Stephen Harper is a Canadian politician who is the 22nd and current Prime Minister of Canada and the Leader of the Conservative Party. Harper became prime minister in 2006, forming a minority government after the 2006 election. He is the first prime minister to come from the newly reconstituted Conservative Party, which formed after a merger of the Progressive Conservative Party and the Canadian Alliance.Harper has been the Member of Parliament (MP) for the riding of Calgary Southw...

Avril Lavigne is a Canadian and French singer-songwriter. She was born in Belleville, Ontario, and spent most of her youth in the town of Napanee. By the age of 15, she had appeared on stage with Shania Twain; by 16, she had signed a two-album recording contract with Arista Records worth more than $2 million. In 2002, when she was 17 years old, Lavigne broke onto the music scene with her debut album Let Go. Since her professional debut she has sold more than 30 million albums and over 50 m...

Rupert Grint is an English actor who rose to prominence playing Ron Weasley, one of the three main characters in the Harry Potter film series. Grint was cast as Ron Weasley at the age of 11, having previously acted only in school plays and at his local theatre group. From 2001 to 2011, he starred in all eight Harry Potter films alongside Daniel Radcliffe and Emma Watson.Beginning in 2002, Grint began to work outside of the Harry Potter franchise, playing a co-leading role in Thunde...

Alan Turing was a British mathematician, logician, cryptanalyst, computer scientist and philosopher. He was highly influential in the development of computer science, providing a formalisation of the concepts of "algorithm" and "computation" with the Turing machine, which can be considered a model of a general purpose computer. Turing is widely considered as the "Father of Theoretical Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence. During World War II, Turing worked for the Government Code a...

Al Pacino is an American film and stage actor and director. He is well known for playing mobsters, including Michael Corleone in The Godfather trilogy and Tony Montana in Scarface, and often appeared on the other side of the law—as a police officer, a detective and lawyer.Pacino won the Academy Award for Best Actor at the 65th Academy Awards in 1992 for his performance as Frank Slade in Scent of a Woman. Prior to his win he had received seven Oscar nominations, including one that s...

Anne Murray is a Canadian singer in pop, country, and adult contemporary music whose albums have sold over 54 million copies worldwide as of 2012. Murray was the first Canadian female solo singer to reach No. 1 on the U.S. charts, and also the first to earn a Gold record for one of her signature songs, "Snowbird" (1970). She is often cited as the one who paved the way for other international Canadian success stories such as Alanis Morissette, Nelly Furtado, Céline Dion, Sarah McLachlan, an...

George Carlin was an American comedian, writer, social critic, and actor who won five Grammy Awards for his comedy albums. Carlin was noted for his black comedy as well as his thoughts on politics, the English language, psychology, religion, and various taboo subjects. Carlin and his "Seven dirty words" comedy routine were central to the 1978 U.S. Supreme Court case F.C.C. v. Pacifica Foundation, in which a 5–4 decision by the justices affirmed the government's power to regulate indecent m...

Steve Jobs was an American entrepreneur, marketer, and inventor, who was the co-founder, chairman, and CEO of Apple Inc. Through Apple, he is widely recognized as a charismatic pioneer of the personal computer revolution and for his influential career in the computer and consumer electronics fields, transforming “one industry after another, from computers and smartphones to music and movies.” Jobs also co-founded and served as chief executive of Pixar Animation Studios; he became a member ...

Barack Obama is the 44th and current President of the United States, and the first African American to hold the office. Born in Honolulu, Hawaii, Obama is a graduate of Columbia University and Harvard Law School, where he served as president of the Harvard Law Review. He was a community organizer in Chicago before earning his law degree. He worked as a civil rights attorney and taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School from 1992 to 2004. He served three terms repres...

Tom Cruise is an American film actor and producer. He has been nominated for three Academy Awards and has won three Golden Globe Awards. He started his career at age 19 in the 1981 film Endless Love. After portraying supporting roles in Taps (1981) and The Outsiders (1983), his first leading role was in Risky Business, released in August 1983. Cruise became a full-fledged movie star after starring as Pete "Maverick" Mitchell in Top Gun (1986). He is well known for his role as secret agent ...

Taylor Alison Swift is an American singer-songwriter. Raised in Wyomissing, Pennsylvania, Swift moved to Nashville, Tennessee at 14 to pursue a career in country music. She signed with the independent label Big Machine Records and became the youngest songwriter ever hired by the Sony/ATV Music publishing house. The release of Swift's self-titled debut album in 2006 established her as a country music star. "Our Song", her third single, made her the youngest person to single-handedly write a...

Whitney Houston was an American singer, actress, producer, and model. In 2009, Guinness World Records cited her as the most awarded female act of all time. Houston was one of the world's best-selling music artists, having sold over 200 million records worldwide. She released six studio albums, one holiday album and three movie soundtrack albums, all of which have diamond, multi-platinum, platinum or gold certification. Houston's crossover appeal on the popular music charts, as well as her ...