Emmeline Pankhurst – English reformer

Emmeline Pankhurst was the English reformer who led the movement for women’s suffrage in Great Britain.
Emmeline Goulden was born on July 4, 1858 in Manchester. Emmeline was the eldest of five daughters. She also had five brothers. At the age of 14 she accompanied her mother to a women’s suffrage meeting. The next few years Emmeline spent in Paris attending school. After her return she married Richard Pankhurst, a barrister and an activist in radical causes, especially in women’s suffrage. They had four children.
In 1880, Mrs Pankhurst began a campaign to get the vote for women. At first, she and her supporters (known as ‘suffragettes’) spoke at public meetings, wrote articles and gave out leaflets. When politicians ignored their campaign, they threw stones at the windows of the Prime Minister’s house and interrupted Parliamentary debates shouting ‘Votes for Women’. One suffragette even threw herself in front of one of the King’s horses during an important horse race and was killed. Suffragettes were often arrested and sent to prison.
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Cleopatra VII – Queen of Egypt

She spoke nine languages, was a good mathematician, and had a great head for business. She used her intelligence and her beauty to hold on to power. She was a queen of ancient Egypt and wanted to make her country more powerful.
Cleopatra was born in 69 BC in the city of Alexandria in Egypt. She was the second daughter of King Ptolemy XII. When her father died in 51 BC, 18-year-old Cleopatra was supposed to rule Egypt with her 15-year-old brother, Ptolemy XIII. Her brother’s supporters drove Cleopatra from power. In 47 BC Caesar defeated Ptolemy XIII’s forces, and Cleopatra returned to the throne.
When Ptolemy died, Cleopatra married her 11-year-old brother, because she couldn’t rule alone by law.
Cleopatra lived with Julius Caesar and gave birth to their son Caesarion.
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David Livingstone – explorer and missionary

David Livingstone was a famous explorer and missionary. From the age of ten to twenty-four he worked in a cotton factory. He studied at evening classes and eventually he qualified as a doctor. In 1840 he went to Africa as a missionary. He ‘discovered’ most of the Zambesi River and in 1866 he started looking for the source of the River Nile.
David Livingstone was born on March 19, 1813, in Blantyre. The Livingstones were poor, so the 10-year-old boy had to work in the textile mills 14 hours a day, studying at night and on weekends.
In 1836 he entered the University of Glasgow to study medicine and theology.
In 1840 he received his medical degree and was accepted by the London Missionary Society. At the end of the same year he sailed to Africa and arrived in Cape Town on March 14, 1841.
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Anne Frank and her diary

Anne Frank was a Jewish girl. After Hitler came to power her family escaped from the Nazi terror in the Netherlands. The little girl was an author of the famous “Diary of Anne Frank” – a document condemning Nazism and translated into many languages. This book immediately became a worldwide bestseller mainly because it has managed to combine millions of human tragedies of the Nazi genocide in the fate of one girl. Anne Frank and her family are among the most famous victims of the Nazis.
Anneliese Marie «Anne» Frank was born on June 12, 1929 in Frankfurt, Germany. Her family was Jewish. She lived happily with her parents and older sister, Margot. In 1933, Adolf Hitler became the leader of Germany. Then everything changed. Hitler passed laws against Jews. People lost their jobs and were forced out of their homes. Many people were killed. The government sent others to prisons called concentration camps. Life in the camps was horrible. Millions of people died there.
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Alexander Graham Bell – great inventor

Alexander Graham Bell was a scientist, inventor and businessman, founder of Bell Labs, which defined further development of the telecommunications industry in the United States. He is famous for creating one of the world’s most important communication devices—the telephone.
Alexander was born on March 3, 1847 in Edinburgh, Scotland. Several relatives of Bell, in particular his grandfather, father and uncle were professional rhetoricians. Father of the inventor, Alexander Melville Bell, even published a treatise on the art of oratory. At the age of 13, Bell graduated from the Royal School in Edinburgh; at the age of 16 he was appointed a teacher of rhetoric and music in Weston House Academy. Alexander studied at Edinburgh University for one year and then moved to the English city of Bath.
When Alexander’s two brothers died of tuberculosis, the family decided to move to Canada. In 1870, the Bells settled in the city of Brantford, Ontario. Like his father, Bell worked with deaf and dumb people, teaching them to speak. He then moved to Boston and opened a school for the deaf.
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Otto von Bismarck – Iron Chancellor

Otto von Bismarck was a German statesman. He was largely responsible for the creation of the German Empire in 1871.
Otto Eduard Leopold von Bismarck was born on April 1, 1815 at his family’s estate of Schoenhausen in Prussia.
He studied at the University of Gottingen and by 1836 had qualified as a lawyer.
All his life, Bismarck was associated with Russia. He, more than anyone else, understood the power and contradictions of the Russian state. He was in love with Russian woman Katerina Orlova-Trubetskaya. They had a passionate romance in the resort of Biarritz.
In 1847, he became religious, entered politics and married Johanna von Puttkamer. Otto and Johanna had three children Herbert, Bill, and Marie.
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Martin Luther King Jr. – Civil Rights Leader

Martin Luther King, Jr. was the most popular and effective leader of the African American struggle for civil rights. He was one of the greatest organizers of people the world has ever seen. King has become a national icon in the history of American progressivism. He used nonviolent, or peaceful, protest to get equal rights for African Americans.
Martin was born on January 15, 1929, Atlanta, the USA. He was the son of a popular Baptist pastor.
At the age of 19 he graduated from the Elite Morehouse College. Then he studied theology at Crozer Theological Seminary in Chester, Pennsylvania. He pursued his doctorate in theology at Boston University. While in Boston he met Coretta Scott. They married on June 18, 1953 and had four children.
At the age of 26, Martin Luther was appointed pastor of the conservative Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama.
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