Last Updated: Alternative Titles: Walker Smith, Jr. Sugar Ray Robinson, byname of Walker Smith, Jr., (born May 3, 1921, Detroit, Michigan, U.S. died April 12, 1989, Culver City, California), American professional boxer, six times a world champion: once as a welterweight (147 pounds), from 1946 to 1951, and five times as a middleweight (160 pounds), between 1951 and 1960. He is considered by many authorities to have been the best fighter in history. He won 89 amateur fights without defeat, fighting first under his own name and then as Ray Robinson, using the amateur certificate of another boxer of that name in order to qualify for a bout. He won Golden Gloves titles as a featherweight in 1939 and as a lightweight in 1940.
Yuri Gagarin, Soviet cosmonaut who on April 12, 1961, became the first man to travel into space. His Vostok 1 spacecraft orbited Earth once in 1 hour 29 minutes at a maximum altitude of 187 miles, bringing Gagarin immediate worldwide fame. Learn more about Gagarin in this article.
Last Updated: Alternative Titles: Joseph Louis Barrow, the Brown Bomber Joe Louis, byname of Joseph Louis Barrow, also called the Brown Bomber, (born May 13, 1914, Lafayette, Alabama, U.S. died April 12, 1981, Las Vegas, Nevada), American boxer who was world heavyweight champion from June 22, 1937, when he knocked out James J. Braddock in eight rounds in Chicago, until March 1, 1949, when he briefly retired. During his reign, the longest in the history of any weight division, he successfully defended his title 25 times, more than any other champion in any division, scoring 21 knockouts (his service in the U.S. Army from 1942 to 1945 no doubt prevented him from defending his title many more times). He was known as an extremely accurate and economical knockout puncher.
NASA/JPL Caltech With a diameter of 2,326 km (1,445 miles), Eris is slightly smaller than Pluto (diameter 2,370 km [1,473 miles]). Both it and Pluto are classified as dwarf planets under categories defined in August 2006 by the International Astronomical Union for bodies orbiting the Sun. Both bodies are also classified as plutoids, members of a subcategory created by the IAU in June 2008 for dwarf planets that are farther from the Sun than Neptune. (For discussions of these categories, seeplanet.) Eris revolves once about every 560 Earth years in a highly tilted, elliptical orbit. From its spectrum its surface appears to be coated with white methane ice. Eris has at least one moon, Dysnomia, about one-eighth its size, with an orbital period about two weeks long.
Eris, in Greco-Roman mythology, the personification of strife. She was called the daughter of Nyx (Night) by Hesiod, but she was sister and companion of Ares (the Roman Mars) in Homer’s version. Eris is best known for her part in starting the Trojan War. When she alone of the gods was not invited
He was born in a slave hut but, after emancipation, moved with his family to Malden, West Virginia. Dire poverty ruled out regular schooling; at age nine he began working, first in a salt furnace and later in a coal mine. Determined to get an education, he enrolled at the Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute (now Hampton University) in Virginia (1872), working as a janitor to help pay expenses. He graduated in 1875 and returned to Malden, where for two years he taught children in a day school and adults at night. Following studies at Wayland Seminary, Washington, D.C. (1878–79), he joined the staff of Hampton.
Last Updated: Alternative Titles: Tuskegee Institute, Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute Tuskegee University, private, coeducational, historically black institution of higher education in Tuskegee, Alabama, U.S. Its establishment as a school for training African American teachers was approved by the Alabama state legislature in 1880; the school still serves a predominantly black student body. Booker T. Washington (front row, centre left), with Andrew Carnegie and other sponsors of Tuskegee Institute, Alabama, 1903. Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. The educator Booker T. Washington founded the school in 1881 and served as its principal until his death in 1915. The Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute (the school’s fourth name; 1891–1937) inculcated Washington’s principles of providing practical training for African Americans and helping them develop economic self-reliance through the mastery of manual trades and agricultural skills. In the 1920s Tuskegee shifted from vocational education to academic higher education and became an accredited, degree-granting institute. It was renamed Tuskegee Institute in 1937 and began offering graduate-level instruction in 1943; the institute was elevated to university status in 1985. The renowned agricultural chemist George Washington Carver, who headed the school’s agriculture department, conducted most of his research at Tuskegee from 1896 until his death in 1943. The school’s third president, Frederick Douglass Patterson (served 1935–53), was the founder of the United Negro College Fund (1944).
Donatio Constantini and Constitutum Constantini, the best-known and most important forgery of the Middle Ages, the document purporting to record the Roman emperor Constantine the Great’s bestowal of vast territory and spiritual and temporal power on Pope Sylvester I (reigned 314–335) and his successors. Based on legends that date back to the 5th century, the Donation was composed by an unknown writer in the 8th century. Although it had only limited impact at the time of its compilation, it had great influence on political and religious affairs in medieval Europe until it was clearly demonstrated to be a forgery by Lorenzo Valla in the 15th century.
Paul Fearn/Alamy Scott Joplin, called the “King of Ragtime,” published the most successful of the early rags, “The Maple Leaf Rag,” in 1899. Joplin, who considered ragtime a permanent and serious branch of classical music, composed hundreds of short pieces, a set of études, and operas in the style. Other important performers were, in St. Louis, Louis Chauvin and Thomas M. Turpin (father of St. Louis ragtime) and, in New Orleans, Tony Jackson. Though ragtime’s heyday was relatively short-lived, the music influenced the later development of jazz. Ragtime experienced occasional revivals, most notably in the 1970s. During that decade pianist Joshua Rifkin released the acclaimed album
Last Updated: Scott Joplin, (born 1867/68, Texas, U.S. died April 1, 1917, New York, New York), American composer and pianist known as the “king of ragtime” at the turn of the 20th century. Joplin spent his childhood in northeastern Texas, though the exact date and place of his birth are unknown. By 1880 his family had moved to Texarkana, where he studied piano with local teachers. Joplin traveled through the Midwest from the mid-1880s, performing at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893. Settling in Sedalia, Missouri, in 1895, he studied music at the George R. Smith College for Negroes and hoped for a career as a concert pianist and classical composer. His first published songs brought him fame, and in 1900 he moved to St. Louis to work more closely with the music publisher John Stark.