Vladimir Ilich Ulyanov was born in Simbirsk on the Volga River on 22 April 1870 into a well educated family. He excelled at school and went on to study law. At university, he was exposed to radical thinking, and his views were also influenced by the execution of his elder brother, a member of a […]
Viswanathan Anand is the first Asian to win the World Chess Championship title. He won the title on 24th December 2000, defeating Spain’s Alexei Shirovyoungest at Teheran. Born in Chennai in December 1969, he started playing chess at the age of 6. He learnt chess from his mother. Susheela. His parents encouraged him used to take
Vincent Willem van Gogh was born on 30 March 1853 in Groot-Zundert, Brabant, The Netherlands, exactly a year after his stillborn namesake.Van Gogh’s father was a pastor at Zundert and three of his uncles were in the art trade. After a spell at the local school Vincent van Gogh went to boarding school in Zevenbergen
The world famous writer and poet Vikram Seth was born in Kolkata, India. Vikram Seth possesses the art of creating a living and breathing world that keeps the readers focused and engaged. Vikram Seth has published 6 books of poetry and 3 novels. In 1986, Vikram Seth wrote The Golden Gate, his first novel.The publication
Vikram.A.Sarabhai, was the main personality behind the launching of India’s first satellite, Aryabhata in 1975. He was born in Ahmedabad, Gujarat in a family of industrialists. He was also responsible for the Equatorial Rocket Building Station at Thumba.Sarabhai set up the Ahmedabad Textile Industries Research Association, a laboratory for research in Physics and the Indian
Sir Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul (born August 17, 1932), better known as V. S. Naipaul, is a British novelist of Hindu heritage and East Indian ethnicity from Chaguanas, Trinidad and Tobago in the Caribbean, which was then a British colony.He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2001 and was also knighted by Queen Elizabeth
Sarod ‘samrat’, Amjad Ali Khan is one of the most distinguished maestro in the world of Indian classical music. Amjad Ali Khan, born on October 9th, 1945 at Gwalior, Madhya Pradesh, is the sixth-generation sarod player in his illustrious family. His ancestors of famous musicians, from the Bangash lineage rooted in the Senia Bangash School
Eldrick Woods, better known as Tiger Woods was born on December 30 1975 in Cypress, California.He took the nickname ‘Tiger’ after a friend of his father’s in Vietnam.Tiger Woods at a young age has broken an incredible number of golfing records and his performances up until 2005 were outstanding.Woods is the only player to have
Joseph Ratzinger, who became Pope Benedict XVI on 19 April 2005, was born on 16 April 1927 in Marktl am Inn, Germany.Before the death of Pope John Paul II, who was Pontiff for 27 years, Cardinal Ratzinger, as he then was, held the positio ns of Prefect of Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (formerly
On May 29, 1953 Tenzing Norgay (born 15 May,1915 in Nepal) and Edmund Hillary became the first to successfully climb Mount Everest, the highest mountain on earth. Neither climbers would ever acknowledge which of them was technically the first to summit.Tenzing was a Sherpa in the mountainous Khumbu region of Nepal near Mount Everest. He
Thomas Stearns Eliot, better known as T.S. Eliot, was born in St Louis, Missouri on 26 September 1888.T.S. Eliot studied at Harvard and the Sorbonne before winning a travelling scholarship from Harvard to Merton College, Oxford.Eliot decided to settle in England and in 1915 married Vivien Haigh-Wood. After spending 8 years in Lloyds Bank, he
Michael Sylvester Enzio Stallone (born July 6, 1946), usually known as simply Sylvester Stallone, is an American film actor, director, producer and screenwriter. He achieved his greatest successes in a number of action films, notably the Rambo and Rocky series, in both of which he played a largely monosyllabic hero.Stallone was born in New York
Lord Swaraj Paul is a Britain based business magnate a philanthropist. He was born in 1931 in Jalandhar, India. Swaraj Paul founded the multinational company Caparo—the UK-based steel and engineering group. Swaraj Paul went to Britain in 1966 and started his business in 1968. From acquiringone steel unit, he went on to acquire more units
India has given birth to a variety of saints and Godmen. Swami Vivekananda, was a saint with one major difference. He worked towards the upliftment of his people, and not just towards his own salvation. He was a ‘Karmayogi’ in the true sense of the word.Born in Calcutta, on January 12th, 1863 to Vishwanath Datta
Swami Sivananda Saraswati (1887-1963), as he is known under his monastic name, was born Kuppuswami in Pattamadai , Tamil Nadu, India. He is a well-known proponent of Hinduism in its yoga and vedanta forms. Due to his status as a major guru, he is usually addressed with the respectful title of Swami (master).He went to