Arthur Sifton (1858–1921) was the secondPremier of Alberta from 1910 to 1917 and a minister in the Government of Canada thereafter. When Alberta was created out of a portion of the Northwest Territories in 1905, Sifton became its first chief justice. In 1910 the Alberta government of Premier Alexander Cameron Rutherford was embroiled in the Alberta and Great Waterways Railway scandal; Rutherford resigned, and the position was offered to Sifton. As premier, he failed to gain provincial control over natural resources, but succeeded in implementing some direct democracy measures, leading to prohibition and the extension of the vote to women. During the conscription crisis of 1917, Sifton supported the Conservative Prime Minister, Robert Borden, in his attempt to impose conscription to help win the First World War. He backed the creation of a Union government composed of Conservatives and pro-conscription Liberals. In 1917 he left provincial politics and became a minister in this government. Over the next three and a half years he served briefly in four ministries and was a delegate to the Paris Peace Conference of 1919. (Full article...)
... that Emilie von Berlepsch(pictured) described herself as "fighting against the prejudice that wants to grant women neither a will of their own nor the courage to express it"?
... that Debra Crew surprised business observers when she became president of the R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company only two months after being named president of PepsiCo North America Nutrition?
... that a town councillor in Ermua was kidnapped and murdered by the Basque separatist movement ETA in 1997?
The works of the British writer W. Somerset Maugham include plays, novels and short stories. Maugham trained as a doctor, although he never practised professionally, as his first novel, Liza of Lambeth, was published the same year he qualified. A year after his first novel was published Maugham began contributing to magazines and periodicals; initially these were short stories, but he also wrote opinion pieces, non-fictional and autobiographical work, and letters. Much of his non-fictional writing was published in book form, and covered a range of topics, including travel, current affairs, autobiography and belles lettres. In 1903 his first play was performed, A Man of Honour at the Imperial Theatre, London. It was the first of many of his works that were produced for the stage, and with the later development of cinema, his novels and stories were also adapted for the big screen. By the time of his death in 1965 Maugham was one of the most commercially successful and gifted writers of the twentieth century, according to Bryan Connon, his biographer. (Full list...)
The reading room at the Sainte-Geneviève Library, a public and university library in Paris which contains around 2 million documents, including the collection of the Abbey of St Genevieve. The building was designed by Henri Labrouste and completed in 1850. Its 17-by-80-metre (56 ft × 262 ft) reading room, which reaches 15 metres (49 ft) in height, is noted for its slender cast iron structure.
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