Compact Biographies

In the third episode of season 9 of the 5 Minute Biographies podcast we take a brief look at the life of the man who tried to get the the East Indies and stumbled across the Americas - Christopher Columbus.

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In the second episode of season 9 of the 5 Minute Biographies podcast we take a brief look at the life of Lord of the Rings author J. R. R. Tolkien.

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In the first episode of season 9 of the 5 Minute Biographies podcast, we take a brief look at the life of entrepreneur and philanthropist Joh D. Rockefeller.

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“Human life is far more important than just getting to the top of a mountain” – Sir Edmund Hillary.

Sir Edmund Hillary is probably one of the most

famous Kiwis of all time.  It was his

adventurous spirit and his impressive philanthropy work in combination with his

hardy determination and exploratory gifts that made Sir Edmund Hillary one of

the greatest explorers of the 20th century.

Sir Edmund Hillary was born in Auckland, New

Zealand on 20 July 1919. His father had served in the 15th (North

Auckland) Regiment at Gallipoli during World War I and when he returned home,

he was allotted land south of Auckland, a benefit which was given by New Zealand’s

government to returning soldiers. Edmund was sent to a good grammar school as

was the wish of his mother, but he had to travel for 1-hour and 40-minutes by train

each way to do so.

Edmund’s time at grammar school was not

something he remembered with fondness as his school commute meant that he

couldn’t take part in after-school activities. He was quite short for his age

although he would eventually grow to be over six feet tall. He was also quite shy

but gained confidence after taking up boxing. However, it was not boxing that sparked

Edmund’s imagination; this would come in his later teenage years when he

discovered what would become one of his lifelong passions, a love of climbing

and all things mountaineering.

Despite his father having served in World War

I, the Hillary family were generally pacifists and Sir Edmund Hillary’s older

brother even spent time in jail during World War II as a conscientious

objector. Sir Edmund himself, on the other hand, desired to participate

believing it to be his patriotic duty. 

His pacifist, and occasionally meddlesome, father utilised a loophole in

the law which allowed certain occupations to be exempt from service. One of

those occupations just so happened to be the family trade of beekeeping.

Despite this, and as the war entered its

fourth year, Sir Edmund Hillary eventually joined up in 1943, learning to

become a navigator. His military career was cut short though, and he never saw

combat, as a plane accident left him badly burned. He was hospitalised for

several weeks before eventually being discharged to recover at home.

After the war, Sir Edmund Hillary continued

his lifelong love of mountaineering and climbing, scaling a variety of peaks

both in Europe and New Zealand.  However,

the chance of a lifetime came his way in 1951 when the British were presented

with a chance to attempt an ascent of Mount Everest. The Nepalese government

only permitted one or two expeditions per year and so the chances to make an

attempt on the summit of the highest mountain in the world were few and far

between with many different countries bidding for the opportunity every year.

New Zealand joined forces with the British team

led by John Hunt to form a joint expedition which in 1951 extensively explored

the mountain during the 1951 season in order to find a route that would lead to

the summit. This approach paid off when in 1953 Sir Edmund Hillary joined the group

that would try to make the formal ascent.

After several setbacks, including being

delayed by two days due to snow and wind, Sir Edmund Hillary and his Sherpa

friend Tenzing Norgay set out with the support of three others, reaching 27,900

feet on 28 May. With their support crew turning back and their oxygen supply running

low,

In the tenth and final episode of season 8 of the 5 Minute Biographies podcast, we take a brief look at the life of one of the founding fathers of the United States of America - Alexander Hamilton.

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In the ninth episode of season 8 of the 5 Minute Biographies podcast, we take a brief look at the life of the renaissance artist who painted the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in Rome - Michelangelo.

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In the eighth episode of season 8 of the 5 Minute Biographies podcast we take a brief look at the life of the man who had a hand in the building of the Statue of Liberty and who also has an iconic landmark tower in Paris named after him - Gustave Eiffel.

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In the seventh episode of season 8 of the 5 Minute Biographies podcast, we take a brief look at the life of an American cultural hero who became known as the King of the Wild Frontier - Davy Crockett.

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In the sixth episode of season 8 of the 5 Minute Biographies podcast, we take a brief look at the life of one of the most beautiful women in the history of Hollywood - Lana Turner.

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“Blessed are the young, for they shall inherit the national debt” – Herbert Hoover.

Some individuals seem to have a knack for just

getting missed by history despite their significant importance to it. One such

individual often overlooked and forgotten by the history books is Herbert Clark

Hoover who, although little remembered outside of the historical community, had

a huge impact both domestically and abroad.

Herbert Hoover was born 10 August 1874 in West

Branch, Iowa. While he was still young, his family moved to Oregon and after a

fairly typical childhood, he graduated from George Fox University and Stanford

University. Herbert Hoover had several jobs in his life before the one that

would make him most famous; having worked as a businessman, an engineer and a

politician, Herbert Hoover would eventually rise to become the 31st president

of the United States.

Prior to his ascension to the White House, Herbert Hoover was tapped to become the senior manager of the Commission for Relief in Belgium. The Commission for Relief in Belgium was founded after World War I as an international agency dedicated to helping provide food supplies and other important equipment to the occupied people of Belgium during World War I. It was partly because of his excellent work in this position that he was later appointed by President Woodrow Wilson to head the Food Administration.

His work with food was not yet over though as Herbert

Hoover also led the American Relief Administration which was dedicated to

helping bring relief supplies, food, and other aid to Central and Eastern

Europeans after the war.

It was his outstanding humanitarianism and a

long history of helping to serve others that made Herbert Hoover a powerful

political force in his day and although he was not successful in getting the

Republican nomination in the presidential election of 1920, he did get himself

appointed as the Secretary of Commerce working under President Warren G.

Harding as well as Calvin Coolidge. He even gained the title of Secretary of

Commerce and Undersecretary of all other departments due to his incredible

energy and active participation in every realm of the executive branch.

His humanitarianism during the Great

Mississippi flood of 1927 continued to build his public persona and the

dividends paid off as he was elected the Republican Party’s nominee in 1928 and

he would go on to defeat the rival Democratic candidate Al Smith. The future

seemed bright for Herbert Hoover, however, there was a problem brewing on the

horizon that few saw coming and that was the collapse of the American, and

world, economies triggering what is known as the Great Depression.

Although the collapse happened shortly after

his ascension to the presidency, his name became irreconcilably linked to the

issue. Hoover utilized a variety of public policies, executive authority, and

his own political persuasiveness to help float the economy and keep it from

sinking. He did not believe that the federal government had a duty to meddle

directly in the affairs of the relief effort, fearing that individuals might

become dependent on the government for their needs and lose their own autonomy.

He did begin many of the great works projects

that were continued by his successor including the building of Hoover Dam,

originally known as Boulder Dam, which was at the time the largest single dam

in the world. Despite his attempts at public works projects and his political...