Something for every one

Problem in IsDate Function

2009-11-04T02:23:00.000-08:00

There is a problem while using the IsDate Function. When we give invalid date like
"197703/02", Instead of returning false, the IsDate function returns true and consider it as a valid date. The work around for the problem is given below, A Custom IsDate function that validates the date and returns whether it is a valid or invalid.

Function MyIsDate(MyText)
If IsDate(MyText) Then
If 1 > Left(MyText, 2) > 12 Or Len(MyText) <> 8 Then
MyIsDate = False
Else
MyIsDate = True
End If
Else
MyIsDate = False
End If
End Function

VBA

2009-11-04T02:20:00.000-08:00

1. VBA Error in IsDate Function

Making of Vodafone Advertisement Featured By Zoozoo

2009-10-26T06:40:00.000-07:00

A. R. Rahman

2007-01-12T11:32:00.000-08:00

A.R.Rahman
Rahman is the only son of R. K. Sekhar, who was a composer, arranger and conductor for Malayalam films. His father died when Rahman was nine years old, and his family used to rent out musical equipment to make ends meet, something they found very difficult. During those hard times, a Sufi (Muslim) saint cured Rahman's sister of an unexplainable illness. This led Dileep to convert to Islam, changing his name to Allah Rakha Rahman.

At the age of 11, Rahman joined the troupe of Indian composer Ilaiyaraaja as a keyboardist. He later played on the orchestra of M. S. Viswanathan and Ramesh Naidu, and accompanied Zakir Hussain and Kunnakudi Vaidyanathan on world tours. The experience allowed him to obtain a scholarship to Trinity College at Oxford University, where he received a degree in Western
Allah Rakha Rahman born on January 6, 1966 as A. S. Dileep Kumar in Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India) is a composer, best known for composing film scores and soundtracks.

In 1991, Rahman began his own studio (attached to his house), called the Panchathan Record Inn. He initially composed music for use in advertisements, the title music of Indian Television channels and music in documentaries, among other projects. Rahman was, at first, hesitant about composing music for the Indian film industry primarily because most film makers at the time used songs as "fillers" - a means by which the audience was given a break from the movie's plot. In 1991 he was approached by film director Mani Ratnam, who offered Rahman the job as composer for his upcoming Tamil language film Roja, at a price of Rs. 25,000. Rahman accepted, and the movie's superhit debut made him a household name in Tamil Nadu virtually overnight and led Rahman to receive the Rajat Kamal award for best music director at the Indian National Film Awards, the first time ever by a debutant. Rahman has since then gone on to win the award 3 more times (for Minsaara Kanavu (Electric Dreams, Tamil) in 1997, Lagaan (Tax, Hindi) in 2002 and Kannathil Muthamittal (A Peck on the Cheek, Tamil) in 2003), the most ever by any composer.

When Rahman arrived on the Indian music scene with his first film Roja, he brought about a transformation of film music. Roja was a massive hit, and Rahman followed it up with a number of other extremely popular films, including Bombay, Rangeela, Dil Se and Taal. Rangeela, directed by Ram Gopal Varma, marked Rahman's debut in Hindi films. The huge sales of these albums prompted movie producers to take film music more seriously.
Lord Lloyd-Webber with A. R. RahmanRahman's work is also unique in the fact that his collaborations with a few film directors have always resulted in hugely successful albums. In particular, he has worked with Mani Ratnam on eight movies (until 2004) (see list of movies by Mani Ratnam featuring A R Rahman), all of which have been musical superhits. Also notable is his collaboration with the director S. Shankar (Gentleman, Kadhalan, Indian, Jeans, Mudhalvan, Nayak, Boys and Sivaji).

He made an album Vande Mataram (1996) on India's national song, singing the title song on the album. He followed it up with an album called Jana gana mana, a huge conglomeration of performances by all the leading exponents/artists of Indian classical music.

Andrew Lloyd Webber, a well known composer of musicals, was impressed with Rahman's unique style and therefore hired him to compose his maiden stage production Bombay Dreams (2002). This play was well received in England and opened him up to new vistas in Hollywood. Furthermore, Rahman, along with the Finnish folk music band Värttinä, composed the music for The Lord of the Rings theatre production, which opened in Toronto on March 23, 2006.

The following article was written in TIME magazine about Rahman's achievements. His first movie album Roja was listed in TIME magazine's "Top 10 Movie Soundtracks of All Time".[1]

In addition to influencing western audiences, Rahman also impressed eastern audiences with his music so much that he was tapped by Chinese director He Ping to compose the score and soundtrack for the Chinese film Warriors of Heaven and Earth in 2003.[2] The music of this film was very much appreciated in Asia and in India.

On May 23rd 2006, a two-disc album soundtrack, titled Introducing A.R. Rahman, was released by Times Square Records, featuring 25 songs he composed from Tamil film soundtracks spanning 1993-2001. The compillation soundtrack was well received. In addition to this, Rahman performed at the Hollywood Bowl amphitheatre in July of 2006, with Indian singers Sukhwinder Singh, Hariharan and Sadhana Sargam, as well as American performing groups Raagapella and Global Rhythms, to a sell out crowd.

His latest work includes Bose - The Forgotten Hero, Swades, Mangal Pandey - The Rising, Rang De Basanti, Sillunu Oru Kaadhal and Guru. He is currently working on Shankar's next venture Sivaji: The Boss, and on one of Shyam Benegal's next ventures, Chamki Chameli, which is set for release in 2007.
Rahman is a recipient of the Padma Shri and is known around the world as the "Mozart from Madras".[3]

Source : Wikipedia

50 Cent, A Biography About The Man

2007-01-10T10:00:00.000-08:00

You know 50 Cent by his music but in this 50 Cent biography you will get to know more about the man and where he came from. With so many obstacles in his way, this individual was determined to make it big. Now, 50 Cent is the largest figure in the hip hop world, dominating rap for the last two years. So, we can’t get everything into this 50 Cent biography that we would like to, but getting to know where this man came from will give you an idea of what makes him so very real to so many.

Many rap stars out there have no idea what it is like to experience the difficulty of living life on the streets. Sure, they write songs but they don’t necessarily experience what they are writing about. But, 50 Cent has. He grew up in one of the roughest neighborhoods in Queens. He saw crime happening around him everywhere from drugs to stabbings and even fatal shootings. Living in this area and seeing what he saw, he was able to portray a very clear picture of the hardest cities in the United States from a first hand point of view, something that his fellow rappers simply could not. And, he got a name for himself by telling it.

In this 50 Cent biography, we still want to talk about all that this man has accomplished. Anyone in circumstances like this has to be nothing short of extraordinary to pull through and end up on top as he has done. His grandmother raised him because his mother had died when he was only eight and his father had left. He turned to a life of hustling where he ended up in prison. Then, came his break. Deciding to turn his life around, 50 Cent took the higher road that led to a rap career. Working with Run DMC and Jam Master Jay he developed his skills.

This 50 Cent biography only touches on the life that this remarkable man has led. And, it hasn’t stopped yet. Working with Eminem as well as a number of other hip hop artists of high stature, his career continues to climb. You can count on seeing 50 for years to come.

MS Ipod Parody

2007-01-09T10:33:00.000-08:00

Videos

2007-01-08T10:03:00.001-08:00

1. Saddam's Execution
2. Microsoft iPod Parody
3. Celebrity Big Brother 2007 Shilpa Shetty - Argument
4. Making of vodafone advertisement

Saddam Execution

2007-01-08T09:58:00.000-08:00

Ghanshyam Das Birla

2007-01-06T09:06:00.000-08:00

Picture of Birla with Mahatma

Born: April 10, 1894
Achievement: Laid the foundations of the Birla Empire; founder of the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI).

Ghanshyam Das Birla is considered as a doyen of Indian Industry. He was the man who laid the foundations of the Birla Empire. G.D. Birla was a multi-faceted personality. He was a close associate of Mahatma Gandhi and advised Gandhiji on economic policies. He was the most important pre-Independence contributor to the Indian National Congress. Ghanshyam Das Birla was the founder of the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI). He is also popularly known as the builder of Birla Mandirs.

Born on April 10, 1894, G.D. Birla, was a native of Pilani. His grandfather Shiv Narayan Birla was a traditional marwari moneylender. Ghanshyam Das Birla entered the business arena during the time of First World War. He established a cotton mill in Sabzi Mandi, and later on established Keshoram Cotton Mills. Along with cotton mills he diversified to jute business and shifted his base to Calcutta city in Bengal, the world's largest jute producing region. He established Birla Jute Mills in Bengal, much to the consternation of established European merchants.

In 1919, with an investment of Rs. 50 lakhs, the Birla Brothers Limited was formed and a mill was set up in Gwalior. In 1930s, G.D. Birla set up Sugar and Paper mills. In 1940s, he ventured into the territory of cars and established Hindustan Motors. After independence, Ghanshyam Das Birla invested in tea and textiles through a series of acquisitions of erstwhile European companies. He also expanded and diversified into cement, chemicals, rayon and steel tubes.

Ghanshyam Das Birla also founded several educational institutions. Birla Institute of Technology and Sciences (BITS) Pilani has today evolved into one of India's best engineering schools. He also established many temples, planetariums, and hospitals. Ghanshyam Das Birla died in 1983 at the age of 90. In his honour, G.D. Birla award for scientific Research has been established to encourage scientists for their contribution in the various fields of scientific Research.

A Short Biography of Dhirubhai Ambani on Reliance Communications Ltd

2007-01-03T09:27:00.000-08:00

The second son of a school teacher, Dhirubhai was born in 1932 in the village of Chorwad in Gujarat in circumstances that can best be described as modest. Driven by hardship and want, he had to drop out of school early. In 1949, at the age of 17, he went to Aden (now Yemen) in search of opportunity, and worked as a dispatch clerk for A. Besse & Co. A couple of years later, the company became a distributor for Shell products and Dhirubhai was promoted to manage the company’s oil-filling station at the port of Aden. It was here that he dreamed of setting up and owning a refinery, which he later realised with his petrochemicals venture. He returned to India in 1958 to launch his first business venture, a spice trading company named Reliance Commercial Corporation. In 1962, Dhirubhai identified an emerging opportunity in yarn trading and shifted to the new business. Three years later, he changed the name of his company to Reliance Textile Industries Limited. In 1966, he purchased land in Naroda, Gujarat, to set up a textile mill. In 1975, a technical team from the World Bank recognised the Naroda mill as one of the best composite textile mills in India and certified it as ‘excellent even by developed country standards’.In 1977, the company went public. At the time of the Reliance Textiles IPO, participation in the Indian capital markets was largely limited to a small but influential elite which dabbled in a handful of stocks. The great majority of India’s middle class chose to stay away. Dhirubhai’s decision to prefer the capital markets over banks as the primary source of funding for his ambitious expansion plans, was as daring as it was unprecedented.In the event, The Reliance IPO was an unlikely success. Against all odds, Dhirubhai managed to convince a sufficiently large number of sceptical middle class investors to put their money, and faith, in what was then a small, relatively unknown company. The subsequent growth and success of Reliance and its philosophy of generously rewarding shareholders rapidly gave Dhirubhai an iconic status in the Indian financial markets. Under Dhirubhai’s charismatic leadership, the Annual General Meetings (AGM) of Reliance took on the character of large public spectacles. Typically held in large public arenas, and attended by thousands of adoring shareholders, the Reliance AGM became a day to remember in the annual corporate calendar of India. In 1986, the Reliance AGM held in Cross Maidan, Mumbai, was attended by as many as 30,000 stockholders—a record in India’s corporate history. By the mid-80s, Dhirubhai had become something of a living legend, widely hailed by peers and critics alike as one of the greatest corporate visionaries in the history of post-Independent India.
But Dhirubhai was never one to rest on his laurels. In the early 80s, he had taken the first important step in strategic backward integration for Reliance with the commissioning of the Patalganga plant which initially manufactured polyester filament yarn and polyester staple fibre. In 1991, he set up Reliance Hazira, for the manufacture of petrochemicals—the next link in the backward integration chain. At the time, Reliance Hazira represented the single largest investment made by a private sector group in India at a single location. Meanwhile, Dhirubhai had firmed up plans of setting up a massive grassroots refinery—the next big leap in his overall strategic roadmap for Reliance. Conceived as the world’s largest grassroots refinery at the time, Jamnagar in Gujarat was to have an annual capacity of 27 million tonnes. In the face of formidable challenges, including a massive cyclone that flattened the project site mid-way through construction, Reliance commissioned the Jamnagar facility in 1999. It was a fully integrated refinery, complete with a dedicated port and a captive supply of power. The refinery was not only commissioned ahead of schedule, but also set up at a cost that was significantly power than the prevailing global benchmark for a project of such magnitude. It was one of Dhirubhai’s great dreams in life to see ordinary Indians enjoy the economic benefits of being able to access affordable yet world class telecommunications infrastructure. He wanted Reliance to spearhead a communications revolution that would dramatically cut down the cost of connectivity, and propel India into the digital age. His ultimate ambition: To make the cost of a phone call cheaper than that of a post card. It was therefore entirely logical for Reliance to enter the telecommunications space when the sector was opened up for private participation in the 1990s. The rest, as they say, is history. Today, Reliance Communications is India’s largest information and communications services provider with over 20 million subscribers, and offers the full range of integrated telecom services—at prices that are, by far, the lowest anywhere in the world. Dhirubhai left for his heavenly abode on July 6, 2002.

Biography

2007-01-03T09:12:00.001-08:00

1. Winston Churchill
2. Dhirubhai Ambani
3. Ghanshyam Das Birla
4. 50 Cents(About a man)
5. A.R Rahman(Mozart of Madras)

Winston Churchill's Quick Bio..

2007-01-01T01:56:00.000-08:00

SIR WINSTON CHURCHILL, (1874-1965), British leader. English on his father's side, American on his mother's, Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill embodied and expressed the double vitality and the national qualities of both peoples. His names testify to the richness of his historic inheritance: Winston, after the Royalist family with whom the Churchills married before the English Civil War; Leonard, after his remarkable grandfather, Leonard Jerome of New York; Spencer, the married name of a daughter of the 1st duke of Marlborough, from whom the family descended; Churchill, the family name of the 1st duke, which his descendents resumed after the Battle of Waterloo. All these strands come together in a career that had no parallel in British history for richness, range, length, and achievement. Churchill took a leading part in laying the foundations of the welfare state in Britain, in preparing the Royal Navy for World War I, and in settling the political boundaries in the Middle East after the war. In WORLD WAR II emerged as the leader of the united British nation and Commonwealth to resist the German domination of Europe, as an inspirer of the resistance among free peoples, and as a prime architect of victory. In this, and in the struggle against communism afterward, he made himself an indispensable link between the British and American peoples, for he foresaw that the best defense for the free world was the coming together of the English-speaking peoples. Profoundly historically minded, he also had prophetic foresight: British-American unity was the message of his last great book, A History of the English-Speaking Peoples. His dominant qualities were courage and imagination. Less obvious to the public, but no less important, was his powerful, original, and fertile intellect. He had intense loyalty, marked magnanimity and generosity, and an affectionate nature with a puckish humor. Oratory, in which he ultimately became a master, he learned the hard way, but he was a natural wit. The artistic side of his temperament was displayed in his writings and oratorical style, as well as in his paintings. He was a combination of soldier, writer, artist, and statesman. He was not so good as a mere party politician. Like Julius Caesar, he stands out not only as a great man of action, but as a writer of it too. He had genius; as a man he was charming, gay, ebullient, endearing. As for personal defects, such a man was bound to be a great egoist; if that is a defect. So strong a personality was apt to be overbearing. He was something of a gambler, always too willing to take risks. In his earlier career, people thought him of unbalanced judgment partly from the very excess of his energies and gifts. That is the worst that can be said of him. With no other great man is the familiar legend more true to the facts. We know all there is to know about him; there was no disguise. He was born on Nov. 30, 1874, at Blenheim Palace, the famous palace near Oxford built by the nation for John Churchill, 1st duke of Marlborough, the great soldier. Blenheim, named after Marlborough's grandest victory (1704), meant much to Winston Churchill. In the grounds there he became engaged to his future wife, Clementine Ogilvy Hozier (b. 1885). He later wrote his historical masterpiece, The Life and Times of John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough, with the archives of Blenheim behind him. His father, Lord Randolph Churchill, was a younger son of the 7th duke of Marlborough. His mother was Jennie Jerome; and as her mother, Clara Hall, was one-quarter Iroquois, Sir Winston had an Indian strain in him. Lord Randolph, a brilliant Conservative leader who had been chancellor of the exchequer in his 30's, died when only 46, after ruining his career. His son wrote that one could not grow up in that household without realizing that there had been a disaster in the background. It was an early spur to him to try to make up for his gifted father's failure, not only in politics and in writing, but on the turf. Young Winston, though the grandson of a duke, had to make his own way in the world, earning his living by his tongue and his pen. In this he had the comradeship of his mother, who was always courageous and undaunted. In 1888 he entered Harrow, but he never got into the upper school because, always self-willed, he would not study classics. He concentrated on his own language, willingly writing English essays, and he afterward claimed that this was much more profitable to him. In 1894 he graduated from the Royal Military College at Sandhurst. He then was commissioned in the 4th Hussars. On leave in 1895, he went for his first experience of action to serve as a military observer and correspondent with the Spanish forces fighting the guerrillas in Cuba. Rejoining his regiment, he was sent to serve in India. Here, besides his addiction to polo, he went on seriously with his education, which in his case was very much self-education. His mother sent out to him boxes of books, and Churchill absorbed the whole of Gibbon and Macaulay, and much of Darwin. The influence of the historians is to be observed all through his writings and in his way of looking at things. The influence of Darwin is not less observable in his philosophy of life: that all life is a struggle, the chances of survival favor the fittest, chance is a great element in the game, the game is to be played with courage, and every moment is to be enjoyed to the full. This philosophy served him well throughout his long life. In 1897 he served in the Indian army in the Malakand expedition against the restless tribesmen of the North-West Frontier, and the next year appeared his first book, The Story of the Malakand Field Force. In the same year, 1898, he served with the Tirah expeditionary force, and came home to seek service in General Kitchener's campaign for the reconquest of the Sudan. Once again young Churchill managed to play the dual role of active officer and war correspondent. As such he took part at Omdurman in one of the last classic battles of earlier warfare; cavalry charges, a thin red line of fire against clouds of fanatical dervishes. The Battle of Omdurman was the end of a world. Once more Churchill wrote it up, and the whole campaign, in The River War (2 vols., 1899), a fine example of military history by an eyewitness. He made enemies among the professional soldiers by his frank criticisms of army defects. He entertained himself by writing a novel, Savrola (1900), which curiously anticipates later developments in history, war, and in his own mind. On the outbreak of the South African War in 1899, he went out as war correspondent for the London Morning Post. Within a month of his arrival, he was captured when acting more as a soldier than as a journalist, by the Boer officer Louis Botha (who subsequently became the first prime minister of the Union of South Africa and a trusted friend). Taken to prison camp in Pretoria, Churchill made a dramatic escape and traveled via Portuguese East Africa back to the fighting front in Natal. His escape made him world-famous overnight. He described his experiences in a couple of journalistic books and made a first lecture tour in the United States. The proceeds from the tour enabled him to enter Parliament (M. P.'s were not paid in those days). On Jan. 23, 1901, Churchill became member of Parliament for Oldham (Lancashire) as a Conservative. But he had returned from South Africa sympathetic to the Boer cause, and his army experiences had made him extremely critical of its command and administration, which he proceeded to attack all along the line. The tariff proposals of Joseph Chamberlain completed his alienation from the Conservative party, and in 1904 Churchill left the party to join the Liberals. In consequence he was for years execrated by the Conservatives, and was unpopular with army authorities. As Liberal M. P. for Northwest Manchester and for Dundee, he was in a position to share in the long Liberal run of power and to take his place in one of the ablest British governments in modern times. As undersecretary of state for the colonies he played a considerable part in making a generous peace with the Boers. In 1906, he published the authoritative biography, Lord Randolph Churchill (2 vols.), and in 1908, My African Journey, a first-class example of his lifelong flair for journalism. In this year, 1908, he married and, in his own words, "lived happily ever afterwards." By his marriage to Clementine Hozier there were one son (Randolph) and four daughters (Diana, Sarah, Mary, and one who died in infancy). As president of the board of trade (1908-1910) and home secretary (1910-1911), he contributed largely to the early legislation of the welfare state. He helped to create labor exchanges, to introduce health and unemployment insurance, to prescribe minimum wages in certain industries, and to limit working hours. As first lord of the admiralty (1911-1915), he was in a key position, as German naval power rose to its peak and modernization of the British fleet became an urgent necessity. Churchill's collaboration with Admiral Lord Fisher to this end was historic: it produced the changeover to oil-fueled ships from coalburning vessels, the creation of a naval air service, and the first development of the tank. With war approaching, Churchill, on his own responsibility, kept the fleet fully mobilized. With the German onrush through neutral Belgium in 1914, he led a naval detachment to Antwerp, but failed to stem the tide. In 1915 he made himself responsible for the campaign to force the Dardanelles, with the aim of pushing Turkey out of the war, of linking up with Russia, and of taking the Central Powers in the rear. The campaign foundered, partly through bad luck, partly through lack of experience in combined operations. Churchill was made to take the responsibility, and when a coalition government was formed in May 1915, the Conservatives made it a condition that he should be dropped as first lord of the admiralty. The Dardanelles failure seemed the end of his political career. He took up painting as a hobby and a consolation, and he remained devoted to it for the rest of his life. His accomplishment in the art should not be underestimated. In 1916 he went back to the army, gallantly volunteering for active service on the western front, where he commanded the 6th Royal Scots Fusiliers. But his energy and ability could not be dispensed with, and Prime Minister Lloyd George called him back to become minister of munitions. At the end of the war, Churchill became secretary of state for war and also for air (1919-1921). In this post he pushed through army reforms and the development of air power, and became a pilot himself. He involved himself in much controversy by backing the efforts of the counterrevolutionaries against the Bolsheviks in Russia. As secretary of state for air and colonies (1921-1922), he took a leading part in establishing the new Arab states in the Middle East, while supporting a Jewish national home in Palestine as an act of historic and humanitarian justice. He was also closely concerned in the negotiations to establish the Irish Free State, and thus earned further Conservative distrust. Having lost his seat in Parliament in the 1922 elections, Churchill lived in the political wilderness for the next two years. He was able to go forward with his memoirs, The World Crisis (5 vols., 1923-1929), a large canvas. After various attempts to form a central, antisocialist grouping, he went back to the Conservative party in time to become chancellor of the exchequer in Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin's government (1924-1929). He was least happy in this office and ill at ease with economic affairs. During the whole of this disastrous period of 1929-1939, Churchill was out of office. During these years of political frustration he wrote his major works: Marlborough (4 vols., 1933-1938); the first draft of A History of the English-Speaking Peoples (4 vols., 1956-1958); a vivid and characteristic autobiography, My Early Life (1930); a revealing and suggestive book, Thoughts and Adventures (1932); and a volume of brilliant, if generous, portrait sketches, Great Contemporaries (1937). He also began to collect his speeches and newspaper articles warning the country of the wrath to come. No one would take heed of his reiterated warnings of the folly of attempting to appease Hitler and of the necessity to bring together a "Grand Alliance" against the aggressor powers before it was too late. Baldwin and Chamberlain were too solidly entrenched in power to shift. Churchill tried to rally the right-wing Conservatives against Baldwin's liberal Indian policy, and he backed Edward VIII against Baldwin at the time of the king's abdication in 1936. These weapons broke in his hands, and only lost him support. Appeasement went on to the bitter end. When war came in 1939, Churchill was inevitably recalled, as first lord of the admiralty. The signal went round the fleet, "Winston is back," a quarter of a century after his first going to the post. But the first wave of German military power overwhelmed Poland in September, and in the spring of 1940 the tidal wave overwhelmed northwestern Europe, followed shortly afterward by the fall of France. On May 10, 1940, in the midst of this cataract of disasters, Churchill was called to supreme power and responsibility by a spontaneous revolt of the best elements in all parties. He, almost alone of the nation's political leaders, had had no part in the disaster of the 1930's, and he really was chosen by the will of the nation. For the next five years, perhaps the most heroic period in Britain's history, he held supreme command, as prime minister and minister of defense, in the nation's war effort. At this point his life and career became one with Britain's story and its survival. At first, until 1941, Britain fought on alone. Churchill's task was to inspire resistance at all costs, to organize the defense of the island, and to make it the bastion for an eventual return to the continent of Europe, whose liberation from Nazi tyranny he never doubted. He breathed a new spirit into the government and a new resolve into the nation. Upon becoming prime minister he told the Commons: "I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat: You ask, what is our policy? I will say: It is to wage war, by sea, land, and air, with all our might. You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word: Victory." Meanwhile he made himself the spokesman for these purposes among all free peoples, as he made Britain a home for all the faithful remnants of the continental governments. These included the Free French, for Churchill had himself picked out Charles De Gaulle as "the man of destiny." But Churchill's personal relationship with President Franklin D. Roosevelt was Britain's lifeline. Britain had lost most of her army equipment in the fall of France and during the evacuation of the British Expeditionary Force from Dunkirk in June. Roosevelt rushed across the Atlantic a supply of weapons that made a beginning. By the autumn of 1940, Churchill was convinced that Germany could not bring off the invasion of Britain. Secure in this conviction, he took the momentous decision to send one of the only two armored divisions left in Britain to Egypt, to hold the land bridge to the East. Submarine warfare had placed a severe strain on the British navy, and Roosevelt again came to Britain's aid with the lease of 50 destroyers. Churchill took the grievous decision to cripple the French fleet at Oran, Algeria. He could not take the risk of the French navy's being taken over by the Germans, for this probably would have been the end for Britain. The turning point of the war came in 1941, when Churchill took advantage of his opponents' mistakes. Hitler's invasion of Russia brought Russia into the war, and Churchill seized the opportunity of welcoming a powerful ally with both hands. Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor brought the United States into the war, and Hitler made the mistake of declaring war on the United States. Churchill's unforgettable speech to Congress after Pearl Harbor expressed something of the inspiration and high resolve in the face of mortal danger that he had given his countrymen while they had fought on alone for over a year. The Grand Alliance to combat aggression that he had had in mind from the 1930's was now a fact. Churchill made himself the linchpin, journeying uncomplaining between Roosevelt and Stalin, though an older man than either. It was possible now to plan the liberation of the world from the aggressors. He and Roosevelt set forth their war aims in the Atlantic Charter, signed aboard the U.S.S. Augusta off Newfoundland in August 1941. The first results of Allied cooperation were the landings in North Africa, the rounding up of the Nazi forces there, and the invasion of Sicily and Italy, "the soft under-belly of the Axis." It proved harder going than was expected, supporting Churchill's opposition to the opening of a second front in the west. Not until the summer of 1944 were the preparations complete for the invasion of Normandy, to break open Hitler's Europe. Churchill had always had an acute personal interest in combined operations, and he regarded the mobile "Mulberry" harbors as in large part his own idea. Only the personal order of King George VI prevented the prime minister from landing with the landing forces on D-day. The last year of the war saw the famous partnership between Churchill and Roosevelt dissolving. Churchill looked to the shape of things that would emerge after the war, with the immense accession of strength to Russia and to communism in Europe. At the summit conferences in Teheran and Yalta, Churchill was grieved to find the president not supporting him in his struggle with Stalin to contain Russian expansion after the war. On the surrender of Germany in May 1945, Churchill rode around London in the victory celebrations, but, as he wrote, there was foreboding in his heart. Before the surrender of Japan, Churchill's wartime government broke up, and the Labour party won a large majority in the general election of July 1945. Churchill was deeply affected by this blow, though it was in no sense a vote of censure upon him but upon 20 years of Conservative rule. He continued to enjoy esteem as leader of the opposition Conservative party. He turned to writing a personal history, The Second World War (6 vols., 1948-1953), and to painting, exhibiting regularly at the Royal Academy. Though he was out of office, his prestige was a major asset to his country. In his famous "iron curtain" speech at Westminster College in Fulton, Mo., he warned the West against Russia's aims and the aggrandizement of communism, making a plea for cooperation between the English-speaking peoples as the only hope of checking it. This aroused a storm of controversy in the United States, but events soon confirmed Churchill's view of the world picture. On Oct. 26, 1951, at the age of 77, he again became prime minister, as well as minister of defense. As the Conservatives held a very small majority and Britain faced very difficult economic circumstances, only the old man's willpower enabled his government to survive. He held on to see the young Queen Elizabeth II crowned at Westminster in June 1953, himself attending as a Knight of the Garter, an honor he had received a few weeks earlier. In 1953, also, he received the Nobel Prize in literature. On April 5, 1955, in his 80th year, he resigned as prime minister, but he continued to sit in Commons until July 1964. Churchill's later years were relatively tranquil. In 1958 the Royal Academy devoted its galleries to a retrospective one-man show of his work. On April 9, 1963, he received, by special act of the U.S. Congress, the unprecedented honor of being made an honorary American citizen. When he died in London on Jan. 24, 1965, at the age of 90, he was acclaimed as a citizen of the world, and on January 30 he was given the funeral of a hero. He was buried at Bladon, in the little churchyard near Blenheim Palace, his birthplace.Winston Churchill