World of faces

Famous people all over the world

Category Archive: History

Gertrude Bell – Desert queen

Gertrude Bell - Desert queen

Gertrude Bell – Desert queen


The motto of this British noblewoman was the words of Hafez: “everything on earth is not forever, except for acts for the benefit of people”. Traveler, archaeologist, scout, she played an important role in the formation of two states – Iraq and Jordan.
Gertrude Margaret Lowthian Bell was born in June 1868 in England, in county of Durham. Her grandfather Lowthian Bell owned steel mills and held the title of Baronet. And her father Hugh Bell continued the family business. Gertrude was only three years old when her mother died.
The girl received a good home education and at the age of 15 she entered Oxford College, where she was one of the best students. At the same time, she found time for entertainment, loved to dance, play tennis and perform on the stage of an amateur theater.
One day, Uncle Frank Lascelles, British Ambassador to Romania, invited her to stay in Bucharest. That winter, she plunged into social life, not without irony, remarking in a letter to her father about the Romanian aristocrats: “They have fun as if every day is the last in their life.”
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Vanga – Oracle of XX Century

Vanga – Oracle of XX Century

Vanga – Oracle of XX Century


Great Vanga was a woman with amazing abilities. She knew the past, predicted the future, could heal physical and mental pain. Invisible worlds were opened for her, there she received information and generously shared her knowledge with people.
Vanga was born on January 31, 1911 in Macedonia in the town of Strumica. The girl was born 2 months earlier and was very weak, with fused fingers and toes. Nobody knew whether the newborn would survive. In March, the baby cried loudly for the first time in her life, and local grandmothers explained to the alarmed mother that, in fact, the girl was born just then. The girl was named Vangeliya, which means “the bearer of the good news” in Greek.
Vanga was only three years old when, after the second birth, her mother died suddenly. And a year later, in 1915, her father, a small landowner, was drafted into the Bulgarian army. The girl was left with neighbor Asanitsa, a good and compassionate Turkish woman. Three years later, the father returned and soon married the most beautiful girl of Strumica – Tank Georgieva. He needed a mistress, and the children needed a mother.
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Raoul Wallenberg – Righteous Among the Nations

Raoul Wallenberg - Righteous Among the Nations

Raoul Wallenberg – Righteous Among the Nations


In 1963 a Swedish diplomat was posthumously awarded the title Righteous Among the Nations. Raoul Gustav Wallenberg saved tens of thousands of Jews during the Holocaust and died under unclear circumstances in a Soviet prison. He deserves that as many people as possible know about his feat, which is an example of true humanism.
The future diplomat was born in 1912 in the Swedish city near Stockholm. The boy had never seen his father, since Navy officer Raoul Oscar Wallenberg died of cancer 3 months before the birth of the heir. Raoul Gustav’s paternal family was known in Sweden, and many Swedish financiers and diplomats came from it. In particular, at the time of the birth of the boy, his grandfather – Gustav Wallenberg – was the ambassador of his country in Japan. At the same time, on the maternal side, Raoul was a descendant of a jeweler named Bendix, who is considered one of the founders of the Jewish community of Sweden. In 1918, his mother married the Swedish Ministry of Health official Fredrik von Dardel. In this marriage, daughter Nina and son Guy von Dardel were born, who later became a nuclear physicist. Raoul was lucky with his stepfather, since he treated him in the same way as his children.
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Elizabeth Woodville united two warring dynasties

Elizabeth Woodville united two warring dynasties

Elizabeth Woodville united two warring dynasties


Nothing prevented Elizabeth Woodville from being happy but her high position. The gloomy XV century, in which she happened to live, did not dispose to sincere manifestations of feelings. And the tangle of intrigue and war in which Elizabeth’s life took place turned her days into hell, full of anxiety, loss and suspicion.
At first fate generously gifted the woman, and then brutally robbed her. Neither natural beauty, nor wealth, nor high position, nor piety could make her happy.
Elizabeth inherited a thirst for sincere feelings and true passion from her mother, Jacquetta of Luxembourg. She was married twice. John Lancaster, the son of the English king Henry IV, was her first husband. This marriage was a purely political union, which lasted about two years and did not bring children. But immediately after this, Jacquetta fell in love with the chamberlain of her first husband – not too noble knight Richard Woodville. This was love at first sight. But the relatives of the first husband and especially King Henry VI (nephew of John Lancaster) reacted sharply negative. It was a misalliance. Woodville even had to pay a fine of one thousand pounds. However, then the king relented, and the money was returned to the happy couple.
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Klaus Stortebeker – Northern Seas pirate

Klaus Stortebeker - Northern Seas pirate

Klaus Stortebeker – Northern Seas pirate


Klaus Stortebeker was a German pirate at the end of the XIV century. Songs about him were sung in the taverns of the port cities of Germany, centuries after his death. Even today, a musical festival dedicated to his memory is held on the island of Rugen. Störtebeker was known as a kind of German Robin Hood. And some researchers from Germany are even convinced that he served as the prototype of the legendary English forest robber.
Despite the fact that the life and work of Klaus Störtebeker, as well as his death in Hamburg are described in sufficient detail in various medieval sources, his birthplace and origin remain unknown. Up to 20 cities and towns are still fighting for the honor of being considered his homeland.
According to some sources, he was a descendant of a noble family from Halsmühlen on the Adler River near Verdun. Medieval chronicles describe the wild life of a young knight whose true name remains unknown. He constantly fought and drank. As a result, the young man was penniless, and when knightly armor and weapons were taken from him for debt, he went into the sea robbers. Is it true or just a legend? In the fourteenth century, some of the knights having completely gone bankrupt went to the sea to hunt in the vast expanses of salt water.
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Evangeline Adams predicted world wars

Evangeline Adams predicted world wars

Evangeline Adams predicted world wars


The name Evangeline Adams is almost forgotten today. But in the first half of the last century, she was a very popular astrologer. Adams was also engaged in palmistry and, probably, had remarkable parapsychological abilities. For several decades, she was able to predict many significant events, including those on a global scale.
Adams was born in 1868. The media first wrote about her in 1899, when an unknown prophetess from Boston predicted a terrible fire at the Windsor Hotel in New York. In March of that year, she took a trip to New York and stayed at the expensive hotel located on Fifth Avenue. After reading horoscope of the hotel’s owner Evangeline was horrified: it was clear that in the very near future this man would be in trouble and adversity… When the hotel burned to the ground the next day and the wife and daughter of the owner died, Adams’ career went up sharply.
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Jeane Dixon – seeress and astrologer

Jeane Dixon – seeress and astrologer

Jeane Dixon – seeress and astrologer


The English seeress Jeane Dixon (1918-1997) enjoyed extraordinary popularity in the middle of the last century.
Little Jeane, at the age of five, predicted what gifts the guests would bring, knew when someone from her family would die … When the girl was eight years old, her mother led her to a famous fortune teller. Looking at the palm of the girl, she said: “Your daughter will be a great seeress. Such lines occur once in a thousand years.”
Soon, little Jeane learned to get information from the future using a crystal ball. At first, she spoke about future events only to those close to her. But her fame grew, and in the 1940s, when she married and moved to Washington, even the powerful people of the world began to ask her about the future.
In November 1944, American President Franklin Delano Roosevelt invited Jeane. During their first meeting, Roosevelt asked how much time he had to complete the job. “Less than six months, Mr. President,” Jeane replied. On April 12, 1945 Roosevelt died.
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