Famous LivesBiography
The Newspaper Boy from Rameswaram
A.P.J. Abdul Kalam delivered newspapers as a boy on a small island town in South India. He grew up to lead India's space and missile programmes, and became its most loved President.
People who changed the world
Scientists, inventors, teachers and leaders, and the moments that made them.
14 stories
Famous LivesBiography
The Light in the Shed
Marie Curie studied in secret as a girl in Warsaw, worked in a leaky Paris shed and discovered two new elements. She remains the only person to win Nobel Prizes in two different sciences.
Famous LivesBiography
Water at the Pump
Helen Keller could not see or hear, and had no words for anything, until a determined young teacher spelled into her hand at a water pump in Alabama.
HistoryHistorical narrative
A Handful of Salt
In 1930, Mahatma Gandhi set out on foot to walk 385 kilometres to the sea, to break an unjust law by picking up salt. The whole world watched.
HistoryHistorical narrative
The Seat on the Bus
On 1 December 1955, in Montgomery, Alabama, Rosa Parks refused to give up her bus seat. Her quiet "no" sparked a year-long boycott that helped change America.
MotivationTrue story
Twelve Seconds at Kitty Hawk
Two brothers who ran a bicycle shop failed again and again to fly. So they went back to the beginning, built their own wind tunnel and checked everything for themselves.
Famous LivesBiography
The Clerk Who Wrote to Cambridge
Srinivasa Ramanujan failed his college exams and worked as a clerk, yet his notebooks were full of mathematics nobody had seen before. One letter changed everything.
HistoryHistorical narrative
The Press That Changed the World
Around 1450, in the German city of Mainz, a goldsmith named Johannes Gutenberg found a way to print books quickly. Within fifty years, Europe was transformed.
Famous LivesBiography
The Girl from Karnal Who Touched the Stars
As a girl in a small town in Haryana, Kalpana Chawla watched planes and drew spaceships. She became the first woman born in India to go to space.
Famous LivesBiography
The Boy Who Gave the Blind Books
Louis Braille lost his sight as a small child in a French village. At fifteen, working late at night with a stylus and a sheet of paper, he invented a way for blind people to read with their fingertips.
Famous LivesBiography
The First Teacher
In 1848, a young woman in Pune walked to school every morning while people on the street threw mud and stones at her. Savitribai Phule kept walking, and opened the door to education for the girls of India.
Famous LivesBiography
The Lady with the Lamp
Florence Nightingale was expected to marry well and live a quiet, comfortable life. Instead she walked the wards of a filthy army hospital at night, and then used numbers to change how the world cares for the sick.
FoundersBiography
The Milkman of India
Verghese Kurien was sent to a small Gujarat town against his wishes and planned to leave as soon as he could. He stayed for the rest of his life, and helped millions of village farmers turn their milk into a livelihood.
FoundersBiography
The Man Who Built a Nation of Steel
Jamsetji Tata dreamed of steel mills, power stations and a great institute of science for a country that was not yet free. He did not live to see most of them built. This is the story of how he planted them anyway.