Scarborough (/ˈskɑrbrə/ or /ˈskɑrbərə/) is a town on the North Sea coast of North Yorkshire, England. Historicallypart of the North Riding of Yorkshire, the town lies between 10–230 feet (3–70 m) above sea level, rising steeply northward and westward from the harbour on to limestone cliffs. The older part of the town lies around the harbour and is protected by a rocky headland.

With a population of around 50,000 Scarborough is the largest holiday resort on the Yorkshire coast. The town has fishing and service industries, including a growing digital and creative economy, as well as being a tourist destination. Inhabitants of the town are known as Scarborians.

History

Origins

The town was reportedly founded around 966 AD as Skarðaborg by Thorgils Skarthi, a Viking raider, though there is no archaeological evidence to support these claims made during the 1960s, as part of a pageant of Scarborough events. The origin of this belief is a fragment of an Icelandic Saga. In the 4th century there had briefly been a Roman signal station on Scarborough headland and there is evidence of much earlier Stone Age and Bronze Age settlements. However, any new settlement was soon burned to the ground by a rival band of Vikings under Tosti (Tostig Godwinson), Lord of Falsgrave, and Harald III of Norway. The destruction and massacre meant that very little remained to be recorded in the Domesday survey of 1085. The original inland settlement of Falsgrave was also a Saxon village rather than a Viking one.

Feudal and medieval

Scarborough recovered under King Henry II, who built an Angevin stone castle on the headland, and granted the town charters in 1155 and 1163, permitting a market on the sands, and establishing rule by burgesses. Edward II granted Scarborough Castle to his favoured friend, Piers Gaveston. The castle was subsequently besieged by forces led by the barons Percy, Warenne, Clifford and Pembroke. Gaveston was captured and transported to Oxford and then Warwick Castle for execution.

In the Middle Ages, Scarborough Fair, permitted in a royal charter of 1253, held a six-week trading festival attracting merchants from all over Europe. It ran from Assumption Day, 15 August, until Michaelmas Day, 29 September. The fair continued to be held for 500 years, from the 13th century to the 18th century, and is commemorated in the song Scarborough Fair:

Are you going to Scarborough Fair?

—parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme….

Resort development

Scarborough and its castle changed hands seven times between Royalists and Parliamentarians during the English Civil War of the 1640s, enduring two lengthy and violent sieges. Following the civil war, much of the town lay in ruins.

In 1626, Elizabeth Farrow discovered a stream of acidic water running from one of the cliffs to the south of the town. This gave birth to Scarborough Spa, and Dr Wittie’s book about the spa waters published in 1660 attracted a flood of visitors to the town. Scarborough Spa became Britain‘s first seaside resort, though the first rolling bathing machines were not noted on the sands until 1735.

The coming of the Scarborough–York railway in 1845 increased the tide of visitors. Scarborough railway station claims a record for the world’s longest platform seat.

Growing influx of visitors convinced a young architect (John Gibson) with an eye to the future to open Scarborough’s first purpose-built hotel. In 1841 a railway link between York and Scarborough was being talked of and he decided that the area above the popular Spa building could be developed. He designed and laid the foundations of a ‘hotel’. (This was a new name derived from the word ‘hostel’ which would serve the same purpose but would be bigger and finer than the traditional inns). Gibson then passed the construction of this hotel to the newly formed South Cliff Building Company. On Tuesday, 10 June 1845 Scarborough’s first hotel was opened—a marketing coup at the time, as the Grand Hotel, soon to be Europe’s largest, was not yet finished.

Architecture

When the Grand Hotel was completed in 1867 it was one of the largest hotels in the world and one of the first giant purpose-built hotels in Europe. Four towers represent the seasons, 12 floors represent the months, 52 chimneys represent the weeks and originally 365 bedrooms represented the days of the year. A blue plaque outside marks where the novelist Anne Brontë died in 1849. She was buried in the graveyard of St Mary’s Church by the castle.

The town has a fine Anglican church, St. Martin-on-the-Hill, built in 1862–63 as the parish church of South Cliff. It contains works by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Morris, Edward Burne-Jones and Ford Madox Brown.

Text from Wikipedia 

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When Aunt Mabel is out of work (which is just about always) and single (which is quite often due to her boozing and foul mouth) she arrange poker nights with her friends to keep herself in cash. Apart from making rather decent moonshine and mixing cocktails about the only thing she is really good at is cheating at cards and as she is devoid of any kind of moral, she always does.

The evenings usually starts off in a friendly atmosphere like on this picture, but when Aunt Mabel has robbed her friends of their last dime and suspicion of cheating is voiced, Aunt Mabel quickly change the subject and suggest a little course in how to make the perfect cocktail, and soon her friends are too plastered to remember anything about cheating at cards.

This way Aunt Mabel manage to combine her two expertizes to keep herself financially afloat and have fun at her friends expenses at the same time. The insolence of that woman, huh….

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The Looper Trio must be the biggest trio in the world. Well, if the two heavies on each side aren’t bodyguards that is. Or the two decently dressed girls in the middle aren’t just holding the  lyrics for the the blokes. Or maybe they just couldn’t spell quintet. My head is starting to swim now so I’ll stop. Something is telling me this will never end up in my record collection anyway – Ted

Another image found on one of James Vaughan’s Flickr albums

Amelia Earhart painted by Howard Chandler Christy in 1933

Image found on one of James Vaughan’s Flickr albums

Gypsy Girl:
“Mean” Mary James, youngest of six children, was born in Geneva, Alabama, though her family lived in Florida, a couple miles below the Alabama line. Her mom (author, Jean James) and dad (WWII veteran, William James) lived a very nomadic lifestyle. On one occasion they packed up the family (Mary was four at the time) and moved from Florida to North Minnesota, near the Canadian border, to rough it in the wilds.

First Guitar:
Mary’s oldest brother, Jim, who’d just joined the Navy, sent the family a guitar and a compilation tape of songs he liked. With a battery-powered tape-player, the family listened to the music of Hank Williams, Jr. and Dolly Parton. It wasn’t long before Mary was singing the songs plus vocalizing all the instrumentation. Seeing her talent, Mom and Dad bought guitar books, and Mom started teaching all the children to play the guitar. Mary and her brother Frank were the two who would turn music into a career.

Mary learned to read music before she could read words and was an official singer/songwriter before she’d started her first day of kindergarten. With the help of her mom, she wrote her theme song “Mean Mary from Alabam’.” The press immediately baptized her with this handle, and she’s been Mean Mary ever since.

On the Road Again:
Mary was now playing guitar, banjo and fiddle. She recorded her first album at age six, and spent five hours a day on instrumental and vocal practice along with her live performances. When she upped her music study time to seven hours a day, and her road shows began to multiply, it became impossible for her to attend school. At the end of the second grade, she went into home study and also started appearing daily on theCountry Boy Eddie Show, a regional TV program out of Birmingham, Alabama. During this time, she also appeared regularly in Nashville, Tennessee at the Nashville Palace, on the Nashville Network, the Elvis Presley Museum, and on Printer’s Alley.
In spite of her hectic schedule, she found time for her studies and when only nine years old she aced a state required test at a 12th grade equivalency level. This wasn’t surprising to her parents who had witnessed her read the entire Gone with the Wind novel at age seven.

Her guitarist brother, Frank James, who’d now joined her on stage and in the home school program, also excelled in his studies and at age fourteen taught himself trigonometry. He graduated from high school at fifteen.

Back in Time:
At one point, Mary and Frank were booked at a living history event. They immediately fell in love with folk music. They’d grown weary of the commercial, country-music scene and so started a tour of historic folk and Civil War era music. It wasn’t long before they were one of the most sought after historical folk groups in the country, being booked every weekend and having to turn down hundreds of shows a year.

was only one problem with this new arena of music to Mary’s fourteen-year-old eyes: all those mounted reenactors riding around while she stood in the dust and played music. Mary had always wanted a horse, and being a wise teenager she slyly told her parents that the only reason she’d worked so hard on music was so she could one day afford one! When her brother, Frank, who was equally drawn by equestrian interests, seconded her resolve, Mom and Dad gave in.

California, Here They Come:
In the meantime, Mary and Frank were eliciting interest from a California music agency, and Mom James had just signed a contract with a California literary agency. The other children were all grown and on their own by this time, so Mom, Dad, Frank, and Mary did the “Beverly Hillbilly” thing. They packed all their belongings into, and onto, their vehicles, hooked up the horse trailer with Rogue and Apache, and drove to LA.

For the next three years, Mary and Frank were involved in almost every TV show and movie produced in the Hollywood area – be it as background actor, stand-in, photo double, stunt double, or day player. Mary found a large, beat-up, slide-in camper for the back of her pickup truck that cost only two hundred dollars, and that became her home. She parked it wherever it was convenient, and sometimes in places not so convenient. There are no doubt still dents on low-hanging limbs all over the LA area, thanks to Mary and her top-heavy home. And then there was the time she took the mirror off a movie executive’s car at Fox studios by trying to squeeze through an impossibly-narrow area. She bought him a new mirror but never got a movie roll out of the happening!
It was exciting, interesting work but it wasn’t furthering her music career, and the horses didn’t like it at all. They longed for the green fields they were used to. Eventually the James Gang migrated back to the South, finding homes in Tennessee.

The Great Setback:
The horses were happy, and Mary’s music career was really taking off, when the most devastating happening of her life occurred. One rainy evening in February she was the front-seat passenger in a small car when the driver lost control, Mary’s head broke the windshield and her neck cracked the hard plastic dashboard. The twisted state of her neck convinced the driver she was gone. He even called her parents and told them she was dead. But a high-speed ambulance ride and quick medical attention at the hospital saved her life – if not her future. It was there she received news that, to her, was worse than death – her right vocal cord was paralyzed.

She brought her battered body home from the hospital and began her fight. Music was her life – had always been her life – and she couldn’t give it up. She purposely set herself to do the hardest of physical tasks, demanding her body to get well. She stacked hay bales, built fences and barns, took winter swims, and constantly worked her vocal cords. The rest of her body soon recovered from the trauma, but her right vocal cord stayed paralyzed. The left side tried to compensate for it, making it possible for her to sing a little, but only for about ten minutes at a time, and her voice was dead next to its former capabilities.

A Bit of Light in the Darkness:
It was one joyous day, six months later, a throat specialist told her there was slight movement in her frozen vocal cord. He said it might not totally recover, might not even improve further, but his news was enough for Mary. That was when her real work began. She booked shows, sang when she could, and when she couldn’t she’d play her instruments.

She started touring again, sometimes alone, sometimes with her brother, and sometimes with her full band. She also got her own Nashville TV show: The Never-Ending Street – a documentary/reality type show depicting the trials and joys of a touring musician.

During this time, she co-wrote novels with her mom. To date, she is the award winnng author of 2 published novels – available now at bookstores:Sparrow Alone on the Housetop, and Wherefore Art Thou, Jane?. Another novel is due for release in 2014.

It was also during this same time that her YouTube videos began to take off. They’d started out with a few daily visits but quickly climbed to over 4000 visits a day. Her bookings increased and her international fan base took a leap of growth. This was all good news, but the greatest thing to happen during this time was the recovery of her vocal cord. She’d worked it back to life!

On the Never-Ending Street:
Today she labors on her TV show, produces music for herself and other artists, produces shows and videos, is co-writing a novel trilogy about the music world, is an endorsing artist for Deering Banjos, and is constantly touring.

There is not room here to tell the whole life story of Mean Mary, but if you’d like to hear more of it, listen to her music—it’s all there.

Text from meanmary.com

Joanna Pettet (born Joanna Jane Salmon; 16 November 1942, London) is a British actress, retired since 1990.

Biography

Her parents, Harold Nigel Edgerton Salmon, a British Royal Air Force pilot killed in World War II, and mother, Cecily J. Tremaine, were married in London in 1940. After the war, her widowed mother remarried and settled in Canada, where young Joanna was adopted by her stepfather and assumed his surname of "Pettet".

She studied with Sanford Meisner at the Neighborhood Playhouse, as well as at the Lincoln Center, and got her start on Broadway in such plays as Take Her, She’s Mine, The Chinese Prime Minister and Poor Richard, with Alan Batesand Gene Hackman, before she was discovered by director Sidney Lumet for his 1966 film adaptation of Mary McCarthy‘s novel, The Group. The success of that film launched a film career that included roles in The Night of the Generals (1967), as Mata Bond in the James Bond spoof Casino Royale (1967), Peter Yates’s Robbery (1967) with Stanley Baker, Blue (1968) with Terence Stamp and the Victorian period comedy, The Best House in London (1969).

In 1968 she married the American actor Alex Cord and gave birth to a son later that year. She and Cord were divorced in 1989 after 21 years of marriage. She has not remarried.

In 1969, Pettet had lunch at the home of Sharon Tate on the afternoon before Tate’s murder in the home that evening.

In the 1970’s her feature film appearances became sporadic and included roles in the cult horror films Welcome to Arrow Beach (1974) and The Evil (1978). However, Pettet re-emerged as the star of over a dozen made-for-television movies, including The Delphi Bureau (1972), The Weekend Nun (1972), Footsteps(1972), Pioneer Woman (1973), A Cry in the Wilderness (1974), The Desperate Miles (1975), The Hancocks (1976), Sex and the Married Woman (1977), Cry of the Innocent (1980) with Rod Taylor, and The Return of Frank Cannon (1980). She also starred in the NBC miniseries Captains and the Kings (1976), guest-starred four times on the classic Rod Serling anthology series Night Gallery, starred in the episode "You’re Not Alone" from the 1977 NBC anthology series Quinn Martin’s Tales of the Unexpected (known in the United Kingdom as Twist in the Tale), was a frequent guest on both Fantasy Island and The Love Boat (appearing three separate times on each series), and had a recurring role on Knots Landing in 1983 as Janet Baines, an LAPD homicide detective investigating the murder of singer Ciji Dunne (played by Lisa Hartman).

Later years

Her last acting appearance was in a "bad action film" called Terror in Paradise in 1990 that was produced by Roger Corman and his frequent Philippine associate Cirio Santiago. During filming in the Philippines she was held hostage by rebels, led by Gregorio Honasan, attempting to overthrow Corazon Aquino, and managed to escape the hotel where she was being held before fleeing the country. By then, she had lost her enthusiasm for acting and decided it was time to bow out gracefully from the entertainment industry.

The grief over the sudden death in 1995 of her 26-year-old son, Damien Zachary Cord, born from her marriage to actor Alex Cord, caused Pettet to retreat even further from Hollywood. For a time, she lived in a remote area in California until she moved to London, where she was actor Alan Bates‘s companion; he died from pancreatic cancer in London in 2003 at the age of sixty-nine.

Text from Wikipedia 

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A digital recreation of an article published in Adam Magazine Vol10 No10 – Feb 1966

TONI DES YEUX VERTS*

(*Toni of the green eyes.)

That’s Tonie Marie, who is Parisienne from toe to tip, all five feet four and 35·23·36 of her. And what they say about this French gal is oui! Toni’s just turned twenty (neatly turned), and she’s just six months away from her native France. She loves the USA and hopes to stay, but her voice goes soft when she recalls the light and gay international life she led in the City of Light – international since the young crowd in Paris comes from almost every country to study art, music, literature – and each other.

Read the whole article HERE

Warning: Nudity do occur in this article. If you are under age or live in a country where watching images of nude women for some reason  are against the law  I take no responsibility if you click the link above. In other words you’re flying solo from here on – Ted ;-)

Brynolf (Bruno) Wennerberg was born in Otterstad (Sweden) in 1866. He was a painter, commercial artist, graphic designer and illustrator.

From 1885 to 1886 he was a student at the School of Applied Arts in Stockholm,  from 1887 to 1888 at P.S. Kroyer’s school in Copenhagen and the at the Academies  in  Munich and Paris.

In 1898 he settled in Munich. He worked on the magazines Lustige Blätter, Meggendorfer Blätter andSimplicissimus (1915).
In 1915 he designed several  military propaganda postcards in the series for Simplicissimus.
Brynolf Wennerberg died in Bad Aibling (Bavaria) in 1950.

I’m not often proud of my countrymen, we’re a very rich country so as individuals we’re usually selfish and smug. But each autumn around now we arrange the world’s largest fundraising and this year the money goes The Norwegian Church Aid and their goal is to give 1.000.000 people in third world countries clean water close to their homes.

And when the 8 hour long TV broadcast closed tonight we had reached over NOK 234.000.000  that is about £22,320,000 and $35,800,2000. More will be added in the next two days as the fundraising telephone number will be kept open.

Not bad for a country with a population of slightly over 5 mill.

Some people throw coins into a well to make a wish. For a small community in Ethiopia, their wish came true with the well itself.

For girls like Tigist, the difference has been remarkable: because now she can attend school instead of carrying water for hours each day along paths dangerous for young girls.

Kofola is a Czechoslovakian carbonated soft drink produced in Czech Republic and Slovakia. It is the principal rival of Coca-Cola and Pepsi in these two markets.

History

Kofola originated in the Czechoslovak pharmaceutical company Galena, n.p. (located in Opava, now Czech Republic) in 1959 during research targeted at finding a possible use for surplus caffeine produced in the process of coffee roasting. The resulting dark-coloured, sweet-and-sour syrup Kofo became the main ingredient of a new soft drink named Kofola introduced in 1960. During the 1960s and 1970s Kofola became exceedingly popular in communist Czechoslovakia because it substituted for Western cola-based drinks like Coca-Cola or Pepsi, which were not generally available.

After the fall of the Communist regime in 1989, Kofola had to compete with many foreign brands that entered the attractive newly opened market. After a period of decline and trademark lawsuits (many companies produced their own similarly tasting "kofola" because the term became a genericized trademark), in 2000 the Santa nápoje company, based in Krnovand owned by the Greek-immigrant Samaras family, became the only producer and distributor of Kofola in Czech Republic and Slovakia. Other producers of similar drinks had to rename their products (most notable are Hejkola and Šofokola).

In 2002, the company built a new factory in Rajecká Lesná, Slovakia, to satisfy the demand of the Slovak market. In 2003, Santa nápoje changed its name to Kofola, a.s.. Apart from Kofola it also produces other soft drinks (Top Topic, Jupí, Jupík, RC Cola and Vinea from 2008) that are exported to Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and Croatia. The company’s intention is to build a factory in Poland as well.

Since 1998 Kofola has been bottled (in addition to classical 0.33-litre glass bottles) in 0.5-litre and 2-litre plastic-bottles. 0.25-litre cans were introduced in 2003, 1-litre plastic-bottles in December 2004. Kofola draught from 50-litre kegs, traditionally sold in many bars and restaurants across the two countries, is very popular as well.

Since 2002 the producer has launched a successful media campaign aimed at a young and hip audience based on the slogan "Když ji miluješ, není co řešit. / Keď ju miluješ, nie je čo riešiť." ("If you love her there is nothing to question.") Until 2000, the Kofola logo featured a coffee bean. It now resembles a coffee flower.

In 2008 Kofola announced a merger with the Polish lemonade producer Hoop.

The merged company was renamed into Kofola-Hoop S.A. In autumn 2008, the Polish Private Equity fund Enterprise Investors acquired in a Public Tender Offer 42.46% of Kofola-Hoop for approximately € 140 million.

Sales

In Slovakia, Kofola is the most formidable rival of both Coca-Cola and Pepsi. In 2003, 14.28 million litres of Kofola were sold on the Slovak market; in 2004, Kofola sales reached 19.44 million litres. According to a 2004 survey, 17% of Slovak cola-based soft drink consumers buy Kofola most frequently, compared to 14% preferring Coca-Cola. Kofola’s market share has doubled in the period of the last three years (4.6% in 2002, 9.4% in 2004). Kofola thus occupies third position in the Slovak market, after Coca-Cola (11.5% in 2004) and Walmark (9.6%), preceding Pepsi (5.5% in 2004).

Ingredients

Kofo syrup, the main ingredient of Kofola, consists of 14 natural ingredients (such as extracts from apple, cherry, currant, or herbal aroma),sugar, and caramel. In comparison with Pepsi or Coca-Cola it contains 30% less sugar, a little more caffeine (15 mg/100ml, Coca-Cola 9.6 mg/100ml) and it does not contain phosphoric acid.

In 2004, Kofola Citrus was introduced into the market which was Kofola with a hint of lemon. It proved to be a popular alternative to the original flavour.

‘neKofola/joKofola’ was introduced at the end of 2007 as a Christmas limited edition. This had a hint of cinnamon, and was only available around the Christmas period

To compete with coca-cola zero, a sugar-free Kofola BEZ cukru alternative was introduced. This allowed Kofola to compete with coca-cola on all levels.

After the success of their limited cinnamon edition, a new cherry-flavoured Kofola Barborková was introduced for a couple of months in 2008.

In Kofola Extra Herbal, a new variety of the drink the original recipe of Kofola Original was extended with dandelion, gentian and peppermint.

Kofola Festival, introduced in 2013, contains guava.

Cocktails

The most popular cocktail with kofola is a highball made of kofola, lemon juice and Czech Tuzemak (domestic rum) called Kofrum, Student lemonade, Rebel or Chequia Libre. Kofola with pilsner lager beer is called Kofola ‘n’ Beer or Diesel.

Text from Wikipedia

Help Needed
I need your help visitors, both in suggesting sodas and soft drinks from around the world and in giving your opinion on the ones presented if you know the product. And you can start with giving your opinion on the ones posted already or reading what other visitors have written  – Ted

List of Soft drinks and sodas posted already
Visitors soft drinks and sodas suggestions and comments

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Aunt Mable never bothered too much about what part of her body was visible when sunbathing in her back yard as long as her sister, young Johnny’s mother, was not present. Should Johnny be present on the other hand she usually made sure some interesting part was visible at all times.

One time he was splashing around in her pool she waved him over, handed him a bottle of suntan lotion and said in her most innocent voice “Would you be a good boy and put some lotion on my bum. It is not a place one would like to get burned.”

Need I mention that Young Johnny took the task very seriously and left not a single spot on his aunts behind un-lotioned. A task he would be asked to perform on many occasion from then on.

The cheek of that women, huh? (Pun intended)

Scotland (/ˈskɒt.lənd/; Scots: [ˈskɔt.lənd]; Scottish Gaelic: Alba [ˈal̪ˠapə] ( listen)) is a country that is part of the United Kingdom and covers the northern third of the island of Great Britain. It shares a border with England to the south, and is otherwise surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean, with the North Sea to the east and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the south-west. In addition to the mainland, the country is made up of more than 790 islands, including the Northern Isles and the Hebrides.

Edinburgh, the country’s capital and second-largest city, was the hub of the Scottish Enlightenment of the 18th century, which transformed Scotland into one of the commercial, intellectual, and industrial powerhouses of Europe. Glasgow, Scotland’s largest city, was once one of the world’s leading industrial cities and now lies at the centre of the Greater Glasgow conurbation. Scottish waters consist of a large sector of the North Atlantic and the North Sea, containing the largest oil reserves in the European Union. This has given Aberdeen, the third-largest city in Scotland, the title of Europe’s oil capital.

The Kingdom of Scotland emerged as an independent sovereign state in the Early Middle Ages and continued to exist until 1707. By inheritance in 1603, King James VI of Scotland became King of England and King of Ireland, thus forming apersonal union of the three kingdoms. Scotland subsequently entered into a political union with England on 1 May 1707 to create the new Kingdom of Great Britain. The union also created a new Parliament of Great Britain, which succeeded both the Parliament of Scotland and the Parliament of England. The Treaty of Union was agreed in 1706 and enacted by the twin Acts of Union 1707 passed by the Parliaments of both countries, despite some popular opposition and anti-union riots in Edinburgh, Glasgow, and elsewhere. Great Britain itself subsequently entered into a political union with Ireland on 1 January 1801 to create the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.

Scotland’s legal system has remained separate from those of England and Wales and Northern Ireland, and Scotland constitutes a distinct jurisdiction in public and private law. The continued existence of legal, educational and religious institutions distinct from those in the remainder of the UK have all contributed to the continuation of Scottish culture and national identity since the 1707 union. In 1999, a devolved legislature, the Scottish Parliament, was reconvened with authority over many areas of home affairs following a referendum in 1997. In May 2011, the Scottish National Party won an overall majority in the Scottish Parliament; as a result a referendum on Scottish independence took place on 18 September 2014, in which independence was rejected by a majority of the Scottish electorate.

Scotland is a member nation of the British–Irish Council, and the British–Irish Parliamentary Assembly. Scotland is represented in the European Union and the European Parliament with six MEPs

Text from Wikipedia

Alela Diane Menig (born April 20, 1983), known as Alela Diane, is an American singer-songwriter from Portland, Oregon.

Career

The songs for her album The Pirate’s Gospel were written on a trip to Europe. They were recorded in her father’s studio and were initially self-released in 2004, in paper and lace sleeves with hand lettering. The album was issued in revised form by Holocene Music in October 2006, and received widespread critical acclaim.

A new song, "Dry Grass and Shadows", was issued on a compilation of Nevada City artists, and five more new songs were issued on a limited-edition 10" vinyl pressing, Songs Whistled Through White Teeth, released in the UK in October 2006. The Pirate’s Gospel was released in the UK on Names Records in April 2007, garnering favorable reviews in The Times and NME.

She toured the U.S. both solo and with Tom Brosseau, and opened for Iron & Wine, Akron/Family, The Decemberists, and Vashti Bunyan. She also toured extensively in Europe (UK, Ireland, France, Switzerland, Netherlands, Belgium, Germany) in March, April and May 2008.

She sang on an album of cover songs, The Silence of Love by Headless Heroes, released in November 2008, recorded by Eddie Bezalel and Hugo Nicholson with musicians Josh Klinghoffer, Joey Waronker, Gus Seyffert, Leo Abrahams and Woody Jackson.

Her second album, To Be Still, was released in February 2009 on Rough Trade Records. In early 2009 she toured the USA opening for Blitzen Trapper, and spent the better part of that year touring Europe.

Her third album, Alela Diane & Wild Divine was released in early April 2011, and was recorded with a backing band, Wild Divine, which included her father, Tom Menig, and her now ex-husband, Tom Bevitori. She and Wild Divine toured the U.S. and Europe to promote the album, and in July 2011, they opened for the Fleet Foxes on a string of dates. In the fall of the same year she also accompanied Fleet Foxes as opening act in Europe.

In 2012 her song "Take Us Back" was featured on the end credits of the episodic adventure game The Walking Dead (Episode 5: No Time Left) by Tell tale Games.

Her fourth album, About Farewell, was released (on her own label Rusted Blue Records) in digital format in June 2013, with a physical release to follow in July.

Diane remarried in 2013 and gave birth to her first child, a daughter named Vera Marie, in early November 2013.

Text from Wikipedia 

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Antonella Lualdi (born on 6 July 1931 in Beirut, Lebanon) is an Italian actress and singer. She appeared in many Italian and French films in the 1950s and 1960s, notably in Claude Autant-Lara‘s film Le rouge et le noir in 1954, opposite Gérard Philipe.

She was born Antonietta De Pascale in Beirut, Lebanon to an Italian father and a Greek mother, and grew up fluent in Arabic, French and Italian. She began her career in 1949, after having won a contest for new talents of the cinema magazine Hollywood, in which she was presented as "Signorina X" ("Madam X"), inviting the readers to choose her stage name.

After having starred with him in several films, she married Italian actor Franco Interlenghi in 1955; the couple had two daughters, Stella and Antonellina, the later also an actress.

In 1974 she debuted in France as a singer with some success and critical appreciation, then she also debuted on stage with the comedy Le Moulin de la Gallette, with which she toured across several European countries.

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Note: Old rumours has it that Alfred Nobel’s wife had a lover who was a mathematician so Nobel decided that he would not include mathematics among his prizes. So the naughty lady’s question was in fact a trick question – Ted ;-)