"Biographies" (95)
On April 12, 1961, Yury Gagarin made history by being the first human to orbit the earth.
As a precaution, engineers at the Soviet Academy of Sciences had an onboard computer, as well as mission control steer the craft, "Vostok 1". They did this because the feared that being in the weightlessness of space, you might be disabled or not be able to move very much. He wouldn't need any food for his single orbit trip, but scientists wanted to know if he could eat in the weightlessness of space.
Before Gagarin climbed aboard the rocket, he made a speech. His speech said things such as how beautiful a moment this was, to go into space. He was glad to, "meet nature face to face, in an unprecedented encounter."
As Gagarin's rocket accelerated towards space, it reached a peak of 5 g's, meaning Gagarin felt five times heavier that his normal weight.As Gagarin passed through the lower atmosphere, the nose pointed canopy separated, exposing the "Vostok 1" capsule, allowing Gagarin to see the dark blue sky turn into a black space as he was shot into orbit, around the earth.
14 minutes after liftoff, Gagarin reported," Separation from the carrier rocket completed" Gagarin tested his food and water samples. He reported no side effects to the weightlessness. As Gagarin passed over the Atlantic, he thought of his mother and how she would react to the news of the first space flight... especially since her son was the one up there flying it. She was unaware about Gagarin being involved in space exploration until the news broke.
At about 10:15 a. m., just after Gagarin started passing over Africa, the autopilot turned "Vostok 1" around and fired the rocket, which would take Vostok 1 out of orbit. This was a very suspenseful and nervous time for Yury Gagarin and mission control, for two out of the five test flights, the rockets did not fire correctly and the flights ended in failure.
Luckily, this time, it worked correctly and Vostok 1 came out of orbit and was slowed down by 350 miles per hour. As the capsule came out of orbit, the equipment section was dropped, because it was no longer needed. Now all that was left of the 125-ft. rocket, launched just over an hour ago, was a 7 1/2-ft diameter capsule. As it fell 17,000 mph. towards earth, Gagarin experienced 10Gs, and felt like a 1,500-pound brick falling from the sky.With a flight time of about 1 hour and 48 min, Gagarin landed safely in Siberia.
Years later, Gagarin tragically died in a test plane crash.
April 12, 1961 will never be forgotten. On that day Yuri Alexeyevich Gagarin was launched into space. He circled the globe in the spaceship "Vostok" for 108 minutes. Gagarin was taking an enormous risk, because at that time nobody knew how a human being would stand up to space flight.Before Yuri Gagarin was launched into outer space he met the people who had prepared the rocket. He thanked them for their work and said he would do everything he could to make his flight successful. Yuri was in great spirits. The cosmonauts spent the evening at a cottage which is now called the Yuri Gagarin Memorial Cottage. Then he had one more normal working day which was worked out to the minute: morning exercises, breakfast, medical examination, putting on the spacesuit, checking the suit, leaving for the launching site and so on.
Yuri Gagarin's flight opened the door into the Universe Those 108 minutes were a turning-point in history. The dreams of generations, the ideas of science-fiction writers and thinkers were brilliantly realised by our contemporaries. Yuri Gagarin's name has become a legend, a symbol of heroism in the name of science and progress.
Yuri Gagarin visited 30 countries. Everywhere he was given a fantastic welcome as the dearest person. He was the same modest man with workers or generals, with employees or with kings and prime ministers.
His life was simple like thousands of others: schoolboy, vocational school student, fighter pilot, husband, father of two children. He was a part of our whole life. But the words "Gagarin character" have become a symbol of will-power, fearlessness, purity.Gagarin's "space" biography began at a lecture about the work of Tsiolkovsky. Then, he fell ill with a disease that has no name in medicine: an irresistible desire to go up into the sky, a desire to fly.
The Saratov Air Club, the Orenburg Air Pilots School, service in Air Force units in the North, and the Cosmonaut Graining Centre in 1960. The dawn of the space age was breaking over the planet.
The first group was made up of strong young men, professional airmen, clever, purposeful, prepared to take risks and work hard. Why did the choice fall on him? Yuri Gagarin", said E. A. Karpov, one of the instructors of the first group of cosmonauts, "possessed all the important qualifications: devoted patriotism, complete faith in the success of the flight, excellent health, optimism, a quick mind, courage and resolution, self-control, orderliness, industriousness, simplicity, modesty, great human warmth and attentiveness to others".
Yuri Gagarin was deeply engaged in public and political activity, but he could not stand aside from training his friends for new flights. He gave all his knowledge and enthusiasm to the preparation for each new flight. He taught others and studied himself. He dreamed of the time when spaceships would undertake interplanetary flights and he would be on board of them. For the sake of this dream Yuri Gagarin worked and lived.
On March 27, 1968, Yuri Gagarin was killed in an air crash. He was 34. On that day we lost a man of remarkable courage and spiritual beauty.It was impossible to say what a man's life would have been like if he remained alive. Gagarin had talent. He put his whole soul, all his strength into "cosmic work".His name will remain immortal in the history of mankind, in the history of the Earth, which he affectionately called the Blue Planet.
Wolfgang Mozart is a famous Austrian composer. Mozart was born in 1756 in Saltsburg, Austria. His father, a violinist and a composer, noticed wonderful talent of his son and taught him how to play musical instruments and to compose.
Being 4 years old Mozart played the clavier. When he was 5 or 6 years old he started composing music. At the age of 8—9 Mozart created his first symphonies, and at the age of 10—11 his first creations for musical theatre.
When he was 6 years old his father decided to take him and her sister to the big cities of Europe. Two children gave concerts in Germany, Austria, France, England, Switzerland. The audience was delighted to see such a small boy playing the clavier.
When he was 14 he was invited to Italy. He could not imagine his life without music. By the age of 19 he was the author of ten major musical works.
At the age of 26 he moved from his native town to Vienna.
Though he didn't have a great success as a composer in Vienna, Mozart wrote many songs, serenades, symphonies. Burdens of life, poverty and disease speeded up his death. He died at the age of 35.
The real fame came to Mozart only after his death. Many people now know and like his music.
Wolfgang Mozart is a famous Austrian composer. Mozart was born in 1756 in Saltsburg, Austria. His father, a violinist and a composer, noticed wonderful talent of his son and taught him how to play musical instruments and to compose.
Being 4 years old Mozart played the clavier. When he was 5 or 6 years old he started composing music. At the age of 8—9 Mozart created his first symphonies, and at the age of 10—11 his first creations for musical theatre.
When he was 6 years old his father decided to take him and her sister to the big cities of Europe. Two children gave concerts in Germany, Austria, France, England, Switzerland. The audience was delighted to see such a small boy playing the clavier.
When he was 14 he was invited to Italy. He could not imagine his life without music. By the age of 19 he was the author of ten major musical works.
At the age of 26 he moved from his native town to Vienna.
Though he didn't have a great success as a composer in Vienna, Mozart wrote many songs, serenades, symphonies. Burdens of life, poverty and disease speeded up his death. He died at the age of 35.
The real fame came to Mozart only after his death. Many people now know and like his music.
William Somerset Maugham is one of the best known English writers of the 20th century. He was not only a novelist, but also a one of the most successful dramatist and short-story writers.
He was born in Paris in 1874. His parents died when he was very young and the boy was brought up by his uncle, clergyman. After his parents' death the boy was taken away from the French school which he had attended, and went for his lessons daily to the apartment of the English clergyman at the church.At the age of ten the boy was sent to England to attend school. In 1890 he went abroad and studied at the University of Heidelberg from which he returned to England in 1892 and as his parents had destined him for the medical profession, he became a medical student at St. Thomas's hospital in London.His experience in treating the sick gave Maugham material for his first work "Lisa of Lambeth". After that, although he became a fully qualified doctor, Somerset decided to devote his life to literature. "I didn't want to be a doctor. I didn't want to be anything but a writer".
Soon after the publication of his first novel Maugham went to Spain and travelled widely to all parts of the world. He visited Russia, America, Africa, Asia. The technique of the short story had always interested Maugham. De Maupassant and Chekhov influenced him but he developed a form of a story that has unmistakable Maugham's flavor.
Somerset Maugham has written 24 plays, 19 novels and a large number of short stories. The most mature period of his life began in 1915, when he published one of his most popular novels.
Maugham wants the readers to draw his own conclusion about the characters and events described in his novels. The most prominent works by Somerset Maugham are: "Cakes and Ale", "Theatre", and "The Razor's Edge".
Realistic portrayal of life, keen character observation, and interesting plots coupled with beautiful, expressive language, simple and lucid style, place Somerset Maugham on a level with the greatest English writers of the 20th century.
William Shakespeare is the greatest of all playwrights and poets of all times. Not much is known of his life. William Shakespeare was born 1564, in the town of Stratford-upon-Avon. His father, John Shakespeare, was a glove-maker and wool-dealer.
William went to the local free grammar school where he studied Latin. At the age of 18 Shakespeare married and had 3 children. Little is known of his life before 1592, when he appeared as a playwright in London. Soon he became an actor playing supporting roles like the ghost in "Hamlet". In 1599 Shakespeare became a part owner of the Globe Theatre in London.
Shakespeare wrote history plays such as "Henry IV" and "Richard III", comedies such as "A Midsummer Night's Dream" and "A Comedy of Errors". Shakespeare's early tragedy is "Romeo and Juliet".
Between 1600 and 1608 Shakespeare wrote his four great tragedies, "Hamlet" "Othello" "Macbeth" and "King Lear". It is the summit of Shakespeare's art.
"Hamlet" is probably the most popular, the best-known of all Shakespeare's plays. It is a very philosophical play. Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, is a highly intelligent person.
Hamlet's soliloquy is very famous: "To be, or not to be; that is the question..."
Queen Elizabeth I died in 1603 and was succeeded by James VI of Scotland, son of Mary Stuart. James, who became James I of England and Scotland, was a lover of the theatre.
Shakespeare wrote a tragedy "Macbeth" in which action passes in Scotland. In 1606 Shakespeare was a very mature and successful playwright. He had become a wealthy man.
In "King Lear" we see evil defeated. "King Lear" is the greatest of all Shakespeare's tragedies.
The story of an old king of England and his three daughters was not invented by Shakespeare. Shakespeare hardly ever invented the plot of his plays.
Between 1608 and 1613, Shakespeare wrote five plays: "Pericles" "Cymbeline" "The Winter's Tale" "The Tempest" and "Henry VIII" In "The Tempest" Shakespeare says farewell to the theatre, to his friends.
On June 29, 1613, the Globe theatre was destroyed in a fire. For Shakespeare and his colleagues it must have been a terrible time. The Globe was the greatest theatre in England.
Shakespeare died on April 23, 1616.
He wrote 38 plays and many poems.
William Shakespeare is the greatest of all playwrights and poets of all times. Not much is known of his life. He was probably the son of a businessman and was born in 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon. He probably attended the local grammar school and got a classical education. In 1582 he married Anne Hathaway and had 3 children. Little is known of his life before 1592, when he appeared as a playwright in London. Soon he became an actor playing supporting roles like the ghost in "Hamlet". In 1599 Shakespeare became a part owner of the Globe Theatre in London.
Shakespeare's work as a playwright is subdivided into 3 periods. Written in the first period, Shakespeare's plays are mostly history plays like "Henry VI", and comedies with strong elements of farce. His masterpiece of this period is "Romeo and Juliet".
In the second period Shakespeare wrote a number of comedies where he moved away from farce towards romance. In the third period, after 1600, appeared his major tragedies - "Hamlet", "Othello". They presented a clear opposition of order to chaos, good to evil.
Shakespeare was a great poet and would be well known for his poetry alone. His major achievement as a poet is his sonnets, first published in 1609. A sonnet is a poem consisting of 14 lines, with a moral at the end. The sonnets are addressed to some "W.H.", and to mysterious "Dark Lady of Sonnets". The sonnets deal with the great themes of love, friendship, death, change and immortality. Shakespeare looks at his own poetry as a means of immortality. Shakespeare's sonnets are excellent. They are full of harmony and music; they praise love, friendship and beauty, though there is no sentimentality in them.
Shakespeare's poetry is at the summit of human achievement. Many centuries have passed since his death in 1616, but Shakespeare is still considered to be the greatest of all playwrights and poets.
2. Life of Shakespeare.
The great poet and dramatist William Shakespeare is often called by his people "Our National Bard", "The Immortal Poet of Nature" and "The Great Unknown". More than two hundred contemporary references to Shakespeare have been located amoung church records, legal records, documents in the Public Record Office, and miscellaneous repositories. When these owe assembled, we have at least the skeleton out line of his life, begining with his baptist on April 26, 1564, in Trinity Church, Stratford-on-Avon, and ending with his burial there on April 25, 1616. Shakespeare's native place was Sratford-on-Avon, a little town in Warwickshire, which is generally described as being in the middle of England.
Shakespeare's father, John, was a prosperous glove maker of Stratford who, after holding minor municipal offices, was elected high bailiff of Stratford. Shakespeare's mother Mary Arden, came from an affluent family of landowners.
Shakespeare probably recieved his early education at the exellent Stratford Grammar School, supervised by an Oxford graduate, where he would have learned Latin smattering of Greek. In 1582 Shakespeare married Anne Hathaway, who lived in a neighboring hamlet. The first child born to Ann and William was their daughter Susanna. In about two years Ann bore him twins a boy and a girl, Hamlet and Jidith.
Then life in Stratford became intolerable for William Shakespeare and he decided to go to London and begin a theatrical career. Shakespeare's major activity lays in the field of drama. He became a full shareholder in his acting company, he was co-owner of "the Globe" theatre and later of "the Blackfriars" theatre, and in 1597 he purchased property in Strarford, including one of the largest houses in the town. He probably retired about 1610, travelling to London when necessary to take care of his theatrical business. In all, 154 sonnets were written. The sonnets were probably created in the 1590 but were first published in 1609.
3. Shakespeare's works.
Shakespeare's literary work is usually divided into three periods. The first period of his creative work falls between 1590 and 1600. Shakespeare's comedies belong to the first period of his creative work. They all are written in his playful manner and and in the brilliant poetry that conveys the spectator to Italy. Some of the first plays of the first period are: "Richard III" (1592), "The Comedy of Errors" (1592), "Romeo and Juliet" (1594), "Julius Caesar" (1599), "As You Like It" (1599), 1600 - "The Twelth Night". Shakespeare's poems are also attributed to the first period, "Venus and Adonis" and "Lucrece", and 154 sonnets. "Venus and Adonis" was the first of Shakespeare's works that came off the press. The second period of Shakespeare's creative work during from 1600 to 1608. His famous tragedies appeared at this time. In the plays of this period the dramatist reaches his full maturity. He presents great humans problems. His tragedies and historical plays made Shakespeare the greatest humanist of the English Renaissanse. Some plays of the second period: 1601 - "Hamlet", 1604 - "Othello".
Shakespeare's plays of the third period are called the "Romantic dramas". There is no tragic tension in these plays. This period lasted from 1609 till 1612. 1609 - "Cymbeline", 1610 - "The Winters Tale", 1612 - "Henry 8".
William Blake, English poet, painter and printer, was born on November 28, 1757.
You may have read his poems - about the lamb, the tiger, or his sad song about the poor chimney sweep.
The strange thing is that in his own time many people thought him mad. Almost a century passed after his death in 1827 before he was recognised as a truly great poet and artist.
His family background was obscure. We don't even know his mother's name. But he showed a talent for drawing early and at 14 he became apprentice to an engraver. When he was 21 he became an engraver on his own account and later married a girl called Catherine who had learnt to draw and paint so that she could work together with him.
When he was young, the French Revolution took place and he supported it. In England a different sort of change was taking place, which was called "The Industrial Revolution".
Blake was horrified at the way the life was being changed, with people young and old obliged to work in "those dark satanic mills."
He was particularly angered by the way the new factory owners and employers used child labour, and in many of his poems he defends the rights of childhood.
From the age of thirty he worked more on his paintings, making coloured lithographs by a method he invented. His pictures are often wild and strange, with very strong dramatic colours. They expressed the very complex ideas in his poems.
His great message is freedom for each person to develop. He hated slavery, black slavery on the plantations. white slavery in the factories.
Vincent Van Gogh was born in Holland in 1853. Before becoming a painter he was a teacher. He started painting when he was twenty-seven. In 1886 he left Holland and joined his young brother Theo, who lived in Paris. Here he painted some of his most famous pictures. After living there for two years he moved to the South of France, because the climate was warmer there.
But Van Gogh was mentally ill. During one of his fits of madness he attacked his friend, the artist Paul Gaugin. In another fit of madness, he cut off part of his own ear. Eventually he went into a mental hospital but he didn't get any better. Finally, on Sunday 27th July 1890, in the small village Vincent Van Gogh took a gun. He went into a cornfield and shot himself. Thirty-six hours later Van Gogh died in his brother's arms. His last words were: "I hope I did it properly". Nobody has ever painted cornfields or sunflowers like Van Gogh. His paintings are full of colour and sunlight. Today his paintings are worth millions of pounds but in his lifetime he only sold one.
Thomas More came into great favour and made a rapid carrier as a statesmen, at the same time writing works of political, philosophical and historical character. His most famous book is "Utopia". "Utopia" - means "no place, no there". The work is written in latin and divided into two books. Thomas More was the first writer in Europe to formulate communist principles as the basis of society.
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Thomas Jefferson, one of the American Presidents of the past, wasborn in Virginia in 1743. When he was 14 years old, his fatherdied and the young boy was left to choose for himself what to do.Jefferson studied literature and languages. He also studied to bea lawyer, and later he wrote many of the Virginia laws. One ofthe laws for which he worked very much was a law to allow manychildren to attend schools for free. Schools in America were only for thechildren whose parents were rich. When Jefferson was still ayoung man he was one of those who wanted freedom from England.His most outstanding achievement was the Declaration of Independence, a statement of human rights andliberties. It was read to the happy people on the 4th of July,1776. Jefferson also drew up the constitution for his state,Virginia, and served as its governor. He was sent to France asthe foreign minister of the United States of America andafterwards was President's Washington secretary of state. A fewyears later he became the country's third president, serving inthis position for 2 terms. The author of the Declaration ofIndependence did another important thing for the American people.He worked out a plan for a university where the students andteachers could live and work together in a village built forthem. It was one of the first schools to teach science. Today, itis the university of Virginia. This well known man was also aself-taught architect. He introduced the simple classical designto America when he designed the Virginia State Capital Building.He also designed his own home, he remained the most influencialarchitect of his time. Thomas Jefferson did many useful thingsduring his life time and he always thought of how to helpordinary people. He was a practical and theoretical scientisttoo. Jefferson's best traditions have been kept up by Americanprograssive people in their struggle for peace and democracy.
Thomas Gainsborough was a master of English school of painting. He was a portraitist and a landscape painter. He was born in Sudbury in 1727 and was the son of a merchant. His father sent him to London to study arts. He spent 8 years working and studying in London. There he got acquainted with the Flemish traditional school of painting. In his portraits green and blue colours predominate. He was the first British painter who painted British native countryside. He painted a wagon of hay, a poor cottage, poor peasants. His works of landscape contain much poetry and music. His best works are "Blue Boy", "The Portrait of the Duchess of Beaufort", "Sara Siddons" and others. The particular discovery of Gainsborough was the creation of a form of art in which the characters and the background form a single unity. The landscape is not kept in the background, but in most cases man and nature are fused in a single whole through the atmospheric harmony of mood. Gainsborough emphasized that the natural background for his characters should be nature itself. His works, painted in clear and transparent tones, had a considerable influence on the artists of the English school. He was in advance of his time. His art became a forerunner of the Romantic Movement.
Thomas Edison was born in 1847. He first went to school at the age of eight and a half. But after only three months his teacher called him "stupid" and he came home crying. From that time his mother taught him at home and he read science books by himself. He got a job sending telegraph messages. Then he started inventing things. At the age of 12 he had a job selling newspapers. He made money in a clever but simple way. He checked the news stories first. When the news was interesting he took a lot of papers; when it was boring he took only few.
In 1877 he made a "phonograph" - the first ever sound recorder. The following year he invented the light bulb. In 1882 New York was the first city in the world with electric lights. In 1889 he made a "kinetoscope' He also made films for his new machine. In 1903 he made the world's longest film (it was ten minutes long!) After more than one thousand inventions, Edison died at the age of eighty-four. In his honour they switched off the lights all over America.
Most people know that Thomas Edison invented the first working light bulb, but they don't know anything else about him. Edison had almost no formal schooling, yet he invented over 1000 different things. Among Edison's inventions are: the phonograph (record player), the movie camera and the movie projector.
Thomas Edison invented his electric light bulb in 1879, but there was still much work to do. No one knew how to use electricity outside of laboratory before Thomas Edison. He and his workers had to create a safe electric system. First they had to build a factory. Then they had to build the dynamos to make the electricity. Next they had to build electric lines.
To show people that he was serious, Edison began his project in New York City. By 1887, most part of New York City was electrified. Edison founded the Edison Electric Light Company and continued to supply electricity to New York and other places.
Thomas Edison lived until 1931. He continued to invent all his life. After the War, he tried to invent a substitute for rubber because of the shortage that the war caused.
Thomas Edison was a true genius, but he never went to a college or university. The only time Edison attended school was when he was 7 years old. He stayed for 3 months and never returned. Thomas Edison was a school dropout, yet he became one of America's most famous and most honoured people.
