Legends over Generations: Stories of Legends who Shaped our lives

By Ashraf Haggag

People contributed to various life aspects such as science, politics, literature, arts, social activities and so many other fields. These genius minds put a keen interest in every phenomenon right from when they were young. The zeal, passion, dedication, hard work and efforts they put into their work helped them discover something new about the world we live in.

In these Legends, we've seen inexplicable abilities that helped us define our existence and human life. Their names are engraved in the sands of time for their work in the welfare of mankind with different inventions that have made our lives easy, enjoyable and successful. The following chapters commemorate the greatest personalities we've ever seen who changed the world.
They are among the most influential people of today's world. With practical advantages in various aspects, they have helped us to grow a better understanding of the world and different working phenomenon's that governs us. Their way of shaping modern day culture is completely unrivalled.

• Language: English
• Publisher: tredition
• Release date: Mar 19, 2018
• ISBN: 9783743989993

Book preview

Introduction

For a long time, I was hesitant to write about legends simply because this subject was tackled and discussed from so many authors. However the desire of drafting my own thoughts and to write about this subject from my own point of view was strong and hard to impede.

Each of us might have a good idea of what it means to be a legend but when it comes to defining the concept, the picture is not so clear for some.

Legends harbor huge components of skills, personal traits and real efforts linked with other external components that are involved to shape the full picture of a leader. If we look around and carefully view the bio of well-known leaders in different fields weather in trade, economics, science , social or political , we will witness and discover great similarities among them in all aspects weather in personality traits , skills etc.

This book will give a strong highlight on what a legend is and what skills, personality traits that has to be available and exist, then moving on to highlight on the different style, types of legends with their impact and how they shaped the minds and souls of entire generations.

Finally, a clear highlight on selected leaders in different fields that has strongly influenced and shaped our lives.

I sincerely hope I have handled this important subject from a wider angle that can be useful and enjoyable to my dear readers.

Enjoy the read.

One

The Role of Legends

The Role of Legends

Since the beginning of human settlement, a lot of people came up with ideas, philosophies, beliefs, experiments, research, redesigning of thoughts, talents, and surveys to bring folklore to reality. People contributed to various life aspects such as science, politics, literature, arts, social activities and so many other fields. These genius minds put a keen interest in every phenomenon right from when they were young. The zeal, passion, dedication, hard work and efforts they put into their work helped them discover something new about the world we live in.

Due to these efforts and unique talent, the world today dwells in the abode of their attainments in different sectors. The present picture of the world that we see today would not have revolutionized without the contribution of these great personalities. Great philosophers and masterminds that existed from the ancient Greek era to the present day.

In these Legends, we’ve seen incomprehensible abilities that helped us define our existence and human life. Their identities are engraved in the sands of time for their work in the welfare of mankind with different inventions that have made our lives easy, enjoyable and successful. The following chapters celebrate the greatest personalities we’ve ever seen who changed the world.

Two

Human Rights

HUMAN RIGHTS

As we believe the virtue of human life has ancient precedents in many religions of the world, the idea of progressive human rights began during the era of renaissance humanism in the early modern period.

The European wars of faith and the civil wars of England gave way to the philosophy of liberalism and belief in human rights became a central concern of European intellectual culture during the Age of Enlightenment.

These ideas of human rights were at the nucleus of the American and French Revolutions. Democratic evolution in the 1800’s paved the way for the emergence of universal suffrage in the twentieth century. Two world wars paved the way to the emergence of Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

The post-war period witnessed human rights movements for groups like feminism and the civil rights of African-Americans. The human rights of members of the Soviet bloc unfolded in the 1970s as did the workers' rights in the West.

The movement rapidly aligned as social activism and political rhetoric in many countries put it high on the world agenda. By the 21st century, the human rights movement enlarged beyond its original anti-totalitarianism to include various causes involving humanitarianism and social and economic development in the Developing World.

Some concepts of righteousness which can be found in ancient law and religion is sometimes retrospectively included under the term human rights. While Enlightenment philosophers propose a secular social agreement between the rulers and the ruled, ancient traditions derived similar conclusions from perceptions of divine law, and, in Hellenistic philosophy, natural law.

Three

Human Rights Legends

3A. MAHATMA GANDHI

Legacy: 1869 through to 1948

Mahatma Gandhi steered India’s non-violent independence movement against British rule and in South Africa who championed for the civil rights of Indians.

Born in Porbandar, India, Gandhi studied law and devised boycotts against British institutions in peaceful forms of civil defiance. He was assassinated by a radical in 1948.

Early Life and Education

Gandhi was a timid, unremarkable student. His shyness followed through to his teenage years in which he would still sleep with the lights on. In the following years, the teenager showed revolt by smoking, eating meat and stealing change from household servants.

Although Gandhi was keen in becoming a doctor, his father had hoped he would also become a government minister, so his family directed him to enter the legal profession. In 1888, Gandhi, who was 18 at the time, sailed for London, England, to study the field of law. The young Indian had difficulties with the transition to Western culture.

Upon his return to India in 1891, Gandhi found that his mother had passed away just weeks earlier. He floundered to gain his footing as a lawyer. In his first courtroom case, an apprehensive Gandhi blanked out when the time came to cross-examine a witness. He immediately left the courtroom after compensating his client for his legal fees.

Early Career

After struggling to find employment as a lawyer in India, Gandhi secured a one-year contract to carry out legal services in South Africa. In April 1893, he sailed for Durban in the South African state of Natal.

When Gandhi arrived in South Africa, he was quickly horrified by the discrimination and racial segregation faced by Indian immigrants at the hands of white British and Boer authorities. At his first appearance in a Durban courtroom, Gandhi was asked to take off his turban. He refused to do so and left the court instead. The Natal Advertiser scorned him in print as an unwelcome visitor.

A groundbreaking moment in Gandhi’s life occurred days later on June 7, 1893, during a train trip to Pretoria, South Africa, when a white man objected to his presence in the first-class railway compartment, although he had a ticket. Refusing to retire to the back of the train, Gandhi was forcibly removed and thrown off the train. His act of civil disobedience awoke in him a determination to devote himself to confronting the deep disease of color prejudice. He vowed that night to try, if possible, to root out the disease and suffer hardships in the process. From that night on, the small, modest man would evolve into a giant force for civil rights. Gandhi formed the Natal Indian Congress in 1894 to fight discrimination.

At the end of his year-long contract, Gandhi prepared to return to India until he learned, at his farewell party, of a bill before the Natal Legislative Assembly that would dispossess Indians of the right to vote. Associate immigrants convinced Gandhi to stay and lead the fight against the legislation. Even though Gandhi could not prevent the law’s passing, he drew international attention to the injustice.

After a brief trip to India in late 1896 and early 1897, Gandhi returned to South Africa with his wife and children. Gandhi was running a prosperous legal practice, and at the eruption of the Boer War, he raised an all-Indian ambulance corps of over 1,000 volunteers to support the British cause, insisting that if Indians expected to have full rights of citizenship in the British Empire, they also needed to undertake their tasks and responsibilities as well.

In 1930, Gandhi returned back to active politics to protest Britain’s Salt Acts. This act prohibited Indians from collecting or selling salt, a dietary staple, and inflicted a heavy tax that hit the nation’s poorest class especially hard. Gandhi planned a new Satyagraha campaign that required a 390-kilometer march to the Arabian Sea, in which he would collect salt in illustrative defiance of the government monopoly.

My ambition is no less than to convert the British people through non-violence and thus make them see the wrong they have done to India, he wrote days before the march to the British viceroy, Lord Irwin.

Wearing a simple white shawl and sandals and carrying a walking stick, Gandhi set out from his religious sanctuary on March 12, 1930, with a few dozen companions. By the time he arrived 24 days later in the coastal town of Dandi, the ranks of the marchers swelled, and Gandhi broke the law by making salt from evaporated seawater.

The Salt March sparked similar protests, and mass civil disobedience swept across India. Nearly 60,000 Indians were arrested for breaking the Salt Acts, including Gandhi, who was arrested in May 1930. The protests against the Salt Acts escalated Gandhi into a transcendent figure around the world, and he was named Time magazine’s Man of the Year for 1930.

Gandhi was released in January 1931, and two months later he made an agreement with Lord Irwin to end the Salt Satyagraha in return for concessions that included the release of thousands arrested political. The agreement, however, largely kept the Salt Acts