Portal:Biography

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The Biography Portal

A biography is a detailed description or account of someone's life. More than a list of basic facts (education, work, relationships, and death), a biography also portrays a subject's experience of these events. Unlike a profile or curriculum vitae (résumé), a biography presents a subject's life story, highlighting various aspects of his or her life, including intimate details of experience, and may include an analysis of a subject's personality.

Biographical works are usually non-fiction, but fiction can also be used to portray a person's life. One in-depth form of biographical coverage is called legacy writing. Biographical works in diverse media—from literature to film—form the genre known as biography.

An authorized biography is written with the permission, cooperation, and, at times, participation of a subject or a subject's heirs.

An autobiography is about a life of a subject, written by that subject or sometimes with a collaborator.

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Stede Bonnet (c. 1688 – December 13, 1718) was an early 18th-century Barbadian pirate, sometimes called "the gentleman pirate". Because of marital problems, Bonnet turned to piracy in the summer of 1717. He bought a sailing vessel, named it Revenge, and traveled with his paid crew along the American eastern seaboard, capturing other vessels and burning down Barbadian ships. After arriving in Nassau, Bonnet met the infamous pirate Blackbeard. Incapable of leading his crew, Bonnet temporarily ceded his ship's command to Blackbeard. Before separating in December 1717, Blackbeard and Bonnet plundered and captured merchant ships along the East Coast. After Bonnet failed to capture the Protestant Caesar, his crew abandoned him to join Blackbeard on the Queen Anne's Revenge. Bonnet stayed on Blackbeard's ship as a guest, and did not command a crew again until summer 1718, when he was pardoned by North Carolina governor Charles Eden and received clearance to go privateering against Spanish shipping. By July 1718, he had returned to piracy. In late August and September of that year, Colonel William Rhett led a naval expedition against pirates on the Cape Fear River. Rhett and Bonnet's men fought each other for hours, but the outnumbered pirates ultimately surrendered. Rhett arrested the pirates and brought them to Charleston in early October. Bonnet was brought to trial, and sentenced to death. After his request for clemency was turned down, Bonnet was hanged in Charleston on December 10, 1718. (Read more...)

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Credit: United States Navy Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Jesse B. Awalt

Muammar Muhammad Abu Minyar al-Gaddafi (Arabic: معمر محمد أبو منيار القذافي‎‎; c. 1942 – 20 October 2011), commonly known as Colonel Gaddafi, was a Libyan revolutionary and politician, and the de facto ruler of Libya for 42 years. Taking power in a 1969 coup d'etat, he ruled from 1977 to 2011, when he was ousted and killed in the Libyan Civil War.

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On this day – March 7

Births

1671 - Robert Roy MacGregor, Scottish folk hero (d. 1734)
1792 - John Herschel, English mathematician and astronomer (d. 1871) (pictured)
1872 - Piet Mondrian, Dutch painter (d. 1944)
1942 - Tammy Faye Bakker, American evangelist

Deaths

322 BC - Aristotle, philosopher (b. 384 BC)
1274 - Thomas Aquinas, Philosopher (b. 1225)
1997 - Edward Mills Purcell, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1912)

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Did you know

... that European welterweight champion Johnny Basham (pictured) faced a manslaughter charge after killing an opponent in a boxing match?
... that Gioachino Rossini's opera Tancredi premiered in 1813 at Teatro La Fenice in Venice with Adelaide Malanotte performing in the title role?
... that Canadian painter Lorne Kidd Smith designed a poster for Canada's Victory Loan campaign and worked in the art department at General Motors?
... that Valerie Bettis was the first modern dance choreographer to work with a major ballet company?
... that the life of Wenlock Christison, who was condemned to death for being a Quaker while in Massachusetts Bay Colony by Governor John Endicott, was spared by King Charles II?
... that Cuban journalist Yndamiro Restano Díaz was reportedly released from prison at the request of Danielle Mitterand, the wife of the former President of France?
... that Adelbert Theodor Wangemann recorded the voice of Helmuth von Moltke in 1890, the only known recording of someone born in the 18th century?