The fashion house also produces accessories, fragrances, makeup and home furnishings as well as clothes. Versaci also designed costumes for the theatre and movies, and was a friend of Elton John, Sting, and Princess Diana among many others.
Openly gay, Versace and his partner Antonio D'Amico were regulars on the international party scene. Versace was murdered outside his Miami Beach home, the former Casa Casuarina, at the age of 50 by spree killer Andrew Cunanan.
Versace was shot dead on 15 July 1997, aged 50, on the steps of his Miami Beach mansion, as he returned from a morning walk on Ocean Drive. It was his custom to take a stroll to a coffee shop that received international periodicals, to read the Italian-language newspapers. He was murdered by Andrew Cunanan, who used the same gun to commit suicide on a boat several days later. Cunanan previously killed real estate developer Lee Miglin in Chicago. Versace's body was cremated and his ashes returned to the family's estate near Cernobbio, Italy.
In September 1997, it was announced Versace's brother, Santo Versace, and Jorge Saud would serve as the new CEOs of Gianni Versace S.P.A. Versace's sister, Donatella, became the new head of design.
In his will, Gianni Versace left 50 percent of his fashion empire to his niece Allegra Versace, daughter of Donatella. Allegra inherited this stake, worth around half a billion dollars, when she turned 18 in 2004. Her younger brother, Daniel, inherited Versace's rare artwork collection.
Comilla District
Comilla District is a district in the eastern region of Bangladesh, near the Tripura Division. Today it is a part of the Chittagong Division.
Mymensingh District
Mymensingh District is a district in the northern region of Bangladesh. It is a part of the Mymensingh Division.
Jessore District
Jessore District is a district of Bangladesh.
Khulna District
The Khulna District () is a district of Bangladesh. It is in the Khulna Division.
Bogra District
Bogra District ( "Bogura") is a district of Bangladesh. It is an industrial city.
Dinajpur District
Dinajpur District is a district of Bangladesh.
Rajshahi District
Rajshahi District is a district of Bangladesh.
Rangpur District
Rangpur District is a district of Bangladesh.
Sylhet District
Sylhet District is a district of Bangladesh. It is one of the four districts in the Sylhet Division.
Most people living in the district follow Islam as a religion. More than 80% of people are Muslim. Hinduism is the second largest religion in this country.
Variations on a Rococo Theme
Variations on a Rococo Theme is a piece of music for cello and orchestra composed by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. It is one of the most popular pieces of music for cello and orchestra.
Tchaikovsky never composed a cello concerto, but he did write this work, which is a tune with a set of variations. It is called "Rococo" because the music is based on the style that was popular in the late 18th century, the period during the Classical period known as Rococo, the time of composers such as Mozart. The main theme is an original theme by Tchaikovsky, not a theme that had been composed by someone else in the 18th century.
Tchaikovsky wrote this piece for Wilhelm Fitzenhagen to play. He was a German cellist who lived in Russia. Like Tchaikovsky, he was a professor at the Moscow Conservatory. Fitzenhagen gave the first performance of the work in Moscow on 30 November 1877. Nikolai Rubinstein was the conductor.
What happened to the work after that first performance is an interesting story. Tchaikovsky himself had not been at the first performance because he was in Switzerland trying to calm himself down after a very short, disastrous marriage. He wanted to prepare the work so that it could be published. He sent Fitzhagen a short score (this is similar to an arrangement for the piano). He asked Fitzhagen to make any necessary changes to the cello part. Meanwhile, Tchaikovsky got on with the job of orchestrating the music (showing exactly what is played by each instrument).
However, Fitzhagen did not only make changes to the solo cello part. He made other changes as well. He left one of the variations out, and changed the order of some of the others. When the music was about to be published, Tchaikovsky saw what Fitzhagen had done. Tchaikovsky was very cross, but he decided to let the publishers print it like that anyway.
When it was published there was nothing in the score which said that Fitzhagen had made lots of changes. It was not until about 70 years later that people realized that Tchaikovsky’s original version had been different. Some cellists, such as Steven Isserlis, now choose to play Tchaikovsky’s original version. However, most cellists still prefer to play Fitzhagen’s version. It is hard to tell which one Tchaikovsky would have preferred. Maybe he let it be printed because he realized that Fitzhagen had improved it. We cannot tell. Musicians still argue about which version ought to be played.
The piece is written for an orchestra which is smaller than Tchaikovsky’s usual Romantic orchestral. It is like the ones from the time of Mozart. There are just two of each woodwind instrument, two horns, and strings.
The piece, which is about 20 minutes long, consists of a theme and seven variations (eight in Tchaikovsky's original version).
The work is occasionally played by other solo instruments. Maxim Rysanov plays it on the viola. He played it at the Last Night of the Proms in 2010.
Gravity assist
A gravitational slingshot, gravity assist maneuver or swing-by is the use of the relative movement and gravity of a planet to alter the path and speed of a spacecraft, typically in order to save fuel, time, and expense. Gravity assistance can be used to speed up, slow down and/or change the path of a spacecraft. The "assist" is provided by the motion of the gravitating body as it pulls on the spacecraft. The Soviet Union used it first for the Luna 3 probe that photographed the far side of the Moon. The later Pioneer program used gravity assist in several missions.
Heliosphere
The heliosphere is a bubble in space "blown" into the interstellar medium (the hydrogen and helium gas that fill the galaxy) by the solar wind. Although electrically neutral atoms from interstellar volume can pass through this bubble, almost all of the material in the heliosphere comes from the Sun itself.
For the first ten billion kilometres of its radius, the solar wind travels at over a million kilometres per hour. As it begins to drop out with the interstellar medium, it slows down before finally stopping altogether. The point where the solar wind slows down is the termination shock; the point where the interstellar medium and solar wind pressures balance is called the heliopause; the point where the interstellar medium, travelling in the opposite direction, slows down as it collides with the heliosphere is the bow shock.
The solar wind is made of particles, charged(ionized) atoms from the solar corona, and fields, in particular magnetic fields. As the Sun rotates once in about 27 days, the magnetic field transported by the solar wind gets wrapped into a spiral. Differences in the Sun's magnetic field are carried outward by the solar wind and can produce magnetic storms in the Earth's magnetosphere.
In March 2005, measurements by the Solar Wind Anisotropies (SWAN) instrument onboard the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) have shown that the heliosphere, the solar wind-filled volume which prevents the solar system from becoming embedded in the local (ambient) interstellar medium, is not axisymmetrical, but is distorted, very likely under the effect of the local galactic magnetic field.
Pakistani nationalism
Pakistani nationalism refers to the political, cultural, linguistic, historical and religious expression of patriotism by people of Pakistan, of pride in the History of Pakistan, Culture of Pakistan, identity and Cultural heritage of Pakistan, and visions for its future.