Monday, July 27, 2015

Joseph Pulitze was a Hungarian-American publisher best known for posthumously establishing the Pulitzer Prizes (along with William Randolph Hearst) and for originating yellow journalism.

Joseph Pulitzer - (April 10, 1847 - October 29, 1911) Joseph was a Hungarian-American publisher best known for posthumously establishing the Pulitzer Prizes (along with William Randolph Hearst) and for originating yellow journalism. In 1882 Pulitzer purchased the New York World, a newspaper that had been losing $40,000 a year, for $346,000 from Jay Gould. Pulitzer shifted its focus to human-interest stories, scandal, and sensationalism. At the age of 42 Joseph became blind due to retinal detachment leaving him no choice but to retire.Joseph Pulitzer is the namesake for one of the most desired honors, the Pulitzer Prize for literature, music and journalism, and was legally blind. Pulitzer was also a politician with a Missouri state legislature seat. Throughout his career, he had a hard stance against illegal gain as well as corruption. While he acquired multiple newspapers, Pulitzer’s eyes began to fail him leading to him becoming completely blind in 1889. Despite this, he remained a strong watch-dog for injustice and social crimes.

Monday, July 20, 2015

Ray Charles was responsible for the creation of soul music, which combines blues, rhythm, gospel and jazz. He was allso blind.


Ray Charles - (September 23, 1930) known by his stage name Ray Charles, was an American pianist and musician who shaped the sound of rhythm and blues. Ray Charles is one of the most famous American musical performers. He was  allso blind. He wasborn with glaucoma and was completely blind by the time he was seven.

He brought a soulful sound to country music, pop standards, and a rendition of "America the Beautiful" that Ed Bradley of 60 Minutes called the "definitive version of the song, an American anthem. In 1965, Charles was arrested for possession of heroin, a drug to which he had been addicted for nearly 20 years.  It was his third arrest for the offence, but he avoided jail time after kicking the habit in a clinic in Los Angeles. He spent a year on parole in 1966.  

 He left school when he was 15 to pursue his dream of music.  Ray Charles was responsible for the creation of soul music, which combines blues, rhythm, gospel and jazz.  Charles not only helped eliminate many racial barriers since he was one of the earliest black musicians to be played on the radio. Ray Charles Live ShowHe pioneered the genre of soul music during the 1950s by combining rhythm and blues, gospel, and blues styles into the music he recorded for Atlantic Records. He also contributed to the racial integration of country and pop music during the 1960s with his crossover success on ABC Records, most notably with his two Modern Sounds albums. While he was with ABC, Charles became one of the first African-American musicians to be granted artistic control by a mainstream record company.
Charles was blind from the age of seven. Charles cited Nat King Cole as a primary influence, but his music was also influenced by jazz, blues, rhythm and blues, and country artists of the day, including Art TatumLouis JordanCharles Brown and Louis Armstrong. Charles' playing reflected influences from country bluesbarrelhouse and stride piano styles. He had strong ties to Quincy Jones, who often cared for him and showed him the ropes of the "music club industry." Frank Sinatra called him "the only true genius in show business", although Charles downplayed this notion. In 2004, Rolling Stone ranked Charles at number ten on their list of the "100 Greatest Artists of All Time", and number two on their November 2008 list of the "100 Greatest Singers of All Time". Billy Joelobserved: "This may sound like sacrilege, but I think Ray Charles was more important than Elvis Presley".

Monday, July 13, 2015

Homer A legendary ancient Greek epic poet, traditionally said to be the author of the epic poems the Iliad and the Odyssey. He was also said to have been blind.

Image showing a staute of HomerHomer (Unknown):  A legendary ancient Greek epic poet, traditionally said to be the author of the epic poems the Iliad and the Odyssey.  He was also said to have been blind.  The ancient Greeks generally believed that Homer was a historical individual, but modern scholars are skeptical because no reliable biographical information has been handed down from classical antiquity, and the poems themselves manifestly represent the culmination of many centuries of oral story-telling and a well-developed “formulaic” system of poetic composition.  The date of Homer’s existence was controversial in antiquity and is no less so today.  Herodotus said that Homer lived 400 years before his own time, which would place him at around 850 BC; but other ancient sources gave dates much closer to the supposed time of the Trojan War (1194 – 1184 BC).  The formative influence of the works of Homer in shaping and influencing the whole development of Greek culture was recognized by many Greeks themselves, who considered him to be their instructor.

Monday, July 6, 2015

Harriet Tubman

Harriet Tubman - (c. 1820 - 10 March 1913) Harriet Tubman was a slave throughout her youth, being treated as an animal until she eventually escaped captivity. When she had reached Canada she did not stay to enjoy her freedom. She returned to the lands and brought hundreds of black slaves back to safety, saving them from slavery by escaping from what they then called The Underground Railroad. After a severe wound to the head, which was inflicted by a slave owner before her escape, she became victim to vision impairment and seizures. Which did not keep her from tossing her fears aside and to keep fighting for the freedom of her people.

Monday, June 29, 2015

Stevie Wonder - Steveland Hardaway Judkins on name later changed to Steveland Hardaway Morris), is an American singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and record producer. Blind from infancy, Wonder signed with Motown Records as a pre-adolescent at age twelve, and continues to perform and record for the label to this day.

Stevie Wonder - (born Steveland Hardaway Judkins on May 13, 1950, name later changed to Steveland Hardaway Morris), is an American singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and record producer. Blind from infancy, Wonder signed with Motown Records as a pre-adolescent at age twelve, and continues to perform and record for the label to this day. It is thought that he received excessive oxygen in his incubator which led to retinopathy of prematurity, a destructive ocular disorder affecting the retina, characterized by abnormal growth of blood vessels, scarring, and sometimes retinal detachment. A prominent figure in popular music during the latter half of the 20th century , Wonder has recorded more than thirty top ten hits, won 26 Grammy Awards (a record for a solo artist), plus one for lifetime achievement, won an Academy Award for Best Song and been inducted into both the Rock and Roll and Songwriters halls of fame. He has also been awarded the Polar Music Prize.

Blind from infancy, Wonder signed with Motown Records as a pre-adolescent at age twelve, and continues to perform and record for the label to this day. He has nine U.S. number-one hits to his name (on the pop Charts, 20 U.S. R&B number one hits), and album sales totaling more than 150 million units. Wonder has recorded several critically acclaimed albums and hit singles, and writes and produces songs for many of his label mates and outside artists as well. Wonder plays the piano, synthesizer, harmonica, congas, drums, bongos, organ, melodica, and clavinet. In his early career, he was best known for his harmonica work, but today he is better known for his keyboard skills and vocals.
His family moved to Detroit when he was four. Stevie took up piano the same year and had mastered it by age nine. During his childhood, he was active in his church's choir. He also taught himself to play the harmonicaand the drums, and had mastered both by age ten.
In 1961, at the age of 11, Stevie was introduced to Ronnie White of the popular Motown act The Miracles. White brought the boy and his mother to Motown Records. Impressed by the young musician, Motown CEO Berry Gordy signed Morris to Motown's Tamla label with the name "Little Stevie Wonder." He then recorded the minor hit "I Call It Pretty Music, But The Old People Call It The Blues."
At 13, he had a major hit, "Fingertips (Pt. 2)," a 1963 single taken from a live recording of a Motor Town Revue performance, issued on the album, Recorded Live: The 12 Year Old Genius. The song, featuring Wonder on vocals, bongos, and harmonica, with a young Marvin Gaye on drums, was a number-one hit on the US pop and R&B charts and launched Wonder suddenly into the public awareness.
Later dropping the "Little" from his moniker, Wonder went on to have a number of other successes during the mid-1960s, including the smash hit "Uptight (Everything's Alright)," as well as "With a Child's Heart," and "Blowin' in the Wind," a Bob Dylan cover which was one of the first songs to reflect Wonder's social consciousness. He also began to work in the Motown songwriting department, composing songs both for himself and his label-mates, including "Tears of a Clown," a number-one hit by Smokey Robinson & the Miracles.
By 1970 Wonder had scored more major hits, including "I Was Made to Love Her" (1967), "For Once in My Life" (1968), "Shoo-Be-Do-Be-Do-Da-Day" (1968), "My Cherie Amour" (1969), "Yester-Me, Yester-You, Yesterday" (1969) and "Signed, Sealed, Delivered I'm Yours" (1970).
On September 14, 1970, at the age of 20, Wonder married Syreeta Wright, a songwriter and former company secretary for Motown. Wonder and Wright divorced 18 months later, but they continued to collaborate on musical projects.
Along with Marvin Gaye, Wonder was one of the few Motown stars to contest the label's factory-like operation methods: artists, songwriters, and producers were usually kept in specialized collectives, and artists had little creative control. When Gaye wrested creative control from Motown in order to release his innovative, socially conscious album What's Going On, Wonder was inspired to seek similar creative freedom from the label. Wonder argued with Motown owner Berry Gordy over creative control a number of times, and finally allowed his Motown contract to expire. He left the label on his twenty-first birthday in 1971. His final album before his departure was Where I'm Coming From, which Gordy had strongly opposed releasing. The album produced one top-10 hit, "If You Really Love Me."

Monday, June 22, 2015

Abraham Nemeth is an American mathematician and inventor. He is Professor Emeritus of Mathematics at the University of Detroit Mercy in Detroit, Michigan.

Abraham Nemeth -(born October 16, 1918) is an American mathematician and inventor. He is Professor Emeritus of Mathematics at the University of Detroit Mercy in Detroit, Michigan. Though his employers were sometimes reluctant to hire him knowing that he was blind, his reputation grew as it became apparent that he was a capable mathematician and teacher. He developed the Nemeth Braille Code for Mathematics and Science Notation in 1952. Nemeth Code has gone through 4 revisions since its initial development and continues in wide use today. Dr. Nemeth is also responsible for the rules of MathSpeak, a system for orally communicating mathematical text. Dr. Nemeth is an active member of the National Federation of the Blind. He has written several short stories and made speeches for the NFB about his life as a blind mathematician. Dr. Nemeth was born in New York City on the Lower East Side of Manhattan into a large family of Hungarian Jewish immigrants who spoke Yiddish. He is blind from birth.
He attended public schools at first but did most of his primary and secondary education at the Jewish Guild for the Blind school in Yonkers, New York. His undergraduate studies were at Brooklyn College where he studied psychology. He earned a Master of Arts degree in Psychology from Columbia University.
Dr. Nemeth studied mathematics and physics at Brooklyn College. He did not major in mathematics because his academic advisors discouraged him. However, tired of what he felt were unfulfilling jobs at agencies of the blind, and with the encouragement of his wife, he decided to continue his education in mathematics.

Monday, June 15, 2015

Richard H. Bernstein -is an American lawyer, practicing at The Law Offices of Sam Bernstein.

Richard H. Bernstein (born November 9, 1974) is an American lawyer and current Michigan Supreme Court Justice, who, until 2014, was practicing at The Law Offices of Sam Bernstein, located in Farmington Hills, Michigan until his election to the Michigan Supreme Court. He also was an adjunct professor at the University of Michigan and served on the Wayne State University Board of Governors for one eight-year term, including two years as vice chair and two more as chair, until deciding not to seek re-election in 2010 for a second term beginning in 2011. In November 2014, Bernstein was elected to serve an 8-year term on the Michigan Supreme Court. Bernstein has been classified as legally blind since birth, as a result of retinitis pigmentsBernstein attended Andover High School in the Bloomfield Hills School District of Bloomfield Hills, Michigan.[9] In 1996, he received his Bachelor of Arts summa cum laude from the University of Michigan, where he was Phi Beta Kappa, Pi Kappa Phi and student body president of the College of Literature, Science and Arts.
For the ability to enter Northwestern University School of Law, Bernstein fought the Law School Admissions Council against the "visual bias" of the Law School Admission Test (LSAT), claiming the test discriminates against the blind because of its requirements for interpreting visual material.  He argued the test was no barometer of success in law school. Four universities agreed: Northwestern University, the University of Virginia, the University of Wisconsin and Vanderbilt University. At the time he was admitted, he was the only blind person in the law school.
To complete his studies, Bernstein would memorize lectures and have notes read to him to memorize. For tests, he memorized test questions and entire fact patterns (the basis for the questions), some of which would be as long as 5 pages. The fact patterns would be repeatedly read to him until he committed the entire question to memory and could then provide an answer. He reportedly worked seven days a week for 13 hours each day. He received his juris doctor degree from Northwestern University School of Law in 1999.