For much of his career, Arnold Schwarzenegger was known as a champion bodybuilder, a movie star, and a successful businessman. Then in 2003, he took on a new career—politics. Schwarzenegger was elected governor of California. He served as governor until 2011. Born in Austria, Schwarzenegger moved to the United States in 1968. He earned a bachelor's degree in marketing from the University of Wisconsin–Superior in 1979. He became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1983. As a bodybuilder, he won 13 championships; his titles included Mr. Universe, Mr. Olympia, and Mr. World. His leading role in the 1977 documentary Pumping Iron brought him to Hollywood's attention. It also helped to popularize bodybuilding competitions. Schwarzenegger soon became a top box-office attraction. He made his mark as an action star in Conan the Barbarian (1982), The Terminator (1984), Predator (1987), and Total Recall (1990). He also displayed a talent for comedy in Twins (1988), Kindergarten...
When Edward Regan Murphy was in high school, he predicted that he would become famous by the time he was 19, and a millionaire by 22. And Eddie was right. He shot to stardom in the popular TV comedy show Saturday Night Live when he was 19. He began making movies in 1982 and quickly became a star and a millionaire. Audiences loved the hip, sassy characters he played in hits such as 48 Hrs. , Trading Places , and Beverly Hills Cop . He remained one of Hollywood 's top box-office attractions throughout the 1980s. Murphy's star dimmed in the early 1990s. He appeared in a series of films that disappointed his fans and failed financially, and it seemed that his days as a top star were over for good. But then, in the summer of 1996, Murphy came back when The Nutty Professor became a huge hit. Murphy played two leading roles: an overweight, painfully shy professor who invents a formula that transforms him into a thin and smooth-talking ladies' man. But those w...
The idea that continents have not always been fixed in their present positions was suspected as early as 1596. At that time, Dutch mapmaker Abraham Ortelius noticed and described the close geometrical fit of different continents. A century later the same observation was made by the English natural philosopher Francis Bacon. Their voices were not heeded at the time. It was only in 1912 that the idea was introduced as a full-blown scientific theory--called continental drift--by a young German geophysicist named Alfred Lothar Wegener. He contended that around 200 million years ago a single supercontinent, Pangaea, began to split apart into the smaller continents that exist today.