Profession: Swimmer Biography: Aaron Peirsol is an American swimmer known for his backstroke. As a three-time Olympian, Peirsol captured seven Olympic medals which included five golds and two silvers. He notably set world records in the 200-meter backstroke and accrued thirty-six medals in major international competitions before retiring from the sport in 2011. Peirsol was born in Newport Beach, California, to parents Scott and Wella Peirsol. Alongside his younger sister Hayley, who also took to swimming, Peirsol developed his aquatic skills early.

Across Iowa’s corn country, huge machines with anteater snouts gulp the ears off 8-ft.-high cornstalks, an instant later spit golden kernels into self-contained bins. In California, packing machines out in the fields seal freshly picked lettuce heads in plastic, drop them into cardboard boxes, then dis gorge the boxes ready for market. On farms in the Southwest, machines work the fields with surgical precision, injecting minuscule broccoli seeds one by one into the soil at measured intervals.

Age: 31 Occupation: Actor Previous TIME 100 Appearances: 0 There is a version of Saturday Night Live that only exists in blog posts and E-mail inboxes, and in that world Andy Samberg is king. The comedian, now in his 5th season with the venerable sketch show, is a pioneer of the digital comedy short: a brief Internet video so funny and compulsively viral that users can't help but forward them along.

“There are no straight lines or sharp corners in nature,” Antonio Gaudi used to say. “Therefore, buildings must have no straight lines or sharp corners.” In the application of his precept, Catalan Architect Gaudi built some of the most fantastic structures in the world. The walls of a Gaudi designed apartment house rise like eroded cliffs; his roofs are undulating, and wrought-iron leaves bristle from his eaves and sills. Gaudi’s largest and most fantastic work is Barcelona’s awesome stone, iron and cement Church of the Holy Family.

Plenty of lovely music -- ineffably sweet and sad and evocative of a lost era -- runs through "Band in Berlin," an unlikely new entry on Broadway that mixes the pleasures of a novel cabaret act with the drearier stuff of a high-school history lecture, replete with slightly cheesy visual aids. Despite the handsome harmonizing by five supremely talented vocalists, "Band in Berlin" is not really a musical. Unfortunately, it's not really a play either, and the show is probably not distinguished enough as a unique theatrical experience to endear itself for long to demanding Broadway audiences.