Biographics: History One Life at a Time: Recent Episodes
Biographics: History One Life at a Time
Prince Rogers Nelson was an American singer-songwriter, musician, record producer, dancer, actor, and filmmaker. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest musicians of his generation. A multi-instrumentalist who was considered a guitar virtuoso, he was well known for his eclectic work across multiple genres, flamboyant and androgynous persona, and wide vocal range which included a far-reaching falsetto and high-pitched screams.
Charles I or Karl I was the last Emperor of Austria, the last King of Hungary, the last King of Bohemia, and the last monarch belonging to the House of Habsburg-Lorraine before the dissolution of Austria-Hungary.
Austrian-born British philosopher, regarded by many as the greatest philosopher of the 20th century. Wittgenstein’s two major works, Logisch-philosophische Abhandlung (1921; Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, 1922) and Philosophische Untersuchungen (published posthumously in 1953; Philosophical Investigations), have inspired a vast secondary literature and have done much to shape subsequent developments in philosophy, especially within the analytic tradition. His charismatic personality has, in addition, exerted a powerful fascination upon artists, playwrights, poets, novelists, musicians, and even filmmakers, so that his fame has spread far beyond the confines of academic life.
Ginette Dior, better known as Catherine Dior, was a French Resistance fighter during World War II. Involved with the Franco-Polish intelligence unit F2 from November 1941, she was arrested in Paris in July 1944 by the Gestapo, then tortured and deported to the Ravensbrück women concentration camp.
Russian physiologist known chiefly for his development of the concept of the conditioned reflex. In a now-classic experiment, he trained a hungry dog to salivate at the sound of a metronome or buzzer, which was previously associated with the sight of food. He developed a similar conceptual approach, emphasizing the importance of conditioning, in his pioneering studies relating human behaviour to the nervous system. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1904 for his work on digestive secretions.
Born in Georgia in 1860, Jefferson Randolph Smith went west while still a young man, finding work as a cowboy in Texas. Smith eventually tired of the hard work and low wages offered by the cowboy life, though, and discovered that he could make more money with less effort by convincing gullible westerners to part with their cash in clever confidence games.
Edward Teach, better known as Blackbeard, was an English pirate who operated around the West Indies and the eastern coast of Britain's North American colonies.
In today’s video we are covering our first Saint worshipped both by the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches, revered for having first introduced Christianity amongst the Rus. These were a pagan people of Nordic descent, who ruled over a vast land in the early Middle Ages, from the Baltic to the Black Sea. But her holy title should not fool you, as she did not dedicate her life solely to prayer and converting the heathen. This Saint was a ruler, the regent of the Principality of Kiev, and one of the most powerful women of the early Middle Ages.
Norman Ernest Borlaug was an American agronomist who led initiatives worldwide that contributed to the extensive increases in agricultural production termed the Green Revolution.
Louis was the son of Louis XIII and his Spanish queen, Anne of Austria. He succeeded his father on May 14, 1643. At the age of four years and eight months, he was, according to the laws of the kingdom, not only the master but the owner of the bodies and property of 19 million subjects. Although he was saluted as “a visible divinity,” he was, nonetheless, a neglected child given over to the care of servants. He once narrowly escaped drowning in a pond because no one was watching him. Anne of Austria, who was to blame for this negligence, inspired him with a lasting fear of “crimes committed against God.”
Douglas Noel Adams was an English author, screenwriter, essayist, humorist, satirist and dramatist. Adams was author of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which originated in 1978 as a BBC radio comedy before developing into a "trilogy" of five books that sold more than 15 million copies in his lifetime and generated a television series, several stage plays, comics, a video game, and in 2005 a feature film. Adams's contribution to UK radio is commemorated in The Radio Academy's Hall of Fame.
Alfred Russel Wallace was a British naturalist, explorer, geographer, anthropologist, biologist and illustrator. He is best known for independently conceiving the theory of evolution through natural selection; his paper on the subject was jointly published with some of Charles Darwin's writings in 1858.This prompted Darwin to publish On the Origin of Species.
Like Darwin, Wallace did extensive fieldwork; first in the Amazon River basin, and then in the Malay Archipelago, where he identified the faunal divide now termed the Wallace Line, which separates the Indonesian archipelago into two distinct parts: a western portion in which the animals are largely of Asian origin, and an eastern portion where the fauna reflect Australasia.
Without a doubt, one of the most exciting periods in history was the Industrial Revolution. At perhaps no other time was there a greater feeling that the sky was the limit. Innovations happened one after another and they all seemed destined to change the world forever.
Assuredly, one of the most important novelties of the 19th century was the railway. It marked a decisive shift in how people could travel the world. Distances that previously seemed unreachable were now just a day or two away. And we might have never enjoyed this revolution without George Stephenson, a man aptly named the “Father of the Railways.”
Today’s protagonist is universally recognised as one of the greatest science fiction writers in the history of literature. He won the Hugo and Nebula Awards, among many others, and is best remembered as the inventor of Robotics -- the brilliant mind that conceived the Foundation series and the concept of Psychohistory.
During his long writing career, Isaac Asimov hopped back and forth between science fiction and mystery novels, essays, non-fiction textbooks, literary commentaries and dissertations on humour. He authored or edited nearly 500 books in his lifetime, including an average of 10 or more publications every year during his most prolific production period.
The year is 30 BC. In the grand Egyptian capital of Alexandria, panic is sweeping the streets. A mighty Roman fleet is bearing down on the city, bringing fire, destruction. In a half-finished mausoleum, Cleopatra and her lover Mark Antony await the inevitable. Antony’s stomach has already been sliced open, and now the great general is merely waiting to die. As Roman boots pound the streets, the wounded man orders one last cup of wine. Then, as his lover looks on, he offers her a final toast before everything goes black.
Looking back on humanity’s achievements, you can pinpoint certain landmark moments that changed the world forever. One such moment was, undoubtedly, the birth of the automobile which, like rail transport before it and aviation afterwards, completely revolutionized how humans moved around.
Many people deserve credit for this achievement. As you are about to find out, the concept of the “first car in the world” is, by no means, a settled matter, but the lion’s share of the accolades goes to Karl Benz who designed and built what is regarded by many as the true first automobile.
Can money truly bring happiness? Well, if you ask King Croesus, then the answer is a resounding “yes.” He ruled over the kingdom of Lydia at a time when it was one of the wealthiest and most powerful kingdoms on the planet. He amassed untold riches the likes of which the world had never seen. He spurred on the world economy by issuing the first gold coins.
And yet...it all came crashing down in the end. Ever fickle, fortune abandoned Croesus and he witnessed his once-mighty kingdom crumble to dust and become just a small part of an even bigger, more powerful empire. And, if oracles are to be believed, this had all been part of a prophecy over 100 years in the making as Croesus had been destined to pay for the sins of his ancestors.
The works of James Joyce — particularly Ulysses and Finegans Wake — are almost universally considered classics, but they're a little different than most of the great works of literature that have been read for decades — if not centuries — in all corners of the world.
They're notorious amongst their peers: they're among the most dense and difficult books to try to read. They're full of obscure language, made-up words, and pages that just dissolve into a bizarre, stream-of-consciousness narratives.
Human history is littered with people who changed the world, only to have their achievements erased from popular memory. Gay men like computing pioneer Alan Turing, women like mathematician Ada Lovelace, even pure oddballs like Nikola Tesla were left out the curriculum for decades. Thankfully, this is no longer the case. On the internet, everyone from the Navajo code talkers, to NASA’s black, female number crunchers are having their stories told.
Robert Louis Stevenson holds a special place in the hearts and minds of many readers. He often served as an introduction to real, grown-up books. Stories like Kidnapped and Treasure Island may be considered classics, but they're also full of adventure and intrigue — the sort of stories that make you wish you were one of his characters, sailing the high seas, looking for buried treasure, fighting to reclaim your legacy.
What is the first name that comes to mind with the mention of electricity? Thomas Edison? Nikola Tesla? Perhaps even Benjamin Franklin. Yet Michael Faraday has every right to belong on that list, too, as it's impossible to imagine a world without his contributions to science.
From chemistry to electricity, from theoretical science to practical experiments that revolutionized the world, Faraday's contributions can't be overstated. And there's more to the story than just success; it's also a poignant tale of how anyone — regardless of their background, their education, or their upbringing — can make a real impact.
For as long as mankind has had currency, a system of trading, and a market economy, the world has been split into the "haves" and the "have-nots," … and for much of that time, there's been a huge gap between the two. The idea of the 1 percent isn't a new concept by any means, and in order to talk about one of the richest men in history, we'll have to go all the way back to the 15th century.
The man who would become known as Jakob Fugger the Rich was born in 1459, and he had an advantage that few people get, then or now -- he was born into a well-to-do family. But through a series of investments made with incredible foresight and a willingness to risk it all, Fugger guided his family to become one of the richest and most influential in history.
“He was a bad son, a bad husband, and a bad king, but a gallant and splendid soldier.” That was the description that historian Sir Steven Runciman thought best fitted Richard I. This was in line with the criticism brought against Richard by Victorian scholar William Stubbs who considered him a “mere warrior” who had no care for his kingdom or sympathy for its people.
Indeed, Richard I was an absentee ruler, spending only a combined six months out of his ten-year reign in England. The rest of the time, the king was either involved in wars or in captivity or simply preferring to reside in his French territories such as Anjou and Aquitaine. Today, scholars debate whether the king even knew how to speak English or not as he preferred his mother’s language of Occitan.
History is a delicate endeavor. It tends to remember those who make a lasting impact as larger-than-life figures, defined by their contributions, as well as the the effects the ripple and unfold after the fact. It's easy to forget that many of the people who shaped our world started out just like everyone else. They had to obey their parents, for better or worse. They played — and argued — with their siblings. They got into trouble in school. They struggled to find a direction in life.
Picture the richest person you can possibly imagine. Is it Jeff Bezos, the super-wealthy Amazon founder? Or maybe Microsoft head Bill Gates? No matter who you chose, their wealth will still be peanuts next to the subject of today’s video. Musa I was a man so wealthy that the true extent of his riches are almost indescribable. The ruler of the Malian Empire from 1312 AD to around 1337, Musa was a man whose life was built on gold. As king he personally owned over half the Old World’s known gold reserves. On a single trip through Cairo he once spent so much that he caused the price of gold to crash, pushing Egypt into an economic slump. Imagine if Auric Goldfinger somehow mated with Scrooge McDuck to produce the wealthiest, bling-iest figure in history. That was Musa I.
This tremendous tale of samurai loyalty and honor goes by several names. It is usually referred to as the Akō jiken in Japan, translated as the Akō incident, or sometimes the Akō vendetta. It has been featured so prominently in Japanese literature and kabuki theater that it spawned its own genre - Chūshingura, or The Treasure of Loyal Retainers, that only includes fictional stories based on this historical event.
Even those who aren't familiar with the name "Olive Oatman" are undoubtedly familiar with her photo. The young, dark-haired girl with the solemn expression and distinctive chin tattoo has become synonymous with the hardships faced by the pioneers who set out as a part of America's Westward Expansion, a mass migration that helped shape the middle of the 19th century.
In November 1910, Mexico exploded. Triggered by a rigged election, the Mexican Revolution shook the nation. You’ve probably heard of its most-famous sons: Emiliano Zapata and Pancho Villa. You probably even know its biggest set-pieces, such as the 1914 US occupation of Veracruz. But how much do most of us know about the guy who started it all? About the guy whose rule convinced hundreds of thousands of Mexicans to take up arms and fight to overthrow him?
He was the undisputed king of rock n’ roll. In the mid-1950s, 20-year old Elvis Presley exploded onto the airwaves. With a rockabilly blend of country music and blues, his curled lip, and his trademark wiggling hips, the southern boy caused a sensation. Coming just as youth culture was taking off, Elvis was everything these new teenagers wanted: dangerous, rebellious, and anathema to their parents. Across the nation, preachers denounced him from their pulpits. Judges issued writs against him for corrupting morals. The National Guard was even called to his concerts. If you were alive in 1956, then you likely thought Elvis either the sexiest or most-dangerous man alive.
On November 26, 1922, egyptologist Howard Carter entered the tomb he discovered just a few weeks prior. After decades of fruitless searching, he found something more amazing than he could have ever hoped for. When asked if he saw anything inside, he simply replied “Yes, wonderful things.”
Carter had located the tomb of a pharaoh from the 18th dynasty who ruled over ancient Egypt during the 14th century BC. More importantly, though, it was a tomb that had been mostly undisturbed for over 3,000 years.
He’s likely the most famous engineer in history. In 2002, a BBC poll named Isambard Kingdom Brunel the second greatest Briton of all time, second only to Winston Churchill. A key player in the Industrial Revolution, Brunel helped turn Britain into a global powerhouse. Under his guidance, railway tracks were laid across England and Wales at a phenomenal rate; gravity defying bridges were built; and the first modern ships were engineered. With his trademark top hat and cigar, Brunel became an icon of Britain’s early Victorian age - a self-made man propelling his nation forward through sheer talent and entrepreneurial spirit alone.
Imagine the scenario: you have an adorable grandmother, beloved by friends and family. She tends to her roses, bakes pies, and grows her own vegetables. You know she works for some sort of government outfit, something to do with science and metals. You know that now and then, she takes long trips to the other side of town. You don’t know exactly where she is going, or who she is meeting, but she always looks excited.
Even if you never cared for his songs, you surely heard of him. He was a musical prodigy, the first real electric guitar hero. He grew from humble beginnings and a fractured family to establish himself as one of the most influential guitarists of all time, a major force in 20th century music. Get ready to jam out on your air-guitar with today’s protagonist: Jimi Hendrix.
Carl Linnaeus was born on May 23, 1707, in Råshult, a tiny village in the province of Småland in southern Sweden. He was the eldest of five children to Nils Ingemarsson Linnaeus and Christina Brodersonia. His father was a church minister and an amateur botanist who believed in the importance of a good education. Ever since Carl was a little boy, he and his father would take trips through the garden where Nils taught him everything he knew about plants.
Cornelius Vanderbilt wasn’t exactly what you would expect out of one of the richest men in the world. He was brutish, ill-mannered, barely literate, and swore like a sailor. But, perhaps, it was these same traits that made him the definition of the American Dream with all the good and the bad that that entailed. He rose up from nothing; from less than nothing, in fact. His Dutch ancestors came to the New World as indentured servants. But through hard work and a keen eye towards the future he amassed a fortune seldom seen before that time.
Many of us have grown up with his stories. In some cases, some of us even grew up because of his stories. We all know about his characters: the enigmatic chocolate magnate, the six-year-old girl genius, the fox and the tortoise. But how much do you know about his adventures as a fighter pilot, his espionage activities, and his contributions to medicine?
George Washington Carver was born in a small town called Diamond Grove in Newton County, Missouri, today known simply as Diamond. His birth date is a mystery. Because he was born into slavery, the exact date was never recorded. It was sometime during the mid 1860s, but before slavery was abolished in January 1865. Later, Carver said that it happened “near the end of the war” so 1864 is generally given as his year of birth.
Who do you think of when you hear the words “father of the atomic bomb”? We’re guessing it’s Robert Oppenheimer, the leader of the Manhattan Project who famously responded to the first A-Bomb test by declaring “now I am become Death, destroyer of worlds.” But what if we told you there was another contender? A scientist who came this close to making the big breakthrough in 1934… a breakthrough that could have resulted in Nazi Germany developing the world’s first nuclear weapon. The scientist who almost created this terrifying alternative reality was Enrico Fermi, the godfather of the atom bomb.
There was a period in history between 1898 and 1922 dubbed the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration. It marked a time when daring adventurers set their sights on one of the few lands that still escaped humanity’s reach - the Antarctic. And this land was harsh, cold, and unforgiving, and all the people who dared face this unknown knew there was a good chance they might not come back. Generally, 17 expeditions are considered part of this era which made legends of men such as Ernest Shackleton, Douglas Mawson, and Robert Falcon Scott.
As a marshal, Wild Bill Hickok took a hands-off approach. He spent most of his day gambling in the saloon and his deputies knew where to find him if they needed him. And even though he policed some of the most lawless towns out in the west, this technique worked more often than not. Even back then, his name and reputation were enough to make other gunslingers think twice about causing trouble in the town where Wild Bill was the law.
The power of Ancient Rome seems absolute today, but that wasn’t always the case. Over 150 years before the great drama of Julius Caesar, the Roman Republic faced its greatest existential threat. Carthage, the great North African merchant empire, battled Rome for supremacy of the Mediterrenean. And at the vanguard of Carthage’s forces was one of the most brilliant tacticians the world has ever seen: Hannibal.
In 1298, a manuscript was published that took Western Europe by storm. Known today as the Travels of Marco Polo, it detailed the Venetian’s adventures in Asia - from India, to Japan, to Sri Lanka. Impressive as those tales were, though, it was the figure at the heart of Book Two who really set Europe alight. The wise, ancient emperor who ruled a China so wealthy, so enlightened, that it seemed like Heaven on Earth. That great emperor’s name was Kublai Khan, founder of the Yuan Dynasty and grandson of Genghis Khan. He would go down as one of the greatest rulers in Asian history.
There are many tales of people achieving all sorts of fortune and fame by selling their souls to the devil. Blues guitarist Robert Johnson is probably the most famous subject of that tall tale. The legend goes that he offered his soul at a Mississippi Delta crossroads, and in return he would receive musical success and talents beyond his wildest dreams. And, yes, to this day he is considered a pioneer of American blues guitar and songwriting. But the devil is in the details. And with a life so shrouded in mystery, it’s hard to separate fact from his very appealing fiction.
Horatio Nelson was born at Burnham Thorpe on Sept. 29, 1758. He entered the Royal Navy at the age of 12, and by 20 he had risen from midshipman to commander. In 1780 Nelson took a convoy to America and the West Indies, but the Admiralty placed him on half pay the next year after the American Revolution ended. Nelson then went to France to learn the language.
John Rackham (26 December 1682 – 18 November 1720), commonly known as Calico Jack, was an English pirate captain operating in the Bahamas and in Cuba during the early 18th century. His nickname was derived from the calico clothing that he wore, while Jack is a nickname for "John".
In the 125 years since Alfred Nobel’s estate first established the Nobel Prize, Cambridge University has had a remarkable group of laureates honored for their work. Their names are synonymous with excellence and innovation: Bertrand Russell. Francis Crick. Neils Bohr. Milton Friedman. There are literally a hundred more.
All good things must come to an end. And so did the Pax Romana, a 200-year-long period of time which represented the Roman Empire at its most glorious and most powerful. It started with the formation of the empire under Augustus and ended with the death of Marcus Aurelius, the last of the so-called Five Good Emperors.
1066 CE. The English Throne sits vacant after the King dies without an heir. Three claimants to the title quickly rise, and prepare to do battle over who would wear the crown. At the end of this turbulent year, invasions would be mounted, battles would be fought, and only one man would be left standing with the prize grasped in his bloody fist.
It is a tale that reads easier as fiction than fact, and in fact has been the inspiration for many famous fictional dynastic struggles, including Game of Thrones. This is the story of the victor of this struggle, who conquered a kingdom and changed the fate of a country and a continent. This is the story of William the Conqueror.
In 1922, Harry Truman sat in his mother-in-law’s house in small town Missouri, contemplating the failure that had been his life. He was nearly 40; behind him lay a string of failed businesses and unfulfilling odd-jobs. He was close to bankrupt, deeply in debt, and looked down upon by his wife’s elitist family. Aside from one brief stint in the Army, he had never lived outside his one horse town. He was, in short, a loser. A man who had failed at life so thoroughly even Jon Arbuckle would appear an overachieving Hercules next to him.
The “Spanish” flu pandemic was the single worst disease episode in modern world history. In the space of eighteen months in 1918-1919, its four epidemic waves killed tens of millions of people around the globe, ravaging a population that had already been exhausted by the mass killing tactics of the War to End All Wars.
In today’s video we will look at the Spanish flu from three perspectives: first, how did it spread across the world and what was its impact on the every day lives of ordinary individuals; then, we will profile this invisible killer, seeking to understand its origins and murderous methods; finally, we will assess the death toll it inflicted on the human species and see what can we learn from the experience.
In his obituary, the New York Times called Robert Franklin Stroud “probably America’s most famous convict.” He rose to notoriety late in life, after author and former corrections officer Thomas E. Gaddis wrote a book about him in 1955 titled “Birdman of Alcatraz.” A few years later, this turned into a movie of the same name starring Burt Lancaster in the title role. This was a major Hollywood production, which proved popular with moviegoers and critics and received four Academy Award nominations.
A hundred years ago, Egyptologist James Henry Breasted described Hatshepsut as “the first great woman in history of whom we are informed.”
This is particularly ironic seeing as how one or more pharaohs who came after her tried to have her erased from history through damnatio memoriae. Maybe they hated her, maybe they resented her success, or maybe they simply wanted a return to tradition. Thankfully, they did not succeed, which means that today we can bring you the story of Hatshepsut, the woman who became a pharaoh.
He popularized, for lack of a better word, several tropes that we associate with serial killers today and we find in numerous crime shows, movies, and books - taunting the police, giving himself a unique name, and using the media to feed his craving for attention.
Gregor Johann Mendel was a scientist, Augustinian friar and abbot of St. Thomas' Abbey in Brno, Margraviate of Moravia. Mendel was born in a German-speaking family in the Silesian part of the Austrian Empire and gained posthumous recognition as the founder of the modern science of genetics.
Subutai was a Mongolian general and the primary military strategist of Genghis Khan and Ögedei Khan. He directed more than 20 campaigns and won 65 pitched battles, during which he conquered or overran more territory than any other commander in history as part of the expansion of the Mongol Empire.
Imagine, for a second, that aliens land tomorrow. Armed with futuristic weaponry, they take the world’s leaders hostage, turning them into mere puppets. They dismantle humanity’s great buildings, destroy all religion… and mass-execute anyone who disobeys them. If that sounds like speculative fiction, think again; a similar scenario already unfolded 500 years ago. In 1519, conquistadors led by Hernan Cortez landed on the edges of the Aztec Empire. Within a year, they’d captured the emperor, Montezuma II, and turned him into their unhappy puppet. Shortly after, the entire empire collapsed, torn apart by the arrival of the Europeans.
“I am Darius the great king, king of kings, king of countries containing all kinds of men, king in this great earth far and wide...By the favor of Ahura Mazda these are the countries which I seized outside of Persia; I ruled over them; they bore tribute to me; they did what was said to them by me; they held my law firmly; Media, Elam, Parthia, Aria, Bactria, Sogdia, Chorasmia, Drangiana, Arachosia, Sattagydia, Gandara, India, the haoma-drinking Scythians, the Scythians with pointed caps, Babylonia, Assyria, Arabia, Egypt, Armenia, Cappadocia, Lydia, the Greeks, the Scythians across the sea, Thrace, the sun hat-wearing Greeks, the Libyans, the Nubians, the men of Maka and the Carians.”
Born in Sabaneta, Venezuela, on July 28, 1954, Hugo Chávez attended the Venezuelan military academy and served as an army officer before participating in an effort to overthrow the government in 1992, for which he was sentenced to two years in prison. Chávez became president of Venezuela in 1999. Early into his presidency, he created a new constitution for the country, which included changing its name to the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela.
Here in the 21st century, Capitalism is an increasingly controversial word. There’s a growing conversation about how much we should trust obscenely wealthy people, and whether or not there should be upper limits placed on human wealth.
Japan at the time had one of the world’s most powerful navies, and after dealing a devastating blow to US forces at Pearl Harbor and attacking Allied outposts all over the Pacific, they seemed invincible. To stop them, the Navy called on a mild mannered Texan who had led a bright but unremarkable naval career for 35 years. His performance was nothing less than spectacular. Within a matter of months, he had halted the Japanese advance, and then proceeded to force them back across the Pacific to the doorstep of their home islands, resulting in their surrender. Along the way, Chester Nimitz became one of the highest ranking officers in US military history, and one of the most important commanders in the history of the United States Navy. This is his story.
Pop quiz: which general defeated Napoleon? If you grew up speaking English, chances are you answered “Wellington.” The Duke who commanded British forces at the Battle of Waterloo, Wellington was indeed the man who oversaw Emperor Napoleon’s bitter end. But while Waterloo may have been the epilogue to the Napoleonic Wars, it wasn’t the grand finale. No, that had come over a year earlier, when one general managed to smash Napoleon’s Grand Armee; invade France, capture Paris, and force le petit caporal to abdicate his throne and go into exile. The identity of that man? Prince Karl Philipp von Schwarzenberg.
Philo Taylor Farnsworth was an American inventor and television pioneer. He made many crucial contributions to the early development of all-electronic television.
Stephen William Hawking CH CBE FRS FRSA was an English theoretical physicist, cosmologist, and author who was director of research at the Centre for Theoretical Cosmology at the University of Cambridge at the time of his death.
North Korea is a country shrouded in mystery. They do not allow their citizens to leave, and they cannot receive information from the outside world. The very few people who are allowed inside are under strict supervision. From the perspective of the United States, all we see of Kim Jong-un in the media is a Communist leader who is threatening nuclear war and violating human rights. He has had his hand in a number of assassinations of his enemies, as well. For many people, that’s all they need to know to form an opinion, and they imagine that his an evil dictator on par with Adolf Hitler. But the truth about this man is far more complicated.
King Leopold II ruled over Belgium from 1865 to 1909. Today, the memory of his reign still lives on, and he is glorified with golden statues of his likeness in every major city in Belgium. In history classes, each generation is taught that he was a humanitarian who brought Christianity and the wonders of civilization to The Congo Free State. However, the truth has been kept away from the Belgian people. The reality is that King Leopold II is responsible for the murder and mutilation of 10 million Congolese people. This just may be the biggest cover-up in European history.
He has achieved legendary status among conmen by pulling off some of the most outrageous, brazen and unbelievable deceits in the history of fraud. By the age of 21, he had impersonated a Pan Am pilot, a paediatric supervising doctor and a lawyer, charming everyone he met and bouncing checks all over the world. In this week’s Biographics, we take a look at the incredible story of Frank William Abagnale.
Alfred Bernhard Nobel was born on October 21st, 1833 in Stockholm, Sweden. He was a sickly child who almost died during the first week of birth. As it was, he was one of just four out of eight children to survive. His illness kept him indoors while his three brothers played outside. Alfred’s father, Immanuel, was an inventor and engineer, but he struggled to realize his ambitions and, as a result, the family struggled to get by. Just three months prior to Alfred’s birth, his father had been forced to declare bankruptcy and shut down his business.
John Whiteside "Jack" Parsons was an American rocket engineer and rocket propulsion researcher, chemist, and Thelemite occultist. Associated with the California Institute of Technology, Parsons was one of the principal founders of both the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the Aerojet Engineering Corporation.
Isoroku Yamamoto was the mastermind behind the worst attack on American soil. That attack on Pearl Harbor brought war with Japan, pitting Yamamoto against the best military minds of the US Armed Forces. In the end, though, it took a clandestine mid air assassination to bring him to heel. In this weeks Biographics, we examine the life of Isoroku Yamamoto.
He was the quiet, efficient and oh so ruthless architect of the Holocaust; Hitler’s most loyal sycophant. He ruthlessly dispatched those who stood in his way as he rose to a position of power that was second only to the Fuhrer. In the end he spectacularly betrayed his master – only to be felled by his own hand.
Mao Zedong, also known as Chairman Mao, was a Chinese communist revolutionary who became the founding father of the People's Republic of China, which he ruled as the chairman of the Communist Party of China from its establishment in 1949 until his death in 1976.
Lavrentiy Pavlovich Beria was a Soviet politician, Marshal of the Soviet Union and state security administrator, chief of the Soviet security and secret police apparatus under Joseph Stalin during World War II, and promoted to deputy premier under Stalin from 1941. He later officially joined the Politburo in 1946.
Gilles de Rais, Baron de Rais, was a knight and lord from Brittany, Anjou and Poitou, a leader in the French army, and a companion-in-arms of Joan of Arc. He is best known for his reputation and later conviction as a confessed serial killer of children.
Henry McCarty, better known as "Billy the Kid" and also by the pseudonym William H. Bonney, was an outlaw and gunfighter of the American Old West who killed eight men before he was shot and killed at the age of 21. He also fought in New Mexico's Lincoln County War, during which he allegedly committed three murders.
Pol Pot was a Cambodian revolutionary and politician who governed Cambodia as the Prime Minister of Democratic Kampuchea between 1975 and 1979.
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was an Indian lawyer, anti-colonial nationalist, and political ethicist, who employed nonviolent resistance to lead the successful campaign for India's independence from British Rule, and in turn inspire movements for civil rights and freedom across the world.
Leonardo da Vinci was a genius who invented revolutionary ideas centuries before his the rest of the world would catch up with him. He embodies the definition of a “Renaissance Man”- one who studied and mastered a variety of different subjects. He was a painter, engineer, architect, writer, scientist, and inventor. While you may know him for his most famous works of art like The Mona Lisa or The Last Supper, few people know the man behind the paintings. Today on Biographics, we’re talking about Leonardo da Vinci.
Aristotle was a Greek philosopher and polymath during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. Taught by Plato, he was the founder of the Lyceum, the Peripatetic school of philosophy, and the Aristotelian tradition.
Sir Isaac Newton is regarded as one of the greatest scientists who ever lived. His breakthrough idea about motion influenced every area of physics, allowing other great thinkers to stand on his shoulders. Yet, Newton was also a man at odds with his public perception – a secret alchemist and heretic who risked his life to write about the failings of the Anglican church. In this week’s Biographics, we uncover the real Isaac Newton.
Friedrich Nietzsche was a nineteenth century philosopher who is most remembered for his killer quotes and incredibly large mustache. The main goal of his work was aimed to uncover the fact that there is no universal truth, and that the human condition is in a constant state of overcoming our animalistic urges. He came up with many amazing quotes that we still use to this very day, including “What doesn’t kill me makes me stronger”, and “God is dead”. While he is often misunderstood, and his work has been used for the justification of evil over the past hundred years, the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche truly has changed the way people live in the 21st Century. Today, we’re going to talk about his life, philosophy, and legacy.
Julius Robert Oppenheimer was an American theoretical physicist and professor of physics at the University of California, Berkeley.
He is the only person whose baby picture was flown into space, and whose body has been preserved for decades after his death. He pushed his version of Communism so far, and for so long, that he was able to overthrow the government of the largest country in the world. To some, he is a hero, and to others, he is one of the most evil villains in history. On Today’s Biographics, we are talking about Vladimir Lenin- The man behind the Bolshevik Revolution, and the founder of the Soviet Union.
During the thirteenth century, a merchant named Marco Polo returned home to Italy after spending 24 years living in the Mongolian Empire. He had the bad luck of getting arrested in Genoa, while they were at war with his hometown of Venice. He was a prisoner for two years, and he just so happened to share his cell with a famous writer named Rustichello da Pisa. The two of them shared stories with one another- as you do, when you’re stuck in a prison cell with absolutely no form of entertainment. Rustichello was so captivated by the stories of Marco Polo’s journey, that he knew it would make a great book. So they spent those two years in captivity writing the manuscript together. When they were finally released from prison, they published The Travels of Marco Polo, and it became an overnight best-seller.
John Davison Rockefeller Sr. was an American business magnate and philanthropist. He is widely considered the wealthiest American of all time, and the richest person in modern history.
He is known as one of the most intelligent men to walk this earth, yet his private life was nothing short of chaotic. He was the world’s most celebrated scientist, yet he shunned the limelight. He ushered in the atomic age, yet he was a lifelong pacifist. In this week’s Biographics, we delve into the contradictory life of Albert Einstein.
Edward Joseph Snowden is an American whistleblower who copied and leaked highly classified information from the National Security Agency in 2013 when he was a Central Intelligence Agency employee and subcontractor.
His writings inspired the great revolutionary movements of the 20th Century, leading to the dictatorial rise of men like Josef Stalin and Mao Zedong. He lived a life of poverty and obscurity, content to let others take the limelight and aware that his ideas would not be realized during his lifetime. We remember him as the Father of Communism, yet the version that took hold in Soviet Union and China bore little resemblance to what he had envisioned. In this week’s Biographics, we discover the man who was Karl Marx.
Socrates is considered the father of Western philosophy. He was a man who questioned everything and everyone. With no regard for how his opinions would be received, he imposed his views with a dogmatic superiority that sealed his eventual fate. Sill, his great legacy to the world was the method of questioning to arrive at the truth known as the Socratic method. Today on Biographics, we discover the man who was Socrates.
Charles André Joseph Marie de Gaulle was a French army officer and statesman who led the French Resistance against Nazi Germany in World War II and chaired the Provisional Government of the French Republic from 1944 to 1946 in order to reestablish democracy in France.
Fritz Haber was a German chemist who received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1918 for his invention of the Haber–Bosch process, a method used in industry to synthesize ammonia from nitrogen gas and hydrogen gas. This invention is of importance for the large-scale synthesis of fertilizers and explosives.
Henry Ford was an American success story. Through his dogged persistence, engineering brilliance and innovative production techniques he brought an affordable motor vehicle to the masses, creating an empire in the process. Yet there were other aspects of the man that didn’t fit comfortably into the American icon image. From his anti-Semitism to his vehement opposition to unions, Henry Ford was a man who defied description. In this today’s Biographic we get up close and personal with Henry Ford.
Galileo Galilei was a truth seeker. His quest for truth, though, was to bring him into conflict with the most powerful institution of his day – the Roman Catholic Church. Through such inventions as the telescope, he revealed truths that landed him in front of the Holy Roman inquisition, fighting for his very survival. Condemned during his life, he is now revered as a true genius. In this today’s Biographics, we get the full story on Galileo Galilei.
He was the most hated among Hitler’s inner circle – a thuggish bully whose uncouth ways and scheming self interest allowed him to manipulate his way to a position of power within the Nazi hierarchy. As Hitler’s personal secretary he became the Fuhrer’s gatekeeper, and his most trusted confidante. In today’s Biographics, we examine the life and death of Martin Bormann.
Ferdinand Magellan was one of the leading explorers of the Age of Discovery. Often cited as the first man to circumnavigate the globe, he fell just short of that milestone, being hacked to death by natives on the Marianas Islands. Yet, his vision and his tenacity, despite tremendous odds, opened up the westward route to Asia and established his legacy as one of history’s great adventurers. In today’s Biographics, we uncover the life and tragic death of Ferdinand Magellan.
Alexander III of Macedon, commonly known as Alexander the Great, was a king of the ancient Greek kingdom of Macedon and a member of the Argead dynasty. He was born in Pella in 356 BC and succeeded his father Philip II to the throne at the age of 20.
Of the early philosophers who followed in the footsteps of Socrates, no-one was as striking, or as eccentric, as Diogenes. He was the original stoic, a man who rid himself of the trappings of society, living in an oversized wine casket and championing the lifestyle of dogs over humans. He also challenged all of the norms of society, shocking people with his outrageous actions and cutting wit. In today’s Biographics, we take a close look at the bizarre life of Diogenes the Cynic.
Alexander the Great stood at the head of the world’s most feared army, using it to carve for himself a vast empire. He crushed the Persian Empire and then thrust his way into Egypt and India to become the acknowledged king of kings. Then at the height of his power he was cut down, leaving behind a legacy of heroism, divinity and tyranny. In today’s Biographics, we examine the incredible life of Alexander.
Victoria was Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland from 20 June 1837 until her death. She adopted the additional title of Empress of India on 1 May 1876. Known as the Victorian era, her reign of 63 years and seven months was longer than that of any of her predecessors.
Gabrielle Bonheur "Coco" Chanel was a French fashion designer and businesswoman. The founder and namesake of the Chanel brand, she was credited in the post-World War I era with liberating women from the constraints of the "corseted silhouette" and popularizing a sporty, casual chic as the feminine standard of style.
Leon Trotsky was a man of thought and action. His dream of a utopian society built on Marxism crumbled around him yet he never gave up on his ideals. When he was sidelined by the power hungry Josef Stalin he wielded his pen to expose the despot to the world, knowing full well that in doing so he was signing his death warrant. In today’s Biographics, we discover the man who was Leon Trotsky.
Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev led the Soviet Union during part of the Cold War as the first secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964 and as chairman of the Council of Ministers from 1958 to 1964.
Louis Philippe I was King of the French from 1830 to 1848. As Duke of Chartres he distinguished himself commanding troops during the Revolutionary Wars but broke with the Republic over its decision to execute King Louis XVI. He fled to Switzerland in 1793 after being connected with a plot to restore France's monarchy.
These are the first sentences of the Sunzi Bingfa, known in the West as The Art of War, one of the oldest treatises on strategy and warfare and for sure, the most quoted across the Globe. Its 13 chapters offer high level strategic advice to rulers and generals, focusing on a series of key principles which should always be kept in mind, lest one takes the road to ruin. Some of its commandments are very specific to warfare in the ancient world, for example chapter 12 is entirely dedicated to Attack by Fire. But most of its teachings can be extrapolated to a variety of situations outside of the military environment, including politics, finance, marketing or even sports.
Alan Mathison Turing OBE FRS was an English mathematician, computer scientist, logician, cryptanalyst, philosopher, and theoretical biologist.
Florence Nightingale, OM, RRC, DStJ was a British social reformer and statistician, and the founder of modern nursing. Nightingale came to prominence while serving as a manager and trainer of nurses during the Crimean War, in which she organised care for wounded soldiers.
William Shakespeare was the greatest writer of all time. He has had the biggest impact on literature for all of human history. Some historians believe that he may have even written the first English translation of the King James Bible. During his lifetime, he published 38 plays, 154 sonnets, and several poems. His writing has been translated into every single language in the world, making him one of the only writers who is universally popular with everyone. So, who was this man? And how did his life experience shape him into someone so profound, that his words have lasted for hundreds of years?
Carl Edward Sagan was an American astronomer, cosmologist, astrophysicist, astrobiologist, author, science popularizer, and science communicator in astronomy and other natural sciences. He is best known as a science popularizer and communicator.
With that boyish face, slick hair, slight frame and pouty lips Audie Murphy could have easily been one of those heartthrobs from the James Dean era. A rebel without a cause, a film star or a pop recording artist. He was, in fact, all of the above and then some. Audie Murphy was the real deal, one who could talk the talk and walk the walk. Aged barely 21, 2nd Lieutenant Audie Murphy had fought his way from North Africa to France in WWII, becoming the most decorated soldier in US History – and a badass Axis-killing machine. In today’s Biographics video we will look at the life of Audie Murphy and how he went To Hell and Back.
It was the financial scandal of the century. One of the most respected figures on Wall Street, a man who was considered to have the investment Midas touch, had not actually invested a dime in the past fifteen years. Instead he’d been running the largest Ponzi scheme in history. In today’s Biographics, we take a look at the stunning rise and cataclysmic fall of Bernie Madoff.
Jiro Horikoshi was the most brilliant Japanese aeronautic engineer of his time. He grew up dreaming of bringing Japan into an age where people could travel the world in airplanes. But he was born in a time when his country was at war, and the only use for his talent was to make bombers during World War II. Horikoshi designed the famous A6M Zero Bomber. This was considered to be the most successful dog fighter of its time, and the plane would eventually become associated with the infamous Kamikazes. On today’s Biographics, we have the story of Jiro Horikoshi’s life, and the impact his creation had on the world.
A total disregard for his own personal safety, an indomitable fighting spirit, reckless courage, … and the gift of being nearly indestructible. This soldier survived five wars, including World War I and World War II becoming one of the most decorated British officers of all time and sustaining countless injuries. Was he the unluckiest soldier of all time or the quintessential British war hero? Make up your mind as you hear the story of today’s protagonist: Adrian Carton de Wiart, the unbreakable soldier.
Benjamin Franklin was one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. Every single American has been taught the stories of his accomplishments since elementary school, and it’s hard to go anywhere in the US without eventually being reminded of Ben Franklin. In Philadelphia, there is the Ben Franklin Bridge, Franklin Institute, and statues of his likeness all over the city. His face is also on the one hundred dollar bill. There was so much respect for him in the US, that saying anything negative is practically treasonous. But on today’s Biographics, we aren’t going to hold back on all of the details on how Ben Franklin was and more than a bit of a mad lad.
On November 22, 1963, 24 year old Lee Harvey Oswald fired the shot that would change history. As crowds cheered on Dealey Plaza, the former Marine sharpshooter put a bullet through the head of America’s telegenic young President. It was the first successful assassination of a US president in 62 years. But Oswald didn’t live long enough to celebrate his grim achievement. Not two days later, Oswald would be dead too, killed by an assassin’s bullet while in police custody.
Gianni Versace was a brilliant businessman who took his humble beginnings and built a multi-billion dollar fashion empire. He became a celebrity designer, and his company’s famous Medusa logo is recognized around the world. But in 1997, his life was cut short when he became the victim of a serial killer.
The story we bring to you today shows exactly that. This is the story of three individuals who through imagination, cunning and sheer cheek were able to fool the secret services of half of Europe at the height of World War II. This is the story of the secret agent codenamed ‘Garbo’ and his associates, and how they brought about the greatest deception of the War.
Hundreds of people stood in a crowd in front of the Menlo Park factory in New Jersey as a banner unfurled to reveal the image of Thomas Edison. He wanted the world to know that he was the most important person in the room. He was the brand. The inventor. The one in charge of over 1,000 machines created under his name.
Louis Pasteur was the chemist who has gone down in history as one of the fathers of microbiology. He is famous for several accomplishments that changed science as we know it, including the pasteurization process of killing bacteria from liquids, and paving the way for immunology by creating life-saving vaccines. These accomplishments are just the tip of the iceberg, because without Pasteur’s revolutionary germ theory, modern medicine would not be anything like it is today. On this episode of Biographics, we are talking about the life and work of Louis Pasteur, and why he was one of the greatest minds in history.
Imagine, for a moment, that you could travel backwards through time and give your sixteen year old self the powers of a God. Imagine placing the lives and fates of millions into your trembling teenage hands. Would the result be a happier world, a utopia? Or would the result be catastrophe for everyone involved, including your younger self? In October, 54 AD, the Roman Empire made this little thought experiment a terrifying reality. They elevated an emotionally unstable 16 year old boy to the position of emperor. That boy’s name? Nero.
Count Victor Lustig may have been the most successful con man of the XXth Century. From the Belle Epoque to the Great Depression, through the Roaring Twenties and across two continents, this elegant swindler eluded the grasp of the law while racking in hundreds of thousands of Dollars.
Nancy Wake was beautiful, smart Australian woman living in France, and at first glance, she looked like a housewife, and no one would have suspected that she was actually a secret agent for the SOE. During World War II, she was given the nickname of “The White Mouse”, because she continued to escape from the Nazis’ grasp. After becoming an expert in espionage, she was put on the Gestapo’s Most Wanted List, and had a 5-million-franc bounty on her head. This is the incredible story of Nancy Wake, The White Mouse.
Being shot directly in the stomach isn’t generally conducive to living- a fact that makes the story of Alexis St. Martin all the more impressive because he not only walked off being shot in said organ at the age of 20 on June 6, 1822 at a range of less than a meter, but went right ahead and lived for another half century despite the wound going full Weathertop on him and never completely healing, giving scientists an almost literal window into how the body digests food.
In the first two years of World War II the Allies were stunned by the speed, coordination and efficacy of German’s armoured divisions, seemingly unstoppable. It was the success of the Blitzkrieg tactics, the ‘lightning war’. This success was attributed to the leadership and military genius of today’s protagonist. Even before the war, his published works had brought him to the attention of military leaders worldwide. He became known as ‘The Father of Blitzkrieg’. His loyalty to Germany was undisputed, but his support of Hitler and Nazi leadership was not so clear cut. He was in fact one of the very few Generals who dared shouting back at the Fuhrer and even disobey his orders.
His career was not without controversy, though. He had to face almost six hundred lawsuits in his lifetime. Was he truly the inventor of the telephone or just someone who stole ideas and had better lawyers? Was he a champion of deaf people or did his efforts do more harm than good? Neither question can honestly be answered with certainty so those might be decisions that you'll have to make for yourself after you have finished watching this video.
Archimedes was the ancient Greek inventor and mathematician who is remembered for being one of the greatest minds in all of human history. His theorems became laws of physics, and his equations became essential for future generations of scientists and engineers. While his great passion in life was the study geometry, Archimedes also used his mind to invent weapons of war that successfully defended the city of Syracuse from Roman invaders. On today’s Biographic, we tell the story of a man whose legacy has lasted thousands of years.
During the late 19th century, a German man named Otto Lilienthal achieved some of the first successful, repeated flights using gliders. Regrettably, he suffered a crash on August 9, 1896, and died the next day. Reportedly, his last words were "Sacrifices must be made!"
Nearly everyone has grown up hearing the stories of the masked vigilante named Zorro. He was dressed all in black, and fought with a sword to defeat his enemies. Instead of superpowers, he used his wits and strength to take down the bad guys. He took from the rich to give to the poor, just like Robin Hood. This is a fictional character, of course, but Zorro was inspired by the real Mexican-American man named Joaquin Murrieta. On today’s Biographics, we are going to uncover the life and the legend of this bandit who became a hero.
"Mad Jack" was born John Malcolm Thorpe Fleming Churchill on September 16, 1906, in Surrey, England. His father, Alec Fleming Churchill, worked as an engineer and, later, Director of Public Works, which meant that he moved the family around a lot for his job. Churchill first grew up in the former British colony of Ceylon, now Sri Lanka, and then Hong Kong before relocating again to England. Jack had two younger brothers who would also go on to have distinguished careers in the military, although not nearly as colorful.
It’s the 1st of October, 1938. Heston airport, just outside London. A man steps out of a propeller airplane to address a crowd of journalists, officials and onlookers. He waves in triumph a piece of paper carrying two signatures, his and the one for a certain Mr A. Hitler. The man is hailed as a hero, as he announces that he has truly achieved “peace for our times”.
Three centuries after the fall of the Roman Empire, most of Western Europe was divided into small Kingdoms frequently at war with each other. They were threatened by the Umayyad Caliphate from the South, subject to the influence of the Byzantine Empire from the East and prone to the interference of the papacy. Cultural and economic development languished, marred by a lack of strategic vision and the loss of centuries’ worth of classical knowledge.
A peaceful, unnamed town is taken over by an unnamed Army. The invaders arrive by surprise, aided by the treason of an insider: the scheming shop keeper Corell. The traitor seeks recognition from the new Masters, an appointment as new Mayor, but he is despised and put to the side both by the occupiers and the townsfolk.
At the dawn of the 20th Century, one young doctor in Vienna developed a theory that would change our understanding of the human mind forever. Using cutting edge techniques the doctor delved further into the psyche than anyone had before. He created names, like the Id and Superego, that are still in use today. Catalogued patterns of thinking, like transference and the Oedipus Complex, that still influence us over a century later. Even now, his name is still instantly recognizable: Sigmund Freud.
According to legend, Spartacus’s wife walked in on her sleeping husband one night to find that a snake had wrapped itself around his face. Instead of being alarmed, she took this as a prophecy. Just like the serpent surrounded itself around the warrior’s head, so shall Spartacus be enveloped by a “great and fearful power”. One thing the woman could not see, however, was if this power would lead her husband to glory or disaster.
Walt Disney once famously said that that laughter is America’s greatest export. It’s not. It’s travel and transportation, with $236 Billion in sales in 2017. But sale of intellectual property, including TV and movies, amount to $49 Billion, which is twice the GDP of Cyprus.
So, if by laughter we mean entertainment, then yes – American entertainment is one of the country’s most important exports, and these days, a good chunk of that intellectual property is owned by Walt Disney Studios: Pixar, Buenavista, and Miramax, plus the Marvel and the Star Wars franchises, are some of the largest and most visible entertainment companies owned by the House of Mouse. Disney’s legacy can capture the imagination of every girl or boy from early childhood all the way through adulthood.
New York City. The Big Apple. It isn't the capital of the United States, but it's still the country's beating heart. It's wild, weird, and wonderful, and in order to truly understand how it turned into the metropolis it is today, you'll have to take a look at one of the most influential figures in the city's history. It's a tale of corruption, fraud, bribery, ostentatious wealth, a little bit of creative legal interpretation, and a lot of sheer audacity and willpower.
He’s a man known to history literally as ‘the Terrible’. Ivan IV was the first tsar of Russia, the man who built the iconic St Basil’s Cathedral, and the ruler who defended Moscow from Tartar invasion. In Russian history, he’s a towering figure, behind perhaps only Peter the Great and Lenin in how he shaped the nation. Yet how much do any of us really know about him, beyond his mistranslated nickname? Could he really be so bad as the crazed, wild-eyed caricature of popular history?
Today’s protagonist, Robert Hanssen, was an FBI agent who served his country for 20 years. At the end of the Cold War, Hanssen sold classified secrets to the Soviet and Russian intelligence services. He compromised the security of his country and put the lives of colleagues in danger. He realised his mistakes and stopped spying, but eventually returned to his duplicitous role with a vengeance.
It is very rare that a book can come out and single-handedly change humanity’s understanding of the world. But in 1543, De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (“On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres”) did just that. It was a book by Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus in which he presented his model of a heliocentric Universe - one which did not place the Earth at the center of it all, anymore. Instead, it had been replaced with the Sun which was now, more or less, at the heart of the Universe, and all the stars and planets in the sky revolved around it.
The world has an eerie fascination with serial killers. Whether it's hearing tales of the men who process their victims through meat grinders in order to feed the remains to future victims, or stories of strange fetishes and incomprehensible desires to commit atrocities upon corpses, people can't help but be intrigued. This dark side of the human psyche has been featured on screens big and small for decades, and there is something undeniably captivating about true crime. It doesn't let you look away.
Today’s protagonist is the Generalisimo Francisco Franco, who ruled Spain from 1939 to 1975 with the title of ‘Caudillo’, leading one of the longest running dictatorships in Europe. He is best remembered as the leader of the Nationalist faction, the military insurgency which opposed the Republican government in the Spanish Civil War. But how did he rise through the ranks and seized control of a movement that he had not initiated? How did he rule Spain after the war and how did he orchestrate the transition back to the Monarchy?
Roman Emperors were men who wielded immense power in a wide variety of ways. Some were good military leaders. Some ruled fairly and openly, to the benefit of their citizens. Some were a destructive force at the centre of plots, conspiracies, and murder.
Today’s protagonist was all of the above. In many ways a puzzling man, he was not born to become an Emperor, and when he did become one, he appeared reluctant, and spent almost half of his reign in self-imposed exile. This is the story of Tiberius, the second Roman Emperor.
He’s one of the five longest reigning monarchs in the history of the world. Emperor Franz Josef ruled over first Austria and then Austria-Hungary for almost precisely 68 years. Coming to the throne on the back of a revolution aged just 18, his reign coincided with some of the most-important events in European history. It was while Franz Josef was emperor that the Second French Empire rose and fell, that Germany was forged by blood and iron, and - most strikingly - that the events unfolded that would pave the way for WWI.
Who comes to mind? Fidel Castro? Che Guevara? Yeah, sure. But one man did it all 19 years before they came to power. None other than their sworn rival, Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista. Confused? You should! But keep on watching to learn more about the complex life of a man who rose from the very bottom of the social scale, ended up ruling the 4th largest economy in Latin America, made an alliance with the Mafia, escaped an assassination attempt thanks to Santería magical practices and eventually fled at dawn with three cargo planes filled with loot.
Visitors to the Saratoga National Historical Park in New York may see the Boot Monument, a frieze that commemorates the Battle of Saratoga, one of the most significant wins for the Americans over the British during the Revolutionary War. Specifically, it honors one officer described as the “most brilliant soldier of the Continental Army”. And although it is extremely bizarre, it does not show his likeness or even name the officer in question.
If you are a film buff, you should be familiar with the early Soviet movie Battleship Potemkin and its iconic scene of a pram rolling down a staircase, as soldiers shoot down protesters. The film is centred around the Russian Revolution of 1905 and directed by cinematic legend Sergej Eisenstein.
“Felicior Augusto, melior Traiano”. According to 4th century historian Eutropius, that was the acclamation used to greet new Roman emperors in his time. It expressed hope that the ruler will be “more fortunate than Augustus and better than Trajan!” The historian lived 200 years after Trajan, but the memory of his reign of prosperity was still very much alive in the hearts and minds of the Roman people.
Being the 2nd born child in a Royal Family can be a blessing in disguise. Nobody expects you to rule, so in a way you are off the hook. But sometimes history gets in the way and unexpected events can bring you in the limelight and on the throne. That throne and that crown may represent one of the youngest, smallest and most peaceful nations in Europe, but that does not mean that trouble won’t get in your way.
The myth of the Vampire is as old as time itself, and many incarnations of this demonic creature are found in almost every culture. And when we think about Vampires today, one novel casts its shadow over legions of imitators -- Dracula, the Undead. One man -- a former civil servant, theatre manager, and part-time writer -- condensed into one single work of fiction all vampiric lore as we know it today.
The sun was setting on the Norwegian port of Bergen. It was early July, 1349, and off in the distance, a lone ship was crossing the line of the horizon. The ship bobbed calmly, port to starboard, coming closer into view. The inhabitants of Bergen noticed its tattered sails and lack of movement on board. As gently as it had appeared, the ship entered the harbour and run aground. Every sailor on board was dead.
In the 6th century BC, Cyrus II of Persia embarked on a mission of conquest. Kingdom after kingdom fell before him as he formed the Achaemenid Empire, the largest empire that the world had ever seen up until that point. It kept growing under successors like Cambyses and Darius until it, too, fell under the might of Alexander the Great during the late 4th century BC.
The King of Jerusalem stood captive in front of the Sultan. Next to him, the Lord of Kerak balked in the sweltering July heat. Earlier that day, a mighty Christian army had been utterly destroyed by the arrows of the Muslims, as much as they were by the decaying rays of an Eastern sun. The Sultan -- renowned for his generosity and kindness toward his enemies -- presented the King of Jerusalem with a most precious gift, at least in that moment: a beading cup of ice-cold water, covered in mountain snow.
Those were extracts from a letter that London’s Central News Agency received on September 27, 1888. It was then forwarded to Scotland Yard who were in the middle of investigating, perhaps, the most notorious killing spree of all time. Someone was attacking women in Whitechapel, murdering them and then cutting up their bodies in gruesome fashion. The killer went by many names - the Whitechapel Murderer, Leather Apron, Saucy Jacky, and, of course, Jack the Ripper.
Picture the scene: it’s January 24, 41 AD and Rome is in chaos. The tyrant emperor Caligula has just been stabbed to death outside the Palatine Games. In the city, his wife has been murdered and his baby daughter had her head dashed open against a wall. In this tense, bloody atmosphere, no-one knows what will happen next. Will the Republic be restored, or will a new emperor be found to take the throne? At the height of this uncertainty, a soldier in the Praetorian Guard sweeps aside a palace curtain and finds Caligula’s useless uncle cowering in fright.
Charles Ponzi allegedly once said “I went looking for trouble, and I found it.” Truer words were never spoken. From an early age, Ponzi discovered that hard work and book learning were not for him. He was always involved in one scheme after another, hoping that some day, he will find the one that would make him rich beyond his wildest dreams.
In the early 17th Century, a religious man decided he was going to uncover the architecture of the universe itself. Using observations of the Heavens and a deep understanding of geometry, this man conjectured a world of harmonious design, where the secrets of God’s creation could be deciphered by anyone willing to use mathematics to look for them. In the course of his quest, this man managed to change our understanding of astronomy forever. His name was Johannes Kepler, and he would go down as one of the greatest scientists to ever live.
Andrew Carnegie was a man of paradoxes. He was a businessman, first and foremost, and, oftentimes, this meant that someone else had to pay the price when he made his fortunes. Although publicly he championed the welfare of his employees, the working conditions in his many factories and plants didn’t exactly match up with his touted values.
Without a doubt, Robert Hooke was one of the greatest minds in British history. His scientific contributions spanned physics, astronomy, horology, microscopy, paleontology, and even architecture. And yet, he is nowhere near as well-known today as his peers.
Today’s protagonist was one of the key players on the giant chessboard that was Asia at the height of the Cold War. Born into a political family, she rose through India’s political system until she became the first and only female Prime Minister of her country. Her name was Indira Gandhi. In one of her speeches, she advised her followers to maintain a ‘bias toward action,’ or to encourage societal change, even if required painstakingly small steps.
The thought police. Big Brother. Room 101. Even if you’ve never heard the name George Orwell, you’ve heard of the concepts he created. As the legendary writer of Animal Farm, Orwell took the volatile politics of the time he lived in, and used them to create twisted dystopias and savage satires. His 1984 is a cry for freedom still banned by repressive regimes across the world. Even now, nearly 70 years after his death, barely a day goes by without some media personality describing something as “Orwellian”. Perhaps more so than any other writer of his era, Orwell’s work is still powerfully relevant today.
You are probably familiar with the musical ‘Evita,’ by Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber, which tells the story of Eva Duarte and her relationship with Argentinian President Juan Perón. In the most famous number, ‘Don’t Cry for Me, Argentina’, Evita addresses the crowds after orchestrating an insurrection to free her husband, prisoner to a military Junta. A young Che Guevara witnesses the events, providing some commentary – in song form, of course.
Charles Ponzi. Bernie Madoff. Billy “Fyre Festival” McFarland. History is littered with the misdeeds of conmen who pulled the wool over the public’s eyes and made a killing. Some, like Frank Abagnale - the model for Leonardo Dicaprio’s character in Catch Me if You Can - pulled off cons so big they’ve become legendary. But not even Abagnale could compete with our subject today. Gregor MacGregor was many things: soldier, pirate, pathological liar. He was also the man who pulled off the biggest con in history.
Some weeks ago, we ran an episode about the Vatican City State in our sister channel, Geographics. In that video, I mentioned one of the tiny state’s most peculiar residents, and many of you asked me to expand on his life here at Biographics. I am talking about Father Gabriele Amorth, the most experienced and prolific exorcist in force at the Vatican. Between the start of his career in 1986, until shortly before his death in 2016, Father Amorth claimed to have exorcised 300 subjects per year.
Thanks to the 1995 Mel Gibson movie Braveheart, most people are fairly familiar with the name of William Wallace. Unfortunately, thanks to the same film, most people also have a mental picture of him that varies between mildly inaccurate and completely wrong. He was, indeed, one of Scotland's most iconic freedom fighters… wasn't he?
Peter the Great was, perhaps, the most important ruler in Russian history. He took a kingdom that was stuck in its old ways and transformed it into a modern and powerful empire. He looked to the West for inspiration. Peter ignored the isolationist policies and traditions of his predecessors, becoming the first tsar to visit other European countries. There, he gained knowledge into the current military and scientific advancements, shipbuilding techniques, diplomatic affairs, even fashion trends, and brought them with him back home.
Enzo Anselmo Ferrari was born in Modena, northern Italy on February 18, 1898. Due to a heavy snowfall, his parents had to wait for two days before the birth could be recorded. Mom Adalgisa came from a wealthy family of land owners, while dad Alfredo had set up a mechanic workshop, employing 30 workers and providing metal parts to national railways.
Alexander Fleming is one of those names, inexorably linked with the discovery of penicillin. Even people who have never studied science or medicine in their lives may have still heard the story of how Fleming’s messiness accidentally yielded the first antibiotic in the world. How he left behind in his lab some Petri dishes with bacterial cultures and, when he came back, one of them developed mold which killed the bacteria and the rest, as they say, is history.
In the year 68 AD, Nero committed suicide, ending not only his reign as Emperor of Rome, but the reign of the Julio-Claudian Dynasty. Unsurprisingly, this plunged Rome into chaos as multiple factions tried to fill the power vacuum created by the fall of Nero. Following that came a crisis known as the Year of the Four Emperors which, as you might guess, saw four different men seize the throne in the span of less than a year. Once the dust had settled and the turmoil ended, Rome had a new emperor, Vespasian, who started his own Flavian Dynasty.
It was the shot heard around the world. On June 28, 1914, on a sweltering street in Sarajevo, a gunman fired into an open-topped car, killing Archduke Franz Ferdinand. The murder of the heir to the Austro-Hungarian Empire was the push that set the dominoes of Europe falling. One by one, the great nations declared war, until countries as far away as India, Japan, and America had all been sucked into the quagmire. Known as WWI, that quagmire would kill twenty million people and change the course of history.
On October 3, 1863, a delegation of Mexican aristocrats arrived in Trieste on a secret mission. For the last few years, their country had been convulsed by violence between its Liberal and Conservative factions. The economy was in freefall, and foreign troops were occupying Mexican soil. But it wasn’t military help that the delegation had come to seek. They were looking for an emperor. A European willing to come to Mexico and rule their nation as an absolute dictator.
Desperate times call for desperate measures, the old saying goes, and the dark days of World War Two were definitely desperate times. Had Chapman been living, working, and stealing at any other time in history, he may have found governments and military agencies — and those who regularly arrested him — to be much less lenient than they were. He wasn't the sort to be trusted with anything, yet British intelligence did trust him. And so did the Germans.
On September 19, 1991, a couple of tourists were hiking through the alpine mountains that straddle the border between Austria and Italy when they came upon a grisly sight - a frozen body with the lower half completely encased in ice. They initially thought they discovered the remains of an unfortunate mountaineer who maybe got lost or injured and died in the snow. Or perhaps they stumbled onto something a bit more blood-curdling like a murder victim. Either way, they did what any sensible person would do and alerted the authorities.
Today’s protagonist was born as a Prince in a southern Indian kingdom, but he soon discarded his palace life to embrace the study of Buddhism. As a travelling Master, he journeyed to China, where he gained powerful disciples and founded Dhyana Buddhism, better known in China as Chan, and later in Japan as Zen.
Stroll down the cereal aisle at any grocery store and you'll find a myriad of choices for starting your day. Healthy and unhealthy, packed with sugar or packed with bran, we're not wanting for options. The idea of a breakfast cereal industry is one that's taken for granted in today's modern world, but it's a surprisingly recent idea with a bizarre history.
Trippy stuff, for sure, and that's how Timothy Leary is largely remembered. While he definitely was a proponent of noshing on shrooms and tripping on psychedelic drugs, Leary was unique in that he gave a bit of professional creedence to the idea that opening your mind with LSD was a perfectly acceptable way of life and self-exploration… at least, he did at first.
In the whole of Russian history, there have been a mere handful of men to earn the nickname “the great”. But there has only ever been one woman. Catherine the Great was an empress who defied both her circumstances and the opinions of those around her to shape an entire era. Born into a minor German family in the first half of the 18th Century, she found herself thrust into the spotlight when she married Peter III of Russia aged only 16. But rather than being a pushover, Catherine used her new position to grab the imperial crown for herself.
As you are about to see, Wyatt Earp was a complex character full of features and foibles. An icon of the Old West? Undoubtedly, but calling him a “hero” might be stretching it a bit. He’s had his good moments, but his life was also full of questionable actions. His persona as a paragon of justice in those wild, ruthless frontier days was carefully crafted after his death, first by a biography and then by TV shows, movies, and more books.
Not many remember the name of Mary Mallon. If not for tragic circumstances, a strange immunity, and her position at the center of an outbreak of disease, it's likely that she would have faded into obscurity as just another ordinary immigrant who gave up her homeland for the promise of America in the mid-1880s. Mallon was just a teenager when she left Ireland and headed west, landing in New York City in 1883 or 1884. She had connections there, at least, an aunt and uncle she lived with until she found her feet.
Victorian era Britain was a time of massive change. From sweeping imperialist expansion abroad to political and social reform at home, to the rise of mysticism, spiritualism, and romanticism, the nation was growing and, in many ways, thriving. For some, cities were becoming bustling, prosperous hubs of industry, but for the less fortunate, they also became cesspools of disease, darkness, and misery. It was an era of invention and advancement, and Britain's citizens learned about it through the newspaper.
One hundred years ago, a reclusive Czech-Jew living anonymously amid Prague’s spires managed to change the way we see the world. He was the son of a shopkeeper, an insurance lawyer by trade. Outwardly, he appeared sickly, forgettable. But inside? Inside, this sallow young man’s mind was alive: with visions of horror, with paranoia, existential dread, and alienation. Working at night, he took those visions and etched them onto paper, creating fiction unlike anything ever seen before.
Pat Garrett once admitted that the thing he feared most was having his life defined by just one moment - the killing of William H. Bonney, better known as Billy the Kid. He said he dreaded meeting new people because they always said something along the lines of “Hey! You’re Pat Garrett, the guy who shot Billy the Kid!”
Otto Skorzeny was born into a middle-class family in Vienna, Austria, on June 12, 1908. As a student he distinguished himself in scientific topics, and after graduating he enlisted at the University of Vienna as an engineering student. His great passion was fencing. He joined the University fencing team and during a match he received the prominent scar on his cheek, known in German as a ‘Schmiss’ which was then a coveted mark of bravery among German and Austrian youth.
Some months ago, we published a Biographics on Italian WWII navy commander Junio Valerio Borghese. Many of you asked us to cover more military protagonists from the Italian side of the Axis alliance, as they get less attention than their German counterparts. Here we are today with someone who we feel may satisfy your curiosity.
In the winter of 1911-1912, a political earthquake in Asia brought one of our last links to the ancient world crashing down. Imperial China had outlasted the Western Roman Empire, the Byzantine Empire, the Holy Roman Empire. For 2,000 years, it had withstood civil wars and foreign invasion, only to dramatically implode after less than six months of unrest. The emperor on the throne at this turning point in history? A six year old boy named Puyi.
He’s perhaps the greatest ever humanitarian. Oskar Schindler was a German industrialist who saved the lives of over 1,000 Jews during the Holocaust. The subject of a hit 1982 book, and a 1993 Steven Spielberg film that hit even bigger, Oskar Schindler today is a household name. You probably think you already know him. How he started out as a cynical businessman before finding redemption. How he courted the Nazi leadership to save Jewish lives. Even how his humanity was finally stirred by the sight of one red coated girl dying in the Krakow ghetto.
Robert Mugabe. Hailed as an anti-colonialist hero; despised as an autocrat and dictator. At the time of this video production, Robert Mugabe has just recently died, aged 95, after 37 years as the Prime Minister, and then President, of Zimbabwe. The news of his death had barely become public when many of you asked us to cover his life story and career. Here, we’ve obliged.
There is little that we know with certainty about his life and exploits, but we will trace his career and look in detail at some of his most famous prophecies. And, as it is fitting for such a mysterious character, there is more to be discovered about Nostradamus and his prophecies, as proven by the recent finding of a Century nr 13 in the old library of his alma mater, the University of Montpellier. A chapter a pparently entirely dedicated to the End of Times, from which we have quoted the early quatrain … but more on this later. For the moment, let’s dive into Nostradamus’ formative years.
Long before Al Capone turned his eye to bootlegging and well before Bugsy Siegl decided to take his ill-gotten gains and cash in on the casino boom in Vegas, there was another boss in town. This one was perhaps the most unassuming of ladies, and within just a few years of setting foot on American soil for the first time, she had built up one of the largest organized crime empires the still-new nation had ever seen.
It’s a cold autumn night, sometime in the late 1870s, somewhere in the Western District of Arkansas. The West just cannot get Wilder here. You are on the run from the law, with a sentence hanging on your neck, issued by none other than infamous Federal Judge Isaac Parker, also known as “The hanging Judge”. He has dispatched his most effective and relentless enforcer to bring you back to justice. A lawman so feared and respected that he haunts criminals in their nightmares. How would you picture him in your head? You are probably thinking about your typical cowboy, complete with Stetson hat, six-shooter and star-shaped badge, popularised by Hollywood. Tall like Gary Cooper, strong like John Wayne, rugged like Clint Eastwood and full of grit like Jeff Bridges. You got most of it right, except one detail. You nemesis is a freed former African-American slave: Bass Reeves, the first black Deputy US Marshal to ride for justice west of the Mississippi River.
Charles Dickens is one of the best-known writers in the world, and is considered to be the greatest novelist of the Victorian Era. If you live in an English-speaking country, you probably read Great Expectations, Oliver Twist, and A Christmas Carol in school. His work became so popular, it even sparked the creation of the world “Dickensian” to describe his style. So, why is Charles Dickens’ work considered to be so good that it has inspired future generations? And who was the man who created all of these well-known characters?
Many of us have grown reading his tales on self-destruction, revenge and violence. Tales of premature burials, of ghastly cats and ravens, where the line between the living and the dead is never clear. But when you look deeper into the life and works of Edgar Allan Poe a more complex figure emerges, beyond the traditional image of the alcoholic, pale, sickly author with an obsession for death.
On the 11th of December 1936, a man spoke on the BBC. Millions of listeners held their breath as he announced his resolve to go forward with a decision which was, and remains, unique in British history: his abdication to the throne. That man was Edward VIII. The reason behind his abdication was his love for a woman that the British Court and the establishment would have never accepted as a Queen: the American, twice divorced, Wallis Simpson.
General Garibaldi cut a distinctive figure amongst the protagonists of that epic novel that is European history of the XIX century, when Nations were forged in iron, blood, but also in gold and deception. With his enviable beard, his Tuscan cigars, Argentine ponchos, his trusty saber and six-shooter, Garibaldi had become one of the most popular men in the World. So much so that his men accepted his autographed photos as a salary!
Martha Gellhorn was present during every single war and conflict around the world for 60 years. She was the only woman to land on the shores of Normandy during D-Day. Throughout the course of her life, she was a pacifist, and devoted her life to documenting everything she could with a sense of perspective and empathy for the human beings she was surrounded by. Many have called her the greatest war correspondent who ever lived.
This is the story of the success of a Hungarian boy who went to America and became one of the most successful entertainers of all times, known as the Master of the Escape. He was, of course, Harry Houdini – acrobat, contortionist, magician, escape artist, entrepreneur, film tycoon, debunker of occultists, maybe even a secret agent …???
This is the extraordinary story of Master Sergeant Raul ‘Roy’ Benavidez, the Lazarus soldier, and of his three lives. This outstanding individual never surrendered in the face of adversity, from childhood to military life. Those who know his story mostly remember him for a six hour Calvary, during which, to great personal sacrifice he held at bay an entire battalion of North Vietnamese infantry to save eight wounded comrades. But how did he get there? And what happened afterwards?
William Burke lived from 1792 to 28 January 1829. His partner-in-crime, William Hare, lived from (probably) 1792 to 1859. The two are almost always paired together, being known simply as Burke and Hare.
He went from a life of crime spent either on the run or in the prisons of France to establishing a national detective police force that served as the model for Scotland Yard and others that followed it. He employed proto-forensic techniques such as ballistics and casting foot impressions. When he left the force, he started his own agency and became the world's first private eye.
Imagine, for a moment, that you were given the opportunity to become the most powerful person in your country. To get there, all you need to do is betray the very man who made you who you are. Would you demure, step back, say “thanks, but no thanks”? Or would you grab that opportunity with both hands? Nearly half a century ago, one man in Chile made the decision to betray everything for his own glory. His name was Augusto Pinochet.
It’s one of the bloodiest conflicts in human history. In 1851, the Taiping Rebellion exploded in Qing dynasty China, causing death on an unprecedented scale. Over 14 years of civil war, an estimated 20 million people died, more than were killed in the whole of WWI. It was, simply, the deadliest war of the nineteenth century, and it was all thanks to one man: Hong Xiuquan.
His image has become iconic: the thin, bearded, ascetic religious leader who had turned a once Western-friendly country into a theocratic regime and a rogue state. I am talking of course about Ayatollah Ruhollah Mostafavi Khomeini, the supreme leader of the Iranian revolution.
If you open a Bible to Matthew 2:16-18, you’ll encounter one of the most notorious stories in any religion. Suspicious of a prophesy about a new king, Herod the Great tricks the Magi into telling him where baby Jesus was born, then sends his soldiers to massacre every child under the age of two in Bethlehem. It’s a scene of shocking cruelty, one that has ensured King Herod’s name is still synonymous with evil today.
During the Cold War, an American soldier named James Joseph Dresnok was stationed on the Demilitarized Zone between North and South Korea. One day, he decided to simply walk over the line to the North. He was “defecting”; betraying his country and choosing to start a new life in an enemy land that he knew nothing about.
To his friends, he was the Blond Beast. To his enemies, he was the Hangman, or the Butcher of Prague. To the man he devoted his life to, he was the Man with the Iron Heart. During his life, Reinhard Heydrich was known by many names, too numerous to list here. But you probably associate him with one name in particular: Heydrich was the Nazi target of Operation Anthropoid.
During World War II, the Nazis were terrified of a mysterious female spy that they called “The Limping Lady.” Hundreds of posters with her face were plastered in every major French city, and yet she managed to slip by undetected. This was Virginia Hall: An American spy living in Nazi-occupied France. She walked with a limp on her prosthetic leg called “Cuthbert”. Even with her disability, she still managed to orchestra jailbreaks for POW’s, run resistance newspapers, and get vital information back to the Allies. Even Klaus Barbie, The Butcher of Lyon, considered her to be one of the most dangerous Allied spies, and he was on a personal mission to hunt her down. So, who was Virginia Hall, and how did she become one of the most successful spies in history?
It takes a tough skin to be a leader of a Country, even more so of a Country that basically did not exist until a few years before you took power, even more so if that Country is torn between two cold-warring blocks, locked in an arm-wrestling contest that will result in total destruction … and yet you manage to give the middle-finger to both factions and do your own thing.
Even if you don’t know her by name, you have most likely seen Frida Kahlo’s paintings before. She is the Mexican woman with a bold unibrow, wearing a flower crown and brightly colored clothing. Kahlo was physically disabled her entire adult life, and yet she loved herself enough to be her own muse. Years before her time, she challenged society’s expectations, and was able to create Surrealist works of art that examined the inner workings of the human soul. On today’s Biographics, we will tell you the story of the great artist, Frida Kahlo.
John Franklin was born on April 16th, 1786 in Spilsby, Lincolnshire in England. He was the ninth of twelve children to Willingham Franklin and Hannah Weekes. Willingham was a successful merchant, which enabled him to provide a comfortable standard of living for his family.
In late 1814, the great powers of Europe gathered after the fall of Napoleon to discuss what to do next. At the time, the continent was in ruins. The old order had been exploded as effectively as if someone had detonated an atom bomb beneath it. Just as it would in 1945, Europe needed a new roadmap, a blueprint for the future. Designing that blueprint fell to one man: Metternich.
She was a royal who hated the pressures of royalty. An aristocrat with the common touch, who dedicated herself to helping the poor. She was also a woman trapped in a loveless marriage, whose life was tragically cut short. Nope, we’re not talking about Princess Diana, the beloved British royal who died in 1997. We’re talking about Empress Elisabeth of Austria, better known as Sisi.
What would you do if you were given absolute power? Would you use it to fix the world’s ills? Or would you use it to satisfy your own darkest desires? It’s a question we’ve seen answered again and again in history, but never so conclusively as in the reign of Rome’s third emperor, Gaius Julius Caesar Germanicus. Or, as you know him: Caligula.
Ho Chi Minh, father of independent Vietnam, was a man of contrasts. Standing at just four foot, eleven inches and weighing less than a hundred pounds, he appeared to pose no threat to anyone. Yet, through the force of his personality and the steely determination of his will he defeated two of the world’s mightiest nations. He portrayed himself as a simple man of the people yet he ruled over a repressive regime that committed terrible atrocities. While many viewed him as the bringer of light to a repressed people, to others he was simply a Communist spy planted by the Soviets. In today’s Biographics, we discover the truth about the real Ho Chi Minh.
You may remember Chris Gardner from the movie Pursuit of Happyness, starring Will Smith. If so, you already know the story. He was a single father who pulled himself out of homelessness to become a millionaire stockbroker. But of course, like any movie based on a true story, it is going to have some parts that only gloss over the events of a person’s life. In today’s Biographics, we will tell you the true story rags-to-riches story of Chris Gardner.
In this channel we have covered the lives of so many Nazi officers and officials that we almost forgot about their Axis allies to the other side of the Alps: Italian Fascists. Their history may not be as well-known as the lives of other protagonists of WWII, and yet I can assure you they had some interesting characters marching about in their black-shirted uniforms since Mussolini founded the Fascist Movement in 1919.
These are the perfect words to describe the life of Hunter S. Thompson. He was a writer who is best known for his semi-autobiographical novel Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, and he was the founder of “gonzo journalism”. He has gone down in history as being one of the wildest writers in American history.
Boudicca was an ancient Celtic warrior Queen who lead an army in a rebellion against the Roman Empire. The story of this brave woman’s life has often been reduced to just a few sentences in a textbook, and that’s because there is very little known about her life. There were just two Roman historians; Tacitus and Cassius Dio, who wrote down information about Boudicca. So everything we know about her is skewed from the enemy’s perspective, and both of their versions of the story vary slightly from the other.
The protagonist of today’s story discovered ancient tombs, explored secret passages inside pyramids and recovered artefacts as old as time - while getting into fistfights, foiling assassination attempts with his trusty whip, dodging bullets amongst Egyptian ruins and facing the opposition of a French rival.
During World War II, most women were doing their duty on the home front by working in factories and looking after the future generations of their respective nations. But for one 24-year old Ukrainian woman named Lyudmila Pavlichenko, she wasn’t about to let Nazi Germany take over her beloved USSR. With 309 confirmed kills, Lyudmila Pavlichenko became the most successful female sniper in all of history.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt was the longest serving President in US history, serving 12 year in office from 1933-1945. He steered the nation through its worst economic crisis, only to be faced with the most horrific war in history. Though facing titanic physical challenges of his own, he imbued America with the indomitable fortitude and sense of morale that was required to spur the nation to victory. In today’s Biographics we examine the inspirational life of the 32nd President of the United States, Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
Aleister Crowley may just be one of the most interesting men who ever lived. He was a self-proclaimed magician, scholar, writer, and even an undercover spy. He was known as “The Great Beast 666”, because some even believe that he was the AntiChrist told in the Book of Revelation. Others believe that he was a genius and a visionary, and that the world would not be the same if it were not for his teachings. Today, we’re going to talk about the life of this legendary figure, and you can decide for yourself if he truly was “The Wickedest Man Alive”.
On November the 5th, 1604, thirteen men plotted together to blow up the Palace of Westminster in London on the day when the most powerful men in England were set to meet at Parliament. The authorities learned about the plan through an anonymous letter, and the terrorists were stopped just in time. The first man they encountered at the scene was Guy Fawkes, who had been guarding barrels of gunpowder in the basement below the palace.
He was the flamboyant, controversial symbol of America’s dogged resolve during World War Two. With his trademark corn cobb pipe and his love of self-publicity, he is among the most well-known of war heroes. Though he often disregarded authority he was praised for his bold, imaginative military strategy. In today’s Biographics, we look into the colorful life of General Douglas MacArthur.
She was an exotic dancer in Paris at the height of the Belle époque. She was the object of sexual desire for wealthy men, ambassadors and high ranking officers. She was Mata Hari: the dancer, the spy, one of the great names of WWI espionage.
She was the poor little rich girl who overcame huge obstacles to become the First Lady of the World. Orphaned at the age of nine, she took control of her own destiny, transforming herself from a shy, fearful girl into a strong, socially aware, confident woman. As the First Lady of the United States she took a ceremonial title and turned it into a platform to help others, then going even further to develop the magna carta of the modern age – the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In today’s Biographics, we examine the very busy life of Eleanor Roosevelt.
There is a sociological phenomenon called “Godwin’s Law”, which says that when an online conversation goes on long enough, someone is guaranteed to bring up Adolf Hitler, and it has never been more true than the comments of our videos! That’s right, the time has come for us to finally talk about the biggest Nazi of them all; Adolf Hitler.
On November 16, 1957, officers in Plainfield, Wisconsin, walked into one of the most gruesome crime scenes in history. On a remote farm they found a house decorated with the body parts of women. There were wastepaper baskets made from heads. Chairs upholstered with human skin. Masks made from shriveled faces. It was a house of horrors unlike anything the state had seen before, and it was all the work of one man: Ed Gein.
Over a century after he first appeared in movies, Charlie Chaplin’s name still conjures images of a funny little guy in a bowler hat causing mirth-inducing chaos. By some measures, his Little Tramp is the most famous character to have ever existed, a clown so beloved that not even Hitler stealing his mustache could ruin him for us.
John F. Kennedy served as the 35th President of the United States, before he was killed in 1963. While we all know about JFK, chances are that you probably know more about the conspiracy theories surrounding his assassination that the actual details of his life.
In the summer of 1976, the city of New York was thrown into a state of terror. A madman was on the loose, wandering the streets and killing people at random. This was a killer who loved publicity, sending vicious, taunting letters to the police and media. Each one was signed with the moniker ‘Son of Sam’. When fate finally caught up with the monster, he was revealed to be a chubby introvertby the name of David Berkowitz. In this week’s Biographics we discover his story.
She’s one of history’s youngest warriors. At an age when most of us were still stressing over what to wear to school, Joan of Arc was leading thousands of French troops into battle against the English. Supposedly inspired by divine visions of Catholicism’s greatest saints, Joan first took up her sword at 16, was leading armies by 17, and was burned at the stake before she was 20. In her short life, she managed to change the course of the Hundred Years’ War, ending English domination of France. Not bad for an illiterate girl from the sticks.
Balto the Siberian Husky is remembered for leading a team of sled dogs to deliver medicine that saved the town of Nome, Alaska from a deadly epidemic. He became a national hero, and his photo was on the front page of every newspaper in the country. A statue was erected in his honor in Central Park in 1925, and it is still one of the most beloved tourist attractions today. Many of you may have grown up watching the 1995 animated film by Universal Pictures, and that may be the extent of what you know about Balto. But the true story is far more dramatic than what you ever learned from cartoons and children’s books. On today’s Biographics, we bring you the story of Balto, the canine hero.
What comes to mind when you hear the words “Napoleon Bonaparte, Emperor of France”? We’re guessing it’s a certain petit corporal in a bicorne hat, rearing up majestically on a horse as he conquers half of Europe. But what if we told you there was another Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte? A Bonaparte who not only managed to rule France for longer than his famous predecessor, but basically created modern Paris.
Belle Starr has come down through time as one of the great anti-heroines of the Old West. She is the Bandit Queen, the female Robin Hood, who was quick with her fists and even quicker with her Colt 45. The reality was quite different. The Belle of history was a battler who made some bad choices in men, ended up twice widowed with two children and made the most of the cards she was dealt – only to meet the most violent of ends. In today’s Biographics, we go beyond the legend to reveal the real Belle Starr.
“The magnanimous Arthur, with all the kings and military force of Britain, fought against the Saxons. And though there were many more noble than himself, yet he was twelve times chosen their commander, and was as often conqueror.” This is a quote from the ancient text known as the Historia Brittonum, which was one of the oldest records of King Arthur’s life story.
When we think about the civil rights movement in the United States, most people immediately think of Martin Luther King Jr., and almost everyone can recite the beginning of his “I have a dream speech”. But the story of another human rights activist, Malcolm X, is often censored in history class. He is misunderstood as someone who preached hate and violence against white people, and some believe that if young people watched his speeches, it could actually be dangerous.
“Twenty-seven people. They were boys, with their cars, summer jobs. Oh my God...Are you one of them? He dressed up like a clown for them, with his face paint white and red. And on his best behavior, in a dark room on the bed, he’d kill them all, with the sleight of his hand. Running far, running fast, to the dead.”
April 15, 2013 – two bombs tear through the crowd welcoming runners over the finish line at the Boston Marathon. The carnage is total with three people killed and dozens wounded. Within hours the FBI have identified a pair of suspects. The two brothers are immigrants to America whose parents have fled the violence of Chechnya to give their children a better life. So, how did it all go so wrong? Today, through the story of the younger of the two bombers, Dzokhar Tsarnaev, we find out.
Sefton Delmer was a writer who created “Black Propaganda” on behalf of the British government, and used “fake news” to fight the Nazi regime. Through postcards, court documents, and pirate radio programs, Delmer and the rest of the secret service infiltrated the minds of the German people, using elements of violence, sex, and death in their stories to subtlety break down the morale of the Nazis. So, who was Sefton Delmer? And why was he most likely the only man on Earth who could have become the true master of Black Propaganda?
On August 27, 1645, the small town of Bury St Edmunds, England set a grisly record. That day, 18 men and women were hanged together as witches. It was the single biggest mass-execution for witchcraft in English history, and it was all the work of one man. Matthew Hopkins was many things: a tavern owner, a former lawyer, a dedicated Puritan. But, to the people of Bury St Edmunds, he had only title worth knowing: Witchfinder General.
Edward Ist, known as Longshanks for his uncharacteristic height, was a man among men and a king among kings. As a child he was so sickly that few thought he would survive to take the crown. But take it he did, immediately displaying a strength and determination that had been sorely lacking. He quickly established his authority, with his ruthless suppression of rebellion earning him the nickname the Hammer of the Scots and the adoration of all England. In this week’s Biographics we get up close and personal with the man who was Edward Longshanks, King of England.
He’s American literature’s titan of terror. The writer who created some of the most iconic names in sci-fi. In his 46 short years of life, H.P. Lovecraft was responsible for the alien god Cthulhu, the Necronomicon book of the dead, and the haunted town of Arkham where things alwaysgo bump in the night. He inspired everyone from Stephen King, to Jorge Luis Borges, to the writers of Batman. His work has so penetrated pop culture that you can even buy plush toys of his creepiest monsters.
Satoshi Nakamoto invented Bitcoin, and more importantly, its underlying blockchain technology. No matter what the future price of Bitcoin may be, the real treasure is blockchain, because it is going to change the world as much as the internet did in the 1990’s. Satoshi Nakamoto was nominated for a Nobel Prize in Economics, and he is a multi-billionaire...And yet no one knows what he actually looks like. He may not even be a single person, and the name may serve as a cover for a group who came together for the sake of starting a digital revolution.
Frank Miller is a comic book artist, writer, and movie director who is known for his edgy storytelling. He is one of the very few creators who has worked on major projects for both Marvel and DC Comics. Some of his most popular works are Daredevil, Sin City, 300, and Batman: The Dark Knight. While you may have seen his name on the cover of a comic book or in the movie credits, few people know the story of how Frank Miller went from being a comic book fan growing up a small town in Vermont to someone who has gained international fame and fortune.
In modern times, we look back at the Nazi’s Third Reich and wonder how on earth anyone could have followed Adolf Hitler when he was so clearly an evil dictator. This was all thanks to Joseph Goebbels, the Minister of Propaganda. He knew exactly how to manipulate the minds of a nation with fake news, Nazi-idealized books, and propaganda films. Goebbels was single-handedly responsible for brainwashing entire populations, and destroying people who were caught in his web of lies. Today, on Biographics, you’ll learn just how one man convinced millions of normal German people to become faithful Nazis.
He was the child from hell – born into royalty with a deformity that put a lifelong chip on his shoulder, he quickly alienated everyone around him. By the time he became ruler of Germany, this grandson of Queen Victoria had grown to hate the British, the French and just about every other European power. Over the next twenty years, he orchestrated the tension that exploded into the nightmare that was World War One. In this week’s Biographics, we uncover the mixed-up life of Kaiser Wilhelm II.
When you think of Nazi Germany, you mostly think about the human rights abuses, and the concentration camps like Auschwitz. But have you ever wondered what happened to the black people living under the Third Reich? It turns out that even though there were racial laws demanding the extermination of the Jewish and Roma people, there were so few Africans living in Germany, that they were not considered to be one of Hitler’s main priorities.
Bill Cosby is a stand-up comedian and actor. He became an American icon, and someone who millions of people looked to as a father figure, and a moral compass. He would disappoint the entire world when they began to learn that he was not at all the wonderful person that he portrayed himself to be. Today on Biographics, we are going to talk about the life, career, and downfall of Bill Cosby.
Theodor Seuss Geisel was born in 1904 to German immigrants. His father owned a very successful brewery in Springfield, Massachusetts. As a child, his favorite pastime was to go to the zoo with his family every Sunday. He was so good at drawing animals, that his father bought him a sketchbook that he added to every weekend, and his mom allowed him to paint on the walls of his bedroom. His animals always looked like caricatures, and from a young age, they could tell that he had a whimsical imagination. After prohibition in the 1920’s, his father could no longer run the brewery, and actually chose to become the head of the Springfield Zoo instead. Ted Geisel could now go to the zoo and sketch the animals as often as he wanted, and he continued to do so for the rest of his life.
Grigori Rasputin was a Russian peasant who claimed to have mystic healing powers, and he even went so far as to say he was the second coming of Christ. He formed his own cult, and even manipulated the members of the royal Romanov family into believing he truly was a holy man.
On March 20, 1995, five members of Japan’s Aum Shinrikyo cult boarded the Tokyo subway in the middle of rush hour. At 8am they punctured bags of sarin, releasing a deadly cloud of nerve gas into the crowded trains. Commuters were blinded, wracked with spasms. Some choked to death on their own blood. Trapped underground, with nowhere to run to, some six thousand people were gassed that bright spring day. Thirteen died.
In the 1970’s, one 6-foot, 9-inch tall man named Edmund Kemper towered over his peers, and most considered him to be a gentle giant. No one in his life could have imagined that he murdered six teenage girls hitchhiking through Santa Cruz, California, or that he would finally turn his rage on his own mother.
He’s the dentist’s son who grew up to become the world’s youngest billionaire. In the mid-2000s, Mark Zuckerberg created a website that defined a generation, a website you almost certainly use yourself. The behemoth that is Facebook today dominates the internet. It has more active users than the populations of China and India combined. At time of writing, it’s worth around half a trillion dollars. It’s also at the center of some massive controversies that have dominated headlines.
“He sees when you are sleeping, he knows when you’re awake. He knows when you’ve been bad, or good. So be good, for goodness sake…” If you live in the western world, you already know this line from “Santa Claus is Coming to Town” by Harry Connick Jr. We’ve all heard the songs and seen the movies, but you may not know the true story behind the legend of the man who can fly around the world in just a single night.
What would you think of a man who supported the greatest mass-murder machine in human history? A man who was proud to stand by a genocidal dictator who nearly destroyed Europe; a man proud to call himself a Nazi? Would you find him sickening, evil? Maybe not if he was John Rabe. A high-ranking Nazi, Rabe was an ardent supporter of Adolf Hitler. But he was also something else. He was perhaps the greatest humanitarian you’ve never heard of.
He is one of the most popular and enduring icons of the American West; the gentleman bandit who charmed his way through life, always keeping one step ahead of the law. With his fabled Wild Bunch, he terrorized the banks and railways companies during the closing decade of the Nineteenth century, then headed south of the border, only to meet his match at the hands of Bolivian troops.
As the founder of Playboy Magazine, Hugh Hefner was one of the icons of the sexual revolution in the 1960’s. Opinions about Hefner are very polarized- you either love and admire the man, or completely disapprove of the multi-million dollar empire he created. But no matter how you feel about Hugh Hefner, there is no arguing that he was truly a genius when it came to business, and a one-of-a-kind publisher, writer, and entrepreneur.
By the age of twenty-four Hermann Goering was a famous combat pilot ,a national hero, and leader of Germany’s most celebrated fighter squadron. By the time of his death, less than thirty years later, he was reviled as a monster with the blood of millions on his hands.
It’s no secret that Amazon.com is dominating multiple aspects of our daily lives. We can find just about everything we could possibly need on their site, and if you have Amazon Prime, you only wait two days for free delivery. For our digital media, we can read books on the Kindle, listen to music with Alexa, and watch on-demand movies and TV series.
The Mongolian empire is remembered for their barbaric conquests, and the power of their great leaders that managed to spread the empire across several continents. But one of the most fascinating people who has been forgotten from the empire is the warrior princess Khutulun. She was the great-great granddaughter of Genghis Khan, and she truly inherited his strength in battle. Unlike many other princesses and queens throughout the history of the world, Khutulun was remembered for her own glory, rather than the achievements of a husband or son. She just may have been the strongest Mongolian warrior of all time.
When it comes to serial child killer Albert Fish, the adjectives to describe his inhumanity hardy seem strong enough - depraved, perverted, deviant, degenerate - he was all that and more. The crimes he committed fill the heart with rage, while the taunting letters he sent the victim’s families make you wonder how a human being could be so cruel. In this week’s Biographics, we venture in the sordid life of Albert Fish - and it ain’t pretty!
Stan Lee spend most of his career as the writer, director, editor, and producer of Marvel Comics. He created some of the world’s most popular comic book characters, like Spider-Man, Iron Man, The Hulk, and the rest of The Avengers. What started out as the creative ideas of a teenage boy evolved into one of the most profitable movie franchises in all of history. Today on Biographics, we’re going to talk about the legendary life of Stan Lee.
In the collective memory of the people, Diana, Princess of Wales was everything a royal should be. She was beautiful, composed, and full of compassion for those in need. And when she died in 1997, it was a horrific tragedy that shook the world. She had been robbed of a future that was looking incredibly bright, and her sons would forever be without a mother. But the dark secrets of Diana’s life prove “all that glitters is not gold.” Some people believe that her death was no accident, and that it was actually an elaborate conspiracy designed by the royal family to silence her.
During the Holocaust, Ilse Koch lived in the Buchenwald concentration camp with her husband. She would order the deaths of prisoners at-will, and even enjoyed watching people being tortured and killed. Her home was filled with momentos made from human skin. Ilse Koch just may have been responsible for more deaths than your average serial killer. She is considered to be one of the most evil women that ever lived.
Tomas De Torquemada was the controlling force of the Spanish Inquisition. He presided over the systematic purging of so-called heretic Jews that has gone down in history as one of the worst religious persecutions of all time. But was he the monster that history has painted? In this week’s Biographics, we uncover the real story of Tomas De Torquemada.
During the Bolshevik revolution, the Romanov dynasty was killed after over a hundred-year reign in Russia. The bodies of the parents and all five children were laid on the ground. But when the corpses were later moved and given a proper burial, the bodies of the son, Alexei, and the princess Anastasia were missing. This gave the Russian people hope that at least two of these innocent children managed to play dead long enough to escape.
Long before Kim Jong-Un became the go-to tyrant for five star absurdity, there was another dictator on the block. Muammar al-Gaddafi ruled Libya for 42 years with an iron fist wrapped in a sequined glove so garish it would’ve put Liberace to shame. His flamboyant reign was famous for its absurdity. For every headline relating to his terrorist activities, there were maybe a dozen more about his plastic surgery addiction or all-female bodyguard troupe. By the time Gaddafi was overthrown in 2011, he was less feared than he was simply mocked.
He’s the man who killed a king. Oliver Cromwell, the English Puritan turned military dictator, is today most famous for signing the death warrant that led to Charles I’s bloody execution in 1649. Over a hundred years before the American and French Revolutions shook the globe, this smalltime farmer from the British sticks proved with steel that the divine right of kings was not so holy after all.
She is one of the earliest serial killers in recorded history – the original sado-masochistic femme fatal. She stands out as a shocking lesson in just how dangerous a sadistic, demented powerful woman can be. The passing of the centuries has left us with an incomplete picture of the true nature of her crimes.
George Washington, Simon Bolivar, even Pancho Villa; the names of the great North and South American revolutionaries remain globally famous centuries on. But there’s one great New World rebel many have forgotten. He was a nobody who became a somebody only after fifty years’ obscurity. A freed slave who wound up leading the only successful large-scale slave revolt in history. The general who made Haiti the second free colony in the whole of the Americas. His name was Toussaint L’Ouverture, AKA The Black Napoleon.
On August 4th, 1892, Andrew and Abby Borden were brutally murdered in their home in Fall River, Massachusetts. Their heads had been split open in a fit of rage from nearly a dozen blows from a hatchet. There was no theft, and no sign of a break-in. Their 32-year old daughter, Lizzie Borden, was at home when her parents were killed.
Georgy Zhukov was born in 1896 to an incredibly poor peasant family in the Kaluga Province, roughly 80 miles from Moscow. His family had a small house in the relatively poor town of Strelkovka, which Zhukov was quoted once as saying “looked the worst in the village”. His family was rather tough when it came to discipline, and floggings with a belt by his father Konstantin, were quite common in order to whip his boy into the shape he wanted.
He was the self-proclaimed messiah who looked like a rock star. A mesmerizing personality and passionate Bible knowledge combined to allow him to gain ascendancy over a small group of followers, to manipulate them, use them for his sexual desires and to prepare them for his own version of Armageddon.
In the 1970’s and 80’s, over one hundred families in California had their homes ransacked by the same man. Many of them woke up in the middle of the night to a flashlight blinding their eyes. A man was standing over their bed, wearing a black ski mask. He held knives to throats, and guns to heads, demanding that they do what he said, if they wanted to live. Within a matter of hours, he ruined and ended lives, slipping small mementos in his pocket as he ran into the darkness.
For 146 years, the Barnum and Bailey Circus was known for being the greatest show on earth. None of it would have been possible if it were not for an ambitious entrepreneur named PT Barnum. While his life and career were sometimes the source of controversy, he truly was a brilliant businessman, and many of his ideas forever changed the entertainment industry as we know it today.
His nickname is still known across the globe. Simon Bolivar, El Libertador (The Liberator), the man who almost single-handedly wrested South America from Spanish control. Without a doubt, he was one of the most important men who ever lived: a Latino George Washington, a general who could stand shoulder to shoulder with Napoleon. In his short life, he united all of modern Colombia, Venezuela, Panama, and Ecuador into a single superstate… and then lived long enough to see all his dreams turn to dust in the harsh daylight of independence.
Soldier, hero, exile, radical, general, dictator, man of the people, Simon Bolivar was many things. Yet outside Latin America, knowledge of his life is something most of us are sorely lacking. Today, we take you on a sweeping ride through the epic life of the man known to history as The Liberator.
He is the worldwide symbol of rebellion and revolutionary struggle. His silhouette is familiar to billions, representing the epitome of cool anti-establishmentism. Yet, few people know the real story behind the legend of Che Guevara. In this week’s Biographix, we discover the man behind the myth to reveal an individual whose passion for social justice saw no bounds.
He is the world’s most famous cyclist, dominating his sport like no one before or since. Yet his reputation has been forever tarnished by a scandal that tore at the very fabric of professional cycling, pitting the sports elite against each other.
Two thousand years after his assassination he is still revered as one of the greatest rulers in all history. Yet, his story reverberates as a tale of the dangers of power unbounded. His military genius and political skill saw him rise to the position of dictator for life. But it all came to a bloody end on the Ives of March. In this week’s Biographics, we discover the man who was Caesar.
Hirohito was the longest reigning monarch in Japan’s history, serving as Emperor for 63 years. Vested with supreme power and viewed as a deity by his people, he presided over a nation that unleashed a war savagery that shocked the world. His unprecedented radio address to his nation, announcing Japanese surrender in World War Two startled the people, only to be followed with the bombshell that he was not a God but a fallible human, just like them. In this week’s Biographics, we go beyond the pomp and ceremony to discover the man who was Emperor Hirohito.
To some he was the very embodiment of evil – the psychopathic incarnation of the Devil himself. To others, he was a god-fearing defender of the faith, courageously standing up to the feared Ottoman Empire. In his time, he was known as Vlad the Impaler, thanks to his favorite method of execution. Today we remember him as the real-life inspiration for Bram Stoker’s infamous prince of darkness. In this week’s Biographics, we discover the gruesome truth about the real Vlad Dracula.
Maximilien Robespierre promised to usher a fairer, more representative form of government to the French people. What they got was a reign of terror that saw thousands facing the horror of the guillotine.
Adolf Eichmann was a thin little man with bow legs and a hook nose. In the civilian world he had been viewed as of no account, a socially awkward loser with little to redeem himself. Having joined the Nazi party, however, his unquestioning commitment to orders coupled with his need for ruthless efficiency allowed him to carve out a career that see him go down as one of the greatest mass murderers in all of human history. In this week’s Biographics, we trace the life, crimes and death of Adolf Eichmann.
Christopher Columbus (c. 1451 to May 20, 1506) was an Italian explorer and navigator. In 1492, he sailed across the Atlantic Ocean from Spain in the Santa Maria, with the Pinta and the Niña ships alongside, hoping to find a new route to India.
Italian diplomat Niccolò Machiavelli lived over five centuries ago but his influence among unscrupulous politicians reaches into the modern age. He is mostly known for writing The Prince -- the handbook that established him as the "father of modern political theory." Through its teachings -- power is the ultimate goal through any means necessary.
He was the father of Fascism, the iron fisted dictator who ruled Italy for more than two decades. During that time, he plunged his country to disaster, forming an alliance with Adolf Hitler and bringing the wrath of the world – and his own people – upon him. In the end, his own citizens expressed their own ruthless verdict on the man who called himself Il Duce. In this weeks, Biographics we track the life and death of Benito Mussolini.
Undoubtedly one of modern history’s most notorious and abhorrent killers -- his crimes are the stuff of nightmares. Over the course of 13 years, he prowled for men and lured them back to his house before drugging and strangling them.
He was the personification of the evil dictator - clad in his familiar khaki uniform and cap and chomping on his cigar, he ruled with an iron fist over his island nation.
He was one of the world’s most notorious and ruthless leaders. Since coming to power in 1979, Saddam used any means necessary to hold onto Iraq including killing anyone who stood in his way. At a young age he was brutalized at home, ran away to his uncles, and quickly became a thug for an extremist political party.
He is the epitome of pure, unadulterated evil; the mastermind guru with the swastika on his forehead and the wild, crazed look in his eyes. He was responsible for the one of the most heinous crimes of our time, controlling his minions like a puppeteer. In this week’s Biographics we discover the dark, disturbing story of Charles Manson.
Twenty-five hundred years ago one’s man’s spiritual journey was the beginning of one of the world’s seven religions -- boasting 376 million followers today. He is simply called “The Buddha,” and he grew up the son of a king…sheltered from the realities of human suffering. When he finally learned the harsh truth, he left his family and set off on a path to understand life itself -- first as a monk and then as a teacher.
Just the mention of his name can still send a chill up the spine. In a place full of horror, he was the most feared monster of them all – the angel of death, Josef Mengele. Although trained as a doctor to preserve life, he brought a sadistic cruelty to the experiments that ended the lives of so many. His victims of choice? Children!
He was the quiet, efficient and oh so ruthless architect of the Holocaust; Hitler’s most loyal sycophant. He ruthlessly dispatched those who stood in his way as he rose to a position of power that was second only to the Fuhrer. In the end he spectacularly betrayed his master – only to be felled by his own hand.
In 1996, the FBI apprehended a man that alluded capture for nearly two decades. His homemade letter bombs struck fear across the country — mostly targeting airlines and universities — earning him the nickname, “Unabomber.” All told, he killed three people and injured 23 more. He took great care not to leave a trace of evidence and unlike other serial murderers, he didn’t seek glory and fame for his killings. If it wasn’t for his “Manifesto,” the publication that outlined his disdain of technology and modern society, he may have never been caught.
Jim Jones, leader of the People’s Temple, has come to symbolize the ultimate in sleazy, evil cult figures. Through a forceful personality, charm and genuine good works, he managed to draw a massive following and lead them, like a modern-day pied piper, to the jungles of Guyana. There he promised them a modern-day Garden of Eden. What they found was confinement, mental and physical control and enforced suicide. In this week’s Biographics, we discover the real Jim Jones.
Born in July 6, 1946, in New Haven, Connecticut, George W. Bush was the 43rd president of the United States. He narrowly won the Electoral College vote in 2000, in one of the closest and most controversial elections in American history. Bush led the United States' response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks and initiated the Iraq War. Before his presidency, Bush was a businessman and served as governor of Texas.
Pablo Escobar was the world’s most successful drug trafficker. He was also its most deadly. During his 17- year reign at the top of the Colombian cocaine empire, he ordered the killings of thousands of people, including judges, ministers of parliament and Presidential candidates.
Cleopatra VII is one of the most famous women who has ever lived. Her story has inspired poets, dramatists, and artists for more than 2,000 years. Through cunning and guile, she survived to rule Egypt as all of her siblings perished by the wayside.
He is revered as one of the greatest artists of all time. For centuries he has typified the perfect artistic genius. His greatest legacy is the surviving works that we can see today - The Sistene Chapel, the Statue of david, the Pieta. Yet, behind the artworks lies a complex and stubborn man. In this week’s Biographics, we go beyond the facade to discover the real Michelangelo.
In 1937 Amelia Earhart was one of the most famous women on the planet. For the last decade she had been upending stereotypes, smashing records and establishing herself as an international role model. As she set off for her greatest adventure, a round the world excursion, the whole world was watching. Then, suddenly, she was gone – disappeared. In this week’s Biographics we delve into the marvellous and mysterious life and death of Amelia Earhart.
The real life exploits of Leonidas of Sparta and his 300 warriors at Thermoplyae have given rise to the myth of the Spartan superhero – the supremely disciplined man of few words who had a body of steel, could endure any hardship and would fight to his last breath. Such men really did exist and chief among them was Leonidas, the Spartan king who defied the might of Persia, saving Greece from annihilation. In this week’s Biographics we discover the real life Leonidas.
Charles Darwin, the mild mannered son of a physician, was once described as the most dangerous man in England. In fact many people considered him to be the agent of the Devil himself, come to sow seeds of corruption among the faithful.
Known as ‘the father of modern fantasy’ his epic tales of legend and lore have been enjoyed by millions of people all over the world — devoured in popular books and adapted for Hollywood blockbuster films. Unbelievably bright, he was a distinguished university professor, poet, historian, and expert linguist. As a child, he even made up his own languages for pure fun.
Ada Lovelace was born Augusta Ada Byron in London on December 10, 1815 to the philandering Romantic poet Lord Byron and strictly religious Annabella Milbanke. Ada was Lord Byron’s only legitimate child.
Christopher Lee is most familiar to the world as a consummate actor with a deep, rich voice and a towering presence. In ten hammer Studios films he became the embodiment of evil, inhabiting the character of Count von Dracula with a sinister charm.
For eleven years he hosted one of the most popular art shows on television -- transforming a blank canvas to a finished painting in a remarkably short, 30 minutes. He captivated audiences with his mesmerizing voice and relaxed demeanor, and of course, his signature perm. Nearly twenty-five years after his death, the painter of “happy little trees” is immortalized through internet memes, inspirational quotes, a thriving business in his name, and reruns of his show The Joy of Painting. His fame as a pop-culture icon shows no sign of diminishing yet so little is known about his life. Today on Biographics, we piece together the world of Bob Ross -- beyond the canvas.
Fred Rogers was a legitimate American national treasure. Over 31 seasons he proved to be the reliable, compassionate and all-wise friendly neighbor who guided millions of youngsters through their childhood. Fred single handedly introduced children’s educational television, in the process elevating a medium that was heading downhill fast. His radical kindness, typified by a gentle and personal manner, helped bring sanity to a world beset by problems. Having Mr. Rogers as our neighbor made the world a safer place.
He is the most bankable star in Hollywood – an action hero with a massive, ripped physique who has impeccable comedic timing and a never ending supply of charm. He is also one of the greatest wrestling superstars to ever emerge from the stables of the WWE and the only third generation wrestling star in history. The story of Dwayne Johnson – the Rock – is a tale of dedication, grit and old fashioned hard work. In this week’s Biographics we chart the rise and rise of 2016’s Sexiest Man Alive – Dwayne Johnson.
It’s the group at the center of major conspiracy theories. They’ve been accused of pulling the strings of major governments around the world, for inserting secret symbols in such prominent places as the U.S dollar bill. And conspiracy theorists have claimed that everyone from The Beatles to Tom Brady to Kanye West are more recent members of the centuries-old society…
In 1951, doctors took a tissue sample from a poor, dying black woman that was given to researchers without her knowledge or permission. The HeLa cells, named for the patient’s first and last name, acted differently than other cells in the lab — they were hardier, and replicated at an amazing rate.
Best known as the young, golden-haired woman living alongside humankind’s closest relatives, this scientist-turned-activist has devoted her life to understanding, and working to save chimpanzees from near extinction. Her unorthodox methods of observation revolutionized how scientists conduct animal research in the wild, debunked long-held assumptions about primate behavior, and showed the world how much we have in common with the animal kingdom.
He was billed as the 8th wonder of the world - a legitimate giant of a man, 7 foot 4 inches tall and more than 500 pounds. Andre the Giant was the greatest attraction the world of professional wrestling has ever seen. Yet his appeal went far beyond the ring. With his humble manner and boundless charm, Andre became one of the most famous and recognizable athletes on the planet and a genuine cultural phenomenon. Yet, behind the celebrity, Andre was a man trapped inside a world he never created - one that would ultimately destroy him.
He was a force of nature - the quintessential Aussie outdoorsmen. With his wicked sense of humor and his insatiable passion for wildlife, Steve Irwin - the crocodile hunter - became a worldwide celebrity. He shone a spotlight on man’s mismanagement of our natural resources and championed the plight of the planet’s most vulnerable inhabitants - the animals. But Steve was also a daredevil - constantly pushing the limits in his interactions with the wild. Then, in a tragic moment, he was gone, taken from us far too soon. In this Biographics we get to grips with the Crocodile Hunter from Down Under, Steve Irwin.
He was the King of Kung Fu – the deadliest human fighting machine that the world had ever seen. Bringing a new level of excitement to the silver screen, he establishing himself as the first oriental super star. Billed as the fittest man on the planet, he had the world at his feet. Then, suddenly, he was gone – dead at the age of 32. In the almost 50 years since then, his legend has propelled Bruce Lee to mythical proportions. In this week’s Biographics we go beyond the legend to reveal the real Bruce Lee.
20 million Soviet Citizens died at his hand. For a quarter of a century, he ruled his huge Empire with a ruthless iron fist. Terror was his modus operandi – while he was alive, no one, not even his closest family members, were safe. Yet, at his passing he was mourned as the savior of his people.
We imagine Winston Churchill with his signature cane, drinking scotch whiskey, and puffing on a Cuban cigar. His mouth is downturned, and his voice is gruff and his words pointed. This is the image Hollywood portrays but it is a mere caricature of the flesh and blood version. Who was Winston Churchill? In Britain’s “darkest hour,” Churchill led his country from the brink of Nazi conquest by forging an alliance with the U.S. and Russia. He had many critics, and made mistakes on a grand scale. Yet, above it all, possessed an unwavering belief in his own power. To his beloved country he offered his “blood, toil, tears and sweat.”
Born in Germany in 1891, Erwin Rommel didn’t have the military in his DNA…his father was a teacher, and he was the only member of his family to enter the military as a career. Of his three siblings that lived to adulthood, one brother became a dentist, another became an opera singer, and his sister became an art teacher.
Robert E. Lee - today, the mere mention of his name is enough to arouse passionate debate. In his time, he was loved and respected by both the Confederate Army and the Southern people. Curiously, following the Civil War, this high admiration carried over to include the people of the North, and Lee become a cherished figure for all Americans. During the war, when Abraham Lincoln looked at a picture of Lee, he remarked that a man with such a compassionate countenance had to be a ‘good man.’ But the war to which he devoted his every fiber broke him, if not in spirit, certainly in body and he was only to outlive the conflict by five years.
Her hair was piled atop her head, often ornamented with jewels or trinkets. Her face was always made up, and she wore the finest gowns and jewelry. At only 19 years old, she was a Queen, and in the tumultuous times in which she lived, she soon became a symbol of all that was wrong with French royalty.
Viktor Frankl was put through some of the most horrific struggles a human being could imagine. But he never lost hope, and used his experiences to continue his work helping other people find meaning in their lives. Frankl’s story is one of strength, of hope, and of a man who made an impact on the world. Let’s dive into it...
The world outside of central Maine almost never got to know Stephen King. If not for his wife’s diligence and her confidence in her husband, the book that launched a million pages might never have come into being. When his wife Tabitha rescued the start of the manuscript of “Carrie” from the trash and insisted her husband finish it, King was working as an English teacher and writing on the side. Tabitha’s judgment was right, Carrie became a smash hit, and Stephen King is one of the world’s most famous and most prolific authors. So what’s the story behind the stories? Let’s delve into his life...
He is the 21st Century Howard Hughes, John D. Rockefeller and Steve Jobs - all rolled into one dynamic package. His hunger for global change mirrors the sense of adventure of the great explorers of the past. His ideas, considered crazy by everyone around him, have opened up new frontiers as he continues to improve the world with the aid of technological advancement. His goal to make the earth a better place to live on has expanded to encompass the entire universe - including the possibility of supporting human life on Mars.
Even though it’s been going on two centuries since Robert Cornelius took both the first photographic portrait and first selfie in 1839, the practically obsolete art of capturing likenesses through other mediums has not died out. Plenty of people continue to have portraits painted of themselves even though it’s common for that to cost $15,000. Many even pay to make fun of themselves through a caricature artist.
At the age of 9 he knew what he wanted to do with his life, and he never wavered from his goal. Now, he’s one of the world’s most famous scientists. He’s earned the title of “Most Powerful Nerd In The Universe” from National Public Radio and the title of “The World’s Sexiest Astrophysicist” from People Magazine. He was instrumental in cutting down the number of planets in our solar system, and in doing so upset entire generations who had come to love Pluto as the quirky, smallest planet. And who is this icon of science that’s recognizable by the general populace? … Neil deGrasse Tyson.
He was the world’s most wanted international terrorist – the Svengali like leader at the helm of a violent political movement that brought havoc and destruction the world over. His name became instantly familiar – Osama bin Laden. We all recognized his image; the long, drawn face, the scraggly beard, the turban. Yet, discovering the man behind the image has never been easy, causing him to be referred to as a ‘fact-checker’s nightmare.’
Seabiscuit was born (or more accurately ‘foaled’) on May 23rd, 1933 in Lexington, Kentucky. He was the son of a nasty-tempered rogue named Hard Tack, and a gentle mare named Swing On. Seabiscuit’s father had great speed, no doubt owing to his own pedigree. His father, Man o’ War, was considered by most experts at the time to have been the greatest racehorse ever produced… although his grandson would certainly go on to challenge that claim. The problem with Hard Tack was that he was uncontrollable... Even hall of fame trainer ‘Sunny’ Jim Fitzsimmons couldn’t tame him.
He was a comic genius who had only one speed - full throttle. From the moment he burst into our lives as an alien on Happy Days, he amazed us with a range of talent that left us breathless. Yet, behind the manic shtick of Robin Williams was a man who was deeply plagued by depression. He had other demons, such as alcohol and cocaine. Still he kept us entertained to the very end, which made it all the more unfathomable to his legion of fans and admirers when he took his life, at the age of 63.
At the age of seventeen he had a master plan for becoming the best known journalist in Britain. He’s been in the midst of media scandals, he’s interviewed some of the most famous celebrities and most powerful politicians in the world, and he’s judged the talents of hundreds of common folks. Arrogant, ambitious, and shameless…. so who is this media man? None other than Piers Morgan, of course…
He is recognized as the greatest athlete of modern times. In the boxing ring, he was nothing short of superb, punishing his opponents at will. Yet, it was outside of the ring that he he would have his greatest battles – and show the world what it really meant to be a man.
Is there anything Richard Branson doesn’t do? A high school drop-out at 16, he’s started companies, seen the world, and had more adventures than anyone could dream of in a lifetime. He’s a creative personality and a brilliant businessman... an energetic, charitable man who has built a brand recognizable around the world. And he’s worth nearly 5 billion dollars. So how did Branson get to where he is today?
He created a body that was to become the gold standard for muscular development. He would use it achieve one goal after another, rising to the very pinnacle of, not one, but three careers. Yet, from the very start Arnold Schwarzenegger had the odds stacked against him... He was dismissed, ridiculed and parodied mercilessly. What people failed to realize was that Arnold’s strongest muscle was, not his bicep, but his brain. With it he orchestrated career moves that took him to the very top.
In high school, a student interested in taking apart and rebuilding machines approached the CEO of Hewlett-Packard and asked for some parts to help him complete a class project. Duly impressed, the CEO made arrangements for the student to get the parts. And years later, he was probably thrilled to be able to say he took the time to do so. The confident, driven student who asked for the parts was Steve Jobs, a man who would go on to become the CEO of Apple Computers and a pre-eminent figure in the tech industry…
During his early years the future macho man’s mother dressed and treated him as a girl and his own son Gregory, would become a transvestite. He was known as Papa Hemingway and yet he had a distant relationship with his three sons. In the midst of the glowing tributes that the world heaped upon him he sunk to terrible lows, causing turmoil as he racked up awards. And then finally, in an act of desperation, he took his own life.
The leading generals of World War Two carried a huge weight on their shoulders. Their decisions could mean the difference between life and death for thousands of men; their actions helped to shape the fate of nations. History has judged some of them as fools, others as butchers, and a handful as military geniuses...
He had a boyish smile, a rebellious hairstyle, and a lilting Liverpudlian accent. His genius extended beyond music, to wordplay and visual arts. While he excited and inspired teens, he frightened parents and pastors, and was a target of the Nixon-era FBI. Who was this British phenom? Well, that would be the inimitable John Lennon.
He was the first of a new breed of American celebrity – the handsome, debonair and super intelligent mass murderer. His legend, fueled by his own insatiable appetite for exaggeration, would turn him into a monster, ‘the arch-fiend of the age’ and the ‘greatest criminal of this expiring century’. His “Murder Castle”, situated at the heart of the world’s greatest exhibition, was reputedly the scene of unspeakable horrors.
He was the richest man in America, the world at his fingertips, and yet he was a prisoner to his own dark fears. His achievements were astounding – he created the fastest plane on the planet, was the driving force behind the largest aircraft ever built and was a pioneer in film making – and yet he is remembered for the eccentricities that drove him from hero to hermit. In his heyday, he was a romantic figure, with movie starlets flocking to be seen on his arm, and yet he spent the last 26 years of his life as a recluse, obsessed with cleanliness and controlling every aspect of his environment even as he sunk deeper and deeper into madness.
He was a man who was impossible to ignore – a huge flamboyant character with a cigar and a $50,000 pinkie ring. Although he weighed over 250 pounds, he could, when the occasion demanded it, move with lethal speed and force. His jowly smile contrasted with the two scars that streaked across his left cheek.
Imagine traveling in a foreign country when you learn the news of your father’s death. Now, imagine that death means you are now at the helm of the British Empire. That is how Queen Elizabeth II discovered she would no longer be a Princess, but instead would be Queen of the most powerful empire in history. She was only 25 years old, and would soon become the head of one of the world’s most powerful monarchies; a post she would hold for much of the 20th Century…
Known for being photographed shirtless and alongside wild animals (perhaps at the same time), Vladimir Putin has cultivated an image as an intimidating and fearless figure on the world stage. He’s a martial arts expert, a fearless political actor, and a former spy...
What comes to mind when you hear the words “Napoleon Bonaparte, Emperor of France”? We’re guessing it’s a certain petit corporal in a bicorne hat, rearing up majestically on a horse as he conquers half of Europe. But what if we told you there was another Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte? A Bonaparte who not only managed to rule France for longer than his famous predecessor, but basically created modern Paris.
John F. Kennedy served as the 35th President of the United States, before he was killed in 1963. While we all know about JFK, chances are that you probably know more about the conspiracy theories surrounding his assassination that the actual details of his life. This story goes far deeper than just the individual life of John F. Kennedy. In order to understand the man, you need to know the family- and he was far from being the only one whose life ended in tragedy. On today’s Biographics, we will discuss the real man behind the Presidency.
Grigori Rasputin was a Russian peasant who claimed to have mystic healing powers, and he even went so far as to say he was the second coming of Christ. He formed his own cult, and even manipulated the members of the royal Romanov family into believing he truly was a holy man.
In modern times, we look back at the Nazi’s Third Reich and wonder how on earth anyone could have followed Adolf Hitler when he was so clearly an evil dictator. This was all thanks to Joseph Goebbels, the Minister of Propaganda. He knew exactly how to manipulate the minds of a nation with fake news, … Continue reading 12 – Joseph Goebbels – The Propaganda Maestro →
John Wayne Gacy was a businessman and politician. To everyone around him, he was a sweet, charming man. No one in his life could have guessed that he dressed up like “Pogo the Clown”, and murdered teenage boys after dark. The Chicago police department found 27 bodies buried in his basement. They knew that his … Continue reading 11 – John Wayne Gacy – The Killer Clown →
He is the only person whose baby picture was flown into space, and whose body has been preserved for decades after his death. He pushed his version of Communism so far, and for so long, that he was able to overthrow the government of the largest country in the world. To some, he is a … Continue reading 10 – Vladimir Lenin – The Founder of the Soviet Union →
Pancho Villa was one of the most divisive figures in history. To millions he was the Mexican Robin Hood, to others a ruthless terrorist who killed without conscience. What is without doubt is that he rose from humble beginnings to become one of the most famous Mexicans in history, playing a vital role in the … Continue reading 9 – Pancho Villa – Robin Hood or Ruthless Terrorist →
09:02am, April 19, 1995. That’s the moment when 27-year old Timothy McVeigh exploded his way into the US history books, blowing up a gigantic truck bomb outside the Alfred P Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. The blast annihilated the building. It ended 168 lives, including 19 children. It also sent a shockwave through the … Continue reading 8 – Timothy McVeigh – America’s Deadliest Terrorist →
He’s the dentist’s son who grew up to become the world’s youngest billionaire. In the mid-2000s, Mark Zuckerberg created a website that defined a generation, a website you almost certainly use yourself. The behemoth that is Facebook today dominates the internet. It has more active users than the populations of China and India combined. At … Continue reading 7 – Mark Zuckerberg – Tech Visionary or Supervillain? →
If the name McAfee sounds familiar, that’s because the McAfee anti-virus software has been installed in nearly every computer in the past 20 years. But few people know much about the company’s founder, John McAfee, or the fact that his millions have helped him to very literally get away with murder.
There have been a lot of crazed leaders throughout history, but few have been as depraved as the man who brutalized Uganda throughout the 1970’s. With his penchant for torture, severed heads and, by his own admission, cannibalism, he thoroughly deserved the description given to him by the man he replaced as Ugandan president, Milton … Continue reading 5 – Idi Amin – The Butcher of Uganda →
By the age of twenty-four Hermann Goering was a famous combat pilot, a national hero, and leader of Germany’s most celebrated fighter squadron. By the time of his death, less than thirty years later, he was reviled as a monster with the blood of millions on his hands. Highly-decorated combat pilot, drug-addicted lunatic, international statesman, … Continue reading 4 – Hermann Goering – The Head of the Luftwaffe →