Margaret Thatcher (1925 - )
Margaret Thatcher
Margaret Thatcher was Britain's first female prime minister
and served three consecutive terms in office. She is one of
the dominant political figures of 20th century Britain, and
Thatcherism continues to have a huge influence.
Margaret Hilda Roberts was born on 13 October 1925 in
Grantham, Lincolnshire, the daughter of a grocer. She went
to Oxford University and then became a research chemist,
retraining to become a barrister in 1954. In 1951, she
married a wealthy businessman, Denis Thatcher, with whom
she had two children.
Thatcher became Conservative member of parliament for
Finchley in north London in 1959, serving as its MP until
1992. Her first parliamentary post was junior minister for pensions in Harold Macmillan's
government. From 1964 to 1970, when Labour were in power, she served in a number of
positions in Edward Heath's shadow cabinet. Heath became prime minister in 1970 and
Thatcher was appointed secretary for education.
After the Conservatives were defeated in 1974, Thatcher challenged Heath for the
leadership of the party and, to the surprise of many, won. In the 1979 general election, the
Conservatives came to power and Thatcher became prime minister.
An advocate of privatisation of state-owned industries and utilities, reform of the trade
unions, the lowering of taxes and reduced social expenditure across the board, Thatcher's
policies succeeded in reducing inflation, but unemployment dramatically increased.
Victory in the Falklands War in 1982 and a divided opposition helped Thatcher win a landslide
victory in the 1983 general election. In 1984, she narrowly escaped death when the IRA
planted a bomb at the Conservative party conference in Brighton.
In foreign affairs, Thatcher cultivated a close political and personal relationship with US
president Ronald Reagan, based on a common mistrust of communism, combined with freemarket economic ideology. Thatcher was nicknamed the 'Iron Lady' by the Soviets. She
warmly welcomed the rise of reformist Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev.
In the 1987 general election, Thatcher won an unprecedented third term in office. But
controversial policies, including the poll tax and her opposition to any closer integration with
Europe, produced divisions within the Conservative Party which led to a leadership challenge.
In November 1990, she agreed to resign and was succeeded as party leader and prime
minister by John Major.
In 1992, Thatcher left the House of Commons for the House of Lords as Baroness Thatcher
of Kesteven.
Albert Einstein is one of the most
notable and influential scientists of the
twentieth century. Although he became
known as a genius of science, he was slow
in learning to speak as a child. Einstein
also rebelled in school, which left many
teachers to believe he would amount to
little. His interest in science and math
was inspired by a compass, his "sacred
little geometry book," and classical
music. By the age of sixteen, he wrote
his first research science paper.
Einstein attempted to skip the last few years of high school to enter the Swiss institute of
Technology. But he failed the entrance exam. His most famous discovery is the theory of
relativity, E=mc2. This theory overturned Isaac Newton's laws by explaining the relation of
energy and mass as a consequence of space and time. It was first introduced in a three-page
paper in 1905. So ahead of its time, the theory could not be proven until years later.
Born in Germany and raised in the Jewish faith, Einstein strongly opposed injustices of race
and religion. He helped out however he could. Einstein supported the American civil rights
movement and efforts of the Zionist movement to preserve and cultivate the Jewish faith.
He played an important role in setting up the Hebrew University of Israel.
Many people have thought that Einstein was the creator of the atomic bomb. But this is not
true. During World War II, he wrote a letter to President Roosevelt warning of Germany's
possible use of nuclear weapons. Einstein was actually barred from helping the United States
to make the atom bomb.
Albert Einstein was more than a world-famous scientist. His name and image have come to
represent genius and intellect.
Mother Teresa
Mother Teresa was born Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu, the youngest of three
children of an Albanian builder, on August 26, 1910 in Skopje, Macedonia.
She felt that August 27, 1910, the day of her baptism, was her true
birthday. At the age of 18 she joined the Order of the Sisters of Our Lady
of Loreto in Ireland. She trained in Dublin, where the motherhouse of the
Loreto Sisters was located. She chose the name of Sister Teresa, in
memory of Saint Thérèse of Lisieux.
In December 1928 she began her journey to India and continued to
Darjeeling, at the base of the Himalayan Mountains, where she would
continue her training towards her religious vows. Soon after, on January 6,
1929 she arrived in Calcutta, the capital of Bengal, India to teach at a school for
girls.
While in Calcutta, she was moved by the presence of the sick and dying on the city's streets. On
September 10, 1946, on the long train ride to Darjeeling where she was to go on a retreat and to recover
from suspected tuberculosis, something happened. Mother Teresa recalls:
"I realized that I had the call to take care of the sick and the dying, the hungry, the naked, the homeless
- to be God's Love in action to the poorest of the poor. That was the beginning of the Missionaries of
Charity."
She didn't hesitate, she didn't question. She asked permission to leave the Loreto congregation and to
establish a new order of sisters. She received that permission from Pope Pius XII. In 1952 Mother Teresa
and her Missionaries of Charity began the work for which they have been noted ever since. Her order
received permission from Calcutta officials to use a portion of the abandoned temple of Kali, the Hindu
goddess of transition and destroyer of demons. Mother Teresa founded here the Kalighat Home for the
Dying, which she named Nirmal Hriday (meaning "Pure Heart"). She and her fellow nuns gathered dying
people off the streets of Calcutta and brought them to this home to care for them during the days before
they died.
Mother Teresa's first orphanage was started in 1953, while in 1957 she and her Missionaries of Charity
began working with lepers. In the years following, her homes (she called them "tabernacles") have been
established in hundreds of locations in the world.
Following a prolonged illness, Mother Teresa passed away on September 5, 1997.
Biography of Nelson Mandela
A Brief Biography of Mr. Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela
Mr. Mandela was born at Qunu, near Umtata on July 18, 1918. This is in what is
now the Eastern Cape Province. Born Rolihlahla Dalibhunga, Mr. Mandela was
given his English name, Nelson, by a teacher at his school.
Mr. Mandela matriculated at Healdtown Methodist Boarding School and then
started a BA degree at Fort Hare. In 1940, he participated in a student strike and
was expelled from Fort Hare along with the late Mr. Oliver Tambo. He completed
his degree by correspondence from Johannesburg, did articles of clerkship and
enrolled for an LLB at the University of the Witwatersrand.
In 1944 he helped found the ANC Youth League, whose Programme of Action
was adopted by the ANC in 1949.
Mr. Mandela was elected national volunteer-in-chief of the 1952 Defiance Campaign. He traveled the country
organizing resistance to discriminatory legislation.
Mr. Mandela qualified as a lawyer and in 1952 opened a law practice, the first black legal firm in the country, in
Johannesburg with his partner, Oliver Tambo. Together, Mr. Mandela and Mr. Tambo campaigned against apartheid,
the system devised by the all-white National Party which oppressed the black majority
When the ANC was banned after the Sharpeville massacre in 1960, he was detained until 1961 when he went
underground to lead a campaign for a new national convention.
He went to Algeria and also visited other independent African countries during this period. On his return, he was
arrested for leaving the country illegally and for incitement to strike. He conducted his own defense. He was convicted
and jailed for five years in November 1962. While serving his sentence, he was charged, in the Rivonia trial, with
sabotage. In the winter of 1964 he was sentenced to life in prison.
In the space of 12 months between 1968 and 1969, Mr. Mandela's mother died and his eldest son was killed in a car
crash but he was not allowed to attend the funerals.
Robben Island, where he was imprisoned, became a centre for learning, and Mandela was a central figure in the
organized political education classes.He remained in prison on Robben Island for 18 years before being transferred to
Pollsmoor Prison on the mainland in 1982.
In prison Mr. Mandela never compromised his political principles and was always a source of strength for the other
prisoners. During his years in prison, Nelson Mandela's reputation grew steadily. He was widely accepted as the most
significant black leader in South Africa and became a potent symbol of resistance as the anti-apartheid movement
gathered strength.
In 1980, Mr. Tambo, who was in exile, launched an international campaign to release Mr. Mandela. The world
community tightened the sanctions first imposed on South Africa in 1967 against the apartheid regime. The pressure
produced results, and in 1990, President FW de Klerk lifted the ban on the ANC, and Mr. Mandela was released from
prison on Sunday, 11 February 1990.
Mr. Mandela has honorary degrees from more than 50 international universities
including Ryerson University in Canada. In December 1993, Mr. Mandela and Mr.
de Klerk were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Five months later, for the first time
in South Africa's history, all races voted in democratic elections and Mr. Mandela
was inaugurated as the first democratically elected State President of South Africa
on May 10, 1994. The ANC won 252 of the 400 seats in the national assembly.
On Monday, November 19, 2001, Mr. Mandela became the second person in the
world to receive Honorary Canadian Citizenship. For a more detailed biography of Mr. Mandela, please read his
autobiography, The Long Walk to Freedom.
Joseph Stalin (1879 - 1953)
Joseph Stalin, 1922
One of the most powerful and murderous dictators in history, Stalin
was the supreme ruler of the Soviet Union for a quarter of a century.
His regime of terror caused the death and suffering of tens of
millions, but he also oversaw the war machine that played a key role in
the defeat of Nazism.
Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili was born on 18 December 1879 in
Gori, Georgia, which was then part of the Russian empire. His father was a cobbler and Stalin
grew up in modest circumstances. He studied at a theological seminary where he began to
read Marxist literature. He never graduated, instead devoting his time to the revolutionary
movement against the Russian monarchy. He spent the next 15 years as an activist and on a
number of occasions was arrested and exiled to Siberia.
Stalin was not one of the decisive players in the Bolshevik seizure of power in 1917, but he
soon rose through the ranks of the party. In 1922 he was made general secretary of the
Communist Party, a post not considered particularly significant at the time but which gave
him control over appointments and thus allowed him to build up a base of support. After
Lenin's death in 1924, Stalin promoted himself as his political heir and gradually
outmanoeuvred his rivals. By the late 1920s, Stalin was effectively the dictator of the
Soviet Union.
His forced collectivisation of agriculture cost millions of lives, while his programme of rapid
industrialisation achieved huge increases in Soviet productivity and economic growth but at
great cost. Moreover, the population suffered immensely during the Great Terror of the
1930s, during which Stalin purged the party of 'enemies of the people', resulting in the
execution of thousands and the exile of millions to the gulag system of slave labour camps.
These purges severely depleted the Red Army, and despite repeated warnings, Stalin was ill
prepared for Hitler's attack on the Soviet Union in June 1941. His political future, and that
of the Soviet Union, hung in the balance, but Stalin recovered to lead his country to victory.
The human cost was enormous but that mattered little to him.
After World War Two, the Soviet Union entered the nuclear age and ruled over an empire
which included most of eastern Europe. Increasingly paranoid, Stalin died of a stroke on 5
March 1953.
John Lennon Biography
Born in Liverpool, England, John Lennon changed music and
the world more than any musician ever dreamed of. John was
born to his mother Julia in Liverpool, England on October 17,
1940.
The first obstacle of his life came the night he was born as he, a
newborn baby, had to survive a German bombing raid. He went 24
hours without proper Medical attention. While growing up in Liverpool,
he led a good life until the age of 5 when he had to decide between
his mom and his dad, the second major obstacle in his life. He at first chose his dad. But after seeing
his mom breakdown, he chose his mother. When he was 19, he spent some time at his mothers with
his fellow friend, Paul McCartney. They left and his Johns uncle Neil came in. Neil spoke with Julia then
left. About 1 hour later, John found out his mother had been ran over by a policeman on duty.
John was even more crushed when the court acquitted the policeman. Shortly afterward john formed
the Beatles with friends Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, and George Harrison. For 10 years, the band
was the most talked about thing on the planet but john was crushed when they broke up due to his
wife, Yoko Ono. John went solo and recorded his own songs. His mist famous solo piece was “Imagine”
which went to Number one on the charts. As he was walking to his apartment at the Dakota in new
York, a crazy fan called “Mr.Lennon!” and went into a firing stance and shot john 5 times with hollow
head bullets. By the time john reached the hospital, he had lost 80% of his blood and was pronounced
dead. John Lennon influenced music by bringing Rock and Roll in and paved the way for the “British
Invasion” era of music. He also popularized Asian music through his wife Yoko ono. John also began
the form of songs called “Protest Songs” with his many songs protesting war.
John Lennon represents generosity because he would often play for free at various benefit concerts. In
1976, he played a benefit concert outside of a prison, where he believed a man had been wrongly
jailed. It was his last public performance. For this reason, john represents Generosity
John Lennon represents Curiosity because he often experimented with things he had never tried. In
1964, he experimented with LSD and was amazed at the effects. While this is not a good thing, some
consider it to be the reason he wrote the masterpiece “strawberry fields forever” which most considers
to be the greatest Beatles song. For this reason, he represents curiosity.
“Give Peace a Chance” represents John the most because it shows his strong, firm belief in peace. He
spent all his life working for peace, attempting to end wars. Needless to say, he was unsuccessful. But
that qoutation most represents his personality by his never ending quest for peace.
John Lennon is a humanitarian because he spent his life working for peace and making peoples lives
well by holding benefit concerts to raise money for people less fortunate than him