Kathie Lee Gifford (born August 16, 1953) is an American talk show host, singer and actress. She is best known for hosting "Live with Regis and Kathie Lee" from 1985-2000 with Regis Philbin. She later co-hosted the fourth hour of NBC's "Today" show. She has received 11 Daytime Emmy nominations. She won her first Daytime Emmy in 2010 as part of the cast in "The Today Show".
Before she hosted talk shows, Gifford's first television appearance was Tom Kennedy's singer/sidekick on "Name That Tune", from 1974-1978.
She also appeared in television advertisements for Carnival Cruise Lines since 1984.
Kathie Lee Gifford was born in Paris, France. Her birth name is Kathryn Lee Epstein. She is the daughter of Joan (née Cuttell; born January 20, 1930), a singer, and Aaron Epstein (March 19, 1924 – November 19, 2002), a musician and former U.S. Navy officer. Aaron Epstein was stationed with his family in France when Gifford was born. Gifford grew up in Bowie, Maryland, and attended Bowie High School. When she was in high school, Gifford was a singer in a folk group, "Pennsylvania Next Right," which performed frequently at school assemblies. As a senior in high school she dated and went to the prom with Michael Bray. After her graduation in high school, Gifford attended Oral Roberts University in Tulsa, Oklahoma. In Oral Roberts University she studied drama and music.
Gifford's paternal grandfather was of Russian Jewish descent and her paternal grandmother was of Native American ancestry. Her mother was a relative of Rudyard Kipling, was of French Canadian, English and German descent and was raised in a snake handler family. After seeing the Billy Graham produced film, "The Restless Ones" at age 12, Gifford became a born-again Christian. She told Larry King, "I was raised with many Jewish traditions and raised to be very grateful for my Jewish heritage." Her brother, Rev. David Paul Epstein, is an evangelical Baptist preacher and pastor of Calvary Baptist Church in New York City.
Gifford represented Maryland in America's Junior Miss Pageant in 1970.
During one summer in the early 1970s, she was a live-in secretary/babysitter for Anita Bryant at her home in Miami. Gifford's career took off in the 1970s (during her first marriage to Christian composer, arranger, producer and publisher Paul Johnson) as a vocalist on the game show "Name That Tune" with Tom Kennedy (she performed the "sing a tune" segment as Kathie Lee Johnson). In 1978, she joined the cast of the short-lived "Hee Haw" spinoff, "Hee Haw Honeys".
After she was divorced from Johnson in 1983, Gifford met sports commentator Frank Gifford (born August 16, 1930) during an episode of ABC's "Good Morning America"; they both married in 1986. By that time she was several months into her most famous television role, as a full-time morning talk show personality. On June 24, 1985, she replaced Ann Abernathy as co-host of "The Morning Show" on WABC-TV with Regis Philbin. The program went into national broadcast in 1988 as "Live! with Regis and Kathie Lee", and Gifford became well-known across the country. In the 1990s, millions of morning-TV viewers watched her descriptions of life at home with her husband and their two children. She appeared as a spokesperson for Slim Fast diet shakes after her son, Cody, was born. She also was a celebrity of Carnival Cruises in the late 1980s and early 1990s, singing "If my friends could see me now!" Gifford left Live with Regis and Kathie Lee on 2000 after 15 years to focus on spending time with family and continue her singing career.
In 1996 the National Labor Committee, a human rights group, reported that sweatshop labor was being used to make clothes for the Kathie Lee line, sold at Walmart. The group reported that a worker in Honduras smuggled a piece of clothing out of the factory, which had a Kathie Lee label on it. One of the workers, Wendy Diaz, came to the United States to testify about the conditions under which she worked. Diaz commented, "I wish I could talk to [Kathie Lee]. If she's good, she will help us."
Labor activist, Charles Kernaghan, spoke on media. He accused Gifford of being responsible for the sweatshop management activity. Gifford addressed Kernaghan's allegations on the air during "Live", explaining that she was not involved with hands-on project management in factories.
Gifford later contacted Federal authorities to investigate the issue and worked with U.S. Federal legislative and executive branch agencies to support and enact laws to protect children against sweat shop conditions. She met with President Bill Clinton at the White House in order to support of the government's initiatives to counter international sweatshop abuses.
On March 31, 2008, NBC announced that Gifford was to join its morning show, "Today", as co-host of the fourth hour, alongside Hoda Kotb. This marked her return to morning television; in many markets, she now airs directly after her old show, now called "Live! with Kelly and Michael". Because the fourth hour of "Today" airs live at 10:00am ET, and "Live! with Kelly and Michael" airs live at 9:00am ET, Gifford's hour does not compete directly with her former show in most markets. Kotb and Gifford replaced Ann Curry and Natalie Morales.
She started hosting "Today" on April 7, 2008 with Hoda Kotb.
Prince-elector
Prince-electors were the group of rulers of German countries which elected the Holy Roman Emperor. In English they were usually called "Electors" and included the Elector of Brandenburg, who also began ruling as King of Prussia, and the Electors of Hanover, who were also kings of Great Britain after 1714.
Electorate of Brunswick-Lüneburg
In 1692 the Duke of Hanover was made an Elector of the Holy Roman Emperor. After then the Dukes were usually called Electors of Hanover, .
Queen Anne of England and Great Britain had no children, Sophia-Dorothea was chosen as her protestant heir. When Anne died in 1714, Sophia Dorothea's son the Elector of Hanover became King George I of Great Britain.
Mantis shrimp
Mantis shrimps are crustacean stomatopods.
They are not actually shrimps, but members of the order Stomatopoda. There are about 400 species.
They are predators which kill their prey by hitting them at high speed.
They hold their body in a manner like that of a praying mantis, and have large, complex eyes. Some species can be 30 cm long.
They are highly coloured, and live in shallow tropical and subtropical habitats such as coral reefs.
Each species has one of these two methods of attack
Both types strike by rapidly unfolding and swinging their claws at the prey, and can cause serious damage on victims larger than themselves.
In smashers, these two weapons are employed with blinding quickness, and hit their prey with the speed of a bullet. This is one of the fastest responses known to man.
Smashers use this ability to attack snails, crabs, molluscs and rock oysters; their blunt clubs enabling them to crack the shells of their prey into pieces. Spearers, on the other hand, prefer the meat of softer animals, like fish, which their barbed claws can more easily slice and snag.
Because they strike so rapidly, they generate cavitation bubbles between the appendage and the striking surface. The collapse of these bubbles hits their prey in addition to the impact of the appendage against the striking surface.
This means that the prey is hit twice by a single strike; first by the claw and then by the collapsing cavitation bubbles that immediately follow. Even if the initial strike misses the prey, the resulting shock wave can be enough to kill or stun the prey.
Their eyes are mounted on mobile stalks and constantly move about independently of each other. They are considered to be the most complex eyes in the animal kingdom.
The mantis shrimp has such good eyes it can perceive both polarized light, and colour vision outside the normal visual spectrum.