Malcolm Scott Carpenter (born May 1, 1925 in Boulder, Colorado) is a former test pilot, astronaut, and aquanaut. He is best known as one of the original seven astronauts selected for NASA's Project Mercury in April 1959. Scott Carpenter was the second American to orbit the Earth and the fourth American in space, following Alan Shepard, Gus Grissom, and John Glenn. Carpenter and Glenn are the last living members of the Mercury Seven.
William Howard Taft (September 15, 1857 – March 8, 1930) was the 27th President of the United States and the 10th Chief Justice of the United States.
Born in 1857 in Cincinnati, Ohio, into the powerful Taft family, Taft graduated from Yale College in 1878, and later graduated from Cincinnati Law School in 1880. After his graduation from Cincinnati Law School, Taft worked in a number of local legal positions until being appointed a judge to the Ohio Superior Court in 1887. Taft was then appointed Solicitor General of the United States in 1890 and a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit in 1891. In 1900, President William McKinley appointed Taft Governor-General of the Philippines. In 1904, President Theodore Roosevelt, then a political ally of Taft, appointed Taft Secretary of War in order to groom Taft as his successor to the presidency.
These were especially dangerous for me as a kid.
Harriet Tubman (born Araminta Ross; c. 1820 – March 10, 1913) was an African-American abolitionist, humanitarian, and Union spy during the American Civil War. After escaping from slavery, into which she was born, she made thirteen missions to rescue over seventy slaves[1] using the network of antislavery activists and safe houses known as the Underground Railroad. She later helped John Brown recruit men for his raid on Harpers Ferry, and in the post-war era struggled for women's suffrage.
As a child in Dorchester County, Maryland, Tubman was beaten and whipped by her various owners. Early in her life, she suffered a traumatic head wound when she was hit by a heavy metal weight thrown by an irate slave owner, intending to hit another slave. The injury caused disabling seizures, headaches, powerful visionary and dream activity, and spells of hypersomnia which occurred throughout her entire life. A devout Christian, she ascribed her visions and vivid dreams to premonitions from God.
In 1849, Tubman escaped to Philadelphia, then immediately returned to Maryland to rescue her family. Slowly, one group at a time, she brought relatives with her out of the state, and eventually guided dozens of other slaves to freedom. Traveling by night and in extreme secrecy, Tubman (or "Moses", as she was called) "never lost a passenger". Large rewards were offered for the capture and return of many of the people she helped escape, but no one ever knew it was Harriet Tubman who was helping them. When a far-reaching United States Fugitive Slave Law was passed in 1850, she helped guide fugitives farther north into Canada, and helped newly freed slaves find work.
When the American Civil War began, Tubman worked for the Union Army, first as a cook and nurse, and then as an armed scout and spy. The first woman to lead an armed expedition in the war, she guided the raid on the Combahee River, which liberated more than seven hundred slaves. After the war, she retired to the family home in Auburn, New York, where she cared for her aging parents. She was active in the women's suffrage movement until illness overtook her and she had to be admitted to a home for elderly African-Americans she had helped open years earlier.
Ulysses S. Grant (born Hiram Ulysses Grant) (April 27, 1822 – July 23, 1885) was general-in-chief of the Union Army from 1864 to 1865 during the American Civil War and the 18th President of the United States from 1869 to 1877.
The son of an Appalachian Ohio tanner, Grant entered the United States Military Academy at age 17. In 1846, three years after graduating, Grant served as a lieutenant in the Mexican–American War under Winfield Scott and future president Zachary Taylor. After the Mexican-American War concluded in 1848, Grant remained in the Army, but abruptly resigned in 1854. Struggling through the coming years as a real estate agent, a laborer, and a county engineer, Grant decided to join the Northern effort in the Civil War.
Source: Wikipedia
Robert Edward Lee (January 19, 1807 – October 12, 1870), was a career United States Army officer, an engineer, and among the most celebrated generals in American history. Lee was the son of Major General Henry Lee III "Light Horse Harry" (1756–1818), Governor of Virginia, and his second wife, Anne Hill Carter (1773–1829). He was also related to Meriwether Lewis (1774 - 1809).[1]
A top graduate of West Point, Lee distinguished himself as an exceptional soldier in the U.S. Army for thirty-two years. He is best known for commanding the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia in the American Civil War.
Source: Wikipedia
Francis Stuart Chapin (3 February 1888 – 7 July 1974) was an American sociologist and educator.
He received his bachelor's degree from Columbia University in 1909, as well as his PhD from the same school in 1911. He taught economics at Wellesley College for one year. He then moved to Smith College where he taught sociology and served as department chair (1912-1921).
He played an important role in creation of a quantitative, statistical sociology in the United States in the years between World War I and World War II (1920-40).
He also served as the 25th President of the American Sociological Association. He was a prime mover in the creation of the Social Science Research Council.
