Compact Biographies

“I see Earth! It is so beautiful!” – Yuri Gagarin

Yuri Gagarin Biography

Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin was born on 9 March 1934 in a small village called Klushino which is about 190km from Moscow, Russia. His parents, Alexey Ivanovich and Anna Timofeyevna worked on a collective farm which is where a number of farmers work a farm together for the collective good, either for the benefit of the community or the state. Alexey was a carpenter and bricklayer and Anna was a milkmaid. As well as Yuri, the couple had three other children, a boy called Valentin who was older than Yuri, a girl called Zoya who was also older and another boy called Boris who was younger.

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When the Nazis advanced on Moscow during the Second World War, the Gagarin residence was taken over by a Nazi officer and the Gagarin family had to make do with a mud hut that they were forced to build for themselves at the back of the house. Measuring only three metres by three metres, they lived there for nearly two years until the occupation ended. Valentin and Zoya, Yuri’s older brother and sister were forced to move to Poland as slave labour in 1943 and they were not seen again until after the war ended in 1945. In 1946, the nearby town of Gzhatsk became the new home for the Gagarins and Yuri was able to continue his education there.

When Yuri Gagarin was sixteen years old, in 1950, he became an apprentice foundryman at a steel plant near Moscow and took evening classes to complete a seventh-grade education. He graduated in 1951 and entered into a training program to study tractors at the Saratov Industrial Technical School. At the weekend he trained as a Soviet air cadet at a flying club near to Saratov and learned to fly. As he was also near to the Volga River, Yuri also earned extra money as a dock labourer.

In 1955, after he had graduated from technical school, he was drafted by the Soviet Army and as he was already a pilot, he was sent to the Air Force Pilot’s School located in Orenburg which is about 1600km to the East of Moscow, near to the border with Kazakhstan. There, he learned to fly the MiG-15 jet fighter and took his first solo flight in the plane on 1957.

On the same day as he graduated from Orenburg, 7 November 1957, Yuri Gagarin married Valentina Ivanova Goryacheva who was a medical technician graduate at Orenburg. They went on to have two daughters together, Yelena and Galina.

By this time the Soviet space program was accelerating and the race was on against the United States to be the first to put a man into space and so, the search was on to find willing and able pilots. After a long selection program, Yuri Gagarin and nineteen other pilots were selected. Due to their performances during the arduous training program, Yuri and another pilot called Gherman Titov were shortlisted to make the first flight. In an anonymous vote by the other nineteen pilots, all but three said that Yuri Gagarin should be the first to fly into space, so on 12 April 1961, he did aboard Vostok 1. Gherman Titov would become the second to do so, aboard Vostok 2 on 6 August the same year.

Following his historic flight, where he also became the first human being to orbit the Earth, Yuri Gagarin became a national hero and a celebrity around the world. The scale of the demonstrations of support in cities throughout the USSR was second only to those celebrating the end of the war. He was paraded through the streets of Moscow on his way to a ceremony at the Kremlin where Nikita Khrushchev awarded him Hero of the Soviet Union.

He travelled quite a lot after this around Europe and visited the United Kingdom, Germany, Canada, Brazil and Japan among others.

In 1962 Yuri Gagarin was elected to serve as Deputy to the Soviet of the Union, which is one of the two chambers of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR.

In the sixth episode of season 2 of the 5 Minute Biographies podcast, we take a brief look at the life of the Englishman who became a highly regarded actor and also served in the army during World War II - David Niven.

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In this week's episode of 5 Minute Biographies, we take a quick look at the life of one of the quintessential British actors of the mid 20th century - David Niven.

In the fifth episode of the 5 Minute Biographies podcast, we take a brief look at the life of one of the most influential singer/songwriters and musicians of the 20th century and a member of one of the biggest music groups in history - George Harrison.

Please consider supporting the show by buying me a coffee at http://www.5minutebiographies.com/coffee/ - Thanks!

In this week's episode of 5 Minute Biographies we take a short look at the life of one of the most influential singer / songwriter and musicians of the 20th century and a member of one of the biggest music groups in history - George Harrison

In the fourth episode of the 5 Minute Biographies podcast, we take a brief look at the life of the English queen who had 280 religious dissenters burned at the stake, earning her the nickname 'Bloody Mary' - Queen Mary I.

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In this week's episode of 5 Minute Biographies we take a quick look at the life of the first queen of England to come to the throne against opposition, 'Bloody Mary' herself - Queen Mary I

In the third episode of season two of 5 Minute Biographies, we take a brief look at the life of an Englishman who became one of the founding fathers of the United States of America - Thomas Paine.

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“The harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph” – Thomas Paine

Thomas Paine Biography

Thomas Paine was born on 9 February 1737, in Thetford, Norfolk, England. He was the son of a Quaker father called Joseph and an Anglican mother called Frances. He attended Thetford Grammar School between the ages of 7 and 13 after which he was apprenticed to his father who was a stay-maker. Stay being a word no longer used for what is now called a corset.

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In around 1756 when he was about 20 years old, Thomas moved to London and would never return to Thetford. However, he did return to his father’s trade when in 1759 he opened a shop at 20 New Street in Sandwich, Kent. The building still stands and there is a plaque on the wall above the door identifying it as Tom Paine’s Cottage.

It was in Sandwich where he met a local girl called Mary Lambert and on 27 September 1759, the couple were married at St. Peter’s Church, after which Mary almost immediately became pregnant with their first child. Less than a year later, tragedy struck, when shortly after the couple had moved to Margate, Mary went into early labour. She and the child both died.

Thomas became an excise officer in various locations at the whim of the Board of Excise. He was appointed to Lewes in Sussex in 1768 where he lived above Bull House, within which he established a tobacco shop. During this time Thomas started to take an interest in politics and he became a member of the Court Leet, which governed the town. He also met his second wife during this time, Elizabeth Ollive, and they were married on 26 March 1771.

In 1772, and in an effort to seek better pay and working conditions from parliament, Paine wrote his first pamphlet, entitled “The Case of the Officers of Excise”, 4000 copies of which were distributed to the members of the house as well as other influential people in London.

Two years later, he was dismissed from the excise service for being absent without permission. More bad luck would follow later that year as his tobacco shop business also failed and he formally separated from his wife.

By September of 1774, Paine had moved to London and was introduced to Benjamin Franklin, by Commissioner of the Excise, George Lewis Scott. During a conversation with Paine, Franklin recommended that he move to the British Colonies in America, and provided Paine with a letter of recommendation to help him do so. By 30 November Thomas found himself in Philadelphia ready to start the next chapter of his life.

Thomas became a citizen of Pennsylvania and became editor of the Pennsylvania Magazine, a role which he seemed to take to like a duck to water. Two years after his arrival in America, he produced one of his most famous pieces of work, entitled Common Sense, which popularised ideas for an independent American republic that were previously only discussed in privileged circles. During the course of the American Revolutionary War, which was already underway, over half a million copies of Common Sense were sold.

Thomas Paine followed up Common Sense with a series of pamphlets called The American Crisis. George Washington had the pamphlet read aloud to his troops in order to inspire them during their battles with the British. In a later pamphlet, it was Paine who coined the term, United States of America.

In 1777 Paine joined the Congressional Committee on Foreign Affairs as its secretary. He resigned from the post due to certain indiscretions but that didn’t stop him from receiving an estate in New Rochelle, New York as thanks for services. He also received money from the state of Pennsylvania and from Congress.

In 1787, Paine travelled back to England in the unofficial capacity as American Ambassador. He met Thomas Jefferson wh...

“Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less.” – Marie Curie

Marie Curie Biography

Maria Sklodowska Curie was born in Warsaw, which was then known as the Russian partition of Poland, on 7 November 1867. Maria was the youngest of five children born to teachers Bronislawa and Wladyslawa Sklodowski. Her elder siblings were three sisters Zofia, Helena and Bronislawa and a brother called Jozef. In the past, the family had been pretty well off, but they had lost their fortune and property through involvement with national uprisings aimed at restoring Polish independence. Consequently, Maria and her family were condemned to a life of struggle. Maria’s grandfather had been a teacher and his son, Maria’s father, followed in his footsteps and taught physics and mathematics. When the Russian authorities banned laboratory instruction in Polish schools, Wladislaw brought the lab equipment home and taught his children how to use it.

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In 1875 disaster struck the family when Maria’s elder sister Zofia contracted typhus from one of the family’s lodgers and died. Less than three years later, in May of 1878 when Maria was only ten years old, her mother died from tuberculosis. After her mother’s death, Maria attended the boarding school of J. Sikorska before moving on to the gymnasium for girls from which she graduated with a gold medal in 1883. Because she was female, Maria couldn’t attend any higher education institutions so she and her sister Bronislawa became involved with the Flying University, a clandestine Polish patriotic place of higher learning, which did accept women.

Shortly afterwards, Bronislawa left to study in Paris and Maria took a job as a governess, first as a home tutor and then for two years with a family who were relatives of her father. In 1890, Bronislawa invited Maria to join her and her new husband in Paris, but it would take 18 months of saving sufficient funds before Maria could take up the offer. During this time, she continued to educate herself through reading books and exchanging letters. In 1889, she returned home to Warsaw and to her father and shortly after began her scientific training in a chemical laboratory at the Museum of Industry and Agriculture, which was run by her cousin Jozef Boguski who had been an assistant to Dmitri Mendeleev in St. Petersburg.

In 1891 Maria joined her sister in Paris and it was from this point forwards that she would become known as Marie. She rented a garret in the Latin Quarter of Paris and struggled to make ends meet. She studied mathematics, physics and chemistry during the day at the University of Paris and earned her keep in the evening through tutoring work. In 1893 she was awarded her degree in physics and earned a second degree in 1894.

After graduating, Marie began her scientific career investigating the magnetic properties of different steels. It was during this time that she met Pierre Curie. Their mutual love of science brought them ever closer and Pierre proposed marriage. However, Marie had wanted to go back to Poland and continue her work and studies there. She did return to Warsaw in 1894 but was denied a place at Krakow University because she was a woman. A letter from Pierre persuaded her to return to Paris and the pair were married on 26 July 1895. The dark blue outfit Marie wore in lieu of a wedding gown (neither had wanted a religious ceremony) served her for years as a laboratory outfit.

Following the discovery of X-rays by Wilhelm Roentgen in 1895 and the discovery of the properties of uranium by Henri Becquerel in 1896, Marie decided to research uranium more closely for a thesis she was putting together. Using an electrometer, which had been invented by Pierre and his brother fifteen years earlier,