Portal:Biography

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The Biography Portal

Biography (from the Greek words bíos (βίος), meaning 'life', and gráphein (γράφειν), meaning 'to write') is a genre of literature or film which presents a relatively full account of the most interesting and important events of a notable person's life. While a biography may focus on a fictional person, the term usually refers to non-fiction works. As opposed to summaries of people's lives, such as profiles or curriculum vitae, a biography is a continuous narrative which interprets and explains the person's character, personality, and social context.

Featured biography

Sir William Schwenck Gilbert (18 November 1836 – 29 May 1911) was a British dramatist, librettist and illustrator best known for his fourteen comic operas produced in collaboration with the composer Sir Arthur Sullivan. Gilbert's most popular collaborations with Sullivan, including H.M.S. Pinafore, The Pirates of Penzance, and The Mikado (one of the most frequently performed works in the history of musical theatre) and most of their other Savoy operas continue to be performed regularly today throughout the English-speaking world and beyond by opera companies, repertory companies, schools and community theatre groups. Lines from these works have permanently entered the English language, including "short, sharp shock", "What never? Well, hardly ever!", and "let the punishment fit the crime". (Read more...)

Selected portrait

Buzz Aldrin (born January 20, 1930 as Edwin Eugene Aldrin, Jr.) is an American pilot and astronaut. He was the Lunar Module Pilot for the Apollo 11 mission, the first lunar landing. He was the second person to set foot on the Moon and was the second human ever to step on an extraterrestrial world. Here, he walks on the surface of the Moon near the leg of the Lunar Module. (Read more...)

Photograph taken by Neil A. Armstrong, mission commander, with a 70mm lunar surface camera. Source:NASA

Did you know...

• ... that Queen Victoria rescued Dash the Dog from a carriage accident?
• ... that Dutch merchant Hendrik Pieter Nicolaas Muller established the Oost-Afrikaansche Compagnie (East African Trading Company) in 1882, which was to be mainly successful in West Africa, and is a trade mark for quality in Liberia to this day.
• ... that Ronald Skirth, an artilleryman in the British Army during World War One, deliberately mistargeted British guns to prevent the loss of enemy life?
• 
  ... that botanist Thomas Frederic Cheeseman (pictured) had a wide range of interests: he also described a few species of marine gastropods?
• ... former Regimental Sergeant Major Harry Lapwood was known as having the loudest voice in the New Zealand House of Representatives?
• ... that in 1951, Bulgarian politician and exile G. M. Dimitrov helped found the first Bulgarian NATO company?
• ... that Edith Killgore Kirkpatrick published a short book of favorite songs titled Louisiana Let's Sing in honor of her husband Claude's unsuccessful candidacy for Governor of Louisiana in 1963?
• ... that canal engineer Hugh Henshall was both pupil of and brother-in-law to James Brindley, the famous canal architect of the Industrial Revolution?

Quote of the week

Categories

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By time • Lists of people

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On this day – May 4

Births

• 1781 - Karl Christian Friedrich Krause, German philosopher (d. 1832)
• 1796 - Horace Mann, American educator (d. 1859) (pictured)
• 1852 - Alice Pleasance Liddell, English schoolgirl model for Alice in Wonderland (d. 1934)
• 1929 - Audrey Hepburn, Belgian actress (d. 1993)
• 1959 - Randy Travis, American musician

Deaths

• 1737 - Eustace Budgell, English writer (b. 1686)
• 1938 - Carl von Ossietzky, German pacifist, recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize (b. 1889)
• 1970 - Kent State victims:
  • Allison Krause (b. 1951)
  • Jeffrey Miller (b. 1950)
  • Sandra Scheuer (b. 1949)
  • William Schroeder (b. 1950)
• 1975 - Moe Howard, American actor and comedian (b. 1897)
• 1980 - Josip Broz Tito, one of the founders of the Non-Aligned Movement (b. 1892)

WikiProjects

See also: Biographies of living persons • Manual of Style (biographies)

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