Martial arts expert Bruce Lee was born on November 27, 1940, in San Francisco, California. He appeared in roughly 20 films as a child actor back in Hong King, beginning in 1946. Lee gained a measure of U.S. celebrity with his role in the television series The Green Hornet, from 1966 to 1967, then went on to star in countless films until 1973, when he died in Hong Kong at the age of 32. Part 1
On May 2, 2011, Barack Obama, the US president, announced that Osama bin Laden, the al-Qaeda leader, was shot dead in a raid by US special forces on a compound about 60km north of Islamabad, Pakistan’s capital. The death of bin Laden ends a ten-year manhunt for the world’s most wanted man.
Before his death, the last known sighting of bin Laden by anyone other than his very close entourage was in late 2001 – as he prepared to flee his stronghold in Afghanistan. However, in subsequent years he issued several video and audio messages.
How did Bin Laden develop his political agenda? And how did this Saudi-born son of a rich construction magnate – who joined guerrillas in Afghanistan fighting the Soviet Union – emerge to become one of the most feared men in the world?
Ahmad Zaidan, Al Jazeera Arabic’s Islamabad correspondent, interviews a range of people including Taliban commandos, former Mujahideen leaders, Pakistani officials, and journalists who all relate their memories of and insights into the al-Qaeda leader.
He speaks to people who are able to debunk some of the myths and describe some of the characteristics of the man who was Osama bin Laden – a man denounced by enemies as a religious fanatic and a terrorist and praised by supporters as a leader fighting Western aggression and subservient Arab regimes.
Martin Luther King Jr was one of America's most influential civil rights activists. His passionate, but non violent protests, helped to raise awareness of racial inequalities in America, leading to significant political change. Martin Luther King was also an eloquent orator who captured the imagination and hearts of people, both black and white.
Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela was born in Transkei, South Africa on July 18, 1918. His father was Chief Henry Mandela of the Tembu Tribe. Mandela himself was educated at University College of Fort Hare and the University of Witwatersrand and qualified in law in 1942. He joined the African National Congress in 1944 and was engaged in resistance against the ruling National Party's apartheid policies after 1948. He went on trial for treason in 1956-1961 and was acquitted in 1961.
After the banning of the ANC in 1960, Nelson Mandela argued for the setting up of a military wing within the ANC. In June 1961, the ANC executive considered his proposal on the use of violent tactics and agreed that those members who wished to involve themselves in Mandela's campaign would not be stopped from doing so by the ANC. This led to the formation of Umkhonto we Sizwe. Mandela was arrested in 1962 and sentenced to five years' imprisonment with hard labour. In 1963, when many fellow leaders of the ANC and the Umkhonto we Sizwe were arrested, Mandela was brought to stand trial with them for plotting to overthrow the government by violence. His statement from the dock received considerable international publicity. On June 12, 1964, eight of the accused, including Mandela, were sentenced to life imprisonment. From 1964 to 1982, he was incarcerated at Robben Island Prison, off Cape Town; thereafter, he was at Pollsmoor Prison, nearby on the mainland.
During his years in prison, Nelson Mandela's reputation grew steadily. He was widely accepted as the most significant black leader in South Africa and became a potent symbol of resistance as the anti-apartheid movement gathered strength. He consistently refused to compromise his political position to obtain his freedom.
Nelson Mandela was released on February 11, 1990. After his release, he plunged himself wholeheartedly into his life's work, striving to attain the goals he and others had set out almost four decades earlier. In 1991, at the first national conference of the ANC held inside South Africa after the organization had been banned in 1960, Mandela was elected President of the ANC while his lifelong friend and colleague, Oliver Tambo, became the organisation's National Chairperson.
An Entertaining but hard hitting look at how the problems America have today are nothing new,and why leaders throughout American history have warned America and fought against the current type of financial system America have Today Watch Documentary Now
North Vietnamese communist politician, prime minister 1954–55, and president 1954–69. Having trained in Moscow shortly after the Russian Revolution, he headed the communist Vietminh from 1941 and fought against the French during the Indochina War 1946–54, becoming president and prime minister of the republic at the armistice.
Aided by the communist bloc, he did much to develop industrial potential. He relinquished the premiership in 1955, but continued as president. In the years before his death, Ho successfully led his country’s fight against US-aided South Vietnam in the Vietnam War 1954–75.
Barack Obama was born to a white American mother, Ann Dunham, and a black Kenyan father,Barack Obama Sr., who were both young college students at the University of Hawaii. When his father left for Harvard, she and Barack stayed behind, and his father ultimately returned alone to Kenya, where he worked as a government economist. Barack's mother remarried an Indonesian oil manager and moved to Jakarta when Barack was six. He later recounted Indonesia as simultaneously lush and a harrowing exposure to tropical poverty. He returned to Hawaii, where he was brought up largely by his grandparents. The family lived in a small apartment - his grandfather was a furniture salesman and an unsuccessful insurance agent and his grandmother worked in a bank - but Barack managed to get into Punahou School, Hawaii's top prep academy. His father wrote to him regularly but, though he traveled around the world on official business for Kenya, he visited only once, when Barack was ten.
Obama attended Columbia University, but found New York's racial tension inescapable. He became a community organizer for a small Chicago church-based group for three years, helping poor South Side residents cope with a wave of plant closings. He then attended Harvard Law School, and in 1990 became the first African-American editor of the Harvard Law Review. He turned down a prestigious judicial clerkship, choosing instead to practice civil-rights law back in Chicago, representing victims of housing and employment discrimination and working on voting-rights legislation. He also began teaching at the University of Chicago Law School, and married Michelle Robinson, a fellow attorney. Eventually he was elected to the Illinois state senate, where his district included both Hyde Park and some of the poorest ghettos on the South Side.
In 2004 Obama was elected to the U.S. Senate as a Democrat, representing Illinois, and he gained national attention by giving a rousing and well-received keynote speech at the Democratic National Convention in Boston. In 2008 he ran for President, and despite having only four years of national political experience, he won. In January 2009, he was sworn in as the 44th President of the United States, and the first African-American ever elected to that position. Obama was reelected to a second term in November 2012. Watch Biography Now
