I. M. Pei (born 1917) is a Chinese American architect, often called a master of modern architecture. Born in Guangzhou, in 1935 he moved to the United States. While enrolled at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he became unhappy with the school's focus Beaux-Arts architecture, and spent his free time researching the emerging architects, especially Le Corbusier. After graduating, he joined the Harvard Graduate School of Design and formed a friendship with the Bauhaus architects Walter Gropius and Marcel Breuer. Pei spent ten years working with New York real estate magnate William Zeckendorf before establishing his own independent design firm that eventually became Pei Cobb Freed Partners. Among the early projects on which Pei took the lead were the L'Enfant Plaza Hotel in Washington, DC, and the Green Building at MIT. His first major recognition came with the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado; his new stature led to his selection as chief architect for the John F. Kennedy Library in Massachusetts. He went on to design Dallas City Hall and the East Building of the National Gallery of Art. In the early 1980s, Pei was the focus of controversy when he designed a glass-and-steel pyramid for the Louvre museum in Paris. Pei has won a wide variety of prizes and awards in the field of architecture, including the 1983 Pritzker Prize, sometimes called the Nobel Prize of architecture. He married Eileen Loo in 1939, with whom he has six children.

Read the rest of this article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I._M._Pei

_______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries:

1547:

Ivan the Terrible was crowned the first Tsar of Russia at the age of 16. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_IV_of_Russia

1605:

Book One of Don Quixote, El ingenioso hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha by Miguel de Cervantes, was first published in Madrid, Spain. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_Quixote

1917:

World War I: The German Empire sent the Zimmermann Telegram, a diplomatic proposal to Mexico to make war against the United States, which led in part to a U.S. declaration of war. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zimmermann_Telegram

1945:

World War II: Adolf Hitler and his staff moved into the Führerbunker, where he would eventually commit suicide. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F%C3%BChrerbunker

2008:

Five days after proposing lyrics for the wordless La Marcha Real, the Spanish national anthem, the Spanish Olympic Committee withdrew the proposal due to widespread criticism. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcha_Real

_____________________________ Wiktionary's word of the day:

twenty-five/eight (adv): (colloquial, hyperbolic) [[unceasingly http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/twenty-five/eight

___________________________ Wikiquote quote of the day:

Ours is an age which consciously pursues health, and yet only believes in the reality of sickness. The truths we respect are those born of affliction. We measure truth in terms of the cost to the writer in suffering — rather than by the standard of an objective truth to which a writer's words correspond. Each of our truths must have a martyr. --Susan Sontag http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Susan_Sontag