ENGLISH FOR GRADUATE STUDENTSExcuse NotesExcuses, ExcusesFrank McCourt was born in Brooklyn, New York, to Irish immigrant parents. Unable to find work in the depths of the Depression, the McCourts returned to Ireland, where they sunk deeper into the poverty McCourt describes so movingly in his memoir, Angelas Ashes. About the authorMcCourts father, an alcoholic, was often without work. He drank up what little money he earned and eventually abandoned the family altogether. Three of the seven children died of diseases aggravated by malnutrition and the squalor of their surroundings. Frank McCourt himself nearly died of typhoid fever when he was ten. Despite the horrors of McCourts childhood, he told his story with humor, brilliant description, and deep compassion for his family, even for the shiftless father who instilled in him a love of language and storytelling. After quitting school at 13, Frank McCourt alternated between odd jobs and petty crime in an effort to feed himself, his mother, and four surviving brothers and sisters. At 19, he returned to the United States and worked at odd jobs until he was drafted into the United States Army at the onset of the Korean War. McCourt spent the war stationed in Germany and on his return to civilian life was able to pursue a college education on the G.I. Bill. Although he had never attended high school, he was able to persuade the admissions office of New York University to accept him as a student. Although his childhood interest in language and storytelling were fed by creative writing classes and his own constant reading, he did not feel ready to pursue as career as a professional writer. On graduation, he went to work for the New York City Public School system, where he taught for the next 27 years.After years of teaching creative writing to young people, McCourt determined to write his own life story. Angelas Ashes sold over 4 million copies, has been published in 27 countries and has been translated into 17 languages. It won McCourt the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Award, the ABBY Award and the Pulitzer Prize for Biography.His second book, Tis, picked up the story of his life where Angelas Ashes left off, with his arrival in America at age 19. It shot to the top of the best-seller lists as soon as it was published. His 2005 memoir, Teacher Man, chronicled his 27-year career in the New York City school system. Like its predecessor, it was an instant bestseller. Frank McCourt died in New York City at the age of 78. Attila (A.D. 406453), also known as Attila the Hun, was the Emperor of the Huns from 434 until his death in 453. He was leader of the Hunnic Empire which stretched from Germany to the Ural River and from the River Danube to the Baltic Sea During his rule, he was one of the most fearsome of the Western and Eastern Roman Empires enemies: he invaded the Balkans twice and marchedthrough Gaul (modern France) as far as Orleans before being defeated at the Battle of Chalons. He refrained from attacking either Constantinople or Rome. His story, that the Sword of Attila had come to his hand by miraculous means, was reported by the Roman Priscus Lee Harvey Oswald (October 18, 1939 November 24, 1963) was, according to three United States government investigations, the assassin of U.S. President John F. Kennedy, who was fatally shot on November 22, 1963, in Dallas, Texas. An Ex United States Marine who defected to the Soviet Union and later returned, Oswald was arrested on suspicion of killing Dallas police officer J. D. Tippit and later connected to the assassination of President Kennedy. Oswald denied any responsibility for the murders. Two days later, while being transferred under police custody from the city jail to the county jail, Oswald was shot and mortally wounded by Jack Ruby on live television. In 1964 the Warren Commission concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald assassinated President John F. Kennedy single-handedly, a conclusion also reached by prior investigations of the FBI and the Dallas Police Department. In 1979, the United States House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) concluded, based largely on outdated acoustic evidence, that Oswald assassinated Kennedy “probably as a result of a conspiracy.”Julius Rosenberg (May 12, 1918 June 19, 1953) and Ethel Greenglass Rosenberg (September 28, 1915 June 19, 1953) were American communists who were executed in 1953 after having been found guilty of conspiracy to commit espionage. The charges were in relation to the passing of information about the atomic bomb to the Soviet Union. Their execution was the first of civilians, for espionage, in United States history. Al Capone is Americas best known gangster and the single greatest symbol of the collapse of law and order in the United States during the 1920s Prohibi