For Want of A Sandwich - A Franz Ferdinand Lives Wikibox TL
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Ray Kroc
Raymond Albert Kroc (Oak Park, IL October 5, 1902 - San Diego, CA January, 14 1984) was an American businessman. A partner of Walt Disney, he handled merchandising for Walt Disney Studio before managing their theme parks and television distribution, succeeding Walt Disney in 1967 as owner and CEO of the Disney Company, a position he occupied until his own death in 1984. Kroc was also founder and owner of the the Anaheim Angels team in Major League Baseball from 1961 to 1984.
Born to Czech American parents in Illinois, Kroc dropped out of school and worked odd jobs during the Great Depression, , working a variety of jobs selling paper cups, real estate and playing the piano. Volunteering for the Second Mexican-American War in 1923, he would serve in the Army, meeting by chance an up-and-coming cartoon animator from California and fellow volunteer, Walt Disney.
In 1933, Disney remembered his military service companion in Mexico, whose sheer will and business acumen had grew on him, and contacted Kroc to run Disney's merchandising, having noted the potential for additional revenue. Even if Kroc knew nothing about animation and barely knew about Disney's mascot Flip the Frog, he would manage 40 licenses for Flip within a year and to make $35 million worth of sales within 2 years, thanks to a partnership to make Flip the Frog watches. Impressed by Kroc, who made for the company more money from the merchandising than from the films, Walt Disney would allow him a participation within the studio as a partner.
Kroc was among the ones who convinced Disney not to endeavour into a feature-length animated film, citing hazards and costs of such a feature : according to later interviews, Disney held a grudge against Kroc, whose business acumen he praised but he pointed out his lack of imagination and his constant lust for profit and merchandising. Nevertheless, Kroc would retain Disney's trust after succesfully crushing a strike of his animators and allowing him to continue production of his musical shorts, that would later be known as the Fantasias, starting with "The Sorcerer's Apprentice". Apart from the mass firing resulting from the strike, Kroc was able to secure a lucrative distribution contract for television with United Artists, bought out Disney's main competitor, Fleischer Studios, launched Disney's initial public offering and, when the United States entered the World War, signed a lucrative contract with the government to produce propaganda films and documentaries.
After the war, as Disney was turning towards live-action film production, Kroc was given full control over the booming television business but also his pet projet : Flip Frog theme parks. While Disney shorts still had resounding success in television, even finding their own applications in commercial advertisement, Kroc developed the theme park as yet another declination of his merchandising process, building attractions based around the Disney-Fleischer roost of characters, ranging from Flip the Frog to Superman. Kroc was more based on derived products, snacks, drinks and sponsorships than with attractions : yet, his tenure under Walt Disney allowed him to open the Flip the Frog Park in Anaheim, California in 1955, along with Flip the Frog Park in Ocala, Florida, in 1963. In the same time, Kroc, a longtime baseball fan, launched his own baseball franchise, the Anaheim Angels, in 1961 ; although a member of the Major League Baseball, the club had lackluster results but its Disney-themed jerseys were a big success on the market.
When Walt Disney died in 15 December 1966, Kroc was able to buy out Roy Disney's shares in intellectual properties, along with the rest of his family, for a hefty sum, becoming CEO of Walt Disney Studios in 1967, renaming it as the Disney Company. Launching his own television channel in 1972, Kroc left animation and live-action films to his employees, leaving them with quite business freedom, but continued to distribute animated shorts to advertising, television, cinema and documentation, pursuing an agressive purchasing policy to augment the rooster of Disney characters, purchasing the Looney Tunes from Warner Bros., becoming a major shareholder within Universal Studios (the same ones that Disney had left in 1927) and outsourcing animation to the Philippines and Latin America. These intellectual properties were much needed to fuel the attractions at Flip Flog Theme Parks, with cruise ships, airlines, railway companies and hotel resorts being opened in Aspen, Colorado (1973), Alicante in Spain (1978), Milan, Italy (1980) and Frankfurt, Germany (1983). Kroc was more focused on the opening of the Hong Kong theme park (that would open in 1992) and his baseball team when he died in 1984, aged 82.
In retrospective, Ray Kroc, a staunch conservative, philanthropist, worth 600 million dollars at the time of his death, is remembered as the epitome of the agressive self-made-man and tough-as-nails businessman, becoming a true figurehead for ultraliberal capitalism, himself staunchly opposing government welfare and minimum wages. His handling of the Disney Company made the group the overall leader of children entertainment, with its merchandising process being still studied in schools. Nevertheless, later studies have pointed out the difference in style between Walt Disney himself and Ray Kroc, who had no interest in art in any form : by the time of his death, the quality of Disney shorts had noticeably degraded, being mass produced in poorly funded studios in Latin America or Asia, and the company retiring from live-action movie. "The tenure of Ray Kroc, a man obssessed with profit and interested solely in making vast theme parks with attractions devoted to saturday morning cereal figures, didn't help to establish animation as an art form" stressed a historian. The Disney Company itself had become something of a has been, being finally purchased by the Coca-Cola Company in 1989. As of nowadays, Disney characters is quite forgotten in front of its Japanese and Chinese competitors.
Clones produced for research and military purposes are sterilized upon birth in Germany ; the issue of their civil rights is an ongoing debate.
Mammoths have been resurrected in Russia and are a fixture of ultramodern zoos.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt
Franklin Delano Roosevelt (Hyde Park, NY, January 30 1882 - Campobello Island, New Brunswick, Canada, August 9, 1921) was an American politician and attorney who served as Secretary of the Navy from 1919 to 1921. He is best known as the husband of Eleanor Roosevelt, who would become Secretary of Labor and later of State and the father of New York Representative Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Jr. and General James Roosevelt.
Born to the wealthy and elite Roosevelt family (being a distant cousin of President Theodore Roosevelt), Franklin Delano Roosevelt spent his childhood between America and Europe, earning a Bachelor of Arts from Harvard University and went through Columbia Law School before entering the law firm of Carter Ledyard & Milburn. He married his cousin, Eleanor, in 1905, having five surviving children together, an unhappy marriage that went to shambles after Eleanor caught wind of her husband’s affair with her secretary Lucy Mercer in 1918. The two remained married nevertheless.
Roosevelt would then enter politics as a Democrat : after serving as a New York state senator, from 1911 to 1913, being appointed to Woodrow Wilson’s cabinet as Assistant Secretary of the Navy in 1913, due to his support during the 1912 presidential election. In spite of a failed run for the Democratic primaries for the 1914 Senate election in New York, Roosevelt would earn the reputation of an able administrator, particularly in face in the Great European War, doing what he could to ensure America’s trade with neutral countries and calling for military preparedness in case of a spill-out. In 1919, incumbent Secretary Josephus Daniels resigned due to the Newport sex scandal : Roosevelt would be appointed in his place, serving under Woodrow Wilson and later Thomas Marshall.
At the 1920 Democratic Convention, Roosevelt put his name in the ring as a favorite son candidate, quicky withdrawing his candidacy due to the running of his own cousin, Theodore Roosevelt, as the Republican candidate.
After the end of the Marshall administration, Roosevelt returned to law in New York City and expected to run in the midterm elections ; unfortunately, as he and his family were vacationing at their estate in Campobello Island in August 1921, the former Secretary of the Navy would fall into the cold waters of the Bay of Fundy ; unable to move while in water and feeling paralyzed and in pain , he would ultimately drown, aged 39.
If Franklin Delano Roosevelt remains a mere footnote in United States history, his memory remained vivid due to the impressive political career of his widow Eleanor, who would become the first woman Secretary of State, and the distinguished careers of his children.
Not on my knowledge.
I wanted Kroc-run Disney to overdevelop while mixing it with the poor management of 80's Disney. I had imagined him taking over Disney's business as he did with the McDonalds, but Walt was also a keen businessman and would've played his hand too.
Maybe a program to bring Thylacines back from extinction inspired by Russia bringing back the mammoth could occur ITTL? And on that note, any species which went extinct IOTL which are "merely" critically endangered/still around in zoos even after being extinct in the wild ITTL or critically endangered species IOTL which went extinct ITTL?
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Thylacine could be possible. It went extinction after the POD but probably ITTL it is still occuring.
And perhaps cloning technology could help baiji (Yangtse dolphin).
And on that note, the Sumatran and Javan Rhinoceros are both likely to be extinct ITTL with how Indonesia had a civil war ITTL and how both are teetering on the brink of extinction IOTL.
Ronald Reagan
Ronald Wilson Reagan (Tampico, IL February, 6 1911 - Los Angeles, CA June, 5 2004) was an American actor and film producer.
Born into a low-income family in Illinois, Reagan graduated from Eureka College, was exempted from service during the Second Mexican-American War due to his poor eyesight, and found employment as a radio announcer in Iowa before beginning an acting career in 1937 in Hollywood, signing a contract with Warner Bros. studios. At first left with B movie roles, Reagan began to emerge as a star with his roles as college football player George Gipp in Knute Rockne, All American in 1940, double amputee Drake McHugh in Kings Row in 1942 and, most importantly, shady nightclub owner Rick Blaine in 1945’s Geneva, starring alongside Michèle Morgan and Conrad Veidt. The movie earned Reagan his first Academy Award nomination and made him an A-list movie star : nevertheless, his star suffered from the World War, being unable to serve, starring in propaganda movies, such as Sergeant York (1946) or Geneva’s poorly-received sequel Budapest (1948).
After peace, Reagan would find classic roles in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1949), Arsenic and Old Lace (1950) before becoming a household name for playing the title character in 1953’s Shane, earning yet another Academy Award nomination and cementing his status as a heroic cowboy in many classic westerns of the era, such as The Searchers, Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, The 3:10 to Yuma, Rio Bravo, but as the genre declined in popularity and as Reagan grew older, the roles became scarce, even if the Western period of Ronald Reagan ended with a bang, with The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962). Afterwards, Reagan worked on television, landing numerous roles, the best known being in the Dragnet revival series (1967-1970) or appearing in supporting roles in ensemble movies.
In 1980, Reagan’s career was renewed in Nothing Lasts Forever, an adaptation of the 1978 novel, portraying retired detective Joe Leland handling a hostage crisis in a Los Angeles skyscraper. The major box-office hit reignited interest in the former Hollywood star, landing roles such as Commissioner Rhinelander Waldo in Ragtime (1981), Commissioner James Gordon in The Batman (1985), Frank Booth in Blue Velvet (1986), Gus McCrae in Lonesome Dome (1989) but most importantly, earning Reagan’s (only) Academy Award in 1984, for Supporting Actor, for his role of Marsh Turner in Cross Creek. After enjoying the rebirth of his career, Reagan retired from acting in 1994, due to the demise of his wife and Alzheimer’s disease, his last film role being as Charles Wheeler in 1993’s Philadelphia. Reagan died in 2004 in California, aged 93.
Reagan was married four times, each time to fellow actresses : Jane Wyman (1940-1949), Lana Turner (1953-1957), June Lockhart (1959-1970) and Audrey Hepburn (1971 to her death in 1993), his marriages producing five children, including her daughter Maureen, who also pursued an acting career. A lifelong Progressive, praising Presidents Fiorello La Guardia and Ralph Yarborough for their handlings of civil rights, he campaigned heavily for Progressive candidates until the 1970s, being dissatisfied with George McGovern’s policies. Portraying American everyday heroes, reportedly nice and caring and private, Reagan embodied a certain essence of American cinema, holding many roles in classics.
It's a subject I hadn't surveyed, I will think about that.
It's among my next projects !
He was killed during the Russian Civil War, having his own faction.
For a country profile you could do next, maybe Armenia with how big it is and how it is supposedly a nuclear-armed state and all that?
The Russian Army was better prepared and the Soviets failed to seize major population points, allowing the Whites to win.
A Bulgarian-build AI managed to pass TTL Turing Test and intelligent androids are being tested for warfare and elderly care. The best advanced countries on the matter are Germany, United States, Bulgaria, Japan and China.
I'm eyeing Armenia a lot !