Alexander III, king of Macedonia, is known as Alexander the Great. He reigned over Greece, conquered the Persians, and marched as far as what are now known as Egypt, India, Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan. He succeeded in forging the largest Western empire of the ancient world.
Alexander was born in 356 BC in Pella, the capital of Macedonia. Aristotle, the Greek philosopher, gave him lessons. The boy’s main interest was war.
In 338 BC Alexander’s father, Philip II, brought all the Greek city-states except Sparta under his rule. Young Alexander commanded one part of the Macedonian army.
Philip II was killed in 336 BC and 20-year-old Alexander became king.
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Elizabeth Cady Stanton was a writer and reformer. She helped to start the women’s rights movement in the United States. She fought to give women the right to vote in elections. Stanton was perhaps the most gifted and versatile feminist leader in American history.
Elizabeth Cady was born on November 12, 1815 in Johnstown, New York, into the family of a judge. She was the eighth of eleven children of Daniel Cady and Margaret Livingston Cady; five of her brothers and sisters died at an early age.
She was a clever girl, but couldn’t go to college, because colleges did not accept women then. Elizabeth attended Troy Female Seminary in New York. In 1840 she married a lawyer and abolitionist leader Henry Stanton. Between 1842 and 1856, the couple had six children. The seventh, unplanned, was born in 1859, when Elizabeth was 44 years old.
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Davy Crockett was famous as a fighter, lawmaker, and frontiersman in a coonskin cap. During his own lifetime he became a celebrity and folk hero. After his death he became a symbol of the American spirit.
David Crockett was born on August 17, 1786, in Hawkings County, eastern Tennessee. At age 12 he went to work as a cattle driver to help support his family. He also became an excellent rifleman and hunter. Crockett worked and traveled throughout Virginia. Several years later he decided that his lack of education limited his marriage possibilities, and he arranged to work 6 months for a nearby Quaker teacher. In return Crockett received 4 days a week of instruction. He learned to read and to write a little.
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Sir Francis Drake was an English navigator, corsair, vice-admiral. He was the first Englishman who circumnavigated the world (in 1577-1580). He opened the Pacific Ocean to English ships. He also defeated the Spanish fleet (Invincible Armada) in the Battle of Gravelines (1588). Thanks to the skillful actions of Drake, the British managed to gain an advantage over the superior firepower of the enemy forces.
Francis Drake was born in 1540 in Devonshire in the family of farmer Edmund Drake, who later became a priest. The family had twelve children, Francis was the eldest. In 1549 the Drake family moved to Kent. At the age of 12, he became a cabin boy on a merchant ship. His distant relative was the owner of the ship and after his death 18-year-old Drake became a captain.
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John Paul Jones was a Scottish sailor who served in the United Kingdom, the United States and Russia. He is most famous for participation in the American Revolutionary War.
Paul Jones was born on July 6, 1747 in Kirkcudbright, Scotland. His father, John Paul Sr., was a gardener, and the mother of the future admiral was Jean Duff. They got married on November 29, 1733 in New Abbey, Kirkcudbright.
John Paul Jr. began naval career at the age of 13 as a cabin boy aboard the Friendship under Captain Benson. The next few years, he sailed on the British merchant ships, including as a third mate in 1764 aboard the King George and the first mate on the Two Friends in 1766.
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Aircraft designer Robert Bartini is a mystery man. Until now, it is unclear who he really was: aircraft designer ahead of time, a brilliant self-taught physicist or maybe just an artist with a capital letter? Probably, no one will answer these questions – the archives about Bartini disappeared as mysteriously as he lived himself…
Biography of Bartini is complicated from the very beginning. According to the official version, Robert was an illegitimate son of the Italian count, the vice-governor of the Austrian province, Fiume Lodovico Oros de Bartini. The baby was allegedly given to a count’s gardener, and one day the countess, walking in the garden, noticed the adorable baby, fell in love with him and adopted him. The boy grew up in a happy family without any worries and hassles. Robert had another version, as if he was the legal son of Baron Formah… There is only one discrepancy: neither the Bartini family nor the Formahs ever existed. In general, a mystery covered in darkness…
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Marcus Garvey was the leader of the worldwide movement for the rights of blacks. He was the founder of the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA). He offered new hope for working-class Blacks in the 1920s. Garvey’s clarion call for Black nationalism resonated primarily among lower- and working-class blacks and inspired numerous Black mass-appeal leaders and movements.
Marcus Mosiah Garvey was born on August 17, 1887 in Saint Ann’s Bay, Jamaica, then British colonial possession. He attended school until the age of 14. As a young man, Garvey moved to Kingston, where he worked as a printer and editor. He travelled extensively in the West Indies and Central America and lived briefly in England. Garvey became convinced that Black people suffered a sort of universal cultural and economic exploitation wherever they lived outside Africa.
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