Author: Maddy

Today, it is common knowledge that humans and chimpanzees evolved from a common ancestor. But during Charles Darwin’s time, it wasn’t obvious. Even though atheists at that time didn’t agree with Christianity’s concept that God made man suddenly out of nothing, they couldn’t answer the question of where humans and animals came from. So, several biology enthusiasts tried to find the answer to this question by observing the organisms around them. Their efforts gave rise to the first theories of evolution. But none of these people could provide evidence to back their theories. The first person to provide an evidence-based theory of evolution was Charles Darwin.

Over the next 150 years, due to the improvements in the fields of biology, genealogy, and archaeology, scientists have proven his theory to be true. But at the time he theorized the concept, the world did not know about the existence of genes or DNA. So, how did he come up with the theory of evolution? How did he convince science enthusiasts that he was correct about evolution? Continue reading this biography of Charles Darwin to find out.

Ancestors

In 1719, partial remains of the fossil of a Jurassic era reptile were found. This was the first time a fossil had been found.

The man who brought this discovery to the attention of the Royal Society (the UK’s national academy of sciences) was Robert Darwin, Charles Darwin’s great grandfather. Even though Robert couldn’t explain how the reptile became fossilized, it created huge public interest and would later pave the way for his great-grandson in creating the theory of evolution.

Robert Darwin was a physician, scientist, and lawyer. Robert Darwin’s son, Erasmus Darwin was greatly impressed by his father’s work. So, Erasmus too, like his father, became a physician. Like his father, Erasmus was also a man of many arts (he was also a physiologist, inventor, and poet).

One of Erasmus Darwin’s friends was Josiah Wedgewood, Charles Darwin’s grandfather on his mother’s side. Josiah was a famous pottery businessman and entrepreneur. He brought in several innovations in the pottery business and became a leader in the industrialization of pottery in Europe.

Josiah’s business was an extremely profitable one. But it was also a big undertaking which was very difficult for one person to manage. So, when his business partner died, Josiah felt handicapped and turned to Erasmus Darwin for help. Thus, Erasmus Darwin ended up becoming Josiah Wedgewood’s business partner, and hence, the closeness between their families grew. As a result of this close association, one of Erasmus’ sons, Robert, married Josiah’s daughter Susannah. They had six children.

Early life

Charles Robert Darwin, Robert and Susannah’s fifth child, was born in Shrewsbury in England on February 12th, 1809.

Why did Robert name his fifth child Charles?

Robert had an elder brother called Charles Darwin. Just like their father, Erasmus, who was a successful physician, Charles wanted to become a doctor too. So, he joined the University of Edinburgh in 1775 to study medicine. He showed great promise as a medical student. He even got a gold medal in 1778 for the medical dissertation he submitted. But before he could become a doctor, he died the same year, probably because of a cut he obtained while doing an autopsy. Robert grew up looking at his elder brother Charles Darwin and had great respect for him. So, when Charles died, Robert started missing him deeply. Therefore, several years later, when his second son was born, Robert named him Charles Robert Darwin in honor of his elder brother.

Growing up in an open-minded family

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, a movement called enlightenment became famous in Europe. It was born out of the belief that science and logic can help people gain more knowledge and understanding than religion and tradition. In the nineteenth century, however, the church rejected the concept of enlightenment and started controlling the scientific establishment in England. Even the schools, which were mostly run by the church, started discouraging students who showed an interest in science.  

Charles Darwin was born at such a conservative time. So, one might expect him to have grown up according to the social and religious norms at that time. But Darwin’s family was a more open-minded family. Both his grandfathers were abolitionists who fought to end slavery in the UK. His paternal grandfather, Erasmus Darwin, published a book titled Zoonomia. In this medical book, he argues that, with time, a species could transmute into another species. It was a highly controversial and radical idea at the time. Therefore, he came to be known as the scientist with unusual ideas. Hence, having descended from such grandfathers, Charles Darwin learned early to explore and embrace new ideas instead of sticking to traditional norms, even though he had a Christian upbringing.

Education

From a very young age, Darwin was fascinated by nature. So, he spent his time exploring the fields and forest near his home and collecting pebbles, minerals, animal shells, bird’s eggs, plants, and insects. He also loved gardening.

Charles Darwin’s father was a naturalist who studied natural history. Natural history is the scientific study of organisms by observing them in their natural habitat instead of experimenting with them. His father’s interest in natural history impressed Darwin. So, he started learning the names of different plant species and, as he grew up, started reading natural history books.

When Darwin was eight years old, his mother died. When she was alive, Darwin’s mother rarely took care of him, because she was often bedridden. So, his sisters took care of him most of the time. Hence, his mother’s death was not a traumatizing experience for him because he did not have any great memories of her to begin with. After he became an adult, he couldn’t even remember how his mother looked.

A portrait of the seven-year-old Darwin, 1816 – By Ellen Sharples – File originally uploaded to w:Wikipedia by Duncharris at 20:49, 5 May 2004., Public Domain, Link

Uninterested in studies

When he was nine years old, Darwin joined the nearby Shrewsbury boarding school, where his older brother studied.

Even after joining the school and studying different subjects, Darwin’s interest in nature did not fade away. So, he started collecting insects. But one of his sisters told him that it wasn’t right for him to kill insects to expand his collection. So, he started collecting only dead insects and took up bird-watching.

Darwin hated the process of memorizing by repetition, which the school used as the primary method to teach the students. Moreover, he wasn’t a bright student either. Therefore, he started hating the boarding school and hence, visited his home as often as he could. 

Darwin’s elder brother loved chemistry. So, he set up a temporary lab at home and started experimenting. Looking at his experiments, Darwin too was drawn to chemistry, and so, joined his brother in his experiments. Even after his elder brother left school and joined college, Darwin continued to return home on weekends to experiment. Therefore, due to his passion for manufacturing gases in his amateur laboratory at home, Darwin got the nickname ‘gas.’

During those days, public schools in England were mostly run by churches. So, since churches wanted to control the scientific establishment in England, teachers focussed on teaching classical studies, like history, literature, and art. These schools considered science as a dehumanizing subject. Therefore, Darwin’s interest in Chemistry did not please his teachers or headmaster. Hence, he was often condemned by them.

University of Edinburgh

When he turned fifteen years old, Darwin’s interest changed to bird shooting and hunting. But his interest in hunting, rather than studying, greatly annoyed his father. So, Darwin’s father considered him a disgrace to the family.

Darwin’s father was afraid that Darwin would amount to nothing in life. So, he sent Darwin to Edinburgh University to study medicine in 1825. Darwin’s brother Erasmus also joined the university the same year. At that time, Edinburgh university was the best place in the UK to study medicine.

Life at the university turned out to be a formative experience for the aimless teenager. But not in the way that his father had expected. For Darwin, the university was not a place of study to enter a profession. Rather, it was a place where he could pursue his interests without his father’s interruption.

During his time at the university, he furthered his interest and knowledge in flora and fauna, chemistry, and natural history.

First-year

During his first year at the university, Darwin attended lectures on Chemistry. He read many books on natural history, some of which he brought from home and others he borrowed from the library.

Every Sunday, he and his brother took walks along a seaport and the shores of an estuary. An estuary is a place where one or more rivers meet the sea or ocean. During these walks, Darwin observed the behaviors of birds, sea plants, and sea animals. He then recorded his observations in a diary.

Once, he even paid a black slave and learned how to stuff animals to preserve them. 

Thus, Darwin spent a great deal of time in improving his knowledge in chemistry and biology. But as for the subjects that are indispensable for a medical profession, Darwin hated them. He found lectures on anatomy boring and surgeries scary.

During those days, anesthetic wasn’t invented. So, patients were conscious during surgeries. Only a few people were brave enough to watch them. But Darwin wasn’t one of those people. Surgeries were too brutal and so disturbing for him that he couldn’t attend more than two practical classes. One of these, an operation on a child, continued to haunt him for a very long time.

Second-year

During his second year at the university, Darwin realized that he was very rich and hence, could live off his inheritance rather than toiling himself to get into a medical profession. So, he decided to improve his knowledge in fields he was interested in. Therefore, he joined a natural history course. It covered a wide range of topics, like botany, zoology, geology, and mineralogy. 

Zoology particularly interested him since he learned the main classes of vertebrates and invertebrates, and the natural history of man.

Due to his interest in natural history, Darwin often visited the Royal Museum of the University, which had a huge natural history collection. He spent a lot of time there, observing the collections, studying and taking notes, learning to classify plants, and stuffing specimens.

He also joined a student club for pupils interested in natural history. At that time, Edinburgh was one of the best places in Britain to study science. So, it attracted people with radical opinions, whom Oxford and Cambridge wouldn’t tolerate. Therefore, by joining a student club on natural history, Darwin met other pupils with similar interests as him as well as people with radical opinions. Pupils also presented the latest theories on transmutation, which is how evolution was known at that time. One of the students whom Darwin met in this club was John Coldstream. Coldstream and Darwin often walked along shores looking for sea animals. The duo also helped Robert Edmond Grant, who was researching simple marine lifeforms, to find evidence that one life form could mutate into another life form.

Abandoning his studies

Both Darwin and Coldstream were obsessed with Natural history. But eventually, Coldstream abandoned it and started medical practice. However, Darwin was too distressed by the sight of blood or suffering. So, he lost any ambitions of becoming a doctor. Therefore, he returned home just two years after joining the university, without finishing his studies.

Cambridge university

Darwin’s father was deeply upset when he came to know that his younger son wouldn’t become a physician like him. He thought that the church would be a better place for the aimless teenager. So, he sent Darwin to Christ’s College of the Cambridge university to study BA. It was the first step to become a parson, a Christian person responsible for a small area.

But in Cambridge, too, Darwin preferred pursuing his hobbies rather than studying. Two of these noteworthy hobbies were horse riding and shooting. But there was one more hobby that Darwin loved more than horse riding or shooting. 

Collecting beetles

When Darwin joined the Cambridge University, collecting beetles was a national craze. So, Darwin, who was already interested in observing flora and fauna, got attracted to it. Therefore, he joined his cousin William Darwin Fox who was already a skilled beetle collector, and together, they started collecting beetles. Soon, Darwin became obsessed with this hobby. One incident, in particular, shows how obsessed Darwin was with collecting beetles.

Once, when Darwin and Fox were collecting beetles, Darwin found two ground beetles. Since there were two beetles, he picked up one in each hand. Exactly at that instant, he found another rare species of beetle crawling nearby. So, desperate to catch the rare species of beetle, Darwin put one ground beetle in his mouth to free one of his hands. But the ground beetle ejected some fluid in his mouth, which burned his tongue. So, he spat the beetle out, and eventually, ended up losing all three beetles. As painful as it might seem, even this incident did not reduce Darwin’s obsession for collecting more beetles than others and winning the student award.

John Stevens Henslow, Charles Darwin’s mentor

Due to their shared interests, Darwin and Fox hanged out together a lot. It was Fox who introduced Darwin to Revd. John Stevens Henslow, a botany professor. Henslow was one of the professors whose courses Darwin came to love. So, he regularly attended Henslow’s field trips and Botany courses conducted in botanical gardens.

But besides Botany, there weren’t many other subjects that Darwin loved. He was mainly obsessed with his hobbies of beetle collecting and horse riding. But even though he was obsessed with his hobbies, he abandoned them and studied vigorously whenever exams approached. Moreover, he took private tuitions from professors whose subjects he was weak in. 

Therefore, Darwin graduated with his BA degree in 1831 on time. He was ranked tenth out of 178 candidates.

Desire to travel the world

Even after his final exams were over, Darwin did not return home to visit his family. He stayed back in Cambridge for a few months due to the rules set by the university. So, to pass the time, he resumed his hobby of collecting beetles and started reading various books on theology and natural philosophy. These books taught him that nature is governed by laws, and to understand these laws, one has to observe and then theorize. He also read the personal narrative of Alexander von Humboldt, a German geographer, and explorer. Humbolt traveled the Americas extensively from 1799 to 1804 and described it from a scientific point of view. After reading these books, Charles Darwin’s heart became filled with an insatiable desire to contribute to science.

So, he decided to visit the canary islands, a group of islands in the Atlantic ocean, which belong to Spain. Therefore, he started learning Spanish and Geology. However, due to various reasons, he had to postpone the trip for a year.

At the same time, heeding the suggestion of Henslow, Darwin’s botany professor, the great geologist Adam Sedgwick decided to take Darwin as his assistant on a geological expedition to Wales. So, Darwin and Sedgwick set off for the expedition on August 4th, 1831. Darwin spent almost two weeks during this expedition learning to identify specimens and generalize from his observations. Then, he bid farewell to Sedgwick and met his friends, with whom he stayed for a week. Then, he returned home. Upon returning home, he found a letter from Henslow.

The second voyage of HMS Beagle

A ship called HMS Beagle had sailed across the Atlantic ocean from 1826 to 1830. During this voyage, it conducted a survey of the sea, ocean, rivers, and lakes of the islands near the southern tip of South America. In 1831, the ship’s crew were preparing for the second voyage. But before setting sail, the ship’s captain, Robert FitzRoy, felt that having someone who could investigate the geology of the areas would be advantageous. So, his contacts sought out Henslow for help.

At first, Henslow approached Darwin’s friend. But he rejected the offer and recommended Charles Darwin instead. So, Henslow wrote to Darwin asking if he was willing to take the trip. Darwin, who was sad that he had to postpone, or even cancel the trip to the canary islands, immediately took the offer. Darwin’s father, however, considered it a waste of time. But his brother-in-law eventually convinced him and so, Darwin’s father agreed to support and fund Darwin’s voyage.

Thus, the 22-year-old Darwin set sail on December 27th, 1831. At that time, he did not know that the voyage, which was planned to last only two years, would actually last five years. But he made good use of all the time he had.

Route of the HMS Beagle expedition (Image credits)

While the ship surveyed South America’s coastline and harbors to create better maps of the region, Darwin spent most of his time on land. He visited four continents and explored regions in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and even some remote islands. During these explorations, he collected samples of plants, animals, fossils, and rocks from these regions. He also carefully noted down his observations and the theoretical speculations he derived from them. Then, at regular intervals, he packed all his specimens and his notes into crates and sent them to England. He also had a lot of time to read books and reflect on them. Thus, overall, the voyage was very beneficial to Charles Darwin. But at the same time, he also started suffering from seasickness, an illness that accompanied him throughout life.

End of the 5-year-long journey

The voyage ended in 1836. One year earlier, Henslow, Darwin’s botany professor and mentor, had published Darwin’s geological letters as a pamphlet. He then sent these pamphlets to select naturalists. So, by the time the 27-year-old Charles Darwin landed in Britain, he was already famous. But during those times, the British Empire encouraged natural history collections. So, British zoologists were overloaded with work. Hence, there was a risk that Darwin’s collections, too, would lie in a storage somewhere for ages. But, thanks to his father’s investments, Darwin was able to avoid that scenario by getting the right people to examine his collections.

Thus, even after he returned to England, Darwin’s collections proved useful. His samples and notes helped experts produce groundbreaking scientific discoveries. The fossils, which he had collected, helped paleontologists and geologists understand the processes that shaped the earth’s surface.

Pondering over the diversity of life

Before starting his voyage, Charles Darwin had thought that the journey will bring answers to his questions about evolution. But by the end of the trip, he had more questions than when he had begun the journey.

It all started when Charles Darwin unearthed fossils and found new animal and bird species in South America. When he unearthed these fossils, he noticed that the fossils were similar to the current inhabitants of that continent. Why were the current inhabitants of that continent more similar to the fossils and less similar to the current inhabitants of other continents? Where did the new species in the continent come from? Why was earth filled with so many varied kinds of organisms? Why were some organisms similar to other organisms but some other organisms so vastly different from others? If organisms were created to suit the environments they live in, why were the wild animals and plants in the jungles of South America, Africa, and Asia different to each other, even though the climate in these jungles were similar?

Evidence for evolution

After he returned from the voyage, Darwin gave the specimens he had collected to experts. They were able to tell him that many of his plant and animal specimens from Galapagos, the remote islands he visited, belonged to unique species found nowhere else. But even though they were unique, they resembled the species in South America, which was just 600 miles away. So, it appeared to Darwin as if some species from South America had migrated to the Galapagos and then changed there over time in isolation from the rest of the world.

While pondering over all these questions, Darwin started working on publishing the expert reports on his collections during the voyage as a multi-volume book called Zoology of the Voyage of HMS Beagle. He had obtained a grant of £1,000 for publishing his books. So, he strained himself to publish these books. As a result, he became sick. Therefore, heeding his doctor’s advice, he returned to Shrewsbury to stay with his relatives.

While staying in Shrewsbury, Darwin met his cousin Emma Wedgwood, who was nine months older than him. At that time, she was caring for their sick aunt. While staying at his relatives’ house, he started liking her. Back then, he might not have known that he would later marry her and have ten children with her. 

But before proposing to her, his health improved. So, he returned to London to continue working. But the strain of publishing his books while trying to make progress on transmutation caught up to him. He was bedridden for several days due to stomach pain, vomiting, trembling, and severe boils. Even though he got better over time, these symptoms reoccurred throughout his life at times of stress. The cause of his sickness was never found. Moreover, any attempts at curing his sickness did not produce significant results. But aside from his occasional health problems, Darwin’s work continued uninterrupted.

Forerunners to Darwin’s theory of evolution

Before Darwin’s time, two famous theories of transmutation existed.

Theory of Acquired Characteristics

The first theory was the theory of the inheritance of acquired characteristics. According to this theory, an organism can pass on the traits it acquired during its lifetime to its offspring. This theory is also called Lamarckism because it was proposed by the French zoologist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck. Lamarck believed that life forms continuously transform into more complex species. According to him, living beings never die out or become extinct; they only transform into other species. And they transform to adapt to changes in the environment. When the environment changes, organisms change their behavior. These behavioral changes affect their organs, which they then pass on to their offspring.

Giraffes which have elongated necks and lengthy front legs are a perfect example of this theory. When their environment changed, the first-generation of Giraffes started stretching up to reach the leaves in the tress. 

This behavior elongated their necks and legs a little. Their offspring inherited these slightly elongated necks and legs. This process continued over several generations until they became the Giraffes we see today.

On one hand, changes in the environment change the organs of organisms, making them better. On the other hand, if the change in environment makes an organ useless, it would gradually shrink over several generations until it finally disappears. Therefore, the organs which were once useful for an organism become vestigial organs for the new organism. Thus, according to Lamarck, life started out simple, from non-living things, and it continuously evolved into complex organisms, and with time, evolved into the more complex human form.

The loophole in the theory

But there was a big loophole in this theory. If evolution had really happened the way Lamarck put it, the world would only have complex organisms and no simple organisms because all the simple organisms would have transformed into complex organisms already. But in reality, simple organisms and complex organisms exist at the same time in this world.

During those days, people believed in Spontaneous generation, the hypothetical process by which living things develop from non-living things. Spontaneous generation helped them explain how maggots appeared on decaying meat, fleas appeared on dust, and how mice appeared on bread or wheat left in a corner. So, Lamarck used Spontaneous generation to explain the existence of simple and complex organisms at the same time despite simple organisms evolving into complex organisms. He proposed that while simple organisms evolve into complex organisms, more simple organisms are created from non-living things simultaneously.

Zoonomia

The other theory of transmutation that was famous at that time came from Charles Darwin’s grandfather, Erasmus Darwin. Erasmus had a similar view as Lamarck. In his book called ‘Zoonomia,’ he explains that all animals undergo never-ending transformations, which they then pass on to their offspring. The reasons for these transformations could be many – pain, pleasure, desire, aversion, irritation, or association. Moreover, if all animals undergo perpetual transformations, then it is possible that all warm-blooded animals evolved from a single ancestor.

Charles Darwin’s work on evolution

But even though these two theories supporting transmutation already existed, the conventional belief at that time was that living beings were created by God the way they were found then. They never evolved over time.

Charles Darwin was a religious man. But he was a man of science too. So, he believed that evolution happens. The only question was how it happens. So, motivated by these two theories of evolution, Charles Darwin wanted to find out how organisms transmuted into other organisms. Therefore, he met animal breeders, like farmers and pigeon breeders, numerous times to help him understand how they produced new breeds of animals.

Natural Selection

While Darwin’s quest to find how evolution happens was going on, in 1838, he read Thomas Malthus’ essay. In this essay, titled ‘The Principle of Population,’ Malthus argues that if the human population grows unchecked, it would eventually outstrip food production. If we assume that two parents have four children (which was normal at that time), and each of these four children has four children in turn, within four generations, there would be 96 human beings. 

Going according to Malthus’s argument, which certainly appeared realistic, each species had the potential to fill the earth in a few hundred generations. Yet, that doesn’t happen. The populations of different species remain stable every year.

While pondering over this paradox, Charles Darwin came to a realization. He understood that a large percentage of individuals in every species do not survive long enough to reproduce. It dawned on him that the key to evolution lies in the same factors which decide which individuals survive to reproduce and which do not. He noticed that these factors were similar to the farmers in selective breeding who artificially select which individuals to breed. So, he named this open-ended collection of factors, which choose which individuals survive to reproduce, natural selection.

As a result of natural selection, the favorable variations within a species are passed on to subsequent generations, while the unfavorable variations are destroyed. As a result, after several generations, a new species is created. Thus, all the species we see today would have evolved from some other species in the past. But Darwin did not think all the species were completely unrelated. Instead, he considered all life to be related to each other, evolving from a single genealogical tree, branching, and re-branching.

Charles Darwin’s drawing of evolution as a single tree – By Charles Darwin – Page 36 of Notebook B: [Transmutation of species (1837-1838)]. ‘commenced. . . July 1837’; from Darwin Online, Public Domain, Public Domain, Link

Dormant years

Even though the idea behind natural selection had formed in Darwin’s head as early as 1838, he did not publish it as a book until 1859. There were two reasons behind this. First of all, he did not want to be ostracized for mentioning that species evolved over time. His grandfather got discriminated against by society for doing the same. After all, religious people believed that God destroyed the world and created new species several times. So, telling them that species evolved over time and there weren’t multiple creation events in history would be like going against their beliefs. Secondly, he wanted to substantiate his claims with more evidence. So, for the next two decades, he wrote exclusively on geology and published expert reports on his HMS Beagle collections. It became his main occupation. Whenever he had spare time, he conducted experiments by selectively breeding plants and animals.

Therefore, even after two decades of formulating the theory of Natural selection, Darwin had only written a small abstract of the big book on Natural Selection he had planned to publish. But things took a turn on June 18th, 1858, when he read an essay. This essay, ‘On the Tendency of Varieties to Depart Indefinitely From the Original Type,’ was written by Alfred Russel Wallace. Wallace was an English naturalist who was collecting specimens in South East Asia at that time.

After reading the essay, Darwin was spellbound by the similarities between his and Wallace’s theories. But he did not want to create a competition. So, he decided to read out his theory as well as Wallace’s theory in the most active biological society in London. But Darwin was distraught at that time because his son had died due to scarlet fever a few days before. So, Darwin couldn’t go to the biological society. Moreover, Wallace couldn’t be reached either. Hence, in the absence of both Darwin and Wallace, their papers were readout. 

On the Origin of Species

After this incident, Charles Darwin realized that he had no time to lose. So, despite the pitiful state he was in, he started writing out a detailed abstract of his big book. After 13 months, the abstract, titled ‘On the Origin of Species,’ was complete. In this book, Darwin proposes that all species evolve over the course of time through the process of natural selection. He also states that all life forms evolved through a common lineage by branching and re-branching. Then, he goes on to substantiate his claims using the evidence he had collected during the HMS Beagle expedition.

Sexual Selection

But natural selection is not the only concept that Darwin focuses in his book. He also identifies one more method through which some individuals are selected for reproduction, and some are not. He names this new method Sexual selection.

Sexual selection is a method of natural selection in which members of one sex choose the members of the opposite sex to mate with. The members of the other sex, on the other hand, compete with each other to gain access to the opposite sex. Sexual selection explained why the males in some species display colorful body parts or compete with other males to attract females. The males who attract the females or defeat other males are selected by the females for breeding. Their offspring then inherit their characteristics and resemble them. Thus, able males can mate with more females and create more offspring. Hence, the next generation would have more individuals who possess the characteristics of males who succeed often, than those who succeed less often. For example, a hornless stag has a very less chance of leaving offspring when compared to other stags.

Human origins

In this book, Darwin did not explicitly state where humans originated from. He merely presented the idea that apes and human beings could have had a common ancestor. It was an idea that completely confronted the religious beliefs of people since religions believed that humans were unique and were created by God.

But despite the controversial ideas laid out in the book, the book was not so severely scrutinized. Darwin wasn’t ostracized either. Indeed, exceeding Darwin’s expectations, the book became hugely popular within a short time. It was translated into several languages and attracted people from all walks of life. So, in the subsequent years, Darwin published more editions of his book.

Within two decades after Darwin published the abstract, ‘On the Origin of Species,’ most scientists had come to accept that evolution happens. But they did not agree with Darwin that natural selection was the chief mechanism that caused it. So, Darwin spent much of his time commenting on reviews and articles, as well as responding to scientific arguments.

Other publications

The big book

Darwin had initially intended to write a big book detailing his findings and his theories about evolution. But instead, he hurriedly published ‘On the Origin of Species,’ an abstract of this big book, after sensing competition from another naturalist. So, once he published the abstract and the scientific community acknowledged his work on evolution, Darwin started writing the big book he had always wanted to write. In 1868, he published its first part, which he named ‘The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication.’ He also wanted to publish the second part of this book, but he couldn’t finish it in his entire lifetime.

Charles Darwin in 1868 – By Julia Margaret Cameron – Reprinted in Charles Darwin: His Life Told in an Autobiographical Chapter, and in a Selected Series of His Published Letters, edited by Francis Darwin. London: John Murray, Albemarle Street. 1892.Scanned by User:Davepape, Public Domain, Link

Other books

Even though Darwin couldn’t publish the second part of his book, he continued his experiments diligently. He also published several other books. Some of these books are noteworthy since they mentioned revolutionary ideas which we accept today as facts.

• The book ‘The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex,’ published in 1871, explores the idea that humans are animals too. It uses evidence from many sources and shows the continuity of attributes between animals and humans to prove the same. It also dives deeper into sexual selection.
• The book ‘The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals,’ published in 1872, discusses how human psychology had evolved. It then proposes that human psychology could have developed from animal behavior by listing the similarities between them.

Both these books became hugely popular. Unlike during his grandfather Erasmus’ time, Darwin’s revolutionary ideas did not repulse anyone. Indeed, people were able to read his books without being shocked by the idea that humans are animals too.

Honors

The Copley Medal

The scientific and religious communities may not have agreed with Darwin’s ideas. Yet, it would not be an overstatement to say that Darwin’s books changed the way people viewed the world and themselves. Therefore, to honor Darwin for his lifelong dedication and contribution to natural history, the Royal Society of London awarded him the Copley medal in 1864. It is Britain’s highest scientific honor.

Death

In the last twenty years of his life, Darwin suffered from repeated bouts of illness. In 1882, he was diagnosed with ‘Angina Pectoris,’ a chest pain caused by insufficient flow of blood to the heart. As a result, he died on April 19th the same year. The president of the Royal Society honored him by burying him in Westminster Abbey close to Isaac Newton.

Facts about Charles Darwin

1. Before Darwin’s time, people used the word transmutation, instead of evolution.
2. Darwin was not the first one to explore the idea of transmutation. Several others had already explored it before him. But Darwin was the first one to provide substantial evidence for it.
3. Lamarck’s idea of evolution was pretty similar to Darwin’s theory. Lamarck believed that all organisms change their behavior in response to the changes in their environment. This change in behavior modifies their organs, which they then pass on to their offspring. But Darwin believed that organisms with modified organs, which provide them an advantage to survive in nature, have a better chance of producing offspring and passing it on to the next generation. For example, Lamarck believed that all giraffes stretched their necks and front legs to reach food. This elongated their necks and front legs slightly, which they then passed on to their offspring. Darwin believed that giraffes with slightly elongated necks and front legs would have a better chance of procuring food and surviving to produce offspring, which would inherit their features.
4. The word evolution in the modern biological sense was first used by Sir Charles Lyell in 1832. Until then, people used the term to describe the physical movement of ships or troops. Charles Darwin used the word only once in the ‘The Origin of Species’ and that too in the closing paragraphs because, in the 18th century, people used the term to denote embryological development. So, he chose to use the words ‘descent with modification’ instead.

Proof for Darwin’s work on evolution

1. By the time of his death, Charles Darwin (and his colleagues) had successfully convinced many scientists that evolution was happening. But he couldn’t convince people that natural selection was the primary cause of evolution. Even though it was obvious to Darwin that evolution happens due to the variations that occur in some individuals among a population, he couldn’t explain to people why these variations occurred. The missing link in his argument was provided later by genetics. In the 1930s, geneticists found that the variations that Darwin mentioned happen due to the genetic changes in individuals. Thus, by the 1950s, Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection became universally accepted by biologists.
2. The fossils that paleontologists discovered in the 19th and 20th centuries prove that Darwin was correct in thinking that humans and apes had a common ancestor.

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1. The history of Christopher Columbus
2. Biography of Leonardo Da Vinci

Christopher Columbus was an Italian explorer credited with the discovery of the American continent. Even though he did not discover America, his voyage to the Americas laid the foundation for globalization. Some people consider him a great explorer, without whom America might not have become the superpower it is today. For others, he is a tyrannical ruler whose landing in the Caribbean Islands paved the way for the decimation of the native people of America. Who is correct? Was Columbus a hero or a villain? Read this biography to find out about the history of Christopher Columbus and his true nature.

Portrait of Christopher Columbus – By Sebastiano del Piombo – This file was donated to Wikimedia Commons as part of a project by the Metropolitan Museum of Art. See the Image and Data Resources Open Access Policy, Public Domain, Link

European exploration: The Age of Discovery

It is evident to everyone reading this blog post who Christopher Columbus was. He was the explorer whose voyages brought a string of changes to the Americas. So, Christopher Columbus holds a crucial place in the history of the USA and the other American nations. But before we find out who Christopher Columbus was and how he set foot in the Americas, we have to first look at why he set sail.

Genghis Khan and the Silk Route

In the 13th century, the Mongols, led by Genghis Khan and his successors, began conquering the world. Their conquests, spanning from Japan in the East to Europe in the West, claimed the lives of millions of people. However, once their conquests were over, peace settled in. 

During this period of peace, the Mongols re-established the silk route, which connected the eastern world with the western world. The silk route was also safe to travel because dacoits, burglars, and bandits were scared of being punished by the Mongols. So, they did not dare to attack the traders who traveled along the silk route. It was said that, during the Mongol times, a woman with a pot of gold can walk through the silk route safely. Moreover, the Mongols enhanced the silk road culturally by letting different religions coexist. So, several kingdoms from Europe, Africa, and Asia started trading through the silk route. The Europeans profited heavily by trading through the silk route. 

Map of the Silk Route – 120 AD to 1450 AD (Source)

Spices were one of the most expensive and in-demand products at that time. Europeans used spices to make food additives, preservatives, medicines, perfumes, cosmetic items, and religious rituals. So, spices became indispensable for medieval Europeans. Spices and many other goods mostly came from Asia and Africa through the silk route. Hence, many European nations depended on the silk route heavily for important goods and commodities.

Closure of the Silk Route

Around the middle of the 14th century, the Black Plague, the global pandemic of that time, hit Europe. It destroyed almost 30% – 60% of Europe’s population. Black Plague might have originated in China and traveled to Europe through the silk route.

A few years later, due to internal conflicts and partly due to the outbreak of the Black Plague, the Mongol Empire disintegrated. So, the silk route became rife with the disease as well as bandits and skirmishes. Thus, the silk route, which was once a secure passage to Asia, now became a dangerous route to take. So, travelers and traders who wanted to travel to Asia started taking longer, roundabout routes. 

In the 15th century, the Byzantine Empire fell to the Ottoman Empire. When the Ottoman Empire came to power, it took control of all the trade routes and closed the silk route completely for Christian traders. 

The need for finding alternative routes to Asia

European countries were in need of goods and commodities that the silk route had provided them until then. 

Many of the currencies of the medieval ages were silver and gold coins. Europe had used many of these coins to pay for goods from the silk route. Since they were mostly importing goods, gold and silver always flowed out of Europe into the hands of traders of the silk route. As a result, Europe started to run out of its reserves of gold and silver. 

Therefore, Europe was in dire need of goods the silk route had previously supplied as well as silver and gold. So, many countries started looking for alternative routes to reach Asia and Africa.

So, in the 15th century, the monarchs of many European countries started funding naval expeditions of exploration. These explorations had three main goals. Their first goal was to find new routes to reach Asia. Their second goal was to find reserves of gold and silver. Finally, they wanted to spread Christianity to new unexplored regions of the world. Thus, the centuries of exploration began. 

Birth

Domenico Colombo was born in 1418. His family had been weaving clothes for two generations. So, his father took him as an apprentice and started teaching him about weaving when he was eleven years old. Thus, when he grew up, he became a wool weaver in Genoa, the capital of Liguria, in Northern Italy. But besides being a wool weaver, he was also a tavern keeper, cheesemaker, and wine dealer. Yet, even though he did multiple businesses, he wasn’t a rich man. 

In 1455, he married Susanna Fontanarossa, a wealthy catholic girl. They had 5 children. The eldest of them, Christophoro Colombo (Christopher Columbus, in English), was born in 1451, sometime between August 25th and 31st. Even though the exact location of Christopher’s birth is unknown, he might have been born somewhere in or near Genoa, a seaport in Italy.

Early life

Very little is known about Columbus’ early life because it is not well-documented. Whatever we know of his parents and early life comes from his own testament of 1498 and the archived documents in Genoa and Savona. 

Since Columbus was not born into a wealthy family, he did not get any formal education. So, only after becoming an adult, he taught himself to read and write. 

When Columbus was a kid, he helped his father in his cheese stand. But since Genoa was a port city, it is not surprising that he grew up to become a navigator. As a kid, he might have seen ships arriving at the port and leaving it and fell in love with sailing. So, when he was just ten years old, he went to sea after finding work on a Portuguese merchant ship. For the next fifteen years, he remained at sea. While sailing, he also began an apprenticeship to become a business agent for the most influential families of Genoa. Meanwhile, his family moved to Savona, another port city in Liguria, because his father took over a tavern.

In 1476, while he was sailing along the Portuguese coast, pirates attacked his ship. So, his ship sank. But Columbus managed to survive by holding on to a wooden plank that washed ashore. He eventually reached Portugal’s port city Lisbon. He met his brother Bartolomeo there. Together they continued to work as traders for the influential families of Genoa. 

Lisbon

Columbus was a very ambitious man. So, despite having no formal education, he taught himself to read and write. He then learned languages like Latin, Castilian, and Portuguese and read books on history, geography, and astronomy. He also joined the Prince Henry’s School of Navigation in Portugal, where he learned mathematics and navigation. Since his brother was working in the map-making business, he also learned cartography, the study of making and using maps.

In 1479, he married Filipa Perestrelo e Moniz, a woman from a wealthy Portuguese family. Her father was the governor of a Portuguese island called Porto Santo. One year after their marriage, Filipa gave birth to their son Diego. From 1477 to 1485, Columbus based himself in Lisbon and started trading. So, he made voyages to the coasts of West Africa and to present-day Ghana. When he returned from one of these voyages in 1484, he found that his wife had died. Their marriage had lasted for just six short years. After his wife’s death, Columbus took his son and left for Castile. 

In 1487, he found a mistress for him in Castille. She was a 20-year-old-orphan and her name was Beatriz Enríquez de Arana. Together, they had a son called Fernando Columbus, who was born in 1488.

Spain and Portugal

The Iberian Peninsula

In the medieval ages, several kingdoms stood in the Iberian peninsula, where present-day Spain and Portugal are. Two of these kingdoms – the Kingdom of Castile and the Kingdom of Aragon – are worth mentioning. Like the other kingdoms of those times, their aim was to expand their kingdoms. So, they started merging with their neighbors through marriage and war. After these mergers, these kingdoms came to be known as Crowns since several kingdoms were under their control.

By the 15th century, a big part of the Iberian peninsula was controlled by the Crown of Castile and the Crown of Aragon. In 1469, after centuries of rivalry, these two Crowns united through the marriage of Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile. But these two Crowns did not merge officially until 1516, when Charles V, the grandson of Ferdinand II and Isabella I, formally merged them to create the Kingdom of Spain.

The desire to reach Asia

In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, European countries tried to gain control of seaports and islands near North Africa. Once they controlled these seaports, they monopolized trade by levying taxes for ships passing through or landing at these ports. Portugal was one of the first European countries to do this.

For centuries, slave and gold trades between West Africa and the European countries to the north of the Mediterranean Sea were controlled by the Muslim rulers of Africa. Prince Henry, the Navigator, of Portugal wanted to bypass these rulers and trade directly with West Africa by sea. So, he wanted to see how far the control of these Muslim rulers of Africa stretched. Moreover, he wanted to find the Indies – which is how the Europeans called the lands of India, China, and Japan, from where the spices came. He also wanted to find new lands to spread Christianity. So, in the early 15th century, he funded sea expeditions along the West African coast.

Until the 15th century, Europeans had only navigated up to the port of Cape Chaunar in southern Morocco. They believed that if they traveled beyond this point, they might be killed by sea monsters or fall down the edge of the world.

In the early 15th century, the Portuguese invented a new type of sailing ship called the caravel. It could travel faster than other ships. In addition to that, the sailors could also easily maneuver it.

In the fifteenth century, navigating using compasses became more advanced and widespread. So, Europeans did not have to just rely on the stars to steer their ships anymore.

Therefore, all these technological advancements, combined with the sponsors from Prince Henry of Portugal, inspired many people to abandon their fears and go to sea.

Portuguese Discoveries 1415 AD to 1543 AD – By Descobrimentos_e_explorações_portugueses.png: *Portuguese_discoveries_and_explorations.png: *Portuguese_Empire_map.jpg: Toklederivative work: Uxbona (talk) – Descobrimentos_e_explorações_portugueses.png, CC BY-SA 3.0, Link

God, Gold, and Glory

During Columbus’ time, people were inspired by God, Gold, and Glory, to take up exploration. That is, they wanted to convert the barbarians in unknown lands to Christianity, wanted to take the riches from these unknown lands, and wanted to become famous by finding sea routes to these unknown lands. Columbus wasn’t any different. He wanted all of these too. So, he decided to find a sea route to the Indies. 

Columbus wanted to get rich by finding a faster route to the spice islands of the Indies. During Columbus’ time, spices were so valuable. So, procuring them through a quicker route would make the spice trade more profitable.

Columbus’ proposal

European explorers sailing along the west coast of Africa hadn’t even reached the southern tip of Africa yet. They still had to sail around the southern tip of Africa into the Indian ocean to reach Asia. But Europeans at that time didn’t know that. They did not have a precise map of the world. They did not even know where Asia was. 

Most people at that time knew that the earth was spherical. So, they knew that it might also be possible to reach the Indies by sailing west into the Atlantic ocean instead of sailing east along the African coast. However, most people believed that sailing west to reach the Indies would be a much farther route than sailing East. But Columbus believed that the world was much smaller than people thought it was. So, he believed that sailing West would be faster than sailing east along the African coast. 

In 1481, Columbus received a map of the Atlantic Ocean from the Florentine astronomer Paolo dal Pozzo Toscanelli. Like Columbus, Toscanelli also believed that a Western sea route to Asia was possible. He had met the king of Portugal in 1470 to explain his plans but was rejected. In the map that Toscanelli sent Columbus, the entire continent of America was left out because, back then, nobody knew that such a continent existed. This map solidified Columbus’ belief that a western sea route to Asia would be quicker.

Toscanelli’s map of the Atlantic Ocean (shown superimposed on a modern map) – By Bartholomew, J. G. – A literary and historical atlas of America, by Bartholomew, J. G. [1], Link

Proposing his plans to the French king

Therefore, in 1484, Columbus met the king of Portugal, John II, to explain his plans. After listening to his proposal, the king asked his experts for their opinion. The king’s experts figured out correctly (we know that now) that Columbus had wrongly estimated the distance to the Indies. If one sailed West, the actual distance to the Indies should actually be three times more than Columbus’ estimate. Heeding the experts’ opinion, the king refused to sponsor Columbus’ voyage.

Proposing his plans to the Spanish crown

So, in 1486, Christopher Columbus met Queen Isabella I of Castile. At that time, Isabella was ruling most of the Iberian peninsula along with her husband, King Ferdinand II of Aragon. Columbus proposed his plan to reach Asia by sailing West. When Isabella I consulted her experts regarding Columbus’ plans, they too, like the experts of King John II, were of the belief that Columbus had severely underestimated the distance to the Indies. They believed that sponsoring Columbus would be a big mistake.

In 1478, Castile fought a naval battle against Portugal for the domination of trade with Guinea, a West African country. After winning this battle, Portugal obtained the sovereignty of several West African territories. With this victory, Portugal also started monopolizing the sea routes along the West African coast. So, to bypass Portugal’s monopoly over the West African sea routes, Queen Isabella wanted to keep Columbus’ proposal of sailing West to reach the Indies as a backup option. Therefore, she didn’t want him to take his ideas elsewhere. But she couldn’t fund him immediately because, at that time, Castile was fighting the Granada War. 

Castile postpones funding for Columbus

The Emirate of Granada was a Muslim nation in the southern part of the Iberian peninsula. For 250 years, these Muslims had been paying tribute to the Crown of Castile to prevent it from attacking them. They even sent troops to aid Castile in their conquests. However, after Castile and Aragon united in 1469, Castile set its sight on Granada. So, in 1482, it waged the Granada War, a series of military campaigns against the Emirate Granada.

Since Castile was fighting the Granada war when Columbus proposed his idea, Isabella couldn’t fund his voyage. At the same time, she didn’t want him to take his ideas elsewhere. So, she sent Columbus, the annual salary of a sailor for the next six years. In 1489, Isabella also ordered the cities under her control to provide Columbus with free accommodation and food.

Christopher Columbus’ First Voyage

After the Emirate of Granada was conquered in 1492, king Ferdinand and Queen Isabella promised to fund Columbus’ voyages. They promised to make him an admiral of the ocean if he succeeded. They also promised to make him the Viceroy and Governor of all the areas he would discover for Spain. He could keep 10% of the gold, silver, precious stones, spices, and other objects he could acquire from the new territory. He was also promised revenues and profits from the new ventures that would be established in these new lands.

So, in 1492, after making such a lucrative deal with the Spanish monarchy, Columbus set sail westward. He took three ships with him. These ships were named Santa Maria, Pinta, and Nina. After restocking his ships in the Canary Islands near Africa, ​Columbus continued his voyage.

A map of Christopher Columbus’s voyages – By Viajes_de_colon.svg: Phirosiberia derivative work: Phirosiberia (talk) – Viajes_de_colon.svg, CC BY-SA 3.0, Link

After a five-week voyage, they reached the Bahamas, the group of islands located a few hundred kilometers east of Florida, USA. Thus, on October 12th, 1492, Columbus had become the first European to set foot in the Americas. 

During his first voyage, Columbus met many native people. Columbus called the native, indigenous people Indians because he believed that he had reached the Indies. He saw that these people were sturdy and well-built. They could repeat what he told them, indicating that they could learn languages easily. Yet, they were not technologically advanced. They were either naked or wore minimal dresses, covering only their genitals. Moreover, they used only primitive weapons. So, he came to the conclusion that they could be easily conquered and enslaved. He wrote his findings in a journal he maintained.

The Carbis and the Arawaks

The early Spanish explorers classified the native people in the Caribbean into two types – The Caribs and The Arawaks. The Caribs were hostile cannibals who attacked the Spanish when they tried to get near them. On the other hand, the Arawaks were friendly people who were willing to help the Spanish. Some of the Arawaks wore golden ornaments. Looking at their gold instruments, Columbus believed that the island would have more gold. So, he kidnapped some of them and forced them to show the source of their gold. 

After spending some time in the Bahamas, Columbus set sail once again and reached Cuba. Then he went to Hispaniola, an island in the Caribbean. There, Santa Maria, one of his ships got damaged. So, to make Columbus happy, the Arawaks gave him some gold. When they noticed that Columbus became happy at the sight of gold, they gave him more gold. Columbus noticed that most Arawaks had nothing to do all day and were simply idling away their time. They wore golden ornaments and were willing to give them away to make him happy. 

La Navidad, the first European settlement in the Americas

Columbus was astonished at the Arawaks, who had no care in the world, had no desire for worldly possessions, and were willing to help others so gladly. So, with the permission of a local chief of Arawaks, Columbus established a settlement in Hispaniola. Columbus and his men constructed a small temporary fort in this settlement using the materials from Santa Maria. This settlement, called La Navidad, became the first European colony in the Americas. The men who sailed onboard the Santa Maria stayed back in La Navidad to collect gold. Meanwhile, Columbus and the remaining men sailed back to Spain. They took the gold the native people had given them and kidnapped some native people to be shown to the Spanish monarchs. 

While returning to Spain, Columbus wrote a letter detailing his discovery and requesting to sponsor a second expedition. He wrote that he had found islands that contained riches, and probably, China was very close to these islands. He described the Arawaks and the Caribs and mentioned the possibility of bringing Christianity and civilizing these barbarians. After he reached Lisbon, Portugal, Columbus sent the letter to the Spanish monarchs.

The year was 1493. The news of Columbus’ discovery spread through Europe like wildfire. Vasco da Gama would reach India only five years later, in 1498. So, Europeans at that time believed that Columbus had actually discovered the Indies, which is how Asia was called then.

Second voyage

Columbus’ discoveries were able to convince the Spanish monarchs to sponsor his expeditions for a second time. So, Columbus set sail on his second voyage in September 1943. This time, he took 17 ships and 1200 men with him, including farmers, soldiers, and priests. 

After Columbus left for Spain, the Spanish people in the settlement he created started attacking the native people searching for gold and women. So, some native people thought that Spanish settlers were beasts from the underworld who came to eat their flesh. So, they attacked La Navidad, the settlement that Columbus had established in Hispaniola, and killed the 39 people there. Therefore, when he reached La Navidad, Columbus found the settlement empty. So, he established a second colony.

The search for gold begins

Columbus and the Spanish settlers started building forts in Hispaniola. Then, they started demanding the Arawaks to hand over the gold they had. The Arawaks, who didn’t value material possessions, gave them all the gold they had. But even after the Arawaks gave the Spanish all the gold they had, Columbus was not satisfied. 

Columbus believed that Hispaniola had reserves of gold and the locals knew where they were located. So, Columbus issued a decree forcing all Arawaks aged fourteen years or more to bring a certain amount of gold dust every three months. Wherever gold was unavailable, each person had to give 25 pounds of cotton instead. When anyone failed to collect enough gold or cotton, Columbus punished them by cutting off their limbs or killing them. Each native tribal chief was made responsible for the collection of gold from his tribe members.

Torturing native people to find gold

Unfortunately, Hispaniola did not have such vast amounts of gold reserves. The gold that the Arawaks had given the Spanish settlers initially was the result of collecting gold for many years. So, even after searching continually for several hours every day, the Arawaks could not meet their tribute requirements. Many Arawaks were also tortured, beaten, raped, and killed when they failed to disclose the location of imagined gold reserves. Therefore, many of them tried to escape from the Spanish by fleeing into the mountains. But those who fled were chased down using hunting dogs that were trained to kill. In short, the lives of Arawaks were turned upside down after the arrival of Columbus.

Christopher Columbus went to the Americas looking for wealth and fame. But there was one other reason why he went there. He truly believed that Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand were messengers of God. He believed that God assigned him the mission of helping them find the kingdom of wealth and civilize the ignorant masses. To him, Arawaks were the uncivilized, ignorant masses whom he must civilize. And the way he would civilize them was by enslaving them, give them dresses, and converting them to Christianity. So, he took 500 Arawaks as slaves to Spain while returning from his second voyage. Almost 40% of them died during the voyage.

Third voyage

Christopher Columbus began his third voyage in 1498 with six ships. This time, he sailed further and reached Venezuela in South America. He recognized that this was not a small island, and this should be a bigger country. He sailed around for some time, reaching the islands near South America, and returned to Hispaniola.

Columbus’ rule of tyranny as Hispaniola’s governor

When Columbus returned to Hispaniola, he found his colonists and the natives revolting against his rule. Columbus hanged the Spanish colonists who opposed him. He killed the natives who opposed him by cutting off their body parts. Then, he paraded their bodies through the streets to discourage further rebellion. 

Columbus also awarded severe punishments for meager crimes. Once, he cut off the ears and nose of a man and sold him into slavery for stealing corn. He also paraded women naked through the streets and sold them into slavery. So, unable to take his rule anymore, the natives rebelled against him. So, in 1499, Columbus ended the system of collecting tribute through tribal chiefs and implemented the system of Encomienda.

According to this system, instead of controlling the entire Hispaniola as its governor, Columbus split the land and the native people among individual Spanish settlers. The natives hoped that, by doing so, their exploitation would cease to exist. However, their new masters, the individual Spanish settlers, exploited them too. They cut off their limbs as punishment and sold them off as slaves.

Decimation of the native population

So, thousands of native Arawaks killed themselves instead of serving under their masters. Many of them burned their own crops hoping that the Spanish settlers would die of starvation even though it meant that they themselves would die too. Many more died due to overwork and diseases.

Therefore the population of the native people reduced tremendously within a century. For example, there were at least a hundred thousand Arawaks in 1492. But by 1542, just fifty years after the arrival of Columbus, only 200 of them were left. The same was the case for other native people as well.

The Europeans had brought new diseases like smallpox, influenza, and malaria. The Europeans, who had already seen these diseases, had developed better immunity to them. However, these diseases were new for the natives in the new world. Moreover, they were forced to work on a massive scale in gold and silver mines as slaves. Under these working conditions, the diseases spread quickly and violently. So, many natives died due to diseases too. Even if they developed immunity for one disease, they were killed by another disease. Sometimes, the outbreak of these diseases came centuries apart. So, the native population, which fell tremendously due to the Spanish arrival, was never able to recover.

Columbus’ rule of tyranny comes to an end

Thus, Columbus’ reign as a governor greatly affected America and its native people. Even his own Spanish followers were not happy with him. By 1499, the Spanish monarchs came to know of Columbus’ tyrannic rule, including his method of executing without trial. So, in 1500, they stripped him of his position, arrested him, and brought him back to Spain. But he was released after spending just six weeks in prison. Even his wealth was restored.

Fourth and final voyage

Christopher Columbus was somehow able to convince the Spanish monarchs to fund his voyage once more. However, he wouldn’t be the governor anymore. So, in 1502, he set sail with the new governor. This time, he reached Central America. However, his fourth voyage was not as much eventful as his other voyages because the new governor detested Columbus. So, two years later, he returned to Spain.

Death

Christopher Columbus died on May 20th, 1506, aged 54, probably due to severe Reactive Arthritis, a pain in the joints caused due to an infection in some other part of the body. The infection might have been caused due to food poisoning during his voyage. Columbus died believing that he had found a shorter route to Asia.

Facts about Christopher Columbus

1. Christopher Columbus’ voyages led to the exchange of trade, ideas, culture, flora, and fauna between Europe and the Americas. They led to globalization and became a turning point in history. But they also started the colonization of the Americas and exploitation of the native people there. They also started the slave trade between Europe and the Americas.
2. Christopher Columbus landed in the Americas on October 12th, 1492. Therefore, many countries in the North and South America celebrate October 12th to remind themselves of their common heritage. The USA celebrates the day as Columbus Day.
3. Christopher Columbus wasn’t the first European to set foot in the Americas. The Viking explorer Leif Erikson had already sailed to Canada in the 11th century.

What to read next?

Did this biography of Christopher Columbus help you understand the history of Christopher Columbus and how he set foot on the Americas? Then you might like the following biographies too:

1. Alexander Graham Bell
2. Henry Ford
3. Marie Curie

Walt Disney was an American animator, voice actor, film producer, and entrepreneur. He introduced several innovations in the cartoon industry. The cartoon characters he created – Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Goofy, the Three Little Pigs, etc. became internationally famous. But he did not limit his imagination to just creating cartoons. He also designed and built the first Disneyland theme park, which he intended to be the happiest place on earth. Read this biography of Walt Disney to find out how he became an animator and built an unconquerable empire.

Ancestors

Walt Disney’s forefathers were Normans. They were the inhabitants of Normandy, a region in Northern France.

In the October of 1066, the Norman-French army led by the Duke of Normandy, William, attacked the English army led by the Anglo-Saxon king Harold Godwinson. This battle, known as the Battle of Hastings, began the Norman conquest of England. After winning the battle, William, the Duke of Normandy, became the king of England. During his reign, he defended England from foreign invasions and built several castles to strengthen England’s defense. William died in the year 1087. Since then, England has been ruled by his successors. Even Queen Elizabeth II, the current queen of England, is his direct descendant. Thus, the battle of Hastings changed the history of England completely. Hence, due to his victory in such an important battle, William came to be known as William the Conqueror.

Origin of the family name Disney

Isigny Sur Mer is a town in Normandy that is renowned for its dairy farms. Like many people, Hughes Suhard and his son Robert joined William in his invasion of England. After he won the battle of Hastings, William acknowledged the help of Hughes and Robert and made them the lords of Isigny Sur Mer. However, Hughes and Robert chose to stay back in England and settled there. So they came to be known by their village name, i.e., Robert d’Isigny (Robert from Isigny). However, as several years went by, the name d’Isigny became Disney in English. This is how Walt Disney’s family name originated. 

In the seventeenth century, a part of the Disney family moved from England to Ireland. Arundel Elias Disney, Walt Disney’s great grandfather, was born into this family two hundred years later. In 1834, Arundel and his brother Robert took their families and traveled to the USA. Even though their original plan was to stay in the USA, Arundel’s family moved to Canada and settled there. There, Arundel set up a saw- and flour mill, which remained a local favorite for several years. In 1878, Arundel’s son, Kepple, moved to California with his two sons in the hopes of finding gold. However, he ended up buying 200 acres of land instead. One of his sons who moved to the USA with him was Elias Charles Disney. 

Elias initially worked on his father’s farm. Then, in 1884, he left the farm to find another job. Throughout his life, he tried various jobs, like carpentry, farming, and building, and even tried to become a businessman. But he found little success in his ventures. In 1888, he married Flora Call, who was the daughter of his father’s neighbor. They had five children. After their marriage, they moved to Chicago. In a few years, Elias became an active building contractor who built and sold houses. In 1900, he built the Saint Paul Congregational Church. Soon, he became an active member and trustee of this church while his wife became its treasurer. He also became a close friend of the church’s preacher Rev. Walter Robinson Parr. Due to the love and respect for the preacher, Elias named his fourth son, Walter Elias Disney, after him. 

Early life

Walter Elias Disney was born on December 5th, 1901, in Chicago. He was the fourth son of his parents Elias Charles Disney and Flora Call. His father was working as a building contractor when Walt was born. But when he was four years old, his father’s brother bought a farm in Marceline, Missouri. So, his father, who hoped to make profits by farming, moved his family to the city of Marceline. There, Walt started his schooling.

By the time he started school, Walt had developed a liking for drawing. When he was a kid, a neighbor paid Walt to draw his horse. This motivated him to improve his skills further. So, he started practicing by copying the cartoons in the newspapers his father bought. He also started painting with crayons and watercolors. 

Growing up on his father’s farm, Walt fell in love with the animals there. They were his friends and companions. Walt knew each of these animals by name. He even created stories about their adventures. A little piglet, which was named Skinny, even followed little Walt everywhere like a puppy. 

But in a few years, Disney farm started failing, and Walt’s father became seriously ill. So, Walt’s father sold the farm. Little Walt wept inconsolably when his beloved farm animals were auctioned off. 

After selling the farm, his family moved to Kansas City. There, using the money from the sale of the farm, his father purchased a newspaper delivery route to deliver newspapers. He had 700 customers who bought morning newspapers and 600 customers who bought evening and Sunday newspapers. So, he compelled his sons to help him deliver newspapers. Therefore, Walt and his brother Roy woke up at 04:30 am every day and delivered newspapers before going to school. After coming back from school, they delivered newspapers once again. The schedule was exhausting, and Walt often fell asleep in class. He even got low grades at school. Yet, he stuck to this schedule for almost six years.

Love for Drawing

But despite the hectic schedule and low school grades, Walt’s love for drawing did not diminish. So, he started attending art courses in the Kansas City Art Institute and School of Design on Saturdays. He also started taking a correspondence course to study cartooning.

By 1917, his father sold the newspaper route and started working in the management of a company. So, he moved his family to Chicago. So, Walt moved to Chicago and started studying at the McKinley High school there. Walt hoped to become a newspaper cartoonist one day. So, he started taking photographs and drawing for the school paper. Meanwhile, he continued to study cartooning on the side.

Early career

Thus, Walt was working hard on realizing his dream of becoming a cartoonist and was making good progress. However, his progress was interrupted when the USA entered the first world war in 1917. So, Walt put his dream of becoming a cartoonist on hold and decided to join the army. However, he was rejected because he wasn’t old enough. So, he forged his date of birth and joined the American Red Cross as an ambulance driver. The Red Cross shipped him to France in 1918. He was commissioned there for a year. During this one year, despite working as an ambulance driver, Walt kept improving his drawing skills while publishing his drawings in an army newspaper. 

First attempts at animation

In 1919, Walt returned to the USA and moved to Kansas City. He wanted to become a newspaper artist. So, his brother helped him get a job as an apprentice artist at the Pesmen-Rubin art studio. There, he met a young artist called Ub Iwerks, who would later play an important role in Walt Disney’s success.

Just a few months after Walt joined the art studio started running out of money. So, both Walt and Iwerks lost their jobs. Then, Walt and Iwerks started their own company called Iwerks-Disney Commercial Artists. After it too failed to make any profits, Walt started working at the Kansas City Film Ad Company. Walt’s role in this company was to make commercials using cutout animation.

Cutout animation is one of the oldest methods of animation. In cutout animation, characters are drawn, and their body parts (head, neck, chest, hip, arms, and legs) are cut apart. Then, these cut parts are manually repositioned in different angles every time to simulate different scenes. Thus, just by drawing a single character and cutting it apart, a cutout animation can create different poses like sitting, walking, running, etc. 

After producing commercials for the company using cutout animation, Walt became interested in animation. So, he wanted to learn more about animation. Therefore, he started reading more about animation using a borrowed book. Then, he took a camera and started experimenting with hand-drawn cel animation at home. Contrary to cutout animation, where a single character is cut out and used for different scenes, in hand-drawn cel animation, each scene is completely drawn from scratch. Thus, hand-drawn cel animation is tedious and time-consuming. 

Walt thought that hand-drawn cel animation could be more promising than cutout animation. So, he tried to persuade the Kansas City Film Ad Company to switch from cutout animation to hand-drawn cel animation. But his company did not want to make the switch. So, he quit the company and started his own animation business using hand-drawn cel animation. His first employee was Fred Harman, a co-worker from his previous company. Iwerks, his colleague from Pesmen-Rubin art studio, also joined him.

Laugh-O-Gram Films

Together, they started making hand-drawn animations. Then, they made a deal with Frank Newman. Frank Newman owned a chain of three theaters, and he produced newsreels for them every week. Newsreels were short documentary films, which were screened in theaters between the 1910s and the 1970s. Akin to the News we have today, they were a source of news stories, current affairs, and information to moviegoers of that era. In most theaters, Newsreels were usually exhibited before a film. But there were also theaters dedicated to newsreels, which ran newsreels throughout the day. 

Walt made a deal with Frank Newman to include short animation videos in his weekly newsreels. Walt tactfully named them ‘Newman Laugh-O-Grams.’ These animations, mostly under a minute long and combined advertising with humor, were an instant hit. Soon, commissions started rolling in for the Laugh-O-grams. So, Walt opened a film studio called the Laugh-O-Gram studio and started hiring more animators to create more Laugh-O-Grams. 

Inspired by the success of his Laugh-O-Grams, and the success of Paul Terry’s animated version of Aesop’s Fables, the 19-year-old Walt Disney tried to do something more ambitious. He decided to create animated fairy tales. So, with the help of Rudy Ising, who later co-founded MGM and Warner Brothers, and other cartoonists, Walt started creating his first animated fairy tale. It took them six months to get it ready. Walt and his team made six of these animated fairy tales, which were seven minutes long. However, before any of these fairy tales could be released to the public, Disney’s studio went bankrupt.

Walt Disney’s First Failure

Walt Disney gave the distribution rights for these Laugh-O-Gram fairy tales to a company called Pictorial Clubs of Tennessee. The company promised to pay $11,100 for these six videos. But it never paid the money. So, by 1922, many of Walt’s workers, working overtime and without pay, quit his company. Desperate to keep the company alive, Walt came up with a brilliant idea. Until then, films had been made by putting a cartoon character in a live-action scene. Walt inverted the idea and put a little girl, the four-year-old Virginia Davis, in a cartoon scene among cartoon figures. 

This cartoon was based on Alice’s adventures in Wonderland. So, Walt called the cartoon Alice in Cartoonland. Even though it was a brilliant and novel idea, it was not enough to save the company. Within a few weeks after making the twelve and a half minute movie, Alex in Cartoonland, the company went bankrupt. So, after his first failure, Walt moved to Hollywood, to help his brother recover from tuberculosis. He decided to work as a cinematographer there, since Hollywood was the center of the growing film industry in the USA. At that time, Walt was 21 years old. 

After moving to Hollywood, Walt heard that a film distributor was looking to buy the rights of a cartoon series. So, he signed a contract with her for creating several Alice in Cartoonland episodes at $1,500 per episode. Now, Walt understood the potential of the Alice cartoons he made. So, Walt and his brother Roy created the Disney Brothers Studio, which was later renamed to Walt Disney Studio. Then, they signed a contract with the little girl Virginia Davis, who was acting as Alice in the series, for $100/month and convinced her family to move to Hollywood. After that, they persuaded Iwerks to join them too. So, with Roy as business manager, Walt and Iwerks started creating the cartoons. 

Walt Disney Studios, Paris branch

Family life

In early 1925, Walt hired an artist called Lillian Bounds and started dating her. Soon, they liked each other and got married in July of that year. Walt was 24 years old at that time, and Lillian was 26. They had two daughters.

Introducing Mickey Mouse

From 1923 to 1927, Walt Disney and his studio mostly created Alice cartoons. Alice cartoons featured a real-life little girl who acted among cartoon characters.

By 1927, Walt Disney became tired of creating Alice cartoons and its mixed format. He decided to create a cartoon with only cartoon characters instead. By that time, the film distributor with whom Walt worked had married a film producer called Charles Mintz, who took over her cartoon distribution business. So, Walt started dealing with Mintz instead.

In 1927, Mintz asked Walt to create a cartoon to rival ‘Felix the Cat,’ the popular cartoon of that time. Walt responded by creating ‘Oswald, the Lucky Rabbit.’ Mintz distributed the new cartoon through Universal Pictures. 

Walt Disney was continuously looking to improve his cartoons. So, after creating 27 episodes of ‘Oswald, the Lucky Rabbit,’ Walt’s production costs began to increase. Therefore, he traveled with his wife Lillian to New York to meet Mintz and renegotiate the cost for each episode. However, instead of increasing the cost for each episode, Mintz reduced it even further. He also owned the copyright for ‘Oswald, the Lucky Rabbit.’ Moreover, without Walt’s knowledge, Mintz had bought off many of Walt’s employees. So, he pressured Walt to continue working at the reduced cost. If Walt declined, Mintz threatened to form his own team using Walt’s employees to continue creating the cartoon. Shocked and saddened by the betrayal, Walt refused the offer and returned to Hollywood.

On his way back, Disney and his wife boarded a train for the ride back. In his depressed state, Walt sketched a character called Mortimer Mouse. His wife liked the sketch, but not the name. So, she suggested the name Mickey Mouse. Walt liked the name. So, he immediately copyrighted Mickey Mouse. Iwerks, who had decided to stay with Walt instead of going with Mintz, refined the sketch. Together, they started creating Mickey Mouse cartoons. However, they couldn’t find a distributor for their new cartoon.

After the introduction of Sound and Color

Steamboat Willie

In 1928, sound was introduced in films. Walt Disney Studio wanted to try the new technology for their cartoons. So, Walt approached Pat Powers, a former executive of Universal pictures requesting him to let them use his recording system. After Pat gave them permission to use his recording system, Walt discarded the first two Mickey Mouse episodes created without sound. Then, he made a third Mickey Mouse cartoon called ‘Steamboat Willie.’ Disney gave the voice of Mickey Mouse for this cartoon, and Powers gave sound effects and music. Powers also distributed the cartoon through his company Celebrity Pictures.

Steamboat Willie, the first Mickey Mouse cartoon with soundtracks, became an instant hit. But the real skill of Walt Disney was to give his cartoon characters real-life, moral characteristics. Therefore, Steamboat Willie captured the attention and imagination of the viewers easily and so, became very popular. Steamboat Willie got rave reviews. Everyone who watched it loved Mickey Mouse. This increased the reputation of Walt Disney Studio.

Silly Symphonies

Motivated by the success of Steamboat Willie, Walt created ‘Silly Symphonies’ in 1929. Silly Symphonies is a series of cartoons that involved characters other than Mickey Mouse, like Donald Duck, Goofy, Pluto, etc.

Both the Mickey Mouse cartoons and the Silly Symphonies cartoons were extremely successful. However, the costs started to increase as Walt strived to continuously improve them. So, Walt asked Iwerks to sketch only the characters in the cartoons and let the less expensive assistants paint the background. He also met Pat Powers for an increase in payments for his cartoons. Pat Powers, however, responded by canceling the partnership with Walt and employing Iwerks to work for him. So, Walt Disney was heartbroken and felt betrayed once again. Since Pat Powers was no more a distributor for Walt Disney Studios, Walt signed up Columbia Pictures for the distribution. Under their distribution, Walt’s cartoons were distributed internationally and became famous globally. 

In 1931, a new technique for introducing color in films, called Technicolor, became famous. Until then, most cartoons were filmed in Black and White. So, when the new technique came out, Walt made a deal for exclusive rights of the technique for two years. The new Silly Symphony cartoon that came out that year in color won the academy awards in the best short subject category in 1932. The following year, Walt Disney Studio released the next cartoon in the Silly Symphony series, The Little Pigs. It won an academy award in the best short subject category too.

Feature-length cartoons

Riding high on the success of his Mickey Mouse and Silly Symphony cartoon series, Walt Disney embarked on his most ambitious project ever. He decided to create feature-length cartoons. Everyone at that time, including his own wife and his brother Roy, was against Walt’s idea. Until then, cartoons were mostly under ten minutes long. So, nobody believed that people would sit and watch a feature-length cartoon for an hour. 

Walt Disney was a man who was always eager to experiment. Moreover, he believed that feature-length cartoons would be more profitable than the shorts he was creating until then. So, despite the stark opposition, Walt set about creating the first feature-length cartoon, ‘Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.’ 

Walt Disney introducing his seven dwarfs – By Unknown author – Screenshot from a public domain movie’s trailer., Public Domain, Link

Walt Disney invested heavily in the movie. He paid his animators to take courses in a professional art institute. He even brought animals into the studio so that his animators could look at them and learn to create realistic movements of animals in animation. Finally, after four years and $1.5 million, the movie was ready in 1937. $1.5 million was a massive amount at that time. Moreover, due to the Great Depression, people were reluctant to spend any money. So, people dubbed ‘Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs’ Disney’s folly or stupidity. Yet, outwitting everyone’s expectations, the movie became a big box-office hit. Despite the Great Depression and people’s reluctance to spend money, the movie amassed $416 million. 

The success of ‘Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs’ did not just change the future of Walt Disney studio. It gave rise to the golden age of animation. It charmed millions of viewers and created a new entertainment field. 

Labor Strikes

After the success of his first feature-length cartoon, Walt produced more feature-length cartoons in the following years. However, due to the start of the second world war, people became less inclined to visit theaters. So, Walt’s new cartoons, Pinocchio, Fantasia, Dumbo, and Bambi, were not as successful as their predecessor. Moreover, due to the success of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Walt had built a big studio employing about 1000 workers. So, Walt Disney Studio ran into debt.

To recover the company from debt, Walt offered shares of his company. It was enough to save his company. However, it was not the last of the problems that Walt would face.

Around 1940, workers of movie studios started forming unions, demanding higher wages and better working conditions. Walt, however, believed that this was the work of communists who had infiltrated his company. So, he was against these unions. However, this led to heated meetings and numerous strikes. Finally, tired of fighting anymore, Walt gave in, and hence, Walt Disney Studio became unionized.

World War II

While the onset of World War II created huge problems for Walt Disney, it also brought new opportunities. As Walt Disney Studio was a leading cartoon maker, the US government asked for Walt’s help to create training films for the millions of men it was sending overseas to fight. Walt obliged and created almost 68 hours of training material using his popular cartoon characters.

Major films and television productions

After the second world war ended, Walt Disney resumed creating feature-length cartoons. Walt’s first feature-length animation after eight years, Cinderella that came in 1950, was a big hit. Made with a budget of $2.9 million, it earned $263 million. After its success, Walt Disney released more feature-length animations like Alice in Wonderland, and Peter Pan, in the following years. 

In the 1950s, Walt also started focusing on producing live-action movies like ‘The Treasure Island.’ So, he began focusing less on animation. 

Disneyland

Walt Disney had always wanted to build a theme park. But he got serious about it after World War 2. He would take his daughters out every Saturday when they were little. He used to take them to a park. Walt would sit on a bench and eat peanuts while his daughters rode the merry-go-round there. While sitting there alone and looking at his daughters, Walt decided to build a theme park where both parents and their children can have fun.

A picture of Walt Disney in 1954 – By NASA – NASA GRIN: GPN-2000-000060, Public Domain, Link

In the 1950s, he started getting serious about it and visiting other amusement parks, carnivals and fairs to gather ideas. Walt Disney had an elaborate plan for the new theme park, which he called Disneyland. 

According to Walt’s plan, Disneyland would have an entrance gate to the main street. This main street would resemble the city Marceline, where the farm Walt grew up was located. When one takes a walk through the main street, one would reach Cinderella’s castle. Then, the path would branch off to four different lands. These four lands are – Adventure Land, which resembles the remote jungles of Africa, South America, & Asia; Frontier Land, which resembles the nineteenth-century America that was home to cowboys, saloons, etc.; Fantasy Land, which contains a castle and characters from Disney cartoons; Tomorrow Land, which has attractions that portray the views from the future. 

Walt Disney wanted to make the Theme Park clean and innovative. He also wanted to make it the happiest place on earth by bringing the characters from his cartoons alive. 

But he did not want the shareholders of the Walt Disney Studio to complain if the venture failed. So, he set up a separate funding body for the Theme park. Besides using his personal wealth, he obtained a part of the funding from the Bank of America. American Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), a television network, provided an investment of $500,000 in return for Walt Disney Studio doing a weekly television series. These weekly television shows eventually became famous. It also offered a loan of $4.5 million. 

Thus, by obtaining funds from several sources, Walt finished the construction of Disneyland in one year. It had cost him $17 million. The ABC telecast the opening of Disneyland. The first day after opening was catastrophic since rides broke down, food stalls ran out of food, and a gas leak led to the temporary closing of some areas. Yet, despite all these initial problems, the guests loved Disneyland. By the end of one year, almost 3.6 million visitors had visited Disneyland. Today, Disneyland has branches all over the world. 

Walt Disney World

Following the success of Disneyland, Walt Disney planned to build another theme park that would be five times bigger. However, before the project could be completed, Walt Disney died. It would only be completed only five years after his death. 

Death

In 1966, Walt was diagnosed with lung cancer. So, one of his lungs was removed. After several chemotherapy sessions, Walt collapsed in his home. So, he was admitted to a hospital, where he died on December 15th, 1966. 

Interesting Facts about Walt Disney

1. Walt Disney had won more academy awards than anyone else. He has won 22 academy awards till now. 

2. Most of the Mickey mouse cartoons were drawn by his cartoonists. 

3. Walt’s favorite character was Goofy.

4. Walt loved trains. So, he built a lot of trains in his theme parks. 

5. Walt gave his housekeeper shares of his company every year for Christmas. By the time she died, these shares had added up to $9 million. 

6. When he built Disneyland, Walt built a secret apartment there for his own use.

What to read next?

We hope that you liked this biography of Walt Disney. If you liked this biography of Walt Disney, read the following biographies too:

1. Biography of Charlie Chaplin
2. Biography of Sylvester Stallone

Leonardo da Vinci was an Italian Renaissance painter. The Mona Lisa and The Last Supper, which Leonardo da Vinci painted, are two of the most reproduced and influential paintings of all time. But he wasn’t born with a silver spoon in his mouth. In his biography of Leonardo Da Vinci, Walter Isaacson portrays him as illegitimate, gay, vegetarian, left-handed, easily distracted, and at times heretical. But he eventually became a polymath whose interest spread over varied fields of discipline, like science, sculpting, architecture, and engineering. His foresight and knowledge in all these fields amaze historians even today. Certainly, he was a great thinker who was ahead of his times. Read this biography of Leonardo da Vinci and find out how he became a legendary painter, sculptor, inventor, and architect.

What is the Renaissance?

Due to the rise in religious art, the medieval ages killed fine arts like Roman and Greek art. In the fourteenth century, some rich Italian families decided to end Christianity’s domination in arts. They decided to create art that was based on the worth and dignity of the individual. This gave rise to the Renaissance, which is the revival of fine arts of the Iron age.

If you want to read more about how art has evolved over the ages and find out more about the Renaissance in detail, read our blog post on the history of art.

Head of the Madonna

Parents

Vinci

32km West of Florence lies Montalbano. On the slope of this hill lies a town called Vinci. In the twelfth century, a castle was built at the top of the hill. As it looked like a ship, it soon got the name ‘ship castle‘. Today, the castle has become a Leonardo Da Vinci museum. At the time of Leonardo Da Vinci’s birth, it would have served as the center of the city.

Leonardo’s grandfather, Antonio Da Vinci, lived on a modest income. He was a farmer who was by no means rich. But he paid his taxes diligently to Florence’s tax authorities. According to Florence’s tax register, which is still preserved in the archives of Florence and Pisa, Antonio’s income was below average. Only 40% of the people of Florence had less income than him. 

The inequality in Florence at that time was extremely high. The top 20% of the population had incomes nearly 25 times higher than the bottom 20%. In Florence and its surrounding towns like Vinci, the poor people worked as agricultural laborers in nearby farms owned by wealthier residents. The only assets they had were small pieces of land which they inherited from their fathers. Even though these lands were uncultivable individually due to their small sizes, these agricultural laborers sold these farms whenever they needed money. Thus, people often fought amongst themselves over the issue of inheritance and distribution of land.

Who was Leonardo da Vinci’s father

Moreover, the rich bought off lands from the poor whenever they had a chance. Whenever someone bought or sold a piece of land, or whenever one sibling won the case of inheritance of property against another, one person always got richer. That person was the lawyer who represented the person.

Antonio’s son, Piero di Antonio da Vinci, worked as a lawyer and a notary in Vinci. As a lawyer, he was highly successful. So, many people came to him to solve land disputes. He was also the notary for many religious institutions and legal advisory for many wealthy families in Vinci and Florence. Thus, in contrast to his father, who had only a modest income, Piero ended up becoming extremely rich. He also continually improved his status by purchasing new assets in Vinci. At times, he even purchased land from the poor agricultural laborers. 

Who was Leonardo da Vinci’s mother?

This Piero was Leonardo Da Vinci’s father. While Leonardo’s father is well-known in history, his mother’s identity is unclear because Leonardo was an illegitimate child. When Leonardo da Vinci was born, his grandfather recorded his birth. In this record, he mentions his mother’s name simply as Caterina. He doesn’t mention her full name. So, there are many theories as to who his mother was. According to one of these theories, Caterina was either a slave from the Middle East or even from China. According to another theory, she was a poor local girl.

However, research done by Martin Kemp and Giuseppe Pallanti sheds more light on who his mother was. They have published their findings in the book called ‘Mona Lisa, The People, and the Painting‘ in 2017. 

According to them, the brothers called Lippo di Nanni and Giusto di Nanni lived in Mattoni, not far away from Vinci. For his marriage, Lippo took dowry from his wife’s family. However, Lippo died early, leaving his wife and son behind. So, after his death, his wife demanded that the dowry she paid her husband to be returned to her. In those days, it was normal for the wife to demand her dowry back if the husband died. However, this led to disputes between her and her son. Eventually, the court gave most of Lippo’s property to his wife. So, her son Meo led a pathetic life and died early, leaving a 15-year-old daughter and a two-year-old son. This 15-year-old girl, Caterina di Meo Lippi, would later become Leonardo’s mother.

Birth

After her son’s death, Lippo’s wife took in her grandchildren to live with them. However, she also, died soon after, leaving the children alone and uncared for. But the children at least had a house to live in. It is during this time that the 25-year-old, rich, and spoiled Piero di Antonio da Vinci met the 15-year-old, poor, and lonely Caterina di Meo Lippi. As one could imagine, it might not have been difficult to woo the lonely girl. Thus, they might have gotten together. As a result, Caterina gave birth to Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci a year later, on April 15th, 1452.

Early life

After being born, Leonardo spent his first years with his mother. But Leonardo was an illegitimate child. His father and mother weren’t married at the time of his birth. Indeed, his father never married his mother, probably because he was rich and she was poor. Instead, he just gave her the dowry so that she could give it to another suitor and get married.

In those days, it was not uncommon for wealthy men to have children with their servants or other poor women in the village. These children would then grow up in their father’s house with their half-siblings who were the rightful heirs. So, even though Leonardo was an illegitimate son, his Paternal grandfather took the 5-year-old Leonardo to his father’s estate. After that, Leonardo lived with his father, stepmothers, uncle, and grandparents. His uncle Francesco, a nature lover, had a profound impact on Leonardo during his early years. 

When Leonardo came to live with his father, Piero, Piero had married a 16-year-old girl. This girl, Piero’s first wife, loved the little Leonardo like her own son. However, she died a few years later, without bearing any children. Thereafter, Piero married once again, and his second wife, too, died without bearing him any children. After that, he married twice. Both these third and fourth wives gave birth to plenty of children. In total, Piero had 13 children, including Leonardo. However, Leonardo was his illegitimate son. So, he couldn’t inherit any of Piero’s wealth.

Becoming an artist

Formal Education

Leonardo had no formal schooling. Since he was born illegitimate, his father did not expect him to take up his notary business. Moreover, expert teachers would not accept him as their student. So, he only learned to read and write and obtained basic Mathematical knowledge at home. But eventually, this became an advantage for Leonardo in the long run. After all, unrestricted by the dogmatic authority of teachers, Leonardo Da Vinci developed the ability to think creatively. 

Growing up, Leonardo might not have been quite knowledgeable due to the lack of formal schooling. Yet, his skill at artistry was evident even from an early age. When Leonardo was a kid, there was a peasant who was good at fishing and catching birds. Once, this peasant, who wanted to have a shield, made one himself from a fig tree. Then, he gave it to Piero and requested him to get it painted for him. Since this peasant’s skills often came in handy for Piero, Piero decided to help the peasant. So, Piero gave the shield to his son Leonardo.

First recorded painting

Leonardo, who saw that the shield was very uneven and badly made, first straightened it by fire and gave it to a lathe worker to make it smooth. Then, he decided to paint something scary on it. So, inspired by Greek mythology, he painted a picture of Medusa, with smoke coming out of her nostrils, fire coming out of her eyes, and venom coming from her open throat. Then, he kept the shield in a place where there was enough sunlight and called his father Piero to look at it. The picture was so realistic that upon his first sight, Piero was startled. Then he took a step back and, after an instant, realized that it was only a painting. 

Looking at Piero’s reaction, Leonardo told him, “This work serves the end for which it was made; take it, then, and carry it away, since this is the effect that it was meant to produce.” Piero immediately realized that his son’s painting was a miracle. But he did not want to give the painting to the peasant. So, he sold the painting to some merchants in Florence. After that, he bought another shield. Then, he had someone paint a heart with an arrow through it, and gave it to the peasant. 

Leonardo’s painting of the Medusa revealed to Piero his son’s innate talent in painting. So, he got him an apprenticeship from Andrea del Verrocchio, a famous painter, and sculptor in Florence.

The Medici family

There were several powerful families in Florence during the Renaissance. One of these families was the Medici family. In 1397, Giovanni di Bicci de Medici moved to Florence and established the Medici bank. Within a span of few decades, the Medici bank became the largest and most respected bank in Europe. Soon the bank became the most trusted bank of the Popes. Moreover, after their success in banking, the family also entered other businesses and dominated them. So, the family became the most powerful family in Florence and Tuscany (A region in Italy. Florence is the capital of Tuscany). The family held this position for the next three centuries. 

The Medicis played a major role in the Renaissance’s growth in Italy because they were great patrons of art and humanism (human virtues like courage, beauty). Artists, both big and small, benefited from their generosity.

Today, people respect specialists who specialize in just one field. So, someone with a post-graduate degree or doctorate earns a lot of respect. However, in the renaissance era, men needed to have various talents to earn people’s respect. This is why a person who is skilled in multiple fields is called a renaissance man even today. So, most of the renaissance era artists were knowledgeable in various fields. Verrocchio was not an exception to this custom.

Andrea del Verrocchio

Verrocchio underwent training to become a goldsmith. But he was also good at painting, sculpting, designing monuments, machinery, and creating theatrical costumes. So, he caught the interest of the Medicis and soon become their most trusted artist. And as Medicis’ most trusted artist, he got a lot of painting and sculpting projects. So, Verrocchio was almost always busy. Verrocchio himself focussed primarily on sculpting. When it came to painting, he often painted only a part of the painting. Then, he directed his apprentices on how to paint the rest of it.

So, several budding artists wanted to become his apprentice. After all, they could learn state-of-the-art techniques from Verrocchio while attracting the attention of generous patrons. Some of these apprentices later became famous artists of the renaissance era. 

Leonardo becomes an apprentice

Leonardo Da Vinci was 14 years old when he became an apprentice to Verrocchio. For the next ten years, Leonardo learned from him meticulously.

Initially, as an apprentice, Leonardo was more of a studio boy or a servant, doing daily chores like cleaning. Then after three years, his apprenticeship began. Initially, he would have learned to prepare pigments, the substance used to make paint colors, and canvas, the strong, woven cloth stretched over a wooden frame on which artists paint. Later, he would have learned to study the paintings of Verrocchio and others. Finally, he would have learned to paint and would have painted along with Verrocchio in his paintings. 

But drawing and painting are not the only things that Leonardo learned from Verrocchio. He also learned sculpting, carpentry, leather arts, chemistry, woodworking, and metalworking. Most paintings and sculptures in the renaissance era depicted the glory of the human body. To depict the beauty of the human body, it is essential to understand it in the first place. So, Verrocchio also insisted that his students develop a deep understanding of anatomy and physiology.

Moreover, Leonardo also met other apprentices in Verrocchio’s workshop. Some of them, like Domenico Ghirlandaio, Lorenzo di Credi, Filippino Lippi, would later become famous artists in their own right. Leonardo could have even met Sandro Botticelli there. Thus, Leonardo spent his time in Verrocchio’s workshop learning from Verrocchio and observing other great minds at work. Hence, the apprenticeship changed Leonardo’s life completely. It implanted in young Leonardo, an illegitimate child whom teachers wouldn’t teach, a desire to gain expertise in several fields.

Leonardo becomes a master artist

In Leonardo’s times, cities had guilds. A guild is, in simple words, an association of like-minded people. A guild for artists is a guild for artists, sculptors, art dealers, and art lovers. It settled disputes between artists as well as conflicts between an artist and his clients. Moreover, an artist needed guild membership, as a master, to sell paintings on his own or accept apprentices. Thus, guilds controlled the livelihood of artists. 

The Guild of Saint Luke was a guild for artists in Florence. In 1472, after three years of apprenticeship, Leonardo qualified for this guild’s membership as a master artist. Leonardo was 20 years old at that time. So, now that Leonardo could sell paintings on his own, his father set up a workshop for him. But even after having his own workshop, Leonardo worked with Verrocchio for another five years. 

One of the paintings which Verrocchio and Leonardo painted together was the ‘Baptism of Christ.’ Historians believe that Verrocchio completed this painting in 1475. In this painting, Leonardo painted an angel. According to Giorgio Vasari, the sixteenth-century painter, engineer, architect, and writer who wrote the first biographies of Leonardo and other renaissance painters, Leonardo’s angel was so superior to the rest of the painting, that Verrocchio swore never to paint again. This, however, could have been an over-exaggerated story. Maybe, realizing Leonardo’s talent in painting, Verrocchio decided to let him take care of his workshop’s paintings. He would have then focused on sculpting and carving, which he liked and excelled in, more than painting.

Was Leonardo da Vinci homosexual?

In 1476, while he was still working at Verrocchio’s studio, Leonardo da Vinci and three other young men were arrested. According to the court records, they were accused of having sex with a well-known male prostitute. However, despite the crime being punishable by exile or death, the court dropped the charges due to lack of evidence. Probably because one of the other men belonged to the Medici family, nobody turned up to testify against the accused. Thus, luckily, Leonardo was saved. However, this incident might have scarred him deeply because his whereabouts went entirely undocumented for the next two years.

This incident has led many historians to believe that Leonardo was homosexual. However, although Leonardo never married nor had any children, his homosexuality has not been proven. Even though Leonardo Da Vinci was a famous artist, and his professional life has been very well documented, it is amazing how we know very little of his private life. 

Two years after the drama surrounding his sexuality, Leonardo da Vinci left Verrocchio’s workshop in 1478. His first job was to paint an artwork behind the altar of the chapel in the Townhall of Florence. Three years later, he also got another commission from another church in Florence to paint a portrait of the Virgin Mary and child Jesus.

During those days, humanist philosophers, who valued human virtues like bravery and heroism over religion, often gathered at Medici’s house. Leonardo also visited Medici’s house along with a friend who was also a philosopher. So, he got to know the Medicis well.

Milan

In 1482, the Medicis planned to send a gift to the Duke of Milan, Italy, as a gesture of peace. So, they commissioned Leonardo to create a piece of art. Even though Leonardo was getting painting projects in Florence, art wasn’t the only thing that interested him. By then, his interest had expanded to engineering as well.

At that time, Milan held a strategic position in Southwestern Europe. So, it spent a lot of money on enhancing its military. Hence, even though Florence was more artistically centered than Milan, Milan provided an opportunity for young Leonardo to pursue his varied interests. So, along with the piece of art, Leonardo also sent a letter to the Duke of Milan. In this letter, he explained that he could work as an artist as well as a military engineer creating machines to enhance the city’s defense and offense. Then he went to Milan. After receiving the piece of art and his letter, the Duke sent him an offer to work as his court’s resident artist. So, leaving both the paintings he was commissioned in Florence unfinished, he traveled to Milan. 

For the next 17 years, Leonardo stayed in Milan. During this time, he designed several military machines, including a wild chariot with blades attached to its wheel and a primitive war tank. The Duke of Milan also commissioned Leonardo to paint several paintings. It is also during this time that Leonardo started accepting apprentices and assistants to work under him.

Studying anatomy and science

Leonardo believed that mankind’s biggest gift was the eyes. For him, accumulating knowledge and collecting facts through observation was of utmost importance. He also believed that to paint a human body perfectly, one should understand the human body first. Therefore, to improve his paintings, Leonard began studying anatomy by dissecting animal and human bodies in the 1480s. He then drew diagrams and illustrations of the different organs and systems in the body. By doing so, Leonardo became the first artist to cut open the human body and draw what he saw inside. 

But Leonardo’s interest did not stop with human anatomy. He also conducted investigations in botany, zoology, geology, physics, hydraulics, and aeronautics, in addition to anatomy. He then sketched the observations from his experiments on sheets of paper. Leonardo da Vinci even kept some of these papers tucked inside his belt so that he could sketch whenever he wanted to. Once he finished the sketch, he arranged it into one of the four broad categories – painting, anatomy, architecture, and mechanics. Some of these sketches, which are preserved even today, help us understand Leonardo’s yearning to know everything.

Close up of Old anatomy drawings by Leonardo Da Vinci

Close up of Old anatomy drawings by Leonardo Da Vinci

Close up of Old anatomy drawings by Leonardo Da Vinci

Close up of Old anatomy drawings by Leonardo Da Vinci

Leonardo Da Vinci’s engineering drawing from 1503 on textured background.

15th Century Leonardo da Vinci engineering drawing

The Vitruvian man

Vitruvius

Marcus Vitruvius Pollio was a Roman architect, engineer, and author who lived in the first century B.C. He believed that, for buildings to be beautiful, they must have perfect proportions and symmetry, like those found in nature. In those days, people thought that nature’s most perfect creation was the human body. So, Vitruvius argued that a building should have proportions similar to the human body. 

For Vitruvius, the temple was the ultimate building since it was a place of worship and was close to god. The base of the temple is a square, but the base of the dome on top is a circle. Thus, when seen from the sky, the temple would look like a square within a circle. This square would have the same center as the circle, and its vertices would touch the circle. So, he theorizes that a human body should have proportions similar to a temple and obey a similar concept. In the third book of his ‘Ten Books on Architecture’, he lists the different proportions of the human body, like the ratio between the height of the head to the height of the human body, etc, and goes on to explain his theory. 

Vitruvius’ challenge

To understand his theory, let’s assume that a man stands with his legs and hands outstretched. His hands are outstretched in such a way that a single line can be traced from the fingertips of one hand to another. Then, a circle can be drawn touching the edges of his feet and the fingertips of both his hands. This circle would have its center at the navel. Now, it should also be possible to draw a square whose one side touches the head, the opposite side touches the feet, and the two remaining sides touch the fingertips of each hand. In other words, the man’s height should be equal to the length of his outstretched hands.  

During Leonardo’s time, Vitruvius’ book, the earliest surviving Roman record on architecture, came out in print. So, sketching a human body satisfying Vitruvius’s criteria became a challenge that attracted artists. Many of them drew sketches assuming that the circle and the square had the same center – the navel. However, all these sketches appeared wrong because they either sacrificed the human body’s proportions or the geometry of the square and the circle so that the human body can touch both the square and the circle, and the vertices of the square can touch the circle.

Leonardo’s solution

The challenge got the attention of Leonardo da Vinci, too. However, unlike other artists, he did not assume that the circle and the square had the same center, the navel. Instead, he used the navel as the center for the circle and the groin as the center for the square. Leonardo knew he had to draw a square with the man’s head, two hands, and legs touching one side each. He also knew he had to draw a circle with the man’s legs and two hands touching the circle. So, he decided to achieve it by moving the square downwards and separating the centers of the two shapes.

Then, he started sketching the human body by using the proportions he had obtained by meticulously studying Vitruvius’ book and by measuring the bodies of male models in Milan. Finally, he perfected his sketch by drawing two distinct and mutually exclusive poses and finished it around 1490. Due to these two distinct poses, the man is both inside the circle and the square at the same time. Thus, Leonardo created a sketch that satisfied Vitruvius’ criteria, even if the square did not fit inside the circle. This sketch came to be known as the Vitruvian man.

Photo of the Vitruvian Man by Leonardo Da Vinci from 1492 on textured background.

Incorporating the element of movement

The two distinct poses that Leonardo drew serve another vital purpose besides satisfying Vitruvius’ criteria. For centuries, several artists have used different techniques to create a sense of movement in their paintings. They used contrasting colors, strong brushwork, painted moving or flowing clothes, etc. After all, it makes the painting look more real. In this sketch, Leonardo created an illusion of movement by painting two different poses. If you look at his sketch carefully, you will make out 16 different poses, making it look as if the man is actually moving. 

The sketch is also accompanied by notes on the proportions of the human body. These proportions, like, the length of the outspread arms is equal to the height of a man; the length of the hand is one-tenth of the height of a man; the foot is one-seventh of the height of a man, help us understand how much work Leonardo put into this sketch. To date, this drawing and its accompanying notes serve as one of the accurate descriptions of the human body.

The Last Supper

In 1495, the Duke commissioned Leonardo to paint ‘The Last Supper’ on the dining hall of Santa Maria Delle Grazie, a church in Milan. It took Leonardo three years to complete the painting. But when Leonardo da Vinci completed it, it caught everyone’s attention. The painting depicts the scene where Jesus and his twelve disciples are having dinner. Jesus informs his disciples that one of them would betray him soon. The resulting confusion is brilliantly captured by the painting. 

While the other disciples are in an argument over Jesus’ statement, Judas, the disciple who betrays Jesus later, can be seen reaching out for the same piece of bread that Jesus is reaching out for, at the same time, and tipping over a jar containing salt. He also clutches a cloth bag. This is a reference to the silver coins he got for betraying Jesus or his role as Jesus’ treasurer. Peter, the other disciple who betrays Jesus later by denying to know Jesus after Jesus is arrested, can be seen holding a knife. Thus, Leonardo uses the body language and facial expressions of the twelve disciples to bring the scene back to life.

Besides paintings, the Duke also commissioned to design an equestrian monument to honor his father. An equestrian monument is the statue of a rider on a horse. This bronze statue would have been a splendid work of art. However, Leonardo never completed it because the Duke never provided the bronze needed for it.

The Last Supper – By Leonardo da Vinci – High resolution scan by http://www.haltadefinizione.com/ in collaboration with the Italian ministry of culture. Scan details, Public Domain, Link

Florence

Thus, as he had hoped, Milan provided Leonardo ample opportunities to pursue his interest in varied fields. If he had a choice, Leonardo might have stayed there for his entire lifetime. However, in 1500, French king Louis XII’s forces attacked Milan, defeated Duke’s forces, and overthrew him. So, along with his assistants, Leonardo fled to Venice. In Venice, the governing council appointed him as a military engineer. They sought his help to fight a Turkish invasion. So, he devised methods to improve their naval defense and returned to Florence the same year.

Mona Lisa

After staying in Florence for some time, Leonardo went to Cesena, a city located almost a hundred kilometers northeast of Florence. There, he worked for Cesare Borgia, a politician and son of the Pope at that time. As Cesare’s military architect and engineer, Leonardo created two maps for him. These two maps, the map of a town and the map of a valley helped Cesare get a better overlay of his land to make better strategic decisions. 

One year later, Leonardo moved to Florence and joined the Guild of Saint Luke once again. It is during this time that he began painting the Mona Lisa.

The Mona Lisa

Who was the Mona Lisa?

Throughout history, there have been many theories as to who the Mona Lisa was. Some people believed that it is a portrait of Lisa del Giocondo, the wife of Francesco del Giocondo. Some others believed that the mysterious smile of Mona Lisa indicates that she is Leonardo’s mother, Catarina. Meanwhile, others believed that Mona Lisa is a self-portrait of Leonardo or one of his male apprentices dressed as a female. In 2005, historians found a 500-year-old note from an acquaintance of Leonardo. In this, the acquaintance states that Leonardo was indeed working on a portrait of Lisa del Giocondo, thus confirming the first theory. 

Why did Leonardo da Vinci paint the Mona Lisa?

During Leonardo’s days, men married around the age of 25. On the other hand, women married early around the age of 15, often immediately after reaching puberty. The foremost responsibility of a wife was to produce heirs for her husband. In turn, it was customary for the husband to give the wife a gift whenever she gives birth. Rich husbands often gifted their wives expensive jewelry when they gave birth. In a similar fashion, Francesco probably wanted to give his wife Lisa a gift celebrating the birth of their second son. So, he commissioned Leonardo to paint a picture of his wife. 

After Leonardo returned to Florence in 1503, he did not have any source of income. So, he agreed to paint the portrait of Lisa. However, soon he got the commission to paint a battle scene of Anghiari. 

The battle of Anghiari was a battle that took place in 1440 between the troops of Milan and some other Italian states led by Florence. Florence won this battle and took control of central Italy. 

Why was the Mona Lisa never completed?

In 1503, Florence commissioned Leonardo da Vinci to paint the Battle of Anghiari for its newly rebuilt council hall. It was a costly project and Leonardo had to complete in two years. So, he started painting the Battle of Anghiari and delayed the Mona Lisa. While Leonardo painted the Battle of Anghiari, Leonardo’s rival at that time, Michelangelo, was commissioned for a similar painting of another battle on the opposite wall. This is the only time the two legends and rivals worked on the same project. However, neither of them finished their paintings. 

In 1506, the French governor of Milan summoned Leonardo. So, he went to Milan, leaving the Battle of Anghiari unfinished. He took the unfinished Mona Lisa with him and continued painting it in Milan.

In 1512, a union of Venetian, Swiss, and Spanish forces attacked Milan and defeated the French troops. So, in 1513, Leonardo da Vinci left Milan for Vatican city to visit Giovanni, a member of the Medici family, who had recently become the Pope. He stayed in the Vatican city until 1516.

In 1516, King Francis I, who recaptured Milan, invited Leonardo da Vinci to stay with him. So, Leonardo went to France and stayed near the king’s residence. The king soon came to like Leonardo due to his intelligence and started spending time with him. When he lived in France, Leonardo created plans for the king to create a settlement surrounding a castle. He also made the Mechanical Lion. This automatic machine could walk a few steps on its own and open its chest to display a cluster of lilies for the king. At the same time, Leonardo also continued to paint the Mona Lisa and add different layers to it.

Death

During his years in France, Leonardo likely suffered a stroke that left his right hand paralyzed. This is probably why he couldn’t finish the Mona Lisa. He probably kept on improving it and adding more layers to it.

Leonardo da Vinci probably suffered a second stroke in 1519 at the age of 67 that killed him.

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452-1519) on engraving from the 1800s.

Facts about Leonardo da Vinci

Leonardo da Vinci’s paintings

1. The Mona Lisa is one of the first portraits to display a person sitting in front of an imaginary landscape. Some historians believe that Lisa’s loose attire in the painting indicates that she was pregnant when Leonardo started painting the portrait.
2. The Mona Lisa is the most iconic painting in the world. But Leonardo da Vinci never finished it. After his death, the French king Francis I acquired it. After many years, it was moved to the Versailles Palace in France. Then, Nepolean Bonaparte took it and kept it in his bedroom. Currently, it is in the Louvre Museum in Paris. 
3. The Mona Lisa is an oil painting on a wood panel.
4. In 2017, Salvator Mundi, an oil painting of Jesus by Leonardo da Vinci, was sold for $450 million. Thus, it became the costliest painting in the world.

Leonardo da Vinci’s sculptures

1. When it came to art, Leonardo devoted most of his time to painting than sculpting. But he was also a great sculptor. He planned meticulously and created preparatory sketches for a few sculptures. However, none of them were ever completed due to varied reasons. So, none of Leonardo da Vinci’s sculptures survive today.

Leonardo da Vinci’s notes

1. Unlike other famous artists, Leonardo da Vinci did not paint a lot of paintings. Less than 20 paintings are attributed to him. However, he sketched a lot and kept meticulous notes on different subjects on the papers he carried with him. After his death, these papers were bound into notebooks. The total number of pages in all his notebooks combined is more than 7000.
2. Leonardo was ambidextrous, i.e., he was skilled at using both hands for writing. However, he was initially left-handed. Whenever a left-hander writes on a sheet of paper, starting from left to right, ink from the already written text smears on his hand. So, probably to avoid that, Leonardo wrote backward, from right to left, using mirror writing. The text he wrote could only be read by looking at it through a mirror. Only when he intended other people to read the text he wrote did he write normally. That is the reason why he used mirror writing for the notes in the Vitruvian man. He probably sketched it for himself.
3. Leonardo’s notebooks contain anatomical sketches, scientific designs, weapon designs, technical diagrams, and shopping lists. His most famous scientific designs were the designs of several flying machines that looked like a bird with flapping wings and another that looked like a helicopter, a design for a parachute, and a design for a giant crossbow.

Other facts

1. Leonardo was an illegitimate son. So, he wasn’t able to inherit any of his father’s wealth, which was a lot. However, he used his father’s contacts to become a renowned artist.
2. Leonardo Da Vinci was a procrastinator. While it made him a polymath, it also left several of his works unfinished.

“There are three classes of people: those who see. Those who see when they are shown. Those who do not see.”- Leonardo Da Vinci (Source)

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Nelson Mandela was a South African human rights and political activist. Through peaceful protests and armed resistance, he fought against racial segregation that plagued the country for 50 years. As a result of his actions, he spent almost three decades in prison. But after his release, he won the Nobel prize and became the president of South Africa. Thereafter, he fought hard to end the racial discrimination in South Africa and improve the living standards of its citizens. In this biography of Nelson Mandela, find out how he transformed South Africa.

History of South Africa

To understand who Nelson Mandela was and what he did for South Africa, we must first understand South Africa’s history and what led to the hostility between different races there.

Until the seventeenth century, various ethnic and linguistic groups lived in South Africa. These people were primarily hunters, gatherers, fishermen, shepherds, and farmers. For centuries they lived in small groups of 20 to 80 families which were related by blood or marriage. Over time, these small groups joined together to form bigger communities.

The arrival of the Dutch

In 1652, ships of the Dutch East India Company landed at the Cape of Good Hope. The Cape of Good Hope is a southwestern port in South Africa. Their goal was to set up a resupply station for their ships traveling from Holland to their colonies in Asia. So, they had no interest in colonizing or establishing European settlements in South Africa. All they wanted was to acquire goods for their ships. But the local ethnic people of South Africa refused to sell the goods under the company’s conditions. So, the Dutch got annoyed and started a battle against the local groups. 

After winning the battle, the Dutch drove the local people who lived near the port into the interior of South Africa. They gave the farmlands they seized from the locals to the former employees of the company. Thus, these former employees of the Dutch East India Company became the first European farmers and settlers in South Africa. These people called themselves Boers. They were mostly Dutch, but there were some French and Germans too. To work in these farms, the company imported slaves from other parts of Africa. 

The Boers

The Dutch East India company forbade the Boers from selling their supplies to anyone other than the company. This affected the profits of the Boers. So, even though the Dutch East India Company made the Boers settle in South Africa, they eventually got fed up with the company. Therefore, they tried to escape its monopoly by expanding into South Africa. But the company forbade the Boers from expanding. It also ended the emigration of Europeans into South Africa. To cope with the demand for agricultural labor, the company started importing more slaves instead. So, the Boers started hating not only the company but also their black slaves. Thus the enmity between the blacks and whites began.

The arrival of the British

At the beginning of the nineteenth century, Britain became concerned that Nepolean might capture the Cape of Good Hope. If that happened, it would lose control of its sea route to South Asia. So, it captured the Cape of Good Hope, which was in control of the Dutch until then. Like the Dutch, the Britishers had no interest in colonizing South Africa. Their main aim was to resupply their ships going to South Asia. But they still needed a community loyal to Britain. So, they started importing Britishers to settle in South Africa.

Moreover, wanting to end racial discrimination, Britain began punishing white owners who assaulted their Black slaves. It also started freeing the Black slaves in its vast empire. So, scared of losing their black slaves, the Boers started moving to the interior of South Africa and expanding there. There, they set up two republics, called the South African Republic and the Orange Free State.

Important events that changed South Africa

Even though Europeans had started settling in South Africa in the seventeenth century, until the 1860s, most of South Africa was still occupied by African people who lived in small communities. This was because neither the Dutch nor the British wanted to colonize South Africa. But all this changed in 1867 when Diamond was discovered in South Africa. 19 years later, gold was also discovered in South Africa. So, South Africa, which until then nobody cared about, suddenly became the center of the world. The discovery of gold and diamond reserves in South Africa exceeded those in any other part of the world. So, it started to attracted foreign investments.

The Britishers wanted to keep the gold and diamond mining in South Africa profitable. So, they needed inexpensive labor. Therefore, they levied heavy taxes on their black workers and made the working conditions terrible. They also conquered the areas of South Africa that were not under the control of Boers. This led to tension between the Blacks and the Whites in South Africa.

The Boers vs. the Britishers

The Boers, on the other hand, had no investment potential. So, they couldn’t get any share of the profits from the mining business. 

Therefore, even though the mining sites were mostly located in the areas controlled by the Boers, the Britishers, who had money to enter the mining business, ended up owning almost all the mines. Moreover, all the profits from mining were taken to Britain and were not reinvested in South Africa. So, the Boers went to war with the Britishers in 1899. In this war, called the South African War, which lasted for three years, the Britishers defeated the Boers. But most of the white population in South Africa were Boers. So, the Britishers realized that they can neither completely win against the Boers nor rule South Africa without their help. So, they made long-term peace settlements with the Boers and decided to install a White government in South Africa.

The Union of South Africa

Therefore, in 1910, Britain combined all the areas owned by the Britishers and the Boers and created a self-governing state within its Empire called the Union of South Africa. In this new country, the white people took up all the positions in the government. The Blacks in South Africa did not even get any voting rights. Furthermore, only white people could hold skilled jobs in the mining industries. In addition to that, the newly formed government forbade Black people from buying land from White people. As a result, the native African Black people, who constituted almost 90% of the South African population, were forced to live in just 7.5% of the land. This ensured that the Blacks in South Africa would not be able to farm anymore. 

So, the Blacks started seeking jobs from white employers. Even though these jobs were the lowest-paid ones, they couldn’t do anything because they had no right to vote. So, since most of the Africans could no longer provide for their families, the country started succumbing to problems like inequality, landlessness, and poverty, which are prevalent even today.

The two major parties

To fight against this injustice against the Blacks in South Africa, the African National Congress was formed in 1912.

When the Britishers fought against the Boers in the South African War, they had taken the land that the Boers had ruled over. But even after the war was over, the Britishers did not return this land to them. So, many of them lived in poverty and had to compete with the Blacks for low-paying jobs. Therefore, to address their concerns, the Afrikaners, which is how the Boers started calling themselves after the war, formed the National Party.

Ancestors

One of Nelson Mandela’s great grandfathers was Ngubengcuka. He was the king of the Thembu people, who lived in the Southeastern part of South Africa. Nelson Mandela’s grandfather was the son of the king and a woman from a clan of lesser royalty. According to the Thembu law, children of such lineage were not permitted to become heirs to the throne. But they could become royal councilors. So, Nelson Mandel’s grandfather became a royal councilor. Following in his footsteps, Nelson Mandela’s father, Gadla Henry Mphakanyiswa Mandela, became the king’s counselor too.

Childhood

Birth

Nelson Mandela was born as Rolihlahla Mandela to Gadla and his third wife, Nosekeni Fanny, on July 18th, 1918. Rolihlahla translates to ‘troublemaker’ in the local language. Rolihlahla was born at a time when racial inequality and poverty were prevalent in South Africa. So, growing up, he witnessed the injustice committed against the Blacks in their own country.

Early Life

Rolihlahla was born in the tiny village of Mvezo in South Africa. His father was initially a local chief. In 1915, the white magistrate sacked the principal counselor to the king of Thembus on charges of corruption. So, the king gave Rolihlahla the position. A few years later, Rolihlahl’s father was also sacked for the same reason, and his possessions were taken away. So, his family moved from Mvezo to an even smaller village called Qunu. 

Qunu had no roads. It only had footpaths. Rolihlahla’s family lived in huts in this small village. Since they were very poor, they could only afford meals made of maize, beans, and pumpkins, which grew in the village. Rolihlahla spent the first few years after coming to Qunu playing with other boys of his age and tending to cattle.

Education

Rolihlahl’s parents were both illiterates. Moreover, they were living in poverty. Yet, despite their shortcomings, they sent him to school. Thus, Rolihlahla became the first person in his family to go to school. 

Primary schooling

Due to the bias created by the British educational system, the Christian school in which he studied had a custom of giving Christian names to African pupils. Keeping in line with this custom, Rolihlahla’s teacher gave him the name Nelson. Thus, Rolihlahla Mandela became Nelson Mandela. 

Interest in African history

Several years earlier, Mandela’s father had recommended the current king of the Thembus to that position. So, the current king was indebted to Mandela’s father. Therefore, when Mandela’s father died when Mandela was twelve years old, Mandela’s mother took him to the palace. The king immediately let him stay at the palace. Thus, Mandela ended up growing up with the king’s children. 

In the school near the palace, Mandela learned English, History, and Geography. The elders who came to the palace told him stories of how his ancestors lived peacefully until the arrival of the Europeans. They explained how their ancestors lived in harmony with each other and shared the air, water, and land with each other. However, the White people came and took everything for themselves. After listening to these stories, he fell in love with African history. However, despite listening to these stories, Mandela did not hate the White people at that age. Instead, he considered them as saviors who brought education and other facilities to South Africa.

When Madela was 16 years old, he took part in the circumcision ritual, which is still prevalent among several South African communities. The traditional practice marks the entrance of a boy into manhood. It is not just a ritual but a mandatory custom, without which a man cannot marry or inherit wealth. Moreover, uncircumcised men were bullied and ridiculed in these communities, which is true even today. So, despite the ritual being dangerous and being performed by inexperienced doctors, Mandela, who wanted to honor his ancestors’ customs and undertake the journey from boyhood to manhood, took part in the ritual along with 25 other boys. 

Secondary and higher secondary schooling

Mandela intended to take up the position of the royal counselor. So, after the ritual ended, Mandela started his secondary schooling. He did his secondary and higher secondary schooling at prestigious institutes. During this time, Mandela learned to work hard and socialize with people. He also excelled at boxing and long-distance running. In the final year of higher secondary, he also became the prefect. During these years, his love for African history increased even more. 

University life

After finishing his schooling, Mandela enrolled at the University of Fort Hare in 1939 to study BA. The University of Fort Hare was a very prestigious university and attracted the brightest students from all over the continent. Mandela intended to become a clerk or an interpreter. At that time, these were the best professions a Black man in South Africa could get. So, he took subjects like English, politics, and native administration, which would help him land his dream job.

In the university, Mandela had friends who supported the African National Congress, which wanted to end the British rule in South Africa. However, Mandela himself didn’t support them yet. On the contrary, he supported the British and even their decision to go to war during the second world war.

In his second year at the university, Mandela was elected as a member of the Students Representative Council. At that time, the quality of food at the university was bad, and the SRC (Students Representative Council) didn’t have enough power. So, supporting the students’ cause, Mandela boycotted the university and resigned from the SRC. However, the university saw this as a way of revolting and expelled him for the rest of the year. It agreed to let him continue his studies only if he served on the SRC again. But Mandela did not agree to the university’s conditions. So, the university sent him home.

When he returned home, the king asked Mandela and his own son to give up on their revolt, return to the university, and continue their studies. When they refused, the king arranged marriages for them. So, feeling trapped and with no other option left, they ran away from home.

Political Awakening

Mandela ran away to Johannesburg, where he worked as a night watchman. But his boos fired him when he came to know that he had run away from home. Thereafter, he found work as an articled clerk, which was like an intern position in a law firm. During this time, he experienced poverty, racism, crime, and pollution, that South Africa was rife with. So, the ANC and the communist party, which were fighting against these problems, caught his attention. Therefore, he started attending communist party gatherings. He was amazed at how the Africans, Europeans, and Asians got along well at these communist party gatherings, despite racial discrimination being prevalent in South Africa.

Joining the African National Congress

Meanwhile, Mandela also started taking a correspondence course to finish his BA. After passing his BA exams, he abandoned his dream of becoming a royal counselor and decided to become a lawyer instead. So, in 1943, he enrolled at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg to study law. While studying at the university, Mandela was the only Black student, and hence, he faced racism. Therefore, he joined the ANC, which wanted to make South Africa free of racism.

A picture of young Nelson Mandela, 1937 -By Unknown authorPublic Domain, Link

Forming the ANC’s youth party

The majority of the South Africans were Blacks. ANC was a party that was fighting for their rights. Yet, it did not have the mass support of these Black people. So, Mandela and other members of the ANC formed the African National Congress Youth League in 1944. Their motive was to convert the ANC into a mass movement in South Africa that could get the support of millions of poor Black farmers and miners and become their voice.

The same year, Mandela met Evelyn Mase, who was an ANC member and a trainee nurse. Soon, they started liking each other and married in October. Together, they had four children.

Mandela and Evelyn, 1944 – By The original uploader was André Koehne at Portuguese Wikipedia. – Transferred from pt.wikipedia to Commons by Truu., Public Domain, Link

Anti-Apartheid Movement

From 1934 to 1948, South Africa was ruled by the United Party. Under its rule, South Africa participated in the second world war on the side of Britain.

During the war, many Whites joined the army and went to war. But this led to shortages of white manpower in industries in urban areas in South Africa. So, Blacks started moving from rural areas to urban areas to take up these jobs. When the war ended, and the Whites returned to their homes, there were severe food and housing shortages. Moreover, South Africa had loaned Britain 250,000 pounds of gold. As a result, South Africa’s economy shattered and led to inflation. Due to the dwindling economy and the increasing number of Blacks in urban areas, the Afrikaner became more and more concerned that the Blacks might steal their jobs. However, the United Party realized that, at some point of time in the future, they have to make the country friendly to the Blacks too. So, it campaigned for a policy of integrating Blacks into society.

The National Party wins the 1948 general elections 

On the other hand, the National Party campaigned on segregating the Blacks from society. By doing so, it would be able to improve the job opportunities and living conditions for the Whites.

The Blacks in South Africa were not permitted to vote. Only the Whites could vote and the majority of them were Afrikaners, descendants of Boers. So, since the National Party’s policies appealed to the Afrikaners, the National Party won in the 1948 General elections and became the ruling party.

The Apartheid Regime

Immediately upon its ascension to power, the National Party started implementing its policy of Apartheid. Apartheid, which means Separateness in Afrikaans, was a policy that increased white supremacy in South Africa. The Blacks, who already faced racial discrimination in their own country, now faced even stricter restrictions. According to the Apartheid, the Blacks should only work in areas designated for them. They should not open a business or hold a profession in areas designated as White South Africa. Under exceptional cases, if his services were absolutely necessary, a Black person could get a pass to work in White South Africa. If a Black was found without a pass in White South Africa, he was often arrested. 

Blacks may not use the hospitals meant for Whites. Since Whites were the minority in South Africa, the White hospitals had fewer patients, more funds, and better doctors. Black hospitals, on the other hand, were severely overcrowded, underfunded, understaffed, and had less-qualified doctors. Just like hospitals, trains, ambulances, parks, graveyards, and public toilets were also segregated. Moreover, Blacks were also not permitted to marry White people.

An Apartheid sign – By Dewet – Derived from Aprt.jpg on en.wiki, corrected perspective and lighting somewhat. Permission from photographer here., Public Domain, Link

Due to its inhuman practices, the Apartheid soon attracted international criticism. The United Nations even implemented arms and Trade bans against South Africa. But despite facing severe opposition inside and outside the country, the National Party did not give up on its Apartheid policy.

The ANC’s initial action against Apartheid

Since Blacks could not vote, they had nobody who could represent them. So, the ANC adopted the policy of polite petitioning to protest against misdeeds committed against the Blacks. But Nelson Mandela and the ANCYL (African National Congress Youth League) felt that only a more aggressive approach would bear results. So, in 1949, the ANC adopted its Youth League’s aggressive methods of non-cooperation and boycott against the government.

With time, Mandela became more and more involved in politics. So, he had less time to concentrate on his studies. Therefore, he failed his final year three times, and finally, in 1949, the university denied him the degree.

Becoming the president of the youth wing

In 1950, Mandela became the president of the youth wing of ANC.

During Mandela’s time, people of four different races lived in South Africa – Black, White, Asian, and Coloured. People whose ancestors belonged to more than one race were classified as Coloured.

Even though Mandela wanted to eradicate racism, he wanted the Black people to be independent in their fight for justice. So, he opposed the idea of Blacks joining hands with other races, like Indians and colored people, and people of other radical beliefs, like communists. So, in 1951, in the ANC national conference, he argued that Blacks should fight alone against the White minority rule. But he was soon outvoted. So, thereafter, he started embracing the concept of a racially united front. His opinion of communism also changed when the Soviet Union started supporting the countries fighting for independence. So, he started reading the books of famous communist figures like Lenin, Stalin, and Mao.

Protest against Apartheid

In the following year, ANC, in unison with Indians and communists, started preparing for a defiance campaign against the government. So, Mandela spoke at a gathering of 10,000 people and incited protests. In return, the government conducted mass arrests. Even Mandela himself was arrested and faced trial. Even though the sentence awarded to him was suspended, he was banned from speaking publicly. However, these measures taken by the government only made Mandela a prominent figure in South Africa. As a result, the membership of the ANC grew from 20,000 to 100,000 members.

Mandela’s marriage life fails

Meanwhile, Mandela passed the qualification exams to become an attorney. Thereafter, he opened a law firm with his friend Oliver Tambo. Since it was the only black law firm in the country, it was always full of Blacks who were mistreated by the Whites. However, the government soon canceled its license. Therefore, Mandela moved his law firm to an undisclosed location.

But the protests and the law firm made Mandela politically famous and extremely busy. So, he started spending less time with his wife. Moreover, they had different political views, and Mandela allegedly had affairs with other women. So, their relationship started going downhill. Finally, in 1958, they got divorced. The same year, he married a social worker called Winnie Madikizela.

Decision to use violence

Inspired by the non-violent resistance organized by Mahatma Gandhi against British rule, the ANC initially followed the same technique against the White minority rule in South Africa. Mandela supported these non-violent protests. However, their protests ended in failure. So, in 1955, Mandela decided that violence was the only way to end the white minority rule and their apartheid system. Following his advice, ANC requested weapons from China, which China denied.

One year later, Nelson Mandela and 156 others who opposed the Apartheid system were arrested. They were charged with committing high treason against the country. Even though they were granted bail, the trial went on for another 6 years.

Symbol of resistance

Those days, Africans had to show their passes if they wanted to leave the areas allocated for their stay and enter other areas. The pass would reveal if the African had permission to enter the area he wanted to enter. Only those Blacks and people of other races who had the permission could enter areas designated for white people. Thus, the pass greatly restricted Blacks’ movement within their own country.

So, in 1959, as a way of showing non-compliance, political parties launched a mass movement, asking people to burn their passes. As a part of this movement, Mandela also burned his pass publicly. In one of these peaceful demonstrations, the police fired, killing 69 people. This attracted a lot of international criticism for South Africa’s white minority rule. The massacre also deteriorated the ANC’s already bad relations with the South African government. So, the South African government blamed the ANC for being a communist party and banned it.

The Union of South Africa had become a sovereign nation under British rule in 1934. So, it was still answerable to the British. In 1960, the majority of Whites in South Africa voted to make the country an independent nation. So, the Union of South Africa cut all ties with the British government, officially gained independence, and became the Republic of South Africa on May 31st, 1961. Thus, the country had now become a Republic, a country ruled by representatives elected by the people. Ironically, most people in the country had no say in who ruled the country or how they ruled it.

To mark South Africa’s independence, ANC planned and conducted several stay-at-home strikes. These strikes crippled South Africa’s economy because the workers refused to go to work.

The cell structure

In 1953, Nelson Mandela had proposed a cell structure to protect the ANC. It was a plan which would come into effect in case the government banned the ANC. It involved restructuring the ANC, a very big group, into many smaller cells. Members in the cell would know only the identity of other people in the cell and not anyone else. They would not know the identity of their superiors. Thus, if a member got caught, only people in the same cell as him would be caught, thus protecting the identity of everyone else. So, even if ANC was banned, people could continue working as ANC members since their identities wouldn’t be revealed.

Founding the armed wing of the ANC

In 1961, the verdict of the treason trial from six years before came, and Nelson Mandela was not found guilty. So, disguised as a chauffeur, he traveled through the country, gathering support for the stay-at-home strikes. Simultaneously, he also started implementing ANC’s cell structure. He also co-founded the Umkhonto we Sizwe (Spear of the Nation), the armed faction of the ANC. He gained motivation for it by reading books of leaders of Guerilla Warfare, like Che Guevara and Mao Zedong. This group planned to bomb military installations, powerplants, etc., instead of waging full-scale guerilla warfare.

Prison

5-year sentence

In 1962, ANC sent Nelson Mandela to attend the pan-African freedom movement held in Ethiopia. Nelson Mandela left South Africa secretly and took part in the delegation. He also visited many countries and gathered funds for ANC. However, upon his return, the South African government arrested him. Charged with leaving the country illegally and inciting people to protest, the court awarded him a five-year sentence.

Life imprisonment

However, one year later, the police conducted a raid, in which they found evidence supporting Mandela’s involvement in the bombings. So, in 1964, the court awarded Mandela and 10 others life-sentences, to serve in prison until they died or were pardoned.

In prison, Nelson Mandela was initially treated as the lowest grade prisoner. He was not allowed to read newspapers and was allowed a visit and a letter only once every six months. There was even a plot to let him escape so that they could shoot and kill him while he escapes. But, thanks to British intelligence, the plan was averted.

Gradually, the conditions in prison improved. The quality of the food improved greatly. Moreover, Mandela was permitted to have frequent visits and letters. Meanwhile, Mandela started studying law by correspondence and writing his autobiography.

Release from prison

By the time he turned 60, in 1978, Mandela was internationally famous for his fight against the apartheid system. So, several universities across the world offered him honorary degrees. By 1980, international support for Mandela had risen to such a degree that United Nations called for his release.

Meanwhile, violence increased in South Africa due to a variety of reasons. So, the then-leader of the National Party and president of South Africa, P. W. Botha, offered to release Mandela. In return, he asked Mandela to renounce violence. However, Mandela refused and stayed in prison. But even though Mandela remained in prison, support for him started increasing both inside and outside the country. However, Botha still refused to release Mandela as they couldn’t reach any deal. In 1989, Botha suffered a stroke. So, he resigned. The man who replaced him was F. W. de Klerk. Klerk considered the Apartheid system unsustainable anymore. So, he released Mandela in 1990 without any conditions. He also legalized all the political parties which were banned earlier and granted freedom of the press.

Nelson Mandela and De Klerk, 1992 – By Copyright World Economic Forum (www.weforum.org) – Frederik de Klerk & Nelson Mandela – World Economic Forum Annual Meeting Davos 1992, CC BY-SA 2.0, Link

Nobel Prize

After his release from prison, Mandela declared that their armed struggle will continue until Blacks get the right to vote. In 1991, the ANC elected Mandela as its president. 

Throughout the 1970s, atrocities committed by the Apartheid government against the Blacks became internationally known. So, humanitarians in Europe and America started pressurizing their governments to impose economic sanctions against South Africa. As a result, in 1986, the USA imposed economic sanctions against South Africa and demanded that it end the apartheid system for the sanctions to be lifted. Following this move by the USA, many multi-national companies moved their offices away from South Africa. 

Until then, South Africa had portrayed the Apartheid system as being anti-communist. So, there was support for the system. But with the end of the cold war in 1991, this claim became obsolete, and many anti-communists worldwide withdrew their support for the Apartheid system. 

Moreover, tensions inside the country rose steadily due to internal protests and revolts. In addition to that, after his release from prison, Mandela traveled to many countries encouraging them to impose sanctions against the Apartheid system. 

Therefore, succumbing to mounting tensions, the white minority government, led by de Klerk, ended the Apartheid system in 1991. So, in 1993, Nelson Mandela and Frederik Willem de Klerk got the nobel peace prize for ending the Apartheid system in a peaceful manner. 

The first black president of South Africa

Over the next few years, the ANC and the National party held various talks. They wanted to come to an agreement on how to end the violence in the country and create a government so that neither the majority nor the minority feels abandoned. As a result of these talks, South Africa became a democratic nation in 1994. Nelson Mandela became its first president. During his stint as the president, Mandela worked hard to create a Black majority rule. But he did not want the minorities, especially the Whites, to feel left out. So, he appointed de Klerk as his deputy.

But even after that, the Blacks and the Whites were still divided. 

So, to bring them together, he started promoting rugby and supporting the national rugby team. Due to the country’s combined interest in sports, this move initiated a reconciliation between different races. He also worked hard to host the Rugby world cup in 1995, which brought international recognition to South Africa. But more importantly, it brought the different races together by establishing a sport that everyone could be proud of.

Over the next few years, he used government funds to improve the country’s healthcare, education system, housing, and employment opportunities. As a result, between 1994 and 1999, 750,000 new houses were constructed, 500 clinics were built or upgraded, 1.5 million children started their education, 3 million people got water access, and 3 million people got access to telephones. But despite bringing all these improvements, Nelson Mandela stepped down from the presidency in 1999. He did not seek a second term in office. 

After retirement

By 1999, 10% of the people in South Africa suffered from AIDS. So, after retiring, Nelson Mandela set up a charity called the Nelson Mandela Foundation. Through it, he raised money to build schools and clinics and combat AIDS. Thus, even after his retirement, he worked extremely hard to improve the quality of life in South Africa. 

In 2004, he retired completely from public life and returned to Qunu, his native village. After that, he remained mostly away from public view until his death, even though he made occasional public appearances.

Death

In his last years, fighting a recurrent lung infection, he was hospitalized multiple times. Finally, on December 5th, 2013, he died due to the same infection.

Biography of Nelson Mandela – a picture of Nelson Mandela

Facts about Nelson Mandela

1. When Mandela was in prison, he became a symbol for the oppressed people of South Africa. It motivated them to fight against the cruel White minority government. 
2. Mandela is widely considered the father of modern South Africa. He played a significant role in converting an oppressed country into a democracy. 
3. Nelson Mandela won over 250 awards, besides the Nobel Prize.
4. The United Nations announced July 18th, Mandela’s birthday, as the Nelson Mandela International Day. The UN urges people to spend 67 minutes on this day doing something good for the people in need. The 67 minutes represent the 67 years Mandela worked hard in bringing change for his people.

We hope that this biography of Nelson Mandela helped you understand how he transformed South Africa. If you liked reading the biography of Nelson Mandela, you might like the following too:

1. Biography of Lee Kuan Yew
2. Biography of Genghis Khan

In this blog post, read the biography of Alexander Graham Bell. Find out everything about his childhood, how he invented the first working telephone, and what he did after that.

Ancestors

Alexander Graham Bell was the man who invented the first working telephone. But it was not through his own efforts alone. It was actually the result of the accumulation of knowledge gathered through three generations of the study of sound. So, even though Alexander Graham Bell might have invented the telephone, he should actually thank his grandfather, who started it all.

Alexander Graham Bell’s ancestors were shoemakers who lived in Fifeshire, an area in eastern Scotland. In the early nineteenth century, elocution, or public speaking, became famous as an art and science. So, Alexander’s grandfather Alexander Bell moved away from Fifeshire and started to learn elocution. But as he became skilled in elocution and started teaching it, his interest turned towards stammering. So, he began researching about it and soon wrote a book called The Practical Elocutionist. It was a book that tried to visualize speech by using a system of symbols, which looked like commas, to indicate word groupings and emphasis.

Alexander Bell’s youngest son, Alexander Melville Bell, also took a liking to his father’s profession. So, he started using his father’s methods to treat stammerers. He gradually became successful at that and gained public fame. But in 1842, he moved to England. There, along with his father, he started investigating how the interaction between different vocal organs produces voice.

Birth

In 1843, Melville traveled to Edinburgh, Scotland, where he started lecturing about public speaking at the University of Edinburgh. While he was in Edinburgh, he met Eliza Grace Symonds. She was an English painter who was ten years older than him and was partially deaf. Since their first meeting, Melville was drawn to her, partially because of her intelligence but mostly out of sympathy for her partial deafness. Soon they fell in love. So, one year later, Melville moved to Edinburgh and married Eliza. 

Alexander Melville Bell and Eliza Grace Symonds had three children. Their first son, Melville James Bell, was born in 1845. Alexander Bell, their second son, was born in 1847. Their third son, Edward Charles Bell was born in 1848.

Early Life and Family

Alexander Bell becomes Alexander Graham Bell

Of their three sons, only their second son Alexander Bell didn’t have a middle name. So, when he was ten years old, Alexander Bell begged his father to let him have a middle name like his brothers. At that time, Alexander Melville Bell had a student called Alexander Graham, who became their family friend. Inspired by him, Alexander Bell wanted to take Alexander Graham’s surname as his middle name. He soon got his father’s permission, and so, on his eleventh birthday, Alexander Bell became Alexander Graham Bell. However, his family members still called him Aleck, which was his nickname. 

Schooling

Like most children of that era, Alexander Graham Bell and his brothers were initially taught by their parents. Alexander Graham Bell’s love for music, art, and poetry came from his mother. Motivated by her encouragement, he learned Piano by himself and became the family’s pianist. He also excelled in mimicry and tricks like ventriloquism, which he used to entertain family guests. At one point in time, Alexander Graham Bell even wanted to become a professional musician. However, that desire eventually disappeared. But it did kindle in him a desire to study sound. 

While his mother instilled in Alexander a love for music, his father instilled in him a love for biology. So, even as a child, he started collecting botanic samples and doing experiments on his own. These experiments he conducted as a child laid the foundation for the inventor he would later become.

Alexander Graham Bell’s formal education began at the age of ten when he joined the Royal High School in Scotland. Even though he would later become an inventor, his initial school grades and attendance did not reflect that. According to his own words, he was a poor student who lacked ambition. The only subject that interested him was science, especially biography. Other subjects did not interest him. During those days, he often spent his time in school alone and dreaming. 

Childhood innovations

As a kid, Alexander Graham Bell might not have been good at school. But he was always curious and had a desire to invent. When Alexander Graham Bell was 12 years old, he had a friend called Benjamin Herdman. His father owned the Herdman flour mill. The boys would often play in the mill and make a mess there.

One day, Benjamin’s father finally got fed up with them and remarked that they could do something useful instead of playing. Those days, wheat was separated from the husk by hand. It was a manual and excruciating process. So, when the boys inquired about how they could help him, Benjamin’s father gave them a handful of grains and asked them to separate the wheat from the husk. However, Alexander surprised him by building a machine to separate the wheat from the husk instead of doing it manually. This machine, built using rotating paddles and wire brushes on an existing device, was used by the Herdman flour mill for many years after that. 

The event that changed Alexander Graham Bell

By the age of fifteen, Alexander, who had no interest in formal schooling, left school without graduating. His parents then sent him to live with his paternal grandfather Alexander Bell, whose wife had recently died. This would turn out to be an important event in Alexander’s life, which changed him completely.

Alexander’s grandfather made him ashamed of his ignorance of subjects that kids of his age would normally know. This motivated him to overcome his defects in education by studying meticulously of his own. His grandfather, an expert on public speaking, also made him realize the importance of speech. His grandfather considered speech the single most important skill for mankind. So, he taught Alexander to speak with conviction so that he could become a teacher too. Soon, Alexander became interested in speech too.

The mechanical man

Alexander’s newfound interest in speech impressed his father. So, his father took Alexander and his brothers to see the mechanical man. The mechanical man is a speech synthesizer created by an English scientist based on a book written by a Hungarian inventor. Alexander and his brother were thrilled at how the device could produce a human voice. So, Alexander obtained the book and translated it from German to English on his own. Then they constructed a mechanical head that looked lifelike, with a skull, throat, Larynx, and lips. Even though the mechanical head synthesized only a few words with a human voice, it was a big success for the teenager. 

Motivated by their initial success at producing human voice using a machine, Alexander decided to test the same approach on a live subject. The live subject he chose for this purpose was their dog. First, Alexander taught the dog to growl continuously. Then, as it growled, he would adjust its lips, and at the same time, he would also reach into the dog’s mouth and adjust its vocal cords. So, the dog’s continuous growl would sound faintly like the sentence, “How are you, grandma?” Thus, Alexander succeeded in creating a talking dog, even though it could speak only one sentence.

Becoming a pupil-teacher

Until the nineteenth century, education was a luxury. So, only the upper classes of the economy were taught by professional teachers. But at the beginning of the nineteenth century, teaching for the masses began, and hence, the demand for teachers increased. This gave rise to a training program called the pupil-teacher system. In this program, students of higher classes, who were at least 13 years old, worked as apprentices to teachers. For five years, they learned through observation and practical application while simultaneously finishing their studies. By the twentieth century, the system was scrapped due to the lack of an adequate theoretical foundation.

When he was 16 years old, Alexander decided to be on his own. But he hadn’t finished his schooling yet. So, he began working as a pupil-teacher of elocution and music. 

Fascination with the telegraph

Meanwhile, Alexander continued his experiments on speech using cats and dogs. The experiments he conducted during these days helped him understand how vowels are formed in our vocal cords. These experiments also motivated him to study more about sound. Telegraph, a device that transmitted text messages through electric currents, also caught Alexander’s attention. So, fascinated by sound and motivated by the concept of the telegraph, Alexander decided to convey sound using electricity. For this purpose, he even installed a telegraph wire from his room to his friend’s room.

But Alexander’s profession as a pupil-teacher and his rigorous experiments on sound took a toll on his body. So, by 1867, he was totally exhausted and was bedridden. Similarly, his younger brother, who was suffering from Tuberculosis, was also bedridden. However, while Alexander’s health improved gradually, his younger brother’s health deteriorated even further, and he died the same year. After his younger brother’s death, Alexander stayed home and started preparing for the entrance exams for the University College in London.

Working with his father

The same year, his father developed a revolutionary system called Visible speech.

Perils faced by deaf people

When we were babies, we learned to talk by listening to the words our parents and teachers speak and repeating those words. But babies born deaf cannot hear what others speak. So, as they grow up, they do not develop the ability to talk. So, deaf children end up being mute all their life.

Today, we accept deaf people as a part of the society we live in. But a few hundred years back, deaf people were alienated by both society and their own families. The deaf were not permitted by the church to attend the holy communion because they could not confess aloud. They were not permitted by their own families to inherit wealth. They were not even permitted to marry because people believed that their children will also be born deaf. If there was a way for deaf people to communicate with others, people would stop seeing deafness as a disability, and society would eventually accept them.

Manualism and Oralism

So, to help deaf people interact with society, two methods of education developed. The first method, called manualism, aimed at teaching deaf people sign language. The second method, called oralism, aimed at teaching deaf people lip reading and mimicking the breathing patterns and mouth shapes that create speech. Today a combination of both these methods are employed to help deaf people interact with others. 

Visible Speech

Visible speech, the system developed by Alexander’s father, made oralism famous in the 1860s. It is a visual representation of sounds. The system is made up of symbols that depict the position and movement of lips, tongue, and throat as we speak a language. A person who read the text written using Visible speech and reproduced the position and movement of lips, tongue, and throat, exactly as indicated, could recreate the original sentence, including the accent with which it was spoken. Using this system a person can reproduce any sentence spoken in any language. So, Älexander, who was fascinated by sound and wanted to find out how it was produced in our vocal cords, soon developed a liking for it. Therefore, he learned the system developed by his father and became an expert in it. 

Alexander’s father believed that Visible speech could help the deaf in learning to speak. So, to garner public support for Visible speech, Alexander’s father took Alexander to public demonstrations. In these demonstrations, Alexander’s father would ask a volunteer to speak. Then, Alexander would come on stage and read out the Visible speech transcript of the volunteer’s spoken words and surprise everyone by saying it out exactly as the volunteer had said it. Soon public support for the system increased, and Alexander started to teach two deaf girls personally. Both of them made tremendous progress under his guidance. 

Meanwhile, in 1868, Alexander also passed the entrance exams for the University College in London and joined the college to study anatomy and physiology. 

Moving to Canada

Thus, by the late 1860s, Alexander started to earn a career for himself as the teacher of the deaf. Moreover, his studies were progressing in a positive direction too. But in 1870, his elder brother died due to Tuberculosis too. So, Alexander’s parents, who were hellbent on keeping their only remaining son alive, decided to move to Canada. Hence, they sold all their properties in London. At the same time, Alexander himself had to drop out of college and end the relationship with his then-girlfriend as they were moving to Canada. 

After moving to Canada, Alexander stayed with his parents for a while. Then, in April 1871, he moved to Boston, USA, and started teaching in a school there. He also started demonstrating Visible speech, as he had done in London. In the USA, people believed that children born deaf can never learn to speak. So, Alexander’s demonstrations were met with huge enthusiasm, as it meant that the deaf can learn to speak. Due to these demonstrations, demand for Alexander’s teaching skills increased tremendously. So, Alexander opened his own school for the deaf in Boston in 1872.

Meeting his future wife

In 1872, Alexander met Gardiner Greene Hubbard, the president of a school where Alexander demonstrated Visible speech, to ask for a recommendation. Amazed by his skills, Gardiner asked Alexander to teach his daughter, who had lost her hearing at the age of five. So, the 26-year-old Alexander Graham Bell started teaching the 15-year-old Mabel Hubbard. Despite the 11 year age difference, Alexander fell for Mabel instantly. Soon, they fell in love and married five years later. Even though Mabel was deaf, she stayed by Alexander’s side as his supporter, friend, and partner until his death.

The telephone

Attempting to transmit multiple messages through a single telegraph wire

Even after coming to Boston, Alexander’s fascination for the telegraph continued. But until now, only a single message could be sent through a telegraph. So, Alexander decided to create a telegraph which would enable its user to send multiple messages through a single wire. Gardiner, who himself was a fan of inventions that had anything to do with the telegraph, immediately started supporting Alexander. 

Coming up with the idea

The school Alexander started for the deaf soon became a part of the Boston University. In 1873, Alexander also started working as a professor of Vocal Physiology and Elocution at the same university. His job as a professor was to train teachers to teach the deaf. While working at the University, Alexander got the chance to observe the functioning of the phonautograph.

The phonautograph is the first device that was created to record sound. It consists of a barrel whose one end is narrow and the other end is wide. The narrow end is covered with a thin membrane, which simulates the human eardrum and is connected to a needle. When someone speaks on to the wide end of the barrel, the membrane on the narrow end vibrates due to the variations in the voice and moves the needle, which traces a line plot on a piece of paper or glass.

After observing the functioning of this device, Alexander decided that if the variations in human voice can be recorded on a sheet of paper as a line graph, it should also be possible to create an electric current whose intensity changes according to the variations in the human voice. So, even though his work on the transmission of multiple telegraph messages was picking up speed, he abandoned it. Instead, he started focussing on transmitting sound through a telegraph wire. In other words, he decided to invent the telephone. 

Solving the biggest problem

Alexander was neither the only person nor the first person to come up with the idea of a telephone. However, he was the first person to solve the problem of converting sound into an oscillating electric current at the transmitter and converting the same oscillating electric current into sound at the receiver. The experiments he conducted on electrical induction and the phonautograph helped him formulate a theory. According to that theory, magnetized reeds that vibrate due to sound should produce an oscillating electric current at the transmitter. This electric current could be transmitted through a wire to a receiver. At the receiver, an electromagnet would convert the incoming oscillating electric current into pulses that would vibrate a diaphragm to produce the original sound. 

Hiring Thomas A.Watson

Even though Alexander had it all planned out in theory, he had no working knowledge of electricity. So, he hired Thomas A.Watson, an expert electrical designer and mechanic, to help him build the machine.

On June 2nd, 1875, Alexander and Watson were doing an experiment to transmit multiple telegraph messages over a single wire. They had built three sets of transmitters and receivers in different rooms for this purpose. When Watson plucked a reed because it was stuck to the electromagnet, the reed started vibrating. This vibration was converted into an electric current, which reached the electromagnet in Alexander’s room, that vibrated the reed attached to it. So, Alexander was able to hear the reproduced vibration of the reed in another room.

Filing the most profitable patent

Thus, now, Alexander was sure that his idea would work. So, he applied for a patent, titled ‘Improvements in Telegraph,’ and received it on March 7th, 1876. It would go on to become the most profitable patent in the history of the invention.

The first sentence ever spoken through a telephone

Meanwhile, Alexander and Watson built a telephone with a transmitter and a receiver in two different rooms. The transmitter even had a mouthpiece through which Alexander could talk. Three days after the patent was issued, Alexander tested the telephone they had built. He said the words “Mr. Watson—Come here—I want to see you” through the telephone. Watson, who was in another room, could hear it clearly. Thus, on March 10th, 1876, Alexander successfully created the first working telephone. 

Improvements

Over the next few months, Alexander and Watson improved upon their invention. They tested it by increasing the distance between the transmitter and receiver to several miles. Until now, the telephone only worked as one-way communication. So, then they built a transmitter and receiver at both ends to make two-way communication possible. They tested the first two-way communication over the telephone on October 9th, 1876.

Alexander Graham Bell, testing long distance communication, from New York to Chicago, 1892 – By Gilbert H. Grosvenor Collection, Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress. – http://www.americaslibrary.gov/jb/recon/jb_recon_telephone_1_e.html, Public Domain, Link

After testing the two-way conversation, Alexander tried to sell the patent for the telephone to Western Union for $100,000. The Western Union is a company that ruled the telegraph market in the USA. However, the president of the Western Union thought that the telephone was a kid’s toy that nobody would want. So, he did not buy the patent. Two years later, the telephone became such a valuable invention that the Western Union couldn’t have bought the patent even if they had offered $25 million. 

The Bell Telephone Company

Following the successful invention of the telephone, Alexander’s father-in-law helped him in establishing the Bell Telephone company in 1877. After a series of mergers, it became the American Telephone & Telegraph Company (AT&T).

Even though Alexander had invented the first working telephone, he wasn’t the first one or the only one to conceive the idea of the telephone. So, the Bell Company faced hundreds of court cases that challenged its patents. But Alexander had a habit of writing letters to his father consistently. In these letters, he had explained the concepts that eventually led to the invention of the telephone. These letters proved that Alexander had indeed come up with the concepts himself and helped the company defend its patents. 

After founding the Bell Telephone company in 1877, Alexander married Mabel. Together, they had four children – two daughters and two sons.

Alexander Graham Bell with his wife and two daughters, 1885 – By Not listed; part of the LOC’s Gilbert H. Grosvenor Collection of Photographs of the Alexander Graham Bell Family. – This image is available from the United States Library of Congress‘s Prints and Photographs division under the digital ID ppmsc.00856. This tag does not indicate the copyright status of the attached work. A normal copyright tag is still required. See Commons:Licensing for more information., Public Domain, Link

In the months that followed, Alexander made several public demonstrations to introduce the telephone to the public. Thanks to his efforts, the telephone soon became a widely used gadget in the United States. By the year 1886, around 150,000 people in the USA had telephones.

Other inventions

The telephone is a very important invention in history. So, it earned Alexander several awards with big prize money. But Alexander Graham Bell was a man of varied interests. So, his journey as a scientist did not end there as he continued to invent other devices. 

Photophone and metal detector

In 1880, Alexander and his assistant invented the photophone. The photophone is a wireless telephone that could send human voices over a beam of light. It would become the forerunner to the fiber-optic communication that became famous a hundred years later. 

Alexander also invented a crude version of a metal detector. 

Attempts at building the first airplane

On September 23rd, 1877, after watching a seagull flying, Alexander decided to build a flying machine. So, he drew a sketch of a flying machine. In 1891, he started to build the flying machine from this sketch. He conducted several hundreds of experiments, most of which failed. 

In the 1890s, while conducting his own experiments on aviation, Alexander predicted that the problem of aviation would be solved within 10 years. Just like he had predicted, the Wright brothers made the first successful flight in 1903. A few years later, in 1907, Alexander formed the Aerial Experiment Association. At the insistence of his wife, he hired young men to help him since he was already 60 years old. Together, they conducted more than 1,200 experiments over several decades, sometimes even using gunpowder for propulsion. The planes they built achieved several feats, like winning the Scientific American Trophy for flying over a kilometer, achieving a total flying distance of more than a thousand miles, and making the first flight in Canada. Moreover, Alexander also contributed to aerospace research by providing funds to Aerial Experiment Association.

Alexander Graham Bell, 1899.

The teacher of the deaf

Thus, today, the world sees Alexander Graham Bell as a curious inventor and a successful scientist. However, he saw himself as a teacher of the deaf above everything else. After all, both his mother and wife, the two most important women in his life, were deaf. So, he wanted to make the world a better place for the deaf. Hence, he dismissed manualism, like sign language, because it alienated the deaf. Therefore, he improved upon his father’s system of Visible speech to teach the deaf to talk. For this purpose, he also dismissed the idea of deaf teachers.

Alexander Graham Bell also made generous contributions to the deaf society throughout his life. In 1887, Alexander met the famous deaf, mute, and blind girl Helen Keller. Alexander maintained a friendship with the Kellers for the next 30 years and created a trust fund for her education. Helen Keller’s father brought her to Alexander Graham Bell to see if he could help her. It was Alexander who referred Helen Keller to the Perkin’s Institute for the blind. Perkin’s Institute then sent Anne Sullivan to teach Helen Keller, who completely transformed Helen’s life. Helen, in turn, brought several improvements for the blind community.

Death

Alexander Graham Bell, whose life greatly benefited the scientific community and the deaf community, died on August 2nd, 1922. Aged 75, he died due to Diabetes, with his wife by his side.

Facts you probably didn’t know:

Antonio Meucci and Alexander Graham Bell

Antonio Meucci was an Italian inventor who settled in the USA. According to several sources, he invented the electromagnetic telephone in 1860, 16 years before Alexander.

Antonio used the telephone he invented to communicate with his bedridden wife, who was in the second-floor bedroom, from his laboratory on the ground floor. However, he did not have enough money to file a patent to get ownership of his invention. So, in 1871, he filed a patent caveat, which was an official notice informing that he would file a patent later. Until then, nobody can file a patent for his invention. However, unlike a patent, a Caveat is only valid for one year. So, the caveat applicant must renew it every year. Antonio renewed the caveat until 1873. After that, he did not have enough money to renew it. So, it expired in 1874.

The same year, he sent his telephone model to the Western Union telegraph company, asking for permission to test his device on their telegraph wires. After not hearing back from them, he asked them to return his materials. But he was told that his materials were lost. Two years later, Alexander Graham Bell, who conducted experiments in the same laboratory that contained Antonio’s materials were stored, filed a patent for the telephone.

So, Antonio filed a case contesting Alexander’s patent. However, despite going in Antonio’s favor, the case came to a close when Antonio died in 1889. Some people still believe that if Antonio had renewed his patent caveat for two more years, Alexander wouldn’t have been able to get his patent. 

Elisha Gray and Alexander Graham Bell

On February 14th, 1876, Elisha Gray, an American electrical engineer, filed for a patent caveat for a water transmitter to transmit speech. The same day, Alexander Graham Bell also filed for a patent for his telephone. It is not sure who came first to the patent office. But Alexander Graham Bell is the one who got the patent. But Alexander used Elisha’s water transmitter in his telephone initially to test its function. He claimed that he used it only to verify the functioning of Elisha’s device. However, after the initial use of Elisha’s device in his telephone, he did not use it again. But the patent examiner claimed that Alexander paid $100 to show Elisha’s patent caveat to him, which Alexander denied. 

A man of varied interests

Alexander Graham Bell was a man of varied interests. He held 18 patents in his name and shared 12 more with other collaborators.

What to read next?

If you liked reading this biography of Alexander Graham Bell, you will love the following blog posts too:

1. Biography of Henry Ford
2. Biography of Albert Einstein
3. Interesting facts about Marie Curie

When he launched Windows, Bill Gates dreamt of a world where every home had a computer that was running Windows. At that time, nobody believed it was possible. Yet, within two decades, he almost achieved his dream. By 1999, 90% of the personal computers in the world ran on Windows. Thus, he transformed a two-man operation into a multi-billion dollar business. In this biography of Bill Gates, read about how Bill Gates began from nothing and built a multi-billion dollar business. Find out how he took the existing computer technology, modified it to suit a specific market, and then dominated that market by promoting innovatively.

Early Life

Birth

William Henry Gates III was born in Seattle, Washington, on October 28th, 1955. His father, William Henry Gates II, was a successful lawyer. His mother, Mary Maxwell, was a teacher. Together, they had three children – William and his two sisters. Since his name was William Henry Gates III, his grandmother nicknamed him ‘Trey,’ which meant three.

How did William Henry Gates III become Bill Gates?

There is a tradition that originated in the middle ages, which is called letter swapping. Probably because hard consonants are easier to pronounce than soft ones, the first letter of a name is often replaced by another letter. Thus, a person named Will was often nicknamed Bill. For instance, King William III of England was often referred to as King Billy, by his subjects in the 17th century. For the same reason, Bill became the short form of William, and Bill Gates became the short form of William Henry Gates. Thus, William Henry Gates III came to be known as Bill Gates. Interestingly, his father had the same nickname too.

Childhood

As a kid, Bill Gates’ favorite games were Monopoly and Risk (where the goal is world domination). Since childhood, Bill has had a habit of reading business magazines. Once, while reading such a magazine when he was in middle school, he had a dream – to open a company. It was a big dream for a small child, but a dream that he would later realize.

When he was a child, Bill displayed disruptive behavior. He started questioning his parents’ decisions. He did not think that their rules were logical and, at times, refused to follow them. This often led to conflict between him and his parents. Moreover, he had some fixed ideas about certain things. He didn’t like it when people confronted him about them. Once, Mary, Bill Gates’ mother, had trouble getting him to the dinner table. So, she asked him what he was doing. But Gates, suddenly annoyed, shot back at her, saying, “I’m thinking, mother. Have you ever tried thinking?” So, alarmed at Gates’ behavior, his parents took him to a psychologist when he was twelve years old.

Bill Gates, as a kid, with his mother – Picture credits

The psychologist advised Gates not to challenge his parents’ decisions as he wouldn’t prove anything. At the same time, he advised Gates’ parents to give Gates more freedom and free will. Bill took the advice of the psychologist and gradually stopped questioning his parents’ decisions. Besides helping Bill’s parents, the psychologist’s advice helped Bill too, because, as he stopped questioning his parents, they became more supportive of his interest in programming too.

Interest in programming

First exposure to computer

Bill Gates’ first exposure to computers came when he was studying at the Lakeside School in Seattle. In those days, the computer was a very costly gadget. A moderate price for a computer at that time was $1 million. It was not something that many schools could afford. But fortunately for Bill, a local company had purchased a computer. The mothers’ club at his school purchased time slots to use the computer, much like we pay money to use a computer for an hour in an internet cafe. Thanks to them, Bill got the opportunity to use a computer for the very first time. The primitive machine caught his attention immediately, and he was enthralled by the possibilities it offered. He was just thirteen years at that time and was in eighth grade.

Bill Gates took an interest in programming the computer. So, he joined hands with Paul Gardner Allen, who was two years his senior but had similar interests as him. Together, they started skipping classes and working in the school’s computer room instead. Sometimes, the school was even supportive of Bill Gates, letting him skip Mathematics classes to pursue his interest.

A Picture of Paul Allen and Bill Gates (right) at Lakeside school in 1970 – By Bruce Burgess – Original: Ancestry.com (requires free registration)Higher quality: The Bruce Burgess Photo Archive, Public Domain, Link

The first computer program

Bill Gates wrote his first program on this computer, which enabled users to play Tic Tac Toe (X’s and 0’s) in a 3×3 grid against the computer. When the mothers’ club ran out of money, the school couldn’t afford any more time slots on the computer. So, Bill, Allen, and their friends started using the microcomputers in the Computer Center Corporation. They soon found out bugs in the system and started exploiting it to use their computers free of cost. When the company eventually found out, they offered to find bugs in the system in exchange for computer time. When the company agreed to their proposal, they went to the company’s office. There, they started learning programming languages like Fortran and machine language, in which the company’s source code was written. 

When he was fourteen years old, Bill and Allen wrote a computer program that computerized the school’s computer scheduling system. Since Allen was already in college, they wrote the program so that Bill was the only boy in a class of girls. Three years later, they wrote another program called Traf-O-Data that measured the traffic flow in Seattle. The program was highly in demand. So, they sold it to the local government and made $20,000. Now, Bill and Allen realized the vast untapped potential that programming had. So, they wanted to quit school and start a company.

Joins Harvard

Even though Bill and Allen wanted to start a company immediately, Bill’s parents did not let him do it. They wanted Bill to finish high school and go to college, hoping that he would become a lawyer. So, Bill sat for the SAT, a standardized test used for college admissions in the USA. Being the brilliant student he is, Bill scored 1590 out of 1600 in it and secured admission to Harvard.

So, in the fall of 1973, despite his love for programming, Bill entered Harvard as a pre-law major due to his father’s influence. In his own words, he was only there in body, but not in spirit. So, he spent the first few months playing poker and video games instead of attending classes.

However, all that changed two years later, when Allen showed Bill the January 1975 issue of a magazine called Popular Electronics. The magazine had featured a microcomputer called Altair 8800. It was the first commercially successful microcomputer. The personal computer that we use today were called microcomputers back then because they were so small compared to the common mainframe computers of that era. Upon seeing it, Bill and Allen sensed an opportunity to make money by programming. So they called MITS, the company that manufactured Altair 8800. They told its president that they had written a version of BASIC for Altair 8800.

Altair 8800 Computer – By Swtpc6800en:User:Swtpc6800 Michael Holley – Transfered from en.wikipedia, Public Domain, Link

BASIC

BASIC stands for Beginners’ All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code. It is a family of general-purpose, high-level programming languages designed in 1964. In the 1960s, computers were big mainframe machines that occupied an entire room. They overheated often, and hence, needed powerful air-conditioning systems to keep them from overheating. Computer operators gave instructions to these computers through punch cards. So, every new computer application required writing a new piece of software. Therefore, only mathematicians and scientists learned to code. But BASIC was more user friendly and easy to learn. This motivated computer hobbyists, even from fields other than science and mathematics, to learn to code. As a result, the scope of computers expanded rapidly. However, until 1975, BASIC was only used in big Mainframe computers and not in microcomputers. 

Creates BASIC for Altair 8800, a microcomputer

Therefore, when Allen and Bill told the president of MITS that they had written a version of BASIC for Altair 8800, they captured his interest. So, he told them that he would like to see it. However, Allen and Bill hadn’t actually written any code. They just wanted to see if the company would be interested in purchasing a version of BASIC for microcomputers.

So, when the president of MITS asked to see the code, they started working day and night to write the code. But they didn’t have an Altair 8800 to test their code on. Hence, they simulated it on other computers in Harvard’s computer lab.

Bill started working very hard to finish the code. Bill would code the entire day in Harvard’s computer lab, sleep at the computer, wake up the next day and pick up programming at the exact place where he left it off the previous day. For working several days like this, they developed a newer version of BASIC. However, they still did not know if it would work on Altair. But despite their doubts about their new software, Allen flew to Albuquerque in New Mexico to show it to MITS. To his surprise, when he tested it on an Altair 8800, the software worked perfectly. So, they sold it to MITS for $3000 while retaining its copyright. 

Microsoft

Founds Microsoft

Now, Allen and Bill knew that programming for microcomputers had a bright future. So, Allen persuaded Bill to drop out of college. Together, they moved to Albuquerque and established Microsoft in 1975. The name, which was the short form of Microcomputer software, initially had a hyphen between ‘Micro’ and ‘soft.’ But the hyphen was removed later.

MITS, the company Allen and Bill wrote code for, was soon acquired by a bigger company. But that did not stop Allen and Bill from writing software. They continued writing software for other start-ups like Apple, Tandy Corp, and Commodore. In 1979, they moved to Seattle. 

Creates MS-DOS

Soon, Microsoft started to become famous for its computer software. So, IBM, the largest computer maker at that time, came knocking on Microsoft’s doors. They wanted to know if Bill had an operating system that they could use for their first microcomputer, the IBM PC. An operating system acts as an interface between the user and the computer’s hardware. By managing both the hardware and the software, it lets the user communicate with the computer even if he/she doesn’t know the computer’s language.

When IBM asked Bill if he had an operating system for their microcomputer, Bill immediately answered that he had one. But the truth is, he didn’t have any functioning operating system. So, he quickly bought an operating system from another person in Seattle for $50,000. Then he developed it into MS-DOS (Disk Operating System) and sold it to IBM. Using DOS, users could navigate, open, and edit files on their computer through a command line instead of a Graphical User Interface like Windows.

Becomes a copyright guru

Microsoft, however, retained the right to license the software to other companies. After all, writing software costs time, effort, and money, and Bill Gates thought that people should pay to use the software.

Until then, customers either wrote their own software, or the software came preinstalled with the hardware. So, IBM thought people would only pay for the hardware and never pay for the software. Therefore, they didn’t have a problem with Microsoft selling MS-DOS to other companies. However, just like Bill had anticipated, other companies, like Compaq, also purchased MS-DOS. Like IBM, they decided that purchasing an existing Operating System like MS-DOS would be cheaper than creating their own Operating System. So, MS-DOS became the standard operating system for the computers of that era. As a result, Microsoft’s sales rose from $7.5 million in 1980 to $16 million in 1981.

Allen leaves Microsoft

Thus, by 1981, Microsoft had become a familiar name across the USA, if not the entire world. However, two years later, when the company was making huge profits, Allen, the man who played a vital role in Microsoft’s formation and success, left the company. But why would he leave the company when it was making so much profit, after all the things he had done to make it grow?

In 1982, Allen was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a type of uncommon cancer that develops in the lymphatic system. Thus, naturally, his productivity in the company reduced. But Bill got frustrated at his lack of productivity. So, Bill and his new lieutenant plotted to reduce Allen’s ownership stake in the company by issuing stock options to themselves and other shareholders. However, fortunately, Allen overheard them talk. So, disheartened, he left Microsoft a year later. 

After Allen left the company, Microsoft became a Multinational company, establishing offices in Great Britain and Japan. By 1983, almost 30% of all computers in the world were running its software. 

Bill Gates and Steve Jobs

In the late 1970s, when Microsoft was slowly rising to fame, Bill met Steve Jobs. Just like Bill, Steve was also a young man with high aspirations.

Just one year after Bill and Allen founded Microsoft, Steve and his friend Wozniak founded Apple. As Steve and Wozniak developed Apple computers, they wanted to offer a revolutionary graphical user interface for their users. To achieve their goal, they decided to create visual programs with which their customers could perform their daily business activities.

A signed portrait of Steve Jobs and Bill Gates

Creates Word and Excel for Apple

At that time, Microsoft was a major computer software maker. Therefore, in the early 1980s, Steve Jobs made a deal with Microsoft to create software for Apple. The deal was that Microsoft would make a visual program for organizing data and doing calculations (Excel), a visual program for typing and saving documents (Word), and a version of BASIC, the easy-to-use programming language, for the Apple Macintosh computer. 

After the deal was made, Bill went to Apple’s headquarters to demonstrate the software Microsoft had created. There, he saw Apple’s Operating system, which used a graphical user interface driven by a mouse and displayed text and images on the screen. On the other hand, Microsoft’s operating system DOS was driven by a keyboard and could only display text on the screen. Bill instantly realized that Apple’s graphical user interface would become more appealing to the end-users when compared to DOS.

A Bluff to retain customers

Bill was afraid that, once Apple’s Macintosh computers were released to the public, DOS would become obsolete, and Microsoft would lose its customers. So, Bill made advertisements claiming that Microsoft was developing an operating system that uses a similar graphical user interface as Apple. However, Microsoft did not have any such program. It was only a bluff. However, as a marketing tactic, it worked very well. It encouraged Microsoft’s customers to wait for a few months to get their hands on Microsoft’s new graphical user interface running on their IBM or Compaq computers, instead of purchasing a completely different computer like Apple’s Macintosh. Bill called this new operating system ‘Windows.’

When Steve Jobs heard about Windows, he was outraged. So, he called Bill to Apple’s headquarters and accused him of stealing Apple’s ideas. However, Steve Jobs himself came up with the idea of the Graphical User Interface after being inspired by Xerox. So, he told Steve Jobs, “Well, Steve, I think there’s more than one way of looking at it. I think it’s more like we both had this rich neighbor named Xerox and I broke into his house to steal the TV set and found out that you had already stolen it.” Steve Jobs even publicly said, “They just ripped us off completely, because Gates has no shame.” In reply, Bill said, “If he believes that, he really has entered into one of his own reality distortion fields.” Thus, the conflict between two great men started, and with it the competition between two huge companies.

Microsoft and Apple

In 1985, due to internal conflict, Steve Jobs left Apple. The man who took over the Mac division from Steve Jobs was Jean-Louis Gassée. Only one year earlier, Apple’s first Macintosh computer had gone on sale. Two-thirds of software sales for Mac at that time came from Microsoft’s software. So, Bill Gates recommended to Apple‘s CEO John Sculley that Apple should license its Macintosh operating system to other manufacturers.

By doing so, Apple could establish Macintosh’s operating system as the standard interface for personal computers, just like Microsoft had made DOS the standard operating system a few years before by licensing it to outside manufacturers. Thus, Apple would not just make money when someone bought its computer, but also when someone bought an IBM or Compaq computer with Macintosh’s operating system. Even though it would replace DOS as the standard operating system, Bill would still make a lot of profits from the sales of Microsoft’s software for Mac.

After a lot of consultation with his licensees, Apple’s CEO Sculley decided that such a move would benefit Apple too. However, when the proposal came to Gassée’s desk, he rejected it. He believed that Apple’s Macintosh Graphical User Interface should be exclusive to Apple’s computers. He reasoned that Macintosh was so superior to other computers that they would make huge profits just by selling them. They need not depend on software sales to keep Apple in the market because their hardware was the best. Moreover, he did not trust Bill. He thought that Bill might have a secret plan to sabotage them.

The marketing genius of Bill Gates

Since his proposal was rejected, Bill’s dreams to capitalize on Apple’s success failed. This meant that Macintosh’s operating system would only run on Apple computers. If an IBM or Compaq user wanted to experience Apple’s superior graphic interface, he/she would have to buy Apple’s computer. There was no other way out. But realizing this fact, Bill sensed a huge opportunity to become the leader in the market if he released an operating system with a graphical user interface that could become the standard operating system for all the computers in the future.

Windows 1.0 – Slow and Cumbersome

So, in 1985, nearly two years after Bill made the public announcement about Windows, Microsoft launched Windows 1.0. But contrary to Bill’s expectations, Windows wasn’t a huge success. When it was launched, Windows was pretty slow and cumbersome. Other operating systems in the market, besides Macintosh’s operating system, were far better than Windows 1.0. So, Windows 1.0 did not become popular among computer users. However, it led to a fight with Apple.

Windows 1.0 (Picture credits)

The conflict between Apple and Microsoft

When Sculley saw Windows, he got infuriated. Some of the elements in Windows resembled Apple. So, he threatened to sue Windows. But Bill had licensed the Graphical User Interface from Xerox. So, in return for Apple’s threat, Bill threatened to stop creating software, including Word and Excel, for Mac. However, Apple’s sales at that time were not that great. Even though they expected to sell 50,000 Macs/month, they sold only 20,000 Macs/month by the end of 1985. In addition to that, two-thirds of the software sales for Mac came from Microsoft’s software. So, breaking their partnership was not beneficial for either of them. Moreover, Windows was not even a big competitor to Mac’s Graphical User Interface because it wasn’t that great.

So, they came to an agreement. Microsoft agreed to continue creating software for Apple. They also agreed not to sell Excel to any other manufacturer for two years. In return, Apple agreed to license Macintosh’s visual displays to Microsoft for use in software derived from Windows 1.0. After the deal was made, Sculley restructured the company. Soon, Apple’s sales began to improve. In 1987, within two years after signing the deal, Apple’s net income doubled. So, Sculley came to be lauded by everyone for the advantageous deal and for turning Apple into a profitable company.

In 1986, one year after they signed the deal, Microsoft went public. The move was a brilliant strategy. It raised $61 million, and Bill became one of the richest people in the USA overnight.

Windows 2.0 – Huge Improvement, but looks similar to Macintosh’s GUI

Two years later, Microsoft launched Windows 2.0. Windows 2.0 was a huge improvement to Windows 1.0.

In Windows 1.0, users could open different applications at the same time. Each application would open in a separate window. But the interface was tiled, and there was no gap between different opened windows. Moreover, windows couldn’t overlap each other or be stacked on top of each other. So, if a user wanted to move a window, he had to move it to a place occupied by another window, much like playing a jigsaw puzzle or minimize it. Moreover, it required too much hardware resources, and hence, was too slow. It had primitive applications like a text editor, notepad, clock, and paint.

However, Windows 2.0 was far superior to Windows 1.0. In Windows 2.0, the interface wasn’t tiled anymore. There was a gap between different opened windows, and they could overlap each other. Resized windows could be moved across the screen. It was also faster. But more importantly, it had Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, and Aldus PageMaker, which helped create documents for print publications. Moreover, other companies also started producing applications compatible with Windows 2.0. One year later, Microsoft also bundled Microsoft Word and Microsoft Excel into a single suite called Microsoft Office. This made Windows 2.0 even more attractive.

Windows 2.0 (Picture credits)

But despite all its improvements, Windows 2.0 resembled Macintosh’s Graphical User Interface more than Windows 1.0. Sculley, Apple’s CEO, believed that the deal they had made gave Microsoft permission to use Macintosh’s visual displays only in Windows 1.x and not in its later versions. So, Apple filed a lawsuit against Microsoft.

The Lawsuit

The lawsuit could have potentially ended Microsoft’s future. Had the court ordered Microsoft to perform any changes, it could have made its products incompatible with many computers and made Windows undesirable to its customers. Moreover, it could have strained the business of many computer manufacturers who delivered Windows as the standard operating system. But luckily, the case, which scared Microsoft and its clients for five years, was decided in favor of Microsoft in 1993. The court declared that the license granted by Apple covered the use of graphical displays.

The Rude boss

But despite the success of the court case, Bill Gates was never complacent. He couldn’t be completely secure. So, he involved himself in all sides of software development, from product development to corporate strategy. While deciding any move that his company should make, he often analyzed all the possible scenarios of what could go wrong. Moreover, he expected his employees to be as skilled as him and have the same dedication to Microsoft. So, he often challenged them to find out how confident they were of their own ideas. If someone went unprepared to Bill, he might fire back at him/her telling that his/her idea was the stupidest thing he had ever heard. While it was a brilliant strategy to make his employees improve their skills and be confident of their own ideas, it also made Bill a person difficult to work with. 

Microsoft, the Bully

While Bill was gaining a reputation as a rude boss within his company, outside the company, he came to be known as a ruthless competitor who would do anything to make Microsoft win over its competition. To understand how Microsoft became a ruthless competitor, we should look at how Microsoft bullied Netscape. 

Netscape and its internet browser

Just like Microsoft and Apple revolutionized the computer market by creating Graphical User Interface, Netscape is a company that revolutionized internet browsing. In 1993, the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at the University of Illinois developed Mosaic, the user-friendly internet browser. It was a simple graphical browser with a point-and-click interface. It enabled users to upload documents and create hyperlinks to other documents. By following these links, one could travel around the online world and access a document at the other end of the world. It could run on Apple computers, as well as computers running on Windows and Unix. Moreover, it was free for non-commercial use. So, it made the internet easily accessible to normal people and led to the internet boom of the 1990s.

Inspired by Mosaic’s success, Marc Andreessen, the man who spearheaded its development, left NCSA and, along with James H. Clark, founded his own company called Mosaic Communications Corp. The company was eventually renamed Netscape communications corporation. In 1994, Netscape released Navigator, its new internet browser with extended functionalities. It had several improvements over Mosaic. It also gave its users the option to use the software freely before purchasing it. Moreover, it had a plug-in interface, allowing independent developers to create modules to extend its functionalities. This pushed it in the direction of an ‘open-source’ browser. As a result, Netscape Navigator quickly became people’s favorite browser. Within one year of its launch, almost eight million people downloaded it. Consequently, Netscape became one of the leading software makers in the world.

Microsoft destroys Netscape

Netscape’s rise to prominence in the software market threatened Microsoft. Moreover, Netscape’s open-source approach led people to believe that it may even replace Operating Systems like DOS and Windows in the future. So, in 1995, Microsoft launched an urgent campaign to enter the internet market. It licensed the Mosaic browser code that Andreessen and his colleagues in the NCSA had written. Then it modified it and released it as internet explorer.

Microsoft offered internet explorer free of cost, even for commercial purposes. However, it wasn’t as good as Navigator. So, it pressurized computer makers and Internet Service Providers to offer internet explorer instead of Navigator to their customers. Sometimes, it even forced computer makers to offer internet explorer as a condition to sell them Windows licenses, even if it meant that Microsoft would lose millions of dollars. And starting from 1996, it started to integrate Internet Explorer into Windows 95 directly. If a user tried to uninstall internet explorer and install another browser like Navigator, the computer could even slow down.

In January 1996, 80% of all browser users used Navigator. But Microsoft’s campaign had a devastating effect on Netscape as its share in the browser business dropped. By November 1997, its share had dropped to 55%. During the same time, Internet Explorer’s share in the browser business rose from 5% to 36%. Finally, in 1998, unable to cope with the pressure from Microsoft and its other competitors, Netscape made Navigator free. It even made its source code available to developers. Eventually, Netscape was acquired by another big company, and its source code was used by independent developers to create Firefox.

Microsoft faces trial

But Microsoft’s bullying did not end with Netscape. During its launch of Windows 95 and even afterward, Microsoft pressurized many small companies to kill their products and tried to take over their innovation. Even big companies like IBM, Apple, and Intel were not spared.

Thus, Microsoft allegedly created a monopoly by suppressing its competitors. But it did not go unnoticed by the Federal Trade Commission. So, throughout the 1990s, Microsoft faced a string of investigations from the Justice Department. At one point, the company even faced a possible breakup. However, Bill claimed that whatever he did had made the services cheaper for his customers. Moreover, he created advertisements and made public appearances that attracted the public’s sympathy. Eventually, Microsoft was able to make a settlement with the federal government and avoid a breakup.

Bill Gates becomes the richest person in the world

By the late 1990s, Microsoft had a solid line of products like Windows, Office, and Internet Explorer. Moreover, thanks to the monopoly it had created, Microsoft was able to dominate the software market. So, throughout the 1990s, Microsoft’s shares continued to soar. As a result, Bill Gates, who owned a lot of these shares, became extremely rich. So, in 1995, when he was just 39 years old, Bill Gates became the richest person in the world. His net worth at that time was $12.9 billion.

When Microsoft launched Windows, Bill Gates envisioned a world where every house owned a computer, and that computer ran on Windows. In 1999, he came close to realizing the latter part of his dream. By 1999, almost 90% of the world’s desktop computers were running on Windows. That year, Microsoft made $19.7 billion in sales, and Gates’ net worth increased to $90 billion.

Microsoft’s employees become filthy rich

But Bill Gates is not the only one who profited from Microsoft’s success. In the 1980s and 1990s, many employees accepted Microsoft’s stocks as a part of the payment for their 60-hour workweeks. So, by 1996, when Microsoft’s stocks increased more than a hundredfold within ten years, they became rich too.

According to Richard S. Conway Jr., an economist from Seattle whom Microsoft hired to study the impact it had on Washington State, there could have been 10,000 millionaires and three billionaires among Microsoft employees by the year 2000. These figures only increased one year later, when Microsoft launched the original Xbox gaming system and entered the gaming industry.

Bill Gates stops working full-time at Microsoft

After making Microsoft a global leader in software creation, in 2000, Bill Gates stepped down from his position of CEO. His Harvard friend Steve Ballmer succeeded him as Microsoft’s CEO. Bill Gates then took the role of a chief software architect and worked in Microsoft until 2008. In 2008, he quit his full-time job at Microsoft but retained the position as the board chairman. In 2014, he stepped down from that position too but retained the position as a board member. After that, he started working as a technology advisor. 

Even though Bill Gates might have earned a reputation as a rude boss and a fierce competitor, there is another side to him as well. He is also one of the biggest philanthropists of the twenty-first century. Bill Gates and his wife, Melinda Gates, have contributed a lot of money for charitable causes. 

Charity

Bill Gates and Melinda Gates

In 1987, 23-year-old Melinda Ann French joined Microsoft as a product manager. Three weeks after joining, she went to New York for work. There, at a dinner event, she met 32-year-old Bill Gates, who sat next to her. After dinner, Bill asked her to go dancing with him and his friends. However, she had already made plans with her friends. So, she turned him down.

After a few months, they met at Microsoft’s parking lot. Bill struck up a conversation with her and asked her to go on a date with him after two weeks. However, his tendency to plan everything far ahead of time turned her off since she didn’t even know what she would be doing after two weeks. So, she turned him down once again, citing that he wasn’t spontaneous enough for her. So, trying to be spontaneous, Bill called her after one hour and asked her for a date again. This time, she agreed. It was one of the many dates they would go on, before starting a relationship.

A year into their relationship, both of them found out that they love each other. So, Melinda wanted to get married to him. But Bill wasn’t ready to commit yet. Moreover, he didn’t know if he could run a family and a business at the same time. So, he made a list of pros and cons of marrying Melinda and eventually ended up marrying her in 1994, when he found that the pros outweighed the cons. Bill and Melinda Gates have three children.

A picture of Bill and Melinda Gates in 2009 – By Kjetil Ree – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, Link

Bill Gates starts contributing to charity

In 1994, the couple, along with Bill Gates’ father, established the William H. Gates Foundation. The goal of the charity was to promote global health and improve the Pacific Northwest community. Two years later, their first child, a daughter, was born. So, Melinda resigned from Microsoft to spend time with her daughter and focus on charity. One year later, in 1997, they founded the Gates Library Foundation. The charity donated computer hardware and software to public libraries to help them get access to the internet so that low-income communities in North America can access the internet. Eventually, it was named the Gates Learning Foundation.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation

In 2000, these two charities were merged, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation was established. Its priorities were to improve global health, global education, and aid global development. In 2006, Warren Buffet pledged his company Berkshire Hathaway’s stock worth $3 billion to the foundation.

Bill Gates and Warren Buffet

In 2008, Bill Gates quit his full-time job at Microsoft as a chief software architect to focus on the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. As of 2019, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is the largest non-profit organization in the world, with assets worth $50.7 billion. Every year, it donates $1 billion for important causes.

Today, the foundation focuses on eradicating hunger and poverty. It funds researches that try to produce rice enriched with nutrients. It provides grants to organizations that research issues which affect developing countries, like sanitation, hygiene, water problems, etc. The Bill and Melinda Gates foundation fights to reduce death rates and inequalities in health in developing countries by focusing on improving nutrition; maternal, newborn, and child health; vaccine delivery, and emergency response for diseases that cause widespread death in developing countries. The charity funds projects that research on improving health and medical facilities in developing countries. It works with governments to raise public awareness of its work and advocates tobacco control to people. It strives to reduce homelessness in families. The foundation has also funded the tuition fees of 20,000 college students and installed 47,000 computers in 11,000 libraries across the USA.

Facts you probably didn’t know:

1. Even though Bill Gates and Microsoft have become synonymous today, the company wouldn’t be what it is today if not for Paul Allen. It was Allen who wrote most of Microsoft’s first program. According to veterans, he also played a very big role in Microsoft’s big successes – DOS, Windows, and Word. Even the company’s name, Microsoft, was actually Allen’s idea.
2. By the year 2007, Bill Gates and his wife Melinda Gates became the second-most generous philanthropists in America.
3. In 2007, Bill and Melinda planned to donate 95% of their wealth to charity eventually. Ten years later, they announced that they would leave $10 million to each of their three children and give the remaining 99.96% of their wealth to charity.
4. Forbes named Bill Gates the fourth most powerful person in the world in 2012.
5. Bill Gates’ parents were often involved in philanthropy and community work. His mother, Mary, is a firm believer of the idea that “To whom much is given, much is expected.” She instilled this belief in her children. His parents’ upbringing played a big role in Bill Gates’ philanthropic works today.
6. Bill Gates is color blind.
7. He never completed his Harvard degree. But he has been conferred many honorary degrees.
8. Bill Gates had held the Forbes’ title of the richest person in the world for 19 years between 1995 and 2017.

Bill Gates predicts the occurrence of a global pandemic

Speaking at a TED talk in 2015 during the Ebola outbreak, Bill Gates predicted that the next event that would cause millions of deaths would not be a nuclear war but a global pandemic. Since we have invested a lot in the research of nuclear weapons and how to stop them, a nuclear war might not kill millions of people. However, after analyzing the way the world dealt with Ebola, he realized that we don’t have a proper system to counter a pandemic. He also explained that we were lucky that Ebola couldn’t spread by air, and by the time it became contagious, people were already bedridden. So, it didn’t spread rapidly. However, if a virus could spread through the air, like the Spanish Flu of 1918, we wouldn’t be able to respond to it. So, he warned that the world is not prepared for the next pandemic. Watch the TED Talk here.

Why was Bill Gates successful?

Bill Gates had never divulged his IQ. But the fact that he scored 1590 out of 1600 in the SAT exam in 1973 means that he has an IQ of roughly 151.45. He scored 99.38% in that exam. Thus, he is extremely smart. On one side, he is a geek and a very good programmer. But on the other side, unlike his other Silicon valley counterparts, he is also a hard-core, high risk-taking businessman driven by future foresight of the market. This combination made it possible for him to see what his competitors could not. At a time where everyone was focusing on selling software, Bill Gates was focusing on setting standards. These standards he set, first using MS-DOS and later using Windows, improved the computer industry while enabling him to dominate the market and destroy his competition. This made Bill Gates extremely successful.

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