On April 23, 1858 Max Karl Ernst Ludwig Planck was born in Kiel, Germany. He was the sixth child of a law professor at the University of Kiel. At the age of nine his interest in physics and mathematics was developed by his teacher Hermann Muller. When he graduated at the age of seventeen he…
Linus Carl Pauling was born in 1901 and died in 1994. He was an American chemist and physicist, whose investigations into the structure of molecules led to discoveries of how chemicals bond. Pauling was born in Portland, Oregon, on February 28, 1901, and educated at Oregon State College and the California Institute of Technology (Caltech).…
His Life Throughout history people have always looked up at the sky and wondered about the universe. Some just wonder while others attempt to solve this mystery. One of the people who had endeavored to solve it was Nicolaus Copernicus. Copernicus was born in the present day town of Torun, Poland in February of 1473.…
Babe Ruth, born George Ruth, Jr., is considered by many to be the greatest baseball player of all time. Everybody knows how great a hitter Babe was and how he virtually invented the home run. Not everybody knows how great of a pitcher Babe was, even though he was one of the best left-handed pitchers…
Tyrus Raymond Cobb was born December 18, 1886 in The Narrows, Georgia. His parents named him after the ancient Phoenician city of Tyre, which stubbornly refused to surrender to Alexander the Great. From the very beginning, he took after the city and became one of baseball’s most stubborn and hated men. The Georgia Peach, so-called,…
His career started when the local paper in Västervik (the town where he was born) had an advertisement about mini-tennis in the early 70s. It said “Day of tennis”. Luckily his mother Barbro read the article and liked it. The day after she sent her son to the tennis-school for beginners. At that time she…
Jim Abbott has led an eventfully life. He brought his college team to the championship in 1985, brought Team USA to gold in 1988, and threw a no hitter against the Cleveland Indians in 1993. These achievements are not what make him so special; what makes Jim Abbott even more remarkable is that he only…
Jesse Owens, one of the eight children in his family, one of the best track and field athletes of all time. He was born 1913, on a farm in the city of Danville Alabama, under his real name, James Cleveland Owens. He went to Fairmount Junior High School. Then he went on to high school where…
Tip was a man who was not bashful to call himself “a man of the house.” Thomas P. O’Neill was a person whose greatest charm was that he seemed “completely out-of-date as a politician.” (Clift) He was a gruff, drinking, card playing, backroom kind of guy. He had an image that political candidates pay consultants…
Robert Edward Lee was born of two distinguished Virginia families. He was a devoted son, an outstanding Westpoint cadet, and an United States army officer for thirty two years. He graduated second in his class. Lee started his impressive Military career as a Lieutenant in the Corps of Engineers. His first assignment was to work…
Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela is judged to be one of the greatest political leaders of modern times. Among his many accomplishments are the 1993 Nobel Peace Prize for his dedication to the fight against racial oppression in South Africa and establishing democracy there and becoming the president of South Africa in 1994 following their first multiracial…
Napoleon Bonaparte was born in 1769 and died in 1821. Napoleon was a military genius for the loyalty of his troops, and for his spectacular victories. The many change of the government in France, against the background of war, made possible the rise of a military dictator. Since childhood, Napoleon was taught strategies and tactics…
Benito Mussolini was the founder of Italian Fascism and premier of Italy ruling as a dictator from about 1925 until his dismissal in 1943. Mussolini was born to a socialist blacksmith. As a child he was unruly and undisciplined. He shared his father’s views picking up other ideas from authors of the time. Mussolini became…
Michelangelo Buonarroti was born in 1475. He was born in a small town called Caprese, in Tuscany, Italy. Michelangelo was one of the most famous artists of the Italian Renaissance. According to Charles de Tolnay Michelangelo’s three greatest works of his later life, were the Tomb of Pope Julius II, the Sistine Chapel ceiling, and…
Marie Antoinette was the wife of King Louis XVI of France. She was born in 1755 in France and was the daughter of the Great Emperor Francis I and Maria Theresa of Austria. Because her parents came from two countries at war with each other, their marriage formed a peace treaty. Marie was very spoiled…
Deng Xiaoping was a loyal communist who sacrificed his own life so his people could have a better one. During his long political career, he served as a Communist political commissioner of the 129th Division (Liu-Deng Army) from 1929 to 1949. As political commissioner he bravely and successfully fought the Nationalists. In 1945, he was…
Ernesto Guevara was born in l928. When he was two, he moved to Cordoba, Spain, because of asthma. As a young child, Guevara became interested in reading Marx, Engels, and Freud found in his father’s library. As he grew up, he watched the Spanish refugees from the Spanish Civil War fight against the fascist dictator,…
Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill was born at Blenheim Palace on Nov. 30, 1874. His father was Lord Randolph Churchill, who descended directly from the 1st duke of Marlborough, of whom Winston was to write a biography. His mother was Jennie Jerosme, an American. Churchill’s childhood was unhappy. He spent most of his time at…
Harry S. Truman. ”Early Life Harry S. Truman, the oldest of three children born to Martha Ellen Young Truman and John Anderson Truman, was born in his family’s small frame house in Lamar, Missouri, in 1884. Truman had no middle name; his parents apparently gave him the middle initial S. because two family relatives names…
The third president of the United States, a diplomat, statesman, architect, scientist, and philosopher, Thomas Jefferson is one of the most eminent figures in American history. No leader in the period of the American Enlightenment was as articulate, wise, or conscious of the implications and consequences of a free society as Thomas Jefferson. Thomas Jefferson…