IN: Josef Mengele (German: ['jo:zef 'meNG@l@]; 16 March 1911 - 7 February 1979) was a German Schutzstaffel (SS) officer and physician in Auschwitz concentration camp during World War II. Mengele was a member of the team of doctors responsible for the selection of victims to be killed in the gas chambers and for performing deadly human experiments on prisoners.

The ideology of Nazism brought together elements of antisemitism, racial hygiene, and eugenics, and combined them with pan-Germanism and territorial expansionism with the goal of obtaining more Lebensraum (living space) for the Germanic people. Nazi Germany attempted to obtain this new territory by attacking Poland and the Soviet Union, intending to deport or kill the Jews and Slavs living there, who were considered inferior to the Aryan master race.  Mengele joined the Nazi Party in 1937 and the Schutzstaffel (SS; protection squadron) in 1938. He received basic training in 1938 with the Gebirgsjager (mountain infantry) and was called up for service in the Wehrmacht (German armed forces) in June 1940, some months after the outbreak of World War II. He soon volunteered for medical service in the Waffen-SS, the combat arm of the SS, where he served with the rank of SS-Untersturmfuhrer (second lieutenant) in a medical reserve battalion until November 1940. He was next assigned to the SS-Rasse- und Siedlungshauptamt (SS Race and Resettlement Main Office) in Posen, evaluating candidates for Germanisation.  In June 1941, Mengele was posted to Ukraine, where he was awarded the Iron Cross Second Class. In January 1942, he joined the 5th SS Panzer Division Wiking as a battalion medical officer. He rescued two German soldiers from a burning tank and was awarded the Iron Cross First Class, as well as the Wound Badge in Black and the Medal for the Care of the German People. He was seriously wounded in action near Rostov-on-Don in mid-1942, and was declared unfit for further active service. After recovery, he was transferred to the Race and Resettlement Office in Berlin. He also resumed his association with von Verschuer, who was at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Anthropology, Human Heredity, and Eugenics. Mengele was promoted to the rank of SS-Hauptsturmfuhrer (captain) in April 1943.
QUESTION: When did he join the military?
IN: Eratosthenes of Cyrene (; Greek: Eratosthenes o Kurenaios, IPA:

Eratosthenes now continued from his knowledge about the Earth. Using his discoveries and knowledge of its size and shape, he began to sketch it. In the Library of Alexandria he had access to various travel books, which contained various items of information and representations of the world that needed to be pieced together in some organized format. In his three-volume work Geography (Greek: [Geographika] ), he described and mapped his entire known world, even dividing the Earth into five climate zones: two freezing zones around the poles, two temperate zones, and a zone encompassing the equator and the tropics. He had invented geography. He created terminology that is still used today. He placed grids of overlapping lines over the surface of the Earth. He used parallels and meridians to link together every place in the world. It was now possible to estimate one's distance from remote locations with this network over the surface of the Earth. In the Geography the names of over 400 cities and their locations were shown: this had never been achieved before. Unfortunately, his Geography has been lost to history, but fragments of the work can be pieced together from other great historians like Pliny, Polybius, Strabo, and Marcianus.  The first book was something of an introduction and gave a review of his predecessors, recognizing their contributions that he compiled in the library. In this book Eratosthenes denounced Homer as not providing any insight into what he now described as geography. His disapproval of Homer's topography angered many who believed the world depicted in the Odyssey to be legitimate. He also commented on the ideas of the nature and origin of the Earth: he had thought of Earth as an immovable globe; while on its surface was a place that was changing. He had hypothesized that at one time the Mediterranean was a vast lake that covered the countries that surrounded it; and had only become connected to the ocean to the west when a passage had opened up sometime in its history.  In the second book is his discovery about the circumference of the Earth. This is where, according to Pliny, "The world was grasped." Eratosthenes described his famous story of the well in Syene, described above. This book would now be considered a text on mathematical geography.  His third book of the Geography contained political geography. He cited countries and used parallel lines to divide the map into sections, to give accurate descriptions of the realms. This was a breakthrough, and can be considered the beginning of geography.
QUESTION: What was he sketching?
IN: John Milton Cage Jr. (September 5, 1912 - August 12, 1992) was an American composer and music theorist. A pioneer of indeterminacy in music, electroacoustic music, and non-standard use of musical instruments, Cage was one of the leading figures of the post-war avant-garde. Critics have lauded him as one of the most influential composers of the 20th century. He was also instrumental in the development of modern dance, mostly through his association with choreographer Merce Cunningham, who was also Cage's romantic partner for most of their lives.

In 2012, amongst a wide range of American and international centennial celebrations, an eight-day festival was held in Washington DC, with venues found notably more amongst the city's art museums and universities than performance spaces. Earlier in the centennial year, conductor Michael Tilson Thomas presented Cage's Song Books with the San Francisco Symphony at Carnegie Hall in New York. Another celebration came, for instance, in Darmstadt, Germany, which in July 2012 renamed its central station the John Cage Railway Station during the term of its annual new-music courses. At the Ruhrtriennale in Germany, Heiner Goebbels staged a production of Europeras 1 & 2 in a 36,000 sq ft converted factory and commissioned a production of Lecture on Nothing created and performed by Robert Wilson. Jacaranda Music had four concerts planned in Santa Monica, California, for the centennial week. John Cage Day was the name given to several events held during 2012 to mark the centenary of his birth.  A 2012 project was curated by Juraj Kojs to celebrate the centenary of Cage's birth, titled On Silence: Homage to Cage. It consisted of 13 commissioned works created by composers from around the global such as Kasia Glowicka, Adrian Knight and Henry Vega, each being 4 minutes and 33 seconds long in honor of Cage's famous 1952 opus, 4'33''. The program was supported by the Foundation for Emerging Technologies and Arts, Laura Kuhn and the John Cage Trust.  In a homage to Cage's dance work, the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company in July 2012 "performed an engrossing piece called 'Story/Time'. It was modeled on Cage's 1958 work 'Indeterminacy', in which [Cage and then Jones, respectively,] sat alone onstage, reading aloud ... series of one-minute stories [they]'d written. Dancers from Jones's company performed as [Jones] read."
QUESTION:
Did they play Cage's works at this festival?