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A biography, or simply bio, is a detailed description of a person's life. It involves more than just the basic facts like education, work, relationships, and death; it portrays a person's experience of these life events. Unlike a profile or curriculum vitae (résumé), a biography presents a subject's life story, highlighting various aspects of their life, including intimate details of experience, and may include an analysis of the subject's personality.

Biographical works are usually non-fiction, but fiction can also be used to portray a person's life. One in-depth form of biographical coverage is called legacy writing. Works in diverse media, from literature to film, form the genre known as biography.

An authorized biography is written with the permission, cooperation, and at times, participation of a subject or a subject's heirs. An autobiography is written by the person themselves, sometimes with the assistance of a collaborator or ghostwriter. (Full article...)

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Featured articles are displayed here, which represent some of the best content on English Wikipedia.

Image 1

Leigh as Scarlett O'Hara in Gone with the Wind (1939)

Vivien Leigh (/liː/; 5 November 1913 – 8 July 1967; born Vivian Mary Hartley and styled as Lady Olivier after 1947) was a British actress. She won the Academy Award for Best Actress twice, for her definitive performances as Scarlett O'Hara in Gone with the Wind (1939) and Blanche DuBois in the film version of A Streetcar Named Desire (1951), a role she had also played on stage in London's West End in 1949. She also won a Tony Award for her work in the Broadway musical version of Tovarich (1963). Although her career had periods of inactivity, in 1999 the American Film Institute ranked Leigh as the 16th greatest female movie star of classic Hollywood cinema.

After completing her drama school education, Leigh appeared in small roles in four films in 1935 and progressed to the role of heroine in Fire Over England (1937). Lauded for her beauty, Leigh felt that her physical attributes sometimes prevented her from being taken seriously as an actress. Despite her fame as a screen actress, Leigh was primarily a stage performer. During her 30-year career, she played roles ranging from the heroines of Noël Coward and George Bernard Shaw comedies to classic Shakespearean characters such as Ophelia, Cleopatra, Juliet and Lady Macbeth. Later in life, she performed as a character actress in a few films. (Full article...)
Image 2

Innis in the 1920s

Harold Adams Innis (November 5, 1894 – November 9, 1952) was a Canadian professor of political economy at the University of Toronto and the author of seminal works on media, communication theory, and Canadian economic history. He helped develop the staples thesis, which holds that Canada's culture, political history, and economy have been decisively influenced by the exploitation and export of a series of "staples" such as fur, fish, lumber, wheat, mined metals, and coal. The staple thesis dominated economic history in Canada from the 1930s to 1960s, and continues to be a fundamental part of the Canadian political economic tradition.

Innis's writings on communication explore the role of media in shaping the culture and development of civilizations. He argued, for example, that a balance between oral and written forms of communication contributed to the flourishing of Greek civilization in the 5th century BC. He warned, however, that Western civilization is now imperiled by powerful, advertising-driven media obsessed by "present-mindedness" and the "continuous, systematic, ruthless destruction of elements of permanence essential to cultural activity." His intellectual bond with Eric A. Havelock formed the foundations of the Toronto School of communication theory, which provided a source of inspiration for future members of the school: Marshall McLuhan and Edmund Snow Carpenter. (Full article...)
Image 3

Mary, Queen of Scots (8 December 1542 – 8 February 1587), also known as Mary Stuart, was Queen of Scotland from 14 December 1542 until her forced abdication in 1567.

The only surviving legitimate child of James V of Scotland, Mary was six days old when her father died and she acceded to the throne. During her childhood, Scotland was governed by regents, first by the heir to the throne, James Hamilton, Earl of Arran, and then by her mother, Mary of Guise. In 1548, she was betrothed to Francis, the Dauphin of France, and was sent to be brought up in France, where she would be safe from invading English forces during the Rough Wooing. Mary married Francis in 1558, becoming queen consort of France from his accession in 1559 until his death in December 1560. Widowed, Mary returned to Scotland in August 1561. Following the Scottish Reformation, the tense religious and political climate that Mary encountered on her return to Scotland was further agitated by prominent Scots such as John Knox, who openly questioned whether her subjects had a duty to obey her. The early years of her personal rule were marked by pragmatism, tolerance, and moderation. She issued a proclamation accepting the religious settlement in Scotland as she had found it upon her return, retained advisers such as James Stewart, Earl of Moray, and William Maitland of Lethington, and governed as the Catholic monarch of a Protestant kingdom. (Full article...)
Image 4

Kapadia in 2018

Dimple Kapadia (born 8 June 1957) is an Indian actress predominantly appearing in Hindi films. Born and raised in Mumbai by wealthy parents, she aspired to become an actress from a young age and received her first opportunity through her father's efforts to launch her in the film industry. She was discovered at age 14 by the filmmaker Raj Kapoor, who cast her in the title role of his teen romance Bobby (1973), which opened to major commercial success and gained her wide public recognition. Shortly before the film's release in 1973, she married the actor Rajesh Khanna and quit acting. Kapadia returned to films in 1984, two years after her separation from Khanna. Her comeback film Saagar, which was released a year later, revived her career. Both Bobby and Saagar won her Filmfare Awards for Best Actress. Through her work over the next decade, she established herself as one of Hindi cinema's leading female actors.

While her initial roles often relied on her perceived beauty and sex appeal, Kapadia was keen to challenge herself and expand her range. She was among the first actresses who starred in women-centred Hindi action films but found greater favour with critics when she took on more dramatic roles in both mainstream and neorealist parallel cinema. Appearing in films ranging from marital dramas to literary adaptations, she played troubled women sometimes deemed reflective of her personal experience, and received acclaim for her performances in Kaash (1987), Drishti (1990), Lekin... (1991), and Rudaali (1993). For her role as a professional mourner in Rudaali, she won the National Film Award for Best Actress and a Filmfare Critics Award. Kapadia followed with character roles in Gardish (1993) and Krantiveer (1994), the latter securing her a fourth Filmfare Award. (Full article...)
Image 5

Left wing, Martyrdom of the Apostles

Stefan Lochner (the Dombild Master or Master Stefan; c. 1410 – late 1451) was a German painter working in the late International Gothic period. His paintings combine that era's tendency toward long flowing lines and brilliant colours with the realism, virtuoso surface textures and innovative iconography of the early Northern Renaissance. Based in Cologne, a commercial and artistic hub of northern Europe, Lochner was one of the most important German painters before Albrecht Dürer. Extant works include single-panel oil paintings, devotional polyptychs and illuminated manuscripts, which often feature fanciful and blue-winged angels. Today some thirty-seven individual panels are attributed to him with confidence.

Less is known of his life. Art historians associating the Dombild Altarpiece master with the historical Stefan Lochner believe he was born in Meersburg in south-west Germany around 1410, and that he spent some of his apprenticeship in the Low Countries. Records further indicate that his career developed quickly but was cut short by an early death. We know that he was commissioned around 1442 by the Cologne council to provide decorations for the visit of Emperor Frederick III, a major occasion for the city. Records from the following years indicate growing wealth and the purchase of a number of properties around the city. Thereafter he seems to have over-extended his finances and fallen into debt. Plague hit Cologne in 1451 and there, apart from the records of creditors, mention of Stephan Lochner ends; it is presumed he died that year, aged around 40. (Full article...)
Image 6

Lê Quang Vinh

Lê Quang Vinh (1923 – 13 July 1956), popularly known as Ba Cụt (Vietnamese: [ɓāː kût]) was a Vietnamese military commander of the Hòa Hảo religious sect, which operated from the Mekong Delta and controlled various parts of southern Vietnam during the 1940s and early 1950s.

Ba Cụt and his forces fought the Vietnamese National Army (VNA), the Việt Minh, and the Cao Đài religious movement from 1943 until his capture in 1956. Known for his idiosyncrasies, he was regarded as an erratic and cruel leader who fought with little ideological purpose. His sobriquet came from the self-amputation of his left index finger (although it was erroneously reported that it was his middle or "third cut finger"). He later swore not to cut his hair until the communist Việt Minh were defeated. Ba Cụt frequently made alliances with various Vietnamese factions and the French. He invariably accepted the material support offered in return for his cooperation, and then broke the agreement—nevertheless, the French made deals with him on five occasions. The French position was weak because their military forces had been depleted by World War II, and they had great difficulty in re-establishing control over French Indochina, which had been left with a power vacuum after the defeat of Japan. (Full article...)
Image 7

On a dig in Aska [sv], 2020

Martin Rundkvist (born 4 April 1972) is a Swedish archaeologist and associate professor at the University of Łódź in Poland. His research focuses on the Bronze, Iron, and Middle Ages of Scandinavia, and includes significant excavations in the province of Östergötland.

Rundkvist has studied and excavated various sites in Sweden, particularly in the country's south. In 2003 and 2004, he published a three-volume work which doubled as his PhD dissertation, cataloguing the finds from Barshalder [sv; de], the largest prehistoric cemetery on the Swedish island of Gotland. A subsequent book identified nine possible regional power centres in Östergötland, and attempted to determine where the "Beowulfian mead halls" of the day once stood. Excavating years later at one of these sites, Aska [sv], Rundkvist uncovered the foundations of a large mead hall, and 22 ornate gold figures that may have represented gods or royals. In other works, Rundkvist has excavated a Viking boat grave, and analysed both the placement of deposited artefacts in the landscape and the lifestyles of the Scandinavian élite during the Middle Ages. (Full article...)
Image 8

Putnam in 2006

Hilary Whitehall Putnam (/ˈpʌtnəm/; July 31, 1926 – March 13, 2016) was an American philosopher, mathematician, and computer scientist, and a major figure in analytic philosophy in the second half of the 20th century. He made significant contributions to philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, philosophy of mathematics, and philosophy of science. Outside philosophy, Putnam contributed to mathematics and computer science. Together with Martin Davis he developed the Davis–Putnam algorithm for the Boolean satisfiability problem and he helped demonstrate the unsolvability of Hilbert's tenth problem.

Putnam was known for his willingness to apply equal scrutiny to his own philosophical positions as to those of others, subjecting each position to rigorous analysis until he exposed its flaws. As a result, he acquired a reputation for frequently changing his positions. In philosophy of mind, Putnam is known for his argument against the type-identity of mental and physical states based on his hypothesis of the multiple realizability of the mental, and for the concept of functionalism, an influential theory regarding the mind–body problem. In philosophy of language, along with Saul Kripke and others, he developed the causal theory of reference, and formulated an original theory of meaning, introducing the notion of semantic externalism based on a thought experiment called Twin Earth. (Full article...)
Image 9

William Speirs Bruce (1 August 1867 – 28 October 1921) was a British naturalist, polar scientist and oceanographer who organized and led the Scottish National Antarctic Expedition (SNAE, 1902–04) to the South Orkney Islands and the Weddell Sea. Among other achievements, the expedition established the first permanent weather station in Antarctica. Bruce later founded the Scottish Oceanographical Laboratory in Edinburgh, but his plans for a transcontinental Antarctic march via the South Pole were abandoned because of lack of public and financial support.

In 1892 Bruce gave up his medical studies at the University of Edinburgh and joined the Dundee Whaling Expedition to Antarctica as a scientific assistant. This was followed by Arctic voyages to Novaya Zemlya, Spitsbergen and Franz Josef Land. In 1899 Bruce, by then Britain's most experienced polar scientist, applied for a post on Robert Falcon Scott's Discovery Expedition, but delays over this appointment and clashes with Royal Geographical Society (RGS) president Sir Clements Markham led him instead to organise his own expedition, and earned him the permanent enmity of the geographical establishment in London. Although Bruce received various awards for his polar work, including an honorary doctorate from the University of Aberdeen, neither he nor any of his SNAE colleagues were recommended by the RGS for the prestigious Polar Medal. (Full article...)
Image 10
Mark Saunders was a British barrister who was shot dead by police on 6 May 2008 after a five-hour siege at his home in Markham Square in Chelsea, London. Saunders was a successful divorce lawyer who struggled with depression and alcoholism. He had been behaving erratically and drinking heavily in the hours before the incident. Neighbours called the police after Saunders repeatedly fired a shotgun from a window shortly before 17:00 (BST, UTC+1). When armed police officers arrived, Saunders fired at their vehicle and the siege began. More armed officers arrived and took up positions in surrounding buildings and on the street. Saunders fired on two more occasions and the police returned fire, slightly wounding him. Around 20 minutes after the previous round of shooting, just after 21:30, Saunders waved the shotgun out of a window. As he lowered it in the direction of a group of police officers, seven officers fired eleven shots, of which at least five struck him. Police entered his flat minutes later and Saunders was taken to a waiting ambulance where he was pronounced dead.

The Independent Police Complaints Commission investigated the shooting as a matter of course. During the investigation, the Saunders family applied for judicial review of the investigation, claiming that the practice of conferring between the police officers involved made it inadequate; the practice was found lawful and the case dismissed, though it prompted a review of the practice. An inquest held in September 2010 heard that Saunders repeatedly asked during the siege to speak with his wife and a friend (both of whom were at the scene) but that the police refused the requests. It also learnt that Saunders' shotgun was in the open position and not capable of being fired when the police recovered it. The police officers who fired testified that they acted out of fear for their lives and the lives of their colleagues, and felt that they had no choice. The jury returned a verdict of lawful killing, but found several flaws in the police handling of the incident, including the lack of consideration to allowing him to speak to his wife, confusion in the chain of command, and a failure to take account of Saunders' drunken state. The jury did not consider that any of these factors significantly contributed to the outcome of the incident. They could not decide whether Saunders had intentionally aimed his weapon to provoke a lethal response from the police ("suicide by cop"). (Full article...)
Image 11
Juan Davis Bradburn (born John Davis Bradburn; 1787 – April 20, 1842) was a brigadier general in the Mexican Army. His actions as commandant of the garrison at Anahuac in Mexican Texas in 1831 and 1832 led to the events known as the Anahuac Disturbances.

Born and raised in the United States, Bradburn's first career was as a merchant and slave trader. He likely first entered Mexico in 1812 as part of the Gutiérrez–Magee Expedition fighting Spanish control of Texas. When the expedition was quashed, Bradburn moved to Louisiana, where he served in the Louisiana militia during the Battle of New Orleans. After his discharge, Bradburn spent several years fighting for Mexican independence. After Spain relinquished its hold on Mexico in 1821, Bradburn became an officer in the new Mexican Army, in which he served as a courier for Emperor Agustín de Iturbide. (Full article...)
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James Moore (c. 1737 – c. April 15, 1777) was a Continental Army general during the American Revolutionary War. Moore was born into a prominent political family in the colonial Province of North Carolina, he was one of only five generals from North Carolina to serve in the Continental Army. He spent much of his childhood and youth on his family's estates in the lower Cape Fear River area, but soon became active in the colonial military structure in North Carolina.

Moore served in the colonial militia during the French and Indian War, and commanded the colonial governor's artillery at the Battle of Alamance, which ended the War of the Regulation. In addition to his military involvement, he was active in the independence movement, despite having been a supporter of the colonial government during his early career. Moore played a prominent role in the local Sons of Liberty organizations, and assisted in organizing the colony-wide extra-legal Provincial Congress. In 1775, he was elected the first commander of a Continental Line regiment in North Carolina, which had been raised following the instructions of the Continental Congress. (Full article...)
Image 13

As lady mayoress of Reigate in 1913

Margaretta "Etta" Louisa Lemon (née Smith; 22 November 1860 – 8 July 1953) was an English bird conservationist and a founding member of what is now the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB). She was born into an evangelical Christian family in Kent, and after her father's death she increasingly campaigned against the use of plumage in hatmaking which had led to billions of birds being killed for their feathers. She founded the Fur, Fin and Feather Folk with Eliza Phillips in Croydon in 1889, which two years later merged with Emily Williamson's Manchester-based Society for the Protection of Birds (SPB), also founded in 1889. The new organisation adopted the SPB title, and the constitution for the merged society was written by Frank Lemon, who became its legal adviser. Etta married Frank Lemon in 1892, and as Mrs Lemon she became the first honorary secretary of the SPB, a post she kept until 1904, when the society became the RSPB.

The Lemons led the RSPB for more than three decades, although Etta's conservatism, authoritarian management and opposition to scientific ornithology increasingly led to clashes with the organisation's committee. She was pressured to resign from her leadership role in 1938, aged 79. During her tenure, the Importation of Plumage (Prohibition) Act 1921 restricted the international trade in feathers, but did not prevent their being sold or worn. (Full article...)
Image 14

Massenet photographed by Pierre Petit, 1880

Jules Émile Frédéric Massenet (French pronunciation: [ʒyl emil fʁedeʁik masnɛ]; 12 May 1842 – 13 August 1912) was a French composer of the Romantic era best known for his operas, of which he wrote more than thirty. The two most frequently staged are Manon (1884) and Werther (1892). He also composed oratorios, ballets, orchestral works, incidental music, piano pieces, songs and other music.

While still a schoolboy, Massenet was admitted to France's principal music college, the Paris Conservatoire. There he studied under Ambroise Thomas, whom he greatly admired. After winning the country's top musical prize, the Prix de Rome, in 1863, he composed prolifically in many genres, but quickly became best known for his operas. Between 1867 and his death forty-five years later he wrote more than forty stage works in a wide variety of styles, from opéra-comique to grand-scale depictions of classical myths, romantic comedies, lyric dramas, as well as oratorios, cantatas and ballets. Massenet had a good sense of the theatre and of what would succeed with the Parisian public. Despite some miscalculations, he produced a series of successes that made him the leading composer of opera in France in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. (Full article...)
Image 15

One of Hu Zhengyan's personal seals

Hu Zhengyan (Chinese: 胡正言; c. 1584 – 1674) was a Chinese artist, printmaker and publisher. He worked in calligraphy, traditional Chinese painting, and seal-carving, but was primarily a publisher, producing academic texts as well as records of his own work.

Hu lived in Nanjing during the transition from the Ming dynasty to the Qing dynasty. A Ming loyalist, he was offered a position at the rump court of the Hongguang Emperor, but declined the post, and never held anything more than minor political office. He did, however, design the Hongguang Emperor's personal seal, and his loyalty to the dynasty was such that he largely retired from society after the emperor's capture and death in 1645. He owned and operated an academic publishing house called the Ten Bamboo Studio, in which he practised various multi-colour printing and embossing techniques, and he employed several members of his family in this enterprise. Hu's work at the Ten Bamboo Studio pioneered new techniques in colour printmaking, leading to delicate gradations of colour which were not previously achievable in this art form. (Full article...)

More featured articles

Did you know... - show different entries

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... that British Army officer Sir Augustus FitzGeorge served as equerry to his father, Prince George, Duke of Cambridge, and accompanied Albert Edward, Prince of Wales, on his visit to India?
... that Desmond Young's biography of Erwin Rommel was criticised for portraying him as a "blue-eyed god who could do no wrong"?
... that police negotiator Max Vernon told the actor portraying him in 6 Days that "you've been wrongly cast. You're two inches shorter than me and I have more hair"?
... that Kid Canfield is the first known person to die live on radio?
... that according to his 2020 biography, Atomic Spy, Klaus Fuchs felt that passing secrets from his work on the Manhattan Project to the Soviet Union was for "the betterment of mankind"?
... that actor Ranveer Singh was slapped 21 times while filming the music video for "Ude Dil Befikre"?
... that with "Homura" and Leo-Nine, LiSA became the first female artist in 16 years to debut a song and an album simultaneously at number one in Japan since Utada Hikaru?
... that NASA mechanical engineer Aaron Yazzie has compared the surface of Mars to the landscape near his birthplace in the Navajo Nation?
... that in 2015, Alexe Gaudreault became the first independent artist to top the BDS charts in 15 years?
... that British educator Thomas Lucas created an embossed shorthand to teach the blind to read by touch around 1830–1832, before the introduction of braille in the UK?
... that at the Schaubühne in Berlin, Jutta Lampe played Ophelia "as if in a trance", and male and female roles on a time voyage as the only actor in the premiere of Robert Wilson's Orlando?

General images

The following are images from various biography-related articles on Wikipedia.

Image 1Cover of the first English edition of Benjamin Franklin's autobiography, 1793 (from Autobiography)
Image 2John Foxe's The Book of Martyrs, was one of the earliest English-language biographies. (from Biography)
Image 3Einhard as scribe (from Biography)
Image 4Third Volume of a 1727 edition of Plutarch's Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans printed by Jacob Tonson (from Biography)
Image 5Eminent Victorians set the standard for 20th century biographical writing, when it was published in 1918. (from Biography)
Image 6A scene from the Baburnama (from Autobiography)
Image 7James Boswell wrote what many consider to be the first modern biography, The Life of Samuel Johnson, in 1791. (from Biography)
Image 8Saint Augustine of Hippo wrote Confessions, the first Western autobiography ever written, around 400. Portrait by Philippe de Champaigne, 17th century. (from Autobiography)

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Selected portrait

Image 1
Louis Pasteur
Photograph: Nadar; restoration: Chris Woodrich
Louis Pasteur (1822–1895) was a French chemist and microbiologist renowned for his discoveries of the principles of vaccination, microbial fermentation and pasteurization. He reduced mortality from puerperal fever, and created the first vaccines for rabies and anthrax. His medical discoveries provided direct support for the germ theory of disease and its application in clinical medicine. Together with Ferdinand Cohn and Robert Koch, he is regarded as one of the three main founders of bacteriology.
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Image 2
Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux
Image credit: The Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News
Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux was a 19th-century French sculptor and painter who sought to inject movement and spontaneity into his works. This engraving, done to commemorate him after his death, shows his sculpture Flore below him, and others of his works above. In his time, some of his works, particularly La Danse, were criticised as indecent, but today his sculptures are exhibited in major museums of art worldwide.
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Image 3
Mark Twain
Photo credit: Unknown
A portrait of American writer Samuel Clemens, best known by his pen name Mark Twain, in his later years. Twain is most noted for his novels Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, which has since been called the Great American Novel, and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Twain enjoyed immense public popularity, and his keen wit and incisive satire earned him praise from both critics and peers. Fellow author William Faulkner called Twain "the father of American literature".
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Image 4
Peter Oliver (painter)
Portrait: Peter Oliver
An 8.8-centimetre (3.5 in) tall self-portrait of the English miniaturist Peter Oliver (1594–1648). He often worked with watercolours.
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Image 5
Walt Whitman
Photograph: George C. Cox; restoration: Adam Cuerden
Walt Whitman (1819–1892) was an American poet, essayist and journalist. A humanist, he was a part of the transition between transcendentalism and realism, incorporating both views in his works. Whitman is among the most influential poets in the American canon, often called the father of free verse. His work was very controversial in its time, particularly his poetry collection Leaves of Grass (first published in 1855, but continuously revised until Whitman's death), which was described as obscene for its overt sexuality.
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Image 6
Portrait of Cardinal Niccolò Albergati
Artwork credit: Jan van Eyck
The Portrait of Cardinal Niccolò Albergati is an oil-on-oak-panel painting by the Early Netherlandish painter Jan van Eyck, dating to the 1430s. It is of considerable interest to art historians because van Eyck's preliminary drawing survives. The work depicts Niccolò Albergati, an Italian cardinal and a diplomat working under Pope Martin V, as a visibly ageing cleric, his face seamed with deep lines below the eyes; it is accompanied by notes on the colours to be used in the final painting. A comparison between this drawing and the portrait shows that van Eyck changed several details, such as the depth of the shoulders, the lower curve of the nose, the depth of the mouth and the size of the ear. The finished painting hangs at the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, while the drawing is in the collection of the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden.
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Image 7
Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom
Photo credit: NASA
Elizabeth II is the Queen regnant of sixteen independent states and their overseas territories and dependencies. Though she holds each crown and title separately and equally, she is resident in and most directly involved with the United Kingdom. She is currently the second longest serving head of state in the world.

The 16 countries of which she is Queen are known as Commonwealth Realms, and their combined population is over 129 million. In practice she herself wields almost no political power in any of her realms.
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Image 8
Pedro II of Brazil
Photo: Mathew Brady/Levin Corbin Handy
Emperor of Brazil Pedro II was the second and last ruler of the Empire of Brazil, reigning for over 58 years. Born in Rio de Janeiro, his father Pedro I's abrupt abdication and flight to Europe in 1831 left him as Emperor at the age of five. Inheriting an Empire on the verge of disintegration, Pedro II turned Brazil into an emerging power in the international arena. On November 15, 1889, he was overthrown in a coup d'état by a clique of military leaders who declared Brazil a republic. However, he had become weary of emperorship and despaired over the monarchy's future prospects, despite its overwhelming popular support, and did not support any attempt to restore the monarchy.
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Image 9
Frederick Douglass
Photo credit: George K. Warren
American abolitionist, editor, orator, author, statesman and reformer Frederick Douglass, shown here in 1879. Born a slave, Douglass was one of the most prominent figures in African American history and a formidable public presence. He was a firm believer in the equality of all people, whether black, female, American Indian, or recent immigrant. He was fond of saying, "I would unite with anybody to do right and with nobody to do wrong."

February is Black History Month in the United States and Canada.
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Image 10
Buffalo Bill
Photo credit: Moffett
William Cody, better known as Buffalo Bill, was one of the most colorful figures of the American Old West, and mostly famous for the shows he organized with cowboy themes. He got his nickname for supplying Kansas Pacific Railroad workers with bison meat, having won the name from Bill Comstock in a bison killing contest. In addition to his documented service as a soldier during the Civil War and as Chief of Scouts for the Third Cavalry during the Plains Wars, Cody claimed to have worked many jobs, including as a trapper, bullwhacker, "Fifty-Niner" in Colorado, a Pony Express rider in 1860, wagonmaster, stagecoach driver, and even a hotel manager, but it's unclear which claims were factual and which were fabricated for purposes of publicity.
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Image 11
Moshe Ya'alon
Photograph: Reuven Kapuscinski
Moshe Ya'alon (b. 1950) is an Israeli politician and current Defense Minister. Ya'alon was called up as a reserve during the Yom Kippur War in 1973. After the war, he rejoined the army as an officer and rose through the ranks, leading the Sayeret Matkal commando unit, the Paratroopers Brigade, and Military Intelligence. In 2002 he was appointed Chief of Staff of the Israel Defense Forces, resigning in 2005. Since 2013 he has served as the country's Defense Minister.
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Image 12
Thomas Cranmer
Painting: Gerlach Flicke
Thomas Cranmer (1489–1556, depicted in 1545) was a leader of the English Reformation and Archbishop of Canterbury during the reigns of three monarchs. Ascending to power during the reign of Henry VIII, under Edward VI he was able to promote a series of reforms in the Church of England. He was executed for treason under Mary I.
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Image 13
Javier Solana
Photo credit: א
Dr. Javier Solana, the High Representative for the Common Foreign and Security Policy and the Secretary-General of both the Council of the European Union (EU) and the Western European Union (WEU). This photograph shows him as he is discussing with students of RWTH Aachen University, one day before receiving the International Charlemagne Prize of the city of Aachen.
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Image 14
Donald Pleasence
Photo: Allan Warren; Restoration: Peter Weis
Donald Pleasence (1919–1995) was a British film, television and stage actor best known for his roles in You Only Live Twice, where he played James Bond's arch-enemy Dr Blofeld, and The Great Escape, where he drew upon his experience in a German POW camp. He was nominated four times for the Tony Award for best performance by a leading actor in a Broadway play, and made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire for his services to the acting profession by Queen Elizabeth II in 1994.
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Image 15
Mark Rutte
Photo: Nick van Ormondt
Mark Rutte is (as of 2011) the incumbent Prime Minister of the Netherlands. He has been the leader of the People's Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD) party since 2006. In the 2010 general election, the VVD won the highest number of votes cast, resulting in their occupying 31 of the 150 seats in the House of Representatives. When he was sworn in on 14 October 2010, he became the first liberal Prime Minister in the Netherlands in 92 years.
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On this day – March 21

Births

1685 - Johann Sebastian Bach, German composer (d. 1750) (pictured)
1806 - Benito Juárez, Mexican statesman and national hero (d. 1872)
1946 - Timothy Dalton, Welsh actor
1945 - Rose Stone, African-American singer
1962 - Matthew Broderick, American actor
1962 - Rosie O'Donnell, American comedian, actress, talk show host, and publisher

Deaths

1617 - Pocahontas, Native American, daughter of Powhatan (b. c. 1595)
1843 - Robert Southey, English poet (b. 1774)
1843 - Guadalupe Victoria, first President of Mexico (b. 1786)

More of today's anniversaries...

In the news

16 March 2022 – China–United States relations, Chinese espionage in the United States: Prosecutors for the U.S. Justice Department accuse five people working on behalf of the Chinese Ministry of State Security of conspiring to spy on and intimidate several dissidents living in the United States, such as the father of Olympic figure skater Alysa Liu, and Tiananmen Square protest leader and current congressional candidate Xiong Yan. The department says it is the first time that federal elections in the country have been interfered with in this manner. Three have been arrested while two remain at large. (The Guardian) (BBC News)
15 March 2022 –: Burkinabè architect Diébédo Francis Kéré wins the 2022 Pritzker Architecture Prize, becoming the first African and black person to do so. (The Guardian)
11 March 2022 – Protests against the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine: Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny renews calls for anti-war and anti-Putin protests in cities across Russia. (Reuters)
11 March 2022 –: Gabriel Boric is sworn-in as President of Chile, becoming the youngest person to serve as President. (Reuters)
10 March 2022 – 2022 South Korean presidential election: Conservative opposition leader Yoon Suk-yeol is confirmed as the winner of yesterday's presidential election with 48.59% of the vote. He will take office as President of South Korea on May 10. (BBC News)
8 March 2022 – Aftermath of the 2021 United States Capitol attack: Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio is indicted on conspiracy charges of obstructing the U.S. Congress during the January 6 attack at the United States Capitol. (Politico)

Updated: 1:33, 20 March 2022

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Quote of the week

"I never did write a biography, and I don't exactly know how to set about it; you see I have to be accurate and keep to the facts, a most difficult thing for a writer of fiction."

— Elizabeth Gaskell

Referring to her Life of Charlotte Brontë in a letter to Harriet Anderson, 15 March 1856

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