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Mayor of the Palace
Merovingian-dynasty term for the manager of the King's household
Event
Under the Merovingian dynasty, the mayor of the palace or majordomo, (Latin: maior palatii or maior domus) was the manager of the household of the Frankish king. He was the head of the Merovingian administrative ladder and orchestrated the operation of the entire court. He was appointed by the king from among the magnates, the most powerful families. Austrasia, Neustria and Burgundy had their own mayor of the palace. After Chlothar II, who ruled over the entire Frankish Kingdom, had ordered the execution of Warnachar, the mayor of Burgundy, the magnates of Burgundy declared in 626 not to want their own mayor anymore. This declaration marks the effective end of the Burgundian court and the beginning of the Neustrian-Burgundian political alliance against Austrasian influence. The Austrasian magnates revolted and the Battle of Tertry of 687 became the Austrasian victory with Pepin of Herstal as their leader and the new mayor of the palace. During the second half of the seventh century, the office evolved into the "power behind the throne". At that time the mayor of the palace held and wielded the real and effective power to make decisions affecting the kingdom, while the kings were increasingly reduced to performing merely ceremonial functions, which made them little more than figureheads (rois fainéants, 'do-nothing kings'). In 687, after victory over the western kingdom of Neustria, the Austrasian mayor, Pippin of Herstal, took the title Duke of the Franks to signify his augmented rule. His son and successor, Charles Martel, ruled without elevating a new king during the last four years of his reign (737–741). His sons Carloman and Pepin the Short elevated another Merovingian king, Childeric III, but he was eventually deposed in 751 by Pepin, who was crowned king in his place.
Lublin-Majdanek concentration camp
Nazi concentration and extermination camp near Lublin in eastern Poland
Land
Majdanek (or Lublin) was a Nazi concentration and extermination camp built and operated by the SS on the outskirts of the city of Lublin during the German occupation of Poland in World War II. It had three gas chambers, two wooden gallows, and some 227 structures in all, placing it among the largest of Nazi concentration camps. Although initially intended for forced labor rather than extermination, it was used to murder an estimated 78,000 people during Operation Reinhard, the German plan to murder all Polish Jews within their own occupied homeland. In operation from October 1, 1941, to July 22, 1944, it was captured nearly intact. The rapid advance of the Soviet Red Army during Operation Bagration prevented the SS from destroying most of its infrastructure, and Deputy Camp Commandant Anton Thernes failed to remove the most incriminating evidence of war crimes. The camp was nicknamed Majdanek ("little Majdan") in 1941 by local residents, as it was adjacent to the Lublin Ghetto of Majdan Tatarski. Nazi documents initially described the site as a POW camp of the Waffen-SS, based on how it was funded and operated. It was renamed by the Reich Security Main Office as Konzentrationslager Lublin on April 9, 1943, but the local Polish name remained more popular. After the camp's liberation in July 1944, the site was formally protected by the Soviet Union. By autumn, with the war still raging, it had been preserved as a museum. The crematorium ovens and gas chambers were largely intact, serving as some of the best examples of the genocidal policy of Nazi Germany. The site was given national designation in 1965. Today, the Majdanek State Museum is a Holocaust memorial museum and education centre devoted entirely to the memory of atrocities committed in the network of concentration, slave-labor, and extermination camps and sub-camps of KL Lublin. It houses a permanent collection of rare artifacts, archival photographs, and testimony.
Javier Bardem
Spanish actor
Being
Javier Ángel Encinas Bardem (born 1 March 1969) is a Spanish actor. In a career spanning over three decades, he has received various accolades, including an Academy Award, a BAFTA Award, a Golden Globe Award, a Critics' Choice Movie Award, two Screen Actors Guild Awards, and seven Goya Awards, in addition to a Cannes Film Festival Award and two Volpi Cups. Bardem is the son of actress Pilar Bardem. He first became known for such Spanish films as Jamón jamón (1992), Boca a boca (1995), Live Flesh (1997), Mondays in the Sun (2002), and The Sea Inside (2004). He received nominations for the Academy Award for Best Actor for playing Reinaldo Arenas in Before Night Falls (2000), a criminal with cancer in Biutiful (2010), and Desi Arnaz in Being the Ricardos (2021). His portrayal of assassin Anton Chigurh in the Coen brothers' crime film No Country for Old Men (2007) won him the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. Bardem has also starred in auteur driven films such as Woody Allen's romantic drama Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008), Terrence Malick's drama To the Wonder (2013), Darren Aronofsky's horror film Mother! (2017), and Asghar Farhadi's mystery drama Everybody Knows (2018). He also acted in blockbuster films such as Eat Pray Love (2010), the James Bond film Skyfall (2012), the swashbuckler film Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales (2017), the science fiction epic films Dune (2021) and Dune: Part Two (2024), Disney's live-action remake The Little Mermaid (2023), and the sports action film F1 (2025). On television, he portrayed José Menendez in the Netflix crime anthology series Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story (2024), for which he earned two Primetime Emmy Awards nominations for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie and Outstanding Limited or Anthology Series (as an executive producer) and Max Cady in the Apple TV thriller Cape Fear. Bardem married actress Penélope Cruz in 2010 and together they have two children. In January 2018, Bardem became the ambassador of Greenpeace for the protection of Antarctica.
Meyzieu
Commune in the metropolis of Lyon, France
Land
Meyzieu (French pronunciation: [mɛzjø]; Arpitan: Mêsiô [ma.ˈʒy]) is a commune in the Metropolis of Lyon in Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region in eastern France. It is a large suburb of Lyon, situated 13 km east of the city centre on the left bank of the Rhône. Before 1967, it was part of the Isère department.
Tori Amos
American singer-songwriter (born 1963)
Being
Tori Amos (born Myra Ellen Amos; August 22, 1963) is an American singer-songwriter and pianist. She is a classically trained musician with a mezzo-soprano vocal range. A child prodigy, Amos entered the Peabody Institute's preparatory division at five, but left at eleven, coming of age as a pianist in Washington, D.C. bars. Amos was the lead singer of the short-lived 1980s pop-rock group Y Kant Tori Read before achieving her breakthrough as a solo artist in the early 1990s. Her songs focus on a broad range of topics, including sexuality, feminism, politics, and religion. Her charting singles include "Crucify", "Silent All These Years", "God", "Cornflake Girl", "Caught a Lite Sneeze", "Professional Widow", "Spark", "1000 Oceans", "Flavor" and "A Sorta Fairytale". Amos has received five MTV VMA nominations and nine Grammy Award nominations, and won an Echo Klassik award for her Night of Hunters classical crossover album. She is listed on VH1's 1999 "100 Greatest Women of Rock and Roll" at number 71.
Statistics
- 185Common
- 74Uncommon
- 115Rare
- 38Epic
- 20Legendary
- 11Mythic
- 0Prism