Naomi Nari Nam is a very graceful and flexible skater. She and Leftheris are a good pairs team. They do very hard jumps for a pairs team, which is helped by Nam's good singles career.
Themistocles Leftheris
Themistocles "Themi" Leftheris (born December 20, 1982) is a figure skater from the United States.
Leftheris has skated pairs for most of his life. He has had many partners and has done very well with them.
In 2005, he started skating as a team with Naomi Nari Nam. They placed 5th at the 2006 Nationals, a very good result for a new team. They won the bronze medal (third place) at the 2006 Skate America competition, which was even more good. They won the bronze at the 2007 Nationals and then placed 6th at the 2007 Four Continents.
Themistocles Leftheris is a very powerful skater. He and Nam are a good pairs team. They do very hard jumps for a pairs team, which is helped by Nam's good singles career.
Ohka
The Yokosuka MXY-7 "Ohka" (櫻花 "cherry blossom") was a type of airplane rocket, used for suicide attacks by the Empire of Japan in the last months of World War II. The United States gave the aircraft the name "Baka" (Japanese for "stupid").
It was carried by a bomber that dropped it when close enough to an enemy ship. The pilot guided it to crash with the target. When dropping down, it could go so fast that it was almost impossible to stop it. The operational record of Ohkas used in action includes three ships sunk and three other ships with great damage.
Stéphane Lambiel
Stéphane Lambiel (born 2 April 1985 in Martigny, Valais) is a figure skater from Switzerland. He is famous for his very good spins.
Lambiel was a good skater as a child. When he was 12 years old, he was picked to perform an exhibition at the 1997 World Championships.
He has won the Swiss national championships every year he has entered them, and at every level.
In 2002, when he was 16, the Swiss Olympic Committee told him he could go to the 2002 Winter Olympics if he placed in the top 15 at the European Championships. Lambiel placed 4th at the European Championships and he went to the Olympics.
In 2006, Lambiel won the silver medal (second place) at the 2006 Winter Olympics. He was World Champion in 2005 and 2006.
Lambiel is famous for having everything a skater needs to do well, called the "full package". He is very artistic, and has all the technical elements needed, including a quadruple jump. He is very consistent, except for the triple axel, which is a bad jump for him.
Lambiel has had a lot of injuries, which has kept him out of the Grand Prix a lot. After the Olympics, he did not feel very motivated. He missed the 2007 European Championships because he said he was burnt out. But he came back for the 2007 World Championships, where he won the bronze medal.
In 2010 he said he was no longer going to compete in skating.
Daisuke Takahashi
Takahashi was born in Kurashiki, Okayama.
Takahashi won the Japanese national championships in 2006 and 2007.
Takahashi is the first male skater from Japan to win the World Junior Championships and the first male skater from Japan to win a silver medal at the World Championship.
He was a member of the Japanese team at the 2006 Winter Olympics at Turin in Italy. In 2010, he won a bronze medal in the Winter Olympic Games at Vancouver in Canada.
Evgeni Plushenko
Evgeni Plushenko (born 3 November 1982) is a figure skater from Russia. He was born and raised in the Soviet Union. He is the last of the "Soviet System" figure skaters, which took children from their parents at a young age and raised them in a training system away from home while giving them everything they needed, including housing and food and equipment, so they could become the best.
Plushenko was a very good skater as a child. At age 14, he won the World Junior Championships. At age 15, he won the bronze medal at the World Championships. He has always been coached by Alexei Mishin, a very famous Soviet and Russian skater coach. At the time of Plushenko's rise, Mishin was also coaching Alexei Yagudin. When Yagudin saw all the attention Mishin was giving Plushenko, it made Yagudin leave and find another coach. Plushenko and Yagudin had a very big rivalry that ended in 2002, when Yagudin won the Olympic Gold and Plushenko won the silver.
Between the 2002 Olympics and the 2006 Olympics, Plushenko only lost a competition twice. The first time was to Emanuel Sandhu at the 2003-2004 Grand Prix Final. The second was to Brian Joubert at the 2004 European Championships. Plushenko came close to losing the 2003 World Championships to American Timothy Goebel, but won.
Plushenko withdrew from the 2005 World Championships with injury. But he won the 2006 Olympics with a very big lead over everyone else there.
Plushenko took the 2006-2007 season away from skating. He was married and had a child, but he is now getting a divorce. He is trying to come back to competitive skating, but still has a lot of injuries.
Plushenko is known for his consistency and his strong jumping ability. He has done a lot of quadruple jumps in competition and in combination with other jumps. He was the first to do a lot of quadruple-jump combinations. He has also done the Biellmann spin in competition, although he has not done that recently.
Bald eagle
The bald eagle ("Latin name: Haliaeetus leucocephalus") is a bird of prey that lives in North America. It is the national bird of the United States of America. The bald eagle is a kind of sea eagle. It can be found in most of Canada, all of the United States, and the northern part of Mexico. It lives near big areas of water, where there are trees to nest in and there is a lot of food to eat. It is called "bald" because of its white head and neck. (There is more information on the bald eagle's name in the section below called "Name.")
The species almost died in the United States (while its numbers were growing in Alaska and Canada) late in the 20th century. Now it has a more stable population.
The bald eagle is a large bird. It is usually as tall as and its wingspan is . Female eagles are about 25 percent larger than males. Adult females weigh , while males weigh . The adult bald eagle has a brown body, and its head and tail are white. It also has yellow feet with large talons, and a hooked yellow beak. The males and the females' wings have the same colors.
Before bald eagles become adults, their wings are brown. Their wings are usually speckled with white dots until the fifth year.
The size of the bird depends on where it lives. The smallest birds are in Florida, where an adult male is only about . The largest Bald Eagles are in Alaska, where large females may be as much as .
The bald eagle is closely related to a species called the golden eagle. The bald eagle is physically and mentally different from the golden eagle. The bald eagle has a bigger head and a bigger beak, and its legs do not have feathers.
When bald eagles "call," (make sounds), they chirp weakly and whistle. The young birds whistle more shrilly than adults.
Bald eagles usually live for around 20 years if they live in nature. The oldest ones sometimes live for 30 years. When bald eagles live in captivity, such as in zoos, they can live much longer.
This sea eagle gets both its common and scientific names from its head. "Bald" in the English name is from the word "piebald", which means, "one with a white head". The scientific name is from "Haliaeetus", which is Latin for "sea eagle".
The bald eagle was one of the many species written in Carolus Linnaeus's 18th century book "Systema Naturae". Linnaeus was a Swedish botanist, physician and zoologist who made the binomial nomenclature system.
There are two main subspecies of the bald eagle:
The bald eagle's natural home is in most of North America, including most of Canada, all of the United States, and northern Mexico.
The most bald eagles live near seas, rivers, large lakes, oceans, and other large places with open water and a lot of fish.