10 Facts You Don't Know About Charlie Chaplin

Here are 10 facts you don't know about the famous actor and director:

What did he do?

1. He had a young child that died.

His child with his first wife, Mildred died after just 3 days. His name was Norman Spencer Chaplin. 2 years later Mildred and Chaplin divorced.

2. He was born in the same year as Adolf Hitler, Otto Frank, and Robert Taft.

3. He met Gandhi...

Proof is in the picture.

4. ...and Albert Einstein.

Way to go, Chaplin!

He knew who to meet.

5. He was exiled from the US.

it was for political reasons. He returned to win an Oscar and receive the longest standing ovation in the history of the Academy.

6. When he was 54, he married his third wife, an 18-year-old.

He was married to her for the longest, since the marriage was ended by his death.

7. That third woman he married (just mentioned) was Oona O'Neill the daughter of the famous playwright Eugene O'Neill.

They had eight children.

Chaplin and his third wife, Oona.

8. His body was stolen and held for ransom.

Yep, just a year after he died, his body was stolen. More info here.

9. His mother became mentally ill when he was a boy.

She had had two illegitimate children in and before her marriage. her husband had died before she drifted into insanity when he was 37. Charlie and his step-brother Sydney were taken in by the State.

10. He played a role as Jewish Barber who is mistaken as Hitler.

In the Great Dictator, Chaplin played a Jewish barber who is mistaken for Adenoid Hynkel and the dictator himself. Even though, Hitler is known by a different name in this movie it is easy to see that it is Hynkel is Hitler. The whole film, in fact, can be seen as just a parody of Hitler. Below is the trailer for the movie.

Sources:
Down but not out...:http://chaplin.bfi.org.uk/resources/bfi/biog/biog.php?fid=biog1
Edna Purivance: http://www.ednapurviance.org/
Chaplin A Life: http://www.chaplinalife.com/
Fun Trivia: http://www.funtrivia.com/en/celebrities/chaplin-charlie-16030.html
IMDb: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0032553/

Check out
The Autobiography of Charlie Chaplin
Click the picture link to know it all. Click it.

It's Late Portrait Lives Wednesday! Starring Marie Antoinette: Part 1

Marie Antoinette is the most famous person of the French Revolution. As many people know she didn't survive it.  She was to the French people of her time the image and icon of unfair extravagance as some poor french people starved. The media showed her as a sickly evil harpy in newspaper pamphlets, a queen who would stoop so low as to having lesbian relationships with her ladies-in-waiting, when the truth was nothing of the kind. The truth was that the press can cause horrible things to happen to innocent people, even Marie Antoinette, a high-status French Queen who was imprisoned by her people and executed by the guillotine.

aged just a few months old

aged  about 5

aged 7

aged about 12

aged about 14

aged about 17 by Drouais

Marie, Queen of France without a crown at aged about 18

mid twenties by Gautier-Dagoty 

I thought I could do this in one post but I can't 

so stay tuned for the last part tomorrow!

I know you can't wait and are disappointed.

But here a short video about her that will make up:

and Check out

To the Scaffold: The Life of Marie Antoinette

Click on the image or go to the Scaffold!

Juanelo Turriano: An Impressive Engineer of the Renaissance

In 1530, Juanelo was around his late twenties or early thirties and still he wasn't that prominent of an engineer in Italy, at least to the upper class. Yet he was going to be. He was to carry out projects of an incredible kind.
A request was made for a clockmaker who could repair a famous astrarium in Padua. Juanelo accepted it and once examining the clock, he proposed that they build another one instead. He began to be praised for his ingenious mechanical work, becoming popular once and for all. Juanelo accompanied Charles V when the emperor abdicated the throne and went for his retirement in a monastery. In order to entertain Charles, Juanelo made little robot figures.
He would build a life size robot monk which walked and along with another most interesting invention described below in the video.

This video shows Juanleo's invention for

 raising water 'from the Tagus to the Alcazar':

 

If you don't understand Spanish you can watch it on YouTube and translate it through the captions. 

P.S. I love this video!

Check out more from Engineering and Philosophy by Elizabeth King:

Click the image, you know you can.

Sources:

Clockwork Prayer: A Sixteenth Century Mechanical Monk by Elizabeth King http://www.blackbird.vcu.edu/v1n1/nonfiction/king_e/prayer_toc.htm

Video from YouTube