Biographies Chapters

We may know about a famous person's accomplishments, but what do we know about THEM? What is the human-interest story in THEIR lives? This biography collection features the stories behind the lives of some famous (and not-so-famous) individuals.

Maureen Watkinss play Chicago appears on Broadway in 1926 and later is the basis for the Bob Fosse musical.

Abandoned by his father and losing his mother and foster mother to tuberculosis, Poe spends his childhood alone and sad.

Young children work with little hope of getting a formal education.

Helen learns to communicate through tantrums and violent outbursts.

American Lewis Hines photographs children in all sorts of manual labor jobs.

Clarissa Vaughan, a character from The Hours, shares her first name and her love of a man who commits suicide with Woolf's title character.

Albert Nieman discovers how to separate the alkaloid base of the coca plant. Thereafter, many products now contain small amounts of cocaine.

In France, some wine contains cocaine. Because of Atlanta's early experiment with prohibition, however, John S. Pemberton uses fruit oils instead of c...

The Columbia carries a well-trained crew of seven when it launches in 2003.

Columbia's first mission, in 1981, proved that a space shuttle could lift-off, travel in space and return to earth.

Engineers observe increasing heat in the Challenger's left wheel well upon reentry.

Some cultures consider comets as omens of disasters.

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