Kirsten Flagstad, Ho jo To ho, from Wagner’s, Walkure Flagstad was undoubtedly the best Brunhilde. In this video you have to look past the slightly embarrassing staging and dramatics and focus on the brilliantly strong voice. It is amazing how effortless she makes it look. Rosa Ponselle, Habanera, from Bizet’s Carmen Another great like Carusa, Ponselle has such a natural and free voice. It is perfectly suited to the Habanera from Carmen....
Despite the vast majority of Americans having no clue what they were actually saying, these 10 artists also managed to find success in the land of Bruce Springsteen and apple pie. And no, “Macarena” doesn’t count. 10‘Da Da Da’Trio After it was released by the German band Trio in 1982, the dance-pop song “Da da da, ich lieb’ dich nicht du liebst mich nicht aha aha aha” (thankfully often shortened to just “Da Da Da”) experienced relative success on US music charts, peaking at No....
10 The Saxtown Ax Murders Saxtown is a small town outside of Millstadt, Illinois, and it was made up of mostly German immigrants. It is also home to a gruesome unsolved murder that took place during the night of March 19 and the morning of March 20, 1874. It is believed that someone knocked on the door of the Stelzriedes’ farmhouse, and when Fritz Stelzriede responded to the knocks, he was killed with an ax....
This is why some people have gotten creative when making excuses to the police. Sometimes, this creativity is taken too far. These are ten hilarious excuses people have given to the police to cover their crimes. 10 This Is Not a Burglary: It Is a Free House A couple decided to make fast cash illegally by stealing; however, luck ran out on them, and the victim caught them in the act....
10Joe Biden September 2008 was a rough time for the US economy, providing an endless supply of talking points and ammunition for that year’s presidential campaign. In a September 22 interview on CBS Evening News, vice presidential candidate Joe Biden was discussing political leadership during harsh economic times. Referring back to the Wall Street Crash of 1929, Biden said: “When the stock market crashed, Franklin D. Roosevelt got on the television and didn’t just talk about the, you know, the princes of greed....
10 The British Barely Remember The Revolutionary War If you went to school in the US, you were taught about the Revolutionary War. The 18th-century punch-up between plucky team USA and the might of the British Empire is America’s founding myth, the inferno from which the United States was born. George III is the villain, up there with the Kaiser as American history’s Big Bad, and independence is the grand finale....
In many parts of south eastern Asia, white elephants (an extremely rare color variety of the Asiatic elephant, rather than a separate species) were thought to be sacred, an omen of good fortune and symbol of all things royal and/or divine. Pope Leo X (who was a member of the powerful Medici family, and the last non-priest to be crowned Pope), is said to have received a white elephant, named Hanno, as a gift on his coronation; it was given to him by King Manuel I of Portugal, who had probably acquired it via his viceroy in India....
History seldom lets truth get in the way of a good story. The official versions of the entries below might have become widely believed because they were more popular, but they don’t represent what actually happened. 10 Pavlov Rang Bells For Dogs Russian scientist Ivan Pavlov’s experiments into classical conditioning are among the most famous scientific tests ever devised. By ringing a bell before serving his dogs food, he created a link between the two in their minds....
Top 10 Movie Sets Abandoned After Filming Wrapped Up 10 Stuntman attacked by shark Many directors are embarrassed by their earliest works. Samuel Fuller directed White Dog and The Big Red One but wished that he had never been involved with Shark! which was released in 1969. So much so that he even requested for his name to be removed from the credits. However, Fuller wasn’t simply embarrassed because the film was bad....
See Also: 10 Things You Didn’t Know About Voodoo This was especially true at the turn of the 20th century. Back then voodoo was synonymous with the “barbaric” practices of deepest, darkest Africa and her descendants in the United States and the West Indies. Whenever strange killings occurred in New Orleans or the swamps of Florida, it was common to put the blame of voodoo. This was especially true when the victims and perpetrators were black....
Devil’s Island was described as being “one huge rock.” It was roughly 34 acres in area and 19 meters (63 ft) above sea level. It was hardly a place to call home, and many prisoners who survived the torments of life there referred to their time as a “living death” and called the prison itself a “dry guillotine.” Devil’s Island operated from 1852 to 1946. It is estimated that during this time, as many as 40 percent of the new arrivals died within the first year....
Even though there have been so many deaths due to hurricanes, there are also a lot of heroic survival stories. Some of the following people survived against all odds, and here are their amazing stories. 10 Jennifer Lowry Jennifer Lowry survived Hurricane Odile in 2014. This hurricane hit Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. Hurricane Odile was a very unique storm. Back in September 2014, it was broadcasted that Odile would be near Cabo but that it would head out to sea and peter out, so residents and guests weren’t too alarmed by the hurricane nearing them....
But for all their hard work, these men were building on the work of even earlier pioneers, including dozens of virtually unknown filmmakers who did as much for cinema as any of those listed above. Here are 10 of those pioneers and their innovative contributions to filmmaking. 10George A. SmithEditing Film is a visual language. But instead of using nouns and verbs, the language of film consists of shots, such as “close-ups” and “points of view” (usually abbreviated “POV”)....
But that’s not exactly the case. Look behind the headlines about fear, carnage, and death and you’ll find another, less reported world of hope, peace, and human courage. We’re not saying the world in winter 2015 is all happy fairies and pixie dust. We are saying that maybe it’s time we gave the good news a chance. 10We’ve Halved Child Mortality Since 1990 In many ways, 1990 seems remarkably close to our own time....
Survived: 6 days on Plum Pudding and Olasana Islands In 1943, John F. Kennedy was the 26-year old skipper of PT-109. As the PT-109 was prowling the waters late at night a Japanese destroyer suddenly emerged and in an instant, cut Kennedy’s craft in half. Two of his 12 member crew were killed instantly and two others badly injured. The survivors clung to the drifting bow for hours. At daybreak, they embarked on a 3....
10 Michael Fagan For most of his criminal career, Michael Fagan maintained an unimpressive resume. That all changed in 1982, when for a brief moment, Fagan became the most talked-about person in England. All he did was break into the queen’s bedroom. One could hardly call Michael Fagan a criminal mastermind, but he was able to break into Buckingham Palace not once, but twice, and he just hung around for a bit....
But that’s nothing new. In fact, those old guys in your history textbooks were just as imaginative as we are today at pounding foes into the dust. Forget Shakespeare. This is war. 10Greek Steam Cannon In 214 BC, the Roman Republic laid siege to the Sicilian city of Syracuse in a bid to gain strategic control of the island. General Marcus Claudius Marcellus led a naval fleet of 60 quinqueremes—Roman battleships—across the Strait of Messina in a frontal charge while his second-in-command attacked from the land....
Usually, anyway. Emperor Commodus, though, is the exception to the rule. When the creators of the movie Gladiator cast him as their villain, they actually had to tone the facts down a little. Because the things the real Emperor Commodus did were so completely insane that nobody would have believed them. 10 He Nearly Bankrupted Rome by Playing Gladiator We’ve told you before about Commodus’s obsession with playing at being a gladiator....
There are so many insane tour companies offering very unique experiences, from chasing tornadoes in the United States to mining with dynamite in a mountain that has claimed a countless number of lives throughout history. All the tours featured in this list are extremely dangerous. Fortunately, many of them haven’t had fatal accidents; however, the risk of such an incident is very real in every case. Here are ten insane tours that are extremely dangerous....
10Laha Airfield MassacreFebruary 1942 This ghoulish event, which killed more than 300 Australian and Dutch POWs, followed the Japanese capture of the Indonesian island of Ambon. Allegedly as an act of reprisal after the Allies destroyed one of their minesweepers, the Japanese randomly selected prisoners and executed them via beheading and bayonet near the island’s airfield. They then repeated the process three more times during the month. The magnitude of this atrocity was enough for an Australian military tribunal to prosecute more than 90 Japanese officers and soldiers after the war in one of the biggest war crime trials in history....
