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James Maitland "Jimmy" Stewart (1908) Stewart was an American actor recognized for his self-effacing screen persona. His slow, halting line delivery initially made him difficult to cast, but his idealistic characters in films such as Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939) soon endeared him to audiences, and he won an Oscar in 1940. His role as the quintessential small-town man helped make It's a Wonderful Life (1946) a Christmas classic. What mysterious Nepalese artifact did Stewart allegedly smuggle out of India? Discuss
Malcolm X (1925) Malcolm X was an African-American activist. His home was burned by the KKK when he was a child, and he joined the Nation of Islam in prison as an adult. Upon his release in 1952, he renounced his "slave name," Little, and took the surname X, representing his lost African ancestral surname. He became a minister and soon rose to prominence campaigning for black separatism, but he publicly broke with the militant Black Muslims in 1964 after a pilgrimage to Mecca. Who assassinated him the next year?
Walter Adolph Gropius (1883) Gropius was the immensely influential director of the Bauhaus school of art and architecture in Germany. In 1937, he immigrated to America and became head of Harvard's architecture department. He was an early exponent of the International style and believed that all design—whether of a chair, a building, or a city—should focus on the particular needs and problems involved, without regard to old styles. His 1923 re-design of what everyday object is now considered an icon of 20th-century design?
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