Inspirational People

Three people I would you like to spend at least one summer with...

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1.  Alan Alda

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QUICK FACTS:

NAME: Alan Alda

OCCUPATION: Television Actor

BIRTH DATE: January 28, 1936 (Age:
82)

EDUCATION: Fordham University

PLACE OF BIRTH: New York, New York

ORIGINALLY: Alphonso Joseph D’Abruzzo

AKA: Alphonso D’Abruzzo

AKA: Alan Alda (Hawkeye Pierce in M.A.S.H.)

ZODIAC SIGN: Aquarius

WHY:  Alan is an actor, director, screenwriter,
and author. A six-time Emmy Award and Golden Globe Award winner, he is best
known for his starring roles as Hawkeye Pierce in the TV series M*A*S*H and Arnold Vinick in The West Wing, and his supporting role in the
2004 film The Aviator, for which he was nominated
for an Academy Award. Alda is
a story teller…who has always blended his comic material with the harsher
realities of today’s world. With Richmond High we also passed by (possibly
played) Alda’s high school in White Planes, New York.

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2.  Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci

Born on April 15, 1452, in Vinci, Italy, Leonardo da Vinci
was concerned with the laws of science and nature, which greatly informed his
work as a painter, sculptor, inventor and draftsmen. His ideas and body of
work—which includes “Virgin of the Rocks,” “The Last Supper,” “Leda and the
Swan” and “Mona Lisa”—have influenced countless artists and made da Vinci a
leading light of the Italian Renaissance.

QUICK FACTS

NAME: Leonardo da Vinci

OCCUPATION: Mathematician, Artist, Inventor, Musician,
Writer

BIRTH DATE: April 15, 1452

DEATH DATE: May 2, 1519

PLACE OF BIRTH: Vinci, Italy

PLACE OF DEATH: Amboise, France

FULL NAME: Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci

AKA: Leonardo da Vinci

AKA: Da Vinci

Born on April 15, 1452, in Vinci, Italy, Leonardo da Vinci
was concerned with the laws of science and nature, which greatly informed his
work as a painter, sculptor, inventor and draftsmen. His ideas and body of
work—which includes “Virgin of the Rocks,” “The Last Supper,” “Leda and the Swan” and “Mona Lisa“—have influenced countless artists and made da Vinci
a leading light of the Italian Renaissance

Leonardo da Vinci was born on April 15, 1452, in Vinci,
Italy. Born out of wedlock, the love child of a respected notary and a young
peasant woman, he was raised by his father, Ser Piero, and his stepmothers. At
the age of 14, da Vinci began apprenticing with the artist Verrocchio. For six years, he learned a wide breadth of
technical skills, including metalworking, leather arts, carpentry, drawing and
sculpting. By the age of 20, he had qualified as a master artist in the Guild
of Saint Luke and established his own workshop.

Florentine court records show that da Vinci was charged with
and acquitted of sodomy at the age of 22, and for two years, his whereabouts
went entirely undocumented.

 
The Last Supper

In 1482, Lorenzo de’
Medici, a man from a prominent Italian family, commissioned da Vinci
to create a silver lyre and bring it to Ludovico il Moro, the Duke of Milan, as
a gesture of peace. Da Vinci did so and then wrote Ludovico a letter describing
how his engineering and artistic talents would be of great service to
Ludovico’s court. His letter successfully endeared him to Ludovico, and from
1482 until 1499, Leonardo was commissioned to work on a great many projects. It
was during this time that da Vinci painted “The Last Supper.”

Mona Lisa

Da Vinci’s most well-known painting, and arguably the most
famous painting in the world, the “Mona Lisa,” was a privately commissioned
work and was completed sometime between 1505 and 1507. Of the painting’s wide
appeal, James Beck, an art historian at Columbia University, once explained,
“It is the inherent spirituality of the human creature that Leonardo was able
to ingenuine to the picture that raises the human figure to some kind of
majesty.”

It’s been said that the Mona Lisa had jaundice, that she was
a pregnant woman and that she wasn’t actually a woman at all, but a man in
drag. Based on accounts from an early biographer, however, the “Mona Lisa” is a
picture of Lisa Gioconda, the real-life wife of a merchant, but that’s far from
certain. For da Vinci, the “Mona Lisa” was forever a work in progress, as it
was his attempt at perfection. The painting was never delivered to its
commissioner; da Vinci kept it with him until the end of his life. expiring domains . Today, the “Mona Lisa”
hangs in the Louvre Museum in Paris, France, secured behind bulletproof glass,
and is regarded as a priceless national treasure.

Renaissance Man

Da Vinci has been called a genius and the archetypal
Renaissance man. His talents in arguably extended far beyond his artistic
works. Like many leaders of Renaissance humanism, he did not see a divide
between science and art.  His observations and inventions were recorded in
13,000 pages of notes and drawings, including designs for flying machines (some
400 years before the Wright
brothers‘ first success), plant studies, war machinery, anatomy and
architecture. His ideas were mainly theoretical explanations, laid out in
exacting detail, but they were rarely experimental. His drawings of a fetus in
utero, the heart and vascular system, sex organs, and other bone and muscular
structures, are some of the first on human record.

One of da Vinci’s last commissioned works was a mechanical
lion that could walk and open its chest to reveal a bouquet of lilies. The
famous artist died in Amboise, France, on May 2, 1519. Da Vinci’s assistant and
perhaps his lover, Francesco Melzi, became the principal heir and executor of
his estate.

3.  Andrew Carnegie

QUICK FACTS

NAME: Andrew Carnegie

OCCUPATION: Entrepreneur, Philanthropist

BIRTH DATE: November 25, 1835

DEATH DATE: August 11, 1919

PLACE OF BIRTH: Dunfermline, Scotland, United Kingdom

PLACE OF DEATH: Lenox, Massachusetts

People who are unable to motivate themselves must be content
with mediocrity, no matter how impressive their other talents.

Carnegie represents the epitome of the self-made man. His
father was a Scottish hand-loom weaver, who moved with his family to America
when Andrew was 13. Carnegie’s first job was working as a bobbin boy at a
textile factory, making $1.50 a week. He subsequently took jobs as a boiler
tender, bookkeeper’s clerk, and telegraph delivery boy. All the while he read
to educate himself and worked to mitigate his thick Scottish accent. In 1853,
Carnegie landed a job with the Pennsylvania Telegraph Co.

He religiously saved his money and reinvested it in the
railroad business. He worked his way up to being superintendent of the
Pennsylvania Railroad’s Western Division and then supervised the Union’s
telegraph lines during the Civil War. He continued to make incredibly wise
investments with his savings which reaped him handsome dividends. After the
war, he left the railroad business and began to focus on building and investing
in ironworks. By bringing great efficiency to the business, taking over one
steel company after another, and utilizing vertical integration, Carnegie soon
created an empire of steel and iron.

In 1901, Carnegie sold his steel holdings to JP Morgan for
$480 million. Carnegie had long preached what he called “The Gospel of Wealth,”
a philosophy in which a man should aim to acquire as much fortune as possible
and then give it away to others. On this point, (unlike several others)
Carnegie was a man of his word. During his lifetime he donated $350,695,653 to
philanthropic causes; upon his death he gave away the last $30,000,000 of his
wealth.

PERSONAL NOTE:  Few have affected me like these
three, and there are of course many others. With six degrees of separation
perhaps you can help arrange the experience of meeting Mr. ask reddit . Alan Alda.

4. Dr. Carl Sagen: Author "Cosmos"

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