73 thoughts on “Who Am I – W?”

  1. Evenin’/Mornin’, Boa

    4. Christopher Wren?

    8. George Wellesley, Duke of Wellington (Double points?)

    10. Walt Disney

    OZ

  2. 1 Walt Disney
    2 Walt Disney
    3 Walt Disney
    4 Walt Disney
    6 Walt Disney
    7 Walt Disney
    8 Duke of Wellington
    9 Walt Disney
    10 Walt Disney

  16. OZ and Soutie
    8. Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington (1769-1852) Commissioned an ensign in the British Army, he would rise to prominence in the Napoleonic Wars, eventually reaching the rank of field marshal. Wellington commanded the Allied forces during the Peninsular War, pushing the French Army out of Spain and reaching southern France. Victorious and hailed as a hero in England, he was obligated to return to Europe to command the Anglo-Allied forces at Waterloo, after which Napoleon was permanently exiled at St. Helena. Wellington is often compared to John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough, with whom he shared many characteristics, chiefly a transition to politics after a highly successful military career.

    10. Walt Disney (1901-1966) founded the animation and entertainment empire which still bears his name. He began as a cartoonist in the 1920s, creating Mickey Mouse and eventually moving from short films into much-acclaimed animated features like Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) and Bambi (1942). Later Disney expanded into live-action features like Treasure Island (1951) and then into television. During Disney’s life his studios won 48 Academy Awards. In 1955 Disney opened a theme park, Disneyland, in Anaheim, California; it was an immediate hit and became the public flagship of the Disney empire. Other Disney theme parks have since opened in Florida, Tokyo, France and Hong Kong.

  19. OZ
    4. Christopher Wren (1632-1723) is best known as the architect of St. Paul’s Cathedral and other London churches, but his first love was science and mathematics. During the first part of his career he worked as an astronomer. The Royal Observatory at Greenwich, which he designed, combines both aspects of this famous man’s work – astronomy and architecture.

    Wren was born at East Knoyle in Wiltshire, the only surviving son of Christopher Wren DD (1589–1658), at that time the rector of East Knoyle and later Dean of Windsor. A previous child of Dr Wren, also named Christopher, was born on 22 November 1631, and had died the same day. As a child Wren “seem’d consumptive”. Although a sickly child, he would survive into robust old age. He was first taught at home by a private tutor and his father. After his father’s appointment as Dean of Windsor in March 1635, his family spent part of each year there. Little is known about Wren’s life at Windsor.

    2. Sir William Wallace (1272-1305) is considered one of Scotland’s greatest heroes, thanks to his opposition to English rule under Edward I in the 13th century. The son of a minor Scottish lord, Wallace was named an outlaw for killing an Englishman in 1292,. He fled for the hills and formed an army to harass English soldiers. In 1297 Wallace and his army drove the English from Scotland and then boldly invaded northern England. In December of 1297 Wallace was elected Guardian of the Kingdom and began to rule Scotland. Within the year Edward I defeated Wallace at Falkirk and Wallace was forced to withdraw his forces. Wallace resigned as Guardian, but for the next several years engaged the English occupiers in frequent skirmishes. He was captured in 1305 and taken to London, where he was convicted of treason and executed. Although much of his story is obscured by legend, it’s generally agreed that he was a very large, well-educated man who fought with passion and brilliant tactics.

  21. If I get MrsOMG to hold up my iPad from about twenty feet away and I screw my eyes up it does look a bit like him.

  25. Araminta

    5. Josiah Wedgwood (1730-1795) , English potter, descendant of a family of Staffordshire potters and perhaps the greatest of all potters. At the age of nine he went to work at the plant owned by his brother Thomas in Burslem, and in 1751, with a partner, he started in business. In 1753 he joined Thomas Whieldon of Fenton, then one of the foremost potters of Staffordshire, and in 1759 Wedgwood started his own business at the Ivy House Works, Burslem. He obtained a site near Stoke-on-Trent, where he built a village called Etruria for his workers and opened a new works in 1769. In that year he took into partnership Thomas Bentley, who remained a valuable ally until his death in 1780. At Etruria, Wedgwood specialized in ornamental products to supplement the utilitarian wares of Burslem. Wedgwood entered the field of pottery at a time when it was still a backward and minor industry and by his skill, taste, and organizing abilities transformed it into one of great importance and enormous aesthetic appeal. He combined experiments in his art and in the technique of mass production with an interest in improved roads, canals, schools, and living conditions for workers.

  27. 9. William Wyler??

    Boadicea – I dearly hope either you or Bearsy is responsible for the festive snowflakes on my screen. 🙂

    OZ

  29. No it’s not your imagination! Bearsy has just turned on the ‘snow effect’ on Word Press!

  30. Phew! For a horrible moment there I thought Avast! had let me down. What a lovely effect.

    OZ

  33. Jan A bit overrated in my view! And yes A N Other American Star!

    1. Wenceslaus I (907-935) was duke of Bohemia from 921 until his death. Wenceslas is the subject of the Christmas carol “Good King Wenceslas”. He was the son of Vratislav I, Duke of Bohemia from the Přemyslid dynasty. His father was raised in a Christian milieu through his own father, Borivoj I of Bohemia, who was converted by Saint Cyril and Saint Methodius, the “apostles to the Slavs”. His mother Drahomíra was the daughter of a pagan tribal chief of Havolans and was baptised at the time of her marriage.

    In 921, when Wenceslaus was thirteen, his father died and he was brought up by his grandmother, Saint Ludmila, who raised him as a Christian. A dispute between the fervently Christian regent and her daughter-in-law drove Ludmila to seek sanctuary at Tetín castle near Beroun. Drahomíra, who was trying to garner support from the nobility, was furious about losing influence on her son and arranged to have Ludmila strangled at Tetín on September 15, 921.

    According to some legends, having regained control of her son, Drahomíra set out to convert him to the old pagan religion. According to other legends she was herself a Christian. Very little is known about her rule.

    In 924 or 925 Wenceslaus assumed government for himself and had Drahomíra exiled. After gaining the throne at the age of eighteen, he defeated a rebellious duke of Kouřim named Radslav. He also founded a rotunda consecrated to St Vitus at Prague Castle in Prague, which exists as present-day St Vitus Cathedral.

    In September of 935 (in older sources 929) a group of nobles allied with Wenceslaus’s younger brother, Boleslav (Boleslav I of Bohemia), plotted to kill the prince. After Boleslav invited Wenceslaus to the feast of Saints Cosmas and Damian in Stará Boleslav, three of Boleslav’s companions – Tira, Čsta and Hněvsa – murdered Wenceslaus on his way to church. Boleslav thus succeeded him as the Duke (kníže) of Bohemia.

    Wenceslaus is venerated as Saint Wenceslaus and is the main patron saint of the Czech state.

  36. Araminta

    3. John Wycliff (1328-1384) was a lay preacher, translator, reformist and university teacher who was known as an early dissident in the Roman Catholic Church during the 14th century. His followers are known as Lollards, a somewhat rebellious movement, which preached anticlerical and biblically-centered reforms. He is considered the founder of the Lollard movement, a precursor to the Protestant Reformation and for this reason he is sometimes called “The Morning Star of the Reformation”. He was one of the earliest opponents of papal authority influencing secular power.

    Wycliffe was also an early advocate for translation of the Bible into the common tongue. He completed his translation directly from the Vulgate into vernacular English in the year 1382, now known as Wyclif’s Bible.

    Wycliffe’s entrance on the stage of ecclesiastical politics is usually related to the question of feudal tribute to which England had been rendered liable by King John, which was not paid for thirty-three years until Pope Urban V in 1365 demanded it. Parliament declared that neither King John nor any other had the right to subject England to any foreign power. Should the pope attempt to enforce his claim by arms, he would be met with national resistance. The Pope backed down.

    Wycliffe became increasingly anti-papal, and was supported and protected by his patron John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster. Thus, it was that Wycliffe, despite being hauled before various eccleciastical courts, died at Lutterworth in 1384.

    However in 1415, the Council of Constance declared Wycliffe a stiff-necked heretic and under the ban of the Church. It was decreed that his books be burned and his remains be exhumed. The exhumation was carried out in 1428 when, at the command of Pope Martin V, his remains were dug up, burned, and the ashes cast into the River Swift, which flows through Lutterworth.

  37. OK, Bearsy is at it again.

    Ho ho ho, and don’t expect any sympathy, dear Bear when your aircon breaks down and you are frying.
    Although, when daughter No.2 spent Christmas in Sydney, she froze : foggy, and fleeces on the beach, and wasn’t impressed.

  38. Actually Araminta – it’s pretty chilly here at the moment. I am seriously considering pulling my jeans out of the ‘winter’ box and we still haven’t taken the duvet off the bed… 🙂

  43. OMG
    6. James Watt, Scottish inventor and mechanical engineer, was born on January 19, 1736, in Greenock, Scotland. He worked as a mathematical-instrument maker from the age of 19 and soon became interested in improving the steam engines, invented by the English engineers Thomas Savery and Thomas Newcomen, which were used at the time to pump water from mines. Watt determined the properties of steam, especially the relation of its density to its temperature and pressure, and designed a separate condensing chamber for the steam engine that prevented enormous losses of steam in the cylinder and enhanced the vacuum conditions. Watt’s first patent, in 1769, covered this device and other improvements on Newcomen’s engine, such as steam-jacketing, oil lubrication, and insulation of the cylinder in order to maintain the high temperatures necessary for maximum efficiency.

    9. Johnny Weissmuller (1904-1984) was one of the world’s best swimmers in the 1920s, winning five Olympic gold medals and one bronze medal. He won fifty-two US National Championships and set sixty-seven world records. After his swimming career, he became the sixth actor to portray Tarzan in films, a role he played in twelve motion pictures. Other actors also played Tarzan, but Weissmuller was the best-known. His distinctive, ululating Tarzan yell is still often used in films.

  45. Off thread, but ..

    It’s not actually cold, Araminta, 26 or 27 during the day and a minimum of 20 at night, but that’s way below Brisbane’s usual humid heat for December. We’ve only resorted to the aircon once, so far, this year. Lots of rain, too, and grey skies.

    As Boa says, it must be global warming. 😎

  46. Frankly it sounds perfect, Bearsy but it does sound a bit unusual for Queensland.

    It’s actually 0 degrees something or other here at the moment, and we so far have missed the worst of the snow. I’m keeping my fingers crossed, and I’m rather wishing for some global warming to be honest! 😉

  47. Araminta – I don’t think it is Dorothy Wordsworth (sister of ‘im wot wrote pomes) either. Double sob!

    OZ

  48. I thought it might be dottie Wordsworth too but alas and alack not.

    Johnny Weissmuller!!!! Young Tarzan. Now if you’d only included the loincloth, Boa….

  53. Sheona Well done! I’m amazed that none of the women knew her!

    7. Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797) was an eighteenth-century British writer, philosopher, and advocate of women’s rights. During her brief career, she wrote novels, treatises, a travel narrative, a history of the French Revolution, a conduct book, and a children’s book. Wollstonecraft is best known for A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), in which she argues that women are not naturally inferior to men, but appear to be only because they lack education. She suggests that both men and women should be treated as rational beings and imagines a social order founded on reason.

    Until the late 20th century, Wollstonecraft’s life, which encompassed several unconventional personal relationships, received more attention than her writing. After two ill-fated affairs, with Henry Fuseli and Gilbert Imlay (by whom she had a daughter, Fanny Imlay), Wollstonecraft married the philosopher William Godwin, one of the forefathers of the anarchist movement. Wollstonecraft died at the age of thirty-eight, ten days after giving birth to her second daughter, leaving behind several unfinished manuscripts. Her daughter Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, later Mary Shelley, would become an accomplished writer herself.

    After Wollstonecraft’s death, her widower published a Memoir (1798) of her life, revealing her unorthodox lifestyle, which inadvertently destroyed her reputation for almost a century. However, with the emergence of the feminist movement at the turn of the twentieth century, Wollstonecraft’s advocacy of women’s equality and critiques of conventional femininity became increasingly important. Today Wollstonecraft is regarded as one of the founding feminist philosophers, and feminists often cite both her life and work as important influences.

  58. Bearsy sometimes makes suggestions for the letters I have problems with and I often say “Who?” I’m really struggling with the Xs – but I’ve got a couple of weeks to dredge up some more!

  60. I think it’s her surname that sticks in my mind, Araminta.

    There may be some Xaviers in the next one, Boadicea???? Just fishing.

  61. The Zs are a doddle compared to Xs! Oddly enough I had a problem with the Fs, too. Plenty in the modern era, but not so many further back.

  66. I’d just checked the spelling of Wieczorek – he was bound to appear – and it was all over! Good game! 🙂

  67. This snow effect…. it was there a moment ago, but seems to have stopped… does anyone else find it disconcerting? It is rather like one of the visual disturbances I get a s migraine aura!

  69. Well, not just for me.

    But I am interested to know if anyone else feels the same. It is very difficult to explain a migraine aura to those who haven’t experienced them.

  72. Pseu :

    Well, not just for me.

    But I am interested to know if anyone else feels the same. It is very difficult to explain a migraine aura to those who haven’t experienced them.

    I get an aura too but it’s more like an expanding star.

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