ejaasaari/simplewiki-2025-04-01 huggingface dataset:
Brian Joubert (born September 20, 1984 in Poitiers) is a French figure skater. He won the 2007 World Championships, the 2004, 2007 &amp; 2009 European Championships, and has won the French Nationals seven times. He competed in the 2002, 2006, 2010 and 2014 Winter Olympics. Joubert did not have a good junior career, but this was due to him going senior at 15, as soon as he was able to. Joubert won the bronze medal (third place) at the 2002 Nationals, but did not immediately qualify for the 2002 Olympic team because France had only two spots to the Olympics. But at the 2002 European Championships, Joubert won the bronze medal, placing ahead of the other French skaters at the competition, and he was put on the Olympic team. He placed 14th at the Olympics. Joubert is one of two men (with Emanuel Sandhu) who has beaten Evgeni Plushenko between the 2002 Olympics and the 2006 Olympics. Joubert beat him at the 2004 European Championships. Joubert then went on to place 2nd at Worlds, winning his first World medal. Joubert has had an up-and-down career. He has switched coaches many times. He was briefly coached by Alexei Yagudin. He is now coached by Jean-Christophe Simond. At the 2005 World Championships, he placed sixth. Nevertheless, he was seen as a threat for an Olympic medal. But at the Olympics, he placed 6th. He was criticized harshly in the French press for this. After the 2006 Worlds, where he won the silver medal, he said he felt pressured to do it in part because of the way the French press had turned on him. In the 2006/2007 season, Joubert swept the season. He won every competition he entered, including the Grand Prix Final, the European Championships, and the World Championships. At the Cup of Russia, he became one of the few skaters
Timothy Goebel (born September 10, 1980 in Evanston, Illinois) is an American figure skater. He is Catholic and was adopted as an infant. Goebel is the first skater to perform a quadruple salchow jump and the first American skater to perform a quadruple jump of any kind. Goebel is also the first skater to perform three quadruple jumps in one program. At the 2002 Olympics, he became the first skater to land a quadruple salchow jump in combination at the Olympics. He is the first and so far only skater to land 6 quadruple jumps in one competition. He has landed 76 career quadruple jumps, the most of any skater. Because of these things, he was nicknamed the "Quad King". However, after the 2003-2004, Goebel began having problems with the quad. He did not land it correctly at all in the 2005-2006 season. Goebel won the bronze medal at the 2002 Olympics. It was a close call for the silver between him and World Champion Evgeni Plushenko. That would happen again at the 2003 World Championships where Plushenko beat Goebel out for the gold. Goebel dealt with injuries in later seasons. An injury forced him to not finish competing at the 2004 Nationals and give up on the rest of the season. At the 2005 Nationals, the mother of Angela Nikodinov, a good friend of Goebel, died in a car crash. Goebel spent much of time at that competition in mourning. With Nikodinov watching, Goebel started crying partly through his free skate. He finished the performance in tears. He placed 2nd. Goebel was not able to qualify for the 2006 Olympic team. He retired from competitive skating after the 2006 Nationals. In May 2010, he graduated with a bachelor's degree in mathematics from Columbia University's School of General Studies. He works as a technical specialist, the person who watches a skating program and tells the judges what each move was and
Angela Nikodinov (born May 9, 1980 in Spartanburg, South Carolina), is an American figure skater. She is the 2000 Four Continents Champion. Biography. Nikodinov is the daughter of Bulgarian immigrants. She speaks Bulgarian fluently. She was born in Spartanburg, South Carolina. Her family moved to southern California when she was very young. She was raised in San Pedro, Los Angeles, California. Nikodinov trained at Lake Arrowhead, California. She also trained in Detroit for one season (1999-2000) but moved back to California in fall 2000. Her coaches included John Nicks, Peter Oppegard, Frank Carroll, Elena Tcherkasskaia, Richard Callaghan, Igor Pashkevich. Her coach Tcherkasskaia, with whom she was very close, died of cancer in November 2001.  Nikodinov missed the 2002-2003 season. She injured her shoulder in February 2002 and again in September. She also had a virus. She had shoulder surgery in February 2003 and was off the ice for seven months. After missing two seasons, Nikodinov returned to win the 2004 Skate America. While in Portland, Oregon, for the 2005 U.S. National Championships, she and her family were in a car accident that killed her mother. Nikodinov did not return to competition after the accident. Nikodinov coached Bulgarian figure skater Ivan Dinev in the 2005-2006 season. They are now coaching together in the Los Angeles area. Nikodinov and Dinev were married in July 2008. Along with her coaching duties, she skates in shows and was a guest skater on the Stars on Ice tour. The pairs team of Bianca Butler &amp; Joseph Jacobsen and Tenile Victorsen are among her and Dinev's former students that have qualified for the U.S. Figure Skating Championships at the Senior level.
Alberto Gonzales (born August 4, 1955) is an American jurist who is the 80th Attorney General of the United States. Gonzales was appointed to the position in February 2005 by President George W. Bush. While Bush was Governor of Texas, Gonzales was part of his general counsel, and later was the Secretary of State of Texas and then was on the Texas Supreme Court. From 2001 to 2005, Gonzales served in the Bush Administration as White House Counsel. On August 27, 2007, Gonzales announced that he is quitting his position as Attorney General, and that his last day will be September 16, 2007. He did not say why he is leaving. He is the highest-ranking Hispanic ever in the United States federal government.
A cantilever is a figure skating move. It is considered a "field move" because it is not a jump, a spin, or a spiral. A cantilever is performed by a skater traveling on a deep lean across the ice, either in a spread eagle or a Besti squat position. The skater then bends backwards, so their back is parallel to the ice, while remaining on the deep lean. The hands can be draped across the ice or not. This is a very dramatic move on the ice. The move was invented by Werner Groebli, better known as "Mr. Frick", a long-time show skater with the Ice Follies. It was brought back and popularized by Ilia Klimkin of Russia, who performed it a lot in competition over many years.
Mao Asada (born September 25, 1990) is a former figure skater from Japan. She is a former World Figure Skating Champion (2008) and is ranked no. 3 by ISU. She won the Japanese national championships in 2007 and 2008 after winning two silver medals in a row. She is the 2005 World Junior Champion. She won the silver medal at the 2010 Winter Olympics. Her older sister Mai Asada is also a high-level skater. Early life. Asada is from Nagoya. She was very skilled from a young age. She landed her first triple axel in competition while still at the junior level. She is one of five female figure skaters who have ever landed that jump in international competition. Career. Asada won everything on the Junior level in the 2004-2005 season. The next season was the Olympic season. Asada would be too young to compete at the 2006 Olympics. But the Japanese skating federation thought there was not a good reason to keep her at the Junior level when she had already won everything. Asada was old enough for the Grand Prix, but not for senior level ISU championships. Asada went into the Grand Prix without any of the pressure that was on the other skaters who were old enough to go the Olympics and were trying to qualify for spots on their country's Olympic team. Able to compete without pressure, Asada won the Grand Prix Final in December 2005. Following her win, the Japanese skating federation petitioned the International Olympic Committee to make an exception to the age rule for Asada, claiming that depriving her of a chance to compete at the 2006 Olympics would be denying a medal contender a chance to compete. However, this petition, even if it had worked, would have been too late. Other skaters had been effected by the age rule. The South Korean skating federation, for example, held Kim Yu-Na back in juniors for the 2005-2006 season, even though she could have competed successfully on the Grand Prix, because she also was not old enough for the Olympics, and because of it did not earn
Brigham Young (June 1, 1801 – August 29, 1877) was the second president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormon church) and the first Governor of the American state of Utah. Young was born in Vermont. He became president of the Mormon church in 1847 after the death of Joseph Smith, Jr in 1844. Brigham Young University is named after Young. John Taylor replaced Young as leader of the church three years after Young died. Western migration. Young started a journey that would take the Mormon pioneers to Winter Quarters, Nebraska, in 1846, then to the Salt Lake Valley. Young arrived in the Salt Lake Valley on July 24, 1847, a date now known as Pioneer Day in Utah, which is also one of its holidays. The Mormon pioneers' journey was one of the largest and one of the best organized migration to the West. On August 22, 29 days after arriving in the Salt Lake Valley, Young started the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. In the church, Young was in some of the important positions, and after three years, he became the president of the church on December 27, 1847. Young served 29 years in the LDS Church. Temple building. Young helped in building temples in his time in the LDS Church and made temple building a main purpose. When Joseph Smith was the president, Young was helping to build the Kirtland and Nauvoo temples. Only four days after arriving in the Salt Lake Valley, Young found the location for the Salt Lake Temple; and then started the building process on April 6, 1853. During his time as the church president, Young look over the construction of the Salt Lake Tabernacle and then he announced plans to build the St. George (1871), Manti (1875), and Logan (1877) temples. He also helped fix the building the Endowment House, a "short-term temple" that began to be used in 1855 for church members to go to while they were building the Salt Lake Temple.
Speaker is the title of the person in charge of some legislatures, usually the lower house. House of Commons of the United Kingdom. The speaker is elected by other members of the House of Commons of the United Kingdom, and is usually a member of the government party, but leaves his or her party because the speaker must be "neutral" (not like one side more than another). The speaker does not vote. If the speaker wants to stand in for re-election the other parties do not oppose him to show he is neutral. As of January 2020, the speaker is Lindsay Hoyle, a member of the Labour Party. Dail Éireann in Ireland. The speaker ("Ceann Comhairle") of the Dáil Éireann is neutral, but the constitution (Bunreacht) of Ireland says he does not need to stand for re-election, he is given the first seat in his constituency. The current speaker (November 2017) is Sean Treacy. United States House of Representatives. The speaker is the leader of the largest party. He or she is not neutral, but votes for his or hers party's policies. The speaker also helps to get his or her party's ideas made law. The term of the speaker of the House is two years in office.
An orator is someone who pleads a case in public. Originally, it meant speaking in a public place for or against a person or a proposal. In ancient Greek, Latin, French and English, an orator spoke for and against the accused in courts, and for or against big political decisions, such as whether to go to war. Gradually, it came to mean someone who spoke in public on formal occasions. Oratory, or rhetoric, is the skill of argument or persuasion used by orators. The invention of printing allowed books to be multiplied and produced cheaply. This has made it possible for orators to do their persuasion in print as well as speaking. Adolf Hitler and Winston Churchill are good examples of how orators in the 20th century used media such as radio and movies where once they could only use speech. Both wrote books which sold in large numbers, though Churchill's books were about more than politics. Today television and newspapers play a vital role in deciding elections; the web less so. Other types of orator are those who wish to change beliefs. Religious preachers like Martin Luther and John Knox changed religion in western Europe; William Wilberforce and Sojourner Truth led the fight against the evil of slavery. Emmeline Pankhurst, Martin Luther King Jr and others fought to get equal rights for all citizens. We have orators today as much as the ancient Greeks did. The main difference is that the Greeks could see and listen to them face to face, but we rarely do today. Rhetoric. The study of how persuasion is done by orators is called rhetoric. It has been studied for 2,500 years at least, and there are a huge number of books about it.
Parsifal is an opera in three acts by Richard Wagner. Wagner took most of the story from a medieval poem "Parzival" by the German poet Wolfram von Eschenbach. It was the last opera that Wagner completed. He started thinking about it in 1857 but did not do much work to it until after he had finished the cycle of four operas known as the Ring Cycle which was produced complete in 1876 in the special theatre (Festspielhaus) he had built in Bayreuth. Wagner composed his opera "Parsifal" so that it would suit the sound of this new theatre. It was first produced in 1882. The story is related to the Arthurian legends. The Musical background to the opera. Wagner did more than any other composer in the 19th century to change the way that people listened to opera. In the 18th century people went to the opera house and sat in their boxes to chat to other people and be seen. Composers wrote operas with big arias which allowed the singers to show off their skills and make the audience applaud. Wagner changed all this. He soon developed operas in which there is no difference between recitative (where the story is told) and arias (big songs for the soloists). The music of his later operas, especially "Parsifal", is like a long, continuous line with rich, Romantic harmony. The music develops logically, with leitmotifs (very short pieces of music which represent particular people or ideas) which help the music and the story to develop. The story of Parsifal. The story of Parsifal and the Holy Grail has survived in several forms that date from between 1170 and 1220. Wagner, who always wrote the words of his operas himself, used a mixture of several of these versions of the story to fit his ideas for the opera. Parsifal is a young man who is a “pure fool”, which means that he is an innocent, good man who slowly starts to understand the world. The Holy Grail is the cup from which Jesus Christ is supposed to have drunk at the Last Supper
Kana is the name for syllable-based writing systems used in the Japanese language. There are three types of kana: Although manyogana is the oldest of the three types of kana, being used as early as the seventh century, it was soon replaced by hiragana and katakana. Both of these characters came from the kanji characters that made up manyogana. Today, there are 46 basic sounds in Japanese that are each represented by a hiragana and a corresponding katakana character as seen in the chart below. (The characters for the sounds "wi" and "we" are no longer used.) There are 25 other sounds that can be made by adding one of two diacritics: a dakuten or a handakuten. Also, 12 of the kana come in a smaller size to make other combinations of syllables. Japanese sentences are usually written using a mix of hiragana, katakana, and kanji. Although it is possible to write a sentence in only hiragana or katakana characters, it is hard for most Japanese people to understand because the kanji symbols represent a concept which the kana do not show. Small kana symbols, however, can be put above kanji to show how it is pronounced (this is called furigana and is used a lot in karaoke). Besides kana, Japanese sounds can also be written in Romaji (using the Roman alphabet) to help people who do not speak Japanese learn the language.
Tropical Storm Erin was the second tropical cyclone to make landfall on the United States in the 2007 Atlantic hurricane season. It was also the fifth named storm of the season. Erin formed in the Gulf of Mexico on August 14 from an area of convection which was becoming stronger. It became stronger and changed into a tropical storm the next day, and on August 16 Erin made landfall near Lamar, Texas and was able to not die as it moved over land across Texas before moving towards the north into Oklahoma. The storm killed at least 17 people and made an already-severe flooding problem in Texas even worse. Another different storm that Erin went into killed at least 18 people. Storm history. On August 9, an area of convection formed just south of Jamaica in association with a trough of low pressure. The system moved west-northwestward, and by August 10, the system had a broad surface trough with a little shower activity. Convection increased on August 11, and by August 12 the contact between a tropical wave and an upper-level low in the area resulted in a large area of disorganized thunderstorms extending from the western Caribbean Sea into the central Bahamas. Upper-level winds slowly became more helpful for development, and on August 13 a large low pressure area formed about 90 miles (145 km) north-northeast of Cancún, Quintana Roo. Late on August 14, a NOAA Hurricane Hunters plane that flew into the system reported a small circulation center, but at the time was not well-defined enough to begin tropical cyclone advisories. However, deep convection was kept near the increasingly organizaing center, and at 0300 UTC on August 15 the National Hurricane Center named it as Tropical Depression Five about 425 miles (685 km) southeast of Brownsville, Texas. In the overnight hours after formation, the storm was disorganized with a shabby and abstracted center of circulation. Located to the south of a mid to upper-level ridge over the southern United States, the system moved to the west-northwest into an area ideal for further strengthening; an upper-level anticyclone formed over the
José Antonio Domínguez Bandera (born 10 August 1960), better known as Antonio Banderas, is an Spanish movie, stage, television, actor, singer, and director. He has acted in several important Hollywood movies including "", "Assassins", "Interview with the Vampire", "Mariachi" sequels, "Philadelphia", "The Mask of Zorro", "The Legend of Zorro", and "Puss in Boots" and its in the Shrek movies. Banderas and his wife Melanie Griffith said in June 2014 that they are divorcing. The divorce was finalized in 2015.
Mikhail Nikolaevitch Baryshnikov (, born 27 January 1948) is a Russian-American dancer, choreographer, and actor. Born in Latvia to Russian parents during the time of the Soviet Union, he later became an American citizen. After a promising start in the Kirov Ballet at the Mariinsky Theatre, Leningrad, he defected to Canada in 1974 for more opportunities in western dance. He has been called the world's greatest living male ballet dancer. Critic Clive Barnes once called him, "The most perfect dancer I have ever seen". While on a tour in Canada with the Kirov Ballet in 1974, Baryshnikov asked for political asylum in Toronto. He became an American citizen in 1986. He has won three Emmy Awards. Part of his significance is that he danced both classical ballet and modern dance. From 1978 he worked full-time in the New York City Ballet under the direction of George Balanchine. In 1980 he became artistic director of the American Ballet Theatre. Later he founded his own company and moved towards modern dance. He has danced many times on television in North America.
Batman Begins is a 2005 superhero movie directed by Christopher Nolan and written by Nolan and David S. Goyer. Based on the fictional DC Comics character Batman, it stars Christian Bale, Michael Caine, Gary Oldman, Liam Neeson, Katie Holmes, Cillian Murphy, Tom Wilkinson, Rutger Hauer, Ken Watanabe, and Morgan Freeman. The movie reboots the "Batman movie series", telling the origin story of Bruce Wayne from the death of his parents to his journey to become Batman and his fight to stop Ra's al Ghul and the Scarecrow from plunging Gotham City into chaos. "Batman Begins" was successful, and in 2008 a sequel titled "The Dark Knight" was released. "Batman Begins" was the first movie in Christopher Nolan's "The Dark Knight Trilogy".
The Great Seal of United States is the official coat of arms of the United States. It is placed in official documents from the United States Government. The name is used both for the coat of arms, and the material seal itself, which is made by the United States' executive power. The design was submitted and accepted on June 20th, 1782. The seal's design is used in national documents, such as passports, by the United States military, and flags. As a coat of arms, it has the national colors of the United States, but the material seal itself only has a basic black and white design (like when used on paper). Since 1935, the two faces of the Great Seal appear in on the one dollar banknote.
The Biellmann spin is a spin in figure skating. It is performed on one foot. The free leg (the leg not on the ice) is pulled up from behind and pulled above the head. The knee is bent slightly and the back is bent backwards into the spin. This forms a teardrop position with the body. In the classic version of the spin, both arms are used to hold up the leg. A slightly changed version has one hand on the skate and the other hand on the arm holding up the skate. A change can be made in that one hand can be dropped. If the hand holding up the spin is on the same side of the body as the leg, the spin is referred to as a "one-hand Biellmann spin", because the spin is being performed with one hand. If the hand holding up the spin is on the opposite side of the body as the leg, the spin is referred to as a "cross-grab Biellmann spin", because that hand has to "cross" the body to "grab" the skate. The spin has also been said to look like a "tulip on a turntable". It is one of the most iconic figure skating moves. Along with the layback spin, the Biellmann is used in advertisements and icons representing figure skating. The position is also used in spiral sequences. Spin history. No one knows who invented the spin. Cecilia Colledge of Great Britain performed a one-handed Biellmann spin in 1937. There is a famous photograph of her doing the spin at the 1937 World Figure Skating Championships. Tamara Moskvina of the Soviet Union performed the spin at the 1965 European Championships and there is a famous photo of her doing it as well. Both Janet Champion and Slavka Kohout of the United States performed this spin early on. The spin is named after Swiss skater Denise Biellmann, who popularized the move. Biellmann performed the spin beginning in the 1970s, having learned it from her teammate, fellow Swiss skater Karin Iten. Biellmann performed the spin on her way to becoming World Champion and the spin was officially named for