Due November 4 :

 

Franklin Delano Roosevelt

 

 

 

 

A Short Biography

     

     Franklin Delano Roosevelt was born in Hyde Park, New York on January 30, 1882. He was privately tutored and taught by his parents at home, but attended college at Groton, Harvard, and Columbia. In just three years, Franklin had received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Harvard. Once he graduated with a BA, he attended New York’s Columbia University to study law. In 1905, he married his distant cousin, Anna Roosevelt, and five years later he was elected New York State Senator. In 1921, he had been diagnosed with a disease called poliomyelitis, and started loosing the use of his legs. Franklin had become the Governor of New York in 1928. Four years later, in November of 1932, he was elected the 32^nd President of the United States. Franklin was the first and only president to serve four terms in office, and had greatly changed the lives of American’s and the economy within those years. Within the first “hundred days,” he proposed a program to bring the United States out of the great depression. By 1935 the Nation had recovered a little, but businessmen and bankers were loosing faith in Roosevelt’s “New Deal” program, and feared the outcome. While in his third term as President, World War II had broken out in Europe. With all the strain of war and his effort to create peace within the countries and to end the war, it had worn Roosevelt out. In 1944, a medical examination concluded he had serious heart and circulatory problems. As the war came close to an end, Roosevelt's health started getting worse and on April 12, 1945, while at Warm Springs, Georgia, he died of a cerebral hemorrhage. Roosevelt was buried in the place of his birth, Hyde Park, which is now a national historic site.

 

Why Franklin Delanor Roosevelt?

 

     I chose Franklin Delano Roosevelt because I am greatly interested in World War II and the Great Depression, two events he had been a big part of. Reading more about Franklin, I had become more and more interested in his life and all of  his accomplishments. He was the only President to serve four terms in office, and while suffering from poliomyelitis, he was still a great leader who pulled the US out of the Great Depression and worked to make peace during World War II. While researching more on Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and looking at the four subjects I had become more interested in researching him as my power of one subject.

 

Franklin Delanor Roosevelt's Time

 

     Franklin Delano Roosevelt born in 1882 and died in 1945. In those 63 years, many things had been going on such as new inventions or wars. The world was drastically changing around him, with the new inventions such as transportation, and weapons. When Franklin was first elected President in 1932, the United States was struck with the Great Depression a few years before. In the late 1930s and early 1940s World War II had also been going on throughout his time in office and his life. He had taken part in both of these events by trying to create peace in the wars, and get the U.S. out of the Great Depression. When the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor, he had directed organization of the Nation's manpower and resources for global war. The year that Roosevelt died, Hitler had committed suicide, and V-E Day had marked the end of the war in Europe.

     

Franklin Delanor Roosevelt's Influence on the World

 

     Franklin Delano Roosevelt had a big impact on the world and in history. He had affected the world in many of the different areas of government, technology, economics, and culture. Within government, economics, and culture he had become President, and his decisions had affected each one of these categories. If Roosevelt had never become President or wasn’t ever born, the U.S. may have never gotten out of the Great Depression. If we never got out of the Great Depression, our world would be very, dramatically different. Roosevelt had entered the US into World War II, which had affected a lot of the world, especially Europe. Einstein had sent a letter to President Roosevelt to propose the idea of creating a nuclear weapon, which became known as the Manhattan Project. This project that they developed had greatly affected the world in technology by creating the atomic bomb. This also made Oppenheimer famous, and without Franklin Oppenheimer and the atomic bomb would've never been created. If Roosevelt was never around, who knows what our world would be like; our economy and technology would be very low-class and our world would probably be the total opposite of what it is now.

 

American President. Franklin Delanor Roosevelt

     2 Nov 2009.

<http://millercenter.org/academic/americanpresident/fdroosevelt>

     

Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial. FDR Biography

22 Dec 2004. 2 Nov 2009

<http://www.nps.gov/fdrm/fdr/biography.htm>

 

Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum.

     Biography of Franklin Delanor Roosevelt. 2 Nov 2009.

<http://www.fdrlibrary.marist.edu/education/resources/bio_fdr.html>

 

The Presidents. Franklin Delanor Roosevelt

2 Nov 2009.

<http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/presidents/32_f_roosevelt/index.html>

 

The White House. Franklin Delanor Roosevelt

      2 Nov 2009.

<http://www.whitehouse.gov/about/presidents/franklindroosevelt/>

 

 

Due October 15 

 

       Rosa Parks was born in 1913 in Tuskegee, Alabama. On December 1, 1995, Rosa Parks had boarded a city bus, and sat in the front. In the time period she lived in, the buses were segregated, where whites sat in the front, and “colored” had to sit in the back. When a white person got on the bus and asked her to move seats into the back, she refused, and was arrested. This was Rosa Parks’ claim to fame, when she stood up for what she believed, and started the Civil Rights Movement with Martin Luther King Jr., later having a huge affect on the world. I did not know that Rosa Parks passed away in 2005, but what surprised me is that she was so respected and honored by the President, when she died, her casket was placed in the rotunda of the United States Capitol for two days. She was the first woman in American history to lie at the Capitol, which is an honor usually reserved for the Presidents of the United States. I do not think that Rosa Parks would be a good choice for the power of one project, because she had definitely affected the government, and economics, but she did not really affect science or technology. 

  

      William Henry Gates III, more commonly known as Bill Gates, was born on October 28, 1955 in Seattle, Washington. When Bill Gates was 13, he started showing interest in computers, and pursued this interest through college. In 1975, Gates and his friend Paul Allen created the company Microsoft. Bill Gates is said to be one of the richest men in the world, for creating this company, and software. Something that I found interesting was that Bill Gates had not finished college. He was a junior in college when he dropped out to develop and work more on his company, Microsoft. I think that Bill Gates could maybe be a possible choice for the power of one, because he greatly affected science and technology, economics, and did affect the government partly through his great creation.

 

     Helen Keller was born on June 27, 1880 in Tuscumbia, Alabama. When she was 19 months, she had lost her vision and hearing.  Helen Keller had a difficult time communicating and getting around because ways of communication and movement for deaf and blind people had not yet been discovered. Helen's parents had hired a teacher for her, her name was Anne Sullivan. When Helen Keller discovered that people were different than her and could communicate easier than she could, she was very upset and threw tantrums until she was exhausted. Helen Keller's claim to fame was from teaching people to respect the deaf and blind, and from traveling around teaching people about the deaf and blind. She helped donate and raise money for many organizations such as the American Foundation for the Blind, and won many awards. Something that surprised me about Helen Keller was that she didn't die until 1968, peacefully in her sleep. I thought that she was a lot older than that and would've died in the early 1900s. Even with all of her accomplishments, I do not think that Helen Keller would be a good choice because she hadn't affected the four components enough to really make a noticeable change.

 

Rosa Parks: 

http://www.time.com/time/time100/heroes/profile/parks01.html

http://www.achievement.org/autodoc/page/par0bio-1

 

Bill Gates:

http://www.biography.com/articles/Bill-Gates-9307520

http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/exec/billg/bio.mspx 

 

Helen Keller:

http://www.afb.org/Section.asp?SectionID=1&TopicID=129

http://www.time.com/time/time100/heroes/profile/keller02.html

http://www.afb.org/braillebug/helen_keller_bio.asp