Sunday, December 03, 2006

Real Madrid


Real Madrid Club de Fútbol is a Spanish sports club best known for its football team which was ranked as 'The 20th Century's Best Club' by FIFA. Real Madrid is considered the best club of football's history. The club, which went in place of the Spanish FA, was also one of the founding members of FIFA. They play their home games at the Santiago Bernabéu Stadium in Madrid. Real Madrid have been European Champions a record 9 times and have also won a record 29 La Liga titles. The club also operates a reserve football team, Real Madrid Castilla, and a successful basketball team, Real Madrid Baloncesto. Real Madrid is unusual in that, unlike most football clubs, it has been owned and operated solely by its members (socios) since 1902.
During its history, the club has acquired a number of nicknames. Among the earliest were los merengues, after the white dessert meringue and los blancos. Both simply referred to the club's legendary all-white strip and are the most common to this day. In the 1970s, the nickname los vikingos became popular, possibly due to the signings of several northern European players. More recently, the media dubbed the club los galácticos, referring to club decision to sign star players.

Audi


Audi AG is a German automobile manufacturer with headquarters in Ingolstadt, Bavaria, and is an almost wholly owned (99.7%) subsidiary of the Volkswagen Group since 1964.
Audi's German tagline is "Vorsprung durch Technik"; this is used either untranslated or in its English translation, "Advancement Through Technology". The American tagline is "Never Follow".The company traces its origins back to 1899 and August Horch. The first Horch automobile was produced in 1901 in Zwickau. In 1910, Horch was forced out of the company he had founded. He then started a new company in Zwickau and continued using the Horch brand. His former partners sued him for trademark infringement and a German court determined that the Horch brand belonged to his former company. August Horch was forced to refrain from using his own family name in his new car business. As the word "horch!" translates to "hark!" in German, August Horch settled on the Latin equivalent of his name — "audi". It is also popularly (but incorrectly) believed that Audi is an acronym which stands for "Auto Union Deutschland Ingolstadt". Audi produces over 2 million vehicles annually at its main production site in Ingolstadt. Audi has another production plant in Neckarsulm.
Audi started with a 2612 cc (2.6 Liter) four cylinder model followed by a 3564 cc (3.6 L) model, as well as 4680 cc(4.7 L) and 5720 cc(5.7L) models. These cars were successful even in sporting events. August Horch left the Audi company in 1920. The first six cylinder model ,4655 cc(4.7 L) appeared in 1924. In 1928, the company was acquired by J S Rasmussen, owner of DKW, who bought the same year the remains of the US automobile manufacturer, Rickenbacker including the manufacturing equipment for eight cylinder engines. These engines were used in Audi Zwickau and Audi Dresden models that were launched in 1929. At the same time, six cylinder and a small four cylinder (licensed from Peugeot) models were manufactured. Audi cars of that era were luxurious cars equipped with special bodywork

Till Linderman



Till Lindemann (b. 4 January 1963) is a German musician who is most notable as being the lead-vocalist for the German Tanz-Metall..Lindemann was born in Leipzig, but he grew up in the village of Wendisch-Rambow in Schwerin (East Germany). His father, Werner Lindemann, was a poet, and his mother, Brigitte "Gitta" Lindemann, is an artist and writer who has co-written at least one book with her husband. Lindemann has one sister, six years younger than himself. At age 11 he went to a sports school at the Rostock Sport Club, and from 1977-1980 attended a boarding school. His parents divorced in 1975, when he was age 12.
In the years 1976-1979, Lindemann was a good swimmer who became junior vice-European champion and was considered to be a swimmer in the Olympics 1980. But he left the sports school in 1979. It is possible that he was thrown out of sports school due to his sneaking out, unaccompanied, of a hotel in Italy on a swimming tour. But he also suffered an injury, a torn abdominal muscle - so either reason could be valid. According to Lindemann, "I never liked the sport school actually, it was very intense. But as a child you don't object."
His first job was at a peat cutting company, but he was fired after three days. He worked as an apprentice carpenter, a gallery technician, and was most well-known as a basket weaver.
In 1981, Lindemann apparently refused to do his 18 months' compulsory military service and was almost imprisoned because of the refusal.
In 1985, when Lindemann was 22, his first daughter, Nele, was born. Lindemann and Nele's mother married after she was born, but they separated and he has raised Nele alone. Lindemann says, "I used to play drums in a punk band and we had our studio in the house where I lived. Seven years I had been a father raising his daughter, but nowadays I'm sharing the upbringing with her mother, because I'm gone for six months of the year with the band."
The Berlin Wall came down November 9, 1989, and Germany started its path to reunification. On this, Lindemann says, "After the wall had been opened, I drove to West Germany and bought gummy bears and yogurt for my salutation money. But there wasn't anything else."
His father died in November of 1992, of the effects of alcohol. He was buried in the grounds of a church near Wendisch-Rambow.
Lindemann had a second daughter with Anja Köseling, his former partner/wife. Köseling claimed Lindemann abused her physically during their relationship and that he refused to pay child support for their daughter, Marie-Louise (b. ca. 1993). Lindemann has never commented on her claim. In an interview with Richard Kruspe, He stated that Rammstein will keep playing until one of them dies. Paul stated in a 2005 interview that Till has a girlfriend who speaks Spanish and helped him write "Te quiero puta!" (I want you, whore!).
And in a 2005 interview with the German playboy, Lindemann stated that he had finally found "a woman he could spend the rest of his life with."