Did You Know?

Galileo Galilei, born in 1564, Pisa, Italy, was a famous physicist, mathematician, astronomer and philosopher. Many important developments in these fields were attributed to him.

The most controversial of those was his promotion of heliocentrism. He was the first to insist that sun was stable and what moved around it was Earth and other planets, which are round. He was tried as a heretic, and his theory was dismissed and ridiculed during his lifetime. In the end, he was right.

Amelia Earhart

Amelia Earhart, born 1897 in Kansas, the United States, was the first female aviator to fly solo across the Atlantic. She wrote a number of best-selling books about her flying experiences, and was instrumental in the formation of The Ninety-Nines, an organisation for female pilots.

She was a visiting faculty member of the Purdue University aviation department, and did much to inspire women to follow her steps. Earhart disappeared over the central Pacific Ocean in 1937 in an attempt to make a circumnavigational flight of the globe. Until today, many are fascinated with her life, career, and disappearance.

Christopher Columbus

Christopher Columbus, born before 1451 in Genoa, current-day Italy, was fascinated by the adventures of Marco Polo who travelled to the east by land.

Determined to reach the East by travelling west, by sea, a plan drafted with the help of his brother who was a map designer, Columbus convinced the Catholic Monarchs of Spain to fund his trips. This led to his discovery of the Americas.

Columbus completed four trips to the American continent that increased European awareness of the continent, and let to the initiation of colonisation in that part of the world.

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