Biographies of people who made a difference and shaped our world. Short profiles for children on men and women who changed our world with path breaking ideas and actions. Personalities include statesmen, leaders, political thinkers, inventors, scientists, artists, writers, actors, sports persons and achievers.
63 items in this section. Displaying page 5 of 7
Eleanor Roosevelt
Anna Eleanor Roosevelt was a powerful voice on behalf of a wide range of social causes including youth employment and civil rights for blacks and women. The wife of a popular U.S. president, Eleanor Roosevelt was born in New York City on October 11, 1884 was a tireless worker for social causes. A niece of President Theodore Roosevelt, she was raised by her maternal grandmother after the premature death of her parents. In 1905, she married her cousin Franklin Delano Roosevelt; they had six children, one of whom died in infancy....
Ho Chi Minh
Ho Chi Minh, leader of the Vietnam revolutionary nationalist party of Indo-China, which struggled for independence from France during and after the second world war, was born Nguyen Sinh Cung on May 19, 1890 in a village in central Vietnam. The French through a puppet emperor indirectly ruled the area during that time. Inheriting his father’s rebellious bent, Ho participated in a series of tax revolts, acquiring a reputation as a troublemaker. In 1911 he left Vietnam to work abroad....
Pop John Paul II
Pope John Paul II is the first Polish pope and the first non-Italian pope since the 16th century. Born Karol Josef Wojtyla on May 18, 1920, to a Polish army officer in Wadowice in Poland, John Paul II attended an underground seminary during the World War II German occupation and was ordained a priest in 1946. After studying in Rome and at the University of Krakow, he was appointed professor of ethics at the University of Lublin in 1956....
Nadia Comaneci
Born on November 12, 1961, Nadia is a Romanian gymnast who was the heroine of the 1976 Olympic games at Montreal. She won gold medals for performances in the balance beam, uneven parallel bars and the all-round event, plus a silver medal in the team event and a bronze medal in the floor exercises. Comaneci was awarded a score of 10 for her initial exercise on the uneven parallel bars at the Montreal Olympics, marking the first perfect score recorded in Olympic competition....
Fidel Castro Ruz
Fidel Castro Ruz was born on August 13, 1926 (some sources give 1927), on his family’s sugar plantation near Biran, Oriente, Province. His father was an immigrant from Galcia, Spain. He attended good Cathotic schools in Santiago de Cuba and Havana, where he took the spartan regime at a Jesuit boarding school, Colegio de Belen. In 1945 he enrolled at the University of Havana, graduating in 1950 with a law degree. In 1948, he married Mirta Diaz-Balart and divorced her in 1954....
Lech Walesa
Born to a family of peasant farmers on Sept 23, 1943 in Popowo in Poland, Lech Walesa started of as an electrician at shipyard in Gdansk. A devout Roman Catholic, he was shocked by the repression of workers’ protests and made inroads with small opposition groups. Despite being sacked from his job, he climbed over the perimeter wall of the Lenin shipyard at the age of 37 to join the occupation strike. With his electrifying personality, quick wit and gift of the gab, he was soon leading it....
Satyajit Ray
One of India’s most distinguished film directors Satyajit Ray, was born on May 2, 1921 in West Bengal. Ray’s films are of universal interest despite the fact that most of his films were made in Bengali. His films are essentially about those things that make up the human race – relationships, emotions, struggle, conflicts, joys and sorrows. Satyajit Ray, the master story teller, has left cinematic heritage that belongs as much to India as to the world....
Magic Johnson
Earvin ‘Magic’ Johnson was born in Lansing, Michigan on August 14, 1959 and is one of professional basketball’s premier guard. Magic Johnson is famous for his brilliant passing skills, all-round sublime talent and engaging personality. At 6ft 9 inches he was the tallest point guard in League history and his illuminating smile made him the most admired as well. He became an instant legend and left people in awe of his skills even as a 15-yr-old high school player....
Mao Zedong
Mao Zedong was chairman of the Communist Party of China and the principal founder of the People’s Republic of China. Along with Karl Marx and V. I. Lenin, he is regarded as one of the three great theorists of Marxian communism. Mao’s greatest achievements were the unification of China through the destruction of Nationalist power, the creation of a unified People’s Republic, and the leadership of the greatest social revolution in human history. This revolution involved collectivisation of most land and property, the destruction of the landlord class, the weakening of the urban bourgeoisie, and the elevation of the status of peasants and industrial workers....
Vladimir Ilich Lenin
Vladimir Ilich Lenin, founder of the Russian Communist party, leader of the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, and first head of state of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, was also a masterly political thinker whose theories shaped Communist thought and influenced all factions of the Marxist movement. Lenin was born Vladimir Ilich Ulyanov on April 22, 1870, in the provincial city of Simbirsk on the Volga River. By all accounts, Lenin’s middle-class family was warm and loving....