IN: Tucker was born Sofya "Sonya" Kalish (in Russian, Sof'ia <<Sonia>> Kalish) in 1887 to a Jewish family en route to America from Tulchyn, Podolia Governorate, Russian Empire, now Vinnytsia Oblast, Ukraine. ("Sonya" is a nickname for the name "Sofya", the Russian form of the name Sophie.) The family adopted the surname Abuza, settled in Hartford, Connecticut, and opened a restaurant. At a young age, she began singing at her parents' restaurant for tips.

By the 1920s, Tucker's success had spread to Europe, and she began a tour of England, performing for King George V and Queen Mary at the London Palladium in 1926. Tucker re-released her hit song "Some of These Days", backed by Ted Lewis and his band, which stayed at the number 1 position of the charts for five weeks beginning 23 November 1926. It sold over one million copies and was awarded a gold disc by the RIAA.  Tucker was strongly affected by the decline of vaudeville. Speaking about performing in the final show at E. F. Albee's Palace in New York City, she remarked, "Everyone knew the theater was to be closed down, and a landmark in show business would be gone. That feeling got into the acts. The whole place, even the performers, stank of decay. I seemed to smell it. It challenged me. I was determined to give the audience the idea: why brood over yesterday? We have tomorrow. As I sang I could feel the atmosphere change. The gloom began to lift, the spirit which formerly filled the Palace and which made it famous among vaudeville houses the world over came back. That's what an entertainer can do." During this time, Tucker began to look to film and radio as possible extensions of her career.  In 1929, she made her first movie appearance, in the sound picture Honky Tonk. During the 1930s, Tucker brought elements of nostalgia for the early years of 20th century into her show. She was billed as "The Last of the Red Hot Mamas," as her hearty sexual appetite was a frequent subject of her songs, unusual for female performers of the day after the decline of vaudeville.  The Beatles once introduced the song "Till There Was You" as previously being performed "by our favorite American group, Sophie Tucker."  The cartoon The Woods Are Full of Cuckoos caricatures Tucker as "Sophie Turkey".

how old was she when she was popular?

OUT: 


IN: Erich Honecker (German: ['e:RIc 'honeka]; 25 August 1912 - 29 May 1994) was a German politician who, as the General Secretary of the Socialist Unity Party, led the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) from 1971 until the weeks preceding the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. From 1976 onward he was also the country's official head of state as chairman of the State Council following Willi Stoph's relinquishment of the post. Honecker's political career began in the 1930s when he became an official of the Communist Party of Germany, a position for which he was imprisoned during the Nazi era. Following World War II, he was freed and soon relaunched his political activities, founding the youth organisation the Free German Youth in 1946 and serving as the group's chairman until 1955.

Honecker was married three times. After being liberated from prison in 1945 he married the prison warden Charlotte Schanuel (nee Drost), nine years his senior, on 23 December 1946. She died suddenly from a brain tumour in June 1947. Details of this marriage were not revealed until 2003, well after his death.  By the time of her death, Honecker was already romantically involved with the Free German Youth official Edith Baumann, whom he met on a trip to Moscow. With her he had a daughter, Erika (b. 1950), who later gave him his granddaughter Anke. Sources differ on whether Honecker and Baumann married in 1947 or 1949, but in 1952 he fathered an illegitimate daughter, Sonja (b. December 1952), with Margot Feist, a People's Chamber member and chairperson of the Ernst Thalmann Pioneer Organisation.  In September 1950, Baumann wrote directly to Walter Ulbricht to inform him of her husband's extramarital activity in the hope of him pressuring Honecker to end his relationship with Feist. Following his divorce and reportedly under pressure from the Politburo, he married Feist, however sources again differ on both the year of his divorce from Baumann and of his marriage to Feist; depending on the source, the events took place either in 1953 or 1955. For more than twenty years, Margot Honecker served as Minister of National Education. In 2012 intelligence reports collated by West German spies alleged that both Erich and his wife had secret affairs but did not divorce for political reasons, however, his bodyguard Bernd Bruckner in a book about his time spent in Honecker's service, refuted the claims.  Honecker had three grandchildren from his daughter Sonja, who had married the Chilean-born exile Leonardo Yanez Betancourt; Roberto, (b. 1974) Mariana, (b. 1985) who died in 1988 at the age of two leaving Honecker himself heartbroken, and Vivian (b. 1988). Roberto's origins are debated; he is claimed to be the illegally adopted son of Mrs. Heidi Stein, Dirk Schiller, born on 13 June 1975 in Gorlitz, who disappeared in March 1979, due to alleged physical similarities between Dirk and Leonardo Mrs Stein suspecting that her son might have been kidnapped at 3 years old by Stasi agents for Honecker's younger daughter.  Honecker's daughter, (who divorced Leonardo in 1993) grandson and granddaughter still live in Santiago.

Did Honecker marry?

OUT: Honecker was married three times.


IN: Carroll was born in Joliet, Illinois on May 18, 1945. His father worked in a coal processing plant. The family moved to San Diego in 1954 where Carroll grew up. He describes his early years in Ocean Beach as an ideal childhood.

Carroll did not believe in an omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent god. However, in his essay "Why I am not an atheist", Carroll described his dislike of the term "atheist" because he feels that the term is being exploited by theists and used as a straw man argument. He felt that the term implies a dogmatic set of beliefs and carries its own share of negative baggage. So, Carroll suggested that atheists might as well adopt the term "Brights" with all its negative connotations.  The only religion that Carroll found attractive after abandoning Catholicism, despite never following it, is Buddhism as taught by the Dalai Lama.  Carroll has always maintained the opinion that people have to be more skeptical of religion than they are now. He said in multiple interviews that religion is an area that skeptics don't target enough, and that pure faith is winning the race against critical thinking.  Carroll tended to have a moderate outlook on religion. He believed that religion has a role to play in people's lives and he didn't condemn religion for terrorism. When asked about the relationship between violence and religion he said that he can't recall anything negative about his religious upbringing, and that maybe Catholicism can provide more good than harm. He didn't believe religion causes wars, he rather believed that it serves as an excuse for people who will go to war regardless of religion's existence. Carroll believed that some people rely on religion as their only source of morality and as a source of comfort. However, he found it distressing that some people are unable to find meaning in their lives without religion. In an interview with Beyond a Doubt he said  "There is nothing dull about a life without fairies, Easter bunnies, devils, ghosts, magic crystals, etc. Life is only boring to boring people."

DID HE PRACTICE BUDDHISM FOR THE REST OF HIS LIFE?

OUT: