David Bowie morphed from character to character, challenging every norm along the way. In his most iconic stage persona, as Ziggy Stardust, he stated that he wanted “to tart rock up.” Aladdin Sane was his next, often remembered for his lightning bolt portrait on the album cover.
The 17th century Rokeby Venus painting by Diego Velázquez has been damaged by two Just Stop Oil protesters in the National Gallery in London. Armed with hammers, the two students smashed the protective glass of the painting. The same painting suffered a slashing in 1914 by the suffragette and fine arts student Mary Richardson.
In October 2023, when the cast of the iconic play Les Misérables performed at the Sondheim Theatre in London, they launched into their famous protest song, ‘Do You Hear the People Sing?’ as a part of their act. But what happened after that was entirely unscripted. The stage was abruptly taken over by activists from the Just Stop Oil movement as their t-shirts and banners proclaimed, while they chanted to the audience to ‘join the rebellion’.
The controversial figure, President Leonid Kuchma, had ignited the public’s fury in 2000 through his infamous ‘Cassette Scandal’, wherein he ordered the murder of journalist Georgiy Gongadze, the founder of the online paper, Ukrainska Pravda. Gongadze’s assassination was fundamental in building up the momentum for the Orange Revolution, and would later come back to haunt Kuchma’s chosen ‘successor’, Viktor Yanukovych, as Ukrainians reached a breaking point.
Five years ago, Luo Huazhong made an important discovery: he loved doing nothing. After quitting his factory job in Sichuan Province, he biked over 1,000 miles to Tibet and found he was able to survive on odd jobs and his savings of $60 a month.
