassis, in many ways, exhibited strong similarities to that of the Greek mythological figure Odysseus. Although never a passionate reader, Aristotle was fascinated by the story of Odysseus -- about his eternal journey in search of chimera and adventures and his ultimate return to his native country to reign in peace on his people. This character always attracted him as he felt the sense of a similar destiny and that he, as did Odysseus, knew how to exist above all will.
Ari was brought up in an environment consumed by the rigorous principles of the Orthodox Church. But inside him, there remained only a deep religious sense of man as he grew older, a sense that respects the strength of superior events while de-emphasizing the will of a god or the lords in determining most matters. Ari was one to never escape the fight and to spends all his energies consumed in an eternal struggle.
His stellar performance as a businessman was surely linked to this component of his character, to the aggressiveness of a man who was willing to win at any price. He was born in Smirne, from where we believe Homer has originated. After Smirne was occupied by the Turks, he ended up in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Here he succeeded in a few years to gain his fated first million. As he went down the path of success with the logic of narcissus, sure of always going the right way and often times feeling omnipotent, he faced rivals and courts of justice, democracies and colonels. Few people in their lives have come across such a crescendo of power.
He frequented exclusive night clubs and restaurants all over the world. Whether over the phone or on a cruise ship, he fostered a profitable business with his flair and vibrant personality. The particulars of his business negotiations, of course, were carried out in offices somewhere in Europe or the United States. But it was his personality that fascinated those around him. He always seemed to tread the fine line between self-egocentrism and vulnerability. This unique combination formed the nucleus of his character and resulted in a remarkable mix of vitality and melancholy. He was a protagonist of the financial world, but fate was not to permit him to reap only happiness from life. That story by Odysseus that he truly loved, also depicted the punishment of the man who had challenged the omnipotence and authority of the lords. Similar to Prometheus who in life had reached the highest aims, Ari was ultimately akin to the son precipitated on the ground in the legend of Icarus. Onassis did indeed spend the last two years of his life fighting without enthusiasm and devoid of hope.
The Escape from Smirne
Aristotle's father, Socrates, moved with his brothers to Anatolia, in Smirne, from inside the country. Although not the oldest of his brothers, Socrates was the most charismatic and effectively fulfilled the role as head of the family. They had moved to Smirne originally due to pure chance when a team of engineers and typographers had invaded the village of Moutalasski to concentrate on the new Berlin-Baghdad railway and spoke of the wonderful economic opportunities in Smirne.
Socrates Onassis and his brothers became inebriated by the city's atmosphere. They recognized the existence of the economic opportunities as they witnessed the carpets, tobacco, cotton, dried-fig, wood, raisins, and other goods that passed through the port. Socrates found commerce to be an extremely prosperous sector of business and, after an apprenticeship with a Jewish merchant near Bohar Benadava, he rented a small store at the port and opened an import-export business. He experienced extremely good business and, in a year, moved to a building in the Han del Gran Visir in the business center of the city. He also rented another store in a strategic location near the railway and the port in Daragaz.
Although his business activity eventually spanned many diverse trades, Socrates was essentially a dealer of tobacco. In the meantime, all his brothers, Alexander, Homer and Vasili, were engaged in their family affairs and their business reputations were also expanding. In fact, Homer and Alexander began to take a keen interest in politics as their reputation flourished. Soon thereafter, Socrates decided to get married, considering the social position he had already achieved, and to return to the village. He chose to marry Penelope Dologu, the daughter of a village notable. Not yet 17 years of age, the bride courageously and intelligently adapted herself to her duties and gave birth to two sons, Artemide and Aristotle. At this time, the year was 1900 and racially-spurred political strife with Turkey was rapidly fomenting.
In 1909, during a time of nationalist hostility at the hands of the Turks, a personal tragedy struck Socrates' family. Penelope died of kidney failure, leaving a sad void in the family. Socrates ultimately remarried, bringing a very good stepmother to Penelope's sons. But to Aristotle, no one would ever love him as his mother Penelope did. Surrounded by women including the stepmother, the grandmother Getsemani and the three sisters (two were born from the second marriage), Ari grew up in a world where religion was an important obligation; in fact, if it weren't for the presence of his uncle Alexandro, perhaps Ari would have set off towards an ecclesiastic career. However, his uncle inculcated in him the passion of life, that taste of struggle and the sense that challenge is highly respected in a Greek world. These passions dominated the rest of Ari's life.
As World War I progressed and the nations began to divide the spoils of war, the Greek reoccupation of Smirne was encouraged. However, on August 26th 1927, the troops of Kemal Pascia entered and conquered the region without meeting much Greek resistance. Only a few days before, Socrates had brought his son Ari into the office and together they wisely burned the documents recognizing the political activity of Alexander. However, his prudence did not keep him from being arrested and thrown into a concentration camp. The family was transported to another camp in the island of Lesbos and only Ari was saved from this travesty. After deceptively lying about his age and suggesting that he was only 16 years old, Ari convinced the military figures that he was to young to go to a camp. Ari somehow found the strength and the necessary inventiveness to organize an escape and successfully liberated his father from the concentration camp.
The New World
Ari's grandmother Getsemani had always told him to remember that "men have to construct their destiny." After his father's liberation, Ari didn't see in his native country any bond strong enough to keep him there. With 250 dollars in his pocket and a valid permit for a journey into a country of new colonization, Ari set out for Argentina. He started so with a third-class ticket in the middle of thousands of emigrants, tight between the hold and the deck, the voyage towards life and his destiny of man.
But Ari was different that all the other desperate fugitives who had lost their country and, with it, their identities. The main distinction between them was Ari's love for victory, his clearness of objectives, and his unfettered determination. He subsequently found work as a telephone operator with the help of some Greeks and, on this occasion, he once again falsified his date of birth, this time making himself six years older so that he could legally hold a job. His work gave him economic stability and a better business sense. When work was slow, Ari would read the financial pages for the London and New York stock exchanges and eventually he put his knowledge into a speculative investment which paid $700 in handsome returns. He bought a new wardrobe and began to frequent the night clubs in new fashion.
In his search for "perfection," Ari became tuned into the cultural aspects of the region and it was for this reason that he attended the opera in which Claudia Muzio was the soprano interpreter. It was by no means an easy courtship but Ari ultimately succeeded in becoming Claudia's lover. Claudia opened up the doors of Buenos Aires to Ari and his destiny started to change.
As he continued his work as a telephone operator, another brilliant idea came to him. He envisioned the tobacco of the orient spreading rapidly in Argentina and he wrote his father with a proposal to ship him tobacco for a contracted rate. He was convinced that Turkish tobacco, more so that Cuban tobacco, would appeal to the female public in Argentina. The deal was more complicated than Ari anticipated, however. Apparently, at this time, women smoked only in private and not in public, so his orders were initially limited. Ari decided to persist when no one bought his tobacco and he opted to open up a cigarette production line himself. He produced two types, "Osman" and "Primeros", and thousands of dollars in profits started to come in. With the help of his cousins Kosta and Niko Konialidis, he enlarged the business to that of import and export.
Unfortunately, Ari was soon informed by Kostas that taxes on goods of importation from countries that didn't have trade agreements with Greece would have a one thousand percent increase. Ari immediately understood the danger that such an increase would pose to the Greek government. Naturally the danger included all of Onassis' personal business. Ari painted the reality to the Greek government in a memorandum stressing how the new taxes would ruin the sea trade. This memorandum for the Greek government didn't effect the increase towards Argentina. He was given the appointment to the Greek consulate in Argentina.
Home-sickness and sweet nostalgia was pervasive in Ari's mind afterwards. The memory of the sea and the port, the scent of mimosa and jasmine, the bread fresh out of the oven, the ship's siren sound, the steam engines and the orchestra music, the folk-songs and the smell of coffee that reminded him of his infancy and the love for his native city. This sense of nostalgia began to consume him. Ari wasn't a sailor and didn't have the instincts of a sailor, but was a native of a Greek sea-city and poured out all his feelings onto a project to obtain some whips containing his name, his flag, and his colors.
The ship offered Ari the opportunity to free himself from the ghosts of his dreams interrupted from his youth; it offered him a coherent symbol of his might and aims to embody the myth of Odysseus in his lifetime--the eternal traveler pushed to discover the limits of the world. As a ship owner, Ari started a seemingly endless adventure, awesome in dimension, to experience a continued mix of success and defeat and the strength of the human character.
The Penelope and the Socrates
Ari arrived at a crossroads in his life. The gains he earned with tobacco was still insufficient to satisfy his heavy aspirations. Ambitious and avidly aware of his own talent, he noted while carrying the function as Consul how fascinating the world of the sea is. As Consul, he enjoyed resolving ships' problems in port, and had the energy to grasp the situations behind sea-transportation and maximizing shipping profits.
Having decided to find ships at any cost, he started a voyage of Europe in order to find the "lost ship." He returned from Europe unconvinced of what he had seen, but Kostas, his inseparable friend and perpetual businessman, found a "possibility" in Canada.
Onassis left immediately. The ships were anchored on the Saint Lawrence River and belonged to the Canadian National Steamship Company, a subsidiary of the Canadian National Railways. The company was resolved to selling the various ships, weighing anywhere from 8.5 and 10 thousand tons, at scrap-metal prices. Onassis examined the ships, and made his own estimates. He offered to buy six ships each for 20 thousand dollars apiece. The company had wanted to sell only two ships, but relented; Onassis was finally a ship owner, and he promptly installed his cousin into a brand new office and designated Nikos Konialidis his curator for naval business.
The first two ships released from the yard after the acquisition were names after his parents Socrates Onassis and Penelope Onassis. With his soon-to-be legendary flair for business, Ari kept his ships in the yard until he judged market demand was right for their release. However, he had to make up the $120,000 that he had borrowed from various banks, and there was little room for error. When he thought that he had arrived at the right moment, his small armada sailed in low waters with a quantity of Canadian newspaper, the prestigious Daily Mirror of Lord Rothermer. The other transports followed one another and Onassis began to ameliorate his starting investment, but it was not easy.
Rotterdam was the sight of the new fleet's first troubles. The Onassis Penelope was stuck in port, blocked by the Port Authority because a Greek sailor was sick and had to be substituted with another Greek. The ship flew a Greek flag, and the crew needed to be completed in order to successfully transport the cargo. Ari went to Rotterdam, but his protests didn't yield many results. The ship had to unload the rest of its load in Copenhagen, which wasted valuable time. Ari dismissed the Consul, his old friend from school, with the phrase "come and see me tomorrow on board." The phrase seemed sublime, but the Consul had underestimated Onassis' mighty power as a man and deep desire to avoid defeats and losses. This was a classic example of Onassis' firm desire to succeed.
Ari called his legal advisors and Kostas Gratsos. His agents took only until that night to register the ship under the Flag of Panama. The morning after, the Greek Consul received a bottle of champagne on board the Penelope. Accompanying the champagne was a note informing him to take the Greek flag with him, for he was now on board a Panamese ship, signed by Ari. The changing of the flag, an immediate resolution to a nagging problem, revealed itself as Ari's winning card. He started a practice which many ship owners soon followed. The advantages were undeniable, especially from a fiscal point of view. Taxes were nonexistent, the ship could now trade with any value, and was no longer subject to most exchange rules. The ship owner could now establish the number of the crew on the ground purely according to the ship's need, and these hirings were no longer carefully checked.
Onassis returned from his trip to Rotterdam, reassured that he had found the right solution. His joy was comparable to that of a great scientist that had just discovered a new formula and was busy preparing himself for greater successes.
The Liberty Fleet and the OPM Technique
"Ari's business," a nickname that originated in the United States and lasted for years, soon prospered. When the Second World War finished, Ari had lost neither a ship nor a man. He was proud of this result, for three of his ships were rented to the Naval Commission of the United States, which yielded him $250,000 a year. Meanwhile, his oil tankers, long sequestered in Scandinavia, were now free from their forced anchorage. Ari had planned to build the world's first oil tanker of tonnage greater than 9000 tons, and gave the project to a Norwegian firm. So was launched the Aristo and Aristofaneus of 15,000 tons each.
Unfortunately, the beginning of the war had caught these two ships in the neutral port of Goteborg, Norway, and the Norwegian government had sieged these ships as a symbol of its complete neutrality in the war. They were now free to carry their cargoes for Onassis.
Now he was being offered one of the greatest business opportunities of the post-war world. The United States Naval Commission put the Liberty Ships that were built during the war on sale. The price was established at $550,000, of which $125,000 could be used as a down payment, with the rest coming in 7 years at 3% interest.
Many ship owners were skeptical on the construction techniques used on these boats, but Ari's opinion was that they would be a good investment. His problem was that he didn't have the money for the 16 Liberty Ships he had intended to buy, so he applied for a bank loan. His technique was quite a bit risky; for, before actually receiving the money from the bank, he contracted transports of coal in South America, France, and Germany on ships that he didn't own. He then used these contracts as a guarantee to the banks, who gave him his money.
He used a different method to buy the T2 oil tankers that the navy put on sale for 1,500,000 each. As the principle clause of the sale, however, the tankers must be sold to an American citizen. Ari avoided this obstacle by creating an American company, United States Petroleum Carriers, with American shareholders. The government sold the new company four oil tankers. The next day, Onassis and his men anonymously took over the shares of the company that fell under the control of Ari.
Onassis' best invention, however, was the O.P.M. (Other People's Money). This idea wasn't originally created by Ari, even though he was a pioneer in the field. Credit for this innovation goes to Daniel Ludwig, a Michigan businessman. The bank refused a loan that would provide for the conversion of a transport ship into a tanker. However, Daniel had an idea; he could give a guarantee to the bank on an oil tanker that he already possessed, while he could use the profits from his transports as an identity to the bank.
The solution to this problem loan was actually simple and ingenious. Daniel Ludwig by now had perfected this technique, and defined it himself as the O.P.M. He asked the bank for a loan towards the construction of new ships but did not change the way he used the ships he already owned. The loan had to be deferred in different payments in order to permit the banks to be repaid before the new ships were actually built. The loan's guarantee came from the profits of the ships already on the water.
The banks called the operation of O.P.M. "card at double-name," for they possessed a double guarantee on their loans. Ludwig grew rich, but he never became a big ship owner. He invested the money he obtained in different areas, with the notable exception of shipping, and although his fleet was bigger than that of Onassis or Niarhos, did not play an important role in the industry.
Colombo's Egg
To be a ship owner now came to mean that you must love a risk on your own trade while carefully watching the fluctuations of the market. Of utmost importance is the oil-tanker's market, where a ship owner had to be ready to play the market if the right situation arose. Onassis used 30% of his fleet on the demands of the market, allotting these ships to be ready if the market was right. The other 70% was reserved for charters, or long journeys, that lasted a minimum of three years.
Ari used the mechanism of his charter to maximize the loans he received from the bank. In his hands, the O.P.M. transformed into a valuable instrument with notable advantages. By using the breach in the accord between Onassis and the First National Bank, Ari financed an entire fleet of oil tankers that made him the most famous ship owner in the world. In 1946, Onassis married Tina Livanos, a Greek with American citizenship, and established a home in New York. He was determined to gain respectability in the United States. In order to do this, he had to build his ships in the US. Ultimately, his plan was to bring millions of dollars into the American economy and to build super oil tankers in American yards.
Ari carefully sought out the right man to head up this task, and his search eventually led him to Harry Haggerty. Haggerty was Treasurer of Metropolitan Life Insurance, a huge company with capital exceeding 250 million. Haggerty was at first excited with the possibility, but in the end he could not agree to join an industry in which he understood little of the nuances. His negative answer did not discourage Ari, but encouraged him to try harder.
The principle obstacle lied in the fact that in agreements of charter, it was expected that if the ship would fail to complete its service, the charter would not be paid. The bank was not encouraged by the charter system, especially this particular lack of guaranty. Onassis fought this by changing his headquarters for the oil tanker company, which encouraged independent fleets to transport their product.
In effect, the oil tanker companies tried to keep the monopoly of the petroleum industry, from extraction to transportation. The transportation was wherein the problem was. In order to monopolize this facet of petroleum, the oil tanker companies had to put up huge amounts of collateral that would restrict their other activities, and subsequently added much risk to this venture. Understanding the situation and playing his cards well, Ari talked with the owners of the Socony Oil Company. He explained to them the bank's apprehension to finance, which they new little about. He told them that it was right that the companies that knew the field well and had drawn up a contract while knowing their risk, in veritas minimum, could be supported by the company and not the bank.
Ari's strength of persuasion was strong, considering his ship's solid reputation and his charismatic personality. What made his persuasion even stronger was the fact that he had covered all possible damages of his ships for the next three months. Everything was going well, but Onassis was hungry for more. He soon got it. During the period of charter, usually five years, he accumulated day-by-day periods termed "dead," that at the end of the charter became several months. It was in this period that Onassis attained a formidable idea, that he could change the accords between ship owners, companies, and financiers. His proposal went like this: "The need of my ships is very urgent; I propose a contract of charter that assures the payment for a ton and a month, for 60 months, that includes in the payment the dead periods without reducing the costs."
Before raising an objection, Ari proposed his counter-item; he would himself undertake a financing of the company for each dead period a double service. Periods longer than three months were covered in his assurance. Onassis was in the habit of illustrating his arguments with examples of comparisons; the powerful oil tanker companies could respect his ships that loded where he lives and for whom he is engaged to pay the rent. If the lodger was Rockefeller, and the house had a roof of gold or leaked was irrelevant. If the lodger accepted that he would have to pay the rent, that would be enough for anyone to lend money to the house. The ship situation was the same thing.
Socony accepted the proposal, which was an inevitable conclusion given the formula, and their assurance to pay with the low and the high tide, gave the financial society absolute security. This agreement established a new principal in marine financing. Wall Street could not avoid the financial sense of this accord; it opened a new field of investment, where banks' skepticism towards the market fell. In naval terms, one can say that after a long period of pitching, the naval financiers took the sea and reached two billion dollars in a short period of time. Ari had found Colombo's egg, but he loved to say to himself that his role in the accord yielded 40 million dollars.
Whale Hunting
"He killed only blue whales today, it has to be a secret," Bruno Schilaghecke wrote in his diary. He was a German sailor on board the Olympic Challenger Whaler, the flag-ship of Lars Andersen's fleet, the best whalers in the world. The adventure of the whaler had been ordained to fail by both the captain and the ship owner. The project "whaler" was born under such circumstances, as the usual Colombo's egg that resolves all such difficult situations.
When it became difficult to build ships in the United States, Ari went to Hamburg, Germany, where before the war he had ordered his super oil tankers to examine the situation of the Hamburg shipyards. The German economy readily received the ordering of ships, but the Potsdam Accords limited ships built to 115 tons.
Ari was disappointed, but Kostas Gratsos came through with a loophole. In the Potsdam Accords, it was written that Germany could enlarge its fleet of whalers, which created an empty space in a profitable market. But there was something else; it was not prohibited in German shipyards to convert preexisting ships. The connection was obvious. The oil tanker T2 Herman Whiton quickly became the largest whaler in the world, while The Olympic Challenger passed through 17 Canadian and British corvettes that formed a convoy to cross the Atlantic. The corvettes were naturally designed for hunting.
This started a new challenge for Onassis, a challenge far different from others, for Ari now knew how to play with loaded dice. He knew he had chosen a captain who was a Norwegian that had collaborated with the Nazis. Through this man, he enlisted 14 Norwegian artillerymen, including Lars Andersen, experienced in whale butchering. With a crew that had these qualifications, there was no problem passing the ship off as a whaler.
Given the scruples of a team of this type relative to the respect for international rules, the safeguard for the survival of the species - limiting whale captures to 16 thousand a year - was pure illusion.
The Olympic Challenger began harpooning whales a month prior to the opening of the season and did not distinguish between little sperm-whales and whales that were still just forming. Pieces of meat from the 124 dead whales lay still on the ship's deck. No one was at all grown up about it. Without any sensibility, they killed everything under the gun. These are the words of Bruno Schlaghecke, from the international commission for the hunting of whales, which bring forth his decisive evidence in the action against the Onassis fleet.
In Ari's opinion, the whales were there for the sole purpose of being captured. The only rule he knew in business was the prificts etic and that the price of whale's oil rises uncommonly fast. There surely existed another component to his fury, above the logic of gain. It is here that we find his instincts as a hunter, the enjoyment of capturing and destroying his prey. The first shipment produced 4,200.00 dollars and the massacre continued undisturbed for another 3 years until 1954.
That was a year of risk for the whalers. With the arctic zone now exhausted, the whalers moved along Peru's coast where an absurd limit was posed: In his territorial waters, where he exercised a fool military and administrative sovereignty, he moved within 200 miles of the coast. The actual limit was about 405 miles. The United States, United Kingdom, and Norway, the biggest producers of whale oil, protested and even without a written document, it seemed that Peru would not defend the imposed limit.
Onassis's fleet was navigating towards Peru, hardly exceeding the Panama canal, when the Peruvian newspaper organized an alarmist press campaign against his whalers. Acting with prudence this time, Onassis decided to stay out and ordered the captain to keep his ship to the limit of 200 miles. By now, he had already accumulated 60 thousand barrels of oil and captured 580 whales in the Arctic zone. On November 15, convinced by second-hand information that Onassis' ships had crossed the limit, sent an ambassador to intimidate the flag-ship and invited it to head for Lima. Instead, the ship continued on the sea and was fired upon by machine guns and bombed. The Captain Reichbert surrendered: the boarded ship was convoyed with 4 hunting ships in the port of Lima. The rest of the fleet was refuged in Panama. The result of the attack was discouraging - 400 sailors in prison and 5 ships sequestered.
The next day, the newspaper had a rich discussion of the matter. Nothing else helped Ari more than being attacked: the step was short from being "monster" that kills to victim of a conspiracy. The authoritative "The Times" of London, struck by a news conference held by Ari in "Claridge," wrote that the Panama's flag of Onassis' ships could be seen as that of freedom. So it seemed that the black flag of pirates depended on how you looked at it. This happened in the middle of November. At the end of the month, the supreme court fined the Olympic whaling, the Panama society owner of the fleet, 57 million soles Peruvian which corresponded to about 2,800.00 American dollars for killing a great number of whales in their water - about three thousand. The payment had to happen within 5 days or his ships would be forfeited and sold.
Ari didn't leave himself vulnerable: All the business fell to his insurance company, the fabulous Lloyd's of London. Onassis took precautions against each possible risk in covering his ships, including that of sequestration and capture. He even had a clause which forewarned that an indemnity of 30 thousand dollars a day must be paid if his ships had to navigating between October 7 and November 20 for any reason. Still, the far sightedness of Ari was his winning card. The Lloyd's paid the fee, the ships got the sea, but the whaler's adventures were finished however.
Where the Peruvian government could not succeed, the anger of the gloomy sailors that were witness of slaughter too cruel to continue to be silent were able to do so. Their testimony to the international commission of whale hunting bound the clamist Lars Andersen and the captain Reichbert to their responsibility. The documents produced and the photos adduced were incontestable evidence. The accusation gained in strength on the table of the jury - blue whales killed illegally, megatherium, sperm-whales - every species was killed without regard.
At the same time, March 1956, Ari dismantled his fleet, selling it for 8,200.00 American dollars to the Japanese, and had to find another business. He found the Pelagic fund, an institution where the goal was the safeguard of marine fauna and Onassis paid the principal quota of 570 thousand US dollars.
So ended Ari's proclivity for whale hunting, like the defeat of David over Goliath.
From the Sea to the Sky
Onassis needed the dominion of the sky, another mythical element of the universe dear to the classic world. The waters were already furrowed in all the world with ships that brought his colors, but the skies were not violated. Even if Ari preferred the sea and considered his ships the roots of a tree, he then considered airplanes as the leaves. He let himself attempt the project of taking off the national Greek airline and made it his creature.
The Greek prime minister Constantine Karamanlis, member of the right party national union radical, who arrived in power with the election of 1957 had decided to derive a source of richness which remained unused to that point. He had quite decided to take back the Greek economy and the richness and financial ability of the great ship owners.
Onassis was the first target, and the TAE was the first business offered. In reality, The loss of the company stimulated Ari to start the only private national airline in the world. The air fleet was derisory, 12 DC-8, the famous Dakota, and one DC-4. The only international service that he could boast was a weekly flight to Paris and one to London.
What Karamanlis asked Ari was to give an international rest to the company by taking it away completely. It was in this way that Onassis, migrating bird, poised himself on Greek ground and assumed command of 13 airplanes, signing the agreement on July 30, 1956. 856 people worked at TAE and all of them were hired by the Olympic Airways at the same salary and working conditions. By baptizing the airline with the name symbol of his winnings, Onassis showed that the airplanes would further his docket and money.
The negotiation with the government was meticulous and Onassis succeeded in gaining a series of important concessions. The government was anxious to encourage rich people to invest money in Greek enterprises and allotted the Olympic Airways special privileges: The monopoly on Greek aviation for 20 years, the reimbursement by the government for any unauthorized strike, reimbursement for loss in overseas flights, the right to bring their profits abroad, exemption from land taxation in Greece, the right to loan up to 3,500.00 US dollars from the government at a tax rate of 2.5%, and the exclusive rights on overseas flights.
The concessions were very generous, but the company was still working at a loss for years, even though Ari called in the Frenchman Tom Fabre who had directed the French line UTA. Fabre accepted the job for two years and helped Olympic take off, but the company was never a lucky enterprise. Without a direct plan or investment strategy, the company passed from one crisis to another. Ari asked that his monopoly rights be extended, because he intended on seeing better results in the long run. He obtained an extension until 2006 which included monopoly maintenance as well as the refueling of foreign airlines.
By June 1957, the Olympic had started its international activity with two weekly flights to London-Paros-Athens-Nicosia-Beirut and had added 3 DC-6's to the fleet. He had rented the airplanes from UTA with a renewing practice, even though the advantages were different, when Colone's regime asked him to potentiate the fleet with five Boeing 727's and two 707's for 54,100,000 US dollars. The company's problem was always that of acquisitions after seeing that profits were scanty. Using "subordinate loans" through his abroad society, Ari had managed to buy two comet English jets and three Boeing 707's. Now, the problem was difficult to resolve: the sum invested was such that it involved an issue of action which Onassis wanted to avoid at any cost.
He also resolved this situation by creating a society in Panama - "The Aircraft Leasing company" - that worked as a financial association, comprised 70% of the first national city bank, 15% by Boeing, and 15% by another one of Ari's societies in Panama. In this way, the aircraft leasing company bought the airplanes from Boeing and rented them to Olympic for ten years. The income of the rent served to extinguish the debts through interest payments, first to the bank, then to Boeing, and finally to Onassis' society. Onassis saw his 8,200,000 US dollars which he had invested in the business all returned. The company continued along with much difficulty.
The Decay
In reality there existed a little association that actually furnished profits and not losses. The Olympic Aviation was able to do this by offering service for the island with the hire of airplanes and also taxi-airlines. The society was guided by Alexander Onassis, first son of Onassis, to whom Ari was not supposed to give up command of the society. Because of his myopia, Alexander could not achieve the bravado of airline pilot, but became a commercial pilot and guided taxi-airplanes.
He became famous for his urgent transports even when the weather tried to dissuade him from leaving. He controlled little airplanes and had a good knowledge of motors. In his store of vehicles were two Piaggio that Alexander wanted to substitute with two helicopters because he found them too dangerous. The Piaggio were also used for Ari's personal transport, one was on the deck of his yacht, the Christina. After about a year of insistence, Alexander finally gained enough funds to substitute the helicopters.
Ari wanted his yacht to be brought to Miami with the Piaggio for his movement, and Alexander was entrusted with educating the new pilot Donald McCusker who was replacing Donald McGregor because of an injured eye. When he began to teach the new pilot, McGregor sat behind for ulterior control. At about 30 meters off the ground, the plane had just started the takeoff from the runway of the Athens airport, the airplane was inclined dangerously on the right and spun around in circles for 500 meters. It then smashed its nose, the tail and the other wing before finally stopping. When help arrived, Alexander was recognized only by the monogram on his handkerchief.
The next day, January 22, 1973 at 18:55, Alexander died. The death of a son can cause different reactions in different fathers, but we see how it affected Onassis from his future years. Immediately after the death, he decided to hibernate his son, and only after affectionate advice from his friend Georgakis did he give up the project.
Alexander was buried in Skorpios, the private island that Onassis bought in 1963 to make his own Ithaca. But the guilt of his father for not agreeing to the substitution of the Piaggios earlier still lingered. He couldn't accept the idea and spent the next few months trying to prove that the commands had been sabotaged.
The emptiness left by Alexander would not remove Ari from the taste of struggle that always supported him. The summer of 1973 was a moment of prosperity for the ship owners of oil tankers. The tariff on the market grew continuously and the VLcc and ULcc, big oil tankers obtained from a single voyage from Kuwait to Europe brought a profit of 4 million US dollars. With entries of 12 million dollars in a month derived from 100 ships, the price of oil increased by 8% for the year and Ari ordered his other 4 oil tankers to Japanese yards and 2 ULcc to France.
However, this was the obvious answer to the market's condition and so there wasn't a sense of victory or triumph. When his cousin Kostas congratulated him, he answered "I'm not happy, it's not always millions that resolve what a man needs." An epic was clearly finished. Ari always measures his success in mathematical terms and now that method had fallen short. Money no longer gave him the pleasure of life. He threw himself into a new project with renewed energies. It was the construction of a refinery in New Hampshire. He presented the project to the locals in October of 1973 and waited. The refinery will never be built.
Onassis found himself in contrast to the public opinion, an assembly of trained citizens. The oil would pollute the water permanently. Onassis didn't care about the assembly of civils and succeeded in the liberty affair behind the law court. He had faced Aramco, the association dominated by the four big American oil tankers for the business in Saudi Arabia. On that occasion he lost, but he had been strong in his challenge. Now in front of an assembly of citizens reunited in a gymnasium, he was in trouble, not knowing how to use his strength of persuasion and charm.
He abandoned the conference and left for New York feeling beaten. The sentiment of danger in life did not excite him anymore. In flight from Acapulco to New York with his second wife Jackie Bouvier, widow of Kennedy, he drew up his will. He wrote pages after pages with tremendous mental effort. The giant had surrendered in front of the reality of death. He felt sick and was diagnosed with a serious form of myasthenia that would claim his life in less than a year. The scripture proceeded rapidly and the pages accumulated quickly.
"To my beloved daughter" were the words that began his last will. His empire would be separated into two financial districts, alpha and beta. Alfa would keep the capital of heritage together and beta would have the shares of alpha. Christina, his heir, received all the heritage of the first society, while the principal share of beta, 52%, went to the "Alexander Onassis Foundation." The intent of the Foundation was to perpetuate the Onassis spirit through charity, art, and the development of Greece.
His daughter Christina had already begun her training and showed gifts similar to her father. On February 6, Onassis was hospitalized to have his gall-bladder operated on. The operation was successful, but he was very weak afterwards. The days passed in a continuing cycle of hope and disappointment until March 15, 1975. It was on this day that death, behind him for two years and ready to seize him at the first sign of surrender, finally found an opening large enough to win over his resistance. He was buried in Skorpios near his son Alexander.
(The Life of Aristotle Onassis -- The Man, the Myth, the Legend by
Eva Prionas, Christos Kiriazis, Mike Elisofon, Andy Roberts, and Andy Salter)
Introduction
The life and character of Aristotle Onassis, in many ways, exhibited strong similarities to that of the Greek mythological figure Odysseus. Although never a passionate reader, Aristotle was fascinated by the story of Odysseus -- about his eternal journey in search of chimera and adventures and his ultimate return to his native country to reign in peace on his people. This character always attracted him as he felt the sense of a similar destiny and that he, as did Odysseus, knew how to exist above all will.
Ari was brought up in an environment consumed by the rigorous principles of the Orthodox Church. But inside him, there remained only a deep religious sense of man as he grew older, a sense that respects the strength of superior events while de-emphasizing the will of a god or the lords in determining most matters. Ari was one to never escape the fight and to spends all his energies consumed in an eternal struggle.
His stellar performance as a businessman was surely linked to this component of his character, to the aggressiveness of a man who was willing to win at any price. He was born in Smirne, from where we believe Homer has originated. After Smirne was occupied by the Turks, he ended up in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Here he succeeded in a few years to gain his fated first million. As he went down the path of success with the logic of narcissus, sure of always going the right way and often times feeling omnipotent, he faced rivals and courts of justice, democracies and colonels. Few people in their lives have come across such a crescendo of power.
He frequented exclusive night clubs and restaurants all over the world. Whether over the phone or on a cruise ship, he fostered a profitable business with his flair and vibrant personality. The particulars of his business negotiations, of course, were carried out in offices somewhere in Europe or the United States. But it was his personality that fascinated those around him. He always seemed to tread the fine line between self-egocentrism and vulnerability. This unique combination formed the nucleus of his character and resulted in a remarkable mix of vitality and melancholy. He was a protagonist of the financial world, but fate was not to permit him to reap only happiness from life. That story by Odysseus that he truly loved, also depicted the punishment of the man who had challenged the omnipotence and authority of the lords. Similar to Prometheus who in life had reached the highest aims, Ari was ultimately akin to the son precipitated on the ground in the legend of Icarus. Onassis did indeed spend the last two years of his life fighting without enthusiasm and devoid of hope.
The Escape from Smirne
Aristotle's father, Socrates, moved with his brothers to Anatolia, in Smirne, from inside the country. Although not the oldest of his brothers, Socrates was the most charismatic and effectively fulfilled the role as head of the family. They had moved to Smirne originally due to pure chance when a team of engineers and typographers had invaded the village of Moutalasski to concentrate on the new Berlin-Baghdad railway and spoke of the wonderful economic opportunities in Smirne.
Socrates Onassis and his brothers became inebriated by the city's atmosphere. They recognized the existence of the economic opportunities as they witnessed the carpets, tobacco, cotton, dried-fig, wood, raisins, and other goods that passed through the port. Socrates found commerce to be an extremely prosperous sector of business and, after an apprenticeship with a Jewish merchant near Bohar Benadava, he rented a small store at the port and opened an import-export business. He experienced extremely good business and, in a year, moved to a building in the Han del Gran Visir in the business center of the city. He also rented another store in a strategic location near the railway and the port in Daragaz.
Although his business activity eventually spanned many diverse trades, Socrates was essentially a dealer of tobacco. In the meantime, all his brothers, Alexander, Homer and Vasili, were engaged in their family affairs and their business reputations were also expanding. In fact, Homer and Alexander began to take a keen interest in politics as their reputation flourished. Soon thereafter, Socrates decided to get married, considering the social position he had already achieved, and to return to the village. He chose to marry Penelope Dologu, the daughter of a village notable. Not yet 17 years of age, the bride courageously and intelligently adapted herself to her duties and gave birth to two sons, Artemide and Aristotle. At this time, the year was 1900 and racially-spurred political strife with Turkey was rapidly fomenting.
In 1909, during a time of nationalist hostility at the hands of the Turks, a personal tragedy struck Socrates' family. Penelope died of kidney failure, leaving a sad void in the family. Socrates ultimately remarried, bringing a very good stepmother to Penelope's sons. But to Aristotle, no one would ever love him as his mother Penelope did. Surrounded by women including the stepmother, the grandmother Getsemani and the three sisters (two were born from the second marriage), Ari grew up in a world where religion was an important obligation; in fact, if it weren't for the presence of his uncle Alexandro, perhaps Ari would have set off towards an ecclesiastic career. However, his uncle inculcated in him the passion of life, that taste of struggle and the sense that challenge is highly respected in a Greek world. These passions dominated the rest of Ari's life.
As World War I progressed and the nations began to divide the spoils of war, the Greek reoccupation of Smirne was encouraged. However, on August 26th 1927, the troops of Kemal Pascia entered and conquered the region without meeting much Greek resistance. Only a few days before, Socrates had brought his son Ari into the office and together they wisely burned the documents recognizing the political activity of Alexander. However, his prudence did not keep him from being arrested and thrown into a concentration camp. The family was transported to another camp in the island of Lesbos and only Ari was saved from this travesty. After deceptively lying about his age and suggesting that he was only 16 years old, Ari convinced the military figures that he was to young to go to a camp. Ari somehow found the strength and the necessary inventiveness to organize an escape and successfully liberated his father from the concentration camp.
The New World
Ari's grandmother Getsemani had always told him to remember that "men have to construct their destiny." After his father's liberation, Ari didn't see in his native country any bond strong enough to keep him there. With 250 dollars in his pocket and a valid permit for a journey into a country of new colonization, Ari set out for Argentina. He started so with a third-class ticket in the middle of thousands of emigrants, tight between the hold and the deck, the voyage towards life and his destiny of man.
But Ari was different that all the other desperate fugitives who had lost their country and, with it, their identities. The main distinction between them was Ari's love for victory, his clearness of objectives, and his unfettered determination. He subsequently found work as a telephone operator with the help of some Greeks and, on this occasion, he once again falsified his date of birth, this time making himself six years older so that he could legally hold a job. His work gave him economic stability and a better business sense. When work was slow, Ari would read the financial pages for the London and New York stock exchanges and eventually he put his knowledge into a speculative investment which paid $700 in handsome returns. He bought a new wardrobe and began to frequent the night clubs in new fashion.
In his search for "perfection," Ari became tuned into the cultural aspects of the region and it was for this reason that he attended the opera in which Claudia Muzio was the soprano interpreter. It was by no means an easy courtship but Ari ultimately succeeded in becoming Claudia's lover. Claudia opened up the doors of Buenos Aires to Ari and his destiny started to change.
As he continued his work as a telephone operator, another brilliant idea came to him. He envisioned the tobacco of the orient spreading rapidly in Argentina and he wrote his father with a proposal to ship him tobacco for a contracted rate. He was convinced that Turkish tobacco, more so that Cuban tobacco, would appeal to the female public in Argentina. The deal was more complicated than Ari anticipated, however. Apparently, at this time, women smoked only in private and not in public, so his orders were initially limited. Ari decided to persist when no one bought his tobacco and he opted to open up a cigarette production line himself. He produced two types, "Osman" and "Primeros", and thousands of dollars in profits started to come in. With the help of his cousins Kosta and Niko Konialidis, he enlarged the business to that of import and export.
Unfortunately, Ari was soon informed by Kostas that taxes on goods of importation from countries that didn't have trade agreements with Greece would have a one thousand percent increase. Ari immediately understood the danger that such an increase would pose to the Greek government. Naturally the danger included all of Onassis' personal business. Ari painted the reality to the Greek government in a memorandum stressing how the new taxes would ruin the sea trade. This memorandum for the Greek government didn't effect the increase towards Argentina. He was given the appointment to the Greek consulate in Argentina.
Home-sickness and sweet nostalgia was pervasive in Ari's mind afterwards. The memory of the sea and the port, the scent of mimosa and jasmine, the bread fresh out of the oven, the ship's siren sound, the steam engines and the orchestra music, the folk-songs and the smell of coffee that reminded him of his infancy and the love for his native city. This sense of nostalgia began to consume him. Ari wasn't a sailor and didn't have the instincts of a sailor, but was a native of a Greek sea-city and poured out all his feelings onto a project to obtain some whips containing his name, his flag, and his colors.
The ship offered Ari the opportunity to free himself from the ghosts of his dreams interrupted from his youth; it offered him a coherent symbol of his might and aims to embody the myth of Odysseus in his lifetime--the eternal traveler pushed to discover the limits of the world. As a ship owner, Ari started a seemingly endless adventure, awesome in dimension, to experience a continued mix of success and defeat and the strength of the human character.
The Penelope and the Socrates
Ari arrived at a crossroads in his life. The gains he earned with tobacco was still insufficient to satisfy his heavy aspirations. Ambitious and avidly aware of his own talent, he noted while carrying the function as Consul how fascinating the world of the sea is. As Consul, he enjoyed resolving ships' problems in port, and had the energy to grasp the situations behind sea-transportation and maximizing shipping profits.
Having decided to find ships at any cost, he started a voyage of Europe in order to find the "lost ship." He returned from Europe unconvinced of what he had seen, but Kostas, his inseparable friend and perpetual businessman, found a "possibility" in Canada.
Onassis left immediately. The ships were anchored on the Saint Lawrence River and belonged to the Canadian National Steamship Company, a subsidiary of the Canadian National Railways. The company was resolved to selling the various ships, weighing anywhere from 8.5 and 10 thousand tons, at scrap-metal prices. Onassis examined the ships, and made his own estimates. He offered to buy six ships each for 20 thousand dollars apiece. The company had wanted to sell only two ships, but relented; Onassis was finally a ship owner, and he promptly installed his cousin into a brand new office and designated Nikos Konialidis his curator for naval business.
The first two ships released from the yard after the acquisition were names after his parents Socrates Onassis and Penelope Onassis. With his soon-to-be legendary flair for business, Ari kept his ships in the yard until he judged market demand was right for their release. However, he had to make up the $120,000 that he had borrowed from various banks, and there was little room for error. When he thought that he had arrived at the right moment, his small armada sailed in low waters with a quantity of Canadian newspaper, the prestigious Daily Mirror of Lord Rothermer. The other transports followed one another and Onassis began to ameliorate his starting investment, but it was not easy.
Rotterdam was the sight of the new fleet's first troubles. The Onassis Penelope was stuck in port, blocked by the Port Authority because a Greek sailor was sick and had to be substituted with another Greek. The ship flew a Greek flag, and the crew needed to be completed in order to successfully transport the cargo. Ari went to Rotterdam, but his protests didn't yield many results. The ship had to unload the rest of its load in Copenhagen, which wasted valuable time. Ari dismissed the Consul, his old friend from school, with the phrase "come and see me tomorrow on board." The phrase seemed sublime, but the Consul had underestimated Onassis' mighty power as a man and deep desire to avoid defeats and losses. This was a classic example of Onassis' firm desire to succeed.
Ari called his legal advisors and Kostas Gratsos. His agents took only until that night to register the ship under the Flag of Panama. The morning after, the Greek Consul received a bottle of champagne on board the Penelope. Accompanying the champagne was a note informing him to take the Greek flag with him, for he was now on board a Panamese ship, signed by Ari. The changing of the flag, an immediate resolution to a nagging problem, revealed itself as Ari's winning card. He started a practice which many ship owners soon followed. The advantages were undeniable, especially from a fiscal point of view. Taxes were nonexistent, the ship could now trade with any value, and was no longer subject to most exchange rules. The ship owner could now establish the number of the crew on the ground purely according to the ship's need, and these hirings were no longer carefully checked.
Onassis returned from his trip to Rotterdam, reassured that he had found the right solution. His joy was comparable to that of a great scientist that had just discovered a new formula and was busy preparing himself for greater successes.
The Liberty Fleet and the OPM Technique
"Ari's business," a nickname that originated in the United States and lasted for years, soon prospered. When the Second World War finished, Ari had lost neither a ship nor a man. He was proud of this result, for three of his ships were rented to the Naval Commission of the United States, which yielded him $250,000 a year. Meanwhile, his oil tankers, long sequestered in Scandinavia, were now free from their forced anchorage. Ari had planned to build the world's first oil tanker of tonnage greater than 9000 tons, and gave the project to a Norwegian firm. So was launched the Aristo and Aristofaneus of 15,000 tons each.
Unfortunately, the beginning of the war had caught these two ships in the neutral port of Goteborg, Norway, and the Norwegian government had sieged these ships as a symbol of its complete neutrality in the war. They were now free to carry their cargoes for Onassis.
Now he was being offered one of the greatest business opportunities of the post-war world. The United States Naval Commission put the Liberty Ships that were built during the war on sale. The price was established at $550,000, of which $125,000 could be used as a down payment, with the rest coming in 7 years at 3% interest.
Many ship owners were skeptical on the construction techniques used on these boats, but Ari's opinion was that they would be a good investment. His problem was that he didn't have the money for the 16 Liberty Ships he had intended to buy, so he applied for a bank loan. His technique was quite a bit risky; for, before actually receiving the money from the bank, he contracted transports of coal in South America, France, and Germany on ships that he didn't own. He then used these contracts as a guarantee to the banks, who gave him his money.
He used a different method to buy the T2 oil tankers that the navy put on sale for 1,500,000 each. As the principle clause of the sale, however, the tankers must be sold to an American citizen. Ari avoided this obstacle by creating an American company, United States Petroleum Carriers, with American shareholders. The government sold the new company four oil tankers. The next day, Onassis and his men anonymously took over the shares of the company that fell under the control of Ari.
Onassis' best invention, however, was the O.P.M. (Other People's Money). This idea wasn't originally created by Ari, even though he was a pioneer in the field. Credit for this innovation goes to Daniel Ludwig, a Michigan businessman. The bank refused a loan that would provide for the conversion of a transport ship into a tanker. However, Daniel had an idea; he could give a guarantee to the bank on an oil tanker that he already possessed, while he could use the profits from his transports as an identity to the bank.
The solution to this problem loan was actually simple and ingenious. Daniel Ludwig by now had perfected this technique, and defined it himself as the O.P.M. He asked the bank for a loan towards the construction of new ships but did not change the way he used the ships he already owned. The loan had to be deferred in different payments in order to permit the banks to be repaid before the new ships were actually built. The loan's guarantee came from the profits of the ships already on the water.
The banks called the operation of O.P.M. "card at double-name," for they possessed a double guarantee on their loans. Ludwig grew rich, but he never became a big ship owner. He invested the money he obtained in different areas, with the notable exception of shipping, and although his fleet was bigger than that of Onassis or Niarhos, did not play an important role in the industry.
Colombo's Egg
To be a ship owner now came to mean that you must love a risk on your own trade while carefully watching the fluctuations of the market. Of utmost importance is the oil-tanker's market, where a ship owner had to be ready to play the market if the right situation arose. Onassis used 30% of his fleet on the demands of the market, allotting these ships to be ready if the market was right. The other 70% was reserved for charters, or long journeys, that lasted a minimum of three years.
Ari used the mechanism of his charter to maximize the loans he received from the bank. In his hands, the O.P.M. transformed into a valuable instrument with notable advantages. By using the breach in the accord between Onassis and the First National Bank, Ari financed an entire fleet of oil tankers that made him the most famous ship owner in the world. In 1946, Onassis married Tina Livanos, a Greek with American citizenship, and established a home in New York. He was determined to gain respectability in the United States. In order to do this, he had to build his ships in the US. Ultimately, his plan was to bring millions of dollars into the American economy and to build super oil tankers in American yards.
Ari carefully sought out the right man to head up this task, and his search eventually led him to Harry Haggerty. Haggerty was Treasurer of Metropolitan Life Insurance, a huge company with capital exceeding 250 million. Haggerty was at first excited with the possibility, but in the end he could not agree to join an industry in which he understood little of the nuances. His negative answer did not discourage Ari, but encouraged him to try harder.
The principle obstacle lied in the fact that in agreements of charter, it was expected that if the ship would fail to complete its service, the charter would not be paid. The bank was not encouraged by the charter system, especially this particular lack of guaranty. Onassis fought this by changing his headquarters for the oil tanker company, which encouraged independent fleets to transport their product.
In effect, the oil tanker companies tried to keep the monopoly of the petroleum industry, from extraction to transportation. The transportation was wherein the problem was. In order to monopolize this facet of petroleum, the oil tanker companies had to put up huge amounts of collateral that would restrict their other activities, and subsequently added much risk to this venture. Understanding the situation and playing his cards well, Ari talked with the owners of the Socony Oil Company. He explained to them the bank's apprehension to finance, which they new little about. He told them that it was right that the companies that knew the field well and had drawn up a contract while knowing their risk, in veritas minimum, could be supported by the company and not the bank.
Ari's strength of persuasion was strong, considering his ship's solid reputation and his charismatic personality. What made his persuasion even stronger was the fact that he had covered all possible damages of his ships for the next three months. Everything was going well, but Onassis was hungry for more. He soon got it. During the period of charter, usually five years, he accumulated day-by-day periods termed "dead," that at the end of the charter became several months. It was in this period that Onassis attained a formidable idea, that he could change the accords between ship owners, companies, and financiers. His proposal went like this: "The need of my ships is very urgent; I propose a contract of charter that assures the payment for a ton and a month, for 60 months, that includes in the payment the dead periods without reducing the costs."
Before raising an objection, Ari proposed his counter-item; he would himself undertake a financing of the company for each dead period a double service. Periods longer than three months were covered in his assurance. Onassis was in the habit of illustrating his arguments with examples of comparisons; the powerful oil tanker companies could respect his ships that loded where he lives and for whom he is engaged to pay the rent. If the lodger was Rockefeller, and the house had a roof of gold or leaked was irrelevant. If the lodger accepted that he would have to pay the rent, that would be enough for anyone to lend money to the house. The ship situation was the same thing.
Socony accepted the proposal, which was an inevitable conclusion given the formula, and their assurance to pay with the low and the high tide, gave the financial society absolute security. This agreement established a new principal in marine financing. Wall Street could not avoid the financial sense of this accord; it opened a new field of investment, where banks' skepticism towards the market fell. In naval terms, one can say that after a long period of pitching, the naval financiers took the sea and reached two billion dollars in a short period of time. Ari had found Colombo's egg, but he loved to say to himself that his role in the accord yielded 40 million dollars.
Whale Hunting
"He killed only blue whales today, it has to be a secret," Bruno Schilaghecke wrote in his diary. He was a German sailor on board the Olympic Challenger Whaler, the flag-ship of Lars Andersen's fleet, the best whalers in the world. The adventure of the whaler had been ordained to fail by both the captain and the ship owner. The project "whaler" was born under such circumstances, as the usual Colombo's egg that resolves all such difficult situations.
When it became difficult to build ships in the United States, Ari went to Hamburg, Germany, where before the war he had ordered his super oil tankers to examine the situation of the Hamburg shipyards. The German economy readily received the ordering of ships, but the Potsdam Accords limited ships built to 115 tons.
Ari was disappointed, but Kostas Gratsos came through with a loophole. In the Potsdam Accords, it was written that Germany could enlarge its fleet of whalers, which created an empty space in a profitable market. But there was something else; it was not prohibited in German shipyards to convert preexisting ships. The connection was obvious. The oil tanker T2 Herman Whiton quickly became the largest whaler in the world, while The Olympic Challenger passed through 17 Canadian and British corvettes that formed a convoy to cross the Atlantic. The corvettes were naturally designed for hunting.
This started a new challenge for Onassis, a challenge far different from others, for Ari now knew how to play with loaded dice. He knew he had chosen a captain who was a Norwegian that had collaborated with the Nazis. Through this man, he enlisted 14 Norwegian artillerymen, including Lars Andersen, experienced in whale butchering. With a crew that had these qualifications, there was no problem passing the ship off as a whaler.
Given the scruples of a team of this type relative to the respect for international rules, the safeguard for the survival of the species - limiting whale captures to 16 thousand a year - was pure illusion.
The Olympic Challenger began harpooning whales a month prior to the opening of the season and did not distinguish between little sperm-whales and whales that were still just forming. Pieces of meat from the 124 dead whales lay still on the ship's deck. No one was at all grown up about it. Without any sensibility, they killed everything under the gun. These are the words of Bruno Schlaghecke, from the international commission for the hunting of whales, which bring forth his decisive evidence in the action against the Onassis fleet.
In Ari's opinion, the whales were there for the sole purpose of being captured. The only rule he knew in business was the prificts etic and that the price of whale's oil rises uncommonly fast. There surely existed another component to his fury, above the logic of gain. It is here that we find his instincts as a hunter, the enjoyment of capturing and destroying his prey. The first shipment produced 4,200.00 dollars and the massacre continued undisturbed for another 3 years until 1954.
That was a year of risk for the whalers. With the arctic zone now exhausted, the whalers moved along Peru's coast where an absurd limit was posed: In his territorial waters, where he exercised a fool military and administrative sovereignty, he moved within 200 miles of the coast. The actual limit was about 405 miles. The United States, United Kingdom, and Norway, the biggest producers of whale oil, protested and even without a written document, it seemed that Peru would not defend the imposed limit.
Onassis's fleet was navigating towards Peru, hardly exceeding the Panama canal, when the Peruvian newspaper organized an alarmist press campaign against his whalers. Acting with prudence this time, Onassis decided to stay out and ordered the captain to keep his ship to the limit of 200 miles. By now, he had already accumulated 60 thousand barrels of oil and captured 580 whales in the Arctic zone. On November 15, convinced by second-hand information that Onassis' ships had crossed the limit, sent an ambassador to intimidate the flag-ship and invited it to head for Lima. Instead, the ship continued on the sea and was fired upon by machine guns and bombed. The Captain Reichbert surrendered: the boarded ship was convoyed with 4 hunting ships in the port of Lima. The rest of the fleet was refuged in Panama. The result of the attack was discouraging - 400 sailors in prison and 5 ships sequestered.
The next day, the newspaper had a rich discussion of the matter. Nothing else helped Ari more than being attacked: the step was short from being "monster" that kills to victim of a conspiracy. The authoritative "The Times" of London, struck by a news conference held by Ari in "Claridge," wrote that the Panama's flag of Onassis' ships could be seen as that of freedom. So it seemed that the black flag of pirates depended on how you looked at it. This happened in the middle of November. At the end of the month, the supreme court fined the Olympic whaling, the Panama society owner of the fleet, 57 million soles Peruvian which corresponded to about 2,800.00 American dollars for killing a great number of whales in their water - about three thousand. The payment had to happen within 5 days or his ships would be forfeited and sold.
Ari didn't leave himself vulnerable: All the business fell to his insurance company, the fabulous Lloyd's of London. Onassis took precautions against each possible risk in covering his ships, including that of sequestration and capture. He even had a clause which forewarned that an indemnity of 30 thousand dollars a day must be paid if his ships had to navigating between October 7 and November 20 for any reason. Still, the far sightedness of Ari was his winning card. The Lloyd's paid the fee, the ships got the sea, but the whaler's adventures were finished however.
Where the Peruvian government could not succeed, the anger of the gloomy sailors that were witness of slaughter too cruel to continue to be silent were able to do so. Their testimony to the international commission of whale hunting bound the clamist Lars Andersen and the captain Reichbert to their responsibility. The documents produced and the photos adduced were incontestable evidence. The accusation gained in strength on the table of the jury - blue whales killed illegally, megatherium, sperm-whales - every species was killed without regard.
At the same time, March 1956, Ari dismantled his fleet, selling it for 8,200.00 American dollars to the Japanese, and had to find another business. He found the Pelagic fund, an institution where the goal was the safeguard of marine fauna and Onassis paid the principal quota of 570 thousand US dollars.
So ended Ari's proclivity for whale hunting, like the defeat of David over Goliath.
From the Sea to the Sky
Onassis needed the dominion of the sky, another mythical element of the universe dear to the classic world. The waters were already furrowed in all the world with ships that brought his colors, but the skies were not violated. Even if Ari preferred the sea and considered his ships the roots of a tree, he then considered airplanes as the leaves. He let himself attempt the project of taking off the national Greek airline and made it his creature.
The Greek prime minister Constantine Karamanlis, member of the right party national union radical, who arrived in power with the election of 1957 had decided to derive a source of richness which remained unused to that point. He had quite decided to take back the Greek economy and the richness and financial ability of the great ship owners.
Onassis was the first target, and the TAE was the first business offered. In reality, The loss of the company stimulated Ari to start the only private national airline in the world. The air fleet was derisory, 12 DC-8, the famous Dakota, and one DC-4. The only international service that he could boast was a weekly flight to Paris and one to London.
What Karamanlis asked Ari was to give an international rest to the company by taking it away completely. It was in this way that Onassis, migrating bird, poised himself on Greek ground and assumed command of 13 airplanes, signing the agreement on July 30, 1956. 856 people worked at TAE and all of them were hired by the Olympic Airways at the same salary and working conditions. By baptizing the airline with the name symbol of his winnings, Onassis showed that the airplanes would further his docket and money.
The negotiation with the government was meticulous and Onassis succeeded in gaining a series of important concessions. The government was anxious to encourage rich people to invest money in Greek enterprises and allotted the Olympic Airways special privileges: The monopoly on Greek aviation for 20 years, the reimbursement by the government for any unauthorized strike, reimbursement for loss in overseas flights, the right to bring their profits abroad, exemption from land taxation in Greece, the right to loan up to 3,500.00 US dollars from the government at a tax rate of 2.5%, and the exclusive rights on overseas flights.
The concessions were very generous, but the company was still working at a loss for years, even though Ari called in the Frenchman Tom Fabre who had directed the French line UTA. Fabre accepted the job for two years and helped Olympic take off, but the company was never a lucky enterprise. Without a direct plan or investment strategy, the company passed from one crisis to another. Ari asked that his monopoly rights be extended, because he intended on seeing better results in the long run. He obtained an extension until 2006 which included monopoly maintenance as well as the refueling of foreign airlines.
By June 1957, the Olympic had started its international activity with two weekly flights to London-Paros-Athens-Nicosia-Beirut and had added 3 DC-6's to the fleet. He had rented the airplanes from UTA with a renewing practice, even though the advantages were different, when Colone's regime asked him to potentiate the fleet with five Boeing 727's and two 707's for 54,100,000 US dollars. The company's problem was always that of acquisitions after seeing that profits were scanty. Using "subordinate loans" through his abroad society, Ari had managed to buy two comet English jets and three Boeing 707's. Now, the problem was difficult to resolve: the sum invested was such that it involved an issue of action which Onassis wanted to avoid at any cost.
He also resolved this situation by creating a society in Panama - "The Aircraft Leasing company" - that worked as a financial association, comprised 70% of the first national city bank, 15% by Boeing, and 15% by another one of Ari's societies in Panama. In this way, the aircraft leasing company bought the airplanes from Boeing and rented them to Olympic for ten years. The income of the rent served to extinguish the debts through interest payments, first to the bank, then to Boeing, and finally to Onassis' society. Onassis saw his 8,200,000 US dollars which he had invested in the business all returned. The company continued along with much difficulty.
The Decay
In reality there existed a little association that actually furnished profits and not losses. The Olympic Aviation was able to do this by offering service for the island with the hire of airplanes and also taxi-airlines. The society was guided by Alexander Onassis, first son of Onassis, to whom Ari was not supposed to give up command of the society. Because of his myopia, Alexander could not achieve the bravado of airline pilot, but became a commercial pilot and guided taxi-airplanes.
He became famous for his urgent transports even when the weather tried to dissuade him from leaving. He controlled little airplanes and had a good knowledge of motors. In his store of vehicles were two Piaggio that Alexander wanted to substitute with two helicopters because he found them too dangerous. The Piaggio were also used for Ari's personal transport, one was on the deck of his yacht, the Christina. After about a year of insistence, Alexander finally gained enough funds to substitute the helicopters.
Ari wanted his yacht to be brought to Miami with the Piaggio for his movement, and Alexander was entrusted with educating the new pilot Donald McCusker who was replacing Donald McGregor because of an injured eye. When he began to teach the new pilot, McGregor sat behind for ulterior control. At about 30 meters off the ground, the plane had just started the takeoff from the runway of the Athens airport, the airplane was inclined dangerously on the right and spun around in circles for 500 meters. It then smashed its nose, the tail and the other wing before finally stopping. When help arrived, Alexander was recognized only by the monogram on his handkerchief.
The next day, January 22, 1973 at 18:55, Alexander died. The death of a son can cause different reactions in different fathers, but we see how it affected Onassis from his future years. Immediately after the death, he decided to hibernate his son, and only after affectionate advice from his friend Georgakis did he give up the project.
Alexander was buried in Skorpios, the private island that Onassis bought in 1963 to make his own Ithaca. But the guilt of his father for not agreeing to the substitution of the Piaggios earlier still lingered. He couldn't accept the idea and spent the next few months trying to prove that the commands had been sabotaged.
The emptiness left by Alexander would not remove Ari from the taste of struggle that always supported him. The summer of 1973 was a moment of prosperity for the ship owners of oil tankers. The tariff on the market grew continuously and the VLcc and ULcc, big oil tankers obtained from a single voyage from Kuwait to Europe brought a profit of 4 million US dollars. With entries of 12 million dollars in a month derived from 100 ships, the price of oil increased by 8% for the year and Ari ordered his other 4 oil tankers to Japanese yards and 2 ULcc to France.
However, this was the obvious answer to the market's condition and so there wasn't a sense of victory or triumph. When his cousin Kostas congratulated him, he answered "I'm not happy, it's not always millions that resolve what a man needs." An epic was clearly finished. Ari always measures his success in mathematical terms and now that method had fallen short. Money no longer gave him the pleasure of life. He threw himself into a new project with renewed energies. It was the construction of a refinery in New Hampshire. He presented the project to the locals in October of 1973 and waited. The refinery will never be built.
Onassis found himself in contrast to the public opinion, an assembly of trained citizens. The oil would pollute the water permanently. Onassis didn't care about the assembly of civils and succeeded in the liberty affair behind the law court. He had faced Aramco, the association dominated by the four big American oil tankers for the business in Saudi Arabia. On that occasion he lost, but he had been strong in his challenge. Now in front of an assembly of citizens reunited in a gymnasium, he was in trouble, not knowing how to use his strength of persuasion and charm.
He abandoned the conference and left for New York feeling beaten. The sentiment of danger in life did not excite him anymore. In flight from Acapulco to New York with his second wife Jackie Bouvier, widow of Kennedy, he drew up his will. He wrote pages after pages with tremendous mental effort. The giant had surrendered in front of the reality of death. He felt sick and was diagnosed with a serious form of myasthenia that would claim his life in less than a year. The scripture proceeded rapidly and the pages accumulated quickly.
"To my beloved daughter" were the words that began his last will. His empire would be separated into two financial districts, alpha and beta. Alfa would keep the capital of heritage together and beta would have the shares of alpha. Christina, his heir, received all the heritage of the first society, while the principal share of beta, 52%, went to the "Alexander Onassis Foundation." The intent of the Foundation was to perpetuate the Onassis spirit through charity, art, and the development of Greece.
His daughter Christina had already begun her training and showed gifts similar to her father. On February 6, Onassis was hospitalized to have his gall-bladder operated on. The operation was successful, but he was very weak afterwards. The days passed in a continuing cycle of hope and disappointment until March 15, 1975. It was on this day that death, behind him for two years and ready to seize him at the first sign of surrender, finally found an opening large enough to win over his resistance. He was buried in Skorpios near his son Alexander.
(The Life of Aristotle Onassis -- The Man, the Myth, the Legend by
Eva Prionas, Christos Kiriazis, Mike Elisofon, Andy Roberts, and Andy Salter)
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