WHITNEY HOUSTON

ANECDOTES:

SAVING FACE:

     Whitney Houston and Bobby Brown were known to have a turbulent relationship. Once, they took a romantic cruise around the island of Capri and shortly Whitney was hospitalized with a gash on her face. Houston said she had cut herself after swimming INTO a rock. It was a way to adress the rumours that Brown had caused her the injuries.

Finally she admitted the truth "When we are fighting, it's like that's love for us".


THE USURPER:


    West Midland's police arrested a 46 year old man after she got up on stage pretending to be Whitney Houston at Birmingham's LG Arena.
The woman fooled the audience for a few minutes as she walked on stage to a standing ovation. However, the audience members realised something wasn't quite right after she sang the first line of "I Will Always Love You" and got the words in incorrect order. Several members of the audience members had got up and left complaining of perforated ear drums due to the deafening noise.


       

CHARLES DICKENS

     Charles John Huffam Dickens was born in Portsmouth, England (7th February, 1812) and died in Gads Hill Place (9th June, 1870). He was a famous English novelist. He was one of the best-known writers of universal literature, and the most important one in the Victorian period.

     He was well-known during his lifetime and nowadays he remains popular.  Many of his writings were originally published serially, in monthly instalments (Dickens himself helped popularise).  He combined mastery when narrating, humour, tragic feeling as well as irony. He criticized  the society where he lived and brought his readers with an intense description of people and places.

     He condemned publically the brutal exploitation of children in England, and thanks to his involvement with society, many consciences awoke with the reality of the time. He was highly talented and extremely energetic, he fought for social reforms, he taught his thoughts about intellectual property or against slavery in the United States...

     Some important quotes of Dickens are:

• "A loving heart is the truest wisdom".
• "A day wasted on others is not wasted in one's self".
• "Have a heart that never hardens, and a temper that never tires, and a touch that never hurts".
• "Every failure teaches a man something new he needed to learn".

                                                                                   

More famous quotes:

• "Charity begins at home, justice begins next door"

What did he want to say?

THE GROUNDHOG DAY

                                                                 

Grounhog day is a holiday celebrated on February the 2nd in the United States and Canada. It is a folkloric event to make a weather broadcasting according to the groundhog's performance:
If it is cloudy when a groundhog emerges from its burrow on this day, spring will come early. If it is sunny, the groundhog will supposedly see its shadow and retreat back into its burrow; that means that the winter weather will last at least two more weeks.
The largest Groundhog celebration is held up in Punxsutawney; Pennsylvania.

Now, pay attention to important images and vocabulary about the celebration:

What is "a groundhog"? Also known as a whistle-pig, woodchuck, or land-beaver is a rodent, belonging to the group of large ground squirrels known as "marmots".

What is "a burrow"? It is a hole or tunnel dug into the ground by an animal to create a safe and suitable space for habitation or refuge. Some animals that usually make burrows are groundhogs, rabbits, cobayes, mice...

What is "weather broadcasting"? It is the application of science and technology to predict the state of the atmosphere for a given location. Weather forecasts are made from collecting data about the current state of the atmosphere and using scientific understanding processes to project how the weather will evolve.
Nowadays we can find computer-based models to predict the weather, but this is something that human beings have been doing informally for millennia, using methods that have to do with folklore more that with science. Some of these methods are: groundhogs (in North America and Canada), Cabañuelas (in La Mancha, Spain), etc.

Tongue twister:

HOW MUCH WOOD WOULD A WOODCHUCK CHUCK IF A WOODCHUCK COULD CHUCK WOOD? (If you can pronounce it properly, you'll get an extra point!!! hehehe)    ;)   ;P