10 Questions about Where Were They Born? | People

Answer: Denmark

Hans Christian Andersen was born in Odense in Denmark. He began his literary career writing short stories and poems. His first novel "The Improvisatore" was published in 1835 and was well received. Also in 1835 he published the first instalment of "Fairy Tales", which continued in 1836 and 1837; however they were not very successful initially.

Andersen did not just write fairy tales. He also wrote poetry and including one that that was successfully set to music. He also wrote travel sketches based on his extensive trips.

He returned to writing more fairy tales in the 1840s and became famous throughout Europe. Some of his better known fairy tales are "Thumbelina", "The Snow Queen", "The Little Match Girl", "The Ugly Duckling", "The Princess and the Pea", and "The Emperor's New Clothes".

There is a statue of "The Little Mermaid" in Copenhagen harbour, in honour of Hans Christian Andersen. In 2006 in Shanghai, China, a multi-million dollar theme park opened based on Andersen's tales and life.

Answer: England

Charlie Chaplin was born in London. His parents were both music hall entertainers and he suffered much poverty and hardships during his childhood. His parents split and he was eventually sent to a workhouse when he was only seven years old. His mother was committed to a mental asylum and he and his brother were sent to live with their alcoholic father, whom they hardly knew.

Chaplin's first public appearance was at age five, when he went on stage in place of his mother. He was very confident and received applause and laughter. When he was older he became a member of "The Eight Lancashire Lads Clog Dancing Troupe" which toured English music halls from 1890 to 1902. By the time he was 13 he had completely abandoned any education, and the next year he registered with a theatrical agency in London and was soon on the stage. By 1908 his brother, Sydney, had become a music hall star and he got his younger brother, Charlie, a two-week trial. Charlie was such a success that he was immediately signed to a contract. His most successful character was a drunk called the "Inebriate Swell".

After taking the show to Paris, part of the company - including Chaplin - toured the North American vaudeville circuit, where he was described as "one of the best pantomime artists ever seen here". One of the other performers in the company was Stan Laurel, later to become famous with his partner Oliver Hardy. The company returned to England in 1912 after nearly two years touring.

On again touring the US in 1913 he was contacted by a motion picture company, Keystone Studios. He signed a contract and went to work for Mack Sennett. Chaplin was by then 24 years old. By the end of World War I Charlie Chaplin was the most famous film star in the world, and the rest is history.

Answer: Warsaw, Poland

Maria Salomea Sklodowska was born in Warsaw in what was the Kingdom of Poland, then part of the Russian Empire. She studied at the clandestine "Floating University" which was an underground educational enterprise, where she began her scientific training.

When she was 24 she went to Paris to study and stayed for a while with her elder sister. Whilst in Paris she earned higher degrees and began her scientific work. She studied at the Sorbonne and tutored at night.

In 1894 she met Pierre Curie, an instructor at the School of Physics and Chemistry, Paris. They married in 1895.

She won her first Nobel Prize in 1903 for Physics along with her husband and A.H Becquerel. This Prize was won for the work they did on radioactivity, where they separated very small amounts of two new highly radioactive chemical elements from uranium ore.

Her second Nobel Prize - for Chemistry - was won in 1911. This was for discovering new elements and isolating and studying the chemical properties of radium.

Answer: West Germany

Walter Bruce Willis was born in Idar-Oberstein, West Germany on 19 March, 1955 and he is the oldest of four children. His brother Robert died of pancreatic cancer in 2001. His father, David, was a US soldier stationed in Germany, who married a German girl, Marlene. When David was discharged from the Army in 1957, he moved back to the US with his family to Carneys Point, New Jersey.

Willis began performing while still at high school, participating in school plays and in a drama club. After leaving school he worked as a security guard at the Salem Nuclear Power Plant and as a private investigator - a role he would later play in TV and a movie. He then enrolled at Montclair State University in a drama programme, following which he moved to New York City, where he worked at a bartender while awaiting his "first big break".

He made his off-Broadway theatre debut in "Heaven and Earth" followed by a few other plays and a Levi's TV commercial. After a few years he went to California and auditioned for several TV shows. His first TV appearance was in an episode of "Miami Vice" in 1984. He auditioned for the part of David Addison Jnr in "Moonlighting" opposite Cybil Shepherd. He was chosen for that role from 3,000 other actors. The show lasted five seasons and established Willis as a comedic actor.

His film debut was in he 1987 Blake Edwards movie "Blind Date", followed by the 1988 movie "Sunset". It was his appearance in the 1988 film "Die Hard" that established him as a major star.

Answer: Argentina

Ernesto Guevara was born in Rosario, Argentina, into a family of Spanish, Basque and Irish descent. He was the eldest of five children.

Guevara excelled as an athlete, even though he suffered from asthma throughout his life. He enjoyed football, golf, swimming, shooting, and also cycling, and played rugby union.

He entered the University of Buenos Aires in 1948 to study medicine and undertook two long journeys: he travelled 4,500 kilometres in 1950 on a solo bicycle trip through northern Argentina, and in 1951 took a year off his studies and went on a nine month, 8,000 kilometer motorcycle trip through most of South America. His account of this trip was titled "The Motorcycle Diaries" and it became a "New York Times" best seller.

During his travels through Argentina, Chile, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Panama and Miami some of the things he saw, like poverty, hunger and disease, greatly concerned him. On his return to university he completed his studies and received a medical degree in 1953. Whilst living in Mexico City, he met Raul and Fidel Castro and joined their "26th of July Movement" and sailed to Cuba to help overthrow the CIA-backed Cuban dictator, Fulgencio Batista. Guevara rose to prominence and was appointed second-in-command. He played a pivotal role in the deposing of the Batista regime. He played several roles in the new government of Cuba.

He left Cuba in 1965 to stir up revolution, first in Congo-Kinshasa and then in Bolivia. Whilst there, he was captured by Bolivian forces and executed on 9 October, 1967.

Answer: Netherlands

Margaretha Geertruide Zelle (stage name Mata Hari) was born in Friesland, Netherlands and was the eldest of four children. Her father was successful in business, so was able to give her a lavish early childhood. However, when she was 13 her father went bankrupt and her parents divorced. Then her mother died and her father remarried.

When she was 18 she replied to a newspaper ad by a captain in the Dutch Colonial Army, living in then Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia), who was looking for a wife. She married him in 1895 and they moved to the island of Java and had two children. However, the marriage did not work; the captain was twenty years older than Mata and he took out his frustrations of not being promoted on her. He also kept a concubine. She moved in with another Dutch officer, learned Indonesian dancing and joined a dance company. In 1897 she changed her name to Mata Hari (Indonesian for "sun").

Mata then went back to her husband, but in 1899 her children became very ill and one of the died. They moved back to the Netherlands and then the couple separated and finally divorced in 1907.

Moving to Paris, Mata performed in a circus as a horse rider, and also posed as an artist's model, and began to win fame as an exotic dancer. She became the long-time mistress of a millionaire industrialist.

As the Netherlands was neutral in World War I, Mata Hari was able to travel freely between France and the Netherlands via Spain and Britain. She was arrested in Britain and was interrogated, and admitted working for French intelligence. However, in 1917 a German message describing the helpful activities of a German spy, code name" H-21", was intercepted, and the spy was identified as Mata Hari. She was put on trial in France, accused of spying for Germany, found guilty, and executed by firing squad on 15 October 1917. She was 41 years old.

Answer: Kiev, Ukraine

Golda Mabovich was born on 1898 in Kiev, which was then part of the Russian Empire and now present-day Ukraine. She had seven siblings, five of whom died in childhood. In 1903 her father Moshe went to New York City to look for work. In 1905 he moved to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, were he found work in a railway yard. The following year, having saved enough money, he sent for his family to join him. Golda attended the Fourth Street Grade School from 1906 to 1912 (which has been renamed The Golda Meir School).

It became quite evident very early that Golda was a leader. Whilst still at school she organised a fundraiser to pay for her classmates' textbooks. Later she formed the American Young Sisters Society. After high school she went to Denver, Colorado, to live with her married sister, Sheyna, where Golda's intellect was triggered by her exposure to debates on literature, women's suffrage, Zionism, trade unionism, etc. She returned to Milwaukee and enrolled in a teachers' college and taught in Milwaukee public schools.

In 1917, she married Morris Meyerson and they moved to Palestine in 1921 to join a kibbutz where some of her duties were picking almonds, working in the chicken coops and in the kitchen. Because of her leadership abilities, the kibbutz chose her as its representative to the General Federation of Labour. She and her husband moved to Jerusalem in 1924, where they had two children. She was elected secretary of the Working Women's Council in 1928, and that required her to move back to the US for two years. She took her two children with her but her husband stayed behind, as they had drifted apart, but never divorced. Morris died in 1951.

After returning to Israel from the US in 1934, Golda's career began to blossom; she held down several important positions during the following years. She was one of the 24 signatories to the Israeli Declaration of Independence in May 1948. She was elected to the Knesset in 1949 and held several Ministerial positions. She became Foreign Minister in 1956 the year she shortened her name from "Meyerson" to "Meir". In the early 1960s she was diagnosed with lymphoma and in January 1966 retired from the Foreign Ministry. In 1969, following the death of Levi Eshkol, the Israeli Labor Party elected Golda Meir his successor and she took office on 17 March 1969, a position she held until 11 April 1974. She died of lymphatic cancer on 8 December 1978 in Jerusalem. She was 80 years of age.

Answer: South Africa

Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela was born in 18 July 1918 in Mvezo, a small village in the district of Umtata, South Africa. He became the first ever person to be elected President of South Africa in a fully representative democratic election, a position he held from 1994 to 1999. But what a struggle he had to get there!

Rolihlahla was the first member of his family to attend school, where his teacher gave him his English name "Nelson". After his father's death he attended a Wesleyan mission school where he completed his Junior Certificate. He moved to the Wesleyan college in Fort Beaufort where he took an interest in running and boxing at school. He studied for a Bachelor of Arts at the Hare University where he became involved in a Students' Representative Council boycott against University policies, which led to his being expelled. Mandella moved to Johannesburg where he gained work as an articled clerk at a Johannesburg law firm and also completed his B.A. degree by correspondence from the University of South Africa. He then took up studying Law at the University of Witwatersrand.

In 1948, following the election of the Afrikaaner-dominated National Party which supported racial segregation and apartheid, Mandela began actively participating in politics. In 1961 he became leader of the armed wing of the African National Congress (ANC), where he co-ordinated sabotage campaigns against military and government targets, made plans for possible guerrilla war and arranged for the raising of funds and paramilitary training of the group. Various acts of violence and bombings were carried out by the group over the ensuing two years. Mandela was arrested in August 1962 and imprisoned in the Johannesburg Fort, where he was initially sentenced to five years. Upon further charges being laid, he was sentenced to life imprisonment in 1964. Mandela was relocated to Robben Island where he remained for the next 18 of his 27 years in prison.

Whist in gaol Mandela's reputation grew and he was widely known as the most significant black leader in South Africa at that time. He did not have an easy time in prison as conditions were very basic and he had to perform hard labour in a lime quarry. Black prisoners received fewer rations, and political prisoners were kept separate from the mainstream inmates. As a D-group prisoner (the lowest classification) he was allowed one letter and one visitor every six months. Whilst in prison he took a correspondence course with the London University and received a degree of Bachelor of Laws degree. Local and international pressure mounted on the South African Government to release Mandela. When President Botha suffered a heart attack and was replaced by Frederik Willem de Klerk, he announced Mandela's release in February 1990.

Answer: Jamaica

Usain St. Leo Bolt was born on 21 August 1986 in Trelawny, Jamaica. He and his brother played cricket and football in the street and began to show his sprinting potential when at Waldensia Primary School. By he time he was 12 he was the school's fastest runner over a 100 meter distance.

At high school his cricket coach noticed his speed on the pitch and encouraged Bolt to try track and field events, which he did. He represented Jamaica in a Caribbean regional event and clocked a personal best in the 400 metres in the 2001 Caribbean Free Trade Association (ARIFTA) and won a silver medal. He also won a silver medal in the 200 metres.

He relocated to Kingston so he could train with the Jamaica Amateur Athletic Association. By age 15 he had grown to 1.96 metres (6ft 5in) tall. At the 2002 World Junior Championships held before a home crown in Kingston, he won the 200m, which made him the youngest world junior gold medallist ever. He won four gold medals at the 2003 CARIFTA Games

In 2004 Bolt turned professional. At the CARIFTA Games in Bermuda he was the first junior sprinter to run the 200m in under 20 seconds, taking the world junior record time of 19.93 seconds. A hamstring injury stopped him competing in the 2004 World Junior Championships although he was still chosen for the Jamaican Olympic squad. Hampered by a leg injury he was eliminated in the first round of the 200 metres at the 2004 Athens Olympics. He continued running at various national and international competitions.

At the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympic Games, Bolt announced that he would run in both the 100 metres and 200 metres events. In the 100 metre final, Bolt
won with a world-record-breaking time of 9.69 seconds. The following day he won the 200m, setting a new world and Olympic record of 19.3 seconds! Two days later he was a member of the gold medal winning Jamaican 4x100 metres relay team, whose win gained Bolt his third gold medal at those Olympics.

At the 2012 London Summer Olympic Games Bolt won the 100 metres gold medal with a time of 9.63 seconds. He then won the 200 metres gold medal in a time of 19.32 seconds. Jamaica's 4x100 metre relay team again won the gold medal.

As cricket was always a favourite game of his, Bolt has expressed interest in playing in the "Big Bash League" or the Twenty20 version saying that if he could get the time he would love to give it a try.

Answer: London, England

Leslie Townes Hope KBE, KCSG, KSS, was born in Eltham, London, UK on 29 May 1903, the fifth of seven sons. His father was an English stonemason from Somerset and his mother an opera singer from Barry, Wales. When Bob was five years old his family emigrated to the US, landing at Ellis Island on 30 March 1908, and then moving to Cleveland Ohio.

Bob loved to entertain. From about the age of 12, he earned pocket money by busking - singing, dancing and doing comedy skits and he entered many dancing and talent contests. In 1915 he won a prize for his impersonation of Charlie Chaplin.

After leaving school he worked as a butcher's assistant and a lineman but wanted a career in show business. He attended dance lessons and he and a fellow student set up a partnership, where they were seen by silent film star Fatty Arbuckle, in 1925, and he got them steady work with a touring troop called "Hurley's Joy Follies". In 1929 Hope changed his first name to "Bob" and went on the vaudeville circuit for about five years. As well as vaudeville, he appeared in Broadway productions and on the radio.

In 1934 he signed a contract with Educational Pictures, New York, for six short films, the first being a comedy "Going Spanish". His contract was dropped by Educational but he was soon picked up by Warner Bros.

He was signed by Paramount Pictures in 1938 and moved to Hollywood for "The Big Broadcast of 1938". The song "Thanks For the Memory" was introduced in this film and that song later became Bob Hop's trademark.

He starred in many successful movies, among which were the famous seven "Road" movies with Bing Crosby and Dorothy Lamour. He also made countless radio, stage and TV appearances with Bing Crosby, and they remained friends until Crosby's death in 1977. Between 1938 and 1972 Hope starred in over 50 theatrical features. He hosted the Academy Awards fourteen times between 1939 and 1977. He hosted or appeared in countless TV shows and specials from about 1950 onwards.

During World War II Bob performed in many USO shows, his first being on 6 May 1941. During the Korean War and the Vietnam War, and in Lebanon, Iran-Iraq and the Persian Gulf strife he took his shows to the troops. His USO shows spanned over half a century and he headlined 57 tours. Because of service to the USA he was awarded the Syvanus Thayere Award by the United States Military Academy at West Point in 1968. An Act of Congress in 1997, signed by President Bill Clinton, named Hope an "Honorary Veteran".

Bob Hope was an avid golfer, learning to play in the 1930s. He played many charity tournaments each year. He learned to pay in the 1930s. In 1934 he married Dolores Reade, and they adopted four children.

Bob Hope died on 27 July 2003. He was 100 years old.