By Andrew Aloia BBC Sport Last updated on 11 October 2021 11 October 2021 . From the section Football Watson was a trailblazer who helped transform how football was played There are two murals of black footballers facing one another across an alleyway in Glasgow. One helped shape football as we know it, the other is Pele. Andrew Watson captained Scotland to a 6-1 win over England on his debut in 1881. He was a pioneer, the world's first black international, but for more than a century the significance of his achievements went unrecognised. Research conducted over the past three decades has left us with some biographical details: a man descended of slaves and of those who enslaved them, born in Guyana, raised to become an English gentleman and famed as one of Scottish football's first icons. And yet today, 100 years on from his death aged 64, Watson remains something of an enigma, the picture built around him a fractured one. His grainy, faded, sepia image evokes many differen
Get link
Facebook
X
Pinterest
Email
Other Apps
Inside Xanadu 2.0: Take a sneak peek into Bill and Melinda Gates’s Washington mansion
Bill Gates and Melinda’s 27-year-old marriage has come to an end. Picture: Anthony Bolante/Reuters
Inside Xanadu 2.0: Take a sneak peek into Bill and Melinda Gates’s Washington mansion
By Staff Reporter May 11, 2021
Questions have been asked as to who is likely to get Bill and Melinda Gates’ 6 100² lakeside mansion in Washington State once their divorce is settled.
But it would seem Melinda doesn’t really want it. In a profile in Fortune magazine published in 2008, she said when she arrived in Gates’ life the house caused her to have “a mini sort of personal crisis”.
It was partly built when she married Gates in 1994. She described it as “a bachelor’s dream and a bride’s nightmare… with enough software and hi-tech displays to make a newlywed feel as though she were living inside a video game”.
So with the help of interior designer Thierry Despont – who has worked on the Palm Court of New York’s Plaza Hotel, and the Ritz in Paris – she helped create a home for a family.
Read the latest Home Improver's digital magazine below
Even then she wasn’t entirely happy. She told the New York Times in 2019: “We won’t have that house forever. I’m actually really looking forward to the day that Bill and I live in a 140m² house.”
So what is the house like? An article in the NY Times, this time printed in 1995 – a year after the couple married – said the house is built as several pavilions into the side of a hill in the super-rich area of Medina, where Jeff Bizos also lives.
It had a 20m indoor/outdoor pool with its underwater sound system, a 230m² gym panelled with stone from a mountain in the Pacific Northwest, a trampoline room, an art decor cinema, and each room apparently has touch-pad controlled lighting, music and climate control.
Oddly for such an enormous home, it has a relatively modest seven bedrooms, but an eye-widening 23 – or 24 – bathrooms, depending on which source you believe. Outside there is a beach with sand imported, according to different reports, from either the Caribbean or Hawaii and a stream for salmon and trout.
It was dubbed Xanadu 2.0 by Gates’ biographers, after the home of the tycoon in the film Citizen Kane. And that, in turn, was a reference to the Coleridge poem that begins: “In Xanadu did Kubla Khan/ a stately pleasure-dome decree…”
WATCH VIDEO HERE
Fittingly, Gates’ Xanadu library has a dome, as well as two secret bookcases, one of which opens to reveal a hidden bar. And a 20-car garage has been built into the hillside. There are six kitchens.
The whole pile is valued at upward of $131 million. In 2009 property taxes were reported to be $1.063m. The details of the home – which opens on to Lake Washington – have been kept private by the Gates family, although in 2009 a tour of the property went for $35 000 at a charity auction, according to TechCrunch.
It is clad in Douglas fir and was designed by the architects James Cutler and Peter Bohlin. And the piece de resistance? A 40-year-old maple tree close to the driveway is one of Gates’ big loves. It is monitored by computer, and if at any point it becomes too dry, water is automatically pumped into it. Now that is something some of us could make good use of.
Analysis: Bill and Melinda Gates divorce
Tracey Coates joined us with analysis of the Bill and Melinda Gates divorce.
By Andrew Aloia BBC Sport Last updated on 11 October 2021 11 October 2021 . From the section Football Watson was a trailblazer who helped transform how football was played There are two murals of black footballers facing one another across an alleyway in Glasgow. One helped shape football as we know it, the other is Pele. Andrew Watson captained Scotland to a 6-1 win over England on his debut in 1881. He was a pioneer, the world's first black international, but for more than a century the significance of his achievements went unrecognised. Research conducted over the past three decades has left us with some biographical details: a man descended of slaves and of those who enslaved them, born in Guyana, raised to become an English gentleman and famed as one of Scottish football's first icons. And yet today, 100 years on from his death aged 64, Watson remains something of an enigma, the picture built around him a fractured one. His grainy, faded, sepia image evokes many differen
Academic rigour, journalistic flair COVID-19 Arts + Culture Business + Economy Education Environment + Energy Health + Medicine Politics Science + Technology In French Artist illustration of an exoplanet. dottedhippo/iStock via Getty Images Are there any planets outside of our solar system? July 19, 2021 2.06pm SAST Author Jean-Luc Margot Professor of Earth, Planetary, and Space Sciences, University of California, Los Angeles Disclosure statement Jean-Luc Margot receives funding from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the National Science Foundation, and philanthropists. Partners University of California provides funding as a founding partner of The Conversation US. The Conversation is funded by the National Research Foundation, eight universities, including the Cape Peninsula University of Technology, Rhodes University, Stellenbosch University and the Universities of Cape Town, Johannesburg, Kwa-Zulu Natal, Pretoria, and South Africa. It is hosted by the
There are a lot of people, but the oceans are very big. Rosley Majid/EyeEm via Getty Images If everyone on Earth sat in the ocean at once, how much would sea level rise? March 29, 2021 2.07pm SAST Author Tony E. Wong Assistant Professor of Mathematical Sciences, Rochester Institute of Technology Disclosure statement Tony E. Wong does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment. Partners Rochester Institute of Technology provides funding as a member of The Conversation US. The Conversation is funded by the National Research Foundation, eight universities, including the Cape Peninsula University of Technology, Rhodes University, Stellenbosch University and the Universities of Cape Town, Johannesburg, Kwa-Zulu Natal, Pretoria, and South Africa. It is hosted by the Universities of the Witwatersrand and Western Cape, the African
May 11, 2021
Comments
Post a Comment