Abraham Lincoln (1809 - 1865)
Abraham Lincoln was born in a log cabin
on a small farm in Kentucky, in the family of a wandering labourer. The family
was constantly on the move, and so Abraham did not get any regular education.
But the boy loved to read books, and usually, after finishing the day's chores,
he read late into the night by candlelight.
When Lincoln was a young man, he moved
with his family to Illinois2, where he spent six years, working in a
shop, acting as a local postmaster, doing other jobs, and all the while
studying grammar, law, reading newspapers, thus laying the foundation for his
future success.
In 1836 Lincoln
began practicing law. In 1837 he moved to Springfield, which by
that time had become the capital of the state. In 1846 he was
elected to the United States Congress.
With time, Lincoln's name became
associated with abolitionist movement. Lincoln was a quiet, gentle person. In
arguing with others about slavery, he never became angry with those who disagreed
with him. He simply said that slavery was wrong. "If slavery is not wrong,
nothing is wrong," he used to say.
On November 6, 1860, Abraham Lincoln was elected sixteenth President of the United
States. Now the country was clearly split into two opposing camps: the
free-from-slavery Northern states and the slave-owning Southern states. This
fact led to the movement of secession2 of Southern states and the
Civil War, one of the saddest periods in the history of the United States.
When the war began, the greatness of
Lincoln's mind and heart were unexcelled. As long as he lived, and ruled the
people of the North, there could be no turning back. A true champion of
freedom, he wrote: "As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master3.
This expresses my idea of democracy." Lincoln’s determination soon began
to be widely felt and appreciated by common people. The belief that he could be
trusted spread quickly. "Honest Abe"' was his nickname.
In 1864, Abraham Lincoln was unanimously reelected President.
But this great man had ruthless
enemies. On April 14,
1865, during a theatrical performance in
Washington, Lincoln was mortally wounded by a southern conspirator. Early the
next morning he died.
Eleanor Roosevelt (1884-1962)
All over the world, Eleanor Roosevelt was known as a
dedicated worker for human rights. As a public figure and as a speaker and
writer, she worked for social causes all her life.
Anna Eleanor Roosevelt was born in 1884. Her
parents died when she was young and she was brought up by her grandmother.
As a young girl, she became interested in helping people. She worked in
an organization which helped immigrants.
When she was 21, she married Franklin D. Roosevelt, who later became President
of the United States.
Eleanor Roosevelt always supported the career of her husband. When in 1921 Franklin
Roosevelt was paralyzed by polio, Eleanor Roosevelt helped to keep him
interested in politics by attending meetings and telling him what she heard and
saw. By the time her husband became governor of New York in 1928, Eleanor
Roosevelt had become a public figure herself.
She was known as a leader in the field of rights for working women and
in the field of education.
During
the twelve years of her husband's presidency (1933-1945) Eleanor Roosevelt
traveled widely, finding out for the President how people lived and what they
needed. She wrote books and articles about her life in the White House.
After her husband's death, Eleanor Roosevelt worked
for international human rights. Until her death in 1962, she continued to work for the causes she
believed in. Her tireless fight for human rights won the respect of people
around the world.
Albert Einstein ( 1879-1955)
Albert Einstein was born in a middle-class Jewish family in Germany.
When he was 15, his
family had to leave Germany and emigrate to Switzerland2 because of
money difficulties.
In
Switzerland Einstein continued his scientific education at the Polytechnic
Academy in Zurich3. After graduation he got a job in a patent
office. He used his spare time for intensive study of philosophy, science and
mathematics.
In 1914 he
returned to Germany and worked as a professor of Berlin University.
In 1933, as a sign
of protest against fascism, Einstein left Germany and moved to the United
States. In 1934 the
nazi government of Germany deprived him of his German citizenship and confiscated
his property.
Albert Einstein found his new motherland in the United States of
America.
Albert
Einstein was a rare scientist who became a hero of science during his
life-time.
Einstein's
discoveries in physics go back to 1905 when he formulated the Special Theory of Relativity2.
The basic principle of relativity is: any motion is relative. A familiar
illustration of this principle is a moving train. A person sitting in a train
carriage with darkened windows will have no idea of speed or direction, or
perhaps even that the train is moving at all. On a greater scale, the movement
of the earth cannot be detected if there are no heavenly bodies for
comparison. Nowhere on the earth or in the universe is there anything
absolutely at rest: motion is the natural state of all things, and each body's
movement is relative to the movement of another body.
Einstein's second hypothesis was that the velocity of light is
independent of the motion of its source. The speed of light — 300,000 km per
second — is
always the same anywhere in the universe, regardless of place, time or
direction. For instance, in a moving train light travels at exactly the same
speed as it does outside the train. No force can make it go
faster or slower.
In the General Theory of Relativity1, published in 1915, Einstein
studied the force that guides the movements of the stars, comets, meteors and
galax-ies. He proved that the space around a planet or: another celestial body
is a gravitational field, simi-lar to the magnetic field around a magnet.
Such bodies as the sun or stars are surrounded by
enormous gravitational fields.
Einstein's Photoelectric Law2
explaining the pho-toelectric effect, paved the way for the coming оf television. For this discovery Einstein was awarded
the Nobel Prize in physics in 1922.
In his later years, Einstein worked on the Unified
Field Theory3, attempting to demonstrate the harmony and uniformity
of nature. According to his views, physical laws for the minute4
atom should be equally applicable to immense celestial bodies.
Einstein's contributions to science have been innumerable.
But primarily, his fame rests5 upon the Theory of Relativity.
1the General Theory of Relativity - Загальна теорія відносності
2 Photoelectric Law ['foutai'lektrik'b:] фотоелектричний закон
3 the Unified Field Theory [бо ju:nifaid'fi:ld'9i9n] єдина теорія поля
4 minute [mam'ju:t] крихітний
5 primarily ['praimsrili], his fame rests - насамперед, його слава ґрунтується
Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)
In the 1700's
Philadelphia, like New York and Boston, was one of the three largest and most
modern cities in the colonies. One of the leading citizens of Philadelphia was
Benjamin Franklin.
Franklin was a man of amazing energy and
curiosity. There are few people in American history who have accomplished as
much as he. Benjamin Franklin was an author, a scientist, an inventor, and a
public figure.
Born in Boston, he later moved to
Philadelphia. There he opened a printing house and published a newspaper called
the Pennsylvania Gazette, which was read throughout the colonies. He also
published an almanac that is a book which comes out every year and gives a list
of the days of the year, together with information about the times of sunrise
and sunset, changes in the moon, weather, etc. Franklin always included a few
of his own short sayings in the almanac. Here are two of them:
A penny saved is a penny earned.
Little strokes
fell great oaks.
He worked hard and was very successful.
The first fire department1 in the colonies was started by Franklin
in Philadelphia.
Franklin built the first library and the
first hospital. He also built a school, which later became the University of
Pennsylvania.
Franklin is the inventor of the lightning-rod. In June 1752, he risked
his life and the life of his son William, who helped him in his experiment.
They made a kite of silk on a wooden frame with a string of metal wire.
Standing in the open doorway of their house, they flew their kite during a
thunderstorm. Sparks jumping off the end of the string proved that lightning is
an electric discharge. Benjamin
Franklin's lightning-rod is now used all over the world.
Franklin invented some scientific terms, which are still used (battery,
semiconductor, etc.).
By the end of the 1750's Benjamin Franklin
was rich and famous. Being an active public figure, he gave much of his time,
attention and money to helping people. He lived a long life, and all his life
he served the people and helped in forming a new nation - the United States of America.
1 fire
department - пожежна служба
Casey Jones (1863-1900)
Casey Jones was an American railway engine-driver,
who died doing his duty.
He was the engine-driver of the train called Cannon-ball, which
ran between Tennessee and Mississippi. Casey was skilful and brave, and he
always brought his train to the place of destination on time. He was also
skilful with the locomotive whistle. He had a special way of blowing the
whistle: beginning very low, then rising to a shriek, and finally gradually
dying away. His whistle always woke people at night as the train passed by
their houses. "There goes Casey", they would say.
On the night of April 29, 1900, when Casey had just finished his work and brought the
Cannon-ball into the town on time, as usual, he learned that the
engine-driver of another locomotive was ill and could not make his journey
according to the time-table. Casey offered to work instead of his friend. He
started the big locomotive and left the station at 11 p.m., which was already one hour and
thirty-five minutes late.
Casey
wanted to make up for the lost time1 so he worked very hard at the
engine and moved very fast.
By four o'clock in the morning he had made up for most of the time.
Suddenly, as he came round a curve, he saw a goods train standing on the rails
in front of him.
"Jump off, Sim!" he cried to his fireman.
The fireman jumped off the locomotive. He lived to tell the story of
Casey Jones's heroic deed.
Casey's body was found with one hand still on the whistle and the other
on the brake.
There is a monument to Casey Jones in his home town in
Kentucky. In 1950 the
United States government put out2 a three-cent postage stamp in honour
of American railway engine-drivers. This stamp has the portrait of Casey Jones.
1to make up for the
lost time - надолужити втрачений час
2 put out - випустило
Walt Whitman (1819-1892)
The poet Walt Whitman was born in a small country place on Long Island,
not far from New York City. His father was a poor farmer and a carpenter. All
his life Walt Whitman was proud of being "one of the people", as he
said.
When Whitman was 11 years old, he had to leave school and start working to
help his family. He became an office-boy at a lawyer's office. Later he worked
for a small newspaper, where he learned printing.
At the
age of 17 he
became unemployed. He could not find a job in town. He went to the country and
worked as a school teacher for some time. People said that Whitman was
unpractical, as he was not interested in making money or getting a place in
society.
Whitman
understood that his education was very poor, and whenever he had time, he
studied literature and history. He tried to write and wrote poems, short
stories and newspaper articles. He wrote about the common people and of their
hard life. He loved the common people whose life he knew very well. His
collection of poems, named "Leaves of Grass", was first published in 1855.
Whitman sympathized with the
abolitionist movement. During the Civil War he served in the Northern army and
continued writing poems. At the be-ginning of the Civil War he was a romantic,
but the war made him a realist.
Whitman knew America and Americans
better than
any poet before him. He wrote with under-standing about the farmer in the
field, the teacher in the classroom, the clerk in the office, the publisher at his desk,
and the carpenter in his work shop.
Walt Whitman occupies a special place
in American
literature. He seldom used rhymes in
his
poems and his poems are written in everyday language: they are more like prose than
poetry. But he showed America as no one ever had done it before
him.
Elvis Presley
Elvis Presley was born on January 8, 1935,
in Tupelo, Mississippi. His parents were
poor and Elvis never had music lessons, but he was surrounded by music from an
early age. His parents were very religious, and Elvis regularly sang in the
choir at church services. When he was 13, his mother bought him a guitar. In the same year his
family moved to Memphis, Tennessee. He left school in 1953 and got a job as a truck driver.
In the summer of 1954 Elvis paid four dollars and recorded two songs for his
mother's birthday at Sun Records studio. The owner of the studio, Sam Phillips,
liked the boy's voice and became his manager. In the next fourteen months
Elvis made another fourteen records. They were all big hits. In 1956 he also
made his first film in Hollywood.
In March 1958, Elvis had to join the army. He wanted to be an ordinary
soldier. When his hair was cut, thousands of women cried. He spent the next two
years in Germany, where he met Priscilla Beaulieu, who became his wife eight
years later on May 1, 1967. In 1960 he left the army and went to Hollywood, where he made
several films during the next few years.
By 1968 many
people had become tired of Elvis. He hadn't performed live for some years. But
he recorded "From Elvis in Memphis" and appeared in a special
television programme in New York.
He became popular again and left for Las Vegas. In 1972 his wife left him and they were divorced in
October 1973. He died from a heart attack on August 16, 1977 in his mansion at Graceland, Memphis. He
left his money to his only daughter. She became one of the richest people in
the world when she was only nine years old.
For his millions of fans, Elvis is still the King, the King of Rock and
Roll.
The man from Tupelo,
Miss., appeared on the American music scene when young people's musical tastes
were on the verge of a major change. The older generation was not yet wary of
teenagers. The kids had no music of their own. They had yet to take over the fashion
world.
Then
along came Elvis. His synthesis of black, country and gospel music helped him
create a simple, raw performing style. Onstage, he twisted and gyrated, much to
the dismay of '50s parents. The more the older folks protested, the more
popular the handsome Southerner became. His name was soon a household word. The
roots of his influence went deeply into almost all forms of rock-'n'-roll
music, including blues rock and funk. Presley led not only his fans but also
performers world-wide. There had never been such an idol. The world had seen
Rudolph Valentino in films drive young women insane. The postwar bobby-soxers
screamed for Sinatra. But before the Beatles' popularity enveloped the earth,
"Presleymania" was the biggest thing ever to hit the entertainment
world.
Ironically,
Presley didn't write his own songs. He wasn't a proficient guitarist. There may
even have been better vocal stylists. Nor was he adept at handling his career
and business. He allowed himself to fall prey to greedy management and
sycophants.
But he
had that wonderful magic. Everyone copied his style. People imitated his
gestures, dressed like him, wanted to be him (or his woman). He was popular
with both men and women. He became the most influential solo popular artist of our time.
There is no debate: ELVIS IS THE KING!!!
From ‘Time”
breakthrough fbreikOru:] велике досягнення
|
realm [relm] область, сфера
spin out (spun
[spAn]) випускати
diverge [dai'v3:d3J розходитися
drastically ['drasstikh) круто, радикально
contented [ksn'tentidj вдоволений
reclusive |n'klu:siv] який живе у відлюдді
nevermore
f.neva'mo:] ніколи більше
on the verge ІУз:сіз] на грані
wary I 'wesn] насторожений
gospel ['gospl] релігійний спів
gyrate
[trjaiTeit] обертатися по колу
dismay fdis'mei] страх, переляк
household word [ 'haushauld] ходячий вираз
worldwide [,w3:ld'waid] у всьому світі
drive insane [in'sein] зводити з розуму
bobby-soxer [ 'bnbiSDksoj розм. дівчинка-підліток
envelop [m'vebp] охоплювати
adept [ asdept] обізнаний
fall prey [prei] (fell,
fallen) зробитися
жертвою
sycophant [ 'sikafsnt] лестун, підлабузник
|
luminous ['lemmas] світлий; який світит
Beatles
Beatles
were and remain to this day, the world's most astonishing rock'-n'-roll band.
I use the adjective advisedly.
Unrelenting astonishment is what I clearly recall feeling, as a teenager myself
back in the winter of 1964, when "Beatlemania," an obscure hysteria that
had erupted in Britain the/year before, suddenly jumped the Atlantic and took
instant root here. First, in January came the spine-tingling arrival of I Want to Hold Your Hand - a great,
convulsive rock-n'-roll record that actually had more than three chords (five
more, to be exact — incredible). Then one week later, She Loves You careened
onto the charts - wooo!
The week alter that came the head-long rush of Please Please Me, and by
April, the top five singles in the country were all Beatles records. By
years-end they had logged a head-spinning 29 hits on the U.S. charts. It is hard - no, it is
impossible — to
imagine any of so carefully marketed little bands of today replicating a
quarter of that feat. (Even a contemporary English group such as Oasis, which
baldly appropriates the superficialities of the Beatles' style, entirely misses
the still-magical heart of their music.)
They hailed from Liverpool, a seaport on
the north-western coast of England. John Lennon, born there in 1940, never knew
the seagoing father who had deserted his mother; mainly a doting aunt raised
the boy. He grew up arty and angry — and musical, it turned out, after his mother bought
him the traditional cheap kid guitar, and he quickly worked out the chords to
the hit That’ll Be the Day.
Paul McCartney, born in 1942 and destined to become Lennon's songwriting soul mate,
seemed a sunnier type: well mannered, level-headed, all that. But he had
weathered
trauma of his own, losing his mother to breast cancer
in his early teens.
In 1957 Lennon formed a
band called the
Quarrymen.
By the following year,
the
group had been joined
by
McCartney and his
school
friend George
Harrison, then
just 14. In 1960, calling
themselves the Silver
Beatles,
and with drummer Pete
Best in tow, they sailed to Germany to play the riotous red-light-district bars
of Hamburg.
In 1 962 Best was replaced by another Liverpool drummer, basset-eyed Ringo Starr
(born Richard Starkey in 1940). The group cut its first single, Love Me Do, a
moderate hit. In January 1963 a second single, Please Please Me, went to No. 1, and
Beatlemania was born.
By 1965 the world had been forced to take notice of
this all-conquering cultural force. The Beatles had become such a huge British
export that they were given a royal award: the Member of the Order of the
British Empire, or M.B.E.
Having scored a breakthrough with their
chart-topping 1 965 album Rubber Soul— the record whose elegant lyrics and
luminous melodies lifted them forever our of the world of simple teen idols and
into the realm of art - the Beatles, exhausted, decided to stop
touring. After a final concert in San Francisco in 1966, they would come together again as a group
only in recording studios. But there they spun out ever more elaborate
masterpieces.
For millions of fans
world-wide, their albums mapped a path through the puzzling and sometimes scary
'60s. The paths of Lennon and McCartney, however, were diverging drastically.
Each took a wife (John married Japanese avant-garde artist Yoko Ono, and Paul
wed American rock photographer Linda Eastman) and drifted even farther apart,
Lennon growing bitter, McCartney adopting the air of the contented family man.
By 1969 Lennon was ready to quit the group.
McCartney is said to have talked him out of going public with this desire; but
then in April 1970 McCartney
himself announced that the group was disbanding. When the other three Beatles
dropped their appeal of this action in 1971, the most fabulously successful band of all rime (with
more than 100 million
records sold to date) came to an end.
And so it was over. McCartney began making records with his wife in a
new band. Harrison followed his Indomystical inclinations as far as he could
until fans lost interest. Ringo made occasional records, movies and television
commercials. And Lennon moved to New York City, where he had always Wanted to
be, and ironically became that most English of figures, the reclusive
eccentric. He was shot down in 1980, and the Beatles were nevermore. Except for their
music, this is eternal.
advisedly [ad 'vaizidli] навмисно
unrelenting [,лпп'1егШп] неослабний
erupt [i'rApt] вивергатися
take root [ru:tj пускати корені
tingle [ 'tirjql] тремтіти
chord [ko:d] акорд
careen [кз'гі:п] кренитися
headlong [ 'hedlon] невтримний
log [log] реєструвати
head-spinning ['hed.spminj запаморочливий
replicate ['replikeit] повторювати (досвід)
superficiality
[,su:p3fiji'£ebtr] поверховість
hail |heilj походити з
seagoing | 'si:,gamrjj далекого плавання
doting 1'dsutin] люблячий
arty [ 'a:tij який претендує на витончений
(художній) смак
destined f'destmd] якому судилося l
evel-headed [Jevl'hedid] урівноважений
quarry [ 'kwonj здобич
in tow |tsu] тут разом з
riotous ['raitssj буйний, розгульний
basset [ 'bassitj басет (порода собак)
all-conquering ['о:1,ког)кзпп]
всеперемагаючий
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