Category: Biography

In this biography of Bruce Lee, find out everything about Bruce Lee – His ethnicity, his reason for going to the USA, his controversial match with Wong Jack Man, and finally, how he became famous. 

When he participated in the International Karate Championships in Long Beach in 1964, Bruce Lee did not think it would change his life. But the championship gave him a chance to meet William Dozier, who introduced Bruce Lee to the American audience. In the next few years, Bruce Lee would go on to star in several films, thanks to the television series produced by William Dozier. Simultaneously, he would train his body rigorously and develop his own martial arts style. His martial arts would soon become hugely popular and immortalize him as a legendary martial artist. 

How did passion and perseverance make an ordinary man such as Bruce Lee immortal? Read this biography of Bruce Lee to find out. 

Early life

Ancestors

Mozes Hartog Bosman, Bruce Lee’s great grandfather, was born in Rotterdam in the Netherlands in 1839. Bosman’s father was a Jewish butcher. But Bosman did not want to become a butcher like his father since he loved adventure. Therefore, he joined the Dutch East India Company when he was a teenager and traveled to Hong Kong. 

In Hong Kong, Bosman slowly rose up the ranks, eventually becoming Netherland’s Ambassador to Hong Kong in 1866. Thus, in his early life, Bosman was extremely successful. But in the latter part of his life, he went bankrupt while trying to make money by exploiting Chinese workers. So, he married the daughter of a wealthy man and moved to England. 

When he was in Hong Kong, Bosman had a Chinese concubine, with whom he had six children. His children would later grow up and become some of the wealthiest people in Hong Kong. Too bad Bosman didn’t stay in Hong Kong to witness that.

Ho Kom-tong

Among all his children, the one who looked the most Chinese was his son Ho Kom-tong. This gave rise to rumors that Ho Kom-tong was not born to Bosman, but to another Chinese man with whom Bosman’s wife had an affair. However, these rumors have not been proved. Moreover, children born to parents from two different races tend to look completely different from one another. So, we have to assume that Bosman is indeed the biological father of Ho Kom-tong. 

Ho Kom-tong himself fathered many children. After all, Ho Kom-tong had 13 concubines and a British mistress, despite having a wife. His 30th child was a girl named Grace Ho, who was born to his English mistress. 

Ho Kom Tong (Seated right), with his brothers – By Unknown author – Eric Hotung, Public Domain, Link

Parents

When she was 18 years old, Grace Ho fell in love with Lee Hoi Chuen, a Chinese opera singer and film actor in Hong Kong. So, she eloped with him, much to the dismay of her family. Grace and Lee had five children and, their first child, a girl, was adopted. Since Lee was an actor, he did several gigs in the USA. So, he traveled to the USA with his wife. 

Birth

On November 27th, 1940, during one such travel, their fourth child was born in San Fransisco. This is the child that would later revolutionize the world by the name of Bruce Lee. Ironically, the name Bruce was not given to him by his parents or his relatives. It was given by a nurse in the hospital where he was born. His parents named him Jun Fan. 

Bruce Lee with his parents, 1940 – By Unknown author – 搜房网电影人生, Public Domain, Link

Experiencing Racial discrimination

Jun Fan was born in the USA and has had US citizenship since birth. But he looked Chinese. Ironically, he was not completely Chinese either, since his great maternal grandfather was a Dutch Jew. Due to this mixed ethnicity, he would become a victim of racial discrimination throughout his life, both in China and the USA. 

Childhood

Jun Fan came from an affluent family. His father was an Opera star, an actor, and also made money by renting out properties. Jun Fan himself had acted in a few films. His first film was the Golden Gate Girl, in which the two-month-old Jun Fan appeared as a newborn girl. His next film was at the age of six when he started doing supporting roles as a child actor. Bruce Lee’s first lead role was at the age of nine for a movie called ‘The Kid.’ By the time he was 18, he had already acted in 20 films, none of which were Kung Fu flicks.

Bruce Lee in ‘The Kid’ – By Elephantine Film Co. – Historical photo of Hong Kong, Public Domain, Link

Joining a street gang

But all the fame and money did not save Jun Fan from being bullied. At that time, Hong Kong was an island ruled by the British. Its streets were filled with refugees who fled communist China. Even though these refugees came to Hong Kong to lead respectable lives, some of them joined gangs that carried out organized crimes. So, due to their presence, the streets of Hong Kong became unsafe.

Jun Fan himself was often bullied by the English boys in the neighborhood. Therefore, when he was 12 years old, Jun Fan joined a street gang called the ‘Junction Street Eight Tigers’ to protect himself from bullying. He and his gang often carried chains and pens with knives hidden in them. Yet, Jun Fan preferred to use fists rather than weapons, just to show his gang that he was better than them. 

Jun Fan become Bruce Lee

Since Jun Fan was from an affluent family, he joined high school at La Salle College, a prestigious Roman Catholic school. Since the medium of teaching was English, Jun Fan started using his English name, Bruce. Thus, when he was 12 years old, Lee Jun Fan became Bruce Lee. 

Initially, when he joined the gang, Bruce Lee only wanted to protect himself from being bullied. But soon, he became a punk who went around looking for fights. His gang would often pick fights with British schoolboys in Hong Kong, who, according to them, were overly privileged. 

Learning Wing Chun

Desire to learn martial arts

Even though his gang was always there to protect him, at times, Bruce Lee wondered what would happen to him if he got into a fight when his gang was not around. As fate would have it, he found the answer to that question soon enough. Just before he turned 13 years old, Bruce Lee got into a fight with an older student. This student, who knew martial arts, beat Bruce Lee thoroughly, making him feel helpless.

After the fight, Bruce Lee, who didn’t want to feel so helpless again, decided to learn martial arts. So, one of his gang members introduced him to Yip Man, the master of the Wing Chun style Kung fu. 

Yip Man

Yip Man only taught advanced students personally, not beginners. So, initially, Bruce Lee was taught by Wong Shun-Leung at Yip Man’s martial arts school. The Chinese normally don’t teach their martial arts techniques to non-Asians. So, a year after Bruce Lee started training at the school, his fellow students refused to train with him because of his mixed ethnicity. But Bruce Lee showed keen interest in learning Wing Chun. So, Yip Man himself started training Bruce Lee personally. 

Bruce Lee and Yip Man – Picture credits

Wing Chun is a form of martial arts that focuses on speed and accuracy instead of strength. Bruce Lee learned Wing Chun for a total of five years and became very proficient in it. But Wing Chun is not the only thing Yip Man taught Bruce Lee. He also taught him the concepts of Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism. While Buddhism emphasizes leading a simple life, Taoism emphasizes living in harmony with nature. Confucianism, on the other hand, emphasizes the importance of morals and personal values.

Winning boxing and dancing championships

Due to the training from Yip Man, Bruce Lee’s martial arts skills improved tremendously. As a result, in 1958, Bruce Lee won the Hong Kong schools boxing tournament. But that’s not the only championship he won that year. He also won Hong Kong’s Crown Colony Cha-Cha Championship the same year. Cha-Cha is a Cuban dance that is practiced internationally. Thus, by the time he turned 18, Bruce Lee was a meticulous martial artist, an excellent dancer, and an accomplished actor. 

Bruce Lee’s aggression changes his life

Even though Bruce Lee was becoming a talented young man, his aggression was getting out of control. Despite Yip Man’s teachings of harmony and self-control, the teenage Bruce Lee’s aggression and love for fighting had not decreased. Moreover, his academic performance was getting worse too. So, he was transferred from La Salle College, a reputed private school, to a strict school. But even that did not stop him from being aggressive. On the contrary, his street fights became even more frequent. In one such fight in 1959, Bruce Lee beat up the wrong person, which completely changed his life.

Planning to go to the USA

When he was 19 years old, Bruce Lee ran into an opponent with an organized crime background. Even though the opponent was no match for him and Bruce Lee won easily, the opponent’s family became furious and started searching for him. Even a skilled martial artist like Bruce Lee wouldn’t stand a chance against a powerful criminal organization. So, fearing for their son’s life, Bruce Lee’s parents asked him to go to the USA. 

Hong Kong was a familiar place for Bruce Lee, and he had many friends there. Moreover, he was the boxing and dancing champion. So, he was sure that he could build a better future if he stayed in Hong Kong. The USA, on the contrary, will be a completely new place. He had no friends there and would have to build his life from the beginning. So, Bruce Lee was initially reluctant to go to the USA. But ultimately, he gave up due to the pressure from his parents and agreed to go to the USA. He decided to become a dance master in America and make a living by teaching people Cha-Cha. So, in April 1959, with just $100 in his pocket, Bruce Lee boarded a steamship and set sail to San Fransisco, where his sister and family friends were.

Bruce Lee dancing Cha Cha – Image credits

En route to the USA

On the steamship, Bruce Lee’s ticket only gave him passage to the lower deck. But people soon heard that he was the Cha-Cha champion of Hong Kong. Therefore, the ship’s crew upgraded him to First class so that he could teach their first-class passengers Cha-Cha. 

The USA

San Fransisco

After landing in San Fransisco, Bruce Lee stayed there only for a short period. During this time, he worked as a dance master teaching Cha-Cha. 

Seattle

After a few months, he moved to Seattle to work as a waiter in the restaurant owned by Ruby Chow. Ruby Chow’s husband was a friend of Bruce Lee’s father. So, she gave him a job and living quarters. 

Teaching martial arts to friends

By this time, Bruce Lee had already abandoned his passions for acting and dancing. Instead, he decided to finish his high school education, which he had abruptly ended in Hong Kong. So, he enrolled himself at the Edison Technical School. The same year, Bruce Lee also started teaching martial arts to his friends. He named his style of martial arts Jun Fan Gung Fu, which meant Bruce Lee’s Kung Fu. Even though it was called Jun Fan Gung Fu, he was actually teaching his own approach to Wing Chun. 

College

One year later, Bruce Lee finished high school. Then, in 1961, he enrolled at the University of Washington and studied drama and philosophy. Even though Bruce Lee’s official major was drama, he was more interested in philosophy. During his time at the college, he wrote several essays linking martial arts techniques and philosophical principles. 

Bruce Lee’s first Kung Fu school

While he was studying at the university, some of Bruce Lee’s friends, whom he taught Kung Fu, encouraged him to open a real Kung fu school and start charging minimal fees to support himself while studying. So, Bruce Lee opened the Lee Jun Fan Gung Fu Institute in Seattle in 1962. By 1963, his school was big enough that he could support himself only by teaching Kung Fu. So, he gave up working at the restaurant and doing other odd jobs. 

Bruce Lee gets married

One of his students in 1963 was Linda Emery, a freshman at the university. Linda had seen Bruce earlier, when he had delivered guest lectures on Chinese philosophy, at her school. So, after joining the university, at the insistence of her Chinese friend, she started taking Bruce Lee’s Kung Fu lessons. Very soon, Bruce and Linda started dating, and in 1964, they got married. 

Bruce Lee becomes a full-time Kung Fu teacher

After three years of college, Bruce Lee decided to become a full-time Kung Fu teacher. So, in 1964, he dropped out of college and moved to Oakland with his wife. He left his first Kung Fu school in Seattle in the hands of his assistant and opened the second one in Oakland along with another Chinese martial artist called James Yimm Lee. After all, Oakland and the nearby San Fransisco had many martial artists, and Bruce Lee was eager to work with like-minded individuals and expand his school.

The two important events 

This biography of Bruce Lee would be incomplete without mentioning the two events that changed his life. 

In 1964, after Bruce Lee moved to Oakland, two important events would occur, which would change his life forever. The first event, the controversial fight with another martial artist, would prompt him to improve his martial arts techniques. The second event, the Long Beach International Karate Championships, would make him famous.

The controversial fight 

San Fransisco’s Chinatown

A Chinatown is a place outside China, Hong Kong, or Taiwan with a large concentration of Chinese people. San Fransisco has a Chinatown too. Before Bruce Lee came to San Fransisco, there were two major martial arts schools in Chinatown there. Each of these schools was headed by a revered master for more than two decades. Both these schools prohibited students from fighting on the streets. This was in stark contrast to the Hong Kong of the 1950s, where students from opposing martial arts schools often fought on the streets. So, Bruce Lee considered these schools in Chinatown ineffective and weak because their techniques were never tested in streetfights. 

The brush with Chinatown

In 1959, immediately after he arrived at San Fransisco, Bruce Lee tried to prove to one of these Chinatown masters that his style was superior. Obviously, Bruce Lee’s comments were not taken lightly. A few months later, Bruce Lee moved to Seattle. But even after he moved to Seattle, he was very vocal about the inefficiency of the traditional Kung Fu styles. 

An example of this can be found in the only book he wrote, ‘Chinese Gung Fu: The Philosophical Art of Self-Defence.’ This book, which Bruce Lee published in 1963, has a section called ‘Difference in Gung Fu Styles.’ In this section, Bruce Lee dismantles the techniques illustrated by one of these Chinatown masters in his earlier book. Then, he demonstrates how his style is superior to the slower, half-cultivated styles of that master. 

Bruce Lee’s book, which was sold for $5 in Chinatown, led to disdain among Bruce Lee and other Chinatown masters. They considered him ‘a dissident with bad manners,’ and he considered them ‘old tigers with no teeth.’

Public demonstrations belittling Chinatown masters

In 1964, Bruce Lee moved to Oakland, which was very near to San Fransisco. By this time, his contempt for traditional styles had increased, and he had become even more vocal about it. He started giving public demonstrations, explaining why his style was superior and would work in a streetfight. Then, he would methodically explain why other traditional styles wouldn’t work in a streetfight. 

Once, during such a demonstration at the Sun Sing Theater in the heart of San Francisco’s Chinatown, Bruce delivered a one-inch punch to a spectator. But instead of being knocked back, the spectator stood still. Even though Bruce Lee knocked the spectator back with a second one-inch punch, the spectator claimed that he wasn’t prepared for a second punch. So, the crowd started laughing and booing at Bruce Lee. This annoyed Bruce Lee, who invited anyone on to the stage, who thought he was better than him. He then announced that he was the best man on the stage and in San Fransisco and would welcome anyone who thinks otherwise for a duel.

Wong Jack Man

In 1963, around the time when when Bruce Lee’s book was published, another martial artist named Wong Jack Man showed up in Chinatown. Unlike Bruce’s Wing Chun, which specialized in short-range combat, Wong’s style focused on acrobatic long-range attacks. 

The controversial fight

As Wong was slowly becoming famous in Chinatown, in 1964, due to unknown reasons, he fought against Bruce. This fight between two 23-year old martial artists from Hong Kong happened in closed quarters with only a handful of witnesses. Therefore, there are two versions as to what caused the fight and what happened in it. 

Bruce Lee’s side of the story

According to Bruce and his wife Linda’s version, Chinatown was not happy when their school started attracting many non-Chinese students. So, they asked him to stop teaching non-Chinese students. When he refused to comply, they sent Wong Jack Man to fight against Bruce Lee. They said that if he won, he could teach anyone he wanted, but if he lost, he had to shut his school down. Bruce Lee commented that the paper given to him had the names of popular Chinatown masters, but he wasn’t afraid. So, the fight, which was a no-rules-barred match, where anyone could hit anywhere, began. 

According to Linda, there were thirteen people in the room. According to her, the fight lasted only three minutes, during which time Bruce completely dominated Wong. The fight ended when Wong started running, and Bruce pounced on him and pinned him to the ground. Wong was already beaten badly and was completely demoralized. So, he surrendered immediately when Bruce Lee pinned him to the ground.

Bruce Lee later revealed in an interview that even though he had won the fight against an unnamed opponent, he was disappointed that he couldn’t end the fight sooner and that his hands hurt from hitting his opponent’s head repeatedly as he ran. Moreover, according to Linda, Bruce Lee also ended up tired at the end of the fight. This proved to him that Wing Chun wasn’t as effective as he thought it was. He also realized that Wing Chun had very few kicking techniques. So, Bruce Lee decided to improve his techniques. Therefore, he abandoned his Wing Chun Style, which took several years to learn, and created his own style.

Wong Jack Man’s side of the story

According to Wong Jack Man, he invited Bruce to a fight only because of Bruce’s open declaration that no one in San Fransisco could beat him. Bruce insisted on fighting in a closed room and keeping the results secret. So, they fought inside a closed room. According to Wong, there were just seven people. 

Wong had expected the fight to be serious but sportsmanly. So, he tried to set up some safety rules for the fight. However, Bruce intended it to be a no-rules-barred fight. Moreover, when Wong attempted to shake hands with Bruce, Bruce aimed to hit Wong’s eyes. Thereafter, Bruce repeatedly used attacks aimed at Wong’s eyes, throat, and groin.

Wong was left to defend himself because it was obvious to him that Bruce was trying to kill him. Yet, Wong refrained from using his signature deadly kicks, which were his strongest weapons, because he was afraid to go to prison if he ended up killing Bruce. For the same reason, he also refrained from delivering a decisive blow, even though he had Bruce’s head locked under his left arm three times. On the contrary, Bruce came back at him more ferociously every time Wong released the headlock. According to Wong, the fight lasted for 20-25 mins and ended when finally Bruce became exhausted. 

Accounts from eyewitnesses

Bruce’s version had two witnesses, his wife and his friend James Lee, who had brought a gun, in case the fight got out of hand. Wong’s version, too, had a witness, even though nobody saw him locking Bruce Lee’s head under his left arm. 

Facts supporting Bruce Lee’s version of the story

The biggest piece of evidence supporting Bruce’s version is that Wong said the fight lasted for 20-25 mins. Despite both of them being Kung Fu masters in their own right, who might have had extraordinary stamina, a fight lasting for 20-25 mins seems too far fetched to be true. 

Facts supporting Wong’s version of the story

The biggest piece of evidence supporting Wong’s version was the fact that a mutual friend saw Wong working at a Cafe the very next day. The only change he could see was a scratch above one eye, which Wong claimed was inflicted during the handshake. If Bruce had indeed beaten up Wong so badly, how could he go to work the very next day?

Three weeks later, Bruce gave an interview claiming that he had beaten an unnamed challenger. In return, Wong published his own version of the fight in a Chinese newspaper and invited Bruce for a public rematch, if he wasn’t satisfied with Wong’s account of the fight. However, Bruce, who always responded to provocations, never responded.

Moreover, some people claim that Bruce Lee also tried to learn Kung Fu from Wong’s master but was rejected. Why would he try to learn a style of martial arts, which he himself deemed was unworthy?

According to Linda, the premise for the fight was that the Chinatown masters were against Bruce Lee teaching non-Chinese students. However, no proof supporting Linda’s accusations were found. Moreover, these 2 Chinatown masters, whom she accused, already had a handful of non-Chinese students, and Wong himself was not against teaching non-Chinese students.

According to Bruce Lee, the fight against a worthy opponent didn’t go as he had planned. Moreover, the victory was clumsy and not quick enough. But are these reasons strong enough for him to abandon his fighting style and put his body through strenuous training for the next ten years to develop his own style?

The ultimate result – The birth of Jeet Kune Do

Thus, each side has its own arguments, and one side may appear more convincing than the other. Yet, it is impossible to know what exactly happened that day. But one thing is obvious. Whatever happened behind those closed doors prompted Bruce Lee to abandon Wing Chun. It compelled him to learn other martial arts and eventually create his own martial art called Jeet Kune Do. 

Bruce Lee wanted Jeet Kune Do to be practical, quick, flexible, and efficient. So, he integrated weight training, running, stretching, and boxing techniques into it. 

Long Beach International Karate Championships

After Bruce Lee came to Oakland in 1964, James Lee introduced him to an American martial artist, who invited Bruce Lee to Long Beach International Karate Championships. In the championship, Bruce Lee demonstrated his two-finger push-ups and one-inch punch and dueled other martial artists. 

William Dozier

Bruce Lee’s techniques impressed many people in the audience. One of those people he impressed was a hairstylist, whose customers were famous movie stars. A few nights after watching the match, the hairstylist told his customer, a film-producer called William Dozier, about Bruce Lee’s spectacular demonstrations. So, William Dozier obtained a copy of the video made during the demonstration. After watching the video, he invited Bruce Lee to act in a television series. 

Bruce Lee’s first American television series

Bruce Lee had given up acting and dancing five years ago to focus on teaching Kung Fu. But in 1964, he came to a dilemma. He had already set up two schools. He wanted to set up more schools. But he was afraid that if he set up too many schools, he won’t be able to control the quality of teaching.

So, when William Dozier offered him a chance to appear in front of the camera, Bruce Lee took it. He decided to focus on acting and see if it would turn into a productive career. After all, if it turned into a successful career, he could showcase his talent to the entire world.

Publicity photo for The Green Hornet – – eBay itemphoto frontphoto back, Public Domain, Link

Thus, in 1966, Bruce Lee’s acting career in America began. His first television series was never aired. But his second television series, ‘The Green Hornet,’ in which Bruce Lee played Hero’s assistant, was an instant hit. It was the first popular American show that showcased Asian-style martial arts.

Difficult times

Children

For the next few years, acting opportunities were scarce for Bruce Lee. But his family was getting bigger. His son Brandon was born in 1965, and in 1969 his daughter Shannon was born. So, between 1967 and 1971, Bruce Lee tried to procure acting opportunities. Meanwhile, he gave private Jeet Kune Do classes to wealthy people from the entertainment industry to support his family. 

A severe injury

After his controversial fight with Wong Jack Man, Bruce Lee had committed himself to healthy nutrition and intense training. However, it would eventually come to bite him in the back. One fine morning in 1970, Bruce Lee lifted a 57kg barbell without a warmup and injured his back. His injury was so severe that he was told he would never be able to do Kung Fu again. However, defying everyone’s beliefs, after staying in bed for six months, Bruce Lee created his own recovery program, gradually built up his strength, and started practicing martial arts once again. 

Bruce Lee becomes a successful actor

Until now, Bruce Lee was only getting supporting roles in movies. He couldn’t get any major roles. So, in 1970, after recovering from his back injury, Bruce Lee traveled to Hong Kong. 

Upon landing in Hong Kong, Bruce Lee realized that his show ‘The Green Hornet’ was a big hit there. People in Hong Kong hailed him as a big hero. This made him believe that he could become a successful actor there. So, when the Hong Kong production company Golden Harvest tried to sign him up for two movies, he agreed. 

Films

The first film, The Big Boss, was released in 1971. It was the highest-grossing Hong Kong film. Made with a tight budget of $100,000, it grossed $50 million worldwide, 500 times its original investment. The next film, Fists of Fury, released in 1972, was an even bigger hit. Made with a tight budget of $100,000, it grossed $100 million worldwide. 

Now that Bruce Lee had become a very successful actor, he created his own production company called Concord productions, in partnership with Raymond Chow. The next film, Way of the Dragon, which Bruce Lee produced, directed, wrote and starred in, was an even bigger hit. It made $130 million worldwide, almost 1000 times its original investment. 

His final movie

In 1972, Bruce Lee started filming for Game of Death. While he was filming for the movie, Warner Bros gave Bruce Lee an offer to star in the movie Enter the Dragon. Since it was the first Kung Fu film produced by a Hollywood studio, and also since the budget, $850,000, was too high for a movie of that genre, Bruce Lee accepted the offer. 

Death

This film was also a big hit, which grossed more than $350 million worldwide. But even though the film broke many records, Bruce Lee did not live to see it. Just one month before the movie was released, on July 20th, 1973, Bruce Lee was found dead.

How did Bruce Lee die?

Two months earlier, Bruce Lee had suddenly collapsed while filming the movie Enter the Dragon. When taken to the hospital, Bruce Lee suffered from headaches and seizures. Doctors diagnosed his condition as Cerebral Edema, in which the excess fluid in the brain leads to swelling and pain. The doctors treated him immediately, and Bruce Lee returned to his normal life soon after. 

On July 20th, 1973, after meeting the producer Raymond Chow, Bruce Lee went to the house of his mistress and Taiwanese actress Betty Ting Pei. After spending several hours with her alone, he complained of a headache. So, Betty gave Bruce a common painkiller containing aspirin. Even after a few hours, Bruce Lee did not come down. So, Betty went up to check on Bruce. Upon finding him unresponsive, she called producer Chow, who couldn’t wake him up either. So, they sent for a doctor. When even the doctor couldn’t wake him up from his unconscious state, they sent him to a hospital in an ambulance. By the time Bruce Lee reached the hospital, he was dead. 

After his death, many conspiracy theories have popped up regarding the cause of his death. However, the real reason for his death was an allergic reaction caused by the painkiller. The painkiller caused a buildup of fluid in Bruce Lee’s brain, increasing its size by 13%. As a result, Bruce Lee fell into a coma and died. 

Did Bruce Lee really die because of an operation?

Bruce Lee thought that sweaty armpits looked bad on screen. So, several months before his death, Bruce Lee had surgery to remove sweat glands from his armpits. Then, on May 10th, 1973, he fainted on the hot sets of the film ‘Enter the Dragon’ when the air conditioning was switched off. Even though he was diagnosed with cerebral Edema, it might have been caused due to heatstroke, which kills athletic young men in the USA. Moreover, the risk of having a heatstroke increases if the person had had it before.

On the day of his death, Bruce Lee was excited and extremely active while acting. After a few hours, he felt extremely thirsty and slightly dizzy before getting a headache. So, even though he died because of Cerebral Edema, it was probably caused because of the heat. The probability that Bruce Lee died due to heatstroke only increases due to the fact that the day of his death also happens to be the hottest day of July that year in Hong Kong. So, the operation to remove his sweat glands in his armpits reduced his body’s ability to dissipate heat and might have ultimately killed him.

Facts you probably didn’t know

1. Jackie Chan worked as a stuntman on Bruce Lee’s films Enter the Dragon and Fist of Fury. He would often act injured just to speak to Bruce Lee. 
2. Bruce Lee often took multiple takes while filming because the cameras back then couldn’t capture his lightning-fast attacks. Many times, his opponents wouldn’t even have time to react. The early shots of the television series Green Hornet were refilmed several times because Bruce Lee’s attacks were so fast that it appeared like his opponents fell down while Bruce Lee did nothing. 
3. The Bruce Lee Foundation, founded by his daughter Shannon Lee, gives scholarships and martial arts training to youth in California.
4. Bruce Lee faced discrimination due to his mixed ethnicity. So, when he opened a martial arts school, he provided training to people from all races and genders. 
5. Even though Bruce Lee’s attacks were extremely fast, his eyesight was terrible. He suffered from nearsightedness. So, he became one of the first people to wear contact lenses. But he later stopped it because it was uncomfortable.
6. Bruce Lee admired Muhammad Ali and wanted to fight him. He even adopted some moves of Muhammad Ali into his own martial arts style. 
7. Bruce Lee might have been one of the strongest men on land. But at sea, he couldn’t even swim. 
8. He charged $275 an hour in the 1960s for private lessons. 
9. A few years after his death, the Golden Harvest production company released Bruce Lee’s last film, ‘The Game of Death.’ Bruce Lee had only filmed 40 minutes of the film before his death. So, it was unfinished when he died. Therefore, Golden Harvest used other actors, scenes from his other films, and even footage from Bruce Lee’s funeral to finish the movie. 
10. Bruce Lee is considered the father of Mixed Martial Arts (MMA).

What can you learn from the biography of Bruce Lee?

We hope that this biography of Bruce Lee helped you learn more about Bruce Lee. Bruce Lee died at the early age of 32. But what he achieved within his lifetime is not easy to contemplate. Even though he came from an affluent family, his rise from a bullied boy to a world-renowned martial artist and actor was due to his own efforts. His accomplishments exposed Chinese martial arts to the entire world. Even after his death, Bruce Lee continues to motivate thousands of people to learn martial arts. So, whenever everything goes against you, and you feel like giving up, read this biography of Bruce Lee. More importantly, remember what Bruce Lee said: 

“Do not pray for an easy life. Pray for the strength to endure a difficult one.” (Source)

If you liked this biography of Bruce Lee, you might like the following biographies as well:

1. The biography of Sylvester Stallone
2. Biography of Charlie Chaplin
3. Biography of Marilyn Monroe

This blog post is a biography of Henry Ford. Henry Ford is an American businessman, innovator, industrialist, and philanthropist. His revolutionary models and innovative methods of production made automobiles accessible to middle-class Americans.Today, Henry Ford’s name is known throughout the world for his innovations and contribution to the US economy. But like most Americans those days, he was born to a farmer and raised on a farm.

Henry Ford

How did a boy who grew up on a farm become a man the entire world revered? Read this biography of Henry Ford to find out.

Early life

Parents

William Ford, Henry Ford’s father, was born in Ireland. His father, John Ford, immigrated to the USA in the 1800s. During their initial years in the USA, his family was not financially stable. So, making enough money to sustain himself was difficult for William. Therefore, he started working on a neighboring farm, where he met Mary Litogot. 

Mary’s parents, immigrants from Belgium, had died when she was a kid. So, she was taken care of by her neighbors, for whom William worked. Since William worked on the same farm where Mary was growing up, they had ample opportunity to meet. Eventually, they fell in love with each other and got married in 1861.

Meanwhile, William’s father rented some land and converted it into a thriving farm. William liked farming and wanted to follow in his father’s footsteps. So, he worked very hard. As a result, by 1858, he became wealthy enough to buy his own share of land. Three years later, he even built a big house on the land he had purchased.

Birth

Two years after William built the house, on July 30th, 1863, Mary gave birth to their first child. They named him Henry. Even though four children were born after Henry, Mary always remained more attached to her first son Henry. Henry, too, loved his mother a lot and always looked forward to spending time with her.

Education

As is often the case with children, Henry Ford’s initial education came from his immediate family. His mother taught him to read, while his grandfather taught him the names of birds, animals, flowers, and trees in the forest. After the bout of this initial education, Ford started school at the age of seven. He studied in a one-room schoolhouse from the first grade to the eighth grade. 

Experiments as a kid

Ford’s curiosity

Since childhood, Ford was always curious and wanted to find out how and why things work. But he did not want to learn these from books. Instead, he wanted to find them out by conducting experiments. 

Steam engine

As a small boy, Ford became fascinated by the power of steam. So, when he was ten years old, he conducted a small experiment to find out how it worked. He took an earthen pot, filled it with water, tied the lid, and started heating it. After a few minutes, due to the pressure generated by the steam, the pot exploded, spilling hot water on him. Learning from his mistake, Ford then built a controlled steam engine using a baking powder can and a watch wheel. Since it was successful, Ford decided to build something better. So, he gathered his classmates and built a bigger steam engine. However, this time, his experiment failed, and the steam engine exploded, burning down the school fence.

The Pocket watch

When he was 12 years old, his father gifted him a pocket watch. Ford got immediately attracted to it. Thrilled by its mechanism, Ford wanted to see what was inside it. So, he created tools using farm machinery and immediately took the watch apart. Then he reassembled it and made it work, a feat most other children of his age wouldn’t be capable of. This experiment helped Ford understand the mechanism behind the watch and how gears and springs work together. Within a few days, his workbench was filled with watches from friends and family, which he repaired in return for a small amount of money.

William and Mary had five children. Like all the other children in their neighborhood, they hoped that their children too would take up farm work after them. But Ford was different. He despised the laborious farm work. Instead, he liked experimenting with machines and understanding the mechanism behind them. He wanted to build machines, which could make farm life easier. Fortunately for Ford, his parents never came in the way of his love for machines. Instead, they even allotted space for him in the kitchen, where he could conduct his experiments. 

Becoming an engineer

The Two important events

The year 1876 was an important year in the life of Henry Ford. This is the year when he decided to become an engineer. His decision was catalyzed by two important events. 

In July 1876, a man called Fred Reden brought a portable steam engine to Dearborn, where Ford lived. Until then, Ford had only seen horse-drawn carriages, which are a slow mode of transportation. So, when he saw this portable steam engine, he was thrilled. Fred even let Ford fire and run the engine. The thrill and joy it gave made little Ford believe that he was meant to be an engineer. The same year, when he saw another portable steam engine on the road while riding a horse-drawn carriage with his father, he immediately jumped off his wagon and started exploring it. After this incident, building a horseless, self-propelled vehicle that could replace horse-drawn carriages became his dream. Years later, he would realize this dream, impacting the entire world in the process.

The second event that made him decide to become an engineer was his mother’s death. Ford was closely attached to his mother. He never liked working on the farm. Yet, he worked there because he liked spending time with his mother. He never had any particular love for the farm—it was the mother on the farm he loved. So, when she died in 1876, his world was devastated. He couldn’t stand to be on the farm anymore. So, three years later, he left home and walked nine miles to the neighboring city of Detroit. 

Learning about steam engines

He found work in Detroit at the Michigan Car Company Works, which built streetcars. But his father, who understood his son’s love for machines, wanted him to have a better life. So, he arranged for him to stay with an aunt in Detroit and even found a job for him as an apprentice machinist. 

Since Detroit was a famous industrial city at that time, the rents were high. So, Ford worked two jobs – as a machinist during the day and as a watch mechanic in a jewelry shop at night. He earned $4.5, which was enough to pay his rent. But despite leading a difficult life, Ford loved his job. So, he worked very hard, learning everything about machines, steam engines, and heavy industry. 

Ford returns home

Becoming an expert on steam engines

After working for three years in Detroit, in 1882, Ford decided to return home. He took this decision neither due to the love for his family nor due to the burden of working two jobs for a prolonged time, but due to the desire to operate the portable steam engine, which his neighbor had recently purchased.

The portable steam engine was an agricultural invention at that time. These steam engines were pulled to the farm by horses and used to power other machines, like sawmills, which cut wood, and threshers, which separate the seeds from the stalk. In short, it made farmers’ lives easier.

Ford’s neighbor didn’t know anything about steam engines, even though he had purchased one. So, he was looking for someone to operate and maintain it. Therefore, Ford, who was now an expert on steam machines, returned home and started maintaining it. However, his neighbor wasn’t the only one who had a portable steam engine. Several other farmers in the locality owned such steam engines. So, since Ford was the steam engine expert in the locality, they paid him to repair their steam engines. Eventually, he was even hired by the Westinghouse company, which manufactured these steam engines. 

Marriage

Meanwhile, Ford fell in love with Clara Jane Bryant, who grew up on a nearby farm. Ford’s father offered him 80 acres of land as a gift for their marriage. He hoped that Ford would stop obsessing about machines and take up farming instead. But Ford had no intention of becoming a farmer. At the same time, he did not want to work for someone else either. He wanted to work on his own. So, he cut and sold the timber in the land his father gifted him. He then built a house and a machine shop in that land while farming now and then. Additionally, Ford also repaired the steam engines of farmers near him while going to Westinghouse occasionally to service their steam engines. He also studied bookkeeping at a college in Detroit. Thus, Ford started on the journey to becoming an entrepreneur.

Ford’s obsession

Meanwhile, Ford’s obsession with building a horseless, self-powered vehicle continued. So, he started making a steam wagon since his expertise was in steam engines. However, to his dismay, he soon found out that a steam-based road vehicle was not practically feasible. After all, to move a small wagon, Ford needed a big engine. In turn, a big engine needed a big wagon to hold it and a lot of fuel to operate. Moreover, there was also the risk of explosion due to overheating. So, he decided to move on and find an alternative to steam. 

Henry Ford, aged 25, in 1888 – Public Domain, Link

In those days, gasoline was a relatively new fuel. Only a few people in Europe and the USA were working on building a gasoline-powered vehicle. So, Ford, who thought that gasoline might be a better fuel than steam, started working on a gasoline-powered four-wheeled vehicle. However, working in a workshop on a farm, he couldn’t get the sophisticated parts needed to build it. So, he decided to move to a city where he could get better access to technology.

Ford builds his first gasoline vehicle

Edison Illuminating Company

In 1892, Ford got a job at Edison Illuminating Company in Detroit. While the city provided him access to modern technology, the job provided him an opportunity to learn electrical engineering. So, even though he had to leave his comfortable life behind, Ford took the job. 

Initially, when he started working as a night operating engineer at Edison Illuminating Company, his salary was $40/month. But Ford was highly skilled and extremely hard working. So, he was promoted frequently. Thus, in a few months, he took charge of the maintenance of steam engines for a salary of $75/month. In four years, he became the Chief Engineer of the Edison Illuminating company.

Even though Ford was having such a successful career at the Edison Illuminating Company, he was not satisfied. His dream was to build a self-propelled vehicle. So, after working long hours at the company, he came home and started working on the gasoline vehicle. After spending several sleepless nights, he built the first gasoline engine in December 1893. The engine ran only for over a minute. But it proved to Ford the power of gasoline as a fuel. 

In the November 1895 issue of American Machinist magazine, Ford read the report of a wooden vehicle. Built by another engineer from Detroit, Charles King, it could travel at a maximum speed of 8 km/hour. Reading this report, Ford became hopeful. So, motivated by the initial success of building a gasoline engine, he started experimenting more. Finally, six years after he started working on the gasoline vehicle, Ford built his first gasoline vehicle in 1896.

The Quadricycle

The Quadricycle had a two-cylinder, four-horsepower motor with an 11-liter gas tank. It had a steering wheel, a clutch, four bicycle wheels, a seating capacity of two people, and no brakes. The Quadricycle was built in a shed in Ford’s house secretly with the help of his friends. Therefore, only when Ford and his friend attempted to get the vehicle out of the shed through the door did they notice it was too wide. So, Ford took an axe, smashed the stone wall of the shed, and took the Quadricycle outside. 

At around 04:00 am on June 4th, 1896, Ford shifted it into gear, and the Quadricycle sprung to life. With his friend cycling ahead to warn passengers on the road, Ford drove the vehicle down the street. The vehicle was very loud and reached a maximum speed of 32 km/hour. Despite a small breakdown, the Quadricycle was a success. It was a remarkable accomplishment. It was way better than the wooden vehicle that Charles King had built. Until now, Henry Ford was considered a lunatic due to the hammering and tinkering sounds he caused at night. But as the news of the Quadricycle spread, he became an overnight sensation in Detroit. The Quadricycle changed Henry Ford’s life, who would later become one of the biggest innovators in the automobile industry.

The Ford Motor Company

Edison encourages Ford

The same year, Henry Ford’s boss invited him to the meeting of the Edison Illuminating company’s executives. At this meeting, Ford told Edison about his gasoline vehicle. Edison wanted to build electric vehicles. Even so, after listening to Ford, Edison thought that Ford’s design had a huge future. So, he told Ford that he was going in the right direction and that he should keep improving his design. Edison’s encouragement served as a huge boost to Ford’s morale. It made him think that he should get into the business of manufacturing gasoline vehicles. But there was one big obstacle in his way – He did not have sufficient money. 

Henry Ford was a nobody before he built the Quadricycle. But the Quadricycle changed everything. It made even the most prominent people in Detroit respect Ford and look at him as a genius. One of these prominent people was the Mayor of Detroit. The Mayor came to Ford’s aid when he needed the capital to start an automobile business. He arranged for Ford to meet with many influential people in the city. In July 1899, Ford took one of those influential people, a wealthy lumber merchant from Detroit called William H. Murphy, on a ride on the second gasoline vehicle he had built in 1898. After the 96.5 km ride that lasted for 3 hours and 30 minutes, Ford gained his first financial backer. 

The Detroit Automobile Company

One month later, with the funds from Murphy and his friends, the Detroit Automobile Company was set up. Soon, Ford resigned from the Edison Illuminating Company and joined the Detroit Automobile Company as its superintendent. His salary was $150/month.

In the 1890s, automobile manufacturing was in its initial stages. Therefore, due to the cost of manufacturing, automobiles only served as luxurious toys for rich people. But Henry Ford grew up on a farm. He knew how difficult transportation was for farmers and middle-class workers. So, he wanted to build cheap automobiles of the highest quality to change people’s lives. But to build cheap reliable cars, he needed to experiment a lot, which needed a lot of time.

However, time was one luxury his investors couldn’t afford. After all, the automobile business was quickly becoming competitive. In 1899, when the Detroit Automobile Company was founded, it was one of the first car manufacturing companies in Detroit. However, within two years, a hundred more were founded. Therefore, the shareholders of the Detroit Automobile Company pushed Ford to give them quick results. So, even though Ford was the brain of the company, and until now, he had only built vehicles without a deadline, he was forced to build cars in the shortest time possible, compromising on quality. 

The Detroit Automobile Company shuts down

The first car that their company built looked more like a horse-drawn wagon. It ran only for a few minutes before stopping. Therefore, as expected, it failed in the market. 

It was now obvious to the company’s investors that manufacturing cheap and reliable cars would be time-consuming and difficult. It would take several experiments to build a cheaper car, which would cost them both time and money. So, they decided to build a reliable luxury car for the wealthy, which could make huge profits even when sold in small numbers. However, their decision went against Ford’s motto of building cheap automobiles to transform people’s lives. So, to buy time, Ford decided to fool his investors by making his workers build car parts for cars he was never going to build. Meanwhile, he started experimenting, trying to rectify the design and mechanical problems, so that he could build a better, cheaper automobile the next time. Finally, his investors realized what Ford was doing and shut the company down in 1901.

Building a racing car

After the company shut down, Ford wanted to make his name known in the automobile sector. Then, he could start a new company and make all the crucial decisions. So, since automobile racing was a sport that was becoming increasingly popular, he decided to build a racing car. By mid-1901, funded once again by Murphy, Ford built a 2-cylinder lightweight racing car. 

In October 1901, Ford’s 26-horsepower car raced against a 40-horsepower car in a 16 km race. Interest in the race was unprecedented. Many shops shut down, and hundreds, if not thousands of people turned up to watch the race. Ford, who had little experience as a driver, was competing against the most popular driver in America. A defeat was imminent. But Ford had unshakable faith in his engine. 

The race began. For the first 33% of the race, Ford lagged behind. However, his opponent’s car overheated soon, and Ford edged past him. Thereafter, his opponent could never overtake him. Finally, when he finished the race, Ford was ahead of his opponent by almost one and a half kilometers. This success, which nobody expected, made Ford hugely popular. He quickly became a hero to the people and a legend to the racing community. 

The Cadillac Automobile Company

Due to this success and newfound motivation, the stockholders of the Detroit Automobile company founded another company. This company, founded just one month after the race, was named the Henry Ford Company. Even though the company planned to build lightweight commercial vehicles, Ford was still hellbent on building race cars. So, the company hired another reputed mechanical engineer as the consultant. Annoyed, Ford left the company. After Ford’s exit, the Henry Ford Company became the Cadillac Automobile Company.

Immediately after exiting the company, Ford started building two racing cars. One of these cars, an 80-horsepower car called ‘999,’ won the Manufacturers’ Challenge Cup, held in October 1902. It had a maximum speed of 147 km/hour. 

Due to this victory, Ford’s popularity surged further. After the race, Alexander Y. Malcomson, a coal dealer from Detroit with whom Ford had been in touch, agreed to support Ford financially. 

The Ford & Malcomson Company

In November 1902, one month after the race, the Ford & Malcomson Company, Ltd was established. To generate revenue, the company issued 15,000 shares at $10 each. But since the company was new, Ford and Malcomson couldn’t get people to buy these shares. So the company got into a financial deadlock when their suppliers demanded money for the car parts they delivered. Moreover, the company had to pay salaries to seven workers, despite not having sold any cars yet. Thus, immediately after it was founded, the company fell into a financial crisis. 

To save them from this financial crisis, Malcomson turned to his friends and family for help. Malcomson had some wealthy friends and relatives. Among them, Malcomson’s uncle, secretary, and lawyers believed that their company would become a profitable enterprise. So, they decided to help Malcomson by purchasing shares from the company. At the same time, Malcomson and Ford were able to convince their suppliers to become their shareholders. Thus, Malcomson had saved the company, for the time being, bringing in an investment of $28,000. But the company was still not out of trouble, because they haven’t sold any cars yet. 

The Ford & Malcomson Company becomes the Ford Motor Company

On June 15th, 1903, at Malcomson’s insistence, the company was renamed the ‘Ford Motor Company.’ But despite bringing in new stockholders and renaming the company, the company’s financial condition was still in shambles. By July 11th, the company had used up all of its investments, and its cash balance was down to $223.65. However, the light at the end of the tunnel was not far away. Four days later, the company sold its first car to a doctor in Chicago. After Ford’s 40th birthday, which was on July 30th, 1903, the company’s financial situation started to improve further. In the three months that followed, the Ford Motor Company sold 195 vehicles, generating $142,481.72 in income and $36,957 in profit.

The car that changed everything

Fordmobile

By 1904, the Ford Motor Company had established itself as a successful automobile manufacturer, producing 1700 cars/year. Its competitor at that time was Oldsmobile, the biggest automobile manufacturer in the USA, which was producing more than 3000 cars/year. To compete with Oldsmobile, the Ford Motor Company purchased land and built its second production plant.

The first car that the Ford Motor Company launched was called Fordmobile, also called Ford Model A. It seated two people and had a reliable eight horsepower engine. Even though it was a remarkable achievement, it was prone to overheating and other problems, typical to cars of that era. But despite its pitfalls, people loved it and paid $700 to purchase it. 

Model T

Even though the Ford Motor Company’s reputation and sales were increasing, Henry Ford was not satisfied. He wanted to improve Model A. So, in the following years, Henry Ford launched a new model every few months. Slowly, he worked his way through the English alphabet, releasing models from A to S. In October 1908, Ford released model T. The Model T had a 22-horsepower, four-cylinder engine. It had a maximum speed of 64 km/hour, didn’t break down a lot, and was highly durable. It was relatively cheap at $825, and no other car under $2000 from any manufacturer could offer more. So, people from many walks of life could afford it. Therefore, even doctors, salesmen, and farmers, who never dreamed of purchasing a car, ended up buying Model T. After all, now, they could go whenever and wherever they wanted to go.

Henry Ford had found gold, and he wanted to keep it. So, for the next few years, he tried to reduce the manufacturing costs by focusing on building only Model T. He built a system of interchangeable parts, thus reducing waste, assembly time, and the training time of new employees. As a result, the price of Model T went down further. 

Improving productivity

Ford was still not satisfied. Now, he had reached a point where he could sell all that he could make. But he wanted to go to a point where he could make all that he could sell. And the way to do that was to produce more cars. So, in December 1913, Ford introduced an assembly line for assembling cars. 

Ford divided the assembly of Model T’s into 84 small tasks. Instead of teaching every worker the entire assembly of a vehicle, he now trained each worker to do just one of these tasks. Cars were then placed on conveyor belts and moved across the factory through different workstations. In each workstation, the workers performed the same task in each car. Since these small tasks were easy, his workers learned fast and performed individual tasks faster. 

The moving production line was being used in the meat processing industry for a long time. Ford took the concept and implemented it in the automobile industry. By doing so, he was able to bring down the construction time of one Model T car from 12 hours and eight minutes to 1 hour and 33 minutes. Consequently, the sales price of Model T went down from $825 in 1908 to $360 in 1916. As a result, the sales of Model T’s rose steadily, and by 1922, half the cars in America were Model T’s. 

The downside

Henry Ford had now achieved something nobody else could. But, it came at a cost. In the Ford Motor Company, employees worked two nine-hour shifts every day. Working nine hours a day, six days a week is no ordinary feat. In addition to that, each worker stood at the same place, doing the same tasks again and again, for months. Therefore, for the workers of the Ford Motor Company, the work became monotonous and depressing.

As a result, retaining employees became a very big problem for Ford. In 1913, to keep a workforce of 14,000 men, the company had to hire 52,000 people. Simply put, the company had to hire four employees for every position, hoping that one of them would stay for more than a few months. 

Solving the problem of employee abandonment

To solve this crisis, Ford came up with an ingenious solution. On January 12th, 1914, the company reduced the workload from nine hours a day to eight hours a day. Moreover, the company also increased the basic pay from $2.34 a day to $5.00 a day. Thus, Ford decided to give away a lot of his profits to his employees. This move startled both his business partners and competitors, who predicted imminent doom for the Ford Motor Company. However, Ford proved everyone wrong the next day, when 10,000 men showed up at his company, looking for a job, eventually improving employee retention and increasing production. 

Since Ford reduced the working hours from nine hours a day to eight hours a day, his company shifted from two nine-hour shifts to three eight-hour shifts, enabling him to produce more cars. The increased salary meant that he could retain his workers longer, and many of them would now be able to purchase his cars. On one side, Ford was losing money due to increased salaries. But on the other side, he was also making money due to an increase in sales and a reduction in training costs. 

The national hero

By now, Ford has become not only an engineer, innovator, and businessman, but also a national hero. His $5 a day salary made headlines in national as well as international newspapers. But Ford was an idealist who expected people to live according to his rules. So, this publicity only boosted his ego. 

Ford’s tendency to control

Controlling his employees

Most of the Ford Motor Company’s workers came from southern and eastern Europe. However, their supervisors were mostly American. This created a language barrier between the workers. So, Ford took it upon himself to educate and Americanize these people. He created schools where his workers learned English as well as how to live a civilized life. These schools taught them everything, from brushing their teeth to saving money to buy a house. 

Besides these mandatory courses that took six months, workers were also subjected to regular inspections. Inspectors from the Ford Motor Company’s sociology department visited employees’ houses to ensure that they met the company’s standards. These inspectors analyzed everything from the workers’ drinking problems to how clean they kept their houses. Those who failed the inspections twice were fired from the company. It was an outrageous intrusion of privacy. Yet, Ford considered himself a national hero and thought it was his duty to teach his workers how to live.

Jeopardizing company’s growth

Ford’s ego not only made him meddle with his employees’ private lives but also affected his company’s growth. During the 1910s, Ford was convinced that Model T was the car people wanted. So, he had stopped building new cars. He ignored the fact that the popularity of more expensive and stylish cars like Chevrolet was rising. He paid no heed to his only son and his executives, who suggested that a new model was long overdue.

Once, when Ford was in Europe, his engineers built a prototype for a new Model. However, when Ford noticed the prototype, he became furious. He then went on to demolish the car by hand, starting by ripping the doors off the car. Thus, he showed his employees not only who was in charge of the company but also how big his ego has become. By now, one thing was evident – The curious engineer in him, who tinkered with car parts and toiled through the night to build a better Model, had died. In his place stood a businessman who loved to be in control and play the role of the national hero.

By the time Ford realized that his son and executives were correct, it was too late. In the late 1920s, even Ford couldn’t ignore the decline in sales of the Ford Motor Company. Other companies were slowly starting to catch up.

The end of Model T

In 1922, the Ford Motor Company acquired the Lincoln Motor Company, which was founded by Cadillac’s founder. The Lincoln Motor Company focussed on making high-end cars. Sometime later, the Ford Motor Company established the Mercury division. It produced cars to serve the mid-price automobile market, between the Lincoln and the Ford brands. However, despite being equipped to serve all markets now, Henry Ford’s interest still lied in the low-end market. On the other hand, General Motors started releasing cars for every market at all prices. So, in the mid-1920s, General Motors started rising rapidly as the USA’s leading automobile manufacturer. Finally, in 1927, Henry Ford realized that model-T’s days were over. So, after selling 15 million Model T’s in 19 years, Ford shut down the assembly lines of Model T.

Model A

After closing down the assembly lines of Model T, the Ford Motor Company launched its next Model. Since it had been such a long time since they released a new model, they went back to the beginning of the alphabet once again and named it Model A. Model A had a four-cylinder, 40-horsepower engine, and reached a maximum speed of 104 km/hour. Even though it cost $500, it was competitive in the market because it was more economical in the long run. In the next five years, the Ford Motor Company sold more than 4.3 million Model A’s.

In 1932, the Ford Motor Company launched Ford V8, the first inexpensive 8-cylinder engine. For the next 20 years, these engines were used in many vehicles all over the world. 

Henry Ford tried hard to keep his Company in the lead. But despite Henry Ford’s best efforts, the fall of the Ford Motor Company couldn’t be stopped. By 1936, it fell to third place in the US automobile market, behind General Motors and Chrysler Corporation. Even though the Ford Motor Company remained one of the Big Three (the three biggest important car manufacturers) in the USA for the rest of the twentieth century, it could never return to the glorious days of Model-T.

Problems in the Workplace

But the problems the Ford Motor Company faced were not limited just to the marketplace. There were also problems in the workplace. Henry Ford had always hated labor unions. He believed that labor unions headed by bad leaders could hurt workers more than benefit them. 

The first attempt to create a labor union in the Ford Motor Company occurred in 1913. Workers became agitated because Ford used the profits from the sales of Model T’s to fund his personal projects, instead of sharing it with his employees. Therefore, they wanted to create a labor union that would represent them. But Ford was able to ward it off by increasing his employees’ salaries and reducing their working hours. 

UAW

In 1913, the Ford Motor Company was the leader in the automobile market. So, Ford was able to take alternate measures when his workers demanded a labor union. In 1937, however, the scenario was very different. Due to the Great Depression, Ford had to reduce the salaries of his employees and even layoff many of them.

Moreover, an organization called the UAW (United Auto Workers of America) had recently succeeded in establishing labor unions in two of the Big Three companies – General Motors and Chrysler Corporation. The Ford Motor Company was the only Big Three company that was still holding out against the UAW. The UAW was promising to fight for an eight-dollar, 6-hour workday. In exchange, it asked the workers to support them. It was appealing to Ford workers, who had a six-dollar, 8-hour workday. Therefore, Ford’s employees felt the need for a labor union much stronger than ever before. 

On May 26th, 1937, henchmen of Henry Ford attacked UAW organizers who tried to distribute leaflets to Ford’s employees. Several of these attacks were captured on camera and appeared in newspapers the next day. As a result, Henry Ford’s reputation nosedived across the entire world, and he came under pressure from the US government. However, unyielding, Ford threatened to shut down his factories. When it appeared that a full-scale war between Ford and his employees was inevitable, in 1941, under pressure from his wife, Ford suddenly gave up and signed a contract with UAW. If his wife had not intervened at the last minute, Ford’s ego would have led to so many deaths. It could have also destroyed the Ford Motor Company, which he tried so hard to create.

Effect on his son

By now, it should be obvious how Henry Ford’s beliefs, stubbornness, and tendency to control people affected his workers and his company’s growth. But it did not stop there. Ford’s beliefs and his tendency to control people also affected his only son Edsel Ford. 

Edsel shared his father’s interest in cars. Every day, after school, instead of going home, he would go to his father’s factory and help out. While Henry was interested in the mechanical aspect of cars, Edsel was interested in its design. In December 1918, when he was just 25 years old, Edsel took up the presidency of the Ford Motor Company, which was a huge responsibility. Both Henry and Edsel shared a mutual respect for each other. However, there were also times when they didn’t see eye to eye. 

Ford’s guilt

Henry wanted his son to be a carbon copy of himself.

Henry grew up on a farm and worked his way up gradually. But Edsel did not have to do that. Even though he shared his father’s love for cars and took up the presidency of the company in 1918 when he was just 25 years old, he did not have to work his way up the ranks, as his father did.

Even after Henry became famous, he did not become friends with the high-class society. He was still a farmer’s son, who loved to work on his own farm and repair machines. Henry woke up early, exercised every day, and never drank. He believed that his discipline was the secret of his success and expected his son to follow in his footsteps. Edsel, on the other hand, was not as disciplined as his father. He hung out with rich people and drank often.

This caused disagreements between the father and the son. There were times when these disagreements blew up, and Henry humiliated Edsel publicly.

Expecting Edsel to rise to Henry’s idealistic standards was unfair, and even Henry’s associates noticed that. Maybe Henry himself was aware of that as well. Therefore, when his son died in 1943 due to terminal stomach cancer, Henry was devastated due to sorrow and guilt. He believed that his unfair treatment of Edsel had caused his death. 

Henry Ford dies

After his son’s death, Henry Ford was never the same. Even though he took up the presidency of his company after his son’s death, he wasn’t mentally capable of holding that post. After all, a series of strokes in the 1930s had affected his mental ability. It was only worsened by his son’s death. So, just two years after he took up the presidency, he handed it over to his grandson. Then, he retired to his estate in Dearborn, where he died in 1947, aged 83.

Facts you probably didn’t know

1. In 1926, Ford introduced the five-day, 40-hour workweek concept. But he did not do it out of charity. Ford was, first and foremost, a businessman. He knew that if he gave his workers two days of recreation, they would spend more time traveling and shopping. Thus, a car would become necessary for many people, and this would lead to more sales. Moreover, giving them two days of recreation would also make them more productive at work. So, he introduced the five-day workweek in his company. 
2. Throughout his life, Henry Ford was a strong advocate of peace. He hated wars. So, when World War II began in 1939, he tried to keep the USA from entering the war. But when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, the Ford Motor Company started making jeeps, tanks, and airplanes for the USA. 
3. Henry Ford was America’s second billionaire. The first billionaire was John D Rockefeller.
4. Ford purchased a weekly newspaper called ‘The Dearborn Independent‘ in 1918. Ford published articles regularly from 1919 to 1927 in the newspaper. Under Ford’s publication, the newspaper reached a readership of 900,000 in 1925.
5. Henry Ford had always been anti-semitic, a hater of Jews. He published articles in his newspaper condemning Jews, which were read by many people around the world. 
6. Henry Ford’s Model T was similar to the Volkswagen of Germany. Volkswagen was also meant to be an automobile for everyone, not just the rich. The term Volkswagen literally translates to ‘People’s car.’ Hitler and Ford also shared the same opinion about Jews – that they were responsible for all the evil in the world. Moreover, Ford was a famous American who advocated anti-semitism. Ford was a huge blow to people who thought that Antisemitism could not exist in a democratic nation like the USA. In addition to that, Hitler also liked Ford’s writing. So, Adolf Hitler had great admiration for Henry Ford. Therefore, in 1938, the Nazi regime awarded Ford the ‘Grand Cross of the German Eagle,‘ the highest honor Hitler could give to any foreigner.

The Grand Cross of the German Eagle – By Service_Cross_of_the_German_Eagle.JPG: Robert Lawton derivative work: PawełMM (talk) – Service_Cross_of_the_German_Eagle.JPG, CC BY-SA 2.5, Link

Conclusion

What can we learn from the biography of Henry Ford?

We hope that this biography of Henry Ford helped you understand how Henry Ford became a world-renowned innovator and businessman. Henry Ford’s journey is an extraordinary one. Even though he was born to a farmer, he gave up his comfort zone, worked hard, and rose through the ranks to become one of the most influential men in the USA. He might have made some bad decisions in the latter part of his life. But the changes he brought upon this world are hard to ignore. It is thanks to Henry Ford that cars became affordable to middle-class people. The increase in the number of cars created other businesses like gas stations, which employ a lot of people. Moreover, it also helped hotels and restaurants to flourish, thereby improving the economy as a whole.

Henry Ford proves that we can achieve what we dream of if we are committed to seeing it through to the end. Ironically, sticking to your dream, even when failure seems imminent, can eventually lead you to success. Remember what Henry Ford said:

Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goals. (Source)

If you liked this biography of Henry Ford, you might like the following biographies as well:

1. Biography of Vincent Van Gogh
2. Biography of Che Guevara
3. The success story of JK Rowling

This blog post is the biography of Che Guevara. It goes into detail on Che Guevara’s ancestry, his birth, how and why he became a revolutionary, his achievements, his death, and how he was immortalized after his death.

On October 8th, 1967, Bolivian forces, backed by the CIA, captured Che Guevara, who had become a famous revolutionary by then. One day later, a Bolivian Sergeant executed him by shooting him to death. They hoped to end his life before he became a symbol of hope for those fighting against the clutches of Capitalism. However, by executing him, they made him into what they didn’t want him to become – a symbol of hope for revolutionaries worldwide. Even 50 years after his death, millions of people wear t-shirts with his photo on them. Even today, he is a symbol of hope for people fighting against oppressive governments. 

So, where did it all begin? How did Che Guevara become a bigger-than-life figure? Read the biography of Che Guevara and retrace his journey to martyrdom that made him a legendary hero.

Birth

The Lynches

The Lynches are a family with a long history. They are one of the 14 tribes which settled in Western Ireland in the thirteenth century. But soon, they grew strong enough to control Western Ireland for the next 600 years. However, their reign ended in the eighteenth century when the revolutionary Oliver Cromwell overthrew their monarchy and set up his own control over England. So, fearing for their lives, several members of the Lynch family fled Ireland. One of the many such Lynch family members who fled Ireland was a man called Patrick Lynch. 

Patrick Lynch

After fleeing Ireland, Patrick Lynch went to Spain. There, he slowly rose to the rank of a royal representative and became the Captain of militias. 

After becoming a successful man in Spain, Patrick Lynch sailed to Argentina in the 1740s and became a wealthy landowner there. A few years later, in 1749, he married a girl from a wealthy family and settled in Argentina. Since then, the Lynches have become an integral part of Argentina. Patrick Lynch’s descendants became soldiers who fought for independence, writers who blended reality and fantasy, and entrepreneurs who founded companies. 

Men from the Lynch family shared one common trait – They were never satisfied with reality. Instead, they fought for the causes they believed in. That’s why they could make a name for themselves in South America in the fields of literature, military, and politics.

Ernesto Guevara Lynch

Ernesto Guevara Lynch was one such man from the Lynch family who lived in the twentieth century, six generations after Patrick Lynch. But even though he came from a big family with a long culture, he had no degree and often involved himself in failing enterprises all his life. 

On the other hand, his wife, Celia de la Serna y Llosa, was a responsible woman who came from another wealthy and high-class family in Argentina. She studied in the Convent of the Sacred Heart. As a child, she had wanted to become a nun. However, after being forced to recite the prayer 10,000 times in the convent, she stopped believing in God.

Wedding

Ernesto met Celia in the late 1920s, just after her graduation. After their initial meeting, they dated only a few months. Then, in 1927, despite the opposition from Celia’s family, they got married. After their marriage, the couple moved from Buenos Aires, the capital of Argentina, to Port Caraguatay, near the border of Brazil and Paraguay. Ernesto tried to create a Yerba mate plantation there. Yerba mate is a herb used to make Yerba mate tea, popular in South America. Several months later, they traveled to Rosario, the third most populous city in Argentina. 

A birth shrouded in secrecy

Celia was three months pregnant when she married Ernesto. But since they were from conservative families, they didn’t want anyone to find out about it. So, when her first son was born on May 14th, 1928, they falsified his date of birth as June 14th, 1928. Then, they informed their parents one month after his birth, and they told them that the baby was born prematurely. Their parents believed them because a baby being born prematurely at seven months was not so uncommon back then.

This boy, born on May 14th, 1928, in Rosario, Argentina, is Ernesto Guevara. Even though he would later make his name known throughout the world as Che Guevara, his birth was shrouded in secrecy. So, it is no surprise that even today, most people believe June 14th, 1928, to be his date of birth.

While the Guevaras were celebrating the birth of Ernesto Guevara, a sad incident happened. His father’s new idea, the Yerba mate plantation, had failed. 

Ernesto and Asthma

When Ernesto was almost two years old, on May 2nd, 1930, Ernesto had his first Asthma attack. Searching for a climate that would reduce the severity of the disease, his family moved to different cities in Argentina. Finally, they arrived at Alta Gracia, a city in Argentina. In the following years, Ernesto’s family relocated several times within Alta Gracia, and his father took up occasional jobs to renovate hotels. 

Due to Asthma, Ernesto did not start school at the allotted age. Instead, his mother taught him to read and write at home. He only joined the school when he was nine years old, in the second grade at Jose de San Martin School in Alta Gracia. 

Ernesto’s family made several efforts to control his Asthma. But despite his family’s sincere efforts, the disease stayed with him throughout his life. As his brother later recalled, Ernesto was a very sick child. However, his character and willpower helped him overcome his sickness. So, it’s evident that Asthma did not hinder him. On the contrary, it motivated him to pursue several physical activities like swimming, cycling, playing Rugby, golf, etc. Due to his battle against Asthma, Ernesto came to believe that any task, regardless of how impossible it might appear, can be accomplished through enthusiasm, revolutionary passion, and unwavering determination.

Early life

While growing up, Ernesto and his four siblings – two brothers and two sisters, grew up in a completely different environment compared to their neighbors and friends. 

Che Guevara (left), his siblings and his parents, 1944 – By Unknown author – Museo Che Guevara, Public Domain, Link

A leftist, atheist family

Maybe Ernesto was always destined to become a revolutionary, given the conditions he grew up in. While their neighbors were mostly conservatives and religious, the Guevaras had leftist views. While their neighbors’ houses were kept clean and organized, their house was almost always in shambles. Their neighbors kept their children in check, deciding when they should return home, and whom they should play with. On the other hand, the Guevaras never controlled their children. So, the Guevara kids came home and went whenever they wished. They even hung around with children of agricultural and industrial workers of low status. 

Moreover, their mother cut her hair short, wore trousers, and drove a car, something that outraged her neighbors. She and her husband collected books, which they lent freely to neighbors and friends. All these might have influenced Ernesto early on. It might have made him realize that their family was very different from other families. 

The Spanish civil war

The biggest influence in Ernesto’s early life might have been the Spanish civil war. Ernesto was barely eight years old when the war broke out between the leftists, including Republicans and communists, and the conservative nationalists. While all their neighbors supported the nationalists, the Guevaras supported the leftists. 

Ernesto’s uncle was in Spain reporting the war for a newspaper in Buenos Aires. So, he would regularly send letters to his family, explaining the progress of the war. Ernesto’s aunt would then read out these letters while Ernesto listened intently. Ernesto would then take a map and put small flags on it, to indicate recent developments in the war. Indeed, he was so involved in the war that, even in the games he played in the backyard with other children, he reproduced war scenarios by digging holes and shouting, ‘Onward militia. Long live the Spanish republic.’

Growing up in such an environment, little Ernesto might have developed his own ideals and a sense of social justice. He could have even developed his own understanding of what is right and what is wrong. 

Ernesto and books

As a kid, Ernesto was handsome, with large, expressive eyes and an attractive smile. But despite being so handsome, he never spent time grooming himself. He wore the same shirt, that wasn’t properly tucked in, and mismatched shoes. Instead of grooming himself, he focused on refining his mind by reading books. 

Ernesto developed a habit of reading books very early. Due to Asthma, Ernesto had trouble attending school regularly. But there was no lack of books at home. So, he started reading these books that his parents had gathered. After all, his parents, both book lovers, had collected more than 3000 books. Therefore, since childhood, he read books from varied genres ranging from poetry to socialism. Among them were books from Rudyard Kipling, Karl Marx, and Vladimir Lenin. As he grew up, he also became interested in philosophy, particularly those of Buddha, Aristotle, and Sigmund Freud. He even noted down interesting concepts from various books in his own handwritten notebook.

Protecting those who were weaker than him

Even though he was the eldest child in the family, Ernesto was never bossy. Instead, he always protected his four younger siblings. So, it is evident that, since childhood, Ernesto had the habit of protecting those who are weaker than him. 

When he was 14 years old, Ernesto went with his brother to work in the grape harvest during his holidays. Even though he worked there for only a few days, he learned of the abuse the workers had to endure. 

Studying medicine

Five years later, in March 1947, his grandmother became terminally ill. So, he went to Buenos Aires to take care of her. Initially, Ernesto had wanted to study Engineering. But after watching his grandmother’s agonizing death, he became aware of his inability to save her. Therefore, he decided to study medicine instead. 

In 1948, Ernesto enrolled at the School of Medicine at the University of Buenos Aires to study medicine. After entering medical college, Ernesto wanted to finish his studies as soon as possible. So, he studied 12 to 14 hours a day. As a result, by December of his first year, he completed all the subjects required for the first three years.

Deciding to become a revolutionary

Solo journey

While Ernesto was in medical college, he was restless and had a desire to explore the world. So, in January 1950, he started touring the rural provinces of Argentina. Altogether, he traveled 4,500km using a bicycle on which he fitted a small engine. 

The motorcycle journey that changed his life

Two years later, a 29-year-old biochemist and friend, Alberto Granado, convinced Ernesto to take a year off from studies. They planned to travel through South America, a trip they had been planning for years. 

Their journey began in January 1952. Ernesto had a rough start due to the flu he contracted and a break-up letter from his girlfriend. Regardless, they continued their journey on Alberto’s motorcycle. 

They started in Argentina and traveled to Chile. They started on Alberto’s motorcycle, which was nicknamed La Poderosa II, meaning, ‘the mighty one.’ Ironically, it broke down in Chile. So, they continued their journey through rainforests and deserts by hitchhiking, walking on foot, riding horses, and sailing on a ship. They slept in farms, garages, and police stations. 

Che Guevara, 1951 – By His Father – Museo Che Guevara, Public Domain, Link

Copper mine

While visiting the copper mine in Chile, Ernesto was saddened by the way the miners were treated. He also met a homeless communist couple near the mine, who were searching for mining work. The couple had no roof above their heads, but only each other, to hug in the cold desert nights. Their sad situation made a strong impression on Ernesto, and he wanted to do something about poverty in the world.

After Chile, they traveled through Peru, where they met more people suffering from poverty. Their sad state solidified Ernesto’s desire to do something against poverty. Finally, after visiting Macchu Picchu and other historical places in Peru, they arrived at the Leper colony in Peru. For the next two weeks, Alberto and Ernesto stayed there and helped out. 

Leper colony

On June 24th, 1952, Ernesto spent his 24th birthday at the Leper colony, where the leper patients sang and played musical instruments for him. Even though it was a happy moment for Ernesto, he noticed how pitiful their lives were. He was deeply disturbed by the miserable conditions in which the patients were living. For example, the singer was blind. The accordion player had no fingers in his right hand. So, he had tied sticks to his hands to help him play the instrument. Almost everyone else had limbs that were deformed due to the disease. Moreover, there was almost no food, no medicines, and no clothes for the patients at the Leper colony. Yet they were happy just to be treated as normal human beings instead of being treated like animals. 

After visiting the Leper colony, Alberto and Ernesto went to Columbia and then to Venezuela, where they parted ways. While Alberto stayed in Venezuela, Ernesto went to Miami through a cargo plane and then returned to Buenos Aires. 

A changed man

Altogether, Ernesto traveled for 270 days, visiting 28 places, six countries, and covering 18,865km. By the end of the trip, he came to the conclusion that even though South Americans were divided by region into several countries, they all suffered from poverty and were mistreated in the same way, and the only way to save all of them was to create a United Latin America. Thus, this trip changed Ernesto into a different person. It played a crucial role in Ernesto’s decision to become a revolutionary. 

Ernesto becomes a doctor

After returning from the trip in September 1952, Ernesto started to prepare for his exams. In the seven months that followed, he studied vigorously and passed the remaining half of the 30 subjects in his curriculum. He got his medical degree and became Dr. Ernesto Guevara on June 12th, 1953.

After finishing his medical degree, he could have definitely obtained a position in a Buenos Aires clinic. Instead, he decided to travel to other South American nations and learn more about the people and the governments there. 

Bolivia

One year earlier, in 1952, a national revolution had taken place in Bolivia. Civilians and miners, armed by a political party, had successfully made the army surrender. The revolution also led to agricultural reforms and the nationalization of some industries. So, eager to see the revolutionary government in action, Ernesto and his friend Carlos Ferrer traveled to La Paz, the capital of Bolivia. However, during his time there, Ernesto witnessed the atrocities committed by the US supervisors against local workers. Moreover, he was annoyed by the way the Bolivian government treated native Indians. So, disappointed, the two friends left for Peru. 

Jacobo Árbenz

When he was in Lima, a city in Peru, Ernesto heard about Jacobo Árbenz, the president of Guatemala. 

In the 1950s, 70% of Guatemala’s agricultural land was owned by only 2% of the population. So, many Guatemalan citizens worked for a US company, which was the largest landowner and employer in Guatemala. But after becoming president, Árbenz sought to end the foreign influence in the country and make it self-sufficient. So, he passed a bill that redistributed uncultivated land from wealthy landowners. The landowners were compensated with government bonds, while the land taken from them was given to their agricultural laborers.

Within two years of passing this bill, almost one-sixth of Guatemala’s population had received land. This not only increased agricultural productivity but also increased the sale of farm machinery. As a result, living conditions in Guatemala improved considerably, and its dependency on foreign nations decreased simultaneously. 

The United Fruit Company, which was owned by US capitalists, was the largest landowner and employer in Guatemala. It owned almost 467,000 acres of uncultivated land. When Árbenz passed the bill in 1952, its profits nosedived. So, Árbenz became the enemy of the United Fruit company and important political figures in the USA, who were linked to it. Therefore, the United States government decided to overthrow Árbenz.

After listening to this story, Ernesto Guevara wanted to find out what was going on in Guatemala. Moreover, he believed that he could better himself and become a true revolutionary in Guatemala. So, he dropped his plans of going to Venezuela and decided to go to Guatemala instead.

Guatemala

Ernesto and his friends reached the capital of Guatemala in December 1953. There, Ernesto sought out Hilda Gadea, who came from Peru. She was politically well-connected and introduced Ernesto to high-ranking officials in the Árbenz government. 

When he reached Guatemala, he didn’t have sufficient money. So, to support himself financially, Ernesto tried to find a job in Guatemala. However, he couldn’t get a job as a doctor because he was a foreigner. Annoyed at the bureaucracy in Guatemala, Ernesto did not know what to do. But, Hilda Gadea helped him financially by paying his rent and lending him books to read. Soon, Hilda became Ernesto’s helper, friend, and companion with whom he had intense political conversations. 

Ernesto Guevara becomes Che Guevara

In Guatemala, Ernesto came into contact with Cuban exiles of the Moncado assault. Ernesto had previously met two similar Cubans in Peru. He struck an instant friendship with them and learned about the 26-year-old Fidel Castro, who, along with his 127 insurgents, had attacked a military barracks in Moncado to overthrow the Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista. Even though the attack failed and Fidel Castro was imprisoned, their story impressed Ernesto, and he came to like the Cubans who fought against Batista. So, he connected with the Cuban exiles in Guatemala instantly.

While talking with them, Ernesto Guevara often used the word ‘che.’ ‘Che’ can be used to attract someone’s attention, similar to the words ‘hey’ and ‘buddy’ in English. It is also used as a filler, similar to the words ‘right’ and ‘so’ in English. However, it is predominantly used only in Argentina, Bolivia, Valencia, Uruguay, and Paraguay. So, the word was foreign to the Cubans whom he talked with. Therefore, since Ernesto used the word often, they nicknamed him ‘Che.’ Thus, Ernesto Guevara became Che Guevara.

The conviction for using armed struggle

In 1954, the USA began its covert efforts to topple Jacobo Árbenz’s government in Guatemala. As part of its Operation PBSuccess, the CIA sent weapons to Guatemala and incited hundreds of mercenaries and Guatemalan refugees to take up arms against the government.  

Che Guevara, who liked Jacobo Árbenz’s reforms, immediately offered to take up arms to defend the government. He joined an armed militia, which was organized by communist youth. But the group did not do anything. So, he tried to gather young men to take up arms. But the Guatemalans were not willing to fight. 

The Guatemalan military believed that the rebels were backed by the US government, and a defeat was unavoidable. So, the Guatemalan military did not want to fight the rebels. Instead, they pressurized Jacobo Árbenz to resign. Therefore, Árbenz resigned, took refugee in the Mexican embassy, and asked all his foreign supporters to leave the country.

After Árbenz resigned, a friend working in the Argentinian embassy informed Che Guevara that the CIA was monitoring his actions. So, he took refugee in the Argentinian embassy in Guatemala. Several weeks later, he made his way to Mexico. 

Che Guevara had always hated Capitalism and thought that it was the cause of poverty. The US’s interference in Guatemala hardened his anti-capitalistic and anti-American views further. He even concluded that Marxism achieved through an armed struggle was the only solution against imperialism and Capitalism. 

Mexico

Meeting Fidel Castro

Che Guevara reached Mexico by train in September 1954. His first few months were difficult as he did not have much money with him. So, he and a friend, whom he met on the train, bought a camera and offered to take pictures of strangers in Mexico city, the capital of Mexico. They developed the photos by striking a deal with a photo laboratory. Then, they delivered the lousy photos they took by walking from one end of the city to another. 

After struggling for several months like this, Che Guevara found a job as a doctor for treating allergies. He also submitted research papers on allergies and gave lectures in the Faculty of Medicine at a university. So, he was offered a grant by the hospital for his contribution to medicine. 

Moreover, he also worked as a freelance photographer for an agency. Therefore, his financial situation became better, and he started to go on tours across Mexico. 

Once, in the hospital where he was working, he encountered his Cuban friend, whom he met in Guatemala. He introduced Che Guevara to Raul Castro, one of the members of the Moncado assault in Cuba. Raul Castro introduced him to Fidel Castro, his brother and leader of the Moncado assault. Even though the exact date of their meeting is unknown, it would become one of history’s most important meetings. 

The best guerilla

From the moment he met Fidel Castro, Che Guevara was impressed by Fidel’s ideas and optimism. He was also convinced that Fidel’s goal of overthrowing the dictatorship in Cuba was a cause worth fighting for. So, he immediately signed up as a member of Fidel Castro’s revolutionaries. 

Alberto Bayo was Cuban by birth. But he had worked in the Spanish military and later became a military trainer in Mexico. Alberto Bayo is the one who trained Fidel Castro’s revolutionaries on the tactics of Guerilla warfare. Initially, Che Guevara had planned to be a medic in the group of Fidel Castro’s revolutionaries. But, in the guerilla warfare training he underwent, he came first on all the tests and became the best guerilla among all his comrades. 

Meanwhile, Hilda Gadea became pregnant with Che Guevara’s child. So, they got married in August 1955. Their first daughter was born in February 1956.

To Cuba

The same year his daughter was born, Che Guevara, Fidel Castro, and other Cubans were arrested while gathering weapons. The Mexican police also found evidence of a training camp from Fidel Castro’s residence. So, they were sent to prison for a month. 

After coming out of prison, they resumed gathering weapons and prepared for an attack in Cuba. After finishing their preparations, finally, they decided to attack. So, on the night of November 25th, 1956, they boarded an old yacht, switched off all its lights, and set sail to Cuba.

Cuba, where history changed forever

Fulgencio Batista

In the early 1950s, Cuba was a prosperous country compared to many other Latin American countries. It was one of the five most developed countries in Latin America. Its GDP was almost equal to that of Italy at that time. 

Fulgencio Batista had served as the president of Cuba from 1940 to 1944. In 1952, he ran for election once again. But after realizing that he can’t win, he staged a military coup, canceled the elections, and took over the government.

The same year, Fidel Castro, who was a young lawyer at that time, circulated a petition to dismiss Batista’s government since it had illegitimately canceled the elections. However, the court ignored his legal challenges. So, he and his brother gather supporters and attacked the Moncado Barracks in 1953. Their aim was to take over the barracks and obtain the weapons stored within them. They would then distribute the weapons to the public and encourage them to fight against the Batista government. However, the attack failed, and of the 160 rebels, many were killed or captured and executed. Fidel Castro and Raul Castro were captured, imprisoned, and then exiled. Fidel and Raul then went to Mexico, where they gathered money, weapons, and supporters to attack once again. 

A US Puppet state

Meanwhile, Batista had converted Cuba into a US puppet state. The USA backed Batista with weapons due to his strong opposition to communism. In turn, Batista antagonized the Cuban people to make the USA influential in Cuba. Indeed, the USA was so influential that the US ambassador became the second-most important person in Cuba. 

By the late 1950s, US companies owned 90% of the mines, 80% of the public utilities, 50% of the railways, 40% of the sugar production, and 25% of the bank deposits in Cuba. Moreover, Cuba’s capital, Havana, became the center for American mafias, run by US citizens of Italian descent. Gambling, prostitution, and drugs became commonplace in Havana. So, in 1956, by the time Fidel Castro’s yacht landed in Cuba, Batista was already hated by the Cubans.

Initial setback

On December 2nd, 1956, Fidel Castro and his revolutionaries, along with Che Guevara, landed on the southern coast of Cuba. Three days later, they were attacked by the planes and troops of Batista, who were alerted of their presence. During this attack, Che Guevara, who was the head of the health services, took a weapon left behind by a deserted comrade and started firing. Che Guevara, who, until then, had only used knives in surgeries to save lives, used a weapon for the first time in real combat, to end someone’s life. This marked a turning point in his life. 

Of the 82 revolutionaries, many were killed. Only 22 of them managed to escape into the nearby Sierra Maestra mountains. Che Guevara’s group was split from Fidel and Raul Castros’ group. But after a few days, they found each other and hid in the mountains. They lived among the peasants there and began their offensive against Batista’s troops.

In the mountains where they lived, many people were illiterate, and they did not even have access to necessary facilities like healthcare, electricity, etc. So, Che Guevara set up schools and healthcare clinics for the welfare of the people. He constructed ovens to bake bread and workshops to teach military tactics. He also established a newspaper and a radio station. Thus, due to his contributions, Che Guevara came to be known as the brain of Fidel Castro. 

The brain of Fidel Castro

After their initial setback, Fidel Castro’s revolutionaries started seeing success. They excelled at hitting Batista’s troops and then running away and hiding in the mountains before reinforcements arrived. 

In the next two years that followed, they went from success to success. Che Guevara became instrumental in many of these victories. So, Fidel Castro, who was impressed by Che Guevara’s abilities, made him the commander of the second army. Thus, Che Guevara became second-in-command of the revolutionaries. 

As a commander, Che Guevara was very strict. He did not hesitate to shoot deserters and execute spies. But at the same time, he entertained his comrades by telling them stories from books he had read. So, he came to be loved by his subordinates. 

The War begins

A massive attack

In May 1958, Batista’s troops launched a massive attack against Fidel Castro’s troops. But despite being outnumbered, they were able to thwart the attack. Che Guevara played a decisive role in this battle as well.

The counterattack begins

Three months later, the revolutionaries launched their counterattack, when Fidel Castro assigned Che Guevara the mission to take the war to the central part of Cuba. 

Che Guevara and his troops traveled on foot. They traveled only at night to avoid raising suspicion. Despite being outnumbered by 10:1, Che Guevara’s troops managed to continue their journey. On their way, they destroyed bridges, cutting off the supply chain of the military. They also destroyed sources of communication, thus causing confusion among the military. Finally, after traveling for 47 days and covering 500km, they reached Santa Clara, a city located centrally in Cuba. Che Guevara’s arrival at Santa Clara was met with cheers from peasants. 

The Battle in Santa Clara

Upon arrival, Che Guevara divided his 300 troops into two. While one group was engaged in combat in Santa Clara, another group was sent to take over the nearby hill. Batista’s forces, who defended the hill, immediately deserted it upon seeing the revolutionaries. Upon reaching the hill, the revolutionaries learned of the arrival of Batista’s reinforcements by train. So, they derailed it. The soldiers who were on the train were not used to fighting experienced Guerilla forces. Therefore, they immediately surrendered. This victory provided a massive advantage to the revolutionaries because they procured weapons and ammunition from the train, which helped them win the battle in Santa Clara. 

One day later, the newspapers, controlled by the government, published that Che Guevara was already dead, to boost the military’s morale. However, Che Guevara’s radio station broadcasted that Santa Clara has fallen. It further announced that the revolutionary leaders are on their way to Havana, the capital of Cuba. So, more military garrisons surrendered upon the first sight of revolutionaries. Due to these recent military developments and the arrival of the news that his generals were negotiating peace with Che Guevara, Fulgencio Batista fled Cuba. The following day, Che Guevara arrived at Havana and took control of the capital. Thus, on January 2nd, 1959, the war had officially ended, and the revolutionaries had won the war. 

By the time the war ended, Che Guevara was involved with another woman called Aleida March. So, he divorced Hilda Gadea. He married Aleida March in June 1959.

After the war

Immediately after the war, the new Cuban government, headed by Fidel Castro, wanted to secure their success. So, they wanted to execute traitors, war criminals, and Batista’s collaborators. For this purpose, Che Guevara was made the commander of the La Cabaña Fortress prison. In the five months he held this position, he oversaw several trials and executed somewhere between 55 to 105 people. Even though it is an outrageous act of violence, the Cuban people, who had suffered terribly during Batista’s regime, were overwhelmingly in support of these executions.

Simultaneously, Che Guevara started crafting the Agrarian reform law. This law, which went into effect in May 1959, took over the land in excess of 1000 acres from farm-owners. These lands were then redistributed to poor agricultural laborers in 67-acre units or held by the government. 

In June 1959, Che Guevara traveled to several countries to improve Cuba’s trade relations. When he returned three months later, he was made the minister of industries. 

During his stint as the minister of industries, Che Guevara sped up the execution of the agrarian reform law. Simultaneously, he created and trained a 100,000 men-strong militia to protect Cuba from foreign forces. 

Che Guevara’s most successful accomplishment as the minister of industries was improving Cuba’s literacy rate. Cuba’s literacy rate before 1959 was approximately 67%. But in the year 1961, Che Guevara sent 100,000 volunteers to rural areas. These volunteers constructed schools, trained teachers, and taught poor peasants. As a result, in the next 25 years, Cuba’s literacy rate rose to almost 100%.

Che Guevara and Fidel Castro, 1961 – By Alberto Korda – Museo Che Guevara, Havana Cuba, Public Domain, Link

Failing political measures

Thus, Che Guevara’s initial political measures were successful. So, he became over-optimistic and started implementing extreme socialistic measures. He nationalized banks, factories, and businesses to reduce social inequalities and provide employment to everyone. Moreover, he introduced a moral system of conduct where every worker was required to produce a specific amount of goods. Those who failed to meet their quota were given pay cuts. On the other hand, people who exceeded their quotas were only given a certificate commending them. Even though Che Guevara had big hopes for these programs, they failed terribly. As a result, Cuba saw a sharp decline in productivity. 

The trouble with the USA

Meanwhile, Cuba’s relationship with the USA deteriorated. The Cuban government’s agrarian reform directly affected US industrialists, especially The United Fruit Company. So, the USA responded by banning the import of sugar from Cuba. In return, Cuba responded by nationalizing US companies in Cuba. Moreover, Cuba reached out to the Soviet Union to establish trade relations. This led to increased tension in the USA. Therefore, the US government gave $13.1 million to the CIA to use against Fidel Castro. Using this money, the CIA trained 1400 Cuban exiles and helped them invade Cuba in 1961. 

Even though the attack was well-planned, it failed because Che Guevara had trained his militia well, which was by this point almost 200,000 strong. But even though this attack failed, it made the Cuban government realize the fragile position they were in. So, Che Guevara, during his travel to the USSR, persuaded Soviet leaders to install nuclear-armed ballistic missiles in Cuba. This alarmed the USA. Therefore, the USA reached an agreement with the USSR to remove these missiles. In turn, the USA agreed not to invade Cuba again. If they hadn’t reached this agreement, the USA and the USSR, which were already in a cold war, might have had a full-scale war. Thus, to protect Cuba, Che Guevara brought the world to the brink of a nuclear war. 

The agreement between the USA and the USSR made Cuba realize that it was just a pawn in USSR’s hands. So, Cuba’s relationship with the USSR deteriorated. 

Finding other trade partners

Since Cuba’s relationship with the Soviet Union deteriorated, Cuba needed other trade partners. By now, Che Guevara had become a world-renowned revolutionary. So, many countries welcomed him. Therefore, Che Guevara used these opportunities to travel to other countries and improve Cuba’s trade relations with them. He even went to the United Nations and spoke as Cuba’s representative. 

A True revolutionary

For several years, Che Guevara was the second most important man in Cuba. Now, he had become world famous as the epitome of the perfect revolutionary. But, suddenly, one day, when nobody expected, he abandoned all his positions in Cuba, and disappeared. The world did not know where he was. So, Fidel Castro read a letter Che Guevara had sent him months before. In this letter, he had written that he had relinquished all his positions in Cuba for revolutionary work abroad. After all, he was a revolutionary, and he wanted to share his revolutionary spirit, knowledge, and experience with the world. 

Revolution in Africa

Che Guevara realized that the African countries, which were imperialist puppets, had a lot of potential for revolution. So, he went to Congo to help create a Marxist revolution against the government. However, his efforts ended in vain because the CIA, which backed Congo National Army, intercepted all his communications. So, they could predict his attacks and cut-off his supply lines. Moreover, the tribal leaders were corrupt. So, he decided to leave Congo. But he couldn’t go to Cuba, because Fidel Castro had already read his letter, which was supposed to be read only after his death.

Revolution in Latin America

So, for the next few months, he lived a covert life. Then, in 1966, he decided to realize his long-cherished dream of uniting Latin America. So, he went to Bolivia to try and start a revolution there. His initial efforts against the Bolivian army were successful. He and his band of 50 revolutionaries successfully won several skirmishes against Bolivian troops.

However, the Bolivian people did not offer much support to his initiatives. Many of them even leaked his location to the Bolivian government willingly. Moreover, the CIA had sent its elite troops trained in jungle warfare. Che Guevara had only expected to fight against untrained, ill-equipped Bolivian forces. He did not expect the CIA to be there. Worse of it all, he and his troops did not have enough food, blankets, and shoes. So, they suffered from malnutrition. Che Guevara suffered from severe attacks of Asthma as well. 

Becoming immortal

Capture

As a result, eventually, on October 8th, 1967, Che Guevara was caught after he got wounded and ran out of bullets in a fight against Bolivian special forces. 

But even after being captured, Che Guevara was not scared. He kicked the Bolivian forces and spat on their faces. 

Death

The Bolivian government wanted to avoid making Che Guevara popular by having a public trial. So, they executed him secretly to make it appear as if he was killed in combat. 

Then, the Bolivian government displayed his body publicly for a short time when pictures were taken. Shortly afterward, his body was sent to an undisclosed location. 

Being immortalized as a legendary revolutionary

The Bolivian government did not execute him publicly, so as not to make him a legendary hero. However, by killing him, they gave him exactly what he wanted – a martyr’s death and reincarnation as a legendary hero. 

Shortly after his death, the news of his assassination reached the world. People throughout the world participated in rallies condemning his assassination. Young men and women marched for several kilometers wearing Che Guevara T-shirts. Even today, people wear his T-shirts and fight against dogmatic suppressive governments. School children in Cuba begin each day by pledging that they will be like Che. In Argentina, schools were named after him, and in 2008, a 12-foot Che Guevara statue was unveiled at Rosario, where he was born. Even decades after his death, famous personalities all over the world commend him as a symbol of freedom. On the other hand, there are also people who consider him a cold-blooded murderer who executed exiles without mercy.

Facts you probably didn’t know

1. In February 1959, the new Cuban government declared Che Guevara a Cuban citizen by birth to honor his extraordinary role in the war. 
2. In 1995, a retired Bolivian general revealed where Che Guevara was buried. Immediately, the Cuban government started searching for his remains in the revealed location. Two years later, his remains were found and later reburied in Santa Clara in Cuba. 
3. Che Guevara hated Capitalism. However, his T-shirt has become merchandise of capitalistic industries, which sells even today. 
4. Che Guevara had five children from two marriages. 

Conclusion

What can you learn from this biography of Che Guevara?

We hope that this biography of Che Guevara helped you learn more about him. We hope that we helped you understand how he lived, how he died, and how he became a legend after his death. There are three things that Che Guevara teaches us. 

Firstly, if you believe in something, you have to fight for it. Che Guevara believed in revolution, and he strived to stay as a revolutionary throughout his life. Despite being the second-most powerful person in Cuba, he abandoned everything to search for revolutionary causes elsewhere. 

Secondly, never give up in the face of adversity. He suffered from severe attacks of Asthma throughout his life. Yet, he never surrendered to it. Instead, he performed rigorous physical activities. Cuba was not his country. Yet, even when his revolutionaries were outnumbered by 10:1, he still found a way to take Santa Clara, which turned the tide of the war.

And finally, always keep reading and learning throughout your life, for reading gives you great ideas, and great ideas make you a great person.

If you liked this biography of Che Guevara, you might like the following biographies as well:

1. Biography of Vincent Van Gogh
2. Biography of Mother Teresa of Calcutta
3. The success story of JK Rowling

This blog post is the biography of Vincent Van Gogh. Vincent Van Gogh was a post-impressionist painter who is considered one of the top ten painters of all time. His paintings, which cost millions of dollars, are studied by art lovers all over the world. The museum dedicated to him, the Vincent Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam, is visited by almost 2 million people every year. 

Yet, despite his fame, he lived a very sad life as an unsuccessful artist. At the time of his death, he was single, had sold only one painting, had been admitted in a mental asylum, and did not have a stable job. His words, ‘Sadness will last forever,’ after he shot himself, stand testimony to the sad life he lived. 

Read the biography of Vincent Van Gogh. Understand how one of the most misunderstood people of the nineteenth century became a celebrated artist in the twentieth century. 

Early Life

Birth

Theodorus Van Gogh worked as a pastor in the Netherlands during the nineteenth century. His older brother was Vincent Van Gogh. Vincent married a woman who came from a wealthy family on the western coast of the Netherlands. During their wedding, Theodorus met the bride’s elder sister Anna Cornelia Corbentus, and they were attracted to each other. Soon their mutual attraction turned into love, and Theodorus and Anna got married in May 1851. 

One year later, on March 30th, 1852, their first son was born. They named him Vincent Willem Van Gogh. However, the baby was born dead. 

Exactly one year later, on March 30th, 1853, in Zundert, Netherlands, their second son was born. The couple, who were still grieving the death of their first son, gave the same name to their second son as well. Their second son, Vincent Willem Van Gogh, would later grow up and become a world-renowned artist.

After Vincent’s birth, the couple had five more children – two sons and three daughters. Of his five siblings, his younger brother Theodorus, also known as Theo, would become Vincent’s biggest patron, friend, and supporter. 

Childhood

Even as a child, Vincent was eccentric due to his choice of clothes and his eating habits. Unlike the other children, he was serious, thoughtful, and loved to be alone. He loved birds, insects, and flowers. 

Vincent Van Gogh did his early schooling at a local village school. In 1864, when he was 11 years old, his parents sent him to a boarding school. Vincent, who felt alone and abandoned in the new school, wanted to return home. But instead of letting him return home, his parents sent him to another middle school two years later. This school, which was in Tilburg, had a dedicated art teacher. But Vincent, who was overcome by sorrow, focused little on art. His early paintings during this time were average and showed no hints of the famous artist he would later become.

In 1868, after spending two years at the school, Vincent abruptly returned home. The reason for this was probably that this new school proved to be too costly for his parents. After all, even though the church provided his family with a house, several servants, a carriage, and a horse because his father was a pastor, his father’s salary was modest. 

After returning from school, Vincent spent a year at home. 

First Job

Goupil and Co. was a company in the nineteenth century that bought, reproduced, and sold famous artworks. Vincent’s uncle, Vincent Van Gogh, also known as uncle cent by his nephews, was a partner in that company. Since he did not have any children of his own, he loved his nephews. So, in 1869, he secured a job for sixteen-year-old Vincent as a junior clerk in his company’s branch in the Netherlands. 

First letter

Vincent initially loved his job and worked hard. He showed remarkable results in the art business, impressing his superiors. However, like in all his later endeavors, Vincent soon grew frustrated and depressed with his job. This led to the first reported incident of his psychological condition, most likely, bipolar disorder.

Alarmed at his mental state, his brother Theo came to visit him. When Theo returned home after visiting Vincent, Vincent was saddened by his departure. So, he wrote a letter to Theo in 1872. This letter would become the first recorded letter of the 819 letters Vincent wrote to Theo and others. These letters helped reconstruct Vincent’s life and made Vincent one of the few artists whose lives have been so well-documented. (You can check out all the letters Vincent Van Gogh sent and received by visiting this website.)

London

In 1873, the company promoted Vincent and transferred him to its London branch. His brother Theo took Vincent’s position in the Netherlands branch of Goupil and Co. This year was the happiest year of Vincent’s life. Even though he was just 20 years old, he was earning more than his father. 

Vincent Van Gogh in 1873, when he worked for Goupil & Co. – By Jacobus Marinus Wilhelmus de Louw (1823–1907) – Memory of the Netherlands, From Vincent van Gogh: letters, art, and context of the Van Gogh Museum, Public Domain, Link

Theo in 1878 – By De Lavieter & Co – Memory of the Netherlands, From Vincent van Gogh: letters, art, and context of the Van Gogh Museum, Public Domain, Link

Falling in love with landscape paintings

Vincent’s job in London transformed his life, exposing him to English arts and literature. Vincent loved English literature, especially the works of Charles Dickens and William Shakespeare. However, he wasn’t attracted to English paintings. Instead, he loved the works of Dutch painters like Rembrandt.

Vincent also loved the form of art called realism, which focused on painting average, working-class people, and day-to-day happenings. So, the works of French and Dutch realist painters, as well as landscape paintings, fascinated him. Uncoincidentally, it is also during this time that Vincent formed his initial opinions about the importance and role of art. 

First love

During his stay in London, Vincent fell in love with his landlord’s daughter. But she rejected him because she was already secretly engaged to someone else. After being rejected by his first love, Vincent became more introverted and isolated. Alarmed at his situation, his uncle transferred him to Paris, to distract him from his grief. However, it did not help him forget his sorrows, and by 1875, Vincent had become utterly miserable. At times, his thoughts became suicidal and triggered an existential crisis within him.

Searching for a reason for his existence, Vincent became profoundly religious and started reading the Bible compulsively. His interest in religion and his disapproval of the extent to which the company commodified art made him lose interest in his job. So, when he went home for Christmas without informing his company, Goupil and Co. fired him.

In 1876, after losing his job, Vincent worked odd jobs, like being a temporary teacher and selling books. 

Interest in Religion

Attempting to study religion

In 1877, looking at his interest in religion, his family sent him to Amsterdam to prepare for the University of Amsterdam’s theology entrance examination. He prepared for the entrance exam while living with his uncle, who was a respected theologist. During this time, Vincent also started to read and draw extensively. 

While preparing for the exams, Vincent found the requirements on Latin, Greek, and Mathematics, subjects unrelated to religion, to be too high. So, he quit it in July 1878. 

Thereafter, he went to Brussels to join a shorter three-month course to become an Evangelist missionary. However, after joining the course, he found out that he did not like it either. So, he quit again and went to Borinage, a coal-mining district in Belgium, where he volunteered to be a missionary. 

Becoming a missionary

After working without pay for months, in January 1879, Vincent managed to get a temporary paid job. The church provided him wages and lodgings to take care of the sick people and teach the Bible. However, wanting to show support for poor families, Vincent gave up the lodgings provided to him by the church to a homeless person. Instead, he stayed in a small hut and slept on straw. This annoyed the church authorities, who considered Vincent’s acts as disrespect towards the church. So, they asked him to leave. 

Another existential crisis

After losing his paid job, he moved to another town called Cuesmes and started preaching without pay. His service to the sick and needy in Cuesmes earned him the respect of the residents. But even though the people liked him, Vincent understood that he had failed as a preacher. After all, he could neither convince the people nor preach in a way simple enough for them to understand. This triggered another existential crisis in him, and once again, he started wondering if he could be of any use in the world.

Wondering what to do with his life, Vincent, who liked the miners, their lives, and the scenes around them, started capturing them in his drawings. Then he sent these sketches to his brother, along with the letters he sent him. His brother Theo, who looked at these sketches, urged him to pursue a career as an artist. 

Life as an artist

Heeding to his brother’s advice and eager to establish his presence in the world through his art, in 1880, Vincent Van Gogh went to Brussels to learn from the Dutch artist Willem Roelofs. Willem convinced Vincent to enroll in the Belgian art school. So, Vincent enrolled in the art school and learned the concepts of anatomy, modeling, and perspective. However, as usual, Vincent soon became restless and wanted to move to the countryside to draw landscapes and peasant life. But since he was living off the monthly allowances from his father and his brother Theo, he couldn’t do as he pleased. So, in 1881, due to financial struggles, he moved to the Netherlands to live with his parents once again. 

Learning to use Charcoal and Pastels

Even though Vincent Van Gogh was living with his parents at the age of 28, his time at home helped him better his painting skills. It is during this time that Vincent started painting portraits, using his sister as a model. He also learned to paint using Charcoal and Pastels from a cousin and famous Dutch Realist painter Anton Mauve.

Anton realized Vincent’s potential as an artist and encouraged him to continue drawing. Enthusiastic, Vincent wrote to Theo, telling him that what he had previously thought impossible was becoming possible now.

Vincent’s love for landscapes and painting ordinary people had not left him yet. So, he started painting these scenes using the new techniques he had learned. His paintings like ‘Coal shoveler’, ‘Portrait of an Elderly Gentleman,’ and ‘Farmer Sitting by the Fireplace, Reading,’ were painted during this time.

Coal Shoveler, July 1879 – Van Gogh, Vincent. Coal Shoveler 1879. Kröller-Müller Museum.The Van Gogh Gallery. “Coal Shoveler.” 9 October 2020https://www.vangoghgallery.com/catalog/Drawing/848/Coal Shoveler.html.

Another failed love

Even though the time living with his parents benefitted his art skills, it brought him pain. In 1881, when his cousin Kee Vos, who had been recently widowed, visited him, he fell in love with her. Even after she refused to accept his marriage proposal, he persisted, annoying both his parents and Kee’s parents.

Learning to use oil

Heartbroken by another failed love attempt, Vincent left home and went to the city where Anton Mauve was living. Anton taught him how to use oil to paint and lent him money to set up a studio. But despite Anton helping Vincent, they eventually fell apart due to differences in opinion. 

One more failed love

Vincent, who had little to no money, could only hire people from the street to be his models. In 1882, while using a prostitute as a model for one of his paintings, Vincent fell in love with her. Their love grew, and after a year, the prostitute and her little daughter started living with Vincent. The prostitute, called Sien Hoornik,  was pregnant due to another man. She had lost two children during infancy and was abandoned by all the four men who fathered her children. So, Vincent decided to marry her because he didn’t want her to feel abandoned anymore. But his family opposed his decision vehemently. Therefore, 18 months after they first met, they broke up because she didn’t share Vincent’s love for art and also because Theo objected to his brother’s decision to marry a former prostitute. Sien would become the only woman with whom Vincent lived. 

Heartbroken once again, Vincent van Gogh traveled to a desolate district in the Netherlands and started living like a nomad. But by the end of 1883, he started feeling too lonely. So, he moved in with his parents once again. 

Improving his technique

While living with his parents, Vincent Van Gogh painted weavers and their cottages. His famous painting ‘The Parsonage Garden at Nuenen’ was painted during this time. In the next two years, he painted at a very rapid pace, finishing almost 200 oil paintings and numerous watercolors and drawings. By this time, Vincent’s technique had improved a lot. However, he was merely adopting the style of other Dutch artists and hadn’t created his own style yet. 

Parsonage Garden at Neunen, May 1884 –  Van Gogh, Vincent. Parsonage garden at Neunen, 1884. Groninger Museum.The Van Gogh Gallery. “Parsonage garden at Neunen.” 9 October 2020https://www.vangoghgallery.com/catalog/Painting/387/Parsonage Garden at Nuenen, The.html.

At that time, Theo was working in Paris, which was the world center of art at that time. So, Vincent sent his paintings, including his first major work, ‘The Potato eaters,’ to Theo to sell them. But Theo couldn’t sell any of them because they were darker compared to the bright impressionist paintings, which people loved.

Potato eaters, April 1885 – Van Gogh, Vincent. Potato eaters, 1885. Van Gogh Museum.The Van Gogh Gallery. “Potato eaters.” 9 October 2020https://www.vangoghgallery.com/catalog/Painting/453/Potato Eaters, The.html.

Antwerp

In November 1885, Vincent moved to Antwerp to study at the Academy of Fine Arts. During this time, he became interested in Japanese art and the works of Monet and other impressionist painters. 

In January 1886, hoping to improve his understanding of figure drawing, the practice of drawing from a live model in different poses, Vincent enrolled at the Academy. After attending the first drawing classes, he found out, to his dismay, that the Academy doesn’t use nude models. So, he used the money, which Theo sent him, to hire nude models and buy painting materials. Therefore, he had only very little money left for food.

For several months, he survived on bread, coffee, and tobacco alone. As a result, he became ill, and his teeth became loose and painful. Moreover, he got into conflict with his instructors and teachers due to his unconventional painting style. So, in March 1886, he moved to Paris, where Theo was. 

Paris

After moving in with Theo, Vincent started working as an apprentice for the painter Fernand Cormon. This allowed him to meet other painters, who became his friends. With the help of Theo, who was selling realist and impressionist paintings, he could meet several impressionist painters, including Monet. Finally, Vincent Van Gogh felt that he was a part of a community of artists. Moreover, he got ample opportunity to study the techniques of other painters and greatly admired the work of Monticelli.

Creating his unique style

As a result, in two years, from March 1886 to February 1888, Vincent Van Gogh’s techniques improved at an extraordinary rate. He created his own style by studying Impressionist paintings, Japanese art, and the techniques used by old Dutch painters. He aimed to distort the reality and natural laws to express deep, intense emotions and touch people. So, he went beyond the confines of Impressionism. He utilized opposing colors to harmonize brutal extremes, while distorting and exaggerating forms to convey the overwhelming emotions he felt deep within him.

This unique style of art was appreciated by several artists when he exhibited his paintings in 1888. But despite the growing interest among fellow artists for his paintings, he couldn’t sell a single painting. 

The decision to relocate

Vincent’s artistic skills improved tremendously during his stay in Paris, whereas his health deteriorated terribly. He often neglected his health while painting rigorously. His drinking habits and poor eating habits, along with his previous psychological condition, led to depression, violent mood swings, and erratic behavior.

In a letter to his sister, Theo remarked how living with Vincent felt like living with two people – a gifted, delicate person and another heartless, selfish person. In February 1888, due to stress and alcohol, Vincent Van Gogh came close to a physical and mental breakdown. So, despite earning the respect of his fellow artists in Paris, Vincent decided to move away from the stressful life in Paris to a more peaceful place in southern France.

Arles

Arles was a peaceful city. There, Vincent painted the winter landscape and the portraits of local residents, whom he befriended. He painted some of his famous paintings, including the Sunflowers series, in Arles. He was extremely productive, painting at a frantic pace. But despite producing some of the world’s remarkable paintings, Vincent still hadn’t made a single sale. Yet, the more he painted, the more convinced he became, that his paintings would become historically important. 

A painting from the Sunflowers series

Vincent and Gauguin

Vincent left Paris to escape from the fast-paced life there. But after arriving in Arles and painting at a rapid pace, he longed for the company of other artists. After all, the melancholy and his obsession with creativity was destroying his mental health. So, he invited artists from Paris. In July 1888, Paul Gauguin accepted his invite and came to Arles. They both had intended to start an art community in Arles. Initially, they got along well, exchanging paintings and debating about art. Vincent admired him and wanted Gauguin to treat him as an equal. But Gauguin was domineering and arrogant. This led to arguments between Vincent and Gauguin. 

A horrifying incident

In December 1888, upon returning home after one such heated argument, Vincent suffered auditory hallucination and mental collapse, cutting off his left ear. He then gifted the severed ear to a prostitute in the hopes of acquiring her love. He then returned home. A policeman found him unconscious in his home the next morning and took him to a hospital. When he woke up the next day, Vincent couldn’t remember what he had done the previous night. 

Even though Vincent healed physically, the delusions and hallucinations continued. Moreover, 30 people signed a petition to get his house closed down. So, he voluntarily admitted himself to an asylum three months later, in May 1889. 

Producing the best paintings

At the asylum, Vincent Van Gogh was given a room to stay and a studio to paint. He was even allowed to go outdoors to paint. During his 1-year stay at the asylum, he painted some of his most famous paintings, including ‘Irises’ and ‘Starry Night.’

Irises, May 1889 – Van Gogh, Vincent. Irises, 1889. Getty Center.The Van Gogh Gallery. “Irises.” 9 October 2020https://www.vangoghgallery.com/catalog/Painting/244/Irises.html.

Starry Night, May 1889 – Van Gogh, Vincent. Starry Night, 1889. The Museum of Modern Art.The Van Gogh Gallery. “Starry Night.” 9 October 2020https://www.vangoghgallery.com/catalog/Painting/508/Starry Night.html.

Slowly, Vincent’s works were becoming popular, and people were starting to acknowledge his skill. In January 1890, the French literary magazine ‘Mercure de France’ praised his work and called him a genius. When his paintings were displayed in Brussels, one of his paintings was sold for 400 Francs. Later, when his paintings were exhibited in the ‘Artistes Independants’ in Paris, Monet said that Vincent’s paintings were the best in the show. 

Meanwhile, Vincent’s health was deteriorating. Hallucinations and breakdowns started to reoccur. Sometimes, it took one month for Vincent to fully recover and resume painting. But with time, Vincent accepted that his condition was incurable, and he had to live with it. So, in May 1890, he left the asylum and went to Auvers, a town north of Paris. But Theo was worried about his brother’s condition. So, he made arrangements for a doctor to supervise him. 

Final days

During the time he lived in Auvers, Vincent worked frantically, producing seventy paintings in seventy days, including portraits and landscape paintings of wheat fields. Vincent believed that his paintings would be admired by people who will be born 100 years later.

Death

Vincent’s frantic pace of painting was slowly getting the better of him, and he started getting into depression and showing erratic behavior.

On June 27th, 1890, while taking a walk in the wheat field where he had been painting, Vincent Van Gogh shot himself in the chest. He then walked back to his room, where doctors attended him. But they couldn’t save him. So, they left him alone. The next morning, when Theo came to be at his brother’s side, Vincent was smoking a pipe. Vincent told him, ‘The sadness will last forever.’ Finally, 30 hours after he shot himself, Vincent Van Gogh died. His final words to his brother were, ‘I wish I could die like this.’

Becoming famous

Theo himself was suffering from psychiatric problems and a sexually transmitted disease. His brother’s death further weakened him. So, six months after Vincent’s death, Theo died in an Asylum in the Netherlands. 

Theo’s wife, Johanna, who was a supporter of Vincent, gathered Vincent’s paintings. In 1901, she displayed these paintings at a show in Paris. Soon, Vincent’s fame grew tremendously, and people came to respect him. In 1914, she published the letters that Vincent Van Gogh sent and received. This increased the interest in the artist’s life, whose paintings were already extremely famous by now. 

Facts you probably didn’t know:

1. In 1987, Sunflowers became the most expensive painting that was sold at an auction. The record was broken two years later by another painting of Vincent Van Gogh called Irises. Today, Irises is the 15th most expensive painting ever sold.
2. Vincent Van Gogh created about 2100 pieces of art in a decade after starting his professional art career.
3. He sold only one painting in his entire life. 
4. Vincent Van Gogh died when he was 37 years old. 
5. He painted a portrait of Felix Rey, the doctor who treated him when he cut his ear, and gifted the portrait to him. But Dr. Rey gave it away because he didn’t like the painting. The painting was worth $50 million dollars in 2016.
6. Vincent’s brother Theo was initially buried in Utrecht. But, in 1914, his wife reburied him in the grave next to Vincent’s grave. 
7. Vincent Van Gogh’s uncle’s name was Vincent Van Gogh, and one of his nephew’s name was also Vincent Van Gogh.

Conclusion

The Biography of Vincent Van Gogh

We hope that this biography of Vincent Van Gogh helped you learn about Vincent Van Gogh and how he struggled in his life. If you have a vision, but you don’t want to work on it because it seems impossible, read the biography of Vincent Van Gogh. Despite all his struggles in life, he kept improving his skills and focused on his vision rather than making money. So, don’t give up on your dream because it hasn’t made you rich. Instead, improve your skills and keep working on it so that you can give your best shot when the opportunity comes knocking.

If you liked this biography of Vincent Van Gogh, you might like the following biographies as well:

1. Biography of Abraham Lincoln
2. Biography of Mother Teresa of Calcutta
3. The success story of JK Rowling

This blog post is the success story of JK Rowling.

Some personalities like Abraham Lincoln struggled a lot since childhood. They might not have had a clear cut view of their future as a child. But their sheer will to persevere and prove their worth to the world made them do unfathomable deeds. On the other hand, personalities like Oprah Winfrey knew what they wanted to be, even as a child. Even when life threw garbage against them, they used it and built their own empire. 

JK Rowling is very much like Oprah Winfrey. Since she was a child, she wanted to be a writer. Her inborn talent was obvious to everyone around her. But despite that, she struggled a lot in life. 

At one point in time, as a single mother who depended on government welfare benefits, she struggled for survival. Yet, she overcame all those years of hardships and became the highest-paid British writer. Her Harry Potter books sold more than 500 million copies worldwide and became the best-selling book series of all time. Her books have been translated into 80 different languages. 

Read the story of the woman who helped millions of people forget their sorrows by boarding the Hogwarts express and traveling into the magical world. 

Early life

Birth

Our story begins in 1964 when teenagers Peter James Rowling and Anne Volant met on the train from King’s Cross. They were both 18 years old. Peter was in the navy, and Anne was in the women’s branch of the UK’s royal navy. Their destination was the headquarters of the 45 Commando in Arbroath, where they were stationed. They were both seated across each other in the same compartment. 

Even though it was their first meeting, they were both instantly attracted to each other. When Anne complained that it was cold, Peter, like a gentleman, offered his coat. Several hours later, when they got down in Scotland, they have already fallen in love. In a few months, they both quit the navy, got married in March the next year, and settled in Yate. Peter found a job as an apprentice engineer in a factory in Bristol, a town located ten miles from Yate. 

Four months later, on July 31st 1965, a girl was born. They named her Joanne, who would later become the famous JK Rowling. Two years later, their second child was born, and they named her Dianne.

Winterbourne

A year later, Joanne and her family moved to a new house in Winterbourne. Her parents filled their new house with books because both of them loved to read.

When she was four years old, Joanne got measles and had to stay in bed all day. To cheer her up, her father read out a children’s novel called ‘The Wind in the Willows.’ This story of four animals – The mole, the rat, the toad, and the badger, became Joanne’s earliest memory of books. This inspired Joanne to read other storybooks, which were spread around the house. 

Of all the children’s stories she read, Joanne particularly loved the stories of Richard Scarry, which often featured animals with human characteristics. Inspired by his books, she made up her own stories about imaginary creatures, which she told to her sister Dianne. Joanne and her sister wanted a rabbit so badly. So, many of these early stories of Joanne focused on rabbits. The influence of this book on Joanne is also obvious in Harry Potter, in which animals and magical creatures are portrayed to be intelligent and come to the aid of Harry and his friends, when they are in dire situations.

The rabbit called Rabbit

When she was six years old, Joanne wrote her first story, which was again about a rabbit called Rabbit. In this story, the rabbit gets measles. So, his friends, including a giant bee called Miss Bee, visit him. From the moment she wrote this story, Joanne had always wanted to be a writer. 

It is remarkable how her struggle during measles and her desire to own a rabbit helped her form a story. Even at such an early age, she started creating stories by blending reality and imagination, which many successful writers often do. 

When Joanne and her family moved to Winterbourne, their mother became friends with their neighbor called Ruby Potter. Joanne, Dianne, Ruby’s son Ian Potter and daughter Vikky Potter often played together. One of the many games they played was the game of Witches and Wizards. To play this game, which Joanne invented, the boys would dress up as wizards, and the girls would dress up as witches. Thus, since an early age, Joanne had an interest in magic, which could have inspired her to write Harry Potter later.

Joanne liked her neighbors’ family name Potter much more than her own family name. So, several years later, when she started writing the Harry Potter books, she named the protagonist Harry Potter. After all, Potter is the family name that she liked the most, and Harry is the boy’s name she liked the most. 

Tutshill

In 1974, when Joanne was nine years old, her family moved once again, this time to a town called Tutshill. Joanne created several elements in the Harry Potter world based on her real-life experiences in this place. For starters, the old stone cottage in which they lived, has a cupboard under the stairs, much like the one in which Harry Potter lives. It also has a trapdoor that leads to a cellar, like the one that the three-headed dog guards in ‘Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s stone.’ The Forest of Dean, near which Joanne’s house was located, is where Harry and Hermione camp during their search of the Horcruxes. 

Second primary school

Even though Joanne used many elements of this house in the Harry Potter series, life there wasn’t exactly a happy one. Her first day at her primary school was catastrophic. In a test organized by Slyvia Morgan, a teacher at that school, Joanne received only half a mark out of ten. As a result, she was made to sit with less intellectual students. Joanne, whom the teachers in her primary school in Winterbourne praised for her imagination and story-telling skills, couldn’t take it lightly. She wanted to prove herself. So, she worked hard, got good marks, and was eventually made to sit with the highly intellectual students. But despite proving herself, Mrs.Sylvia Morgan still appeared strict and intimidating to Joanne. 

As a young girl, Joanne Rowling read so many books. She was also a know-it-all, pretty much like Hermione Granger. Indeed, she created Hermione Granger based on her 11-year old self. 

Growing up

Secondary school

When she moved to secondary school, she was taught Chemistry by John Nettleship. He was a strict teacher. Joanne didn’t particularly enjoy his classes. Even though Joanne was a brilliant student, in Nettleship’s classes, she was more like Harry Potter in Snape’s class, rather than Hermione. 

Indeed, Sylvia Morgan and John Nettleship affected Joanne’s life so much that she created Severus Snape based on them. 

The Lord of the Rings

But besides John Nettleship, at this age, Joanne Rowling had nothing to complain. At this age, Joanne was starting to read more books. During this time, she read ‘Lord of the Rings’ and fell in love with it. Even though she didn’t use any characters from the Lord of the Rings, Lord of the Rings might have motivated her to create a story of her own.

After all, the similarities between both the stories are not easy to ignore. The protagonists in both stories are orphans living with their uncle or his family. In both stories, the plot begins on the birthdays of the protagonists. In both stories, the villains are extremely powerful beings who have lost power and seek to retain it. Moreover, both the villains can be killed only by destroying their source of power, either the ring or the Horcruxes. Gandalf, in Lord of the Rings, is an old, but strong man who is respected by his comrades and feared by his enemies. In the Harry Potter series, Dumbledore holds a similar position.

Another book that Joanne fell in love with, during her teenage, was ‘Emma,’ written by Jane Austen. She read it more than 20 times. She also started liking pop music. Thus, Joanne was growing up to be a happy teenager. 

Anne’s failing health

However, Joanne’s life took a turn when she was 15 years old. Her mother was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis. It is a disease in which one’s own immune system attacks the fatty material around the nerve fibers. As a result, the nerves stop working properly. When this happens, the brain can’t send signals to different parts of the body properly. Eventually, the victim becomes incapable of movement. Thus, the disease is a ticking time bomb.

When Joanne’s family found out about her mother’s disease, they were devastated. Joanne knew that her mother would be completely paralyzed one day. Looking at her mother suffering from this progressively destructive disease destroyed Joanne. But, she could only watch helplessly, because there is no cure for the disease. Knowing that her mother’s days are numbered is the worst thing that could ever happen to any child. So, slowly, Joanne started to fall into depression.

Sean Harris and his car

But luckily, for Joanne, a knight came to save her from the depression. Even though he didn’t ride a horse, he drove a car. To save her from the depression, a new pupil in her school, Sean Harris, often took Joanne for a ride in his blue Ford Anglia car. They went to concerts and bars to help Joanne forget about her sorrows. To Joanne, Sean’s car became a symbol of hope that rescued her from depression. Like it came to Joanne’s aid, in the second Harry Potter book, it comes to Harry and Ron’s aid when the entrance to the platform 9 3/4 is blocked. 

Thus, Sean became a very close friend who also encouraged Joanne’s secret desire to become a writer. Joanne never forgot what Sean did for her. So, she dedicated the second book in the Harry Potter series to him. 

An idea changes Joanne’s life

The University of Exeter

Thanks to Sean, Joanne could focus on her studies once again. She wanted to get into Oxford. But even though she secured good grades, she couldn’t get a place in Oxford or Cambridge. So, in 1982, she started studying at the University of Exeter. Joanne wanted to study English. But her parents thought that a Bachelor’s degree in a foreign language would give her the opportunity of working as a bilingual secretary. This would give her a stable job when compared to a job in literature. So, they convinced her to take up the Bachelor of Arts in French and Classics. 

At the university, she often borrowed books and read so much outside her syllabus. Once, she even ended up paying a fine of £50 to the University library for the overdue books. The additional reading didn’t help her with the exams. But it helped her come up with names for the spells in her Harry Potter books. 

After spending her third year in Paris teaching at a school, Joanne graduated in 1986. After graduating, Joanne started working as a bilingual secretary in London. Even though her work as a secretary was very important, she didn’t like it. So, she never took notes during meetings. Instead, she just wrote down ideas for the two adult novels she was writing at that time. 

The train ride

In the summer of 1990, Joanne’s boyfriend moved to Manchester. So, she decided to move to Manchester too. So, on a fine weekend, Joanne went to Manchester to find a place to stay. After hunting for flats, Joanne returned to London by train, which was delayed by four hours. During the journey, suddenly, an idea surfaced in her mind – The idea of a boy who didn’t know that he could use magic until he got an invitation from a wizard school to study magic. Even though Joanne has always had a wild imagination, she had never been this excited by an idea before. So, after reaching Manchester, she immediately started working on the story. 

Anne Rowling passes away

But all her excitement and happiness of creating a new magical world was shortlived. A few months later, on December 30th, 1990, Anne Rowling passed away after fighting Multiple Sclerosis for ten years. Even though Joanne had gone home for Christmas, she didn’t realize how ill her mother was. So, she didn’t even tell her about Harry Potter. The loss of her mother, to whom Joanne was very attached all her life, affected her terribly. So, she used her own feelings of loss to describe how much Lily loved Harry and how much her death affected him. 

After several depressing months, Joanne found an advertisement in The Guardian to teach English as a foreign language in Portugal. The advertisement gave Joanne hope. So, looking for a fresh start, she decided to leave England and all the sorrows behind and move to Portugal. 

No man’s land

Porto

Porto, the second-largest city in Portugal, was a busy city. When Joanne moved to Porto, she had to share her apartment with two other girls. The three girls who were working in the same school taught only from 5 pm to 10 pm. After their work, they often went to nightclubs. Since she had to teach only during the night, during the day, Joanne often went to coffee shops and started writing Harry Potter books while sipping a cup of coffee. 

First Marriage and first child

After 18 months of living a carefree life, she met Jorge Arantes, a Portuguese journalist. Even though he was three years younger than her, they connected due to their shared interest in Jane Austin’s books. Even though their relationship was passionate, they were both possessive and jealous. Moreover, the money Joanne earned was spent by Jorge to search for meaningful employment, which he couldn’t find. Both these factors threatened to end their relationship. However, the tides turned when Joanne’s first pregnancy ended in miscarriage. Even though it was a sad moment, this brought them closer. So, in spite of the fact Joanne and Jorge had arguments often and her friends advised her to leave him, they got married on October 16th, 1992. 

Life after marriage wasn’t so easy for Joanne. Jorge not only argued with Joanne but also physically abused her. Despite that, Joanne stayed with him because she wanted to make the marriage work. Meanwhile, Joanne got pregnant once again, and, on July 27th, 1993, their daughter Jessica Isabel Rowling Arantes was born. Despite Joanne’s efforts, the marriage reached a dead end within a few months. On that fateful day, Jorge slapped Joanne and threw her out of their home. Joanne, who understood that their marriage had reached an end, returned with the police, took her daughter and left to the UK.

As poor as possible, without being homeless

Living on government welfare

After returning to the UK, Joanne couldn’t find a job. But she didn’t want to trouble her sister and her husband, who let her stay with them. She couldn’t stay with her father either because her father had remarried. So, she rented a small apartment and started living on government welfare. 

But the small apartment filled with rodents was not an ideal place for a baby to grow up. So, she started searching for a better apartment. But, nobody was willing to rent an apartment to a single mom living on government welfare.

After a long search, she found an unfurnished apartment. With the help of the money her old friend Sean Harris lent her, she was able to rent it. Her friends donated some of their furniture and helped her furnish it. Finally, she was in a better apartment. But even though she was in a better apartment now, Joanne wasn’t happy. 

Depression and Dementors

Whenever she visited her friends’ house, she would look at the dolls their children had. She compared it with Jessica’s dolls, which could fit in a shoebox. This made her very sad. She understood that she didn’t have enough money to provide for her daughter. Indeed, she was living as poor as possible without being homeless. So, Joanne, who, as a kid, was similar to Hermione, came to see herself as a failure seven years after graduation. Moreover, she was often overcome by feelings of guilt for being a failed mother. So, she fell deep into depression and often wanted to kill herself. The depression she underwent during this time inspired her to create the dementors in the Harry Potter series. Her own feelings during this time helped her write how Harry feels when he meets a dementor.

But despite her depression, Joanne wanted to keep writing the Harry Potter books. But a crying baby and an apartment that reminded her of her failures did not provide a great atmosphere to get her creative juices flowing. She longed for the ambiance of a coffee shop. However, living on state benefits, she couldn’t afford to spend money on coffee.

Nicholson’s cafe

Luckily for her, her brother-in-law opened a coffee shop called Nicholson’s cafe. Since she was family, they let her sit at the coffee shop for hours drinking a single cup of coffee. There, Joanne would write the Harry Potter books while rocking Jessica to sleep in her baby stroller. 

Meanwhile, her husband, Jorge, had come to the UK looking for her and their daughter. Scared, Joanne obtained an order of restraint against him and applied for a divorce. This forced Jorge to go back to Portugal. 

For several months, Joanne continued writing in coffee shops and typing on an old typewriter upon returning home. Finally, in 1995, five years after the idea of the boy who lived came to her mind, Joanne completed the manuscript for her first book.

Tides change

Christopher Little Literary Agency

Now that the first book was complete, the next step was to send a sample to literary agents. If a literary agent liked her book, they would send it to publications that would print the book and sell it. So, Joanne sent the first three chapters of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s stone to literary agents. But she never thought that her book will ever get accepted. So, she was overjoyed when the second literary agent she sent the book to, Christopher Little Literary Agency, liked her book and asked for the rest of the chapters. 

A young reader in the agency had read the three chapters and liked it a lot. So, instead of throwing it away, because the agency didn’t handle children’s books, she and her colleague persuaded Christopher Little to sign up Rowling. Thus, the Christopher Little Literary Agency became the literary representative of Joanne Rowling.

After signing a deal with Joanne, the agency sent the 200-page script to various publishers. Most of them rejected it. Finally, after one year and 12 rejections, Bloomsbury publication agreed to publish it. They gave Joanne an advance of £1,500. 

Bloomsbury publication

When Bloomsbury’s chairman, Barry Cunningham, gave the first chapter to his 8-year-old daughter to read, she read the first chapter eagerly and demanded the next chapter immediately. 

Barry Cunningham knew Joanne’s book would sell. But he did not think that Joanne can make considerable money out of it as it was a children’s book. He believed that the adult audience will only like crime thrillers and romance novels, but not children’s stories. So, he advised Joanne to get a full-time job. 

Heeding to Barry’s advice, Joanne decided to become a teacher. But to become a teacher, she needed a Postgraduate degree. Therefore, she started pursuing a post-graduate degree in modern languages at Moray House, which is now part of Edinburgh University. She got her post-graduate degree a year later, in July 1996.

Publishing her first book

Bloomsbury anticipated that boys would not read a book written by a female author. So, they urged Joanne to choose a different pen name. They suggested her to pick a name with two initials. So, Joanne Rowling chose the name J. K. Rowling. J stands for Joanne, and K stands for Kathleen, her paternal grandmother. 

Meanwhile, JK Rowling applied to The Scottish Arts Council for a grant to help her write the second book. After reviewing her application, the council awarded her a grant of £8,000. 

In June 1997, Bloomsbury published 1000 copies of the first book in the UK. Initially, since both the author and the book were new, there wasn’t much response from the general public. But the book got favorable reviews from leading magazines. Moreover, within days of publishing the book, Scholastic, a children’s book publisher, bid more than $100,000 for the publishing rights in the USA. Scholastic renamed ‘Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s stone’ as ‘Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s stone’ to publish in the USA. This news spread like wildfire. This news and the rave reviews from leading magazines boosted the sales of the first Harry Potter book. 

The success story of JK Rowling

Surging popularity

Five months later, the book won the Nestle Smarties Book Prize. This prize, awarded to the book which got the most votes from children and was written by a British author in the preceding year, stood testimony to Harry Potter’s surging popularity in the UK. The book also won other prestigious awards, like The British book award for being the Children’s book of the year and the Children’s book award. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, published in July 1998, also won the Smarties Prize. 

In 1998, Warner Bros. wanted to capitulate on the growing popularity of the Harry Potter books. So, they paid a seven-figure sum and purchased the film rights to the first two Harry Potter stories.

J.K.Rowling in 1999 – By John Mathew Smith & www.celebrity-photos.com from Laurel Maryland, USA – Author J. K. Rowlings, Link

By March 1999, the first two Harry Potter books had sold almost 300,000 copies each, in the UK alone. In December 1999, the third Harry Potter book, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, was published. It, too, won the Nestle Smarties Book Prize. This made JK Rowling the first author to win the award three times in a row. One year later, in July 2000, the fourth book, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, was published. But JK Rowling removed the book from the Smarties Prize competition to give other books a fair chance of winning the prize. 

Slowing down

All JK Rowling ever wanted was to be able to support herself and her daughter. However, by the year 2000, JK Rowling had become wealthy beyond her wildest imagination. But this popularity came at a cost. Unlike before, she couldn’t decide when to write her next book. Once the first book became famous, she was forced to write the consequent books in subsequent years. The amount of pressure it produced was overwhelming for JK Rowling. So, after the fourth book was published, she slowed down and published her next book only three years later. 

In 2001, the first Harry Potter movie was released. It became an instant hit, grossing almost 1 billion dollars. It marked the beginning of a movie franchise, which, as of 2019, is the third highest-grossing movie franchise. A month after the movie’s release, she married Neil Murray, a Scottish doctor. Their son was born two years later. 

The sixth book was released in 2005, and the seventh book was released in 2007. Both these books broke sales records, selling 9 million copies and 11 million copies, respectively, within 24 hours of release. 

Even though the Harry Potter books made JK Rowling famous, they were not the only books she wrote. In 2012, she published ‘A Casual Vacancy,’ a political story in a small British town. The book sold one million copies in three weeks. 

Other Books

In 2013, JK Rowling wrote a novel called ‘The Cuckoo’s Calling’ under the pen name Robert Galbraith. The novel was rejected by a few publishers. She later published the rejection letters on Twitter to serve as a motivation for budding writers. One of the rejection letters suggested that Galbraith should join a writers’ group or writing course to get constructive criticism on his novel. The novel was eventually published and obtained great reviews. However, a family friend let loose that Robert Galbraith was actually JK Rowling. Soon, the sales of the book jumped 150,000%. As a result, the book, which was in the 4709th position in Amazon, became the best-selling book of the year. Since then, she has written four more parts of the novel. 

Giving back

Charities

JK Rowling might be filthy rich now. But, even after becoming rich, JK Rowling didn’t forgot her humble beginnings and the turmoils she went through. So, she wanted to help other people like her. Therefore, she contributed to several charities. In 2003, she set aside a day a week for charity.

As her mother died due to Multiple Sclerosis, JK Rowling has contributed more than 25 million dollars to a center that treats the disease. She has also donated the profits from two of her books, ‘Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them’ and ‘Quidditch through the ages’ to fight poverty in the UK and help children and young people in crises throughout the world.

In 2004, while reading Sunday Times, JK Rowling saw the picture of a boy in a caged bed in a Czech orphanage. It made her realize that children in orphanages are not properly taken care of. So, she created an NGO to end the institutionalization of children. In 2010, it was renamed Lumos, based on the light-generating spell in the Harry Potter books. Lumos and other organizations have convinced the European Commission to stop spending more than $367 million to build orphanages. Instead, this money was used to improve the livelihood of children by finding foster families for orphans and improving the family income of poor children who were sent to orphanages because their families couldn’t afford to take care of them. 

J.K.Rowling in 2010 – By Daniel Ogren – Flickr: 100405_EasterEggRoll_683, Link

Facts you probably didn’t know

1. The Harry Potter movies have grossed more than 9.1 billion dollars worldwide.
2. Harry Potter books have been translated into 80 languages and sold more than 500 million copies, making Harry Potter the best-selling book series of all time.
3. The boy’s name that JK Rowling likes most is Harry. She likes it because it sounds happy. If her first child were a boy, she would have named him Harry. But then, the protagonist of her famous book wouldn’t have been called Harry Potter.
4. Little White Horse, a story JK Rowling read as a child, inspired her to write the Harry Potter books. 
5. Whenever she got an idea regarding Harry Potter, she wrote them on small pieces of paper and stored them. While writing the books, she used these bits of paper to connect the dots.
6. July 31st, Harry Potter’s birthday, is also JK Rowling’s birthday. 
7. She wrote the last chapter of the last Harry Potter book sometime in 1990, five years before she finished the first Harry Potter book.
8. In 2004, she became the first billion-dollar author and also one of the only self-made female billionaires. But she lost her status as a billionaire as she gave a lot of money to charities. 
9. JK Rowling has won several awards for her Harry Potter books and her charitable works.
10. Her sister Dianne was always the first one to listen to her stories. So, she dedicated her first book to her mother, Anne; her sister, Dianne; and her daughter, Jessica. 
11. She dedicated her second book to her friend Sean Harris, who helped her get out of depression when her mother was ill and lent her money when she returned to the UK after a failed marriage.
12. She finally came to terms with her father and dedicated her fourth book to him.

The Message

The success story of JK Rowling

When you think that life is meaningless and you encounter failure after failure, read this success story of JK Rowling. JK Rowling decided to become an author when she was six years old. Yet, by the time the first Harry Potter book was published, she was 32 years old. In the 26 years it took for her dream to become a reality, she had worked various jobs she didn’t like, got a Bachelor’s degree in a subject her parents chose, her mother died, her father abandoned her, had a failed marriage, suffered from poverty, and fell deep into depression twice. But not once did she think of giving up on her dream. 

Her perseverance made her what she is today. After she became wealthy, she decided to give back a lot of her money to the world. She spent a lot of money on charities to help those in need. So, read this success story of JK Rowling when you want to give up. More importantly, never give up on your dreams and help others when you become successful.

If you liked this success story of JK Rowling, you might like the following biographies as well:

1. Biography of Abraham Lincoln
2. Biography of Mother Teresa of Calcutta
3. Albert Einstein, the Genius

This blog post is the biography of Albert Einstein, the genius. Albert Einstein was a world-renowned theoretical physicist who changed the way we look at energy and matter. He was a German and is best known for developing the energy-mass equation and the Theory of Relativity. He revolutionized modern physics and won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1922.  

Even though Albert Einstein is a name that everyone knows, he wasn’t born that way. When he was born, he had trouble learning to speak. Those around him thought that he would never be able to speak or learn anything. Yet, he achieved feats that others wouldn’t even dare think about.  

How did a child who had trouble speaking become a man the entire world speaks about? Read this article and find out. Get a glimpse into Albert Einstein’s personal and professional journey. Find out how his contributions to modern physics changed the course of human events.  

Early Life

Birth

Albert Einstein, the genius, was born on March 14th, 1879, in a city called Ulm in the German Empire. Both his parents, father Hermann and mother Pauline, came from Jewish merchant families. When he was a kid, Hermann Einstein loved Mathematics. So, he went to Stuttgart, which was 75 miles away, for high school. However, his family’s financial condition was not so good. Moreover many colleges at that time did not accept Jewish students. Therefore, he did not go to college. Instead, he returned to his village and got into trade. A few years later, he moved to Ulm with his parents because Ulm was an industrial center. 

When he was 29 years old, he married the 18-year-old Pauline Koch. Three years later, on March 14th, 1879, their first son was born. Initially, they wanted to name the boy Abraham, which was Hermann’s father’s name. But the name sounded too Jewish. So, they named him Albert instead.  

After a year of Albert’s birth, Hermann’s business started failing. So, Hermann moved with his family to Munich, where his younger brother had opened a gas and electrical supply company. Eventually, the company would get so big that, at a point, it would employ 200 people and set to compete against Siemens. 

One year later, in 1881, Albert’s younger sister Maria, also known as Maja, was born. She would later become one of the most important people in Albert’s life.

Difficulty in learning to speak

As a kid, Einstein had trouble in learning to talk. So, when he was two years old, he developed a peculiar habit. Before he said anything out loud, he wanted to make sure that the entire sentence sounded properly. So, he repeated it within himself, to make sure it doesn’t sound gibberish. Looking at his behavior, people started thinking that he would never be able to learn at all. Even though Einstein soon proved everyone wrong, this little habit continued throughout his life. As a result, he suffered from a mild case of echolalia, a psychiatric disorder in which a person is compelled to repeat the other person’s spoken words. In his later life, Einstein would come to believe that this slow verbal development actually contributed to his success.

Einstein, 3 years old – By YouTube – http://th.physik.uni-frankfurt.de/~jr/physpiceinstein.html., Public Domain, Link

Things like light, gravitation, electricity, etc. are intriguing to kids. But, as they grow up, they lose the awe for these little things as other things take precedence. However, Einstein was different. The stage where he was fascinated by these little things came a little late in his childhood. So, even after he became an adult, the trivial stuff never ceased to amaze him.

Due to his difficulty with language, Einstein started to think in pictures rather than in words. Unlike normal people, who think in words and speak it out, Einstein used to think in pictures, and then translate it into words before speaking it out. This made him a genius because it helped him visualize the concepts in Mathematics and Theoretical Physics in his mind.

Life-changing incidents

When Albert Einstein was a kid, two major incidents happened, that would change his life forever. 

When he was four or five years old, his father gave him a magnetic compass. Looking at the needle move, little Einstein froze. The fact that the needle moved, without Einstein even touching it, fascinated him. It made him believe that there was something hidden behind things. This created in Einstein a lifelong lust for the forces of nature, which would come to define who he was. 

At around the same time, his mother, a pianist, made him take violin lessons. This would create in little Einstein, lifelong devotion to music. In his later years, whenever he would hit a roadblock in his experiments and did not know what to do, he would take his violin and start playing Mozart’s tunes or improvising melodies. And suddenly, he would stumble upon a solution to the problem.

Schooling

Einstein’s parents were not religious. So, when he was 6 years old, they sent him to a catholic school, which didn’t teach anything about their religion. Even though the year was 1885, antisemitism, the hatred against Jews, was already prevalent in elementary schools in Germany. So, little Einstein was often bullied by his schoolmates. Therefore, little Einstein started feeling like an outsider who didn’t belong there. 

When he was 9 years old, he joined the Luitpold Gymnasium. Unlike the previous school, this school had a teacher who taught him and other Jews about their culture and religion. 

Love for Mathematics

As a child, Einstein disliked playing. Even though other children played near him, he never joined them. Instead, he sat alone, pondering over the forces of nature and solving mathematical problems. He studied the following year’s textbooks during the summer vacation. Therefore, since primary school, he was the top of his class. Thus, even though he struggled with language early on, it did not stop him from becoming exceptionally good at his studies. 

When he was in his fifties, after Einstein became famous, allegations arose, claiming that he had failed in Mathematics as a child. It was meant to motivate underachieving students. However, in response to these allegations, Einstein explained that he had never failed in Mathematics. To prove him right, the principal of his high school released a letter showing how good his grades were. So, next time, if you see a social media post claiming that Albert Einstein failed in Mathematics as a child, don’t believe it.

Love for science

When Einstein was 10 years old, as part of their Jewish culture, his family invited a poor medical student to dine with them every Thursday. The medical student, called Max Talmud, was 21 years old at that time. He gave Einstein a Geometry book that Einstein would have learned only two years later, according to the school schedule.

Initially, Talmud helped Einstein solve the problems in that book. But within a few months, Einstein had mastered the book. After finishing the book, Einstein started learning higher mathematics. By the age of 13, he had already mastered algebra, Euclidean Geometry, and calculus. Talmud, who was amazed by Einstein’s mathematical genius, could no longer follow him anymore. 

Talmud also brought Einstein several science books. One of the noteworthy books among these was an illustrated series. The series consisted of 21 little volumes. Einstein read these books thoroughly. They explained the relation between Physics and Biology and reported the scientific experiments at that time in great detail. These books seem to have become influential in Einstein’s life. They might have helped him create thought experiments, which eventually led to the Theory of Relativity.

At this age, Einstein also started taking an active interest in philosophy. He started following the works of Immanuel Kant, who was a renowned German philosopher. 

Becoming Stateless

Leaving Germany

In 1894, when Einstein was 15 years old, his father’s company closed down due to bankruptcy. So, his father decided to set up a smaller company with less investment in Italy. Consequently, his family moved to Italy. However, Einstein stayed back at a relative’s house to finish the last 3 years of school. During that time, his teachers started to disapprove of his visual, imaginative approach to learning, which was indispensable to him. 

Since childhood, Einstein never really liked the German authoritarian teaching methods. He felt that being a part of the education system with an established hierarchy felt like being a machine. So, he quit school and went to Italy, where his parents were. Thereafter, he decided to study by himself and join the Zurich Polytechnic in Switzerland.

Even though Einstein had successfully escaped the German authoritarian education system, there was still one more problem that terrified Einstein. It was the mandatory military service every German had to do, once he turned 17. But for Einstein, who hated German education because it felt like a military system, serving in the real military was a terrifying thought. However, if he was a German citizen when he turned 17 and did not report for military service, the country would accuse him of desertion. The only way out was to not to be a German citizen when he turned 17. So, he renounced his German citizenship, and officially, from 1896, Einstein was not a citizen of any country.  

First visualized thought experiment

After returning to Italy, Einstein took the entrance exam to join the Swiss Federal Polytechnical School (ETH) in Zurich. Even though he passed the sections on Science and Mathematics, he failed in language, biology, history, and geography.

So, he spent a year preparing for the entrance exam in a school nearby. Surprisingly, Einstein, who hated the German teaching principles, fell in love with his new school. The reason for this is not hard to imagine. In the new school, students were encouraged to visualize images. It was in this school that Einstein learned to create his first visualized thought experiment. In this experiment, Einstein imagined a person chasing a beam of light. This would become the first of many such thought experiments, which helped him formulate the General theory of relativity.

First love

During his time at the school, Einstein fell in love with Marie Whinteler, his guardian’s daughter. Not just Einstein, but his entire family came to like Marie.

After finishing a year at the school, in 1896, Einstein retook the entrance exam. This time, he passed it and joined a four-year diploma program at the Zurich Polytechnic (Swiss Federal Polytechnical School), to become a physics and mathematics teacher . 

This began a career spanning almost six decades that made him a world-renowned physicist. At the same time, it also ended his romance with Marie. 

Zurich Polytechnic

Until now, Einstein had been a child prodigy whose intellect in Mathematics and Physics was unparalleled. But during his time at Zurich Polytechnic and for a few years after that, his life turned upside down.

Getting in trouble with the Mathematics professor

During his time at Zurich Polytechnic, he fell in love with Physics and wanted to become a physicist. He thought that basic knowledge in Mathematics was enough to become a successful physicist. So, he started neglecting Mathematics and skipping many Mathematics classes. As a result, his Mathematics professor started hating him.

Getting in trouble with Heinrich Weber

Even though he was not in good terms with his Mathematics professor, he was in good terms with his Physics professor, Heinrich Weber, whom he admired. Weber taught many basic concepts of Physics, which Einstein came to love. Weber, too, admired Einstein for his intellect and brilliance, at such a young age. However, with time, Einstein became dissatisfied with Weber because he focused too much on the historical concepts of Physics rather than on modern developments. He thought that Weber was 50 years out of date.

Einstein was an outspoken student. He hated authority and, at times, was disrespectful to teachers. So, when he became disappointed with Weber’s teaching methods, he made no efforts to hide his feelings. Moreover, unlike the other students who addressed Weber as ‘Mr. Professor’, he addressed him as ‘Mr. Weber’. This destroyed the admiration they had for each other, and Weber came to think of Einstein as an arrogant student. 

Getting in trouble with Jean Pernet

He was also not in good terms with his other Physics professor, Jean Pernet, who was in charge of practicals. Einstein was a student who never stuck to the syllabus. If he didn’t find a subject interesting, he would skip its classes. If he found a subject interesting, he would read beyond what was assigned to its syllabus. So, since the beginning, Einstein skipped Pernet’s classes. Even when he attended Pernet’s lab classes, Einstein disregarded the instruction sheet provided by Pernet for solving the exercise. Instead, he created his own solution for these exercises. This annoyed Pernet a lot. So, he failed Einstein in the course called ‘Physical Experiments for Beginners’, the only Physics course in which Einstein failed. 

Once, in July 1889, during such an experiment, Einstein was implementing his own solution. However, something went wrong and caused an explosion that damaged his right hand. Even though he recovered from it physically, it might have contributed to his decision to become a theoretical physicist rather than an experimental physicist.

Meeting interesting people

Even though the time at Zurich Polytechnic was difficult for Einstein, it also helped him meet some interesting people and forge rewarding relationships. Two of these interesting people, who played important roles in his life, are Marcel Grossman and Mileva Maric. 

Even though Einstein was not in good terms with his professors, he was good at making friends. Some of them remained his friends throughout his life. One of these friends worth mentioning is Marcel Grossman. Even though Grossman was a Jew like Einstein, he was very different from Einstein. While Einstein loved Physics, Grossman was a Mathematics genius. While Einstein rarely attended lectures, Grossman obediently attended lectures and took notes. This would eventually become beneficial to Einstein, because Einstein, who himself did not take any notes, would later use his notes to study for the exams. So, saying that Grossman’s notes played a big factor in Einstein’s graduation wouldn’t be an exaggeration.

Mileva Maric was the only female in the group of five students who enrolled for the diploma program. Mileva, like Einstein, loved Physics, liked to think independently, and detested authority. So, even though Mileva was often called the ugly girl of the class, and Einstein was the intelligent, handsome boy of the class, Einstein came to like Mileva. They bonded easily and read books and papers on higher physics together. He saw her as a companion and a friend, and eventually, they fell in love. 

Einstein and Mileva, 1912 – By Unknown author – http://ba.e-pics.ethz.ch/latelogin.jspx?records=:33805&r=1448594392396#1448594400592_1, Public Domain, Link

Exams

If life at the Zurich Polytechnic was hard for Einstein, life after that only became even harder. 

During those days, students at the Polytechnic had to take only two exams in their four years – the Intermediates and the Finals. These two exams were mostly based on the notes from the professors. Einstein, who mostly did what he pleased and skipped classes, had no notes to study for these exams. But his friend Grossmann kept meticulous notes. So, Einstein started cramming for the intermediates using Grossman’s notes, three months before the exam. The exam took place in October 1898. When the results came, Einstein was pleasantly surprised. Having secured the highest grade, he had scored more than Grossman, whose notes he had borrowed. 

However, in the Finals, Einstein wasn’t as lucky. He had also spent most of his time reading other books. So, in 1900, when his final set of grades came, his absence from lectures and the bad reputation among his professors finally showed their effect. Einstein was placed fourth in his class of five people, barely managing to pass. Moreover, due to his reputation with professors, he couldn’t get a job as a research assistant. Indeed, Professor Weber was so annoyed with Einstein that, when he needed two assistants, he hired two unknown students from the Engineering department, instead of hiring Einstein. As a result, Einstein became the only graduate in his class who couldn’t secure a job after graduation. So, he was forced to return to Italy and stay with his parents. 

The Unemployed Graduate

For the next two years, he would desperately send job applications throughout Europe to become a research assistant. But Einstein was a below-average graduate, with no academic accomplishments and no reference from his professors. So, it is not surprising that he never got a job he desired. But what is surprising is that, of all the job applications he sent through the post, he only got one reply. However, it too turned out to be a rejection. So, Einstein took up small jobs like teaching in a school temporarily and tutoring a rich kid.

Einstein deeply desired to become a Swiss citizen. So, he had been saving money since his first year at college. Therefore, some months after his graduation, Einstein applied for Swiss citizenship, despite not having a steady job. After a thorough investigation, he was granted Swiss citizenship in 1901. So, Einstein, who had been stateless for five years, finally became a country’s citizen.

The first job

His troubles ended in 1902 when he finally got a job at the patent office to review patents. The one who got him this job was his college friend Grossman, the same person whose notes have saved him in college. Grossman’s father knew the director of the patent office. So, they changed the requirements of the job to suit the qualifications of Einstein. Therefore, after two years of searching for a job, Einstein finally got a job.

By this time, Mileva had become pregnant with Einstein’s child. But Einstein couldn’t marry her due to the lack of a job. By the time he got the job, his daughter was born. But as a Swiss citizen, working in a decent job, he couldn’t afford to have an illegitimate child. So, they gave her daughter to a friend of Mileva’s parents.  

Conducting research during spare time

Even though Einstein had wanted a research assistantship, he only got a job to review patents. But despite not getting a research assistantship, Einstein’s love for science never faded. So, while reviewing patent applications, he used to ponder over the big questions in physics. Moreover, Einstein started a discussion group with some of his friends. They talked about science, inventions, and philosophy. Meanwhile, he started his doctoral degree at the University of Zurich.

Normally, it would be difficult to pursue a doctoral degree in science while doing a full-time job due to the numerous experiments that need to be done. But Einstein was a theoretical physicist. So, he could do his research at home or at the patent office’s library in his spare time. He didn’t even have to go to the university or a research laboratory. 

Albert Einstein, the Genius

Einstein’s year of miracles

All his hard work bore fruit in 1905 when he completed his Ph.D. dissertation. That year, Einstein published 5 scientific papers, which came to be known as the Annus Mirabilis papers. These papers explained the Photoelectric effect using Quantum theory, mathematically proved the existence of atoms, laid the foundation for his General theory of relativity, and established that energy and mass are interchangeable (e=mc²). Einstein got his doctoral degree a year later. 

Even though the year 1905 would later come to be recognized as ‘Einstein’s year of miracles,’ when he published these papers, Einstein did not get any recognition. This was because he did not even have a doctoral degree or a university teaching position in  1905. So, people did not know him. The only person who supported him at that time was Max Planck, who invented the Quantum theory. So, partly due to Planck’s backing, Einstein soon became known among the scientific community. 

As a result, in 1908, due to the recognition by the scientific community, Einstein was appointed as a lecturer at the University of Bern. One year later, he became an associate professor for the faculty of Theoretical Physics. Meanwhile, Einstein and Mileva were married and had two sons.

Returning to Germany

In 1913, Einstein was asked to be a professor at the University of Berlin in Germany. He accepted the offer and moved to Germany but kept the Swiss citizenship. Soon, the first world war started. But since Einstein was a Swiss citizen, he didn’t join the military. Instead, he worked on completing his theories. 

But since he worked all the time, he couldn’t spend much time with Minerva. So, she took the kids and went back to Zurich. In the following years, he worked hard to complete his General Theory of Relativity, at times forgetting to eat and sleep. Finally, he finished it in 1915. But it took its toll on him, and he was diagnosed with gallstones. During this time, his cousin Elsa took care of him. So, they got close.

In 1919, Einstein and Mileva got divorced. Einstein agreed to give the Nobel prize money to Mileva if he ever won one. Soon after the divorce, Einstein married Elsa. 

Winning the Nobel Prize in physics

In 1922, the 1921 Nobel Prize for Physics was awarded to Albert Einstein. The Nobel Committee did not find any suitable candidate in 1921 who met the criteria laid down by Alfred Nobel. So, they decided to reserve the award until the next year and awarded it to Einstein in 1922. 

Even though the General Theory of Relativity is an interesting discovery, in 1921, it was new, strange, and controversial. So, The Nobel Committee decided to not give Einstein the Nobel prize for his discovery of the General Theory of Relativity, because they feared that it might be disproved later. So, they gave Einstein the Nobel Prize for his contributions to theoretical physics and for his discovery of the law of the Photoelectric effect, instead. Einstein did not accept the award in person since he was traveling to China and Japan during that time. As agreed during the divorce settlement, all of his award money went to his ex-wife and two sons. 

Traveling the world and moving to the USA

In the next ten years, Einstein traveled the world and toured many countries as a member of the international committee on intellectual cooperation. He received great respect in all the countries he visited. He traveled to the USA in 1930 for a two-month work visit to the California Institute of Technology. But he stayed there for more than the intended duration due to various commitments.

Meanwhile, in Germany, the Nazis were rising to power under Adolf Hitler. Due to his religion, Einstein was hated by the Nazis. They also burned many of his books. This forced him to get out of Europe and settle in Princeton, New Jersey as a resident scholar. In 1939, along with other scientists,, he wrote a letter to President Roosevelt. They urged him to think upon starting the country’s own nuclear research as the Nazis were working on creating bombs that could be used to destroy America. He ultimately became an American citizen in 1940. 

Later years

It was in these years residing in America that Einstein worked on most of his theories. 

“The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existence”

– Albert Einstein (Source)

Some of his significant works include general relativity, special relativity, thermodynamic fluctuations, gravitational waves, wormholes, wave-particle duality, Bose-Einstein statistics, Bose-Einstein condensates, and unified field theory, to name a few. 

He also researched superconductivity and force but later abandoned the research to focus on other subjects. He also collaborated with many other scientists like Ervin Schrodinger and De Haas. 

Award and honors

Apart from the coveted Nobel Prize, Einstein won many awards in his lifetime of academic brilliance. Some prestigious awards include the Barnard Medal, Copley Medal, Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society, and the Max Plank medal.

He was Time Magazine’s Person of the Century in the year 1999. The runners up for the position included Mahatma Gandhi and Franklin Roosevelt.

Other Interests

Apart from his usual academic research, Einstein was also actively interested in music since his early years and was fascinated with Mozart and Beethoven. He performed for his friends regularly and continued to enjoy and play music till his last years.  

Einstein was also a bit involved in politics and was even the founder of a political party in his early years. He supported socialism and did not believe in any personal god. He was impressed by Mahatma Gandhi and was himself a member of many humanitarian and social reform groups.  

Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better

– Albert Einstein (Source)

Death

Einstein died on April 18th, 1955, due to internal bleeding caused by an abdominal aortic aneurysm. He was working on a speech he was supposed to give on television when he was rushed to the hospital. He declined surgery as he did not want to prolong his life artificially. His final words were in German. But the nurse who attended to him in those moments did not understand German. So, his final thoughts were lost in translation. 

His death also became controversial because the scientist who conducted his autopsy removed his brain and preserved it without obtaining his family’s permission. His remains were then cremated. The scientist ultimately returned his brain after a few years.

Facts you probably didn’t know 

1. Einstein was very fat when he was born and had trouble speaking properly until the age of 2. Even later, he only used to speak very rarely until the age of nine years.
2. He threw tantrums very often when he was young, and his sister had to bear the brunt of his antics. He also got angry easily in his adult life.
3. Einstein played piano and violin well and even played music in his last years for a junior quartet. 
4. He occasionally wore women’s sandals and hated wearing socks as they tore quickly. 
5. Einstein’s first lover was 2 years older than him, his first wife was 3 years older than him and his second wife was also 3 years older than him.
6. The iconic photo wherein Einstein can be seen sticking his tongue out to the paparazzi was the result of him getting tired of smiling for photographers. 
7. The character of Yoda in Star Wars was partially modeled after Einstein’s face as his picture was in the room where the character was being designed.
8. Einstein was offered to be the president of Israel when he was 73 years old. But he declined the offer saying that he is inexperienced in dealing with people.
9. He ultimately regretted his association with the Manhattan Project, which created the first nuclear weapons and dissuaded the use of science for war. 
10. Einstein had a terrible memory. He often forgot his keys, left behind his clothes and suitcase, and even forgot the train station he was supposed to get down at. 
11. Albert Einstein and Max Planck became lifelong friends.

Try not to become a man of success, but rather try to become a man of value – Albert Einstein

Albert Einstein, the Genius

We hope you enjoyed this biography of Albert Einstein, the genius. As you can see, even Einstein suffered in his lifetime. Even though he was a genius, he couldn’t get a job for two years. And even when he got a job, it was not a job that he had desired. Even after publishing five groundbreaking theories in a year, Albert Einstein, the genius, wasn’t even recognized. But he never lost the love for Physics. So, when situations seem dire and success seems impossible, read this biography of Albert Einstein, the Genius. More importantly, never give up and remember what he said:

“Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.” ― Albert Einstein (Source)

If you liked the biography of Albert Einstein, the genius, you might like the following biographies as well:

1. Biography of Abraham Lincoln
2. Biography of Mother Teresa of Calcutta
3. The biography of Marilyn Monroe

This is the biography of Mother Teresa of Calcutta.Mother Mary Teresa was an Indian-Albanian Roman Catholic nun and missionary.  Mother Teresa was born in Macedonia. From a young age, she was fascinated by the lives and service of missionaries in Bengal. So, when she was a teen, she decided to become a nun and serve the needy. This decision laid the foundation for the religious life that she lived in the future.  Mother Teresa devoted her entire life to the poor and homeless. She aimed to provide them with all the help they would need. So, she founded the organization called “Missionaries of Charity.”

The organization was a congregation of more than 4000 nuns devoted to helping the poor and the needy. Her organization provided shelter for the homeless who were suffering from AIDS, Leprosy, and other diseases. It also provided food and built medical facilities, schools, and counseling centers. Her contribution to the people, whom the society ignored and cast away, was remarkable. So, she was awarded the Nobel peace prize in 1979. Read the biography of Mother Teresa of Calcutta to ride along the 87-year journey of a young girl, who gave her life to the needy and her soul to the almighty.

Childhood

Birth

Nikola and Dranafile Bojaxhiu were both Albanian. Nikola came from a wealthy family of merchants. Being a tradesman and entrepreneur himself, he moved to Skopje, a commercial city in the Ottoman Empire. There, he partnered with an Italian merchant who sold a wide variety of goods ranging from oil to leather. Soon, he started traveling to different parts of Europe on business. As a result, his business flourished, and he became a rich and important person in Skopje. Nikola and Dranafile Bojaxhiu had two children – daughter Aga and son Lazar. On August 26th, 1910, after they moved to Skopje, Dranafile gave birth to a girl. They named her Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu. This girl would grow up and later make her name known throughout the world as Mother Teresa.

Father’s death

Even though Nikola was a strict father who wanted his children to achieve high standards in their lives, he also entertained them with stories of his travel. So, the children eagerly awaited his arrival from business tours. Nikola was very sociable and kind. So, a wide variety of people, including the city’s poorest to the Archbishop, visited him often. Even though people from all walks of life visited Nikola’s home, the poor were especially welcome. Nikola often instructed his children to treat the poor with dignity and respect and share their meals with the needy.

Nikola was also very patriotic. So, he offered financial support to the Albanian freedom fighters. Therefore, when Albania declared its independence from the Ottoman empire in 1912, he was overjoyed and celebrated it. However, the same feelings of patriotism would ultimately turn against him. Seven years later, while attending a political gathering to include Kosovo into the Greater Albanian empire, he was murdered. Agnes was just eight years old at that time.

Mother’s virtues

After Nikola’s death, everything changed for his family. Nikola’s Italian partner took away all his properties. At the same time, Dranafile’s relatives took away her ancestral properties because she didn’t have any documents to validate her claim. So, suddenly, Nikolas’ family lost all their material possessions except the house they were living in.But Dranafile, Agnes’ mother, did not let the grief overcome her. She started sewing and selling clothes to support her family. More importantly, she taught her children the importance of virtues like generosity, kindness, compassion, and devotion to God. Dranafile was a mother who taught her children by example. She regularly took care of people who were abandoned by their families and children whose parents had died.

The Journey begins

The desire to become a nun

Little Agnes grew up looking at her mother’s act of kindness. These acts of kindness ignited in Agnes a desire to become a nun and help those in need. So, when she was just twelve years old, she decided to become a nun. When she conveyed her decision to her mother, surprisingly, her mother was not surprised. Agnes was a weak child since birth. So, her mother had a premonition that Agnes would leave them soon, either by death or by becoming a nun.

Even though she wanted to become a nun, Agnes was not sure if that was the right thing to do, and if that’s what God wanted. Being a religious Christian, Agnes went to the church regularly. Once, she asked Father Jambrekovic how she can find out if becoming a nun was the right thing to do. Father Jambrekovic replied that the joy in doing something was the important thing. It was proof that it was the right thing to do. So, she was soon convinced that becoming a nun was her true calling and decided to go to Africa to serve the needy.

The desire to go to India

In 1924, several priests from Yugoslavia went to Calcutta in India for missionary work. They sent back letters to Father Jambrekovic describing their missionary work among the sick and the poor. Until then, Agnes had wanted to go to Africa. But after reading the letters, she was very impressed and decided to go to Calcutta.

She neither knew English, the local language of Calcutta, Bengali, nor the widely spoken language of India, Hindi. She knew that she might never meet her family again. However, her conviction to become a nun was stronger than her desire to live with her family.  So, in 1928, when she was just 18 years old, she left home. Her mother and sister accompanied her until Zagreb, in Croatia. From there, Agnes and another Yugoslavian woman went to Ireland to join the Sisters of Loreto. They started learning English, which was the official language of the Loreto sisters in India.

Marie Therese

Birth

Marie Françoise-Thérèse Martin was born in 1873 in France. Her father wanted to be a monk, and her mother wanted to be a saint. So, her entire family was very religious, and her elder sisters became nuns.

Therese saw suffering very early in her life. When she was four years old, her mother died. After her mother’s death, her elder sister then became her mother. Five years later, her elder sister went to a convent to become a nun. The departure of her sister, who was her second mother, was extremely painful to Therese. 

By Celine Martin (Sor Genoveva de la Santa Faz) – Archivos del Carmelo de Lisieux, CC0, Link

The first divine intervention

A few months later, Therese became extremely sick. People thought that she was going to die. So, her elder sisters started praying to the statue of the Virgin Mary. Looking at them, Little Terese started praying to her too. At once, Virgin Mary answered Terese’s prayers by appearing before her and smiling at her. Suddenly, Therese was cured.

This divine intervention changed her life. So, she started praying regularly and wanted to become a nun.

The second divine intervention

Becoming a nun requires extreme willpower. However, as a child, Therese was emotionally sensitive. She would start crying if someone criticized her. She knew that she could not survive life in the convent if she was so weak. So, she prayed to Jesus to make her emotionally strong, so that she could go to the convent and become a nun. However, Jesus did not answer her prayers. But she didn’t give up and kept on praying. As a result, after several years, on the Christmas eve of 1886, Jesus answered her prayers. He came to her heart and made her emotionally strong, something that she herself couldn’t do.

Joining the convent

Thus, when she was 15 years old, Therese had become emotionally stronger. So,  she decided to join the convent. However, the superior of the convent declined her request because she was not old enough. So, she went to the Bishop and requested him to let her join the convent. When he too declined, she went to Rome and asked the Pope to let her join the convent. Thus, even though she was a little girl, the love for God gave her a will of steel. So, she was permitted to join the convent.

After joining the convent, Therese wanted to become a saint. However, she knew she couldn’t do great deeds like the other Christian saints. But she thought that God wouldn’t have planted a desire in her if it was impossible to achieve. So, she decided to become a saint in her own way. Therefore, she started sacrificing little things for the love of God. At the convent, even if she was humiliated, she always kept smiling. She prayed for others, even if they have wronged her. Even though she was only given the leftovers, she always ate her food without complaining.

When she was 23 years old, Theresa started coughing up blood due to Tuberculosis. But she did not tell about it to anyone until it got serious and others found out. Despite the unbearable pain she was going through, her faith and her love for God kept her alive and smiling.

Becoming a saint

Therese was not afraid of dying. But she was afraid of dying young without achieving anything. So, after her death at the age of 24, her elder sister printed her autobiography and sent it to 2000 convents. Marie Therese’s tragic life, her love for God, and her way of sacrificing little things for him appealed to thousands of Catholics all over the world. It taught people across the world that they don’t have to do great deeds to be loved by God. Even the little sacrifices they make for him makes him happy. So, 28 years after her death, on May 17th, 1925, she was declared a saint by Pope Pius XI.

Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu becomes Mary Teresa

Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu was one of the thousands of people who were inspired by Marie Therese’s story. Marie Therese had shown Agnes that divinity can be achieved by doing small things. So, due to the love for Marie Therese, the little flower, when she was in Ireland, Agnes changed her name to Mary Teresa of the Child Jesus.

Sister Teresa

After spending six weeks in Ireland, Agnes, now Mary Teresa, and her companion set sail to India on December 1st, 1928. On January 6th, 1929, they reached Calcutta, the capital city of the state called Bengal, in India. From there, she moved to Darjeeling, India, and began teaching at St. Teresa School while learning Bengali. Sister Teresa took her first religious vows in 1931.

As a teacher, Sister Teresa witnessed the poverty-stricken conditions in which the slum children of the school lived. Most of the children were dirty and untidy. But she had no material wealth to share with them. So, she would often place her hand on each dirty child’s head. This brought her extreme joy. At the same time, this small act made the children happier, and they got closely attached to her. She was determined to eradicate poverty through education.

On May 24th, 1937, Sister Teresa took her final vows to lead a life of chastity, poverty, and obedience. By doing so, she took the title of ‘Mother,’ which was the common custom for Loreto nuns. Thus, in 1937, Sister Teresa became Mother Teresa.

Mother Teresa

Mother Teresa as a teacher

The same year, Mother Teresa moved to eastern Calcutta to teach at the Loreto Convent School. She served the school for nearly twenty years. During this time, she was devastated by the rising destruction caused by the second world war, poverty, and famines in Bengal. Thousands of people died, and thousands more entered Calcutta in the hopes of finding food and shelter.

Mother Teresa understood that, even though the lack of money, food, and shelter can kill someone, it is the absence of love that hurts them the most. She learned it first hand while caring for a homeless woman. Even though the woman had no food to eat, was half-eaten by maggots, and was on the verge of death, what caused the woman to cry was the fact that she was considered unwanted and abandoned by her own son. So, Mother Teresa started caring for her and other homeless people. She also took care of hundreds of orphaned babies.

Divine Intervention

On September 10th, 1946, Mother Teresa was traveling on a train. During this ride, she had a divine intervention. She said that Jesus Christ spoke to her. He asked her to abandon her teaching profession and take care of the sick and poor people in the slums of Calcutta instead. 

Mother Teresa wears Sari

So, in 1946, she quit her job. By doing so, she left the Loreto Sisters in tears because she was loved by everyone there. To Mother Teresa, Loreto Sisters had become her family. She later revealed that leaving Loreto Sisters was more difficult than leaving her own mother. 

Nevertheless, she quit her job. During her divine intervention, Jesus Christ had asked her to wear a simple dress while serving the poor. So, on her departure, she purchased saris with three blue stripes from a local vendor. These saris were similar to those worn by the female sweepers of Calcutta. This helped her mingle with the poorest people of Calcutta and live with them.

By Kingkongphoto & www.celebrity-photos.com from Laurel Maryland, USA – Mother Teresa best © copyright 2010, CC BY-SA 2.0, Link

Moreover, she liked the Blue color because it is the color of the Virgin Mary and indicates purity. The three blue stripes represent the three vows taken by nuns to lead a life of chastity, poverty, and obedience. This dress would later become the identity of herself and the congregation she started. 

Upon quitting her job, Mother Teresa went to Patna to receive basic medical training and help the sick people in the slums. She also obtained Indian citizenship so that she could help the poor while living with them.

Passport of Mother Teresa

Founding Missionaries of Charity

Mother Teresa began serving the poor with the food and shelter she could get her hands on. Often, she had to beg for food and alms. But she never gave up, because she was doing God’s bidding. Soon, a group of young women joined her to work on her cause. Together, they started a school for poor children. In 1950, Mother Teresa received formal permission from the Vatican to create the ‘Missionaries of Charity.’

Missionaries of Charity

Two years later, she founded ‘Nirmal Hriday,’ a home for serving the poor, homeless, hungry, diseased, dying, and shunned individuals of the society.

In the following years, she opened a hospice for people with leprosy and the ‘Nirmala Shishu Bhawan’ for orphaned and homeless children. Many outreach clinics for lepers were also established under this charity. By the 1970s, this charity had expanded its hospices worldwide. It had centers all over the world with more than 4000 sisters who were members of this congregation.

Traveling the world to spread the message of humanity

Mother Teresa always said, “I belong to the world.” So, she traveled on humanitarian missions to many countries and provided help to those who were in need. In 1982, she rescued 37 children from a war-stricken hospital in Beirut with the help of workers from the Red Cross. 

We ourselves feel that what we are doing is just a drop in the ocean. But the ocean would be less because of that missing drop. – Mother Teresa (source)

In the late 1980s, she visited the Soviet Union twice, to help the victims of the Chernobyl nuclear reactor accident and the earthquake in Armenia. She also visited African countries regularly to help the hungry and the poor population. 

Failing health and death

While touring Rome in 1983, Mother Teresa had a heart attack that was followed by a second heart attack in 1989. An artificial pacemaker was fitted to repair her heart, but her condition kept on worsening. She also suffered from pneumonia in 1991 and then had a fall injuring her collarbone in 1996. The Archbishop of Calcutta even ordered a priest to perform an exorcism on her, as he believed that she was under attack by spirits.  In March 1997, due to her ill health, Mother Teresa resigned as the head of the charity. She died on September 5th of the same year. A state funeral was arranged for her, and the Pope’s representative performed the last rites.  Pope Francis declared her a saint on September 4th, 2016, in Vatican City. 

Awards and recognition

Padma Shri, which is awarded by the Indian government to citizens to honor their distinguished contribution, was awarded to Mother Teresa in 1962. Bharat Ratna, the highest Indian civilian award, was awarded in 1980. The Ramon Magsaysay award for peace and understanding was awarded in 1962.

In 1979, she won the Nobel Peace Prize for her service to the poor and the destitute. In the United States, she was awarded the Order of Merit in 1983 and honorary citizenship in 1996. She is the co-patron of the Calcutta Diocese and has a train named after her in the Indian Railways. Albania’s international airport is also named after Mother Teresa.  

A special commemorative 5 rupees coin was issued on her 100th birth year anniversary by the Indian government. Many people in Calcutta also revered her as a deity. She has many buildings named after her around the world and has a memorial in her home town in Albania.

Mother Teresa Memorial House in her native Skopje – By Danielmkd – Own work, Public Domain, Link

Many universities in India are named after her. In 2012, she was ranked the fifth greatest Indian, according to a poll conducted by Outlook India.

Her death anniversary is celebrated as the “International Day of Charity” by United Nations General Assembly.

Controversies

Though she was a missionary who worked all her life tirelessly to eliminate poverty and suffering, there were a few controversies in her life too. According to some critics, the donations that her charity received were not used for the intended purpose. 

I feel the greatest destroyer of peace today is abortion – Mother Teresa (source)

She was also vocal against the use of contraceptives and abortion. This sent abortion activists and women rights groups into a rage, who believed there were religious reasons behind her views. Her critics called her a fanatic who was more concerned about religious conversions of people to Christianity. They said that she allegedly asked her members to convert the dying patients to Christianity and baptize them. 

A documentary titled ‘Hell’s Angel’ was made by Christopher Hitchens and was released in 1994. The documentary claims that Mother Teresa forced the poor to accept that they are destined for poverty, and the rich are born with luck. He also wrote an essay on her in 1995, criticizing her charitable efforts and media coverage on them. 

Mother Teresa was also criticized for her relationship with various controversial personalities like Enver Hoxha, Robert Maxwell, Charles Keating, Licio Gelli, and others.

Facts you probably didn’t know

1. Pope Paul VI gave Mother Teresa  his limousine with which she raised money for people suffering from leprosy. 
2. Mother Teresa and Princess Diana met in New York, just days before Diana’s death. She died within a week of Diana’s death. 
3. Mother Teresa asked the Nobel committee to not host the Nobel banquet in her honor and instead donate the amount to help the needy.
4. She was short in height. She was only about 5 feet tall, yet was loved by many people. 
5. When she first started teaching, she did not have the required resources or money to teach properly. So, she used sticks to write in dirt and teach students. 
6. She was fluent in many languages, including English, Hindi, Bengali, Serbian, and Albanian. 
7. A documentary named “Something Beautiful for God” was made on her in 1969. A book was written by the same name in 1971 by the documentary maker. 
8. In 1997, a movie was made on her, which won the Art Film Festival Award in the same year.

Biography of Mother Teresa of Calcutta

We hope that this biography of Mother Teresa of Calcutta helped you learn about her. The biography of Mother Teresa of Calcutta shows you how Mother Teresa treated other people with empathy and dignity, regardless of who they were. This attitude made her the favorite of the people and earned her a Nobel Peace Prize. She is still remembered for her contribution to those who had been cast away by society. So, even if you are superior to others in terms of money, power, or knowledge, always treat others with dignity and empathy. 

The hunger for love is much more difficult to remove than the hunger for bread. – Mother Teresa (source)

If you liked the biography of Mother Teresa of Calcutta, you might like the following biographies as well:

1. Biography of Abraham Lincoln
2. The success story of Oprah Winfrey
3. The biography of Marilyn Monroe

This blog post is the biography of Marilyn Monroe. Marilyn Monroe was an actor, model, and singer based in the United States of America. 

Marilyn Monroe became one of the world’s biggest sex symbols and an icon for female empowerment in the 1950s and 1960s. Even 58 years after her death, people still remember her for what she managed to achieve within a short period of time. 

But Marilyn Monroe was not born rich. She wasn’t born to influential parents either. On the contrary, she was born to poor parents. In addition to that, she did not even get to spend much time with them because her mother became mentally ill when she was a child, and her father’s identity is still not 100% clear. 

Understandably, Marilyn had a very difficult childhood. She was not only poor, but because of her mother’s health condition, she also lived with 12 sets of foster parents one after another and in an orphanage. As a result, she couldn’t get proper love and affection from her parents. 

Some biographies motivate us to work harder, while others teach us to be humble by showing us how gifted we are. This biography of Marilyn Monroe is obviously the latter – this is the story of a little girl who suffered all her life. Read this biography of Marilyn Monroe now and get a glimpse into the saddening, yet motivational life story of that little girl.

Early Life

Gladys Monroe

Gladys Monroe was born to Otis Elmer Monroe and Della May Hogan in 1902. When she was seven years old, her father died due to an infection that destroyed his brain tissue. After her father’s death, hoping to find a husband, her mother had relationships with several men. But none of them lasted. Due to her mother’s inconsistent relationships and irresponsible behavior, young Gladys never really understood the importance of men and the role of women in a marriage. Moreover, since she lacked a father figure, she grew up craving attention from older men. So, when she was 14 years old, she claimed that she was 18 years old, and married a 26-year-old man called John Newton Baker.However, after giving birth to a son and daughter, the demands of motherhood tired her. Moreover, Gladys had no desire to be a conventional housewife. So, she would often leave her children in the care of her neighbors and go dancing and partying.As time progressed, Gladys wanted to be free, instead of being held down by the clutches of the family. So, in 1921, she filed for a divorce. Two years later, the divorce was granted, and her husband took their children with him.Gladys liked the new carefree life, which was devoid of a husband or kids. She often went on dates and had a good time with men.Several years later, when she was 22 years old, Gladys was attracted to a 27-year-old man called Martin Edward Mortensen. He had a stable job, was generous, handsome, and looked five years older than his current age. So, she married him. However, being a traditional housewife was something that was too boring for Gladys. Therefore, just four months after their marriage, she left her husband. 

Birth of Norma Jeane

Almost ten months after Gladys left Mortensen, she found out that she was pregnant. As a result of the pregnancy, she gave birth to a baby girl on June 1st, 1926, in Los Angeles. However, since Gladys had been with several men after leaving Mortensen, she herself was not sure who the father was. The child’s father was most probably a womanizer called Charles Stanley Gifford. Charles Stanley Gifford was a coworker with whom Gladys had a brief affair. However, he abandoned her after finding out that she had gotten pregnant. Since she did not know who the father was, and also because she was still not divorced from Mortenson, she named the child as Norma Jeane Mortensen. The child was also called Norma Jeane Baker, taking the last name of Gladys’ first husband. This child would grow up and later revolutionize Hollywood by the name of Marilyn Monroe.

The first foster family

Gladys had no one who could help her financially. So, she couldn’t quit her job. Moreover, she knew that she couldn’t be a good mother due to her lifestyle. She was also scared of the responsibility of caring for a child. Therefore, when Norma was just two weeks old, Gladys left her in the care of a foster family living only sixteen miles away. She paid the family $25 every week to take care of Norma. Even though several children were fostered by the family, Norma lived there for the longest time. She lived there for the first six years of her life. During this time, the foster family took care of Norma properly. They even let her keep a puppy, which she brought home, as long as she took care of it.

Childhood photo of Norma Jeane, 1927 – By Dell Publications, Inc. New York, publisher of Modern Screen (Page 34) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons – File:Monroe as an infant.png, CC0, Link

Moreover, Gladys visited Norma on weekends and took her for picnics and outings. They would ride trams, tour glass factories, go to the beach, and eat ice cream. Yet, Norma was disturbed emotionally, because Gladys’ visits got less frequent, and Norma did not know when Gladys might stop visiting her.

A child’s confusion

As a child, Norma was always confused. The reason for the confusion is not hard to imagine. She saw other children addressing their parents as mother and father. So, she didn’t understand why her foster parents forced her to call them uncle and aunt. She did not understand that Gladys was her real mother, and her foster parents were just taking care of her. To her, Gladys was a fun lady who visited her often and took her to outings. When Norma turned seven, an angry neighbor shot and killed her dog because it was barking loudly. This caused a lot of pain to the little girl. So, unable to console the little girl, the foster family summoned her mother, Gladys.

Life with her mother

Gladys helped her bury the dog and took Norma to live with her. To Norma, living with Gladys was a new experience. Her foster parents were religious and highly disciplined. They did not approve of Norma watching movies.

On the other hand, Gladys worked in the film industry in Los Angeles to create the final version of the edited film. She often took Norma to watch movies. Norma would sit in the first row and watch the movies on the big screen with awe. Gladys often drank and danced with her friends on weekends. After Gladys was done drinking and dancing, little Norma often emptied the beer bottles that her mother drank and filled them with flowers from the garden. Even though Gladys was not a great role model, she tried her best to take care of Norma. As Norma was slowly getting adapted to living with her mother, everything changed suddenly.

Her Mother becomes mentally ill

All her life, Gladys had thought that her mother and father had died because of madness. In the year 1934, due to the economic depression and other reasons, her grandfather took his own life. Even though she did not know her grandfather personally, this made Gladys believe that mental illness runs in her family. So, she was convinced that she will become a lunatic as well. This pushed her into depression.

Due to the depression and the false belief, she started hallucinating. Often, she had difficulty in distinguishing between what is real and what isn’t. As a result, in the year 1934, Gladys was diagnosed with Paranoid Schizophrenia. She spent the rest of her life in and out of care homes and hospitals.

Grace Mckee

Since Gladys was deemed incapable of caring for her daughter anymore, Norma was sent to live with different sets of people for short durations and even in some orphanages. But primarily, she spent her years with the family of Grace Mckee and their relatives. 

Grace Mckee was the most important friend and confidante of Gladys. She decided to take care of Norma after Gladys became ill. Grace didn’t have any children of her own and considered Norma as her daughter. So, even if Norma was living with some other foster family, she visited Norma often. 

Grace thought Norma was really beautiful and would become an actress one day. So, she taught Norma to dress properly and take care of herself, so that she appears gorgeous all the time. Grace would later become a big influence in the life of Norma. 

Thus, growing up, Norma could never get the parental love that she needed. At first, she thought her foster mother was her biological mother. Then, she adapted to live with her biological mother. After her mother fell ill, she had to move from one foster family to the next and was also sexually abused. All these incidents left a permanent scar on her mental well-being. As a result, she developed a stutter and became shy because of the trauma. 

Norma Jeane becomes Marilyn Monroe

The first marriage

When Norma was 16 years old, the family of Grace, with whom she was living at that time, decided to move to West Virginia. But they couldn’t afford to take Norma with them. Even though Grace had promised Norma that she wouldn’t have to feel insecure again, she went back on her word. This devastated Norma because she felt like a dispensable object once again.

Since Grace’s family was moving to West Virginia, she wanted someone else to take care of Norma. So, Grace decided to get Norma married to her neighbor’s son, whom she was dating at that time. Since the only alternative was to stay in an orphanage until the age of 18, Norma agreed to the marriage. So, in 1942, the 16-year-old Norma Jean Mortensen quit school and married the 21-year-old James Dougherty. After their marriage, they moved to Santa Catalina Island, where her husband was stationed during the second world war. Marilyn later described this marriage as mundane. After a year of living with her husband, Norma came to live with her mother-in-law when her husband was posted to the Pacific.

Beginning of her modeling career

Norma’s mother-in-law was working in a Radioplane company as a nurse. At that time, the defense sectors were booming due to the second world war. So, Norma’s mother-in-law could easily get a job for Norma in the same company. Norma’s task was to spray varnish on the fuselage fabric. 

In 1944, photographers came to shoot pictures of the most beautiful female factory workers for commercials and military magazines. Their task was to portray to the nation that America’s loveliest ladies showed their patriotism by working in defense companies.

One of these photographers, named David Conover, who had powerful contacts, was impressed by Norma. He advised her that she would have a great future if she got into modeling. Heeding to his advice, Norma quit her job the following year. She began doing modeling shoots for him and his other photographer friends. Gradually, she started applying to modeling agencies as well. One of these agencies, called the Blue Book Modeling Agency, accepted her. She signed her first contract with them in 1945.

Norma Jeane while working in the Radioplane company – By U.S. Army photographer David Conover’s shot – Yank, the Army Weekly, via [1] and [2], Public Domain, Link

The first divorce

Within a year, Monroe had appeared in more than 30 magazine covers and was called one of the most hard-working models by the owner of her agency. Her figure was more suitable for print advertisements than modeling. So, she began focusing on these magazines.

However, her husband was not pleased with this development in her career. He wanted her to quit modeling and become a housewife. So, Norma divorced him in the year 1946.

The birth of Marilyn Monroe

The same year, she met Ben Lyon, who was working with Fox production company. They signed a contract for six months with her even though she didn’t impress the head executive of the company. But Lyon didn’t want an actress who was called Norma Jean Dougherty. It seemed plain and unattractive.

So, Norma chose to have the last name, Monroe, since it was the name of her mother’s family. But Norma Jean Monroe was still not attractive. So, Lyon, remembering an actress called Marilyn Miller, with whom he had fallen in love previously, suggested that she should take the name of Marilyn Monroe. And just like that, the famous Marilyn Monroe was born.

The Rise to Fame

Entry into films

For the first six months after signing her contract, Marilyn did not do any films but worked on her acting and dancing skills. She got into an acting school with the help of the studio she worked with and met many people to promote herself. She got her first small role in the film “Dangerous Years” in 1947. Her contract was not renewed in 1947 after the teachers at the acting school said she was “too shy” to be a successful actor. 

Marilyn continued her modeling journey. She started working as a backup dancer while continuing to take acting lessons. She did everything she had to do so that she could get acting roles. This involved befriending influential people in the industry and entertaining them at her home.

One such friendship with a Fox executive helped her get a contract with Columbia Pictures in 1948. But she lost that contract a year later as her picture didn’t work that well. She again went back to modeling and started some semi-naked shots, too, as she was comfortable with nudity. 

Her big break came in the year 1950 when she earned a 7-year contract with 20th Century Fox studios after a series of small acting parts in movies like The Fireball, Right Cross, All About Eve, and The Asphalt Jungle. She got great reviews for The Asphalt Jungle, and even critics praised her. Her mentor and partner, Johnny Hyde, who got her these parts and the contracts, died of a heart attack days after she signed the contract. This left her shattered. 

“Fear is Stupid. So are regrets” – Marilyn Monroe

A scandal

In 1949, Monroe posed for a series of nude photographs. These photographs surfaced in the year 1952 and threatened to put a dent on her career. Her production studio did not want them to affect her reputation. So, they thought it would be better if Monroe admitted to being the model in the photographs and told that she was broke when she did that photoshoot for some instant money. 

Monroe gained a lot of public sympathy from this scandal. At the same time, she also became popular for her “Sex symbol” image rather than her acting skills. Her following films did do well. But all these films had her typecasted in blonde bombshell roles that demanded semi-nudity and suggestive clothes.

Monroe enjoyed this popularity and added fuel to it by turning up in revealing clothes on public forums and sharing sexy amusing facts about her to public columnists. In December 1953, Hugh Hefner published one of her nude photos as the center spread of the first copy of Playboy. This added to her already soaring popularity as the leading sex symbol of Hollywood. 

“The body is meant to be seen, not all covered up” – Marilyn Monroe

Stardom and an abusive marriage

After a series of highly successful films as a blonde sex symbol, Monroe wanted to do some serious roles. But 20th Century Fox studios did not agree to it, as they thought that her serious films would not do well.

After many discussions, Monroe refused to shoot for another such movie. So, they suspended her and canceled her contract.

Marilyn wanted to stop this negative publicity from ruining her career. So, she married baseball star Joe DiMaggio and started traveling the world with him. She reunited with Fox Studios a few months later and was promised a lead role in what would go on to become one of the biggest movies of her career, “The Seven Year Itch.” She started filming for the film in 1954. It was released in 1955. It features the immensely popular subway grate scene in which Monroe can be seen standing on the subway grate with the skirt flying up. This scene would later become so famous that it would be featured in many magazines and films even decades after her death. Ironically, her on-screen success ended her marriage with Joe. Marilyn later claimed that Joe was physically abusive and had a controlling behavior. She filed for divorce but continued her relationship with Joe along with affairs with Arthur Miller and Marlon Brando during this period.

Marlin Monroe in the subway grate scene – Published by Corpus Christi Caller-Times-photo from Associated Press Corpus Christi Caller-Times page 20 via en:Newspapers.com Public Domain, Link

Founding her own production studio

After her contract with Fox Studios ended, Marilyn, along with photographer Milton Greene, founded Marilyn Monroe Productions. She began studying acting and using psychoanalysis to address her personal traumas. Her production studio could not produce films on its own. So, Monroe reunited with Fox Studios yet again after an intense legal battle. She signed a 7-year contract with them with four big films.  In 1956, Marilyn married Arthur Miller despite the FBI pursuing a case against him. She began shooting for “Bus Stop” under Fox Studios, which went on to become a commercial success. Monroe received a Golden Globe award for best actress for her role in the film and was finally recognized as an actress instead of just a sex symbol.  She completed one more film under her own banner after this. Then, she took an 18-months hiatus from shooting to concentrate on her family life. She suffered a miscarriage and an ectopic pregnancy in the period. So, she started taking pharmaceutical drugs to overcome her emotional depression. She and Miller finally got divorced in the year 1961.  After this, Monroe resumed shooting on and off for films. But she did not get a commercial hit despite posing nude for a publicity stunt for the movie “Something’s Got To Give.” She was also involved in many legal battles with Fox Studios over delay in shooting. This gave her negative publicity in the final months of her life.

Final years

Depression and anxiety

In the last years of her life, Marilyn Monroe was battling depression caused by three failed marriages, miscarriages, a lost job, and the belief that mental illness runs in her family. She also suffered from anxiety and low self-esteem caused due to the lack of parental love when she was a child. The search for her father also devastated her terribly. 

While she was living with her mother, the 8-year-old Marilyn found a picture of Charles Stanley Gifford, the man who was most probably her father. In her later years, she would try to reach him without any success. She would spend a lifetime trying to find this man in others, which affected her relationship with men. Once, when she called him in 1952, he told her that he didn’t have anything to say to her and that she should call his lawyer instead. This completely apathetic reply from the man she believed to be her father crushed her emotionally. All her life, she never stopped hoping for his approval. 

Death

Magazine displaying the death news of Marilyn Monroe – By New York Daily Mirror – source (after en-wiki), Public Domain, Link

Marilyn Monroe died on the night of August 5th, 1962, when she was just 36 years old. Monroe’s housekeeper and her psychiatrist found her dead in her room due to drug overdose.

In the following years, her fans introduced many conspiracy theories and murder intentions, but police ruled them all out. Her sudden death became a national sensation. It was later revealed that Marilyn had overdosed on barbiturates, a drug used to treat anxiety, insomnia, and depression in the 1960s. 

Facts you probably didn’t know

• Marilyn had a fear of losing her mind and going mad as her mother and grandmother did. 
• She stuttered on occasions, and this stuttering continued for the rest of her life. 
• Monroe attempted suicide in 1950 after her partner, agent, and close confidante Johnny Hyde died. She attempted suicide once again when she miscarried and had an ectopic pregnancy. 
• According to her co-stars, Marilyn was extremely difficult to work with. She was even fired from her last film due to her lack of punctuality and erratic shooting schedule. 
• Marilyn Monroe’s house, where she died in 1962, was purchased by a couple. The couple later found that the house was bugged, and an elaborate government phone tapping system was found across the house. 

The Biography of Marilyn Monroe – Summary

We hope that this biography of Marilyn Monroe helped you learn about the actor and how she became a world-renowned personality. Whenever you have trouble making a decision, read this biography of Marilyn Monroe. If she hadn’t made the decision to divorce her first husband and pursue modeling, she could have raised a family and led a happy life. On the other hand, she wouldn’t have become a world-famous star. So, make the right decisions, for these decisions will define who you are.

 It’s all make believe, isn’t it? – Marilyn Monroe    

If you liked the biography of Marilyn Monroe, you might like the following biographies as well:

1. Interesting facts about Marie Curie
2. The success story of Oprah Winfrey
3. The biography of Helen Keller

This blog post tells you the success story of Oprah Winfrey. Oprah Gail Winfrey is an American talk show host and a producer. She rose to fame with her talk show “The Oprah Winfrey Show” and became the richest African American woman of the 20th century.

Oprah Winfrey at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival on February 5, 2014

Born to a single teenage mother in poverty and being molested, Oprah had a rough childhood. Growing up, she worked various odd jobs before landing a job to anchor the local news at a small radio network. She then went on to work in a TV station, where she started her own talk show. Her emotional delivery in that show made her the favorite of the masses. As a result, her TV show became one of the highest-rated shows ever. When she was a kid, Oprah suffered a lot due to poverty. So, when she became famous, she tried to make the world a better place to live by donating money to the needy. Today, she is known as one of the greatest black philanthropists and one of the most influential women in the world. Read this success story of Oprah Winfrey to get a glimpse into her journey and find out how she transformed her life completely using sheer hard work and empathy towards her community.

Childhood

Birth

Oprah Winfrey was born on 29th January 1954 in Mississippi to a single teenage mother. She was named Orpah Gail Winfrey. Her father, Vernon Winfrey, left her mother soon after her birth. At that time, her mother was 18 years old and did not have a job. She knew that she couldn’t take care of young Oprah without a job. So, she left Oprah to stay with Oprah’s maternal grandmother and moved to Milwaukee to find a job.

Oprah Winfrey when she was 2 years old. Picture credits – Oprah.com

So, Oprah lived with her maternal grandmother for the first six years of her life, where she saw extreme poverty. They were so poor that Oprah had to wear dresses made out of potato sacks.

The gifted child

Even though she was born into a poor family, Oprah was a gifted child. As a kid, she developed a desire for learning, a passion for speaking, and even envisioned her future. 

Her grandmother realized her skills and wanted Oprah to have a promising future. So, she taught Oprah to read when she was just two and a half years old. Soon, Oprah developed a desire for reading, and by the age of three, could recite Bible verses for the church. Astonished by Oprah’s ability to read the Bible, the people who came to the church nicknamed her, ‘The Preacher.’ 

It is during this time that Oprah’s passion for speaking also started taking shape. As a kid, she used to interview her dolls and the birds around her house. Imagining that she was on a stage and the farm animals were her audience, she used to enact in front of them. Looking at this, her grandmother realized her innate talent for speaking and acting and always encouraged her. In her later years, this encouragement she got from her grandmother when she was a kid, would motivate Oprah to speak in public. 

When she was just four years old, Oprah had a feeling that she would be a great personality when she grows up. Even though she was a kid and did not know what she would do when she grew up, she was sure of one thing – that she wouldn’t be poor all her life. Even as a kid, she envisioned her future, something that many successful people often do. 

“Whenever I look into the future, it is so bright it burns my eyes” – Oprah Winfrey

Oprah skips kindergarten

One year later, when she was five years old, Oprah was sent to a kindergarten. On the very first day, she wrote a note to her teacher saying that she belonged in the first grade and skipped kindergarten. Since her grandmother had taught her at home, she was skilled at school. So, she was allowed to start first grade. 

Oprah develops her speaking skills

In the following year, her grandmother fell ill. So, Oprah’s mother took Oprah with her to Milwaukee. By this time, Oprah had a younger half-sister. Since Oprah’s mother worked as a housemaid, she did not have much spare time to spend with her children. The little spare time she had was spent taking care of her half-sister. So, when she was 7 years old, her mother sent Oprah to live with her father in Tennessee since she couldn’t take care of her properly.  

Oprah’s father and stepmother were excited to take Oprah since they did not have any children of their own. They cared about her education and took her to libraries, where she read a lot. As a result, she became skilled at school. So, she skipped a grade again and started third grade. 

The family also took her to church regularly. So, Oprah found more opportunities to improve her oratory skills by speaking at social gatherings and churches. Soon, she became so good at speaking in front of live audiences that she was paid $500 for a speech once. It was then that Oprah understood the power of her skill and decided that she wanted to be paid to talk. Thus, she had a lot of opportunities to develop her skills while living with her father. Yet, she lived there for only one year. After that year, when her father took Oprah to visit her mother, she decided to stay with her mother and continue her education. 

Teenage

Sexual abuse

While she was living with her mother, her mother did not have sufficient time to take care of her children. So, she asked Oprah’s cousin to babysit them. Oprah’s cousin, who was 19 years old and came to babysit and protect her, raped her instead. He then bought her ice cream and asked her to keep it a secret. Oprah was just nine years old at that time. 

For Oprah, the sexual abuse did not end there. In the years that followed, she was also raped by a family friend and her uncle. Yet, she couldn’t talk about her sexual abuse to her mother because they did not have such a good parent-child relationship. So, when she was 13 years old, unable to suffer sexual abuse anymore, Oprah ran away from home. 

During this time, Oprah was studying in Lincoln high school. There, she did well in her studies. Therefore, she was transferred to a more affluent school. Since she was in an affluent school, she wanted to keep up with her wealthy schoolmates, who spent a lot of money. So, to impress her classmates, Oprah began stealing money from her mother. It was also Oprah’s way of rebelling since she couldn’t talk to her mother about the sexual abuse she suffered. But her mother eventually found out that Oprah was stealing money from her and became furious. 

Teenage mother

So, since she couldn’t put up with her anymore, Oprah’s mother sent her to live with her father. After Oprah started living with her father, she became pregnant due to the sexual abuse she underwent while living with her mother. But her son was born prematurely and died soon after. 

Oprah’s father

Oprah’s father was very strict. But he helped her forget about her son and focus on her studies instead. He provided Oprah with the guidance, support, rules, and books so that she could improve. He made her learn five new vocabulary words each day before dinner and submit book reports every week. So, Oprah became very intelligent. As a result, she became a top student in her school and came to be known for her brilliant oratory skills. 

Oprah was also a member of various clubs like the debate club, the drama club, and the student council. Participating in these clubs improved her oratory skills further. As a result, she became so skilled in speaking that she secured a full scholarship to study at Tennessee State University by winning a speaking contest.

Becoming a radio news anchor

When she was 16 years old, Oprah participated in a beauty contest conducted by Nashville’s local radio station. Despite heavy competition, Oprah won the contest and was crowned Miss Fire Prevention. When she went to the local radio station to collect the prize, people working at the radio station asked her if she would like to hear her voice on the radio. 

Excited, Oprah agreed and read a script. Listening to her speak, everyone at the radio station was impressed. So, they offered her a job as a news anchor. Oprah accepted the job and started working part-time at the Nashville radio station when she was still in high school.

Becoming a TV news anchor

Two years later, with the scholarship she had won, Oprah started studying her Bachelor’s degree in Speech Communications and Performing Arts at Tennesse State University. During her first year there, Oprah won two more beauty contests, becoming Miss Black Nashville and Miss Tennessee. Oprah was 18 years old at that time. After she won these beauty contests, she got a call from a TV station called the Nashville Columbia Broadcasting System (also known as CBS in short), who wanted to offer Oprah a job. But Oprah was concerned that the job might affect her studies. So, she declined the job offer twice.

But her professor, who found out that she had rejected the job offer, reminded Oprah that the main reason why people go to college is to get such jobs. This advice from her professor opened her eyes. So, when CBS called her the third time, she took the job. Thus, when she was 19 years old, she became the first African American female co-anchor of the CBS evening news.

Career

Baltimore TV news anchor

Three years later, she moved to Baltimore to co-anchor the Six 0’Clock news. She was 22 years old at that time and was getting a salary of $22,000. 

Oprah Winfrey as a co-anchor of WJZ, Baltimore on June 26, 1978.

Oprah was a person who was deeply empathetic to people. But as a reporter, she often had to report tragic incidents like fire accidents without displaying her emotions. This was not only unnatural but also very difficult for Oprah. So, even though she was making $22,000 at that time as a reporter, she often felt that it was not the right job for her, because she couldn’t display her emotions. 

Since Oprah was caring and emotional, she couldn’t be unsympathetic to people who were suffering. So, after reporting fire accidents, she would go to the fire victims and give them blankets. Once, she was reporting a funeral, and she had to ask the family of the dead child to comment on the issue. But she couldn’t bring herself to do that, because she understood the pain the family was going through. 

However, when these incidents came to the attention of her boss, he understood that Oprah was unfit to be a news reporter because she gets too emotionally invested in her stories. So, he wanted to fire her. But Oprah was on a job contract for a year. So, if he fired her before the contract ended, the company had to give her the full salary even though she had worked for only half the period. 

Therefore, he demoted her to be a co-anchor on a new local talk show called ‘People are Talking.’

Oprah’s first talk show

Initially, Oprah thought that this talk show would devastate her career. So, she begged the General Manager to not put her on this show. But he told her that if the talk show succeeded, she could impact the community much more than a news reporter. So, Oprah started to co-anchor the talk show. 

Oprah Winfrey after her talk show became famous.

In this show, Oprah and her co-anchor Richard Sher interviewed people from all walks of life. In the very first episode of the talk show, Oprah and Richard interviewed an ice-cream man and a character from an American soap opera.

Once she started the interview, she felt a connection to what she was doing. She realized immediately that this is what she really wanted to do. She asked the right questions and was not shy about revealing secrets about herself. So, she connected with the female audience easily. As a result, Oprah and Richard’s talk show became famous.

The Oprah Winfrey show

After serving seven years on the talk show, Oprah was hired by another TV broadcasting company called the American Broadcasting Company to improve the ratings of its morning talk show. Before Oprah joined the company, its talk show was consistently last in the ratings. It was aired for half an hour and focused mostly on traditional women’s issues. Oprah immediately changed the focus of the talk show to current controversial issues. 

Within months, Oprah’s talk show became one of the highest-rated talk shows of America. It overtook Phil Donahue’s talk show, which was considered the best talk show in Chicago. People said that while Oprah might not be a match for Donahue in journalism, she made up for it with her empathy. Due to her empathy, people revealed much more about their personality than they would normally reveal on a talk show. As a result, the talk show was named the Oprah Winfrey Show and was extended to one hour. 

In the early years of the show, it was known as a general chat show. But it later transformed into a show that addressed social issues and the views of the celebrities associated with these issues. The show aired for 25 glorious years from 1986 to 2011 and was a huge success barring a few controversies. It received 47 Daytime Emmy awards. 

Her own production company

Due to her talk show’s success, Oprah started her own production company, Harpo Productions, Inc., in 1986. Within two years of starting her own production company, she acquired the production rights and ownership for The Oprah Winfrey Show from the American Broadcasting Company. Thus, Oprah Winfrey became the first woman in history to produce and own her own talk show. 

Oprah has co-starred in a few films under her production banner. She was nominated for an Oscar for the best supporting role for her role as Sofia in Steven Spielberg’s movie, ‘The Color Purple.’ In her next film, Beloved, she played the role of a former slave. To get an idea of how a slave feels, she asked her team to tie her up, blindfold her and leave her in the woods for 24 hours. 

One of the most powerful woman in the world

Oprah is a self-made woman who rose from extreme poverty and climbed the heights of success because of her own merit. She was the world’s only black billionaire from 2004 to 2006, and the highest-paid television entertainer in the USA. Her net worth in 2014 was more than 2.9 billion dollars and has only risen since. 

“Where there is no struggle, there is no strength” – Oprah Winfrey

CNN and Time magazine called her the “World’s most powerful woman” and one of the most influential people of the 20th century. She was also voted the greatest woman in America’s history in 2005.

Contribution to the world

Oprah believes that god resides inside us and goes with us wherever we go. This belief has helped her influence people with her warmth, affable talks, kind philosophies, and heal them.  Oprah is one of the biggest philanthropists in America. She has given more than $ 400 Million to educational causes to date and donated about $ 12 million dollars to the National Museum of African American History and Culture. She treats her staff really well. In 2006, she took about a thousand people, including her staff and their families, to Hawaii for a well-deserved vacation.  Oprah supports LGBT rights and is against gun usage. She donated about $ 500,000 to a student body in 2018 for their campaign for gun control. She has co-authored five books, including a book on weight issues and her memoir.

Awards and honors

Oprah was awarded the first Bob Hope Humanitarian award in 2002 for her service to the film and television industry.  She was named as “Person of the year” in 2008 by PETA for using her influence to create a better world for animals and the less fortunate people.  President Barack Obama conferred on her the “Presidential Medal of Freedom” in the year 2013.

Oprah receiving the presidential medal of freedom

Influence

In 2007, she used her influence for the first time to support a candidate running for President. Oprah endorsed the presidential candidate Barack Obama in 2007 and helped raise funds for his campaigns. This endorsement attracted about 1,600,000 votes for Obama. She was offered Obama’s vacant senate seat after the elections, but she politely declined to take it.  In 1996, Oprah started an on-air reading club. Every month, she would announce the name of a book and ask her fans to buy the book. They would then discuss the book together the following month. One of the first books she read on-air was ‘The Deep End of the Ocean,’ which was a first time novel that sold around 750,000 copies mainly because of Oprah. The book then went on to become a best seller. Soon, Oprah became the most powerful book marketer in the USA. Her show drove more book sales than magazines, news shows, radio shows, and print reviews combined.

Romantic relationships

Oprah has been in a series of romantic relationships. The most profound and deep one out of those was with William Taylor, whom she met at Tennessee University.  The couple had an intense relationship. However, they broke up when Winfrey moved to Baltimore, and William decided to stay in Nashville despite Winfrey getting him a job in the radio network she was working at.  Another man that Oprah deeply cared for and called her “Most fun romantic relationship” was Lloyd Kramer. The couple broke when Oprah had an affair with a married man while Lloyd was away on an assignment. The affair with the married man broke her and drove her to think about committing suicide. She allegedly even wrote a suicide note but later rubbished the idea saying, “she could never kill herself.” All these broken relationships took a toll on her emotional and physical well-being, and Oprah battled with weight issues and drug usage. In 1986, she met American author Stedman Graham. She finally found love and solace in Stedman. Since then, she has been in a steady relationship with him. Her relationship with Stedman Graham has successfully continued for 33 years, with each partner supporting the other.

Facts you probably didn’t know

• Oprah does not like people chewing gum! She hates it when people chew gum around her. It is one of her pet peeves. 
• She has a phobia of balloons. 
• Her multimedia production company, named Harpo, is just “Oprah” spelled backward.
• Oprah was close to Maya Angelou and called Maya her mother/sister/friend. 
• She grows her own avocados at her house and always travels with fresh bread and avocados while touring different parts of the world. 
• She has her favorite muffins flown in from Napa Valley!

The Success story of Oprah Winfrey

We hope that this success story of Oprah Winfrey helped you understand how Oprah Winfrey became what she is today. She was born in extreme poverty and suffered sexual abuse when she was a kid. Yet, she never gave up. She never stopped believing in herself or improving her skills. She even suffered from drug abuse, but came out of it and succeeded in her life. Today, she is one of the most powerful women in the world (ranked Number 20 in 2020).

So, whenever life gets tough, don’t give up. Trust in yourself, and keep tuning your skills. Read this success story of Oprah Winfrey to motivate you. Always believe in yourself and envision your future.

“You don’t become what you want, you become what you believe.” – Oprah Winfrey

If you liked reading the success story of Oprah Winfrey, you may like the following blog posts too:

1. Interesting facts about Marie Curie
2. The biography of Helen Keller
3. The biography of Abraham Lincoln

This blog post is the biography of Abraham Lincoln. Abraham Lincoln was an American lawyer who served as the 16th president of the United States of America. He is best known for strengthening the U.S. economy and abolishing slavery while leading the nation through a political turmoil. 

Abraham Lincoln grew up working on a farm. The entire amount of time he spent at school in his lifetime was less than a year. But that did not stop him from learning. He educated himself by reading books, often borrowed from others after walking several miles at a stretch. 

Abraham Lincoln suffered from clinical depression almost all his life. Throughout his life, he lost people very close to him. His mother died when he was nine years old; his sister died when he was 19 years old; two of his four sons died before him. All these incidents devastated him and worsened his depression.

Yet, despite suffering so much in life, Abraham Lincoln did not give up. He fought all the odds stacked against him and became the 16th president of the USA. His feats as a president not only earned him a permanent place in Mount Rushmore, but also a permanent place in people’s hearts. 

Read this biography of Abraham Lincoln and find out how Abraham Lincoln rose from nothing to become one of the most cherished presidents. Get a glimpse into the heartbreaking yet inspiring story of a man who lived a hero and died a martyr. 

Early life

Birth

Abraham Lincoln was born on 12th February 1809, to Thomas Lincoln and Nancy Hanks Lincoln. His mother gave birth to him in a one-room log cabin where the Lincoln family had settled after years of migration through parts of Virginia, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey. Abraham had two siblings – an elder sister and a younger brother. His younger brother passed away when Abraham was three or four years old.

Moving to Indiana

When Abraham was seven years old, his family moved to Indiana, where his father had purchased 40 acres of land.  Abraham’s first year in Indiana was lonely because there weren’t any children of his age in the neighborhood. His loneliness was only broken when the family of his mother’s aunt came to stay with them. Abraham developed an instant liking to his mother’s cousin and considered him his older friend.

Losing his mother and sister

A year later, a disease called milk sickness started to spread rampantly. It was caused by drinking the milk of a cow that had eaten a dangerous plant. The uncle and aunt of Abraham’s mother died because of it. Within a few months, Abraham’s mother died because of the same sickness too. This left the 9-year-old Abraham and his family completely broken. After one year, to fill in the gap left by his mother and to rebuild the broken family, his father married a widow. Abraham soon developed a special bond with his stepmother. In his later life, when talking about her, he would refer to her as his mother.Ten years after his biological mother’s death, Abraham would again be devastated by another tragic incident. His elder sister would pass away while giving birth, leaving Abraham and his family in utter grief. The deaths of his brother, mother, and sister made his childhood unbearably miserable and continued to haunt him throughout his life.

Depression

Clinical depression

Abraham Lincoln suffered from clinical depression almost all his life. He might have inherited the vulnerability for depression from his parents, who themselves suffered from it. Moreover, losing his mother and sister could have worsened his depression. 

At times, he suffered from major depressive episodes, feeling worthless and even wanting to commit suicide. He once told his law partner, “I am now the most miserable man living… Whether I shall ever be better I cannot tell; I awfully forebode I shall not.” 

This shows that Abraham Lincoln was always depressed. But because he was always depressed, he was never egoistic. He was open to learning from others, even if they were his enemies. So, he appointed his former political opponents in his cabinet. 

Being open about his depression

During Lincoln’s time, depression was considered a weakness. So, many people hid it from their friends and family. But Abraham Lincoln did not hide it from his friends. He even told his friends that the world was a hard and grim place to live. 

His depression and melancholy were noticeable not just to his friends, but also to complete strangers who met him only once. An observer, who saw Lincoln being selected as the Republican presidential candidate, described Lincoln as one of the most diffident and worst plagued men he ever saw.

However, his depression made him more empathetic to others, and his openness about it made him more approachable. This could have been one of the reasons for people choosing him as the president. 

Surviving depression

Even though Lincoln suffered from overwhelming depression, he found ways to overcome it. He often used humor to momentarily forget his problems. 

Since Lincoln often felt worthless due to his depression, he was always searching for a purpose for his existence. In his later years, he found this purpose, which was to hold his country together and abolish slavery. This gave him a reason to live, even when he wanted to die. 

Passion for learning

The Lincolns

Abraham Lincoln came from a family of adventurers. His ancestor Samuel Lincoln is one of the thousands of people who moved from England to the unexplored USA in the 1600s in hopes of higher wages. In the USA, he started his life as a farmer. With time, he tried different business ventures, made enough money, and built a big house. 

His subsequent generations carried his sense of love for adventure. They moved to unexplored areas within the USA and gathered a significant amount of wealth there. 

However, among all the Lincolns, Abraham Lincoln was different. If the previous generations of Lincolns were driven by their love for the land, Abraham Lincoln was driven by his unquenchable thirst for knowledge. It helped him overcome the overwhelming sense of sorrow engulfing him. 

Abraham Lincoln was an avid reader since childhood and hated the laborious farm life. Even though he started working on the farm early to help his father, he used his spare time to read. 

Early education

When Abraham Lincoln came to Indiana at the age of seven, there were little educational opportunities for children. Indeed, the first school was established only three years later. So, most children were taught informally. Lincoln, too, was taught to read and write by his mother’s cousin.But he also took intermittent lessons from teachers in blab schools. In these schools, students learned to read by repeating what the teachers taught them. So, Abraham Lincoln learned by reading and reciting his lessons aloud and repeating them over and over. This habit stayed with Abraham Lincoln for the rest of his life. So, he always read aloud. Young Abraham read everything he could get his hands on. He read storybooks, newspapers, spelling books, songbooks, etc. Some of the first books he read were Robinson Crusoe, the Bible, Life and Memorable Actions of George Washington, and Aesop’s fables. Sometimes, he would walk for several miles to borrow a single book. Such was his passion for learning.

Those days, the paper was a scarce resource. So, the students did calculations on boards, which they cleaned and reused. However, the little Abraham somehow managed to get some sheets of paper, sewed them together and created a sum book.

Page of Abraham Lincoln’s student sum book, -26. -26, 1824. Manuscript/Mixed Material

Early professional life

Getting into politics

In 1831, Lincoln and his few friends transported goods from New Salem to New Orleans and sold them. It was here that Lincoln saw the ground picture of slavery. Then, one of these friends started a general store, and Lincoln started working for him. 

In 1832, Lincoln entered politics. He contested in the Illinois state assembly. But he lost in it. 

The same year, the general store closed down, and Lincoln lost his job. After losing his job, Lincoln volunteered to fight in the Black Hawk War, which started soon after. In this war, hundreds of Native Americans fought the USA.

Even though Abraham Lincoln never saw actual combat during that war, he was selected as the captain of his unit. Lincoln later remarked that being chosen as the captain by his peers gave him more pleasure than anything else. 

After the war, he returned and served as a postmaster of New Salem and later its county surveyor. 

In 1834, Abraham Lincoln contested in the Illinois state assembly elections once again. However, this time, he won the election. Indeed, he won the next three elections as well. He served a total of four terms in the Illinois House of Representatives from 1834 to 1842.

Becoming a lawyer

After his successful election into the Illinois state assembly in 1834, Lincoln decided to pursue law and become a lawyer. Afterall, courtrooms were not new to Abraham Lincoln. His father often visited courtrooms when they were still in Kentucky. He might have taken young Abraham with him. Moreover, after they moved to Indiana, Lincoln went to courtrooms to observe lawyers with good oratory skills argue with each other. There he noticed that lawyers often referred to books like the United States Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. So, he read all these books thoroughly.   In 1835, Abraham Lincoln started to study law on his own. He read law using books borrowed from a law firm and a judge. In September of the following year, after passing an oral examination, he got the license to practice law. He began his practice soon after.

His personal life

He met his first love interest in the following years, but she passed away due to typhoid fever. He then met another woman, but the relationship died after they both agreed that it was not working. In 1839, Lincoln met Mary Todd, a woman who later became his wife and mother of his children. They got married in 1842. The couple settled in Springfield near Lincoln’s law office. The couple had four sons, two of whom died aged 4 and 12 due to tuberculosis and typhoid fever, respectively.

The 16th President of the USA

Entering the U.S House of Representatives

In 1843, Lincoln decided to contest the election for the United States House of Representatives from the seventh Congressional district. However, the Whig party, in which Lincoln was a member, nominated John J. Hardin. So, he couldn’t get a nomination for that election. However, in 1846, his party nominated him. He won his opponent by securing 56% of the votes and became an active member of the House of Representatives. He even introduced the house to a bill to abolish slavery. But he dropped it when it got no support from his own party.  He extended his support to nominate General Zachary Taylor in the 1848 presidential elections. Taylor won and became the president of the USA.  After Taylor won, Lincoln was not given a post he anticipated. So, he decided to continue his law practice as the given post would have ended his political career in Illinois. He won many cases as a lawyer. Due to his clean reputation, he came to be known as ‘Honest Abe.’

The Kansas-Nebraska act

For several decades, the abolition of slavery has been a heated topic in the USA. It divided the USA into two factions demographically- the northern and the southern states. The southern states wanted to expand slavery, whereas the northern states wanted to abolish it. 

In the 1850s, when the USA was expanding, deciding if the newly acquired states should abolish slavery or not, became a big problem. So, a Democratic senator called Stephen Douglas proposed a solution. This solution, passed in 1854 as the Kansas-Nebraska act, aimed to let the people of the states decide if they wanted slavery or not. 

This upset the delicate balance between the northern states and the southern states, which were equal in number. As a result, a civil war in the country between the northern and southern states became inevitable. 

This act also annoyed the northern Democrats who opposed slavery. So, they quit the party and joined the relatively new Republican party. 

Re-emergence as a leader

The Kansas-Nebraska act made Lincoln enter politics once again. He opposed this act strongly as he opposed slavery in all forms in all his speeches. So, he joined the republicans in the year 1856 and became a leader of the republicans in Illinois soon after.  In the 1856 U.S. Senate elections, Abraham Lincoln contested against Stephen Douglas. Even though he lost that election after a series of moving debates, Lincoln’s presence in the political scene made him a favorite among the masses. People called him the next republican presidential candidate.

The 16th president of the United States of America

For the 1860 presidential elections, Abraham Lincoln was chosen as the presidential candidate by his party. Ironically, Lincoln never gave any speeches during his campaign. He let his life story play its part. 

However, other Republicans supported him with their speeches. They developed such elaborate campaigns portraying Abraham Lincoln as a hero. Other candidates looked so small and weak in front of Lincoln and his story.

The heroic story of a poor farm boy who becomes the president of the USA appealed to the vast majority of the people. So, Abraham Lincoln won the election and become the president of the USA on 6th November 1860. He was the first Republican leader to do so. 

He had gathered votes majorly from the northern states as none of the slaveholding southern states supported him due to his stand against slavery. In the run-up to his inauguration, he tried to convince the southern states for a political compromise. But none of his efforts made any difference. 

The seven slaveholding southern states left the USA, which was also called the Union back then. They formed their own sovereign nation called the Confederate States of America or the Confederates. 

Abolishing Slavery

In the following four years, Lincoln braved the civil war and painstakingly rallied to bring the states into the Union. He had many health issues during the time, including depression, for which he took mercury pills that affected his health. The trauma of losing a son during his presidential term also added to his depressed mental state.

In 1862, Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, giving freedom to slaves of ten states that didn’t fall under the Union. This proclamation freed 3.9 million slaves. This convinced Lincoln that they can put an end to slavery if they fought strongly. 

Those who deny freedom to others, deserve it not for themselves – Abraham Lincoln

Successful re-election and reconstruction of southern states

In 1864, Lincoln successfully managed his second presidential campaign and was re-elected in November. He delivered his 2nd inaugural address in 1865. He diverted all his efforts to re-establish the southern states that had withstood the worst of the war.  Lincoln rallied to pass a constitutional amendment that aimed to abolish slavery. In his 2nd attempt, he gathered the majority and passed the amendment. This came to be known as the 13th amendment to the U.S. constitution.

Assassination

On the evening of 14th April 1865, Lincoln had gone to enjoy a play with his wife and general Grant. 

John Wilkes Booth, a confederate spy and actor, had attended Lincoln’s speech on 11th April 1865. In this speech, Lincoln had spoken about bringing voting rights for black people. Hearing that, Booth decided to assassinate Lincoln and his allies.

While the murder attempts on Lincoln’s allies failed, Booth successfully entered Lincoln’s theatre box and shot him in the head. Lincoln remained in a coma for the next nine hours and succumbed to his injuries on the morning of 15th April 1865. Vice president Andrew Johnson was sworn in as the president the next morning.

Booth, Lincoln’s murderer, was spotted in a farm in Virginia after two weeks. He had to be killed as he refused to surrender to the police. 

Lincoln was laid to rest after his body was taken in a funeral train all throughout the country, so that mourning citizens could take a last look at their president. An estimated 25 million people attended his memorial service. He was buried in the Oak Ridge Cemetery in Springfield. His wife and sons are also buried in the same cemetery.

There were some attempts to steal Lincoln’s remains in the following years, but they were all prevented. Lincoln’s tomb has been opened 5 times, and his remains have been moved 17 times to date.  

Legacy

Lincoln was one of the greatest presidents America has ever seen. His portrait can be seen on the $5 bill and penny. His image was also carved on the Mount Rushmore memorial that features the four U.S presidents who personify America’s story. Many stamps feature him, and many other memorials are dedicated to him in different parts of the country.

The Lincoln Memorial in Washington is one of the most popular tourist destinations in the country. It houses many memorabilia from Lincoln’s personal life and office tenure. He has been a subject of many Hollywood films and has been portrayed as one of America’s greatest heroes. President Barack Obama named Abraham Lincoln as his favorite president. He used Lincoln’s Bible for his oath ceremony as a tribute to the president.

Facts you probably didn’t know

1. Lincoln is the one who declared the final Thursday of November to be celebrated as the national Thanksgiving holiday. (Source)
2. Lincoln’s bodyguard was missing when Lincoln was assassinated. (source)
3. He took part in wrestling matches before he became actively involved in politics. 
4. Lincoln was an animal lover and would have opened an animal shelter after his retirement if he was not assassinated. 
5. He survived an assassination attempt in the year 1864 as the bullet fired at him hit his hat. 
6. It was claimed that Lincoln’s health started to deteriorate even before his assassination. He had developed a rare genetic disease that led to muscle wastage. (Source)

We hope this biography of Abraham Lincoln helped you learn about Abraham Lincoln, his life and his achievements. He was constantly depressed almost all his life. Yet, he found a reason to live, remained trued to his country and people and carved his name in history. 

So, whenever you are in a dire situation and doing something illegal looks like the easy way out, remember what Abraham Lincoln said:

Whatever you are, be a good one – Abraham Lincoln

If you liked reading the biography of Abraham Lincoln, you might also love these biographies:

1. Interesting facts about Marie Curie
2. The biography of Helen Keller