Question:
Marvin Neil Simon (born July 4, 1927) is an American playwright, screenwriter and author. He has written more than 30 plays and nearly the same number of movie screenplays, mostly adaptations of his plays. He has received more combined Oscar and Tony nominations than any other writer. Simon grew up in New York during the Great Depression, with his parents' financial hardships affecting their marriage, giving him a mostly unhappy and unstable childhood.
Simon's characters are typically portrayed as "imperfect, unheroic figures who are at heart decent human beings", according to Koprince, and she traces Simon's style of comedy to that of Menander, a playwright of ancient Greece. Menander, like Simon, also used average people in domestic life settings, the stories also blending humor and tragedy into his themes. Many of Simon's most memorable plays are built around two-character scenes, as in segments of California Suite and Plaza Suite. Before writing, Simon tries to create an image of his characters. He says that the play, Star Spangled Girl which was a box-office failure, was "the only play I ever wrote where I did not have a clear visual image of the characters in my mind as I sat down at the typewriter." Simon considers "character building" as an obligation, stating that the "trick is to do it skillfully". While other writers have created vivid characters, they have not created nearly as many as Simon: "Simon has no peers among contemporary comedy playwrights," states biographer Robert Johnson. Simon's characters often amuse the audience with sparkling "zingers," believable due to Simon's skill with writing dialogue. He reproduces speech so "adroitly" that his characters are usually plausible and easy for audiences to identify with and laugh at. His characters may also express "serious and continuing concerns of mankind ... rather than purely topical material". McGovern notes that his characters are always impatient "with phoniness, with shallowness, with amorality", adding that they sometimes express "implicit and explicit criticism of modern urban life with its stress, its vacuity, and its materialism." However, Simon's characters will never be seen thumbing his or her nose at society."
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what were the characters from?

Answer:
his characters are usually plausible and easy for audiences to identify with and laugh at.

Question:
Johan August Strindberg (; Swedish: [2strInd,baerj] ( listen); 22 January 1849 - 14 May 1912) was a Swedish playwright, novelist, poet, essayist and painter. A prolific writer who often drew directly on his personal experience, Strindberg's career spanned four decades, during which time he wrote over sixty plays and more than thirty works of fiction, autobiography, history, cultural analysis, and politics.
Strindberg died shortly after the first of his plays was staged in the United States--The Father opened on 9 April 1912 at the Berkeley Theatre in New York, in a translation by Edith and Warner Oland. During Christmas 1911, Strindberg became sick with pneumonia and he never recovered completely. He also started to suffer from a stomach cancer. The last weeks of his life were painful, and the daily papers in Stockholm reported on his health in every edition. He received many letters and telegrams from admirers across the country. He died on 14 May 1912 at the age of 63. Strindberg was interred at Norra begravningsplatsen in Stockholm. He had given strict instructions concerning his funeral and how his body should be treated after death: only members of his immediate family were allowed to view his body, there would be no obduction, no photographs were taken, and no death mask was made. Strindberg had also requested that his funeral should take place as soon as possible after his death to avoid crowds of onlookers. However, the workers' organisations requested that the funeral should take place on a Sunday to make it possible for working men to pay their respects, and the funeral was postponed for five days, until Sunday, 19 May. According to Strindberg's last wish, the funeral procession was to start at 8am, again to avoid crowds, but large groups of people were nevertheless waiting outside his home as well as at the cemetery, as early as 7am. A short service was conducted by Nathan Soderblom by the bier in Strindberg's home, in the presence of three of Strindberg's children and his housekeeper, after which the coffin was taken outside for the funeral procession. The procession was followed by groups of students, workers, and members of Parliament, and it was estimated that up to 60,000 people lined the streets. King Gustaf V sent a wreath for the bier.
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Are there any other interesting aspects about this article?

Answer:
According to Strindberg's last wish, the funeral procession was to start at 8am, again to avoid crowds,

Question:
Cuban was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. His father, Norton Cuban, was an automobile upholsterer, while Cuban has described his mother, Shirley, as someone with "a different job or different career goal every other week." He grew up in the suburb of Mount Lebanon, in a Jewish working-class family. His paternal grandfather changed the family name from "Chabenisky" to "Cuban" after his family emigrated from Russia through Ellis Island.
On November 17, 2008, it was reported that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filed a civil suit against Cuban relating to alleged insider trading in the shares of Mamma.com, now known as Copernic. A stock dilution occurred shortly after a trade in June 2004, giving hints of inside knowledge at the time of the trade, and Cuban allegedly was saved from a loss of $750,000. The SEC claimed that Cuban ordered the sale of his holdings in Mamma.com after he had been confidentially approached by the company to participate in a transaction likely to dilute shares of current shareholders. Cuban disputed the charges, saying he had not agreed to keep the information secret. On his blog, Cuban contended the facts were false and that the investigation was "a product of gross abuse of prosecutorial discretion". DealBook, a section of The New York Times, reported through an anonymous source that Cuban believed the investigation was motivated by an SEC employee having taken offense to his interest in possibly distributing the film Loose Change. In July 2009, the U.S. District Court dismissed the charges against Cuban, and the SEC appealed. In September 2010, an appeals court said that the district court had erred and that further proceedings would be necessary to address the merits of the suit. A federal jury in Texas found in favor of Cuban on October 16, 2013. The nine-member jury issued the verdict after deliberating 3 hours and 35 minutes. In March 2014, Cuban was on air at CNBC criticizing high-frequency trading (HFT). Those against HFT, such as Cuban, believe the technology is equivalent to automated insider trading.
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What was the SEC insider trading allegations about?

Answer:
(SEC) filed a civil suit against Cuban relating to alleged insider trading in the shares of Mamma.com, now known as Copernic.