Who was John C. Fremont?

   John Charles Fremont (1813-1890), was an American general and explorer, born at Savannah, Ga. He spent the years 1838-1839 exploring the area between the Missouri River and the British frontier and obtained a lieutenant's commission with the U.S. Topographical Corps. In 1842, with governmental approval, Fremont led a small exploration party through the Wind River Range in the Rocky Mountains. Upon returning, he reported extensively on the meteorology, botany, geology, and geography of the region and designated points later fortified by the United States. In 1845 he cleared northern California of Mexican troops, but in pursuit of this goal he became involved with American authorities in California, the result of which was a court-martial (1846-1847). Having been found guilty of mutiny and other charges, he resigned from the army in 1848. Five years later he made his fifth expedition across the continent. In 1856 he was the first Republican candidate for the presidency, and in 1861 President Abraham Lincoln appointed him a major general in command of the western Union army, a position he lost because of a dispute with a subordinate. He was territorial governor of Arizona from 1878 to 1883.

Harriet Ware

   Harriet Ware was an American composer. She studied piano under William Mason and pursued further studies in piano, voice, harmony and composition in Paris and Ber­lín. She is one of the foremost women composers of the present day. Her compositions include numerous songs: The Cross (1909), Wind and Lyre (1912), and In an Old Garden (1921), and longer compositions: the cantata, Sir Oluf (1911), the one-act opera, Undine (1913), the chorus, Trees (1924), the ballet, White Moth (1925), and the choral symphonic poem, The Artisan (1929). She became the president of Harriet Ware, Publishers, Inc., in 1926.

David Adams Warden

   David Adams Warden was an American musician; born in London, England, in 1815; settled in the United States prior to the Civil War; was organist in. several Protestant Episcopal churches in his earlier years. During the Civil War he composed the music of many patriotic songs, which were sung by both armies. The best known of these include The Flags Come back to Tennessee, and All Quiet Along the Potomac Tonight. He also wrote both the words and music of Mother, Don't Weep for Your Boy and Tell Me, Ye Winyed Yinds. and was author of a book of chants. He died in Philadelphia, Pa., Feb. 4, 1902.

Who was Buffalo Bill

BUFFALO BILL (William Frederick Cody) (1846-1917).
Buffalo Bill was the last of the famous American frontier scouts. He was a sharp-shooter and an expert guide and hunter. His Wild West shows did much to establish the popular image of the Old West.
Buffalo Bill, whose real name was William Frederick Cody, was born in Le Claire, Iowa, on February 26,1846. At the age of 14 he was carrying mail for the Pony Express. During the U.S. Civil War, he was a Union Army scout. Later he hunted bison (often called buffalo). It is said that Cody killed 69 bison in one day, and over 4,000 in 8 months. He became known everywhere as Buffalo Bill. When war with the Sioux and Cheyenne Indians broke out in 1875, Cody again became a scout for the cavalry. He is said to have fought a duel with Yellow Hand, the son of a Cheyenne chief, and killed him.
In 1883, Cody organized his famous traveling Wild West shows. These shows included a huge cast of cowboys, Indians, and sharp-shooters, as well as herds of bison, elk, ponies, steers, and wild horses. Historic events such as Custer's Last Stand were reenacted. Sitting Bull, the Sioux chief whose warriors had helped defeat General Custer's soldiers, traveled with the show in 1885. Annie Oakley, the famous sharpshooter, was another star. Thousands of people in the United States, Canada, and Europe saw the show before Cody lost it in 1913 because of debts.
Cody died on January 10, 1917. His grave and the Cody Memorial Museum are on top of Lookout Mountain in Colorado. Other Cody museums include the Buffalo Bill Historical Center in Cody, Wyoming, where scenes from the old Wild West shows are recreated, and Buffalo Bill's Ranch State Historical Park in North Platte, Nebraska.

Agustin de Iturbide

Iturbide

   Agustin de Iturbide (1783-1824) was an emperor of Mexico. He was a native of Valladolid, Mexico. His father was a Spanish nobleman, his mother a rich creole. When the Mexicans first attempted to throw off Spanish rule the Spanish viceroy put Iturbide in command of the militia; but, instead of putting down the rebellion, Iturbide carried the militia over to the Mexican side. In 1822 the Mexicans made him their emperor and passed a law providing that his son should succeed him. The new emperor was too despotic, however, to suit the Mexicans, or perhaps they chafed under any autocratic government. In less than a year Iturbide was banished and went to Leghorn, Italy, to reside, with a pension from the Mexican Congress of $25,000 a year. A few months later Iturbide went to London. In 1824 he sailed for Mexico to recover his lost sovereignty. He landed July 14, and issued a proclamation that he would govern in accordance with the constitution and usages of England. July 17 he was arrested, and July 19 he was shot as a disturber of the public peace. The Mexicans settled a pension on his family.

John Charles Frémont

   John Charles Frémont (1813-90) was an Amer­ican explorer, soldier, and politician, born in Savannah, Ga. After serving briefly as teacher of mathematics and engineering in the U.S. Navy, he accepted a post as civil engineer in the Army; in 1838 he was commissioned as sec­ond lieutenant of topographical engineers. He gained early fame for his western explorations; in 1842 he made an expedition to southern Wyoming, and in 1843—44 he went to the tidewater of the Columbia and thence to the Sacramento Valley. His reports on California and the Great Salt Lake region turned American attention toward both areas at a time when "manifest destiny" was guiding policy in the direction of national expansion. His third expedition (1845-47) led him to California, in whose conquest he unquestionably wished to have a part. By February, 1846, he had centered his men at San Jose, in the heart of California. The Mexican authorities ordered him to leave the country, but he refused, playing for time. He knew that war between the United States and Mexico was expected. He moved north to Klamath Lake, and then to Sutter's Fort where he encouraged the discontented American settlers in the Sacramento Valley to revolt. News of the outbreak of war reached him in July, 1846, and from then on he actively supported Commanders Robert Stockton and John Sloat in the conquest of California. At the close of the war in 1848, Stockton commissioned him civil governor of California, but Fremont was soon ousted in the bitter quarrel between Stockton and Gen. Philip Kearny over lines of authority in the new territory. As a result, Fremont was court-martialed and dismissed from the service, but President Polk remitted the sentence, allowing him to resign.

Who was Heinrich Hertz?

Heinrich Hertz (1857-1894)

   Heinrich Hertz (1857-1894) was a noted German physicist. As a student at Berlin in 1880 he came under the influence of Helmholtz, which determined his later career. His work while here on the inertia exhibited by electricity was especially creditable. Two years were spent as a lecturer in physics at Kiel, then four years at Carlsruhe, when, in 1889, he became professor of physics at the University of Bonn. The year previous Hertz made known his immortal work on the relation between light and electricity which had been prophesied by Maxwell in his interpretation of the work of Faraday. In this Hertz demonstrated that electricity can be transmitted in elec­tromagnetic waves with approximately the same velocity as light waves. This production and detection of electromagnetic waves by Hertz was the beginning of that experimentation which gave us wireless telegraphy and other electric wave phenomena.

   The hertz (Hz) was established in Hertz's honor in 1930 as a unit of measurement for frequency, a measurement of the number of times that a repeated event occurs per unit of time (also called "cycles per sec").

Vincent van Gogh

Self-portrait by van Gogh

    Vincent van Gogh (1853-90) was a Dutch painter, born in Zundert, Brabant. From 16 to 22 he worked as an assistant for branches of the Goupil Galleries in The Hague, London, and Paris. Soon after his arrival in Paris he became interested in religion and in 1877 he began to study for the church. After a short period of instruction at the School for Missionaries in Brussels, van Gogh was sent as a missionary to the mining town of La Borinage in Belgium. In less than two years he was dismissed, because he gave everything he owned to the poor; an act which van Gogh considered true Christianity, but which the church did not. He found solace for his disappointment in theology by sketching the peasants of La Borinage amid their sordid surroundings, using the technique of Millet for his work. In 1880 he returned to The Hague to study under Mauve. By 1885 van Gogh had produced "The Potato Eaters," a powerful charcoal that showed his development from mere illustration to well-composed studies from nature. The same year he entered the Academy at Antwerp, but left in 1886 to join his brother, Theodore, in Paris. There he met the Impressionists and through their influence abandoned the dark browns of the Dutch school and adapted the Impressionists' clear, light colors to his own more intense shades.

Alessandro Leopardi

   Alessandro Leopardi was an Italian sculptor: born in Venice in the last half of the 15th century; died there, about 1512. His earliest known work is the magnificent mausoleum of the Doge Andrea Vendramini in the church of San Giovanni e Paolo at Venice. Some of the figures are missing, two of which authorities agree are in the museum at Berlin. Leopardi was charged with forgery and banished from Ven­ice in 1487, but the necessity for finishing the statue of Bartolomeo Colleoni, begun by Verrocchio, caused the Senate to recall Leopardi in 1490. The pedestal of this work is his own creation and he cast the bronze statue. The bronze sockets for the three standards in the square of Saint Mark's were designed and cast by Leopardi, and he worked on the tomb of Cardinal Zeno at Saint Mark's in 1503-05, the tomb being finished by Pietro Lombardo. Among the works believed to be his but not fully verified are ‘Elijah in the Fiery Chariot’ in the Morgan collection, New York, a bronze relief; and the three bronze reliefs of the ‘Assumptipn of the Virgin’ in the Museo-Archeologico, Venice.

Victor Hugo

Victor Hugo

   Victor Hugo (1802-85) was a French author, the greatest of the French romantics. His first volumes of verse, Odes el Poésies Diverses, Odes et Ballades, and Les Orientales, are notable for the metrical skill and colorful diction that characterize all his works. The bizarre subjects of his poems foreshadowed the pronounced Romanticism for which he was soon to become celebrated.

   In the preface to Cromwell, 1828, a historical drama, Hugo issued his manifesto. He claimed that complete freedom from tradition and perfect individuality were essential to good literature, and in Hernani, 1830, he put his principles into practice. The unconventional nature of the verse and diction of this play caused a riot on its first night. Hugo went on to revolutionize prose in Notre Dame de Paris, 1831. Other historical plays, including Ruy Blas, followed; and meanwhile he was publishing numerous volumes of poetry, including Les Feuilles d'Automne, Chants du Crépuscule, 1835, and Les Rayons et les Ombres, 1840. In 1852 he was exiled for his political opinions. During this period, Les Chátiments, 1853, a satire, the Légende des Siécles, 1859, narrative poems, and many articles and pamphlets appeared. Les Miserables, es Travailleurs de la Mer, 1866, and l'Homme qui Rit, 1869, established his fame is a writer of prose romances. 

   In 1870 he returned to France, but of his later works, only d'étre Grandpére, 1877, is well known. Hugo's work was made immortal by his tremendons vitality. The color and warmth of his prose and the metrical skill and glowing diction of his poems have never been equaled in any language. He had an enormous influence on all the younger European poets of his day.

Sir Frederick William Herschel

F. W. Herschel

   Sir Frederick William Herschel (1738-1822) was an English astronomer, born in Hanover, Germany. He went to England in 1757; became a teacher of music, organist and conductor. He continued his study of mathematics and astronomy and built bis own telescopes with which to study the heavens. 

   In 1781 he discovered the planet Uranus for which he became fa­mous. Herschel then devoted all of his time to astronomy and with the help of his sister Caroline carried on important scientific explorations of the sky. 

   He set up a powerful telescope at Slough, 1789, that had a 48-inches mirror and a focal length of 40 ft. With this he explored beyond the solar system. Herschel dis­covered 2,500 new nebulae as well as nebulous stars and planetary nebulae and also was the discoverer of the 6th and 7th satellites of Saturn. 

   His studies convinced him that the entire solar system moved through space and he determined a point toward which he thought it to be moving. Herschel died in Slough, his work being carried on by a son, Sir John Frederick William, who set up an observatory at the Cape of Good Hope.

Irving Berlin

Irving Berlin (1888-1989)

    The American songwriter Irving Berlin helped define the modern American popular song. During his long career he wrote some 1,500 songs. Many—"Always," "Blue Skies," "Puttin' on the Ritz," and countless others—have become classics, recorded again and again by new generations of singers.

    Berlin was born Israel Baline in Tyumen, Russia, on May 11, 1888, the youngest of eight children. He moved with his family to New York City at the age of 5. He had barely begun school when his father died, and he sold newspapers and sang in the streets to help support his family. He learned to play piano by ear and began to compose melodies by trial and error. He became Irving Berlin when his first song was mistakenly credited to "I. Ber­lin," and he decided to change his first name as well.

    In 1909, Berlin got a job writing lyrics for a music publisher; he became world famous two years later for writing "Alexander's Ragtime Band," which sold more than one million copies of sheet music. Berlin formed his own music company in 1919. During the 1920's the composer developed his unerring touch for ballads. In 1935 he wrote Top Hat, the first of many film scores. In 1939 he composed "God Bless America," which became one of the country's best-loved patriotic songs.

    Among Berlin's greatest successes was the song "White Christmas," which won an Academy Award in 1942 and became a mod­ern Christmas carol. He also wrote hit Broadway musicals, notably Annie Get Your Gun (1946), with its rousing showstopper, "There's No Business Like Show Business."

    Berlin's last major work was the Broadway show Mr. President (1962). He died in New York City on September 22, 1989, at 101 years of age.

Paul Verlaine

Verlaine

   Paul Verlaine was a French poet, born in 1844. He became a figure in the Parisian half-world of struggling artists and writers. His life was one of poverty, tragedy, and disappointment. After an unfortunate marriage, he toured Belgium and England with his young protege, Rimbaud. While traveling in Belgium, Verlaine accidentally shot and wounded his companion and was imprisoned for two years. During his incarceration, the Roman Catholic faith of his youth was brought back to him. Consequently the deep religious feeling he experienced resulted in the composition of his poem, Sagesse (1881). In 1874 first appeared his Romances sans Paroles, which identified him as one of the greatest pioneers of the symbolist school. The poems of Verlaine are characterized by his keen observation and fine interpretation of common events in life. The haunting and simple meter and rhyme of his poetry provides suitable accompaniment to its morbid and melancholy nature. Although Verlaine was a prominent decadent, his works are distinguished more by their childlike frankness than by their sensuality and emotionalism. The latter part of his life was spent in dissipation and degradation. The beauty of his phraseology is usually lost in translations. The most famous of his later works are Jadis et naguére (1884), and Parallélement (1889). Verlaine died in 1896.

George VI

King George VI

   George VI, 1895-1952, king of Great Britain and Ireland and of the British Dominions beyond the seas, was born in Sandringham, Norfolk. The second son of King George V and Queen Mary (who were then Duke and Duchess of York), he received the names of Albert Frederick Arthur George. There seemed to be little probability at that time that he would ever succeed to the throne, as there were three male heirs whose succeeding to the throne came before his. His great-grand-mother, Victoria, was reigning queen; his grandfather, Alfred Edward (later Edward VII) was still the Prince of Wales, who succeeded five years later on the death of Victoria on Jan. 22, 1901; next in line stood his father (George V), who was destined to reign 25 years, from May 6, 1910 until Jan. 20, 1936. Then followed the popular Prince of Wales, as Edward VIII, who was nearly 18 months older than Albert Frederick Arthur George. Edward abdicated after a brief reign of less than 11 months and left the path clear for his younger brother, then Duke of York, who was duly proclaimed king as George VI.

Who was Francois Guizot?

F. Guizot (1787-1874)

   Francois Guizot was a distinguished French statesman and his­torian. He was born at Nimes. At the age of twelve he resided in Geneva. In 1805 he took up the study of law in Paris. Seven years later he was made assistant professor of literature. Soon after he was called to a newly established chair, that of modern history in the Sorbonne. Guizot began writing for publication as early as 1816. The titles of his published works exceed thirty. A translation of his History of Civilization in Europe was for several decades a popular college text. He taught that civilization is the outgrowth of large factors and that men—even Napoleon—are but instruments. He held a number of state offices. In 1828 Guizot was elected to the chamber of deputies. In 1830 he be­came minister of the interior and continued to hold important ministerial positions until 1848. In theology he was a Calvinist; in politics he was a supporter of the temporal sovereignty of the pope and of the Bour­bon dynasty in France. Guizot stood for freedom, character, and education.

   Guizot is famous as the originator of the quote "Not to be a republican at 20 is proof of want of heart; to be one at 30 is proof of want of head".

Philip Freneau

   Philip Freneau (1752-1832) was an American poet born in New York City, of Huguenot descent, and was graduated from Princeton in 1771, where, with H. H. Brackenridge, he delivered at commencement a poetical dialogue on "The Rising Glory of Amer­ica." He made mercantile voyages to the West Indies in 1776 and 1780, was captured by the British during the second one, and described his experiences as a prisoner at New York in The British Prison Ship: a Poem in Four Cantos (1781). Other early publications are his Voyage to Boston, a poem (1774), and General Gage's Confession (1775). He was a frequent contributor of patriotic verse to the Freeman's Journal of Philadelphia during the Revolution. After its close he was principally occupied as a shipmaster in the West India trade until 1791, when he was made editor of the National Gazette of Philadelphia by Jefferson. This connection lasted for two years, and he then edited a paper at Mt. Pleasant, N.J., and engaged in other journalistic work for a few years, subsequently returning to a seafaring life and following it until the restrictions on navigation made it unprofitable in 1809. He then resided at his home in Mount Pleasant, N.J. Freneau was the first distinctive American poet, and his verse, though uneven, is characterized by grace, sentiment, and originality.

   His books include The Poems of Philip Freneau, Written chiefly during the Late War (1786), Poems Written and Published during the American Revolutionary War (1809), and A Collection of Poems on American Affairs (1815).

Who was Shalom Aleichem?

  Shalom Aleichem is the pen name of Solomon Rabdjowitz, or Rabinovitz (1859-1916), Yiddish short-story writer and dramatist, born in Pereyaslav, near Kiev, in the Russian Ukraine. At the age of twenty-one he was a teacher in the nearby town of Lubny. From 1890 to 1905 he worked at various occupations at Odessa and Kiev, and then fled from Russia, where the Jews were victims of widespread massacres, to western Europe. At the outbreak of World War I in 1914 he took up permanent residence in New York City. His best-known works were written in Yid­dish. The main subject of his writings is the life of Russian Jews in small towns. Certain types recur in his stories: Menachem Mendel, the typical small-town Jew; the eternal dreamer and Schemer Luftmensch; and the best-loved of them all, Tobias the Dairyman (Tevya der Milchiger), indestructible optimist in spite of poverty. Between 1883, when he published his first short story Tavel Shteiner in St. Petersburg, and 1916, when part of his autobiography Fun Yarid appeared in the New York daily Die Wakrheit, he wrote over forty volumes of short stories, novels, and plays. His books of short stories include Stempenyu and Yosele Solovei, published first in the Folk-Bibliothèque (1889), Don Kishot mi-Mazepfwka (1892), Eisenbahn Geschichtes (1909), Der Blutiger Shpass (1912-13), and Der Grosse Gewinn (1916). Stempenyu ap­peared in English in 1913. English translations of other works are She Must Marry a Doctor (1916), Jewish Children (1920), and The Old Country (1946).

Paul Gauguin

Two Tahitian Women

   Paul Gauguin (1848-1903) was a French painter and leader in the post-impressionist movement, was born in Paris. His father, a journalist, was from Orleans, and his mother was born in Lima, Peru. As a boy, Gauguin sailed the seas for six years with the merchant marine. In 1871 he went to work in a Paris bank, and in his spare time painted as a hobby. His first work shows the influence of Delacroix and Gourbet. He soon adopted the impressionist technique. Encouraged by Pissaro to give all of his time to painting, he resigned his Job in 1883. Shortly afterward, he left his wife and children, and traveled far and wide, searching constantly for a Utopia where he would be free of the conventions of society. In 1887 he worked on the island of Martinique, and then went on to Pont Aven, where he became the leader of a small group of painters. Gauguin did not articulate his theories of painting, leaving that to others. Bernard' Filiger, and Serusier, using Gauguin's work as a basis, reduced the group's technique to a theory which emphasized composition rather than unity and coherence. They used colors with great intensity. Their major thesis was that a painting was a plane on which to present a significant pattern of color. The ideas of Gauguin and his group were taken up by a number of resourceful young artists in Paris, including Denis, Ibels, Ranson, Vuillard, and Maillol. In 1888 Gau­guin visited his friend Van Gogh in Arles, hoping to place before him some of the principies of impressionism. At the time, however, Van Gogh was suffering from a mental disease, and Gauguin went on to Brittany. There he produced "Le Ghrist Jaune," "La Lutte de Jacob et de l'Ange," and the celebrated portrait of himself. These were done with utmost simplicity and represent some of his best work of the period. In the meantime, he also did some interesting lithographs and wood carvings.

Giuseppe Garibaldi

   Giuseppe Garibaldi was an Italian patriot. Born in Nice, France, July 4, 1807. Died in Caprera, Italy, June 2, 1882.
   Garibaldi played a leading role in the unification of Italy. In 1833 he joined Giuseppe Mazzini's Young Italy, a political society devoted to ending foreign domination of Italy and unifying it as a republic. Entering the Sardinian navy, Garibaldi became involved in an unsuccessful plot against the king and had to flee to South America. There he fought with Brazilian rebels and then in the Uruguayan civil war.
  When revolution swept over Europe in 1848, Gari­baldi returned to fight for Sardinia against Austria. After Sardinia's defeat he joined Mazzini in Rome, where in 1849 they set up the short-lived Roman republic. Driven out by French troops after weeks of heroic resistance, Garibaldi was again forced to flee Italy. He took refuge in the United States and worked as a candlemaker in New York City.

Johann Gottlieb Fichte

   Johann  Gottlieb Fichte was a German philosopher and patriot. Born in Rammenau, Germany on May 19, 1762. Died Berlin, Germany, January 27, 1814.
   Fichte was the first of the classical German Idealist philosophers. Rejecting Kant's theory that reality is divided between the mind and unknowable external objects, Fichte claimed that reality is the undivided absolute ego, or will of God. Man and everything in the universe are ideas thought of by the absolute ego in order that it may become aware of itself. Man's duty, as part of the absolute ego, is to struggle freely to know himself. Fichte developed these theories in his Science of Knowledge (1794) and Vocation of Man (1800).
   Fichte came into prominence by publishing a treatise that sympathized with Kant's views and won his favor. As a result, Fichte was made professor at the University of Jena in 1793, but gradually he began to criticize Kant, was charged with atheism, and resigned in 1799. He continued his lectures in Berlin, where the presence of Napoleon's occupation forces stirred him to publish the Addresses to the German Nation (1807). These works, which praised German superiority and urged the Germans to unite against the French, contributed greatly to the growth of German nationalism.