Charles Freer Andrews, born on 12 February 1871, was
a priest of the Church of England. A Christian missionary, educator and social
reformer in India, he became a close friend of Rabindranath Tagore and Mahatma
Gandhi and identified with the cause of India's independence. He was
instrumental in convincing Gandhi to return to India from South Africa, where
Gandhi had been a leading light in the Indian civil rights struggle.
Abraham Lincoln, born on 12 February 1809, was an
American statesman and lawyer who served as the 16th president of the United
States (1861–1865) and died in office upon his assassination. Lincoln led the
nation through its greatest moral, constitutional, and political crisis in the
bloody American Civil War. He preserved the Union, abolished slavery,
strengthened the federal government, and modernized the U.S. economy.
Dayanand Saraswati, born on 12 February 1824, was an
Indian philosopher, social leader and founder of the Arya Samaj, a reform
movement of the Vedic dharma. He was the first to give the call for Swaraj as
"India for Indians" in 1876, a call later taken up by Lokmanya Tilak.
Denouncing the idolatry and ritualistic worship prevalent in British India at
the time, he worked towards reviving Vedic ideologies. Subsequently, the
philosopher and President of India, S. Radhakrishnan called him one of the
"makers of Modern India", as did Sri Aurobindo.
On 11 February 1990, Nelson Mandela was released from
Victor Verster Prison outside Cape Town, South Africa after 27 years as a
political prisoner.
Thomas Edison, born on 11 February 1847, was an
American inventor and businessman who has been described as America's greatest
inventor. He developed many devices in fields such as electric power
generation, mass communication, sound recording, and motion pictures. These
inventions, which include the phonograph, the motion picture camera, and the
long-lasting, practical electric light bulb, have had a widespread impact on
the modern industrialized world. He was one of the first inventors to apply the
principles of organized science and teamwork to the process of invention,
working with many researchers and employees. He established the first
industrial research laboratory.
Sidney Sheldon, born on 11 February 1917, was an
American writer. He was prominent in the 1930s, first working on Broadway
plays, and then in motion pictures, notably writing the successful comedy The
Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer (1947), which earned him an Oscar in 1948. He went
on to work in television, where over 20-years he created The Patty Duke Show
(1963–66), I Dream of Jeannie (1965–70), and Hart to Hart (1979–84). After
turning 50, he began writing best-selling romantic suspense novels, such as Master
of the Game (1982), The Other Side of Midnight (1973), and Rage of Angels
(1980).
On May 31, 1859, Big Ben rang over the Houses of Parliament in Westminster, London, for the first time. In October 1834, a fire destroye...
