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One of the best goalies in the history of NHL ,Dominik Hasek, announced on Monday that we was retiring from hockey. He began to play for NHL (Chicago Blackhawks) in 1990 and over his 18-year long career Dominik managed to win the Stanley Cup (twice!), the NHL’s Hart Trophy (twice!), the Vezina prize for the best goalie (6 times!!) and other trophies. Of course, we cannot forget the fact that he led the Czech Republic to Olympic Gold at Nagano in 1998. I remember that year like it was yesterday. The streets of Prague were filled with thousands of drunk and ecstatic Czechs like never before - one would have thought that we had won the World War or something! (more…)

My parents were avid tennis players so we used to watch Lendl play on our black-and-white TV, the one where you had to painfully twist the buttons to get somewhat of a clear picture. The image was never great but good enough for us to see the moving tennis ball….and the dazzling Ivan Lendl. Ivan was born in 1960 to a couple of prominent tennis players from Ostrava, Czech Republic. Ivan became a professional tennis player at the age of 18 when he won both the French open as well as the Wimbledon and was ranked no.1 junior player. In 1981 he managed to emigrate to the US where he lived for a while with his lifelong coach, the famous polish tennis player, Wojtek Fibak. It was Wojtek who introduced him to his current wife, Samantha, a friend of Fibak’s family. (more…)

An artist is someone who produces things that people don’t need to have but that he - for some reason - thinks it would be a good idea to give them.

(Andy Warhol)

Anyone who takes himself too seriously always runs the risk of looking ridiculous; anyone who can consistently laugh at himself does not.”

(Vaclav Havel) (more…)

He had taught for over 30 years at the UCLA where he had molded the minds of over 13,000 students. In 2001 he received the Nusle prize for his life works…. Miroslav Plavec was one of the front astronomers of the 20th century. His early works dealt with meteor showers, but he is also widely known for his studies of close binaries, especially of mass transfer in binary systems. Plavec was born in Sedlcany in 1925. During the Nazi occupation Miroslav’s father was arrested and taken to the concentration camp where he had died 6 months later. Being the oldest sibling, Miroslav became the head of the family and decided to move with his mother and a younger brother to Ondrejov, a home of the Ondrejov’s observatory. (more…)

Have you decided who would you like to be the future president of the Czech Republic? Svejnar or Klaus? Are you still undecided? When the lidovky.cz survey asked people who would they pick to be a new Czech president, these were the results:

• 921 voted for Klaus
• 524 voted for Svejnar (more…)
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Ray Kroc was born in 1902 in Chicago, Illinois. His Czech grandparents, however, came to he US from Stupno (near Pilsen). In 1917 a 15-year old Kroc lied about his age and joined the Red Cross as an ambulance driver. He never left for Europe though because the war ended. Disappointed Kroc had to find work to feed himself. He played the piano for a radio station during nights and functioned as a salesman of paper cups during the day. Later on he obtained exclusive marketing rights for selling the five-spindle multimixer - the miracle of speed and efficiency of that time. For next 17 years Kroc traveled the US selling these mixers until he encountered the San Bernardino restaurant in California, owned by Dick and Mac McDonald brothers. This simple-menu hamburger restaurant ordered 8 mixers on the spot. Kroc was quite blown away by the restaurant’s efficiency and offered the owners a partnership where his part would be building McDonald’s stores across the USA. Kroc says: “I was 52 years old. I had diabetes and incipient arthritis. I had lost my gall bladder and most of my thyroid gland in earlier campaigns, but I was convinced that the best was ahead of me.” (more…)

Ingenious Czech-American Jan Tomas Forman (his formal name) was born in Caslavi on Febuary 18th, 1932.Both of his parents (Jewish father and protestant mother) died in Auschwitz concentration camp when he was just a little boy. What was the reason? His father belonged to the Czech Resistance group and his mother was dealing with an illegal grocery trade. The rest of his childhood/adulthood spent Forman living with his distant relatives as well as at the dorms of Podebrady’s public school. There he also met young Vaclav Havel (1st president of the Czech Republic) and Masin brothers ( who later started an armed anti-Communist resistance). After finishing high school he tried to get into the the University of Acting (DAMU) in Prague but without success. His second choice was the University of Film (FAMU), also located in Prague, and this time was Forman accepted. He graduated in 1968. His first major movie became the black-humored comedy “Cerny Petr” (Black Peter; 1963), which was followed by another debut “Loves of a Blond” (Lasky jedne plavovlasky; 1965). In 1967 he finished the “Fireman’s ball” (Hori, ma panenko; 1967), which was quickly forbidden by the government because it was “making fun of the common man”. When the Soviet tanks rumbled into Prague in 1968 Milos was in Paris working on his first American movie “Taking off”. The Czech studio for which he worked fired him, claiming that he had left the country illegally. Those circumstances led him to leave Europe and come to America where people already loved him for his unique film-making skills. Compared to the recently deceased Jan Benes (see my recent post on him), Forman’s first job in the United States was quite a breeze: he accepted a position as a professor of film at the Columbia University.

The first movie that made him famous in the New World was adaptation of Ken Kesey’s novel “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” (1974) which won him five Oscars. Few years later Forman created “Amadeus“, another piece of art, which won him eight Oscars!

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