6. eli

ELI Whitney is the inventor of the cotton gin. While Whitney created other inventions during his lifetime and was very connected to the firearms trade, he is most well known for the cotton gin. The cotton gin, which could remove the seeds from more than fifty pounds of cotton a day, contributed to the perpetuation of slavery in the South. He and his business partner Phineas Miller intended not to sell the cotton gin but to provide the service of “cleaning” the cotton for a proposed 40 percent of the crop. Farmers were outraged by the proposal. Their reaction along with the relative simplicity of the invention and the loose nature of the patent process at the time resulted in the manufacture of copycat machines and disputes over the ownership of advances associated with the invention.

Whitney was a graduate of Yale University and was well-connected both to other people associated with the institution and prominent members of New Haven, Connecticut, society. The Eli Whitney Student Program allows students to enter Yale College (the undergraduate program at Yale University) on a part- or full-time basis. Students matriculating under the banner of the program are typically older than students enrolling as graduating high school applicants.

Yale students are often called Elis not after Eli Whitney but after the benefactor Elihu Yale.Yale earned his fortune as part of the British East India Company and was also the second governor of a settlement at Madras (present-day Chennai) in India. In 1701, at the behest of Cotton Mather, Yale donated a crate of goods to the Collegiate School of Connecticut. The merchandise was sold, and the money earned from the sale was put toward a new building. The building—and eventually the entire college—was named after Yale.

Eli Wallach is an actor who started on Broadway stages before earning film and television roles. He won a Tony Award in 1951 for his portrayal of Alvaro Mangiaco in Tennessee Williams’s The Rose Tattoo. His most memorable film role is arguably that of Tuco in Il buono, il brutto, il cattivo, a “spaghetti Western” known in English as The Good, the Bad, and The Ugly. The term spaghetti Western was originally a put-down applied to a string of Westerns produced in Italy beginning in the 1960s. Spaghetti Westerns were more violent and made use of more minimalist cinematography than conventional Westerns up until that time. A Fistful of Dollars (1964) and My Name Is Nobody (1974) are also considered part of the genre.

Eli Manning is the quarterback for the New York Giants and the Most Valuable Player for the Super Bowl of 2008. He led his team on a successful fourth-quarter drive against the New England Patriots, who until the Super Bowl had had an undefeated season. A memorable highlight of the drive was a third-down reception by David Tyree by a ball that was thrown high by Manning. Manning had eluded a sack and hurled the ball for a resultant first down. Plaxico Burress scored the game-winning touchdown a few minutes later. Manning’s brother Peyton, a member of the Indianapolis Colts, had been named Super Bowl MVP the year before.