Alfred Nobel

Albert Einstein is known all over the world as a brilliant theoretical physicist and the founder of the theory of relativity. He is perhaps the greatest scientist of the 20th century. Some of his ideas made possible the atomic bomb, as well as television and other inventions. Alfred Nobel, the great Swedish inventor and industrialist, was a man on many contrasts. He made a fortune but lived a simple life, he was cheerful in company but said in private. A lover of mankind, he never had a family or wife to love him. He was a patriotic son of his native land and he died on foreign soil. He invented dynamite, to improve the peacetime industries of road mining and road building, but he saw it used as a weapon of war to kill and injured his fellow man. During his life he often felt he was useless. He was world famous for his works he was never personally well known, for throughout his life he avoided publicity. But since his death his name brought fame and glory to others.

He was born in Stockholm on October 21, 1833 but moved to Russia with his parents in 1842, where his father made a strong position for himself in the engineering industry. Most of the family returned to Sweden in 1859, where Alfred rejoined them in 1863, beginning his own study of explosions in his father's laboratory. He had never been to school or university but had studied privately and by the time he was twenty he was a skillful chemist and excellent linguistics, speaking Swedish, Russian, German, French and English. He builds up over 80 companies in 20 different countries.

But Nobel's main concern was never with making money on scientific discoveries. In youth he had taken a serious interest in literature and psychology. He was always generous to the poor. His greatest wish was to see an end of wars and thus peace between nations. His famous will, in witch he left money to provide prizes for outstanding work in Physics, Chemistry, Physiology, Medicine, Literature and Peace.

Elizabeth II, Elizabeth I, Queen Victoria

Elizabeth 2 is the Queen of Great Britain. She was born in Windsor on 21 April 1926. Her full name is Elizabeth-Mary-Alexander Windsor. Her pet name is Lilibet. She was educated at home, taught to read and write by her parents. She knew foreign languages. Elizabeth was made her speech on the radio in 1940. She was learned to drive. She was married Prince Philip in 1947. Her first son Prince Charles was born in 1948. She came to throne in 1952. Elizabeth was crowned in Westminster Abbey on 2 June 1953.

Now she plays an important role in the country. She travels a lot. The Queen has got four children: Prince Charles, Princess Anne, Prince Andrew, and Prince Edward. She has five official residences in Britain; Buckingham Palace and Windsor among them.

I'd like to speak about Elizabeth 1 and Queen Victoria. Elizabeth 1 came to throne in 1558. She had many of her father's qualities including common sense and the strength of character. Like him, she understood the people. She loved hunting and dancing. She traveled a lot round the country. She wanted to know her people and to be known by them. Her soldiers and sailors admired her courage [мужество]. The universities were surprised at her leaning, for she could speak Latin, Greek and several modern languages. She enjoyed a joke. During her reign Queen Elizabeth solved her first problem, the Church. The Anglican Church under Elizabeth followed a middle course. Most people in Britain wanted what her father, Henry 8, had given them: a reformed Catholic Church that used the English language and was free from foreign influence. And they got what they wanted. Elizabeth's next problem was to keep her enemies quiet until her country was strong enough to defend itself. The greatest danger came from Spain. In July 1588 the Spanish Armada of 130 Spanish ships arrived in the Channel. The English ships were faster than slow Armada. The English guns could shoot farther. After the battle less than half of the proud Armada came back to its home ports. This defeat of Spain was very important for England, though some people said that the Spanish Armada was defeated more by bad weather than by English guns.

During Elizabeth's reign England sent its explorers to different lands. They tried to find a quick way to India round the north of Russia. As a result they came to Archangelsk, were welcomed in Moscow and opened a new trade with Russia. England wanted to find empty lands where it could plant her own colonies. Queen Elizabeth's reign was also famous for arts and theater development. Elizabeth was a good musician herself. English music was then among the best in Europe. Many great men whote poety, drama was also famous. William Shakespeare's plays were written in the years of her reign.

Queen Victoria was a strong queen. Her monument you can see in front of Buckingham Palace. Queen Victoria came to throne in 1837 and reigned until her death in 1901. She ruled for the longest period in the English history, for 64 years! Victoria married a German, Prince Albert, but he died at the age of 42 in 1861. That was a great tragedy for Queen Victoria. She left London and never lived in the city where she had been so happy with her husband and nine children (5 daughters and 4 sons). But there are places in London that reminds us of their love. One of them is the Royal Albert Hall - a very large concert hall where the best musicians of the world perform classical music. In front of the Albert Hall there is a monument to Prince Albert built by Queen Victoria. Another place is theVictoria and Albert museum (V & A) with its rich collections of paintings and other works of art. The family life of Queen Victoria touched people's hearts. But this is not only reason why Queen Victoria became very popular. During her reign Britain became a rich industrial country with a developed trade, an empire with a lot of colonies.

Harry S Truman

Truman was born in Lamar, Missouri, in 1884. He grew up in Independence, and for 12 years prospered as a Missouri farmer.

He went to France during World War I as a captain in the Field Artillery. Returning, he married Elizabeth Virginia Wallace, and opened a haberdashery in Kansas City.

Active in the Democratic Party, Truman was elected a judge of the Jackson County Court (an administrative position) in 1922. He became a Senator in 1934. During World War II he headed the Senate war investigating committee, checking into waste and corruption and saving perhaps as much as 15 billion dollars.

As President, Truman made some of the most crucial decisions in history. Soon after V-E Day, the war against Japan had reached its final stage. An urgent plea to Japan to surrender was rejected. Truman, after consultations with his advisers, ordered atomic bombs dropped on cities devoted to war work. Two were Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Japanese surrender quickly followed.

In June 1945 Truman witnessed the signing of the charter of the United Nations, hopefully established to preserve peace.

Thus far, he had followed his predecessor's policies, but he soon developed his own. He presented to Congress a 21-point program, proposing the expansion of Social Security, a full-employment program, a permanent Fair Employment Practices Act, and public housing and slum clearance. The program, Truman wrote, "symbolizes for me my assumption of the office of President in my own right." It became known as the Fair Deal.

Dangers and crises marked the foreign scene as Truman campaigned successfully in 1948. In foreign affairs he was already providing his most effective leadership.

In 1947 as the Soviet Union pressured Turkey and, through guerrillas, threatened to take over Greece, he asked Congress to aid the two countries, enunciating the program that bears his name--the Truman Doctrine. The Marshall Plan, named for his Secretary of State, stimulated spectacular economic recovery in war-torn Western Europe.

When the Russians blockaded the western sectors of Berlin in 1948, Truman created a massive airlift to supply Berliners until the Russians backed down. Meanwhile, he was negotiating a military alliance to protect Western nations, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, established in 1949.

In June 1950, when the Communist government of North Korea attacked South Korea, Truman conferred promptly with his military advisers. There was, he wrote, "complete, almost unspoken acceptance on the part of everyone that whatever had to be done to meet this aggression had to be done. There was no suggestion from anyone that either the United Nations or the United States could back away from it."

A long, discouraging struggle ensued as U.N. forces held a line above the old boundary of South Korea. Truman kept the war a limited one, rather than risk a major conflict with China and perhaps Russia. Deciding not to run again, he retired to Independence; at age 88, he died December 26, 1972, after a stubborn fight for life.

Martin Luther King Jr.

One of the most visible advocates of nonviolence and direct action as methods of social change, Martin Luther King, Jr. was born in Atlanta on 15 January 1929. As the grandson of the Rev. A.D. Williams, pastor of Ebenezer Baptist church and a founder of Atlanta's NAACP chapter, and the son of Martin Luther King, Sr., who succeeded Williams as Ebenezer's pastor, King's roots were in the African-American Baptist church. After attending Morehouse College in Atlanta, King went on to study at Crozer Theological Seminary in Pennsylvania and Boston University, where he deepened his understanding of theological scholarship and explored Mahatma Gandhi's nonviolent strategy for social change. King married Coretta Scott in 1953, and the following year he accepted the pastorate at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama. King received his Ph.D. in systematic theology in 1955.

On 5 December 1955, after civil rights activist Rosa Parks refused to comply with Montgomery's segregation policy on buses, black residents launched a bus boycott and elected King president of the newly-formed Montgomery Improvement Association. The boycott continued throughout 1956 and King gained national prominence for his role in the campaign. In December 1956 the United States Supreme Court declared Alabama's segregation laws unconstitutional and Montgomery buses were desegregated.

Seeking to build upon the success in Montgomery, King and other southern black ministers founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) in 1957. In 1959, King toured India and further developed his understanding of Gandhian nonviolent strategies. Later that year, King resigned from Dexter and returned to Atlanta to become co-pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church with his father.

In 1960, black college students initiated a wave of sit-in protests that led to the formation of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). King supported the student movement and expressed an interest in creating a youth arm of the SCLC. Student activists admired King, but they were critical of his top-down leadership style and were determined to maintain their autonomy. As an advisor to SNCC, Ella Baker, who had previously served as associate director of SCLC, made clear to representatives from other civil rights organizations that SNCC was to remain a student-led organization. The 1961 "Freedom Rides" heightened tensions between King and younger activists, as he faced criticism for his decision not to participate in the rides. Conflicts between SCLC and SNCC continued during the Albany Movement of 1961 and 1962.

In the spring of 1963, King and SCLC lead mass demonstrations in Birmingham, Alabama, where local white police officials were known for their violent opposition to integration. Clashes between unarmed black demonstrators and police armed with dogs and fire hoses generated newspaper headlines throughout the world. President Kennedy responded to the Birmingham protests by submitting broad civil rights legislation to Congress, which led to the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Subsequent mass demonstrations culminated in the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom on 28 August 1963, in which more than 250,000 protesters gathered in Washington, D. C. It was on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial that King delivered his famous "I Have a Dream" speech.

King's renown continued to grow as he became Time magazine's Man of the Year in 1963 and the recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964. However, along with the fame and accolades came conflict within the movement's leadership. Malcolm X's message of self-defense and black nationalism resonated with northern, urban blacks more effectively than King's call for nonviolence; King also faced public criticism from "Black Power" proponent, Stokely Carmichael.

King's efficacy was not only hindered by divisions among black leadership, but also by the increasing resistance he encountered from national political leaders. FBI director J. Edgar Hoover's extensive efforts to undermine King's leadership were intensified during 1967 as urban racial violence escalated, and King's public criticism of U.S. intervention in the Vietnam War led to strained relations with Lyndon Johnson's administration.

In late 1967, King initiated a Poor People's Campaign designed to confront economic problems that had not been addressed by earlier civil rights reforms. The following year, while supporting striking sanitation workers in Memphis, he delivered his final address "I've Been to the Mountaintop." The next day, 4 April 1968, King was assassinated.

To this day, King remains a controversial symbol of the African American civil rights struggle, revered by many for his martyrdom on behalf of nonviolence and condemned by others for his militancy and insurgent views.

Princess Diana

Diana Frances Spencer was born on July 1, 1961 at Park House, the home her parents rented on the royal family's estate at Sandringham. As a child she occasionally played with Prince Andrew and Prince Edward, who were near her in age. Diana had two older sisters, Sarah and Jane, and a younger brother, Charles.

When Diana was six, her mother left her father. The Spencers divorced in 1969, and Diana's father received custody of the children. In 1975 Diana's father became the eighth Earl Spencer, making Diana a Lady. Diana and her siblings moved to Althorp, the Spencer family estate in Northampton.

Diana attended private boarding schools. Although she wasn't an especially good student, she was excelled at sports, and won trophies for her swimming. She dreamed of being a ballerina, but grew too tall (as an adult she was 5'10"). After leaving school in 1978 she worked as a nanny, waitress, and cleaning woman before becoming a teacher at the Young England kindergarten in Pimlico, London.

Her romance with the Prince of Wales began in 1980. The oldest child of British monarch Queen Elizabeth II, he was 12 years older than Diana, and had previously dated her sister Sarah. Almost from the start, the press took a special interest in "Lady Di." They staked out her apartment and followed her everywhere. Diana later said that she found the constant attention unbearable.

Diana and Charles were married July 29, 1981 at St Paul's Cathedral. The wedding was broadcast in 74 countries and watched by 750 million people worldwide. Diana was the first English woman to marry an heir to the throne in over 300 years.

At the ceremony the Archbishop of Canterbury said, "Here is the stuff of which fairy tales are made." But the fairy tale was an illusion, as Diana had already discovered. Prince Charles was still in love with an old girlfriend, Camilla Parker-Bowles. "There were three of us in this marriage, so it was a bit crowded," Princess Diana remarked years later. Distraught, Diana developed bulimia and attempted suicide. Despite her problems, she was a devoted mother to her two sons, Prince William and Prince Harry. She worked tirelessly for charity, and was beloved by the public for her warmth and humanity.

In 1992 Princess Diana decided to expose the truth about her relationship with Prince Charles to the public. She secretly collaborated with author Andrew Morton on his book Diana, Her True Story. The princess's direct involvement in the writing of the book was not revealed to the public until after her death. The separation of the Prince and Princess of Wales was announced on December 9, 1992. The divorce became official August 28, 1996. Princess Diana kept the title Princess of Wales and continued to work for her favorite charities. She and Prince Charles had joint custody of their sons.

In 1997 Princess Diana began a love affair with Emad "Dodi" Fayed, the son of billionaire businessman Mohamed Al-Fayed. Their romance ended abruptly on August 31, 1997 when both were killed in a car accident in Paris while fleeing from paparazzi. Princess Diana's sudden death led to an unprecedented worldwide outpouring of grief and love. As her brother said at her funeral, she was "the unique, the complex, the extraordinary and irreplaceable Diana, whose beauty, both internal and external, will never be extinguished from our minds."