Showing results for "Lance" in Biographies

Eli Whitney’s love of inventing and pondering new ideas made him one of America’s greatest inventors. Best known for inventing the cotton gin, one of the most important American inventions of the century, he changed cotton production forever. A few years later, Whitney invented machines to make muskets that were identical. The first mass-manufacturing business in the country, his musket factory revolutionized the way Americans made things.

When Jules Verne was born in 1828, his family had his future planned out for him. They expected him to become a lawyer, but he dreamed of writing. He started out writing more traditional poetry and plays, but then he began to create a new, unconventional kind of fiction. It combined adventure, the modern world of science and invention, and his personal view of the future. With fantastical characters, spaceships to the moon, and deep-sea submarines, his books told of things that would not actually occur for decades.

In the 1800s, the moist soil of the Midwest would stick to plow blades, stopping the farmers as they plowed. Young blacksmith John Deere knew about the problem, so he designed and built a self-scouring plow. With this small start, he founded the famous farm implement company Deere & Company and started down the road to success.

A musical prodigy, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart began playing the piano and composing when he was just three years old. Able to play multiple instruments, among them the piano and violin, Mozart spent much of his youth touring European courts with his family. From the time he was three until his death just thirty-two years later, he produced a huge volume of musical works. Among them the famed operas The Magic Flute, The Marriage of Figaro, and Don Giovanni.

When George Eastman decided to make photography his hobby, "simple" was hardly the word to describe the pastime. He had to lug 50 pounds of camera equipment around with him, including the fragile glass plates that would become pictures. But resourceful George wasn't one to put up with such inconvenience for long. Click! is the story of how George Eastman developed a camera simple enough for anyone to use―the Kodak, predecessor of today's pocket instamatics―and forever revolutionized photography.

In 1847 an eighteen-year-old immigrant arrived in New York. He had little in his pockets and no knowledge of English. However, by 1874, people throughout the United States knew him as the man who made blue jeans with copper rivets. Even now Levi Strauss's name lives on as a mark of quality and style. In Mr. Blue Jeans, Maryann N. Weidt presents the history of this hardworking man, as he struggles through long, grueling days as a peddler and challenging times as a young businessman.

America’s sixth president and son of America’s second president, John Quincy Adams lived an extraordinary life. Beginning as a young boy as secretary for his father during the peace talks that ended the Revolutionary War, Adams served his country as a diplomat, state senator, secretary of state, the president, and as a representative in congress. Through his many speeches, essays, books, and written reports, Adams helped shape America. Today, he is remembered as a great statesman, a scholar, and a poet, just as he hoped he would be.

In the 1870s, surgery was a crude affair performed on the patient's kitchen table. In the frontier town of Rochester, Minnesota, Dr. W. W. Mayo brought his young sons, Will and Charlie, to assist him with operations. Fifty years later, Rochester became a medical mecca as the Mayo brothers were established as world-class surgeons. With a firm belief in sharing information and learning from others, the Mayo brothers proved the benefits of cooperation in a jealously competitive field and accomplished more than any single colleague of their time.

Although he is credited with changing history through his invention of printing, Johann Gutenberg remains mysterious. In Fine Print, author Joann Johansen Burch pieces together Gutenberg's amazing story.

Milton Hershey loved candy. As a boy, he saved his hard-earned pennies for the candy store. He soon discovered that he had a gift for making delicious treats and, after years of trying, Milton finally make it big. People loved his new HERSHEY'S chocolate. Listeners will delight in the story behind Hershey's mouth-watering world of chocolate.

Simonetta Carr’s newest children’s biography introduces us to a father of the Chinese evangelical church, Pastor Wang Mingdao. Mingdao is remembered for standing firm for the true gospel, even though it cost him his earthly freedom. Even after a moment of weakness during persecution, Mingdao found restoration in Christ and kept the faith through twenty-three years of imprisonment. His courage and strength provide a modern example of how Christians can trust the Lord and remain faithful in times of hardship and persecution.

Born in Florence, Italy, in 1499, Peter Martyr Vermigli decided that he wanted to teach God's Word when he grew up. After many years of study, he became a well-respected leader in the Roman Catholic Church, yet he questioned the church's teachings because he believed they were contrary to the Bible. Eventually forced to flee Italy and the Roman Church, Vermigli joined the Reformers north of the Alps and devoted the rest of his life to teaching, preaching, and writing about the great truths of the Protestant Reformation.

Byang Kato grew up in Nigeria in a family devoted to juju, a religion of magic and superstition. Although from a young age he planned to become a juju priest, his encounter with missionaries and the gospel changed that. In this book, Simonetta Carr tells how the eager young Byang devoted himself to learning about Jesus and sharing Him with others.