Augusta

The Sacred Heart Cultural Center, known also as Sacred Heart Catholic Church, is an events center and a former Roman Catholic Church located in... Augusta, Georgia. It is one of the more notable and recognized landmarks in the city. It was built by Jesuit priests and its first service was on December 2, 1900. The Church had been in Augusta for 70 years, until the church closed in 1971 due to modern suburban advancements. While the building was vacant, it endured much vandalism and was near destruction after vandalism and vacancy. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1972. In 1987, city officials renovated the building and opened as a vibrant center of the city for cultural events. The building now host events such as wine festivals, choral concerts, and Christmas events. It is one of the best examples of redeveloping downtown Augusta. The Sacred Heart Cultural Center host special events such as wine festivals, choral concerts, Christmas events, and an annual garden festival. Art work are exhibited on a regular basis in the Art Gallery.
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The Woodrow Wilson Boyhood Home, in Augusta, Georgia, is a historic house museum owned and operated by Historic Augusta, Inc. It was designated a... National Historic Landmark on October 6, 2008. It was the childhood home of Thomas "Tommy" Woodrow Wilson, 28th president of the United States and proponent of the League of Nations. Then a Presbyterian church manse, it was the home where Tommy spent his formative years, from 1860-1870, experiencing the American Civil War and the Reconstruction. Wilson, later U.S. president during 1915-1923, was profoundly affected. It was opened as a house museum in 2001 The house is adjacent to the Joseph R. Lamar Boyhood Home, which is also listed on the National Register.
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Blind Willie McTell , was an influential Piedmont and ragtime blues singer and guitarist. He played with a fluid, syncopated fingerstyle guitar... technique, common among many exponents of Piedmont blues, although, unlike his contemporaries, he came to exclusively use twelve-string guitars. McTell was also an adept slide guitarist, unusual among ragtime bluesmen. His vocal style, a smooth and often laid-back tenor, differed greatly from many of the harsher voice types employed by Delta bluesmen, such as Charlie Patton. McTell embodied a variety of musical styles, including blues, ragtime, religious music, and hokum. Born blind in the town of Thomson, Georgia, McTell learned how to play guitar in his early teens. He soon became a street performer around several Georgia cities, such as Atlanta and Augusta, and first recorded in 1927 for Victor Records. Although he never produced a major hit record, McTell's recording career was prolific, recording for different labels under different names throughout the 1920s and 30s. In 1940, he was recorded by John Lomax for the Library of Congress's folk song archive.
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James Joseph Brown was an American singer, songwriter, musician, and recording artist. He is the originator of funk music and is a major figure of... 20th century popular music and dance. In a career that spanned decades, Brown profoundly influenced the development of many different musical genres. Brown moves on a continuum of blues and gospel-based forms and styles to a profoundly "Africanized" approach to music making. Brown performed in concerts, first making his rounds across the Chitlin' Circuit, and then across the country and later around the world, along with appearing in shows on television and in movies. Although he contributed much to the music world through his hitmaking, Brown holds the record as the artist who charted the most singles on the Billboard Hot 100 without ever hitting number one on that chart. For many years, Brown's touring show was one of the most extravagant productions in American popular music. At the time of Brown's death, his band included three guitarists, two bass guitar players, two drummers, three horns and a percussionist.
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Jasper Johns, Jr. is an American contemporary artist who works primarily in painting and printmaking. Born in Augusta, Georgia, Jasper Johns spent... his early life in Allendale, South Carolina with his paternal grandparents after his parents' marriage failed. He then spent a year living with his mother in Columbia, South Carolina and thereafter he spent several years living with his aunt Gladys in Lake Murray, South Carolina, twenty-two miles from Columbia. He completed high school in Sumter, South Carolina, where he once again lived with his mother. Recounting this period in his life, he says, "In the place where I was a child, there were no artists and there was no art, so I really didn't know what that meant. I think I thought it meant that I would be in a situation different than the one that I was in." He began drawing when he was three and has continued doing art ever since. Johns studied at the University of South Carolina from 1947 to 1948, a total of three semesters. He then moved to New York City and studied briefly at the Parsons School of Design in 1949. In 1952 and 1953 he was stationed in Sendai, Japan during the Korean War.
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Laurence John Fishburne III is an American film and stage actor, playwright, director, and producer. He is perhaps best known for his roles as... Morpheus in the Matrix science fiction film trilogy, as Cowboy Curtis on the 1980's television show Pee-wee's Playhouse, and as singer-musician Ike Turner in the Tina Turner biopic What's Love Got to Do With It. He became the first African American to portray Othello in a motion picture by a major studio when he appeared in Oliver Parker's 1995 film adaptation of the Shakespeare play. From 2008 to 2011, he starred as Dr. Raymond Langston on the CBS crime drama CSI: Crime Scene Investigation. Fishburne has won a Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Play for his performance in Two Trains Running and an Emmy Award for Drama Series Guest Actor for his performance in TriBeCa . Fishburne was born in Augusta, Georgia, the son of Hattie Bell , a junior high school mathematics and science teacher, and Laurence John Fishburne, Jr., a juvenile corrections officer. His parents divorced during his childhood, and he moved with his mother to Brooklyn, New York, where he was raised.
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Joseph Wheeler was an American military commander and politician. He has the rare distinction of serving as a general during war time for two... opposing forces: first as a noted cavalry general in the Confederate States Army in the 1860s during the American Civil War, and later as a general in the United States Army during both the Spanish-American War and Philippine-American War near the turn-of-the-twentieth-century. For much of the Civil War he served as the senior cavalry general in the Army of Tennessee and fought in most of its battles in the Western Theater. Between the Civil War and the Spanish-American War, Wheeler served multiple terms as a United States Representative from the state of Alabama. Although of New England ancestry, Joseph Wheeler was born near Augusta, Georgia and spent most of his early life growing up with relatives in Connecticut. However, he was appointed to the United States Military Academy at West Point from the state of Georgia and always considered himself a Georgian and Southerner. Wheeler entered West Point in July 1854, barely meeting the height requirement at the time for entry.
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Terry Gene Bollea , better known by his ring name Hulk Hogan, is an American professional wrestler, actor, television personality, and musician... currently signed to Total Nonstop Action Wrestling . Hogan enjoyed mainstream popularity in the mid 1980s through the early 1990s as the all-American character Hulk Hogan in the World Wrestling Federation , and was notable in the mid-to-late 1990s as Hollywood Hogan, the villainous nWo leader, in World Championship Wrestling . Following the closure of WCW, he made a brief return to WWE in the early 2000s, revising his heroic character by combining elements of his two most famous personas. Hogan was later inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame in 2005. He is a 12-time world champion being a six-time WWF/WWE Champion, six-time WCW World Heavyweight Champion, as well as a former WWE World Tag Team Champion with Edge. He won the Royal Rumble in 1990 and 1991, and was the first to win two Royal Rumbles in a row. He was also the first WWE wrestler to win the WWE Championship, three times.
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Jasper Johns, Jr. is an American contemporary artist who works primarily in painting and printmaking. Born in Augusta, Georgia, Jasper Johns spent... his early life in Allendale, South Carolina with his paternal grandparents after his parents' marriage failed. He then spent a year living with his mother in Columbia, South Carolina and thereafter he spent several years living with his aunt Gladys in Lake Murray, South Carolina, twenty-two miles from Columbia. He completed high school in Sumter, South Carolina, where he once again lived with his mother. Recounting this period in his life, he says, "In the place where I was a child, there were no artists and there was no art, so I really didn't know what that meant. I think I thought it meant that I would be in a situation different than the one that I was in." He began drawing when he was three and has continued doing art ever since. Johns studied at the University of South Carolina from 1947 to 1948, a total of three semesters. He then moved to New York City and studied briefly at the Parsons School of Design in 1949. In 1952 and 1953 he was stationed in Sendai, Japan during the Korean War.
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Laurence John Fishburne III is an American film and stage actor, playwright, director, and producer. He is perhaps best known for his roles as... Morpheus in the Matrix science fiction film trilogy, as Cowboy Curtis on the 1980's television show Pee-wee's Playhouse, and as singer-musician Ike Turner in the Tina Turner biopic What's Love Got to Do With It. He became the first African American to portray Othello in a motion picture by a major studio when he appeared in Oliver Parker's 1995 film adaptation of the Shakespeare play. From 2008 to 2011, he starred as Dr. Raymond Langston on the CBS crime drama CSI: Crime Scene Investigation. Fishburne has won a Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Play for his performance in Two Trains Running and an Emmy Award for Drama Series Guest Actor for his performance in TriBeCa . Fishburne was born in Augusta, Georgia, the son of Hattie Bell , a junior high school mathematics and science teacher, and Laurence John Fishburne, Jr., a juvenile corrections officer. His parents divorced during his childhood, and he moved with his mother to Brooklyn, New York, where he was raised.
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Joseph Wheeler was an American military commander and politician. He has the rare distinction of serving as a general during war time for two... opposing forces: first as a noted cavalry general in the Confederate States Army in the 1860s during the American Civil War, and later as a general in the United States Army during both the Spanish-American War and Philippine-American War near the turn-of-the-twentieth-century. For much of the Civil War he served as the senior cavalry general in the Army of Tennessee and fought in most of its battles in the Western Theater. Between the Civil War and the Spanish-American War, Wheeler served multiple terms as a United States Representative from the state of Alabama. Although of New England ancestry, Joseph Wheeler was born near Augusta, Georgia and spent most of his early life growing up with relatives in Connecticut. However, he was appointed to the United States Military Academy at West Point from the state of Georgia and always considered himself a Georgian and Southerner. Wheeler entered West Point in July 1854, barely meeting the height requirement at the time for entry.
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Faith Prince is an American actress and singer known primarily for her work on Broadway. Prince has won the Tony Award as Best Actress in a Musical... and received three Tony nominations. Prince was born in Augusta, Georgia, and raised in Lynchburg, Virginia, where she participated in theater at E.C. Glass High School and then studied theater at the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music. She made her Broadway debut as the Gypsy character Tessie Tura in Jerome Robbins' Broadway and followed this with a role in the ill-fated Nick & Nora. She established herself as a Broadway star with her portrayal of Adelaide in the 1992 revival of Guys and Dolls, for which she won both the Tony and Drama Desk Award as Best Actress in a Musical. In 2001, Prince was once again nominated for Tony and Drama Desk Awards for her portrayal of Ella Peterson in the 2001 revival of Bells Are Ringing. Prince was featured in the 2008 Broadway musical A Catered Affair, for which she received Tony and Drama Desk nominations. She appeared in a concert version of Sweeney Todd with the Orlando Philharmonic Orchestra in Orlando, Florida in March 2009.
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Jessye Norman is an American opera singer. Norman is a well-known contemporary opera singer and recitalist, and is among some of the most highly... successful performers in classical music. A dramatic soprano, Norman is associated in particular with the Wagnerian repertoire, and with the roles of Sieglinde, Ariadne, Alceste, and Leonore. Jessye Mae Norman was born on September 15, 1945 in Augusta, Georgia to Silas Norman, an insurance salesman, and Janie King-Norman, a school teacher. She was one of five children in a family of amateur musicians; her mother and grandmother were both pianists, her father a singer in a local choir. Norman's mother insisted that she start piano lessons at an early age. Norman attended Charles T. Walker Elementary School, A.R. Johnson Junior High School, and Lucy C. Laney Senior High School, all in downtown Augusta. Norman proved to be a talented singer as a young child, singing gospel songs at Mount Calvary Baptist Church at the age of four. At the age of nine, Norman heard opera for the first time on the radio and was immediately an opera fan.
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Danielle Nicole Panabaker is an American actress. She was a cast member in the CBS drama Shark, and appeared in the films Mr. Brooks, Sky High, The... Crazies and Friday the 13th, among other projects. She is best known to younger audiences for her roles in the Disney Channel films Stuck in the Suburbs and Read It and Weep along with her younger sister Kay Panabaker. Panabaker was born in Augusta, Georgia, to Donna and Harold Panabaker. Her younger sister, Kay Panabaker, is also an actress. Danielle moved for a short time to Orange, TX, around her kindergarten year. Panabaker took a theater class at a summer camp and discovered her enjoyment in acting, so she started acting in community theaters at the age of 12, later auditioning for commercials. After moving to Naperville, Illinois, Panabaker went to Crone Middle School and later Neuqua Valley High School in Naperville and participated in the speech team. She graduated from high school as valedictorian when she was only 14 years old. Later, feeling it was the only way to land acting roles regularly, Panabaker relocated to Los Angeles, California in order to pursue an acting career.
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