Overcoming handicaps

On April 9, 1865, Charles Steinmetz was born at Breslau in Germany. He was a cripple from his birth. Both his father and grandfather had suffered from spinal trouble, but in Cha...

Early in 1831 a little lad was born in County Carlow, Ireland, under most unfortunate circumstances. He had only the rudiments of arms and legs; mere stumps instead of proper li...

In the middle of the eighteenth century there was a little shop in the heart of London, England, where the owner sold antique plaster casts of famous people. Most of these casts...

If any number of boys were asked to name their favourite book, “Treasure Island,” by Robert Louis Stevenson, would be sure to be mentioned. Could any one who has read the book e...

Ludwig van Beethoven, who became one of the greatest--if not the greatest--of all musical composers, was born at Bonn, Prussia, in 1770. His childhood was not by any means a hap...

In October, 1858, a boy was born in a Serbian village to whom was given the name of Michael Pupin. His parents were poor and could neither read or write, but they understood the...

Before the days of the Great War, there lived in Breton, France, an artist whose beautiful pictures had caused people to think of him as one of the greatest of French painters....

One day in September, 1791, a boy was born in the heart of London to whom was given the name, Michael Faraday. The father, James Faraday, was a blacksmith, but he was in such fe...

One day a boy sat at his desk in an Ohio schoolhouse, trying hard, but not very successfully, to master his lessons. The boy was Thomas Alva Edison and from birth he had been in...

One day, more than seventy years ago, in Somersetshire, England, a four year-old boy was watching his father plant potatoes. The man was a poor tenant farmer and the little boy,...

Less than forty years ago a little Serbian boy--Ivan Mestrovic--was watching the sheep on the hillsides near his home in the village of Otavice in Serbia, about thirty-five mile...

Among the flood of European immigrants that came to America in the early seventies of last century, was a family from Alsace-Lorraine, named Kindleberger. There were several sma...

Fifty years ago Aaron Drucker was born in a small Russian village far inland. His parents were so poor that they were often on the verge of starvation, and when Aaron, at the ag...

One night, in the town of Erie, Pennsylvania, a poor negro boy stood, knee-deep in snow, outside the windows of a large house listening to a famous singer within. The name of th...

One summer afternoon in 1745 a seven-year-old boy, living near Springfield, Pennsylvania, was given the task of looking after a little baby. His mother put a fan in his hand and...