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Legends over Generations

Life Stories of Legends that shaped our lives across; Arts, Literature, Science, Human Rights and Politics

Ashraf Haggag

Legends over Generations

Copyright © 2018 by Ashraf Haggag

All rights reserved.

ISBN-13: 9783743989979

Contents

Introduction

ONE The Role of Legends

TWO Human Rights

THREE Human Rights Legends

3a. Mahatma Gandhi

3b. Dalai Lama

3c. Malala Yousafzai

3d. Martin Luther King

3e. Nelson Mandela

FOUR Science

FIVE Science Legends

5a. Albert Einstein

5b. Alexander Graham Bell

5c. Marie Curie

5d. Thomas Edison

5e. Louis Pasteur

5f. Nikola Tesla

SIX Politics over History

SEVEN Politics Legends

7a. Charles De Gaulle

7b. Che Guevara

7c. Mao Tse-tung

7d. Mustafa Kemal Ataturk

7e. Mikhail Gorbachev

7f. Winston Churchill

7g. Napoleon Bonaparte

EIGHT Art & Literature

NINE Art & Lit Legends

9a. Anton Chekhov

9b. Ava Gardner

9c. Charles Dickens

9d. Dwight D. Eisenhower

9e. Ernest Hemingway

9f. Fyodor Dostoevsky

9g. Humphry Bogart

9h. Leo Tolstoy

9i. Marlon Brando

9j. Simon Bolivar

9k. Victor Hugo

9l. William Shakespeare

TEN Conclusion: Key Features & Traits across all Legends

Introduction

For a long time, I was hesitant to write about legends simply because this subject was tackled and discussed from so many authors. However the desire of drafting my own thoughts and to write about this subject from my own point of view was strong and hard to impede.

Each of us might have a good idea of what it means to be a legend but when it comes to defining the concept, the picture is not so clear for some.

Legends harbor huge components of skills, personal traits and real efforts linked with other external components that are involved to shape the full picture of a leader. If we look around and carefully view the bio of well-known leaders in different fields weather in trade, economics, science , social or political , we will witness and discover great similarities among them in all aspects weather in personality traits , skills etc.

This book will give a strong highlight on what a legend is and what skills, personality traits that has to be available and exist, then moving on to highlight on the different style, types of legends with their impact and how they shaped the minds and souls of entire generations.

Finally, a clear highlight on selected leaders in different fields that has strongly influenced and shaped our lives.

I sincerely hope I have handled this important subject from a wider angle that can be useful and enjoyable to my dear readers.

Enjoy the read.

One

The Role of Legends

The Role of Legends

Since the beginning of human settlement, a lot of people came up with ideas, philosophies, beliefs, experiments, research, redesigning of thoughts, talents, and surveys to bring folklore to reality. People contributed to various life aspects such as science, politics, literature, arts, social activities and so many other fields. These genius minds put a keen interest in every phenomenon right from when they were young. The zeal, passion, dedication, hard work and efforts they put into their work helped them discover something new about the world we live in.

Due to these efforts and unique talent, the world today dwells in the abode of their attainments in different sectors. The present picture of the world that we see today would not have revolutionized without the contribution of these great personalities. Great philosophers and masterminds that existed from the ancient Greek era to the present day.

In these Legends, we’ve seen incomprehensible abilities that helped us define our existence and human life. Their identities are engraved in the sands of time for their work in the welfare of mankind with different inventions that have made our lives easy, enjoyable and successful. The following chapters celebrate the greatest personalities we’ve ever seen who changed the world.

Two

Human Rights

HUMAN RIGHTS

As we believe the virtue of human life has ancient precedents in many religions of the world, the idea of progressive human rights began during the era of renaissance humanism in the early modern period.

The European wars of faith and the civil wars of England gave way to the philosophy of liberalism and belief in human rights became a central concern of European intellectual culture during the Age of Enlightenment.

These ideas of human rights were at the nucleus of the American and French Revolutions. Democratic evolution in the 1800’s paved the way for the emergence of universal suffrage in the twentieth century. Two world wars paved the way to the emergence of Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

The post-war period witnessed human rights movements for groups like feminism and the civil rights of African-Americans. The human rights of members of the Soviet bloc unfolded in the 1970s as did the workers' rights in the West.

The movement rapidly aligned as social activism and political rhetoric in many countries put it high on the world agenda. By the 21st century, the human rights movement enlarged beyond its original anti-totalitarianism to include various causes involving humanitarianism and social and economic development in the Developing World.

Some concepts of righteousness which can be found in ancient law and religion is sometimes retrospectively included under the term "human rights". While Enlightenment philosophers propose a secular social agreement between the rulers and the ruled, ancient traditions derived similar conclusions from perceptions of divine law, and, in Hellenistic philosophy, natural law.

Three

Human Rights Legends

 

3A. MAHATMA GANDHI

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Legacy: 1869 through to 1948

Mahatma Gandhi steered India’s non-violent independence movement against British rule and in South Africa who championed for the civil rights of Indians.

Born in Porbandar, India, Gandhi studied law and devised boycotts against British institutions in peaceful forms of civil defiance. He was assassinated by a radical in 1948.

Early Life and Education

Gandhi was a timid, unremarkable student. His shyness followed through to his teenage years in which he would still sleep with the lights on. In the following years, the teenager showed revolt by smoking, eating meat and stealing change from household servants.

Although Gandhi was keen in becoming a doctor, his father had hoped he would also become a government minister, so his family directed him to enter the legal profession. In 1888, Gandhi, who was 18 at the time, sailed for London, England, to study the field of law. The young Indian had difficulties with the transition to Western culture.

Upon his return to India in 1891, Gandhi found that his mother had passed away just weeks earlier. He floundered to gain his footing as a lawyer. In his first courtroom case, an apprehensive Gandhi blanked out when the time came to cross-examine a witness. He immediately left the courtroom after compensating his client for his legal fees.

Early Career

After struggling to find employment as a lawyer in India, Gandhi secured a one-year contract to carry out legal services in South Africa. In April 1893, he sailed for Durban in the South African state of Natal.

When Gandhi arrived in South Africa, he was quickly horrified by the discrimination and racial segregation faced by Indian immigrants at the hands of white British and Boer authorities. At his first appearance in a Durban courtroom, Gandhi was asked to take off his turban. He refused to do so and left the court instead. The Natal Advertiser scorned him in print as “an unwelcome visitor.”

A groundbreaking moment in Gandhi’s life occurred days later on June 7, 1893, during a train trip to Pretoria, South Africa, when a white man objected to his presence in the first-class railway compartment, although he had a ticket. Refusing to retire to the back of the train, Gandhi was forcibly removed and thrown off the train. His act of civil disobedience awoke in him a determination to devote himself to confronting the “deep disease of color prejudice.” He vowed that night to “try, if possible, to root out the disease and suffer hardships in the process.” From that night on, the small, modest man would evolve into a giant force for civil rights. Gandhi formed the Natal Indian Congress in 1894 to fight discrimination.

At the end of his year-long contract, Gandhi prepared to return to India until he learned, at his farewell party, of a bill before the Natal Legislative Assembly that would dispossess Indians of the right to vote. Associate immigrants convinced Gandhi to stay and lead the fight against the legislation. Even though Gandhi could not prevent the law’s passing, he drew international attention to the injustice.

After a brief trip to India in late 1896 and early 1897, Gandhi returned to South Africa with his wife and children. Gandhi was running a prosperous legal practice, and at the eruption of the Boer War, he raised an all-Indian ambulance corps of over 1,000 volunteers to support the British cause, insisting that if Indians expected to have full rights of citizenship in the British Empire, they also needed to undertake their tasks and responsibilities as well.

In 1930, Gandhi returned back to active politics to protest Britain’s Salt Acts. This act prohibited Indians from collecting or selling salt, a dietary staple, and inflicted a heavy tax that hit the nation’s poorest class especially hard. Gandhi planned a new Satyagraha campaign that required a 390-kilometer march to the Arabian Sea, in which he would collect salt in illustrative defiance of the government monopoly.

“My ambition is no less than to convert the British people through non-violence and thus make them see the wrong they have done to India,” he wrote days before the march to the British viceroy, Lord Irwin.

Wearing a simple white shawl and sandals and carrying a walking stick, Gandhi set out from his religious sanctuary on March 12, 1930, with a few dozen companions. By the time he arrived 24 days later in the coastal town of Dandi, the ranks of the marchers swelled, and Gandhi broke the law by making salt from evaporated seawater.

The Salt March sparked similar protests, and mass civil disobedience swept across India. Nearly 60,000 Indians were arrested for breaking the Salt Acts, including Gandhi, who was arrested in May 1930. The protests against the Salt Acts escalated Gandhi into a transcendent figure around the world, and he was named Time magazine’s “Man of the Year” for 1930.

Gandhi was released in January 1931, and two months later he made an agreement with Lord Irwin to end the Salt Satyagraha in return for concessions that included the release of thousands arrested political. The agreement, however, largely kept the Salt Acts intact, but it did give those who lived on the coasts the right to harvest salt from the sea. Hoping that the agreement would be a step to home rule, Gandhi attended the London Round Table Conference on Indian constitutional reform as the sole representative of the Indian National Congress. The conference, however unsuccessful.

Gandhi returned to India to find himself under arrest once again in January 1932 during a crackdown by India’s new viceroy, Lord Willingdon. After his eventual release, Gandhi left the Indian National Congress in 1934, and leadership passed to his protégé l Nehru. He again moved away from politics to focus on education, poverty and the problems afflicting India’s rural areas.

As Great Britain found itself consumed in World War II in 1942, though, Gandhi launched the “Quit India” movement that called for the immediate British withdrawal from the country. In August 1942, the British arrested Gandhi, his wife and other leaders of the Indian National Congress and kept them in the Aga Khan Palace in present-day Pune. Gandhi was released after a while detainment, but not before his wife died in February 1944.

After the Labor Party defeated Churchill’s Conservatives in the British general election of 1945, it began negotiations for Indian independence with the Indian National Congress. Gandhi played a remarkable role in the negotiations, but he could not prevail in his hope for a unified India. Instead, the final plan called for the partition of the subcontinent along religious lines into two independent states—predominantly Hindu India and predominantly Muslim Pakistan.

Violence between Hindus and Muslims increased even before independence took effect on August 1947. Afterwards, the killings multiplied. Gandhi toured riot-torn areas in an appeal for peace and fasted in an attempt to end the bloodshed. Some Hindus, however viewed Gandhi as a traitor for expressing kindness toward Muslims.

Gandhi’s Assassination

In the late January 30, 1948, Gandhi, weakened from repeated hunger strikes, clung to his two grandnieces as they led him from his living quarters in New Delhi’s Birla House for a prayer meeting.

Hindu extremist, upset at Gandhi’s tolerance of Muslims, knelt before the Mahatma before pulling out a semiautomatic pistol and shooting him three times. The violent act took the life of a pacifist who spent his life preaching nonviolence.

Even after Gandhi’s assassination, his commitment to nonviolence and his belief in simple living have been a beacon of hope for oppressed and marginalized people throughout the world. Satyagraha remains one of the most potent philosophies in freedom struggles throughout the world today, and Gandhi’s actions inspired future human rights movements around the globe,

Famous Quotes

Be the change you want to see in this world

Nobody can hurt me without my permission

Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony

The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is an attribute of the strong

Freedom is not worth having if it does not include the freedom to make mistakes

 

3B. DALAI LAMA

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Legacy: 1935 through to the Present

Dalai Lama, Tibet's political leader, has worked to make Tibet an independent and democratic state from China. He and his followers are exiled to India.

Early life

Lhamo Thondup was born on July, 1935 in Taktser, China, northeast of Tibet, into a peasant family. Lhamo Thondup was the fifth of 16 children. After several months of searching for an inheritor to the 13th Dalai Lama and following many significant spiritual signs, religious officials found Lhamo Thondup, at age 2, and distinguished him as the reincarnation of the 13th Dalai Lama, Thubten Gyatso. Lhamo was given the name Tenzin Gyatso and proclaimed the 14th Dalai Lama.

Dalai Lamas are presumed to be the reincarnation of Avalokitesvara, an important Buddhist divinity and the embodiment of compassion. Dalai Lamas are also enlightened beings who have delayed their own afterlife and chosen to take rebirth for the good sake of humanity. "Dalai" means "ocean" in Mongolian."Lama" is the equal of the Sanskrit word "guru," or spiritual teacher. When put together, the title of Dalai Lama is literally "Ocean Teacher," with a connotation of “teacher spiritually as deep as the ocean."

Legacy

Buddhism was generated in the sixth century, in line with the birth of Buddha Siddhartha Gautama, making it one of the oldest religions practiced today.

The religion circulated throughout most of eastern and southern Asia. Dissimilar to other religions that are pivoted on a supreme being, Buddhism is centered on four basic truths: Life is not perfect; people are left unsatisfied by trying to make life perfect; people can realize there is a better way to achieve fulfillment; and to live one's life through wisdom, ethical conduct and mental discipline, people will reach enlightenment.

At the age of 15, in 1950, Tenzin seized full political power as the Dalai Lama. However, his governorship was short lived. In October of that year, the People's Republic of China invaded Tibet against little opposition.

In 1954, the Dalai Lama crossed to Beijing for peace talks with Chinese leaders. However, in 1959, continued clampdown of the Tibetan people by Chinese troops led to their insurrection. The Dalai Lama and his closest advisers surmised the Chinese government was planning to assassinate him. Accordingly, he and several thousand followers fled to Dharamshala in northern India and established an replacement government there.

In the meanwhile, the People's Republic of China considered the Dalai Lama to be a symbol of an outdated religious movement, not in line with communist philosophy. Of late, the Chinese government alleges that he is a separatist and a betrayer for advocating Tibetan self-rule, and a radical for inciting Tibetan rebellion.

Since the Chinese invasion, the Dalai Lama has taken a great number of actions in hopes of creating an autonomous Tibetan state within the People's Republic of China. In 1963, he supplied a draft constitution for Tibet entailing a number of reforms to democratize the government. Named the Charter of Tibetans in Exile, it grants freedom of speech, belief, assembly, and movement. It also presents detailed guidelines for Tibetans who are in exile.

Throughout the course of the 1960s, the Central Intelligence Agency funded and trained Tibetan forces to withstand the Chinese invasion and occupation with the Dalai Lama's full knowledge and support. The program was unsuccessful as thousands of lives were astray in the resistance and is now considered simply a Cold War tactic on the part of the United States to challenge the Chinese government's credibility in the region.

In September 1987, the Dalai Lama suggested the Five Point Peace Plan for Tibet as the initial steps in a peaceful solution to reconcile with the Chinese government and end the volatile situation there. The plan proposed that Tibet would become a sanctuary where enlightened and liberated people can exist in peace and the environment can be conserved.

In June, 1988, the Dalai Lama approached members of the European Parliament in Strasbourg, France. There he suggested talks between the Chinese and Tibetans that would lead to a self-governing democratic political establishment for Tibet. The entity would be amalgamated with the People's Republic of China, and the Chinese government would be accountable for Tibet's foreign policy and defense.

In 1991, the Tibetan government-in-exile announced that the Strasbourg Proposal was invalid due to the current Chinese leadership's negative standpoint toward the proposal.