Category: Today’s Birthday

Isma’il Pasha was appointed viceroy of Egypt under the Ottoman Empire and was involved with work on the Suez Canal. He planned but failed to unify the Nile valley by creating a new southern Egyptian province in the Sudan. Educated in Paris and sent on diplomatic missions throughout Europe, he helped to modernize Egypt before being dismissed by the sultan because of fiscal mismanagement. The enormous debt he incurred led to the British occupation of Egypt in 1882. Who captured his son Hassan? Discuss

Kipling was raised in England but returned to his birthplace, India, as a 16-year-old journalist. He soon became famous for his stories and poetry, which often feature the heat, strife, and ennui of India and romanticize British imperialism. While in the US in the 1890s, he published The Jungle Book and The Second Jungle Book, stories of the boy Mowgli in the Indian jungle that have become children’s classics. In 1907, he became the first English language writer to win what award? Discuss

Gladstone, a British statesman, served as prime minister four times between 1868 and 1894, a period in which he was the Liberal party’s dominant personality. A great orator and master of finance, he was deeply religious and brought a highly moralistic tone to politics. To many, he represented the best qualities of Victorian England, but he was also passionately disliked, most notably by Queen Victoria and his chief political rival, Benjamin Disraeli. What famous quips resulted from the rivalry? Discuss

A giant in the world of comic books, Lee is the former president and chairman of Marvel Comics and the creator of numerous comic book superheroes. With several artist collaborators, Lee co-created Spider-Man, the Fantastic Four, the X-Men, Iron Man, and the Incredible Hulk, among many others, and is credited with introducing complex, naturalistic characters into superhero comic books. Lee has made cameo appearances in what films featuring characters that he helped create? Discuss

Bernoulli was a Swiss mathematician who, with his brother Johann, pioneered German mathematician Gottfried Leibniz’s calculus. The first to use the word “integral” in solving Leibniz’s problem of the isochronous curve, Jakob used calculus to study the forms of many curves arising in practical situations. In 1713, he wrote Ars Conjectandi, or The Art of Conjecture, an important treatise on the theory of probability that contained the Bernoulli numbers, which are what? Discuss

Babbage was an English mathematician and inventor who devoted most of his life and private fortune to trying to perfect a mechanical calculating machine. In 1837, he described the so-called Analytical Engine, a machine capable of performing arithmetical operations with the use of instructions from punched cards. Although the device was never built, his idea is considered the forerunner of modern computers. Babbage also invented other devices, including the cowcatcher, which is used to do what? Discuss

Barton was a pioneering American nurse and humanitarian. During the American Civil War, she organized the distribution of medicine and supplies to wounded soldiers and nursed in army camps and battlefields, earning the title “Angel of the Battlefield.” In Europe at the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War, she began doing relief work there under the auspices of the International Red Cross. In 1881, she organized the American Red Cross, heading it until 1904. Who was Barton’s first-ever patient? Discuss

Before he became an infamously eccentric recluse, Hughes was a brilliant aviator and movie producer. At 17, he left college to take control of his late father’s Hughes Tool Company, which would form the future basis for his vast fortune. After founding the Hughes Aircraft Company, he set a speed record of 352 mph (567 km/h) in a plane he designed, and in 1938, he flew around the world in a record 91 hours. A recluse in his later years, Hughes spent the last decade of his life living where? Discuss

Karsh was a Canadian photographer of Armenian descent noted for his portraits of the world’s most prominent figures. Born in Turkey, he immigrated to Canada at 16, after losing his sister in the Armenian Genocide. He opened his own studio in the early 1930s and was appointed official portrait photographer of the Canadian government in 1935. His portrait of a scowling and defiant Winston Churchill is said to be the most reproduced photographic portrait in history. What made Churchill so mad? Discuss

Taylor married future US President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1934. In 1943, she bought a debt-ridden radio station and built it into a multimillion-dollar broadcasting company, later helping to finance her husband’s first election campaign. As first lady, she played an active role in politics while supporting the “war on poverty,” environmental causes, early education, and national beautification projects. She later wrote A White House Diary. How did she get the nickname “Lady Bird”? Discuss