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Sean Connery
Biography
Sir Thomas Sean Connery (August 25, 1930 – October 31, 2020) was a Scottish actor and producer who won an Academy Award, two BAFTA Awards (one being a BAFTA Academy Fellowship Award), and three Golden Globes, including the Cecil B. DeMille Award and a Henrietta Award.
Connery was the first actor to portray the character James Bond in film, starring in seven Bond films (every film from Dr. No to You Only Live Twice, plus Diamonds Are Forever and Never Say Never Again), between 1962 and 1983. In 1988, Connery won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role in The Untouchables. His films also include Marnie (1964), Murder on the Orient Express (1974), The Man Who Would Be King (1975), A Bridge Too Far (1977), Highlander (1986), Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989), The Hunt for Red October (1990), Dragonheart (1996), The Rock (1996), and Finding Forrester (2000).
Connery was polled in a 2004 The Sunday Herald as "The Greatest Living Scot" and in a 2011 EuroMillions survey as "Scotland's Greatest Living National Treasure". He was voted by People magazine as both the “Sexiest Man Alive" in 1989 and the "Sexiest Man of the Century” in 1999. He received a lifetime achievement award in the United States with a Kennedy Center Honor in 1999. Connery was knighted in the 2000 New Year Honours for services to film drama.
On 31 October 2020, it was announced that Connery had died at the age of 90.
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Douglas Muigai
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Douglas Muigai is a Kenyan based actor,Commercial model,athlete,rugby player ,stunt man, artist and former bouncer. He is most notable for playing the role of "GSU Officer in the Oscar award winning Fim WATU WOTE-All of us, "Bartender" in the hit web series TUKO MACHO by The Nest Collective,"Police man" in the Jumbo Jet Advert ,role of "Biggie" in the Kenyan movie "UNRULY TEENS" , Lead Gangster in the Eluding Damnation feature Film,Head waiter in the 2017 M-VISA Advert just to mention a few.
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Jack Weston
Biography
Jack Weston (born Jack Weinstein; August 21, 1924 – May 3, 1996) was an American film, stage, and television actor.
Weston usually played comic roles in films such as Cactus Flower and Please Don't Eat the Daisies, but also occasionally essayed heavier parts, such as the scheming crook and stalker who, along with Alan Arkin and Richard Crenna, attempts to terrorize and rob a blind Audrey Hepburn in the 1967 film Wait Until Dark. Weston had countless character roles in major films such as The Cincinnati Kid and The Thomas Crown Affair.
In 1981, Weston appeared on Broadway in Woody Allen's comedy The Floating Light Bulb, for which he was nominated for a Tony Award as Best Actor. Other stage appearances included Bells are Ringing (with Judy Holliday), The Ritz, One Night Stand, and Neil Simon's California Suite.
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Louis Lachenal
Biography
Louis Lachenal, born July 17, 1921 in Annecy and died November 25, 1955 in the Vallée Blanche in Chamonix, is a French mountaineer, first winner with Maurice Herzog, in 1950, of one of the peaks over eight thousand meters: Annapurna (8091 meters).
Louis Lachenal made his first ascents on the Biclope rock in 1934. An assiduous choir boy, he preferred the world of the street to school benches. His taste for risk and the search for danger will be for him a sort of ideal of life. Thus, at the age of 13, his vocation called him to the mountains surrounding Annecy: La Tournette, Parmelan, Arcalod. In 1941, he became a member of the organization Jeunesse et Montagne. In 1942, he became a certified member of the Club Alpin Français. In June-July he took part in a mountaineering course from which he graduated as first roper and met Lionel Terray. Later, he meets Gaston Rébuffat, by chance, in a stationary train. On October 1, he was hired as a mountaineering and ski instructor at the Contamines-Montjoie center. On November 12, 1942, he married Adèle Rivier (1920-1983). From this union were born two sons, Jean-Claude (1944) and Christian (1946).
In 1945, he made his first races with Lionel Terray: the north face of Les Droites and the east face of Le Moine. He followed, among other things, and always in the company of Lionel Terray, the fourth ascent of the Walker spur in 1946, the second ascent of the Eigerwand wall in 19472. In 1948, he became a member of the Compagnie des Guides de Chamonix . In 1949, he chained the ascents. In particular, he undertakes to climb three reputedly difficult routes in a single day (east ridge of the Crocodile, east face of the Caiman, Ryan route in Plan).
On June 3, 1950, he was part of the agreement with Maurice Herzog who reached the summit of Annapurna, the first in the world to reach a summit of more than eight thousand meters. Both men did not have oxygen masks. This victory over Annapurna is also that of a team: Gaston Rébuffat, Lionel Terray, Jean Couzy, Marcel Schatz, Dr. Jacques Oudot and filmmaker Marcel Ichac (the only one who already has experience in the Himalayas). During this expedition, Lachenal's feet froze and had to be amputated. The descent resembles a long Stations of the Cross that lasts more than a month, from June 4 to July 7.
After his return to Orly airport, a stay at the Vaugirard clinic and the presentation of the Legion of Honor, Louis Lachenal returned to Chamonix. He then gave a series of lectures (Knowledge of the world), starting in 1951. He began to drive cars before resuming training and climbing. He took over the management of the French alpine skiing and slalom team and climbed Mount Rose in August 1955.
On the afternoon of November 25, 1955, he took Jean-Pierre Payot skiing in the Vallée Blanche, above Chamonix. Skiing ahead of him at high speed, he suddenly disappeared into a crevasse hidden by a snow bridge, which Payot narrowly avoided. With great difficulty, he managed to warn the Chamonix guides who, during the night, recovered Lachenal's body, which had fallen 28 meters deep. Back in Chamonix, his remains were guarded by his Annapurna companions, Maurice Herzog and Gaston Rébuffat.
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Karen Gillan
Biography
Karen Gillan (born November 28, 1987) is a Scottish actress, director, and screenwriter from Inverness, Scotland. She played the role of Amy Pond, companion to the Eleventh Doctor, in the BBC One science fiction series Doctor Who (2010–2013). In film, she portrayed Nebula in the Marvel Cinematic Universe films Guardians of the Galaxy (2014) and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 (2017), Avengers: Infinity War (2018), Avengers: Endgame (2019) and Thor: Love and Thunder (2022), and also played Ruby Roundhouse in the box-office hit Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle (2017). In 2018, she released her first feature film as writer and director, titled The Party's Just Beginning.
Description above from the Wikipedia article Karen Gillan, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
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Guido Magnone
Biography
Guido Magnone, born February 1, 1917, in Turin, Italy, and died July 9, 2012 in Clamart, was a French mountaineer and sculptor.
Son of Italian immigrants, Guido Magnone arrived in Paris when he was four years old. Having become a cardboard worker, he took up swimming, water polo, and, a gifted sculptor, took courses at the Beaux-Arts. It was only in 1942, at the age of 25, during a chance stay in Chamonix, that he discovered the mountains. He devoted himself to it and became one of the best climbers of his generation, adding to his list of prestigious conquests: first climbs of Fitz Roy in Patagonia, of the west face of the Drus in the Alps, of Makalu in the Himalayas. His rope companions are Lionel Terray, Gaston Rébuffat, Louis Lachenal.
Regarding the Fitz Roy, it was reached in 1951 by Lionel Terray and Guido Magnone who achieved the final feat. The ascent must be considered one of the most extraordinary mountaineering feats of all time, not only for the extreme difficulties overcome in free and artificial climbing, worthy of the Petit Dru West Face.
In 1957, he took over as head of the National Union of Mountain Centers from Jean Franco, appointed director of the Praz de Chamonix mountaineering and ski school, and participated in the creation of the largest leisure organization for young people, the Union of Outdoor Centers (UCPA), born of the merger between the National Union of Mountain Centers and the French Nautical Union. The infrastructures put in place will contribute to popular dissemination of mountaineering, skiing, boating and diving. "With hindsight, he wrote in 2005, I know that it was the UCPA that brought me the greatest wealth. The twenty years invested in the creation and development of this social action organization have been, in many respects far greater than the 8,000 meters of a Himalayan conquest".
Guido Magnone lives between Paris and Saint-Raphaël and from 1977, he returns to his first passion: sculpture, to devote himself fully to it around 1990. He begins to exhibit again in 1996. In 2002, he exhibits his sculptures in Paris , Bourg-la-Reine, Aosta then in Etroubles in 2009.
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Lucien Bérardini
Biography
Lucien Bérardini, born September 24, 1930 in Martigues and died October 13, 2005 in Montpellier, was a French mountaineer. Lucien Bérardini learned the art of climbing on the rocks of the forest of Fontainebleau then on the cliffs of Saussois. Faced with aristocratic mountaineering with personalities such as Henri de Ségogne, and professional mountaineering of which the guides are the emblematic figure, a new form of amateur mountaineering stemming from the Parisian popular circles is developing: "rogue" mountaineering. ". The Robert Paragot-Lucien Bérardini team is the most striking illustration of this. Insolent, iconoclastic, non-conformist, they symbolize the post-war climbers of modest origin who, making fun of conventions and rules, overthrew the stereotypes of the “perfect mountaineer”. Bold, tenacious, driven by a tremendous desire to be and to surpass themselves, Lucien Bérardini and Robert Paragot have found in climbing the way to release their energy.
He entered the circle of great mountaineers by making the first ascent of the west face of Les Drus on July 19, 1952 in the company of Guido Magnone, Adrien Dagory and Marcel Lainé, with intensive use of artificial climbing. The same year he completed the first route without a bivouac on the Walker spur (4,208 m, the highest point of the Grandes Jorasses), in the company of Michel Dufranc. In 1953 he opened a route to the south-east face of Mont Mallet, then the following year he was part of a French expedition to the south face of Aconcagua, a 6,962-metre summit located in Argentina. This expedition, led by René Ferlet, also includes Guy Poulet, Robert Paragot, Pierre Lesueur, Edmond Denis and Adrien Dagory. This enterprise was a success, but the harsh conditions of the ascent and the bad weather caused Lucien Bérardini severe frostbite on his hands and feet, which necessitated amputations. It was with his friend Robert Paragot that he nevertheless returned to the summits. This rope, which has become famous, will succeed in many firsts in the Dolomites or the Mont-Blanc Massif, such as the north face of the Grand Capucin in 1955.
Bérardini was not a guide, but he liked to lead the way, to open the way. Take his friends Pierre Mazeaud and Robert Paragot to climb the Jonte gorges again this summer. Introduce young people to climbing on the cliffs of the Cévennes. He did not like labels either, but there is one that he willingly let himself stick to, that of professional climber, spokesperson, he laughed recently, of "France from below on the summits".
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Lionel Terray
Biography
Lionel Terray was a French mountaineer born on July 25, 1921 in Grenoble and died on September 19, 1965 at the Gerbier ridge in the Vercors massif.
At 11, he made his first easy climbs near Grenoble and then in Chamonix at the age of 12. In the 1940s, he settled as a farmer in the Chamonix valley. In the summer of 1940, he ran on the south ridge of Le Moine. During the winter of 1940-41, he achieved many successes in alpine skiing in the French championship. In May 1941, he met Gaston Rébuffat. He married in 1942 with Marianne, a teacher in Saint-Gervais-les-Bains, and took part in the war with the famous Compagnie Stéphane à ski on the Maurienne front.
In 1945-46, he was an instructor at the École de Haute Montagne, ski instructor and instructor at ENSA, and a guide. At that time, Lionel made his first races with Louis Lachenal, it was the beginning of great epics on the biggest faces of the Alps and in particular the north faces of the Grandes Jorasses and the Eiger. Then, he left France for Quebec, and became coach of the national ski team.
He returned to France in 1949 and set up as an independent guide. In 1950, he participated in the famous French expedition to Annapurna, alongside Maurice Herzog, Louis Lachenal, Gaston Rébuffat, Marcel Ichac (filmmaker), Jean Couzy, Marcel Schatz, Jacques Oudot (doctor), Francis de Noyelle (diplomat ), Adjiba (Sherpa).
In February 1952, he made the first ascent of Fitz Roy with Guido Magnone. On July 7 of the same year, he made the first ascent Nevado Pongos (5,710 m) and Huantsan (6,369 m) by its North face with Cees Egeler and Tom De Booy. In 1954, Terray took part in an expedition to Makalu (8,481 m) with Jean Couzy. On October 22, they made the first ascent of Kangchungtse (7,678 m) and on October 30 that of Chomo Lonzo (7,790 meters). On May 15, 1955, still with Jean Couzy, they reached the summit of Makalu. In 1956, Terray performs the first Chacraraju (6,112 meters), he continues with the Taulliraju. Before that, between the months of May and June, he had climbed the peaks of Veronica (5,893 meters), Soray (5,428 meters) and the second ascent of Salcantay (6,271 meters) taking a new route along from the north face. Returning to France, he took part in the attempt to rescue Vincendon and Henry on Mont Blanc.
In August 1957, Terray participated in rescue operations on the north face of the Eiger to rescue Italian climbers Claudio Corti and Stefano Longhi. During the summer of 1958, he appeared in Marcel Ichac's film "Les Étoiles de Midi".
In July 1961, Gallimard published his first book, Les Conquérants de l'Inutile. In April 1962, Terray returned to the Himalayas and made the premiere of Jannu. The same year, he climbed the East Chacraraju (Peru) and the Nilgiri (7,061 meters) in the Annapurna massif (Nepal). In 1964, Lionel Terray led an expedition to climb Mount Huntington (3,731 meters). During the climb, Terray fell and injured his elbow and right hand, he nevertheless reached the summit on May 26.
On September 19, 1965, with his friend Marc Martinetti, Lionel Terray fell to his death at the Arc de Cercle crack, at the Arêtes du Gerbier, in the Vercors. He is buried in Chamonix.
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Pierre Lesueur
Biography
Pierre Lesueur, born in Clichy (France) on January 23, 1928, is one of the representatives of the famous group of Parisian climbers who marked the history of French mountaineering in the 1950s, with in particular the first of the face south of Aconcagua. During the week, while Robert Paragot repairs typewriters at Social Security, Pierre Lesueur cuts metal parts at the factory. On weekends, they meet up with the whole gang in Fontainebleau to climb the rocks or, better yet, hitchhike to Chamonix, with the heavy pitons made by Lesueur in their backpacks.
“I was a fitter because my father was a fitter, I couldn't be anything else. I worked at night. I was watching stuff and didn't have much to do, so I was doing pitons because we didn't have a lot of money to buy them. This anecdote, told by Pierre Lesueur, is perhaps the one that best sums up the era and the state of mind that reigned, in the early 1950s, within this formidable team of Parisian climbers led by Robert Paragot. , Lucien Bérardini, Edmond Denis, Adrien Dagory and the Lesueur brothers.
In 1950, Paragot and Lesueur climbed the north face of the Petit Dru by the route opened in 1935 by Pierre Allain, the master, trained like them at the school of bleausarde and already nicknamed "the Old", as if to signify the handover. With yet another good anecdote: “At Dru, I had old shoes and the sole opened in the Lambert crack. It had to be fixed with a wire. They are still fabulous stories! It was a good time ! »
In the summer of 1952, ambitions were on the rise and Lesueur first took on the Walker on the north face of the Grandes Jorasses with his brother Henri, Edmond Denis and still Robert Paragot. Then the brothers go to Les Drus, on the Grand this time. They need two bivouacs to open the Lesueur route on the left of the north face. A few days earlier, Magnone, Bérardini, Dagory, and Lainé had successfully completed the first of the formidable west face. Les Bleausards are at the top of their game!
Going on an expedition to the end of the world is the logical continuation of alpine adventures. In December 1953, the band of Parisian proletarians flew to Buenos Aires with the south face of Aconcagua in their sights. Here again, the trip is organized thanks to the funds of each other. We don’t even take a return ticket: “no need to waste money” wrote Paragot in Vingt ans de cordée (Flammarion, 1974).
On February 25, after five bivouacs, Pierre Lesueur was at the top with Edmond Denis, Guy Poulet, Adrien Dagory, Lucien Berardini and Robert Paragot. The end of the ascent was a nightmare. After the last bivouac, the men are exhausted and the extremities are frozen. All except Paragot will be seriously amputated... For Pierre Lesueur, who wanted to become a guide, it will be the end of his career at high altitude.
Pierre Lesueur, nicknamed "Lafleur" by his rope companions, will die in 2021 at the age of 94 in Étampes (France).
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Diego Sanchez
Biography
Diego J. Sanchez (born December 31, 1981) is an American mixed martial artist (MMA) with a background in wrestling and Gaidojutsu, system of submission wrestling developed by his longtime trainer Greg Jackson. Sanchez was the winner of the first season of The Ultimate Fighter reality series and currently fights as a welterweight with the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC). From 2007-2009, he lived in San Diego where he trained at The Arena MMA gym and the University of Jiu Jitsu with Saulo Ribeiro. In 2010, Sanchez moved back to New Mexico prior to his fight with John Hathaway. He now trains at Greg Jacksons MMA again.
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