Who Was E.B.White?

Today, most people remember E.B.White as the beloved children’s book author who gave us Charlotte’s Web and Stuart Little, but did you know that most of his career was spent writing for famous magazines like The New Yorker? His lifelong dream to write a children’s book about a mouse would take years to get published. A few years later, White would publish yet another children’s book inspired by a pig he had raised and a spider.

Who Was Johnny Cash?

Find out in this biography that takes us from Cash’s childhood on an Arkansas cotton farm to his first days in rockabilly through his most famous years as a country music legend and icon of American songwriting. Due to his wide range of musical talent, Johnny Cash has been inducted into the Country, Rock and Roll, Rockabilly, and Gospel Halls of Fame. He also won 18 Grammys and 9 Country Music Association Awards.

Who Was Charles Schulz?

Charles Schulz always loved drawing from the time he was a young child, and as he grew older, he turned this passion into a successful career. His early doodles of his naughty dog and of a shy boy inspired two of his most familiar and beloved characters, Charlie Brown and Snoopy.

Who Was Levi Strauss?

As a young working-class German immigrant, Levi Strauss left his family’s dry goods business in New York City to journey out west for the California Gold Rush. Only Levi wasn’t looking for gold — he wanted to provide the miners with strong clothes to wear. His solution? Blue jeans — which have become one of the most beloved and fashionable clothing items in the world.

Zara Rutherford, who is just 19 years old, is flying around the world by herself in a small plane. When she finishes her trip, which will take over two months, she’ll become the youngest woman to fly all the way around the globe by herself.

Ms Rutherford, who’s British-Belgian, began her trip in Belgium on August 18. She plans to fly across five continents, through 52 countries before returning to Belgium in November.

Shaesta Waiz, the current record holder, was 30 years old when she flew around the world. She says she’s happy Ms Rutherford is trying to break her record.

Ms Rutherford’s parents are both pilots, and they helped her practice. She’s been learning to fly planes since she was 14 years old. She got her pilot’s license in 2020 and has hundreds of hours of flying practice.

She’s making this trip in a small two-seater plane called a microlight. One of the seats has been replaced with an extra gas tank, which will allow Ms Rutherford to cover longer distances. The plane has had several other updates for safety, including a second radio, and satellite communications that let her talk to people whenever she needs to.

To follow her route, Ms Rutherford needs to be able to see, since her plane can’t be guided using its instruments alone. That means she can’t fly at night or in bad weather. To avoid clouds, she has to fly close to the land or ocean, which can be dangerous.

Because of the danger, Ms Rutherford worked hard to prepare for emergencies. She has even been trained in escaping from a plane landing in the ocean.

She plans to stay a night or two in each place to visit with schools and youth groups. She advises young girls to explore areas like aviation, science, mathematics, and engineering. As her father points out, currently, only about 5% of pilots are women.

“It’s an easy thing to say, but just go for it,” Ms Rutherford says. “If you don’t try and see how high you can fly, then you’ll never know.”

Beethoven is one of the greatest musicians. He completed 722 musical works including 9 symphonies. Unfortunately, the musician died while still working on his 10th Symphony. Now, a team of musicians and scientists have used artificial intelligence (AI) to complete the artist’s final masterpiece.

Dr. Matthias Roder first came up with the idea to complete the composition. The director of the Karajan Institute in Austria thought it was an appropriate way to celebrate Beethoven’s 250^th birthday. He began by enlisting an international team of experts in music, including music composer Walter Werzowa and Dr Ahmed Elgammal, the creator of an innovative AI technology for the art market.

Elgammal and his colleagues started the process by familiarizing the AI software with a broad range of classical music and then narrowing it down to just Beethoven’s work. Meanwhile, Werzowa and his group tried to decipher the rough sketches and the handful of notes that detailed Beethoven’s plans for the10th Symphony.

The team then fed the AI software musical notes from the unfinished composition. Since music is very structured and mathematical, AI can predict the next note accurately. However, it starts to deviate from the central theme after a few notes. To stay true to Beethoven’s original composition, Elgammal’s team sent Werzowa hundreds of AI-generated musical note variations every evening. Werzowa would listen to them and then select the one that he thought was closest to what the artist would have written. The AI team would add the music and rerun the software to generate the next suggestions. And piece by piece, the team was able to complete the 10th Symphony!

The composition delayed by a year due to the COVID-19 pandemic debuted in Beethoven’s birthplace of Bonn, Germany, on October 9, 2021. Not surprisingly, the AI-generated masterpiece is causing some controversy. Critics believe technology shouldn’t be used to replicate the human creative process. Elgammal and his team agree with their stance and say their AI software isn’t out to replace humans — it’s just a tool to help artists express themselves in new ways.