World of faces

Bear Grylls – extreme adventurer

Bear Grylls is a record-breaking adventurer. He became the youngest Briton to climb Mount Everest. In his TV shows he demonstrates how to survive dangerous situations. He also writes books for teenagers.
Edward Michael “Bear” Grylls was born on June 7, 1974.
Since his childhood Grylls loved adventure. He grew up on the Isle of Wight, and as a young boy often went mountain climbing with his father.
Grylls studied at Eton College (the school where Prince William and Prince Harry were educated) and as a teenager got a black belt in karate. He speaks English, French and Spanish.
19-year-old Grylls joined the army. During his service, he broke his back in a parachuting accident in Zambia. He spent a year in hospital and his dream of Everest helped him to recover.
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Captain Cook – James Cook

Captain Cook was one of the most famous scientific navigators, one of the foremost figures of the Age of Exploration. He headed three expeditions to the Pacific Ocean. During these expeditions, he made a number of geographical discoveries. Cook was the first European to arrive on the east coast of Australia. He drew maps of the coasts of Australia and New Zealand. He was also the first European to arrive at Hawaii.
He was a British naval officer, explorer, cartographer, a member of the Royal Society and the Royal Navy captain.
James Cook was born on October 27 (November 7), 1728 in Marton-in-Cleveland, Yorkshire, England. He was one of the seven children. Unfortunately four of them died before they passed the age of five. James helped his father on a farm, then worked in a shop. Since his childhood James dreamed of becoming a sailor. At the age of 18, he became a ship’s boy on a coal ship and spent the next 9 years sailing from the River Tyne to London and the Baltic. When he was 24, he joined the Royal Navy.
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Alexander Rybak – bright singer

Alexander Rybak is a Norwegian singer, composer, violinist, pianist, writer, and actor. In the 2009 Eurovision Song Contest in Moscow he represented Norway and took the first prize. For the contest he wrote and composed the song Fairytale. The song was performed together with the modern folk dance company Frikar.
Alexander Igorovich Rybak was born on May 13, 1986 in Minsk, Soviet Union. When he was 9 years old, he and his family moved to Norway. At the age of five, Rybak began to play the piano. His parents are musicians – Natallia Valiantsinauna Rybak, a classical pianist, and Ihar Aliaksandravich Rybak, a well-known classical violinist.
At the age of 10 he entered the Barratt Due Institute of Music in Oslo.
In 2004, Rybak was awarded the Anders Jahre Culture Prize.
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Mark Twain – Samuel Clemens

Mark Twain was one of America’s greatest authors. His Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn, and Life on the Mississippi rank high on any list of great American books.
Mark Twain was the writer’s pen name. His real name was Samuel Langhorne Clemens.
Samuel was born on November 30, 1835 in the small town of Florida, Missouri. When he was 4 years old he moved with his family to Hannibal, Missouri, on the Mississippi River. His boyhood home at 206 Hill Street is now a museum. He lived there from 1844 until 1853. In 1847 his father died and the boy had to help support the family. At the age of 12 Sam had to go to work as a printer’s apprentice. 15-year-old boy worked as a printer for his brother Orion, publisher of the Hannibal Journal. Later he worked as a steamboat pilot.
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Janis Joplin – great blues singer

Janis Joplin was a great blues singer of the 1960s. She was rock & roll’s first female superstar, first goddess of rock. Her career was brief and magnificent. She often is associated with Jimi Hendrix and Jim Morrison, a trio of dynamic performers who all died within a year of each other between September 1970 and July 1971.
Janis Lyn Joplin was born on January 19, 1943 in Port Arthur, Texas. Her father, Seth Joplin, worked at Texaco refinery. Her mother, Dorothy Joplin, was a teacher. Her parents felt an interest in literature and arts. Janis had a brother, Michael, and a sister, Laura. Janis had a happy childhood.
As a teenager, she felt like an ugly duckling because she didn’t fit any standard of beauty. Janis was crazy about jazz and blues. She was also fond of painting. Her favorite singers were Bessie Smith, Leadbelly and Odetta. Their influence was so strong that she decided to learn music.
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Agatha Christie – Queen of Crime

Agatha Mary Clarissa, Lady Mallowan, nee Miller, was an English writer. But she is better known by the name of her first husband – Agatha Christie (15 September 1890 – 12 January 1976). She is one of world’s most famous detective fiction writers and one of the most published authors in history (after the Bible and Shakespeare). Christie had published more than 60 detective novels, 6 psychological novels (under the pseudonym Mary Westmacott) and 19 collections of short stories and 19 plays. Her books have been translated into more than 100 languages and her two most famous creations, Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple, solved hundreds of crimes.
One of her plays, The Mousetrap, is the longest-running play in history. It started showing in London in November 1952, and it has never stopped!
Agatha was born in 1890 in Devonshire, England. As a child, she loved to hear and tell stories. She taught herself to read before she was five years old.
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Evanescence – American rock band

Evanescence is an American rock band. It was founded by Amy Lee and Ben Moody in 1996. They met at a summer camp when she was 13 and he was 14. At first they didn’t even notice each other, but one evening Ben caught Amy playing the piano and singing. Soon they became friends and started to write songs together.
They chose a name for their group – Evanescence. It means “to disappear like vapour”.
They drew inspiration from goth, electronica and movie soundtracks. As a result a new style was created. Amy Lee called it Dark epic rock.
Their first single Bring me to life was included in the soundtrack for the blockbuster movie Daredevil and became a global hit. In 2002, Evanescence signed a contract with the popular label Wind-up Records. The band has achieved great popularity in early 2003 with the release of the album Fallen. At the Grammy Award of 2004, they won two Grammy Awards for Best New Artist and Best Hard Rock Performance. In 2004, they released their first live album Evanescence Anywhere but Home. In 2006, the second studio album, The Open Door was released.
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