then part of Soviet Union). He was the first high school student from Latvia to participate in the International Mathematical Olympiad. On 9 April 1969, Rips (who was a 20-year old graduate student at the University of Latvia at that time) attempted self-immolation in a protest against the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia.
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Mikhail Nikolaevich Baryshnikov (born January 28, 1948) is a Soviet-born Russian American dancer, choreographer, and actor, often cited alongside Vaslav Nijinsky and Rudolf Nureyev as one of the greatest ballet dancers of the 20th century. After a promising start in the Kirov Ballet in Leningrad, he defected to Canada in 1974 for more opportunities in western dance. After freelancing with many companies, he joined the New York City Ballet as a principal dancer to learn George Balanchine's style of movement.
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Friedrich Zander, often transliterated Fridrikh Arturovich Tsander, was a pioneer of rocketry and spaceflight in the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union. He designed the first liquid-fuelled rocket to be launched in the Soviet Union, GIRD-X, and made many important theoretical contributions to the road to space.
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Laila Ligita Freivalds (born 22 June 1942) is a Swedish Social Democratic politician and a former Swedish Minister for Justice, Minister for Foreign Affairs and Deputy Prime Minister. Freivalds was born in Riga, Reichskommissariat Ostland, during World War II, and escaped to Sweden with her family. She graduated with a Candidate of Law (juris kandidat) from Uppsala University in 1970 after which she served in the Swedish Court System until 1976.
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Sandis Ozoliņš (born August 3, 1972) is a Latvian ice hockey player and captain for Dinamo Riga of the Kontinental Hockey League. During his career in North America (in the NHL), Ozoliņš was a seven-time NHL All-Star, Stanley Cup champion, Norris Trophy finalist, the all-time leader for goals, assists, points and games played by a Latvian in the NHL, holds several Colorado Avalanche and San Jose Sharks franchise records and was the highest paid sportsman in Latvian history, after NBA basketball player Andris Biedriņš succeeded him.
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Leo Michelson was an American artist considered part of the École de Paris, although his works span many periods and styles.
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Indra Devi, born as Eugenie Peterson in Riga, Livonia, was an early disciple of Sri Tirumalai Krishnamacharya, and herself became a renowned yoga teacher. Born in Riga, she also acted in some Hindi films. Born in Riga to Vasili Peterson, a Swedish bank director and Alejandra Labunskaia, a Russian noblewoman, Eugenie attended drama school in Moscow as a girl and escaped to Berlin with her mother as Bolsheviks came to power in 1917.
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George Swede, (born as Juris Puriņš, November 20, 1940 in Riga, Latvia) is a Canadian psychologist, poet and children's writer who lives in Toronto, Ontario. He is a major figure in English-language haiku, known for his wry, poignant observations.
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Juris Hartmanis is a prominent computer scientist and computational theorist who, with Richard E. Stearns, received the 1993 ACM Turing Award \"in recognition of their seminal paper which established the foundations for the field of computational complexity theory\". Hartmanis was born in Latvia. He was a son of Mārtiņš Hartmanis, a general in the Latvian Army. After the Soviet Union occupied Latvia in 1940, Martins Hartmanis was arrested by Soviets and died in a prison.
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Nicolai Hartmann was a German philosopher.
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Leor Dimant, better known as DJ Lethal, is a turntablist and producer. He is best known as a member of the band Limp Bizkit, and formerly a member of the Irish-American-influenced hip hop group House of Pain. Currently, DJ Lethal is the main producer of hip hop group La Coka Nostra, which includes his former House of Pain mates Everlast and Danny Boy, among others. The group's debut album A Brand You Can Trust was released on July 14, 2009.
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Anatoly Yakovlevich Solovyev is a former Soviet pilot, cosmonaut, and Colonel. Solovyev holds the world record on the number of spacewalks performed (16), and accumulated time spent spacewalking (over 82 hours).
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Helmuts Balderis-Sildedzis (born June 30, 1952) is a retired Latvian ice hockey player. He played right wing.
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Vasiliy Vasilievich Ulrikh (July 13, 1889 – May 7, 1951) was a senior judge of the Soviet Union during most of the regime of Joseph Stalin. In this capacity, Ulrikh served as the presiding judge at many of the major show trials of the Great Purges in the Soviet Union.
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Philippe Halsman was a Latvian-born American portrait photographer.
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Imants Kalniņš is one of the most important composers in the history of Latvian music. Having studied classical, as well as choral music, he has written six symphonies, several operas (including the first rock opera in the USSR, Ei, jūs tur!), oratorios, cantatas, choir songs, a lot of movie and theater music. However, he is generally best known for his rock songs and is to be considered the first composer of intellectual rock music.E 
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Edward Leedskalnin (August 10, 1887, Riga – December 7, 1951, Miami) was an eccentric Latvian emigrant to the United States and amateur sculptor who, it is alleged, single-handedly built the monument known as Coral Castle in Florida. He was also known for his unusual theories on magnetism.
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Kārlis Skrastiņš is a Latvian professional ice hockey defenceman currently playing for the Dallas Stars of the National Hockey League (NHL).
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Georg August Schweinfurth (December 29, 1836 – September 19, 1925) was a German botanist, traveller in East Central Africa and ethnologist. He was born at Riga, Latvia, then part of the Russian Empire. He was educated at the universities of Heidelberg, Munich and Berlin (1856-1862), where he particularly devoted himself to botany and palaeontology. Commissioned to arrange the collections brought from the Sudan by Freiherr von Barnim and Dr Hartmann, his attention was directed to that region; and in 1863 he travelled round the shores of the Red Sea, repeatedly traversed the district between that sea and the Nile, passed on to Khartum, and returned to Europe in 1866.
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William \"Ito\" Rebane is a film director, producer, screenwriter, and author. He is best known for low budget horror movies such as Monster A Go-Go and The Giant Spider Invasion. Rebane also ran for governor of Wisconsin in 2002 as the American Reform Party candidate. He had previously run for the position in 1979.
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Charles Ivars Kalme (November 15, 1939 – March 20, 2002) was an American International Master of chess recognized by FIDE, the World Chess Federation, and a mathematician. Kalme was born in Riga, Latvia on November 15, 1939. At the conclusion of World War II, Kalme and what was left of his family fled Latvia, lived for years in a Displaced persons camp in Germany and finally arrived in Philadelphia in the United States in 1951.
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Vladimirs Mamonovs is a Latvian professional ice hockey player. He plays Left Wing. He currently plays for HK Liepajas Metalurgs of the Belarusian Extraliga.
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Herberts Vasiļjevs is a Latvian ice hockey player who plays as a center and right winger. He currently plays for Krefeld Pinguine of DEL.
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Vizma Belševica was a Latvian poetess, writer and translator. She was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature.
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Kārlis Padegs (1911–1940) is one of Latvia's most popular artists. He studied under noted Latvian painter Vilhelms Purvitis at the Latvia Art Academy. Padegs' style was original and shocking - using themes which were very iconoclastic at the time.
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Georgijs Pujacs is a Latvian ice hockey defencemen who is currently plays for HC Sibir Novosibirsk of the Kontinental Hockey League (KHL).
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Aigars Cipruss is a Latvian professional ice hockey player currently playing for HK Ozolnieki/Monarhs hockey club. Until then he played for Dinamo Riga of the Kontinental Hockey League, and served as manager for this team and was coach in its farm club.
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Jazeps Grosvalds (April 24, 1891 – February 1, 1920) was a Latvian painter from Riga. He is now regarded as one of Latvia's finest painters and has several works on display in the Latvian National Museum of Art. His style is a combination of European Modernism and Abstract with a distinctly Latvian influence. A student of Simon Hollósy's school in Munich, Grosvalds went to Paris in 1910 where he studied at several private academies until 1914.
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Jeļena Rubļevska (born March 23, 1976 in Riga) is a Latvian modern pentathlete who won silver medal at the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens, Greece
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Armands Bērziņš is an ice hockey centre. He played for Dinamo Riga of the Kontinental Hockey League. He never played in the National Hockey League, but was drafted by the Minnesota Wild in the 2002 NHL Entry Draft, 155th overall.
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Jānis Liepiņš (August 9, 1894 – September 2, 1964) was a Latvian painter from Riga. He studied at J Madernieks Studio in Riga between 1909-1910, in Kazan 1911-1913 and M Bernstein's Studio in St Petersburg 1913-1917. He was a member of the Riga Artists' Group and Professor of painting at the Art Academy of Latvia 1940-1950. During the 1920s Liepiņš was active in the left-wing press. Liepiņš is credited with having introduces a fisherman's theme in Latvian genre painting, he also created still lifes of various subjects (tavern scenes, gamblers, peasants' life) drawing attention to the social aspects.
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Dmitrijs Miļkevičs (born December 6, 1981 in Riga) is a Latvian athlete competing in 400 m and 800 m.
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Mārtiņš Karsums is a Latvian professional ice hockey player currently playing as a right winger for Dinamo Riga of the Kontinental Hockey League (KHL). Karsums was selected in the second round, 64th overall, in the 2004 NHL Entry Draft by the Boston Bruins. He has also played for the Tampa Bay Lightning.
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Pranas Morkūnas (October 9, 1900 - December 28, 1941) - Lithuanian translator and poet dadaist.
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Eliezer Halfin (June 18, 1948 – September 6, 1972) was a wrestler for the Israeli Olympic team at the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, Germany. Along with 10 other athletes and coaches he was taken hostage by Palestinian Black September terrorists. Eventually they were brought to a German airport and during an attempted rescue mission staged by the German police all the hostages died. Eliezer was a mechanic by profession and was born in Riga, USSR.
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Jacob W. Davis (Youphes) was born in Riga, in 1831 and came to Reno, Nevada in June 1868. A tailor, Davis used small copper rivets to reinforce and strengthen items including harnesses. In 1871, a woman approached Davis to make pants for her husband, who was quite large. Davis decided to use the copper rivets to reinforce stress points in the pants. At the time, Davis made tents and wagon covers with cotton duck cloth, an off-white canvas-type material he bought from Levi Strauss & Co a San Francisco merchant.
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Inessa Galante is a Latvian soprano opera singer.
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Vera Ignatyevna Mukhina was a prominent Soviet sculptor.
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Ivan Klementjev is a Soviet-born Latvian politician and former sprint canoer who competed from the mid 1980s to the late 1990s. He won three Olympic medals in C-1 1000 m at the 1988, 1992 and 1996 Summer Olympics. The highlight was the gold medal in 1988, which he won as a competitor for the USSR. He trained at Trudovye Rezervy and later at the Armed Forces sports society in Riga when Latvia was part of the Soviet Union.
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Annie “Londonderry” Cohen Kopchovsky (1870–1947) was the first woman to bicycle around the world. She was a free-thinking young woman, who reinvented herself as the daring “Annie Londonderry” — entrepreneur, athlete, and globetrotter.
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Edgars Masaļskis is a Latvian ice hockey goaltender, who currently plays for the Russian team HC Yugra of the Kontinental Hockey League. Masaļskis is the main goalkeeper for the Latvian National Ice Hockey Team, and has played for a number of clubs, with five seasons in Liepājas Metalurgs as his longest stay at any club.H 
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Jānis Sprukts is a Latvian professional ice hockey forward, who currently is playing for KHL team Dinamo Riga. Last year he spent in North America, playing 12 games for Florida Panthers
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Mstislav Vsevolodovich Keldysh was a Soviet scientist in the field of mathematics and mechanics, academician of the USSR Academy of Sciences (1946), President of the USSR Academy of Sciences (1961–1975), three times Hero of Socialist Labor (1956, 1961, 1971), fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (1968). He was one of the key figures behind Soviet space program. Among scientific circles of USSR Keldysh was known with epithet \"the Chief Theoretician\" in analogy with epithet \"the Chief Designer\" used for Sergey Korolyov.
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Valērijs Ivanovs (born February 23, 1970 in Riga) is a former football midfielder from Latvia. He played 69 international matches and scored 1 goal for the Latvia national team between 1992 and 2001. His clubs include FC Skonto (1995-1997), Helsingborgs, Uralan Elista, Shinnik Yaroslavl and Volgar GazProm Astrakhan.
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Heinz Erhardt (20 February 1909 in Riga – 5 June 1979 in Hamburg) was a German comedian, musician, entertainer, actor, and poet. Heinz Erhardt was the son of Baltic German Kapellmeister Gustl Erhardt. He lived most of his childhood at his grandparents in Riga, where his grandfather, Paul Nelder, owned a music house. His grandfather also taught him how to play the piano; Erhardt's wish to become a professional pianist was not supported by his grandparents who wanted him to work as a merchant.
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Raivis Belohvoščiks (born 21 January 1976 in Riga) is a Latvian professional road bicycle racer who specializes in individual time trial events. He is five-time Latvian national champion. In 2006 he signed 2 year contract with UCI ProTour team Saunier Duval-Prodir, but this was not renewed for the 2009 season. In 2010, he rides for Ceramica Flaminia.L 
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Piotr Ugrumov (Rus. Пётр Угрюмов) (born January 21, 1961 in Riga) is a former professional road racing cyclist from Latvia who represented Russia in cycling at the 1992 Summer Olympics. His career as a professional lasted from 1989 to 1999, he had ten victories. He is an ethnic-Russian.
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Heinz Christian Pander, name sometimes given as Christian Heinrich Pander (24 July 1794 - 22 September 1865) was a Russian biologist and embryologist who was born in Riga. In 1817 he received his doctorate from the University of Würzburg, and spent several years (1827-1842), performing scientific research from his estate in Carnikava (Zarnikau) on banks of river Gauja near Riga. In 1820 he took part in a scientific expedition to Bokhara as a naturalist, and in 1826 became a member of the St.
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Gunnar Birkerts is a prominent American architect, who, for most of his career, was based in southeastern Michigan. Some of his designs include the Corning Museum