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Category Archive: Presidents and Rulers

John Quincy Adams – 6th president of America

John Quincy Adams – 6th president of America

John Quincy Adams – 6th president of America


John Quincy Adams was the sixth president of the United States. He was one of the most brilliant, learned, and able men who has ever held high office in the nation. He played a major role in formulating the basic principles of American foreign policy. He was the first president in American history whose father John Adams had also held the office.
John Quincy Adams was born on July 11, 1767 in Braintree (now Quincy), Massachusetts. He was the eldest son in the family. At the time of his birth, his father, John Adams, was a prospering lawyer, and his mother, Abigail Smith Adams, was the daughter of an esteemed minister.
John received education at private schools in Paris, Leiden, and Amsterdam. In 1788, Adams went to Harvard College, and three years later opened his own law office in Boston.
On July 26, 1797 John married Louisa Catherine Johnson, a daughter of a wealthy merchant of tobacco from London.
Between 1797 and 1801 Adams served as minister to the Netherlands and then to Prussia.
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Jimmy Carter – 39th president of America

Jimmy Carter - 39th president of America

Jimmy Carter – 39th president of America


Jimmy Carter was the 39th president of the United States. In 2002 he won the Nobel Prize for peace.
James Earl Carter Jr. was born on October 1, 1924, in Plains, Georgia. He was the first of four children. His father was a businessman and his mother was a nurse. Jimmy was the first member of his family to complete high school. He attended Georgia Southwestern College and the Georgia Institute of Technology.
In 1946 he graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in Maryland. Carter served as submarine officer in the Pacific and Atlantic fleets.
In the same year he married Rosalynn Smith. The couple had three sons and a daughter.
Carter’s father died in 1953 and he returned to Georgia to manage the family peanut farm.
In 1962 and 1964 Carter was elected as a Democrat to the Georgia Senate.
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Abigail Adams – American First Lady

Abigail Adams - American First Lady

Abigail Adams – American First Lady


Abigail Adams was American First Lady. She is considered a remarkable woman for her times. She had a notable influence on her husband, John Adams, second President of the United States. She strongly favored American independence and universal liberty.
Abigail Smith Adams was born on November 11, 1744 in Weymouth, Massachusetts. Her mother, Elizabeth Quincy Smith, was related to the Bay Colony’s Puritan leadership. Her father, Reverend William Smith, was minister of the North Parish Congregational Church of Weymouth. Abigail was educated at home and as an adult, she was for equal education for women.
On October 25, 1764, Abigail married John Adams, who was nine years her senior. The couple had three sons and two daughters, and their family union lasted over 50 years.
In the fall of 1775, an epidemic of dysentery hit Braintree and neighboring towns. Abigail and her son, Thomas, took ill, but slowly recovered.
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William Howard Taft – US president

William Howard Taft – US president

William Howard Taft – US president


William Howard Taft was the twenty-seventh president of the United States from 1909 to 1913. He later served as chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. He is the only person to have held the country’s two highest offices.
William Howard Taft was born on September 15, 1857 in Cincinnati, Ohio into a wealthy family. Both his father and grandfather had served terms as judges, and young Taft aspired to a judicial career.
In 1878 Taft graduated from Yale University and in 1880 from Cincinnati Law School.
Between 1880 and 1890 he served successively as assistant prosecuting attorney for Hamilton County, Ohio, collector of internal revenue for Cincinnati, and judge of the Superior Court of Ohio.
In 1886 he married Helen Herron and they had three children.
In 1887 Taft became a judge of the superior court of Ohio. In 1892 he was named a judge of a U.S. circuit court.
In 1900 President William McKinley asked Taft to organize a government for the Philippines and next year Taft became governor of the Philippines. There he established an educational system, built roads and harbors.
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John Fitzgerald Kennedy, Jr. – American journalist

John Fitzgerald Kennedy, Jr. - American journalist

John Fitzgerald Kennedy, Jr. – American journalist

John Fitzgerald Kennedy, Jr. was an American journalist and lawyer, the third child and first son of the 35th US President John F. Kennedy and Jacqueline Kennedy. In the American press he was also called John Jr., John-John, or JFK Jr., or America’s Son, because he became the first infant to live in the White House since the Grover Cleveland administration in the late 1800s.
John was born on November 25, 1960, 16 days after his father, John F. Kennedy, was elected as the President of the USA. During the first three years of his life he lived in the White House. His father was killed on November 22, 1963 in Dallas. The funeral of President John F. Kennedy took place on November 25, 1963. It was John F. Kennedy, Jr.’s birthday.
After the murder of his father, John lived in Manhattan in New York with his mother Jacqueline Kennedy. In 1968, his mother married a Greek tycoon Aristotle Onassis. His stepfather died in 1975, when Kennedy Jr. was 14 years old.
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Sissi – favorite empress of Austria

Sissi - favorite empress of Austria

Sissi – favorite empress of Austria

Duchess Elisabeth Amalie Eugenie was a Bavarian princess, the wife of Emperor Franz Joseph I. She became the Empress of Austria on April 24, 1854 (date of marriage); on June 8, 1867 she became Queen of Hungary. Her family and friends called her Sissi. She was the most beautiful Empress of Austria. Her life was one of the few stories of true love among the monarchs, which became one of the favorite plots for books and movies.
Elisabeth was born on December 24, 1837 in Munich Palace. She was the second daughter of Duke Maximilian Joseph of Bavaria (1808-1888) and Marie Ludovika Wilhelmine (1808-1892), daughter of the King of Bavaria, Maximilian I. The newborn girl had a tooth. According to legend it means a happy life. Napoleon also had a tooth when he was born. Queen Elizabeth of Prussia became the godmother of the girl. Sissi spent her childhood in Munich in the summer estate where she had her own menagerie. Elizabeth’s parents lived in their own way. Duke Maximilian rarely spent his time with the family and children were educated by their mother.
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Eamon de Valera – president of Ireland

Eamon de Valera - president of Ireland

Eamon de Valera – president of Ireland

Eamon de Valera was an Irish revolutionary leader and statesman. He served as prime minister and later president of Ireland (1959-1973).
Eamon was born on October 14, 1882 in New York. He was the son of a Spanish father and an Irish mother and, as a child, lived on his uncle’s farm in Ireland. At this time, Eire, as it is known today, was part of the United Kingdom.
De Valera graduated from the Royal University of Ireland in 1904 and became a mathematics teacher.
In 1916, de Valera took part in a rebellion against the British and he was sent to prison; in 1917 he was released in an amnesty. He became leader of Sinn Fein, the nationalist movement. In 1918 he was sent to prison again but managed to escape to the USA.
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