|
Château De La Croë
The Château de la Croë () is a large detached villa situated in eight hectares of grounds on the Cap d'Antibes peninsula of the French Riviera (Côte d'Azur), in the Alpes-Maritimes department of Southern France. The classical-style château was designed by architect Armand-Albert Rateau and built in 1927 for Sir Pomeroy Burton, general manager of Associated Newspapers. Ownership The Duke and Duchess of Windsor leased the château in May 1938, in addition to their Parisian mansion, after the Duke's abdication as King Edward VIII in 1936. When the Germans invaded France they left it, traveling to Spain, on 19 June 1940. The Windsors returned in 1946 to find that it had been used during the war as a billet for Italian and German troops. The building was in a poor state and there was abandoned military equipment on the building and in the garden. The Duchess of Windsor subsequently renovated the house, leading the author Rebecca West to comment that "There are not many wom ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Deborah Cavendish, Duchess Of Devonshire
Deborah Vivien Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire, (née Freeman-Mitford; 31 March 1920 – 24 September 2014), was an English aristocrat, writer, memoirist, and socialite. She was the youngest and last surviving of the six Mitford sisters, who were prominent members of British society in the 1930s and 1940s. Life Known to her family as "Debo", Deborah Vivien Freeman-Mitford was born in Kensington, London, on 31 March 1920. Her parents were David Freeman-Mitford, 2nd Baron Redesdale (1878–1958), son of Bertram Freeman-Mitford, 1st Baron Redesdale, and his wife, Sydney (1880–1963), daughter of Thomas Gibson Bowles, MP. She married Lord Andrew Cavendish, younger son of the 10th Duke of Devonshire, in 1941. When Cavendish's older brother, William, Marquess of Hartington, was killed in action in 1944, Cavendish became heir to the dukedom and began to use the courtesy title Marquess of Hartington. In 1950, on the death of his father, the Marquess of Hartington became the 11th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jacques Wirtz
Jacques Wirtz (31 December 1924 – 21 July 2018) was a Belgian landscape architect. Wirtz was born in Schoten, a suburb of Antwerp. His family were stockbrokers. He studied landscape architecture at a horticultural school in Vilvoorde. He was forced to work in a nursery in Germany during the Second World War. He started his own business in 1950, as garden designer and later landscape architect. He has four children. His sons Martin (born 1963) and Peter (born 1961) joined the firm in 1990. It is the largest landscape design business in Belgium. Wirtz is particularly noted for his use of evergreens clipped to create undulating "clouds" of foliage, creating a green architecture that lasts all year, together with a retrained palette of herbaceous planting. He believed that his gardens should preserve and enhance the spirit of place, rather than stamping his own mark on the landscape. He came to public notice after being commissioned to design the garden for the Belgian pavilion at ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Squatters
Squatting is the action of occupying an abandoned or unoccupied area of land or a building (usually residential) that the squatter does not own, rent or otherwise have lawful permission to use. The United Nations estimated in 2003 that there were one billion slum residents and squatters globally. Squatting is practiced worldwide, typically when people find empty buildings or land to occupy for housing. In developing countries and least developed countries, shanty towns often begin as squatted settlements. In African cities such as Lagos, much of the population lives in slums. There are pavement dwellers in India and in Hong Kong as well as rooftop slums. Informal settlements in Latin America are known by names such as villa miseria (Argentina), pueblos jóvenes (Peru) and asentamientos irregulares (Guatemala, Uruguay). In Brazil, there are favelas in the major cities and rural land-based movements. In industrialized countries, there are often residential squats and also ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Roman Abramovich
Roman Arkadyevich Abramovich (born 24 October 1966) is a business oligarch and politician. He is the former owner of Chelsea F.C., Chelsea, a Premier League football club in London, England, and is the primary owner of the private investment company Millhouse LLC, Millhouse. He has Russian, Portuguese and Israeli citizenship. He was formerly Governor of Chukotka Autonomous Okrug from 2000 to 2008. According to ''Forbes (magazine), Forbes'', Abramovich's net worth was 14.5 billion in 2021, making him the List of Israelis by net worth, second-richest person in Israel, Since then, his wealth decreased to $6.9 billion (in 2022) before rising again to $9.2 billion in 2023. Abramovich enriched himself in the years following the collapse of the Soviet Union in the 1990s, obtaining Russian state-owned assets at prices far below market value in Russia's controversial Loans for shares scheme, loans-for-shares privatization program. Abramovich is considered to have a good relationship ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Eugenia Livanos
Eugenia Livanos-Niarchos (, ; 1927 – 4 May 1970) was a shipping heiress and the third wife of Greek shipping tycoon Stavros Niarchos. She was the daughter of shipping magnate Stavros G. Livanos and his wife Arietta Zafirakis. Eugenia and Stavros Niarchos married in 1947. The couple had four children, Philip, Spyros, Konstantinos and Maria. Her sister was Athina Livanos, the wife successively of Aristotle Onassis and Stavros Niarchos. Athina married the latter, her older sister Eugenia's widower, in October 1971. On 4 May 1970, Eugenia was found dead at home on the Niarchos family's private island Spetsopoula, having died from an overdose of barbiturates. An inquiry into the circumstances of her death exonerated her husband. She is buried in the family tomb of the Niarchos family at the Bois-de-Vaux Cemetery in Lausanne Lausanne ( , ; ; ) is the capital and largest List of towns in Switzerland, city of the Swiss French-speaking Cantons of Switzerland, canton of Vaud ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Stavros Niarchos
Stavros Spyrou Niarchos (, ; 3 July 1909 – 15 April 1996) was a Greek billionaire shipping tycoon. Starting in 1952, he had the world's biggest supertankers built for his fleet. Propelled by both the Suez Crisis and increasing demand for oil, he and rival Aristotle Onassis became giants in global petroleum shipping. Niarchos was also a noted thoroughbred horse breeder and racer, several times the leading owner and number one on the French breed list. Early life Niarchos was born in Athens to a wealthy family, the son of Spyros Niarchos and his wife, Eugenie Koumantaros, a rich heiress, both born in the village of Vamvakou in the Peloponnese. His parents were naturalized Americans who had owned a department store in Buffalo, New York, before returning to Greece, three months prior to his birth. They returned to Buffalo for a brief time, and the young Stavros attended the Nardin Academy grammar school. They returned, permanently, to Greece, and Stavros studied in the city's ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Athina Livanos
Athina Mary "Tina" Onassis Niarchos (; , ; 19 March 1929 – 10 October 1974) was an English-born Greek-French socialite and shipping heiress, the second daughter of the Greek people, Greek shipping magnate Stavros G. Livanos, Stavros Livanos and Arietta Zafirakis. She was known best as the first wife of Aristotle Onassis, but she later married her older sister Eugenia's widower and Greek shipping tycoon, Stavros Niarchos, who was her first husband Onassis's arch-rival. She was also the elder sister of George Stavros Livanos. Marriages and family She was married three times. Her husbands were: #Aristotle Onassis (28 December 1946 – 1960); with him she had two children, Alexander Onassis (1948–1973) and Christina Onassis (1950–1988). She divorced him upon her discovering that he was having an affair with the opera singer Maria Callas. #John Spencer-Churchill, 11th Duke of Marlborough, John Spencer-Churchill, Marquess of Blandford (23 October 1961 – March 1971), later 11 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Aristotle Onassis
Aristotle Socrates Onassis (, ; , ; 20 January 1906 – 15 March 1975) was a Greek and Argentine business magnate. He amassed the world's largest privately-owned shipping fleet and was one of the world's richest and most famous men. He was married to Tina Onassis Niarchos, Athina Mary Livanos, had a long-standing affair with opera singer Maria Callas and was married to American former First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Jacqueline Kennedy. Onassis was born in Smyrna in the Ottoman Empire to Greeks, Greek parents and fled the city with his family to Greece in 1922 in the wake of the Great fire of Smyrna, burning of Smyrna. He moved to Argentina in 1923 and established himself as a tobacco trader and later a shipping owner during the Second World War. Moving to Monaco, Onassis fought Prince Rainier III for economic control of the country through his ownership of Société des bains de mer de Monaco, SBM and its Monte Carlo Casino. In the mid-1950s, he sought to secure an oil shi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Blonde
Blond () or blonde (), also referred to as fair hair, is a human hair color characterized by low levels of eumelanin, the dark pigment. The resultant visible hue depends on various factors, but always has some yellowish color. The color can be from the very pale blond (caused by a patchy, scarce distribution of pigment) to reddish "strawberry" blond or golden-brownish ("sandy") blond colors (the latter with more eumelanin). Occasionally, the state of being blond, and specifically the occurrence of blond traits in a predominantly dark or colored population are referred to as blondism. Because hair color tends to darken with age, natural blond hair is significantly less common in adulthood. Naturally-occurring blond hair is primarily found in people living in or descended from people who lived in Northern Europe, and may have evolved alongside the development of light skin that enables more efficient synthesis of vitamin D, due to northern Europe's lower levels of sunlight. Blond ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chatsworth House
Chatsworth House is a stately home in the Derbyshire Dales, north-east of Bakewell and west of Chesterfield, Derbyshire, Chesterfield, England. The seat of the Duke of Devonshire, it has belonged to the House of Cavendish, Cavendish family since 1549. It stands on the east bank of the River Derwent, Derbyshire, River Derwent, across from hills between the Derwent and River Wye, Derbyshire, Wye valleys, amid parkland backed by wooded hills that rise to Moorland, heather moorland. The house holds major collections of paintings, furniture, Old Master drawings, neoclassical sculptures and books. Chosen several times as Britain's favourite country house, it is a Grade I listed property from the 17th century, altered in the 18th and 19th centuries. In 2011–2012 it underwent a £14-million restoration. The owner is the Chatsworth House Trust, an independent charitable foundation formed in 1981, on behalf of the Cavendish family. History 11th–16th centuries The name 'Chatsworth ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Great Highland Bagpipe
The great Highland bagpipe ( 'the great pipe') is a type of bagpipe native to Scotland, and the Scottish analogue to the great Irish warpipes. It has acquired widespread recognition through its usage in the British Armed Forces, British military and in pipe bands throughout the world. The bagpipe of any kind is first attested in Scotland around 1400. The earliest references to bagpipes in Scotland are in a military context, and it is in that context that the great Highland bagpipe became established in the British military and achieved the widespread prominence it enjoys today, whereas other bagpipe traditions throughout Europe, ranging from Portugal to Russia, almost universally went into decline by the late 19th and early 20th century. Though widely famous for its role in military and civilian pipe bands, the great Highland bagpipe is also used for a solo virtuosic style called ''pìobaireachd'', ''ceòl mòr'', or simply pibroch. Through development over the centuries, th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
