Christopher Columbus

Christopher Columbus tried to take a shortcut, and ended up somewhere he never intended to go. He discovered two continents that people in Europe didn’t even know existed. By crossing the Atlantic Ocean in 1492, Columbus opened contacts between lands and peoples that were unknown to each other.
Columbus’s voyage to the Americas opened an exciting period in history. Animals, plants, and new ideas were exchanged between continents. But it also caused terrible tragedy. Millions of Native Americans died as Europeans rushed to take land and riches for themselves.

MASTER SAILOR
Christopher Columbus was born in 1451 in Genoa, Italy. He became a sailor at the age of 14. In 1476, he was shipwrecked off the coast of Portugal. Portugal was Europe’s top seafaring nation at
that time. Columbus settled there. Columbus studied geography and navigation, the science of
figuring out where things are on Earth’s surface. He became a master sailor. He met explorers who had sailed along the coast of Africa seeking an eastward sea route to the rich lands of Asia.
Europeans called these lands “the Indies.” Europeans wanted to bring gold and other treasures from the Indies back to Europe.

DARING DREAM
Columbus began to think about a wonderful adventure, which he called the “Enterprise of the Indies.” He dreamed of reaching the Indies by sailing west! This was not a new idea, but no one had ever managed to make the voyage. Columbus thought the trip to the Indies west across the ocean would be much shorter than sailing around Africa.

Columbus had high hopes, but no money. Who would pay for his expedition? He asked the king of Portugal, but the king refused. Columbus didn’t give up. He went to the rulers of Portugal’s neighbor, Spain. At first they also refused. Eventually, however, the Spanish king and queen agreed to provide three small ships—the Pinta, the Niña, and the Santa María. They also paid for crews and supplies for the voyage.

HISTORIC VOYAGE
Columbus sailed from Palos, Spain, on August 3, 1492. He stopped at the Canary Islands southwest of Spain, then headed west into unknown seas. He had no idea what lay ahead, but he had faith in his sailing skills and his bold idea. A swift current carried his ships along, and on October 12, the crew sighted the islands of the Bahamas. Columbus thought he had reached Asia. He called the islands the Indies.

Columbus was greeted by the Arawak people who lived on the islands. They offered food, but had only a little gold. Columbus was disappointed not to find Asian treasures, but still felt sure he had reached Japan in Asia. He spent two months exploring, then headed home. One of his ships sank in a storm, but back in Spain he was hailed as a hero. The king and queen offered rich rewards and made him “Admiral of the Ocean Seas.”

THREE FAILURES
Columbus made three more voyages to America. None went well. He was a skillful sailor, but his greed and stubbornness made him a bad leader and created enemies. During his second voyage (1493-1496), Columbus claimed land for Spanish settlements. He fought against Caribbean peoples who lived on the land he claimed and forced them to work as slaves. On the third voyage (1498-1500), Columbus quarreled with Spanish settlers so violently that he was sent back to Europe as a prisoner in chains. On his fourth and final voyage (1502-1504), Columbus was marooned on an island for more than a year. He had to be rescued. He was very ill by the time he returned home to Spain.

AN EXTRAORDINARY EXPLORER
Columbus died in 1506. He quarreled with the king and queen right up until his death. He wanted authority over Spanish colonies and a larger share of the riches that were brought back from America. It was a sad end to an extraordinary career that still shapes our lives today. When Columbus crossed the Atlantic, he changed the world forever.

Nelson Mandela

Nelson Mandela, a boy from an African village, grew up to become the first black president of South Africa. Before he became president, Mandela led a long and difficult struggle against segregation in South Africa. Under segregation, black and white people were kept apart. Segregation denied blacks many basic rights. Mandela spent many years in prison for trying to end segregation in South Africa.

EARLY LIFE
Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela was born in 1918 in a small village in the Transkei region of South Africa. His father was a chief of the Thembu tribe. Mandela’s parents named him Rolihlahla, an African word that means troublemaker. Little did they know how fitting his name would be! At the age of seven, Mandela became the first person in his family to go to school. At school, Mandela was given the name Nelson. He went on to attend collegeand earn a law degree in the city of Johannesburg.

FIGHTING SEGREGATION
When Mandela was a young man, South Africa was divided by segregation. Segregation in South Africa was called apartheid, a word that means apartness. Under apartheid, black people couldn’t vote or hold certain jobs. Whites controlled the government. Blacks and whites lived in separate areas and went to different schools. Mandela opposed this cruel and unfair system. In 1944, Mandela joined a group called the African National Congress (ANC). The ANC opposed the rule of South Africa by whites alone. The ANC believed that South Africa belonged to everyone, whatever the color of their skin.

A NATURAL LEADER
Mandela was a natural leader and a gifted speaker. He became a leader in the ANC, and he encouraged people to break the apartheid laws. The government saw Mandela as a troublemaker. It tried to stop him. The government made the ANC illegal. Mandela was arrested several times. When he was released, he continued to fight for an end to apartheid. In 1962, the government sentenced Mandela to five years in prison. Then, in 1964, he was accused of working to overthrow the government. The government increased Mandela’s sentence to life in prison.

MANDELA IN PRISON
The government sent Mandela to a prison on Robben Island, off the coast of South Africa. The prison conditions were harsh. Mandela was allowed only one visitor every six months. Every day he was forced to break rocks in the prison yard for many hours. During this time, Mandela became the world’s most famous political prisoner. Leaders around the word demanded Mandela’s freedom. They wanted apartheid in South Africa to end. In 1982, the government moved Mandela to a prison on the mainland. This was during a time of growing violence in South
Africa. Many people protested in the streets against apartheid.

PEACEMAKER
The government began secret talks with Mandela. They believed that if anyone could stop the trouble, Mandela could. He was a popular leader who had won the support of many South Africans. In 1990, Mandela was released after spending 27 years in prison.The government lifted the ban on the ANC. Mandela became its leader in 1992. Mandela soon began talks with the government aimed at ending apartheid. Many white people worried about giving blacks equal rights. Mandela worked with South Africa’s president, F. W. de Klerk, to promote peaceful relations between blacks and whites. For their efforts, Mandela and de Klerk won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993.

PRESIDENT OF SOUTH AFRICA
In 1994, South Africa held elections. For the first time in South Africa’s history, men and women of all races could vote. Mandela became the first black president of South Africa. He brought an end to the hated apartheid system. After five years as president, Mandela retired from political office. He returned to live in the Transkei region, where he grew up.

Albert Einstein

Dents in space, light in bundles, and matter that turns into energy sound like science-fiction fantasies. However, Albert Einstein said they were real. Other scientists proved through observations that Einstein’s theories were right. Einstein revolutionized the science of physics and helped bring in the atomic age.

WHERE DID EINSTEIN GROW UP?
Albert Einstein was born in Ulm, Germany, on March 14, 1879. He grew up in Germany, Italy, and Switzerland. Einstein taught himself geometry when he was 12 years old. School bored him because it required endless memorizing and reciting. He often skipped classes to study on his own or to play his violin. Yet he graduated from college in 1900 and earned a Ph.D. degree in 1905. From 1902 to 1907, Einstein worked as a clerk in the patent office in Zürich, Switzerland. His job left him plenty of time to think.

WHAT DID EINSTEIN THINK ABOUT?
Einstein thought about the rules that govern the way the world works. For example, he explained why small particles in liquids wiggle around, a movement called Brownian motion. He said that the particles were being bumped into by tiny bits of matter called atoms that are too small to see. He also thought about light and electricity. Einstein knew that light shining on metal sometimes causes electricity to flow. He explained this result, called the photoelectric effect, by saying that light is made of tiny bundles of energy called photons. Photons hitting the metal knock particles called electrons away. Since electricity is simply moving electrons, he had solved the mystery of the photoelectric effect. In 1921, Einstein won the most famous prize in science, the Nobel Prize, for this work. Another thing Einstein thought about was time. He said that time does not always flow at the same rate. He proposed that motion affects time. He calledthis idea the special theory of relativity. Einstein then came up with his general theory of relativity. This theory has a new explanation for gravity. Einstein said that gravity comes from curves or dents in the fabric of space. Objects make dents in space the way a bowling ball makes a dent in a mattress. The Moon falls into the dent made by Earth and rolls around the Earth. Scientists later proved that the dent a star makes in space-time bends light as the light passes by. Einstein changed physics by showing that new ideas could come just from thinking. Before Einstein, most new ideas in physics had come from experiments in the laboratory.

EINSTEIN AND ATOMIC ENERGY
Einstein also said that matter and energy are the same thing. He expressed this relation in a famous equation: E=mc2. This equation says that energy (E) equals mass (m) times the speed of light squared (c2). Energy can therefore be changed into matter, and matter into energy. The ability to turn matter into energy led to the development of the atomic bomb and nuclear power.

FAME AND LATER YEARS
Einstein’s theories made him famous, even though few people understood them. He became a university professor and director of a physics institute in Berlin, Germany. After the Nazis rose to power in Germany, Einstein left. In 1933, he came to the United States, where he lived the rest of his life. Einstein died in Princeton, New Jersey, on April 18, 1955. Einstein’s last great idea was that every force in nature is part of one master force. Physicists are still working on this idea, which they call the theory of everything.

Leonardo da Vinci

Leonardo da Vinci excelled as a painter, sculptor, architect, engineer, and scientist. He had endless curiosity. Leonardo wanted to understand how things worked. He wanted to put down on paper what he saw. He left thousands of pages of drawings and notes that recorded his thoughts.

GOOD AT EVERYTHING
Leonardo was born in 1452 in the small town of Vinci, near Florence, Italy. He had little schooling and was largely self-taught. Leonardo seemed to be good at everything he tried. He was handsome, a good speaker, and a fine musician. He trained as a painter with Andrea del Verrocchio, a leading artist in Florence. Leonardo later worked for dukes and kings.

HIS MOST FAMOUS PAINTINGS
Leonardo produced a relatively small number of paintings, and he left some of them unfinished. But he had original ideas that influenced Italian artists long after his death. Leonardo believed painting was a science. He applied scientific thinking in his art so that his paintings looked more like the real world. One of his most important painting techniques was sfumato, a blending of one area of color into another so there are no sharp outlines. Leonardo used sfumato in one of his most famous paintings, the Mona Lisa. When you look at this portrait, notice how colors shade into each other on her face and hands. See how Leonardo has blurred the edges of her mouth to give her the hint of a smile. This mysterious smile has fascinated people for centuries. It looks as if Mona Lisa’s expression might change at any moment because of the way Leonardo has softened the edges of the mouth, eyes, and cheeks. She seems almost alive. Many people consider a mural by Leonardo known as The Last Supper to be his masterpiece. Christ, seated in the middle of The Last Supper, has just announced that one of his 12 apostles will betray him. Leonardo places the figures in this painting in a way that increases the drama of the announcement. Christ is the calm center. His body, which is set slightly apart from the others, forms a stable triangle. The apostles are arranged in four groups, some leaning toward Christ and some leaning away. Their gestures and the expressions on their faces reveal their reactions to Christ’s words.

HIS DRAWINGS AND NOTEBOOKS
Drawing was Leonardo’s favorite tool. He said that drawing was a better way of communicating ideas than words were. He drew catapults and war machines. He drew the muscles and skeletons of human beings and other animals. He drew clouds, swirling water, and storms. He designed churches that were never built. Leonardo’s drawings and theories are contained in numerous notebooks. His ideas were far in advance of what other people were thinking at the time. But the notebooks were not published during his lifetime. Had his notebooks been published, they might have revolutionized scientific thinking in the 1500s. Leonardo’s deep love of research was the key to both his artistic and scientific endeavors. Leonardo died in 1519.