World of faces

Jani Lane was an accomplished pianist, guitarist and drummer. He was a songwriter, frontman and leader of the American glam metal group Warrant. The band was popular in the late 80s and until the mid-90.
John Kennedy Oswald (his real name) was born on February 1, 1964 in Akron, Ohio. He was one of a huge family of talented musicians. By the age of 11 he was playing the clubs. After graduating from Field High School, Lane joined the Cyren group as a drummer. In 1983 he moved to Florida and founded the group Dorian Gray. In Dorian Gray, he played drums until the formation of the Plain Jane group with a future Warrant colleague Steven Sweet. It was at this time that Lane took the stage name Jani Lane.
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Alex Harvey was a Scottish rock musician, songwriter and vocalist, best known as the frontman of Sensational Alex Harvey Band.
Alex Harvey was born in Glasgow on 5 February 1935. At the age of fifteen, he left school and then (as he later claimed) tried his hand at 36 different professions (including a lion tamer). In 1954, Harvey made his debut on the professional stage, playing a trumpet at a wedding in Glasgow.
Harvey’s musical roots were in Dixieland jazz and skiffle, and he fronted a soul band during the early sixties. In 1957 Alex was a winner of a Scottish newspaper talent contest and received title Tommy Steel of Scotland.
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Mia Zapata was an American rock singer, songwriter, guitarist and pianist, soloist of the group The Gits (1986-1993).
Mia Katherine Zapata was born on August 25, 1965 in Louisville, Kentucky.
At the age of 9, the girl learned to play the guitar and piano. She was influenced by such artists as Bessie Smith, Billy Holiday, Jimmy Reed, Ray Charles, Hank Williams and Sam Cook. In 1984, Mia entered the college located in Yellow Springs, Ohio. In 1986 at college she and her three friends (Joe Spleen, Matt Dresdner and Steve Moriarty) formed the band The Gits.
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Harry Chapin was a famous American musician, poet and composer. He became the author of several songs, which later turned out to be world hits.
Harry Chapin was born on December 7, 1942 in Greenwich Village, New York. He was the son of Jim Chapin, a noted jazz drummer who headed his own sextet. Jim also had been a regular player alongside Woody Herman and Tommy Dorsey during the forties. When his family moved to Brooklyn Heights Harry sang with a local boys’ choir. Harry with two more musical brothers in the family put together an onoff group. In 1966 they recorded an album, Chapin Music.
After graduating from the Brooklyn Technical School, Chapin was drafted into the army. For some time he was a cadet at the US Air Force Academy.
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Charles Lindbergh was an American aviator. He was the first person to fly an airplane alone across the Atlantic Ocean without stopping.
Charles Augustus Lindbergh was born on February 4, 1902, in Detroit, Michigan. His father was a congressman from Minnesota.
He studied flying in Lincoln, Nebraska (1920-1922). He made his first solo flight in 1923 and thereafter made exhibition flights and short hops in the Midwest.
In 1926 he began flying mail between Saint Louis, Missouri, and Chicago, Illinois.
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Michael Phelps is a swimming sensation who’s made sports history. Since 2001, he has broken and reestablished several new world records in competitive swimming. His success at the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens was amazing (six gold and two bronze medals) and at the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing he won eight gold medals!
Michael Fred Phelps II was born on June 30, 1985, in Baltimore, Maryland. He began swimming at a very young age, following in the footsteps of his father Fred. His sister, Hilary, swam for the University of Richmond and his sister, Whitney, swam at the 1996 Olympic Swimming Trials.
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Jack London fought his way up from a hard life of a factory worker in Oakland, California to become the highest paid, most popular novelist and short story writer of his day. His writing appealed not to the few, but to millions of people all around the world. Some of his writings have been translated into as many as seventy different languages.
Jack was a celebrity, a colorful and controversial personality. He was a fiery and eloquent public speaker, and an avid lecturer. He was one of the most attractive and romantic figures of his time.
He worked hard and tried never to miss his early morning 1,000- word writing stint. Between 1900 and 1916 he completed over fifty books, hundreds of short stories, and numerous articles on a wide range of topics.
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Rick Bass is an environmental activist and writer.
Rick was born on March 7, 1958 in south Texas and grew up there. His father was a geologist. His grandfather told him interesting stories during deerhunting trips.
In 1979, he received a degree in geology from Utah State University and then worked as a petroleum geologist in Mississippi. This experience informed one of his better-known nonfiction books, Oil Notes.
Bass has lived in Texas, Mississippi, Vermont, Utah, Arkansas, and Montana.
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Nelson Mandela fought against apartheid. It was an official policy of the government of South Africa that separated people according to their race and color. During World War II, Mandela joined the African National Congress (ANC), and later became one of its leaders. They fought for the freedom of the black people in South Africa. In 1962 Mandela was sentenced to five years in prison. The next year, he was found guilty on more charges and sentenced to life imprisonment. In 1990 South Africa’s president, F.W. de Klerk, ordered Mandela’s release. De Klerk, together with Mandela, worked to change South Africa into a country where all races would have equal rights. In 1994 Mandela became South Africa’s first black president.
Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela was born on July 18, 1918, in Umtata, South Africa. He was the eldest child of his father’s third wife, Nosekeni Fanny. The boy was called Rolihlahla. He was given the name Nelson Mandela at age seven when he attended a mission school. He became the first member of his family to do so.
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Isabel Allende is a Latin American writer. Her many books, in Spanish, have been translated into several languages. The author has received international acclaim for her writing.
Isabel was born on August 2, 1942, in Lima, Peru. Her parents divorced three years later. In 1953, her mother married Ramon Huidobro, a Chilean diplomat. Allende graduated from a private high school in Santiago, Chile, and shortly after married Miguel Frias. They had two children.
Allende worked as a secretary for the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization in Santiago and then began successful careers in the theatre and print and broadcast journalism.
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