Fado fado 25 years ago

I've written abit about my father, from growing up on the quayside at Dunmore East to his exciting war in small ships. 25 years after the picture captured in the first link, he was caught [cropped R], all pensive and/or embarrassed, at another seaside location with my mother [off stage R]. He was an only child, doted on by a handful of Victorian vintage maiden aunts and some of their buttoned-up primness descended upon his shoulders. We're not sure where or when he started to hoover up, and retain, facts obtained from books. He read a lot, and widely, and in another life and time he might have been an Oxbridge don. Indeed, he used to articulate a fantasy that, if the family hadn't sent him to join the UK navy aged 14, he might have gone to college to read History. Whence he would have been called up in 1940 and, shortly thereafter, been killed in the Western Desert. 

As we all know, he survived WWII, and continued to read [so many books] all through the rest of the 20thC. Indeed, aged 80, he enrolled in a speed-reading course because the books on his bedside table (and on other surfaces through the house) were accumulating faster than he could get through them.  It was, in hindsight, kinda weird: what did he hope to Do with all the data which he had warehoused in his mind. If his kids tried to tap into it [What's the capital of El Salvador, Daddy? How do you spell lighthouse? What treaty ended the War of Spanish Succession? What happened to Voltaire's library after he died? ], his standard response was to tetchily invite us to "look it up!". He died in the wee hours of 15th Jan 2001, 25 years ago this week, having fallen down the stairs encumbered by more reading material. 

A few hours later, Jimmy Wales uploaded the first words ["Hello World" apparently] into what grew into Wikipedia. Wikipedia is not without its detractors: critics of both its policies [deadnaming etc.] and product [invisible women etc.]. Oh and more MeFi Wikipedia knockers. But I've been coffing up supportive donations on the regular for ten years and <new policy> I use Wikipedia as my primary search engine [works really well for Central American capital cities]. I like the idea that, during the great transition, my father downloaded 80 years of accumulated knowledge and it was captured by the Great Wikipedia Ouija Board. 

And [bonus] a Wikipedia Quiz. I clicked on Random Article until I got ten people, each from a different country and 'notable' for a different thing. Then sorted each category alphabetically. Women are not invisible but the sex-ratio i'nt great. Your task, should you choose to accept it, is the match up the data. And No scientists! Personal name shd be a hypertext link to the answer.

Who	Whence	What
Andrew Napier	Canadian	actor
Boris Gusman	English	composer
Bruce Carlson	Filipino	cricketer
Isabel Toua	German	FilmProducer
Jim Dale	Netherlands	linguist
Julia Dahmen	PapuaNG	musician
Lope Santos	Poland	NotAPerson
Štefan Maixner	Russian	politician
Tofik Dibi	Slovak	singer
Żeromin Drugi	USA	SoccerPlayer

 For all its faults we're better off for Wikipedia