Biography of the day.

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Biography of the day


April 15: Leonardo Da Vince

Italian artist Leonardo Da Vince, whose genius epitomized the Renaissance humanist ideal and whose Last Supper (1495-98) and Mona Lisa (1503-06) are widely influential paintings, was born this day in 1452.

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April 22nd: Earth Day

Responding to wide spread environmental degradation, United States Senator Gaylord Nelson of Wisconsin called for an Environmental Teach-in or Earth Day to be held on April 22, 1970. Over 20 million people participated and it is now observed each year by more than 500 million people and national governments in 175 countries. Senator Gaylord Nelson, an environmental activist in the U.S. Senate, took a leading role in organizing the celebration, to demonstrate popular political support for an environmental agenda. He modeled it on the highly effective Vietnam War protests of the time. Senator Nelson selected Denis Hayes (a Harvard student and Stanford graduate) as the National Coordinator of activities. The nationwide event included opposition to the Vietnam War on the agenda. Pete Seeger was a keynote speaker and performer at the event held in Washington DC. Paul Newman and Ali McGraw attended the event held in New York City.

According to Santa Barbara Community Environmental Council:

"The story goes that Earth Day was conceived by Senator Gaylord Nelson after a trip he took to Santa Barbara right after that horrific oil spill off our coast in 1969. He was so outraged by what he saw that he went back to Washington and passed a bill designating April 22 as a national day to celebrate the earth."

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25th April: Al Pacino

American artist Al Pacino, known for his intense and sometimes over the top acting style and for his gangster portrayals The Godfather trilogy (1972-90) and Scarface (1983) was born in New York city this day in 1940.

Al Pacino went from success on the New York stage to almost instant stardom in the movies, thanks to his Oscar-nominated role as Michael Corleone in Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather (1972, also starring Marlon Brando). Pacino was a critical and popular hit during the '70s, appearing in several gritty dramas, including as real-life cop Serpico (1973, Oscar nomination), The Godfather, Part II (1974, Oscar nomination), and in Dog Day Afternoon, (1975, Oscar nomination) and ...And Justice for All (1979, Oscar nomination). In the 1980s he made only a handful of films, but in the '90s he made more than a dozen movies, including 1992's Scent of a Woman, for which he won an Oscar, and Glengarry Glen Ross (1992, Oscar nomination), Heat (1995, co-starring Robert DeNiro) and The Insider (1999, with Russell Crowe). One of the most celebrated actors in movie history and still going strong, Pacino appeared with Robin Williams in 2002's Insomnia and with Colin Farrell in The Recruit (2003).

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3rd May : World press freedom day

World Press Freedom Day is a day designated by the United Nations to raise awareness of the importance of freedom of the press and to remind governments of their duty to respect and uphold the right to freedom of expression enshrined under Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Proclaimed by the UN General Assembly in 1993, the day is celebrated each year on 3 May, the anniversary of the Declaration of Windhoek, a statement of free press principles put together by African newspaper journalists in 1991.

UNESCO marks World Press Freedom Day by conferring the UNESCO/Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize on a deserving individual, organization or institution that has made an outstanding contribution to the defence and/or promotion of press freedom anywhere in the world, especially when this has been achieved in the face of danger. Created in 1997, the prize is awarded on the recommendation of an independent jury of 14 news professionals. Names are submitted by regional and international non-governmental organizations working for press freedom, and by UNESCO member states.

The Prize is named in honour of Guillermo Cano Isaza, a Colombian journalist who was assassinated in front of the offices of his newspaper, El Espectador, in Bogotá, on 17 December 1986. Cano's writings had offended Colombia's powerful drug barons.

UNESCO also marks World Press Freedom Day each year by bringing together media professionals, press freedom organisations and UN agencies to assess the state of press freedom worldwide and discuss solutions for addressing challenges. Each conference is centred around a theme related to press freedom, including good governance, media coverage of terrorism, impunity and the role of media in post-conflict countries.