Amelia Mary Earhart was an American aviator. She is world’s best-known woman pilot. She was the first woman to fly alone across the Atlantic Ocean.
Amelia Mary Earhart Putnam was born on July 24, 1897 in Atchison, Kansas. Until she was 12 she lived with her wealthy maternal grandparents in Atcheson, Kansas.
In 1909 Amelia and her younger sister, Muriel, went to Des Moines, Iowa to live with their parents. In 1914 her mother took the girl and moved to Chicago, where Amelia graduated from Hyde Park School the following year.
Amelia was a volunteer nurse in a hospital for veterans in Toronto where she worked until 1918.
In the winter of 1920 Earhart saw her first air show and took her first airplane ride. She took lessons at Bert Kinner’s airfield. On December 15, 1921 she received her license from the National Aeronautics Association (NAA).
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Bartolomeu Dias was a Portuguese explorer who discovered the Cape of Good Hope and opened the sea route to the Indian Ocean. He was the first European to round the South Africa. He was one of the most important European explorers before Christopher Columbus.
Bartolomeu Dias de Novais (sometimes spelled Bartholomew Diaz) was born in about 1450 near Lisbon, Portugal. Very little is known about Dias’s early life. De Novais usually added to his name was first documented in 1571, when King Sebastian I appointed his grandson, Paulo Dias de Novais a governor of Angola.
In his youth, Dias studied mathematics and astronomy at the University of Lisbon.
In 1487 Bartolomeu Dias sailed from Portugal with orders from King John II to continue exploration of a landmark on the coast of South-West Africa. The King wanted Dias to discover a sea route to India and to seek information about the Christian empire of Abyssinia.
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Sitting Bull was a chief of an Indian tribe Hunkpapa, who tried to keep U.S. settlers from taking over Indian lands. He is known for his role in the battle of the Little Bighorn. His name in his native Dakota language sounds like Tatanka Iyotake, Bison, sitting on the ground.
Sitting Bull was born in 1831 near the Grand River. As a boy he was called Slow (Hunkeshni). Subsequently, Sitting Bull became a renowned warrior.
Outstanding Hunkpapa chief had a lot of followers among all the tribes of the Lakota. Since 1863 he fought against US troops. He led the Indian tribes, who opposed resettlement. When US Army General Henry Hastings Sibley attacked hunting Lakota in June 1863, Sitting Bull led the Lakota group to avenge the soldiers.
When another tribe of the Sioux, under the direction of leaders Red Cloud and Frantic Horse started a war against the construction of the railroad through their territory, Sitting Bull took part in it. Red Cloud War lasted from 1866 to 1868 years. Sitting Bull refused to join the peace agreement and continued attacks on the armed forces of the whites. His authority among all the tribes of the Sioux had increased, so a number of historians believe that during this period he was elected supreme leader of the Sioux.
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John Brown Russwurm was an African American and Liberian journalist, educator, and governor. He was co-editor of the first African American newspaper. He became governor of Maryland-in-Liberia after his emigration to Africa.
John Russwurm was born on October 1, 1799 in Jamaica. His parents were a Creole woman and a white American father. In 1807 the boy was sent to Canada for schooling. In 1812, John and his father moved to Portland, Maine. In 1813 his father married Susan Blanchard. John’s father died in 1815.
Russwurm attended Hebron Academy in Maine.
In 1826 John graduated from Bowdoin College. His stepmother and her new husband helped him to pay for his education. So he became one of the first three blacks to graduate from an American college.
In 1827, Russwurm moved to New York and joined Samuel Cornish to edit Freedom’s Journal. It was the first newspaper published by and for blacks. In February 1829 Russwurm announced support for colonization. The black subscribers abused on Russwurm and let the newspaper die. So John went to Liberia where he worked as the editor of the Liberia Herald. Then he was elected to office and served as secretary of the colony.
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Ralph Abernathy was an American civil rights leader. He was the best friend and trusted assistant of Martin Luther King Jr.
Ralph David Abernathy was born on March 11, 1926, in Linden, Alabama. He was one of 12 children. His father was the son of a slave. In 1948 he became a minister in the Baptist church.
In 1950 he obtained a Bachelor of Science degree in mathematics from Alabama State University and a Master’s degree in sociology from Atlanta University in 1951.
In 1951, at the age of 26, Abernathy became pastor of the First Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama.
A few years later he met Martin Luther King, Jr. They began fighting laws that kept blacks and whites separated.
In 1955 Rosa Parks, an African American seamstress from Montgomery, refused to relinquish her bus seat to a white passenger and she was arrested. Abernathy and King organized a protest of the Montgomery bus system. This protest helped start the civil rights movement.
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John Brown was an abolitionist, who wanted to end slavery in the United States. Opponents of slavery admired him, but others considered him a dangerous criminal. He was one of the first white abolitionists who fought for the abolition of slavery.
John Brown was born on May 4, 1800, in Torrington, Connecticut. He was the second son of Owen Brown, a tanner, and Ruth Mills Brown. As a child he moved to Ohio. Brown studied briefly for the ministry but quit to learn the tanner’s trade.
In 1820 John married Dianthe Lusk. She gave birth to 7 children. Lusk died in 1832. A year later he married Mary Ann Day, who bore 13 children. Only 12 of Brown’s 20 children survived.
In 1836, the Browns family moved to Ohio to Franklin Mills. He suffered heavy financial losses during the economic crisis in 1837. So he tried many different ways to make money. However, on September 28, 1842, John Brown was declared bankrupt. In 1843 four of his children died of dysentery.
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Spartacus was a Thracian gladiator who led a slave war in Italy against the Romans in 73 – 71 BC. His army of escaped gladiators and slaves defeated several Roman legions in the Third Servile War. The war was also known as the Gladiator War.
His motto was “the last will be the first (and vice versa).”
As a gladiator, Spartacus would have been trained to fight to the death. In 73 BC Spartacus and at least 50 other gladiators staged an escape from their combat school using kitchen knives as weapons. They hid near Mount Vesuvius. There he raised a rebel army of 70,000 escaped slaves. Spartacus defeated several legions and had intended to march his army out of Italy and into Gaul. However, he changed his mind. The followers marched back south and defeated two more legions under Marcus Licinius Crassus.
In the beginning of 71 BC, eight legions of Marcus Licinius Crassus isolated Spartacus’s army in Calabria. Spartacus managed to break through Crassus’s lines and escape towards Brundisium.
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