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 6 of 7
Ronald Reagan
Ronald Wilson Reagan was elected the 40th president of the United States on November 4, 1980. At the age of 69, he was the oldest man and the first movie star ever sworn into that office. During his two terms in office, the popular president helped raise the nation’s spirits. He also oversaw the creation of large budget and trade deficits and ultimately effected a historical truce in cold war with the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics....
John Fitzgerald Kennedy
The 35th president of United States (1961-63) was at the age of 43, the youngest and the first Roman Catholic to be elected to the presidency. Rich, handsome, elegant and articulate, he aroused great admiration at home and abroad. His assassination in Dallas, Texas in November 1963 provoked outrage and widespread mourning. His term of office as president was too short. Kennedy was born in Brookline, Massachusetts, on May 29, 1917, a descendant of Irish Catholics who had immigrated to America in the 19th century....
Mikhail Gorbachev
He was born in Privol’noye, Russia. In 1985 Gorbachev became general secretary of the Communist Party, and in 1988 he became president of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). Between 1985 and 1990, Gorbachev sought to reform Soviet society by introducing perestroika (restructuring) of the economy and glasnost’ (openness) in political and cultural affairs. He transferred power from the Communist Party to popularly elected legislatures in the union republics. Gorbachev also withdrew Soviet troops from Afghanistan, normalized relations with China, signed a series of arms control agreements with the United States, and cooperated with the U....
Bill Clinton
Born on August 19, 1946 in Hope, Arkansas, to Virginia Blythe and named for his father, who had recently died in an auto accident, William Jefferson Blythe was reared from the age of seven in Hot Springs, Ark.. He took his stepfather’s last name Clinton, after the birth of a stepbrother. After high school he went to Georgetown University, University of Oxford as a Rhodes scholar and Yale University Law School where he met his future wife Hillary Rodham....
Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini
The Ayatollah (Arabic, “Reflection of Allah”) Ruhollah Khomeini became leader of Iran in 1979 by forcing the overthrow of the shah and Prime Minister Shahpur Bakhtiar. Born in Khomein, Iran on May 27, 1900, the son of an ayatollah of the Shiite sect, he studied theology and by 1962 was one of the six grand ayatollahs of Iran’s Shiite Muslims. Exiled in 1964 for his part in religious demonstrations against the shah, he was expelled from Iraq in 1978 and moved to France, where he emerged as the leader of the anti-shah movement....
From Russia with Love : Rudolf Nureyev
The most photographed male dancer in the world, Rudolf Nureyev electrified the world with his ballet for close to three decades in the second half of the 20th century. In the world of ballet, dominated by the ballerina or the female artist, Nureyev brought male dancing to the limelight, and changed the nature of 20th century ballet. From peasantdom to stardom, he twirled his way to the very top in an eventful life. Rudolf Hametovich Nureyev was born in a train near Irkutsk in Russia, when his mother was on her way to meet his father, in 1938....
Franklin Delano Roosevelt
Roosevelt served longer than any other president and held office during two great crises: the Great Depression of the 1930s and World War II (1939-1945). Roosevelt was born in Hyde Park, New York. In 1899 he entered Harvard College, earning his bachelor’s degree in 1903. In 1904 Roosevelt moved to New York City, where he entered the Columbia University Law School. While at Columbia, Roosevelt married his distant cousin Eleanor Roosevelt. Although he attended classes until 1907, he did not stay on for his law degree after passing the state examinations allowing him to practice law....
Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill
Churchill was born on November 30, 1874 in Blenheim Palace, Oxfordshire, England. His father Randolph Churchill was the third son of the 7th Duke of Marlborough. As a young man of undistinguished academic accomplishment, he entered the army as a cavalry officer. He took enthusiastically to soldiering and managed to see three campaigns. He served as a cavalry officer in India and Sudan but resigned his commission in 1899 to become a war correspondent in the Boer war....
The Unknown Soldier
The year was 1989. China witnessed a major pro-democratic student uprising. The Chinese leaders in a horrific show of force vented their fury and frustration on student dissidents and their pro-democracy supporters who had gathered in the Tiananmen Square. Several hundred people were killed and thousands wounded when the People’s Liberation Army moved on Beijing’s Tiananmen Square. As the first armoured vehicles smashed their way through a ring of burning buses into Tiananmen Square itself, student occupiers began to fight....
Margaret Hilda Thatcher
Thatcher was born Margaret Hilda Roberts in Grantham. She married Denis Thatcher in 1951. Thatcher was elected to the House of Commons in 1959. After the Conservative defeat in 1974 she won leadership of the party the following year. In 1979 she led the Conservatives to victory, vowing to reverse Britain’s economic decline and to reduce the role of government. In 1982 Argentine forces occupied the Falkland Islands, which were claimed by both Argentina and the United Kingdom....