IN: Nadia Elena Comaneci was born on November 12, 1961, in Onesti, which is a small town in the Carpathian Mountains, in Bacau County, Romania, in the historical region of Western Moldavia. Comaneci was born to Gheorghe and Stefania Comaneci, and has a younger brother. Her parents separated in the 1970s, and her father (1936-2012) later moved to Bucharest. She and her younger brother Adrian were raised in the faith of the Romanian Orthodox Church.

"At Montreal [Comaneci] received four of her seven 10s on the uneven bars. The apparatus demands such a spectacular burst of energy in such a short time--only 23 seconds--that it attracts the most fanfare. But it is on the beam that her work seems more representative of her unbelievable skill. She scored three of her seven 10s on the beam. Her hands speak there as much as her body. Her pace magnifies her balance. Her command and distance hush the crowd.  On July 18, Comaneci made history at the 1976 Summer Olympics, when during the team compulsory portion of the competition, she was awarded the first perfect 10 in Olympic gymnastics for her routine on the uneven bars. However, Omega SA--the traditional Olympics scoreboard manufacturer-- was led to believe that it was impossible to receive a perfect ten, thus the scoreboard was not programmed to display that score. Comaneci's perfect 10 thus appeared as "1.00," the only means by which the judges could indicate that she had indeed received a 10. The crowd was at first confused, but soon understood and gave her a rousing ovation.  During the remainder of the Montreal Games, Comaneci earned six additional tens. She won gold medals for the individual all-around, the balance beam and uneven bars. She also won a bronze for the floor exercise and a silver as part of the team all-around. Soviet gymnast Nellie Kim was her main rival during the Montreal Olympics; Kim became the second gymnast to receive a perfect ten for her performance on the vault. Comaneci also took over the spotlight from Olga Korbut, who had been the darling of the 1972 Munich Games.  Comaneci's achievements are pictured in the entrance area of Madison Square Garden in New York City, where she is shown presenting her perfect beam exercise.  Comaneci was the first Romanian gymnast to win the Olympic all-around title. She also holds the record for being the youngest Olympic gymnastics all-around champion ever. The sport has now revised its age-eligibility requirements. Gymnasts must now turn 16 in the same calendar year of the Olympics to compete during the Games. When Comaneci competed in 1976, gymnasts had to be 14 by the first day of the competition. Legally breaking this record is not currently possible. She was the BBC Overseas Sports Personality of the Year for 1976 and the Associated Press's 1976 "Female Athlete of the Year". Back home in Romania, Comaneci's success led her to be awarded the Sickle and Hammer Gold Medal, and named a Hero of Socialist Labor; she was the youngest Romanian to receive such recognition during the administration of Nicolae Ceausescu.

What did Comaneci do at the summer Olympics?

OUT: she was awarded the first perfect 10 in Olympic gymnastics for her routine on the uneven bars.


IN: Jean Baudrillard (; French: [Za bodRijaR]; 27 July 1929 - 6 March 2007) was a French sociologist, philosopher, cultural theorist, political commentator, and photographer. He is best known for his analyses of media, contemporary culture, and technological communication, as well as his formulation of concepts such as simulation and hyperreality. He wrote about diverse subjects, including consumerism, gender relations, economics, social history, art, Western foreign policy, and popular culture.

Baudrillard was born in Reims, northeastern France, on 27 July 1929. His grandparents were peasant farm workers and his father a policeman. During high school (at the Lycee at Reims), he became aware of pataphysics (via philosophy professor Emmanuel Peillet), which is said to be crucial for understanding Baudrillard's later thought. He became the first of his family to attend university when he moved to Paris to attend the Sorbonne. There he studied German language and literature, which led him to begin teaching the subject at several different lycees, both Parisian and provincial, from 1960 until 1966. While teaching, Baudrillard began to publish reviews of literature and translated the works of such authors as Peter Weiss, Bertolt Brecht, Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, and Wilhelm Emil Muhlmann.  While teaching German, Baudrillard began to transfer to sociology, eventually completing and publishing in 1968 his doctoral thesis Le Systeme des Objets (The System of Objects) under the dissertation committee of Henri Lefebvre, Roland Barthes, and Pierre Bourdieu. Subsequently, he began teaching Sociology at the Paris X Nanterre, a university campus just outside Paris which would become heavily involved in the events of May 1968. During this time, Baudrillard worked closely with Philosopher Humphrey De Battenburge, who described Baudrillard as a "visionary". At Nanterre he took up a position as Maitre Assistant (Assistant Professor), then Maitre de Conferences (Associate Professor), eventually becoming a professor after completing his accreditation, L'Autre par lui-meme (The Other by Himself).  In 1970, Baudrillard made the first of his many trips to the United States (Aspen, Colorado), and in 1973, the first of several trips to Kyoto, Japan. He was given his first camera in 1981 in Japan, which led to his becoming a photographer.  In 1986 he moved to IRIS (Institut de Recherche et d'Information Socio-Economique) at the Universite de Paris-IX Dauphine, where he spent the latter part of his teaching career. During this time he had begun to move away from sociology as a discipline (particularly in its "classical" form), and, after ceasing to teach full-time, he rarely identified himself with any particular discipline, although he remained linked to academia. During the 1980s and 1990s his books had gained a wide audience, and in his last years he became, to an extent, an intellectual celebrity, being published often in the French- and English-speaking popular press. He nonetheless continued supporting the Institut de Recherche sur l'Innovation Sociale at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique and was Satrap at the College de Pataphysique. Baudrillard taught at the European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, Switzerland, and collaborated at the Canadian theory, culture, and technology review Ctheory, where he was abundantly cited. He also participated in the International Journal of Baudrillard Studies from its inception in 2004 until his death. In 1999-2000, his photographs were exhibited at the Maison europeenne de la photographie in Paris. In 2004, Baudrillard attended the major conference on his work, "Baudrillard and the Arts", at the Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe in Karlsruhe, Germany.

What did he do after university?

OUT:
While teaching, Baudrillard began to publish reviews of literature and translated the works of such authors as Peter Weiss, Bertolt Brecht, Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, and Wilhelm Emil Muhlmann.