Pink Floyd

Syd died 10 years ago today.

Roger Keith "Syd" Barrett (6 January 1946 – 7 July 2006) was an English musician, composer, singer, songwriter, and painter. Best known as a founder member of the band Pink Floyd, Barrett was the lead singer, guitarist and principal songwriter in its early years and is credited with naming the band. Barrett was excluded from Pink Floyd in April 1968 after David Gilmour took over as their new guitarist, and was briefly hospitalised amid speculation of mental illness.

Barrett was musically active for less than ten years. With Pink Floyd, he recorded four singles, their debut album (and contributed to the second one), and several unreleased songs. Barrett began his solo career in 1969 with the single "Octopus" from his first solo album, The Madcap Laughs (1970). The album was recorded over the course of a year with five different producers (Peter Jenner, Malcolm Jones, David Gilmour, Roger Waters and Barrett himself). Nearly two months after Madcap was released, Barrett began working on his second and final album, Barrett (1970), produced by Gilmour and featuring contributions from Richard Wright. He went into self-imposed seclusion until his death in 2006. In 1988, an album of unreleased tracks and outtakes, Opel, was released by EMI with Barrett's approval.

Stallone

Stallone is 70 today.

Sylvester Gardenzio Stallone (born July 6, 1946) is an American actor, screenwriter, producer, and director. He is well known for his Hollywood action roles, particularly boxer Rocky Balboa, the title character of the Rocky series' seven films from 1976 to 2015; soldier John Rambo from the four Rambo films, which ran from 1982 to 2008; and Barney Ross in the three The Expendables films from 2010 to 2014. He wrote or co-wrote most of the 14 films in all three franchises, and directed many of the films.

Stallone's film Rocky was inducted into the National Film Registry as well as having its film props placed in the Smithsonian Museum. Stallone's use of the front entrance to the Philadelphia Museum of Art in the Rocky series led the area to be nicknamed the Rocky Steps. Philadelphia has a statue of his Rocky character placed permanently near the museum. It was announced on December 7, 2010 that Stallone was voted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame in the non-participant category.

In 1977, Stallone was nominated for two Academy Awards for Rocky, Best Original Screenplay and Best Actor. He became the third man in history to receive these two nominations for the same film, after Charles Chaplin and Orson Welles. He received critical raves, as well as his first Golden Globe Award and third Academy Award nomination, for reprising his role of Rocky Balboa in Ryan Coogler's 2015 film Creed.

Dolly

Dolly's taxidermied remains.

Dolly (5 July 1996 – 14 February 2003) was a female domestic sheep, and the first mammal cloned from an adult somatic cell, using the process of nuclear transfer. She was cloned by Sir Ian Wilmut, Keith Campbell and colleagues at the Roslin Institute, part of the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, and the biotechnology company PPL Therapeutics, based near Edinburgh. The funding for Dolly's cloning was provided by PPL Therapeutics and the Ministry of Agriculture. She was born on 5 July 1996 and died from a progressive lung disease 5 months before her seventh birthday. She has been called "the world's most famous sheep" by sources including BBC News and Scientific American.

Independence Day

Thomas Jefferson,
the principal author
of the Declaration

Independence Day of the United States, also referred to as the Fourth of July or July Fourth in the U.S., is a federal holiday commemorating the adoption of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776, by the Continental Congress declaring that the thirteen American colonies regarded themselves as a new nation, the United States of America, and no longer part of the British Empire. Independence Day is commonly associated with fireworks, parades, barbecues,

1823 facsimile of the engrossed copy

carnivals, fairs, picnics, concerts, baseball games, family reunions, and political speeches and ceremonies, in addition to various other public and private events celebrating the history, government, and traditions of the United States. Independence Day is the National Day of the United States