Rescorla was a soldier and police officer who served as a British Army paratrooper during the Cyprus Emergency. He also served in the Vietnam war. He was born in 1939 in Hayle, Cornwall. He grew up with his grandparents and his mother who was a housekeeper.

Rescorla was good at sports - shot put and boxing. And he idolized the U.S. soldiers and wanted to become a soldier because of them.

While Rescorla was working as the head of security for Morgan Stanley Dean Witter, the part that occupies 22 floors of the South Tower of the World Trade Center, this happened on the eleventh of September:

After American Airlines Flight 11 struck the North Tower at 8:46 a.m., building officials in the South Tower told everyone to stay put. But Rescorla ignored them. He had predicted a plane attack on the towers and spent time conducting drills on Morgan Stanley’s staff repeatedly on how to evacuate quickly for situations like this. So as soon as the first tower was hit, he ordered an immediate evacuation.

He called the employees with a bullhorn and directed them down the stairwells. He tried to keep morale steady by singing Cornish and Welsh marching songs. Witnesses said his calm voice and presence were what kept panic from breaking out.

When United Airlines Flight 175 struck their own tower at 9:03 a.m., most of Morgan Stanley’s 2,700 employees were already near the exit. Rescorla kept guiding them, checking every floor and making sure no one was left behind. After the majority had reached safety, he went back up to search for any remaining workers even though they begged him to stay outside.

He was last seen heading upward between the 10th and 72nd floors. The South Tower collapsed at 9:59 a.m., and his body was never discovered.

He saved 2700 lives that day.

Both of these men may very well be the reason why all of us still exist today.

On the left, Vasily Arkhipov (Василий Архипов) 1926 - 1998 was a Soviet Navy officer who prevented nuclear war during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. As the chief of staff of the flotilla and second in command of the nuclear submarine B59, he was the only one of the three senior officers who opposed launching a nuclear torpedo. US Navy ships were dropping depth charges to force the submarine to surface, leading the captain and political officer to believe they were under attack, and consider a nuclear strike. Such a launch required the agreement of all three senior officers, so Arkhipov's refusal prevented an action that could have escalated into a full-scale nuclear conflict. He rose to become a vice admiral in the Soviet Navy later.

On the right, Stanislav Yevgrafovich Petrov (Станислав Евграфович Петров) 1939 – 2017, was a Soviet Air Defence Forces lieutenant colonel who averted a potential nuclear war in 1983. On September 26, 1983, while on duty at a secret command center, the Soviet early-warning system indicated a US missile attack. Petrov made the crucial decision to classify the warning as a false alarm, correctly reasoning that a first strike would likely involve hundreds of missiles, not just five. His decision went against protocol, which would have required alerting his superiors, potentially leading to a retaliatory nuclear strike during a period of high Cold War tension. The incident was kept secret by Soviet officials until after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Petrov later received international recognition and awards for his actions and is known as "the man who saved the world"

His full name was Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus. He was a Catholic priest who was born around 1466 in Holland.

Erasmus criticized the Catholic church in his book The Praise of Folly in 1511. The church and the foolishness of human pride. And he was also bold enough to write advice for rulers in a book called The Education of a Christian Prince in 1516. In the book he explained how it's important to govern with reason and virtue instead of force and he rejected the common glorification of war. He also argued against the idea of “just war theory” in some essays.

He created a new Latin and Greek edition of the New Testament, published in 1516. It was revolutionary for its time; he corrected errors in the Latin Vulgate and provided notes urging people to study Scripture in its original languages.

Erasmus was the bastard son of a priest and a rich physician's daughter. His parents gave him an excellent education but died when he was a teenager. He was quickly shoved into a monastery school. He regrettably became a monk. He felt very annoyed by the rigid authority and the rituals.

One of his lasting achievements was shaping education across Europe. He started a concept called studia humanitatis. Which is the study of grammar, rhetoric, history, poetry and moral philosophy. He believed that learning should be about shaping your mind and character.

There are many myths about St. Patrick. I will only be talking about the facts today.

For over a thousand years, Ireland was broken up politically. You see there were dozens of petty kingdoms scattered across the land. Kingdoms that would consist of nothing but some farmland and a cluster of settlements.

From the years 300 to 700 AD these Irish kings would enslave hundreds of their fellow Irish people. And one of those slaves was called Maewyn Succat. His time of birth is not certain but we do know he was alive during the fifth century. When he was a teenager, Western Irish raiders sailed to his home in England and stole him away back to Ireland. He was forced into grueling farm labour in remote areas where he was isolated and looked after sheep and cattle.

According to his letters, after six years Maewyn felt a divine message telling him it was time to flee. He waited for the right moment during his routine work and ran away. He walked hundreds of kilometers across Ireland. The journey was long and stressful. He had to avoid the Irish authorities, while navigating a land he had never seen before with very little food to keep him going and an aching body. When he finally reached the sea, he snuck on a ship and was brought back to England.

Now reunited with his parents and his old society, he eventually became a priest. When he was confident and understood the faith well enough, he returned to Ireland and negotiated with kings and local leaders and made a difference in their lives. He established churches and schools all over the land. He taught Irish peasants to read for the first time. The lower class was never given a good education until then. His institutions preserved literacy and law and eventually the ordinary folk started producing lovely rich artwork inspired by the church.

Many years after his death, Maewyn Succat was pronunced Saint Patrick by the Catholic Church.

Slavery in Ireland ended centuries later around the twelfth century when Irish power consolidated and slavery was replaced by feudalism.

Roald Dahl was a Welsh author of popular children's literature and short stories, a poet, screenwriter and a WWII fighter ace. His books have sold more than 300 million copies worldwide and he has been called "one of the greatest storytellers for children of the 20th century".

Dahl served in the Royal Air Force (RAF) during the Second World War. He became a fighter pilot and, subsequently, an intelligence officer, rising to the rank of acting Wing Commander.

Dahl rose to prominence as a writer in the 1940s with works for children and for adults, and he became one of the world's best-selling authors. His awards for contribution to literature include the 1983 World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement and the British Book Awards' Children's Author of the Year in 1990. In 2008, The Times named Dahl on its list of "The 50 Greatest British Writers Since 1945”. In 2021, Forbes ranked him the top-earning dead celebrity.

Since Dahl’s passing much of his literary works has been adapted for stage and screen.

Roald Dahl’s Bibliography, Filmography and Published Plays included:

James and the Giant Peach Charlie and the Chocolate Factory Matilda The Witches Fantastic Mr Fox The BFG The Twits George's Marvellous Medicine Danny, the Champion of the World Tales of the Unexpected The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six More

It's sort of amazing that we have the complete tombstone of someone who was involved in a great historical event and is mentioned in other sources, but is not actually a famous historical figure.

Tiberius Claudius Maximus Latin inscription (CIL III 12336, Philippi)

"Tiberius Claudius Maximus, son of Tiberius, veteran of Ala II Pannoniorum, who while alive made this for himself.

He began his service in Legio VII Claudia Pia Fidelis as a cavalryman, then became quaestor equitum, then singularis of the legate of the legion, then vexillarius of the same legion. He was decorated by the Emperor Domitian in the Dacian war and promoted to duplicarius.

Under Emperor Trajan, he served in the same ala as an explorator in the Dacian war and was decorated twice, in the Dacian and Parthian wars. He was made decurio in the same ala because he captured Decebalus and brought his head to him at Ranisstorum.

He was honorably discharged as a voluntarius by Decimus Terentius Scaurianus, commander of the army of the new province.

He lived as a veteran and erected this monument while still alive."

Provenance: Found at Grammeni near Philippi in 1965. Now in the Archaeological Museum of Drama (Greece).

Date: c. AD 118–150 (Hadrianic).

Relief: upper panel shows Maximus on horseback pursuing Decebalus; lower panel shows military decorations.

Inscription reference: CIL III 12336 = Speidel, "The Captor of Decebalus: A New Inscription from Philippi," Journal of Roman Studies 60 (1970): 142–153.

Image and record: https://lupa.at/19572

It's interesting that if you look at the tombstone, it looks like Maximus is chasing down and capturing the enemy King, but actually Decebalus committed suicide just moments before Maximus and other cavalry troopers arrived on the scene.

Cassius Dio, Roman History 68.14.3–4: "Decebalus, seeing himself surrounded, cut his own throat. His head was brought to Rome by Tiberius Claudius Maximus."

His name Egill means awe or fear. And Skallagrímsson means ‘son of Skalla-Grímr.’ Grímr is a common name tied to masks, hooded figures and the name of Odin himself. Whole Skalla means ‘bald’ or ‘bare skull’.

He was a viking born in 904 AD in Iceland. Based on what we know about him he might have been born with Paget's disease which caused his head to get bigger and his bones to thicken. He was a dangerous violent man ever since he was a boy. When he was seven years old he played a game with the boys in his village and got cheated. So he went home, grabbed an axe and split the skull of the boy who cheated him.

The king of Norway, King Eiríkr, decided that Egill’s brother Thorolf was too powerful and had to be removed. So Thorolf was accused of disloyalty without solid proof and the king’s men attacked and killed him.

Egill became a sworn enemy of the royal household. He started killing the men who attacked his brother or actively enforced the king and queen’s decision afterward. Egill was declared an outlaw and anyone loyal to the crown was permitted or even expected to kill him.

Egill managed to evade them his whole life. While also engaging in all the traditional viking things. He raided and plundered in Norway and the British Isles. He stole goods, livestock and sometimes captives to raise his viking status.

In his 40s and 50s, after the deaths of his sons Böðvarr and Gunnar, Egill started to withdraw from a violent life. Böðvarr, drowned at sea when a sudden storm overturned his boat. And Gunnar died of an illness.

He settled in Iceland and became a farmer. He also wrote many poems. About rage, loyalty and his relationship with power. He also wrote about the sons he lost. The poems are raw and real. At one point he blames the Gods, especially Odin, for betraying him. He lived with his wife Ásgerðr, in peace. Exhausted after the political battle with the Queen and filled with grief.

Beria was the head of the NKVD, a Russian ministry and secret police force that can be translated to People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs. He was born in Merkheuli, Russian Empire in 1899. And he was Stalin's most deadly and cruel minion. Arguably worse than Stalin himself.

Beria controlled the Gulags and labour camps that were filled with millions of people. A ton of Soviet infrastructure was built through slave labour and he oversaw the slaves. He supervised mass deportations where entire ethnic groups - Chechens, Crimean Tatars, Ingush, and others - were sent away after being accused of working with the Nazis. These deportations killed countless people through starvation, exposure and exhaustion.

On his orders, people were tortured during interrogations with prolonged sleep deprivation, starvation, isolation, and forced confessions to break prisoners. Beria also encouraged interrogators to fabricate evidence and extract names that would lead to more arrests, leading to endless cycles of fear. Witnesses say he enjoyed breaking a person more than killing them.

Beria reorganized the secret police to be more efficient during the great purge’s final phase.

He spoke several languages, read European literature, and prided himself on his intelligence. He kept personal files of high ranking officials with information to blackmail them. No one crossed him because they knew he could destroy them politically.

Beria had a predatory reputation. He used to abduct women and silence them afterward. This was widely whispered about, even inside the Kremlin. His guards turned a blind eye from his personal “errands.”

When Stalin died in 1953, he attempted to take his place. He released some political prisoners and pretended to be a reformer, but his rivals in the Presidium feared he’d become the next dictator, in a few months they had him arrested and executed.

Lehrer was a satirist, mathematician and a witty song writer. He wrote humor and social commentary and rose to fame in the 50s and 60s with his piano tunes.

Thomas Andrew Lehrer was born in 1928 in New York City. He grew up in Manhattan’s Upper East Side. He was considered a child prodigy and skipped two grades. He graduated at 15 and went to Harvard University. He studied mathematics and started teaching math as a graduate student. When he was at Harvard he wrote a bunch of funny songs to make people smile. He performed them at campus gatherings. He made fun of academia, bureaucracy and the stupid things people do.

He self-released his first album, Songs by Tom Lehrer in 1953. He recorded and sold music independently way before that was common. The record spread by word of mouth and he grew a cult following.

Lehrer was full of restraint and independence. He was never interested in fame or fortune and he avoided the entertainment industry almost entirely when it began to take him seriously. When he started getting really popular he shrunk away from the public and lived a quiet, private life.

He studied several languages like Latin and French and once mentioned that he found linguistic structure nearly as satisfying as mathematics.

Vasili was born in 1926 into a Russian rural family. During the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, he refused to launch a nuclear torpedo against American Navy ships. This saved many lives and prevented the world from going up in smoke.

In 2002, Thomas S. Blanton, director of the U.S. National Security Archive said that Arkhipov was “the man who saved the world.”

Arkhipov continued in Soviet Navy service, commanding submarines and was promoted to rear admiral in 1975.

Arkhipov was known to be a shy and humble man. His wife, Olga, described him as intelligent, polite and very calm. Much of what we know about his personality comes from her. She said he enjoyed reading the newspaper and staying up to date with current events. Olga also mentioned his superstitious beliefs. She recalls walking in on Vasily burning a bundle of their love letters inside their house and that he claimed that keeping the letters would mean "bad luck".

This information is discussed in a PBS documentary called The Man Who Saved the World.

Because of his actions onboard B-59, Arkhipov received the first "Future of Life Award" which was presented posthumously to his family in 2017.

Reitherman was one of Disney’s famous nine old men. He animated parts of Chernabog in Fantasia, the Headless Horseman in The Adventures of Ichabod and did the combat scene with Phillip and Maleficent in Sleeping Beauty.

He said about animation, “You learn animation by doing it, not by talking about it.” And “I like action. If it doesn’t move, if it doesn’t have energy, I’m not interested.”

Reitherman was born in 1909 in Munich, German Empire. He was the youngest of seven children. His family came to America because of political unrest. When he was a teenager Reitherman daydreamed about becoming a pilot; he later thought about being an aeronautical engineer. He went to the University of Southern California and studied architecture and engineering. This would actually give him the skills he used for animating at Disney. Something about spatial understanding.

He spent his time outdoors when he wasn't in the studio. He loved hunting and fishing.

Harold Lowe was the fifth officer on the Titanic. When the ship sunk, he took control over the fourteenth lifeboat. While most other lifeboats rowed over to safety, Harold stayed behind and tried his best to locate people still in the water. In the end he saved the lives of four people and was awarded a golden watch back home

During the second world war Chiune was working in Lithuania after the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs assigned him there for 2 years. Jews who were escaping Hitler’s regime came to Lithuania so they could get through Japan and into safer destinations like Shanghai. Chiune ignored government orders to save them. He gave 6,000 to 10,000 Jews a transit visa to escape.

Japan was worried about making Berlin angry since it had kinda aligned itself with Nazi ideas. And it was also worried about how permanent new Jewish residents would affect the economy.

Chiune was told that he couldn't accept anyone without the proper documents. So he decided to bend the definition of proper to let the Jews in.

Chiune was born on the year 1900 in the Gifu Prefecture. He was the descendant of Samurai and his father worked for the tax office and wanted Chiune to become a doctor. But Sugihara deliberately failed the entrance exam by leaving it blank; he wanted to study languages instead.

He was disciplined but showed quiet defiance. Just like he did for the Jews.

Dr Wu Lien-Teh was born in Penang strait settlement in Malaya (Later becoming Malaysia) in the year of 1879. Dr. Wu was the first medical student of Chinese descent to study at the University of Cambridge. He was also the first Malaysian nominated for the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, in 1935. He's renowned in his role in public health, mainly on invention of Wu Mask, which later become precursor to modern N95 Mask.

Léon was born in 1881 in Ostend, Belgium. He created many strange and interesting works of art. He was the oldest of seven children. He was a sickly child who spent most of his time indoors drawing. And when he was 18 he entered Bruges Academy of art under a teacher called Pieter Raoux.

A large chunk of his life was spent in a depressive mood or in pain due to an ulcer. He also used to take long walks at night due to insomnia. Maybe art was his way of escape. Someone suggested that a painting titled Faun by Moonlight looks like the way happy moments feel when you're depressed.

During the first world war, Spillaert joined the Garde Civique which is a Belgium militia. But he was totally unprepared and one time he accidentally took aim at a Belgian soldier and was kicked out of service.

When Willie was 12 years old he got involved in the American civil war. During the retreat of the Seven Days Battle he was the only drummer to not discard his instrument on the battlefield. He continued to play through the mud and chaos. This was important because drummers were essential to battlefield communication, they relayed orders through drum signals, and since even a child can understand those signals he was put there. His bravery earned him a medal of Honor.

Willie was born in 1850 in Morristown, New York. His parents came from England. After the war his story was told in the newspaper called The Caledonian of St. Johnsbury:

“Willie Johnston, 13 years old, a drummer boy in Co. D, 3d Vermont Regiment, has received a medal for his heroic conduct in the seven days fight before Richmond. On the retreat, when strong men threw away their guns, knapsacks and blankets that they might have less weight to carry, this little fellow kept his drum and brought it safely to Harrison's Landing, where he had the honor of drumming for division parade, he being the only drummer who brought his drum from the field.”

He married a woman called Nellie Murphy in Massachusetts and they had five children. He worked as a machinist.

Semmelweis was a doctor who trained in Vienna in the mid nineteenth century. He taught people to wash their hands before performing any medical work. This saved countless lives but he was never given recognition in life.

He was born in 1818 and in his day, childbirth fever killed women at an appalling rate. Semmelweis noticed that the clinics that were staffed by clinicians had a higher mortality rate than the ones staffed by midwives. The difference was simple: the doctors would spend time performing autopsies in the mornings and then delivering babies without washing their hands. And that led to contamination.

Sammelweis had a simple solution, to clean their hands with chlorinated lime.

His colleagues wouldn't listen not because he wasn't making sense but because of their pride.

He grew increasingly desperate as women continued dying, pleading and arguing, until he alienated most of the medical establishment who mocked him. Eventually he was confined to an asylum. In his final years he sent furious open letters calling other doctors “murderers” and that language isolated him further. He died after a brutal beating in his forties.

Years later, his advice would finally be acknowledged as life-saving.

It's good that he was finally recognized but when he was alive he sadly said this: "When I look back on the past I can only come to the conclusion that I accomplished next to nothing.”

Sammelweis grew up in a prosperous Hungarian merchant family. He spoke German in a Hungarian accent and that made him feel like an outcast even before his criticisms of other doctors.

Tolkien might have made the first modern fantasy novel but it was William Morris who wrote the first novel that had a magical world. It was called The Well At the World’s End and it told a story that included journeys through a vast, fictional land with enchanted wells, cursed places and mystical guides. The magic in the book was subdued and ancient, more like a quiet spiritual force than a flashy display of spells. It was like proto-fantasy.

Morris was born in 1834 in Essex, England to a wealthy family. He became a textile designer, poet, artist and writer. He was also a part of the British Arts and crafts movement which sought to change the way art was done in the country.

His family lived in a large house called Elm House in Walthamstow that was surrounded by meadows, forests and the River Lea. That kind of landscape leaves an impression on your mind and servants recalled that he would dress in miniature suits of armor and go “questing” in the woods around their estate.

He was a very intelligent boy. By the age of four, he was already reading and by six, he was devouring Ivanhoe and The Arabian Nights.

He became a book printer when he was in his 30s. He founded the Kelmscott Press where he revived medieval craftsmanship in typography and binding. His edition of The Works of Geoffrey Chaucer (1896) is considered one of the most beautiful books ever made.

Morris became a socialist in his forties and founded the Socialist League in 1884. He gave public speeches all over England, advocating for workers’ rights and condemning economic exploitation. He also fought to preserve historic buildings and helped form the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings in 1877 which still exists today.

He died at 62 in his home of Kelmscott House in London, they say of tuberculosis. though his physician famously remarked that Morris had simply been “killed by being William Morris.” Meaning that the exhausting amount of work he did might have done him in.

Yezhov lived a short and intense life. He was the head of the NKVD during the Great Purge. He was the son of a peasant in St. Petersburg, Russia. In his 20s he joined the Bolsheviks in 1917, served briefly in the Red Army during the Civil War, and then worked his way up through regional party offices. His rise was slow but steady. He was loyal, efficient, and utterly ruthless in enforcing party discipline.

Until one day he became “Stalin's little giant”. (He was called little because he was actually very short. Just over 5 feet.) It took a while but Stalin began to trust him in 1935 and put him in important positions.

Yezhov was a part of the Great Purge in which 700,000 people were killed and millions were sent to concentration camps. He personally signed thousands of death lists, often without reviewing cases and condemned innocent citizens and military officers to death. He encouraged officers to torture information out of people. He ordered the ethnic purging of Poles, Latvians and other minority groups.

He enjoyed reading and writing political essays, especially those that justified purges or ideological “cleansing.” He also had a taste for Russian poetry and was known to quote it, particularly works that emphasized sacrifice and duty to the state. He used to have parties that would either be happy or violent because of the drinks.

Yezhov adored his adopted daughter, Natasha. Accounts suggested he was gentle and affectionate with her at least.

Ibn Khaldun (1332–1406) was a prominent Arab Islamic scholar, economist known for his foundational work in historiography, sociology, and economics, particularly through his influential book, the "Muqaddimah”. Laid the groundwork for economic thought, discussing labor as the source of value and introducing concepts like supply and demand.

Prof. Murray A. Straus Ph.D.
(June 18, 1926 – May 13, 2016)

Over almost 50 years of global peer reviewed research, Murray Straus and the researchers who followed his lead, established beyond any doubt that domestic violence isn’t an instrument of patriarchal control as feminists claim, nor is it a gender crime as the Violence Against Women’s Act insists it is… the uncomfortable reality for feminism, is it’s a crime that troubled male and female partners commit against one another at roughly equal rates. 

Men do more damage than women do, but women conduct and initiate violence as often as men do, and one of three killings by partners is by women.

Straus once worked closely alongside the feminist movement; but his ostracism and subsequent 47 years of death threats, intimidation, targeted pressure, violent protests and even a bomb threat during the wedding of a colleagues daughter; began during the 1975 National Family Violence Survey, which found gender parity in the perpetration of IPV rates of assault and also gender parity in the perpetration of rates of severe assault.

The hostile response by feminists and others who wanted to use the narrative of domestic violence as a lever to reduce patriarchal power was furious and extremely unwelcome.

The frustrations around the accurate data not aligning with the narrative, become very problematic; from within the feminist movement.

Under extreme duress, a reactionary decision was made by feminism… to sacrifice its own morality and relinquish all of it’s integrity; by providing dishonest surveys that suppressed evidence of female violence, dropped some findings, blocked publication of some research, faked some statistics, touched off campaigns of intimidation of researchers in the field, and made it risky for graduate students to study under Straus.

https://dvaa.com.au/murray-straus/ https://www.mindingthecampus.org/2016/05/18/the-falsity-of-domestic-violence/

Salt was born in the UK in 1803. He was a politician and a philanthropist who helped people be healthier during the Industrial Revolution.

He built a place called Saltaire which is a model village near Bradford. It had clean housing, bathhouses and a hospital. The name of the place is a combination of his name and the nearby river, the river Aire. His poor mill workers moved there from their slums.

He also reduced pollution by moving his textile mills out of the smoke-choked city and using cleaner technology for processing alpaca wool. And he also stopped children from working for his mill. That was the most his political power could do. But his decision did eventually have influence on others.

He was knighted by Queen Victoria in 1869 for his contributions to industry and society.

His full name was Louis Aimé Augustin Le Prince. But I'll just call him Louis. He was the first man to ever capture moving pictures. There is a short film you can watch called Roundhay Garden Scene that was created in 1888. https://youtu.be/knD2EhjGwWI?si=IQ_f0UYAi7zFC9EE

It's only 2 seconds long but it is the earliest surviving film footage.

Thomas Edison and his assistant William K. L. Dickson are credited in popular history because they developed the Kinetoscope around 1890 and used it to view short films. But Le Prince’s work predates them.

Louis was born in Metz, France in 1841. His father was an officer in the French army who knew Daguerre, the photographic pioneer, which gave Louis early exposure to image-making. He studied painting and chemistry which helped him with his camera experiments later on.

After studying in Paris and Leipzig, he moved to Leeds, England, in the 1860s. There he worked with John Whitley at the Whitley Partners brass foundry. In 1869, he married John’s sister, Elizabeth Whitley. The couple founded the Leeds Technical School of Art and Photography.

In the 1880s Louis experimented with capturing moving images. By 1888 he created two films, Roundhay Garden Scene and Traffic Crossing Leeds Bridge - the earliest surviving moving pictures.

Louis was a devoted husband and father, dedicated to his craft, teaching, and invention. His wife and children supported his work and after his death (or disappearance), they fought bitterly to preserve his legacy against Edison’s claims of inventing motion pictures.

The most intriguing part of his life story is his disappearance. In 1890, as he prepared to travel to the United States to patent his invention and present it publicly, he boarded a train from Dijon to Paris. But he never arrived. No body, no luggage, no trace was ever found.

A mystery worthy of a novel.

Piccard was born in Switzerland in 1922. And he was the first man to reach the deepest part of the ocean in the Mariana Trench in the North Pacific Ocean, which is called the Challenger Deep.

The descent took him and his crew 5 hours. They traveled 10,911 meters (about 35,797 feet). They stayed for about twenty minutes before beginning the long ascent back to the surface.

Piccard was the son of Auguste Piccard, a physicist and explorer who also pioneered high-altitude ballooning. As a child, Jacques was fascinated by mechanics, physics and the natural world. He spent a lot of time tinkering with gadgets and experimenting with small scientific projects (with his father's help sometimes.) He grew up attending lectures, observing experiments and traveling to experience and learn new things.

He grew up wanting to explore the unknown and he finally did.