Walt Disney

American Animation Film Producer

The son of Canadian-born farmer and

businessman Elias Disney and Flora Disney
(née Call), Walter Elias Disney was born on
December 5, 1901, in Chicago, Illinois. He was
of English, German, and Irish descent. At the
age of seven, Walt relocated to Kansas City with
his parents, where he spent the most of his
youth. He lied about his age to join the
American Red Cross in World War I when he
was 16 years old. Shortly after arriving back
home, he was awarded a scholarship to the
Kansas City Art Institute. He met fellow
animator Ub Iwerks there.

Soon after, the two started their own business. They produced "Newman's Laugh-O-
Grams," a collection of animated short films, for the Newman theater network in the
early 1920s. But their business failed very quickly.

In 1923, the two subsequently traveled to Hollywood. A live-action young girl travels to
the world of animated characters in a new television series that has just begun
production. They were sold by M.J. under the name "Alice Comedies." Winkler
(Margaret) (Margaret). Only Winkler and Roy O. Disney, Walt's older brother, who
remained his business partner for the remainder of his life, provided financial support for
him. Between 1923 and 1927, hundreds of "Alice Comedies" were made before their
popularity waned.

Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, a brand-new cartoon character, became the focus of Walt's
next project. Although this series was popular, Walt learned that M.J. He had lost
ownership of the character to Winkler and her husband, Charles Mintz. All of his
animators had likewise been taken, with the exception of Ub Iwerks. Walt began making
sketches on a piece of paper as he rode the train home. A mouse named Mickey was
created as a result of these doodling. Three Mickey Mouse cartoons were quickly made
using only Walt and Ub as the animators, together with Walt's wife Lillian Disney (Lilly)
and Roy's wife Edna Disney, who inked the animation cells. After the first two failed to
find an audience, Walt added synchronized sound to the final film, Steamboat Willie
(1928), and it became an instant hit. It debuted to great success with Walt providing
Mickey's voice. Then came a ton more cartoons. Even though Walt was now successful,
he continued to develop fresh concepts.

He produced the "Silly Symphonies," a cartoon series without a recurring character, in

1929. They were yet another triumph. Three Little Pigs (1933) was so well-liked that it
was sometimes billed above the feature films it accompanied, while Flowers and Trees
(1932) was the first cartoon to be produced in color and to win an Oscar. Even after the
Silly Symphonies ceased production in 1939, Mickey and his pals—including Minnie
Mouse, Donald Duck, Goofy, Pluto, and a host of others—were still going strong and
enjoying enormous popularity.

Walt began work in 1934 on another innovative concept: a cartoon that was as long as
a full-length motion picture. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) received
overwhelmingly positive reviews from critics, the public's love, and one big and seven
little special Oscars for Walt, despite the fact that everyone in Hollywood was labeling it
"Disney's Folly." Walt has added animated films to his ever-expanding resume of
achievements. He started making larger animated films in addition to his ongoing
cartoon short production. Even a failure like Fantasia (1940) and a studio animators'
strike in 1941 couldn't stop Disney after the box office triumphs of Pinocchio, Dumbo,
and Bambi (1940), 1941, and 1942, respectively.

In the middle of the 1940s, he started making "packaged features," which were
effectively a collection of shorts combined to run feature length. But by 1950, he was
back with animated features that stuck to one tale, including Cinderella (1950), Alice in
Wonderland (1951), and Peter Pan (1953). With Treasure Island, he debuted in 1950,
he also began making live-action movies (1950). In the 1950s and 1960s, these started
to gain more significance, but Walt continued to make animated films like Lady and the
Tramp (1955), Sleeping Beauty (1959), and 101 Dalmatians (1961).

In southern California, he opened Disneyland, a theme park, in 1955. It was a spot

where kids and their parents could go on rides, just wander about, and meet the lovable
cartoon characters in a clean, secure setting. Another outstanding accomplishment, it.
With his 1954 television series The Magical World of Disney, which he started to
advertise his theme park, Walt also became one of the first film producers to enter into
television. He also created Zorro and The Mickey Mouse Club in 1955. (1957). The
extravagant musical fantasy Mary Poppins (1964), a live-action and animation hybrid,
was released by Walt as the cherry on top. Many people believe it to be his best work.
Even after that, Walt persisted in his intentions to develop a new theme park and an
experimental prototype city in Florida.

Unfortunately, because to his longtime chain smoking, he passed away in 1966 before
those goals could be realized. On December 15, 1966, at the age of 65, he passed
away from a heart attack after undergoing cancer surgery. However, it appeared that
not even his death could stop him. Roy continued with the construction of the Florida
theme park, which opened as Walt Disney World in 1971. His business is still thriving,
creating animated and live-action movies, and managing the always-expanding empire
that was founded by Walt Disney, a man who will never be forgotten.
Albert Einstein
Father of Modern Physics

Early Life of Einstein (1879-1904)

Albert Einstein was raised in a middle-class

Jewish household in Munich after being born on
March 14, 1879, in Ulm, southern Germany.
Einstein developed a fascination for
mathematics, physics, and music as a young
child (he played the violin). He left school in
1894, relocated to Switzerland, picked up
where he left off, and later was admitted to the
Zurich campus of the Swiss Federal
Polytechnic Institute. He gave up his German
citizenship in 1896, and until he was granted
Swiss citizenship in 1901, he was considered
as a stateless person.

While attending Zurich Polytechnic, Einstein fell in love with Mileva Maric, a fellow
student. However, his parents forbade the relationship, and he lacked the resources to
wed her. Lieserl, the couple's illegitimate daughter, was born in the first half of 1902,
although little is known about her. Einstein married Maric in 1903 after landing a job as
a clerk at the Swiss Patent Office in Bern. They would go on to have two additional
children, Hans Albert (born 1904) and Eduard (born 1910).

A Miracle Year for Einstein (1905)

Einstein produced no less than four ground-breaking essays in 1905 alone while
working at the patent office, producing some of his most imaginative work to date. In the
first publication, he used the quantum theory, which was created by German physicist
Max Planck, to explain the photoelectric effect, which is the phenomenon whereby a
substance emits electrically charged particles when exposed to light. In the second
paper, Einstein provided experimental evidence for the existence of atoms by examining
the phenomena known as Brownian motion, which included microscopic particles
suspended in water.

In his third and most well-known work, "On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies,"
Einstein addressed what appeared to be a conflict between two fundamental physics
theories: James Clerk Maxwell's theory of a constant speed of light and Isaac Newton's
conceptions of absolute space and time. In order to achieve this, Einstein developed his
special theory of relativity, which postulated that the speed of light is constant in all
inertial frames and that the laws of physics apply to objects moving in all inertial frames,
regardless of their inertial frame (i.e., at constant speeds relative to one another). The
basic connection between mass and energy, formerly seen as two entirely different
notions, was the topic of a fourth study. This relationship was described by Einstein's
famous equation E = mc2, where "c" stood for the constant speed of light.

Zurich to Berlin (1906-1932)

Until 1909, when he finally secured a full-time academic position at the University of
Zurich, Einstein persisted in his work at the patent office. He moved to the University of
Berlin in 1913, when he was appointed director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for
Physics. The relocation took place at the same time as Einstein's romance with his
cousin Elsa Lowenthal, whom he would later wed after divorcing Mileva, began. The
general theory of relativity, which Einstein regarded as his best work, was published in
1915. According to this idea, both motion and gravity can have an impact on time and
space. Einstein's equivalence principle states that if light is bent by acceleration, it must
also be bent by gravity because the pull of gravity in one direction is comparable to the
acceleration of speed in the opposite direction. In 1919, two expeditions sent to conduct
research during a solar eclipse discovered that light rays from far-off stars were
deflected or bent by the gravity of the sun in precisely the way Einstein had predicted.

The London Times proclaimed a "Revolution in Science" and a "New Theory of the
Universe" after the general theory of relativity, which was the first significant theory of
gravity since Newton's, more than 250 years earlier. Beginning his globe tour, Einstein
gave speeches in front of large audiences in the United States, Great Britain, France,
and Japan. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1921 for his research on the
photoelectric effect because his work on relativity was still debatable at the time. Soon
after, Einstein started expanding on his ideas to create a new branch of cosmology that
argued that the cosmos could expand and contract and was dynamic rather than static.

Einstein relocates to the USA (1933-39)

Being a Jew and a longstanding pacifist, Einstein faced prejudice in Weimar Germany,
when many people were experiencing declining economic circumstances in the wake of
the Great War's loss.

Einstein decided to immigrate to the United States in December 1932, one month
before Adolf Hitler was appointed chancellor of Germany. He then accepted a position
at the recently established Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. He
would never return to his native nation.

By the time Einstein's wife Elsa passed away in 1936, he had already spent more than
ten years working on his quest to develop a single theory that encompassed both the
physical and universal principles. As a result, Einstein lost touch with many of his
colleagues who were more concerned with the implications of the quantum theory than
with relativity.
The Later Years of Einstein (1939-1955)

Einstein's theories, which included his equation E=mc2, helped lay the groundwork for
the creation of the atomic bomb in the late 1930s. Leo Szilard, a Hungarian physicist,
urged Einstein to write to President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1939 encouraging him to
approve financing for uranium development before Germany might gain the upper hand.
The United States government mistrusted Einstein's socialist and pacifist ideals,
therefore he was never invited to take part in the ensuing Manhattan Project. Einstein
became a citizen of the United States in 1940 but kept his Swiss citizenship. David Ben-
Gurion, the prime minister of Israel, offered Einstein the position of president of Israel in
1952, but he turned it down.

In the final years of his life, Einstein persisted in his search for a comprehensive field
theory. He did, however, leave it unfinished when he passed away from an aortic
aneurysm five years later, despite having published an essay on the subject in Scientific
American in 1950. As physicists began to solve the riddle of the so-called "strong force"
(the gaping hole in his unified field theory) and satellites further supported the tenets of
his cosmology, Einstein's prestige and stature in the area of physics only expanded in
the decades that followed his passing.
Elon Musk
Chief Executive Officer

Early Years
Musk was born in Pretoria, South Africa,
on June 28, 1971. When Musk was
younger, his parents and physicians
demanded a hearing test because he was
so engrossed in his invention-related
daydreams.

When Musk was 10 years old, just around

the time of his parents' divorce, he started
to get interested in computers. He learned
how to program on his own, and at the age
of 12, he sold his first piece of software—a
game he had made called Blastar.

Musk was a bookish, withdrawn, and short

student in elementary school. He went through a growth spurt, was bullied until he was
15 years old, and learnt karate and wrestling as self-defense techniques.

Family
The oldest female model to appear in a Covergirl commercial is Musk's mother, Maye
Musk, a Canadian. In order to support her family while Musk was growing up, she once
worked five jobs.

An accomplished South African engineer, Errol Musk, is Musk's father.

Early years of Musk's life were spent in South Africa with his sister Tosca, brother
Kimbal, and family. He was ten when his parents split up.

Education
Musk relocated to Canada in 1989 when he was 17 years old to attend Queen's
University and avoid serving in the South African military's conscription program. Musk
became a citizen of Canada that year, partly because he thought it would be simpler to
become an American citizen in that way.

Musk left Canada in 1992 to attend the University of Pennsylvania to study physics and
business. He earned an economics undergraduate degree before staying on to earn a
second bachelor's in physics.
Musk moved to Stanford University in California to seek a PhD in energy physics after
leaving Penn. He left Stanford after just two days to join the Internet boom, starting his
first firm, Zip2 Corporation, in 1995. However, his decision was made at the exact right
time. In 2002, Musk acceded to citizenship.

His Private Life: Spouses and his children

Musk has wed twice. He married Justine Wilson in 2000, and the two went on to have
six kids together. Their first kid passed away from sudden infant death syndrome in
2002 at the age of 10 weeks (SIDS). Griffin and Xavier, twins, and Kai, Saxon, and
Damian, triplets, were born in 2004. Musk and Wilson have had five other kids together
(born in 2006).

Musk met actress Talulah Riley after a bitter divorce with Wilson. The pair wed in 2010.
Despite divorcing in 2012, they remarried in 2013. In the end, they divorced in 2016.

Some of his Famous Companies

Zip2 Corporation
Together with his brother Kimbal Musk, Musk founded his first business, Zip2
Corporation, in 1995. The New York Times and the Chicago Tribune both quickly
started using Zip2, an online city guide, to publish their new websites with original
material. For $307 million in cash and $34 million in stock options, Zip2 was acquired by
a division of Compaq Computer Corporation in 1999.

PayPal
The proceeds from the sale of Zip2 were utilized by Elon and Kimbal Musk to launch the
online financial services and payments business X.com in 1999. The next year, PayPal
as we know it today was founded as a result of the acquisition of X.com.

When eBay purchased PayPal in October 2002 for $1.5 billion in stock, Elon Musk
made his first billion dollars. Musk had 11% of the PayPal stock prior to the sale.

SpaceX
Space Exploration Technologies Corporation, or SpaceX, was formed by Musk in 2002
with the goal of developing spaceships for private space travel. In an effort to replace
NASA's own space shuttle missions, NASA gave SpaceX a contract in 2008 to handle
cargo transport for the International Space Station, with intentions to include crew
transport in the future.

TESLA Motors
Musk is a co-founder, CEO, and product architect at Tesla Motors, a business founded
in 2003 with a focus on mass-market, reasonably priced electric vehicles as well as
battery goods and solar roofs. Musk handles all product development, engineering and
design of the company's goods.

Twitter
Following months of back and forth, Musk finally acquired Twitter in October 2022 and
was named the social media company's CEO.
Alexander Graham Bell
Inventor

Early Life, Education, and Early Inventions

Eliza Grace Symonds, who was Alexander

Graham Bell's mother, was present at his
birth on March 3, 1847, in Edinburgh,
Scotland, UK.

His father, Alexander Melville Bell, was a

professor of speech elocution at the
University of Edinburgh. His father also wrote
definitive books about speech and elocution,
which sold very well in the UK and North
America.

The young Alexander was home-schooled

until he was 11, following which he attended
Edinburgh’s Royal High School for four years: he enjoyed science, but did not do well
academically.

He travelled to London, England, at the age of 15, where he joined his grandfather.
Bell's grandfather taught him at home, which appeared to bring out the best in him once
more. He began attending Weston House Academy in Elgin, Scotland, when he was 16
years old. There, he studied Greek and Latin and made some money by instructing
elocution.

He attempted to create a talking robot with his brother when he was 16 years old. They
constructed a head that looks genuine and a windpipe. A few identifiable syllables might
be made by the mouth when air was expelled through the windpipe.

For the following few years, Bell changed schools frequently, either to teach elocution or
further his own education.

Canada
Bell continued to do his own sound and speech research despite his frequent moves.
He put in a lot of effort at work, and by the time he was 20 he had returned to his
family's house in London due to his poor health.

Bell's younger brothers both succumbed to tuberculosis by the middle of 1870, when he
was 23 years old. Alexander's parents were concerned that he might meet the same
end as Bell because of his weakened health. He was now the only one of them who had
lived.

When Bell was younger, his father traveled to Canada, where he discovered that his
precarious health had significantly improved. By the end of 1870, his remaining family
members had moved to Brantford, Ontario, in Canada as a result of his new decision.
Thankfully, Alexander Graham Bell's condition started to get better.

Bell initially put the Mohawk language in writing while he was residing in Brentford. He
was appointed an Honorary Chief by the Mohawk people.

USA
Bell began teaching deaf individuals to talk when he launched his School of Vocal
Physiology and Mechanics of Speech in Boston, Massachusetts, when he was just 25
years old. He was appointed Professor of Vocal Physiology and Elocution at the Boston
University School of Oratory at age 26, despite not having a college degree.

The Telephone's History

Bell had a strong ambition to create a device that could mimic human speech when he
was changing jobs and locales all around the UK and North America.

Due to his mother's loss of hearing and Bell's father's invention of a method for teaching
the deaf to speak, Bell's life had become one of speech. His persistent fixation with the
idea of automating human speech nearly caused him to pass out in the UK.

Bell had written about his work in a letter to the linguist Alexander Ellis when he was just
19 years old. Ellis informed Bell that Hermann von Helmholtz's research in Germany
was comparable to his own.

Telephone patenting
In 1875, when Bell was 27 years old, he and his investors decided it was time to start
utilizing patents to safeguard his intellectual property.

For speech transmission over an electrical wire, Bell had a patent written. In those days,
UK patents could only be issued if they had not already been authorized in another
nation, thus the applicant filed for this patent there. After the patent was approved in the
UK, Bell instructed his counsel to wait to submit an application there.

America's situation had gotten murkier by 1876. Elisha Gray submitted a US patent
application for a phone in that same month that featured a variable resistance based on
a liquid: salt water.

The liquid resistor in the transmitter converted the sound-induced vibrations of a needle
coupled to a diaphragm into an electric circuit. As the needle's position in the liquid
varied, so did the electrical resistance of the circuit, converting sound into an equivalent
electrical signal. The receiver recreated the sound that had been broadcast using a
vibrating needle submerged in liquid that was attached to a vibrating diaphragm.

Bell's legal representative submitted his US patent application on the same day.

Bell finally succeeded in making his invention function using a Gray-inspired design in
March 1876. Gray therefore asserted that he created the telephone.

However, Bell had already invented the idea before Gray, and he never employed a
water-based variable resistor in any of the commercially available demonstrations of a
functional phone that he presented or built. In actuality, Bell's patent for a variable
resistor based on liquid mercury was filed in 1875, predating Gray's invention for a
similar device.

Bell had to fend off around 600 lawsuits before he could finally rest in bed at night as
the legally acknowledged inventor of the telephone.

Bell began transmitting voice messages across a line several kilometers long in Ontario
by the summer of 1876.

Bell’s Death
On August 2, 1922, in Nova Scotia, Canada, Alexander Graham Bell passed away at
the age of 75. He had been suffering from complications from diabetes for a few
months. His two daughters, Elsie and Marian, as well as his wife, Mabel, survived him.

In honor of him, all phones in North America were turned off during his funeral.

The decibel, a smaller unit of sound intensity, is more commonly referred to as the bel,
which bears Bell's name because it was developed at Bell Laboratories.
Thomas Edison
American Inventor and Businessman

The greatest inventor in human history

could be Thomas Edison. In his name,
there are more than 1000 patents. He
made a lot of innovations that still
significantly impact how we live.
Additionally, he was a business owner.
The development, construction, and
testing of many of his innovations took
place in his expansive invention laboratory
with the assistance of many people who
worked for him. The creation of General
Electric, one of the largest firms in the
modern world, was made possible by
Edison's inventions.

Early Life
On February 11, 1847, Thomas Edison
was born in Milan, Ohio. He spent the
majority of his boyhood in Port Huron, Michigan, where his family shortly relocated.
Unexpectedly, he struggled in school and ultimately had to be taught at home by his
mother. Thomas was a resourceful young man who hawked newspapers, candies, and
veggies aboard trains. He once rescued a youngster from a speeding train. The boy's
father paid Edison back by teaching him how to operate a telegraph. Thomas developed
an interest in communications while working as a telegraph operator, and this passion
would lead to several of his innovations.

Thomas Edison, a Telegrapher

A nearly disastrous incident that occurred to the young man when Edison was
employed by the railroad turned out to be fortunate. The father of a three-year-old who
Edison saved from being struck by a careening train thanked him by giving him
instruction in using a telegraph as a prize. He was capable of operating telegraphs by
the time he was 15 years old.

Edison served as a replacement telegrapher for those who had served in the Civil War
for the following five years as he iterated throughout the Midwest. He read a lot,
researched telegraph technology, experimented with it, and learned about electrical
science in his personal time.
At the age of 19, Edison relocated to Louisville, Kentucky, where he began working for
The Associated Press. He could read and experiment more because he worked the
night shift. He developed a free-flowing way of thinking and asking questions,
establishing his own truths via unbiased investigation and experimenting.

Because early Morse code was written on a piece of paper, Edison initially excelled at
his telegraph profession and his partial deafness was not a barrier. But as technology
improved, receivers became more and more fitted with a sounding key, allowing
telegraphers to "read" messages based on the sound of the clicks. Due to the lack of
employment prospects, Edison was adversely affected.

When Edison came home in 1868, he discovered that his father had lost his job and that
his dear mother was developing a mental disorder. The family was on the verge of
famine. Edison came to the conclusion that he needed to manage his future.

He traveled to Boston on the advice of a friend, where he found employment with the
Western Union Company. Edison cherished the fact that Boston was then America's
hub for culture and science. He created and trademarked an electronic voting recorder
for the legislature in his spare time to efficiently count votes.

Massachusetts legislators, meanwhile, had no interest. They noted that the majority of
lawmakers preferred slow vote tallying. They needed more time to persuade their fellow
lawmakers.

Children
Edison married Mary Stilwell, a 16-year-old worker at one of his companies, in 1871.
They produced three kids—Marion, Thomas, and William—during their 13-year
marriage; William went on to become an inventor.

Mary passed away in 1884 at the age of 29 from what was likely a brain tumor. Edison
married Mina Miller, who was 19 years his junior, two years later.

Menlo, Park
Thomas Edison developed his research facilities at Menlo Park, New Jersey. The first
company or organization founded solely for the purpose of invention was this one. After
conducting study and applying science to real-world problems that could be made and
constructed on a huge scale. There were numerous workers for Edison in Menlo Park.
These employees worked diligently to develop Edison's ideas into innovations since
they were themselves inventors.

Most Famous Inventions

Phonograph - It was Edison's first significant innovation, which catapulted him to fame.
The first device that could both record and playback sound was this one.
Light Bulb - Edison developed the first commercially viable electric light bulb that could
be used in homes, while not having created the first electric light. Along with safety
fuses and light socket on/off switches, he also created other components that were
required for the light bulb to be usable in houses.

The motion picture - Edison put a lot of effort into developing the motion picture camera
and advancing the development of useful movies.

Death
In his West Orange, New Jersey, home, Glenmont, Edison passed away on October 18,
1931, as a result of complications from diabetes. He was 84 years of age.

To honor his departure, numerous towns, businesses, and organizations all across the
world dimmed their lights or briefly shut off their electricity.
Wolfgang Mozart
Composer of Classical Music

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, also known as

Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus
Theophilus Mozart, was a very unique
person. At the ages of three and five, he
began playing the piano, and at the age of
fourteen, he finished writing an opera.

As a young prodigy, Mozart produced

countless symphonies, operas, and other
works throughout his distinguished career.
He was a multi-instrumentalist pianist with
great talent. Mozart is recognized as one of
the greatest classical composers of all time,
along with Beethoven and Brahms.

The Early Years of Wolfgang Amadeus

Mozart

He was born in Salzburg, Austria, on January 27, 1756. Leopold, his father, was an
accomplished musician who wrote a book on violin technique. In the middle of the
1760s, his mother Anna Maria Pertl, whom Wolfgang adored, led the family on a
number of musical trips. Mozart had established himself as a mainstay of the classical
music scene by the age of 13. His sister Maria Anna was also a child genius, but
regrettably at the time, women were not as encouraged as men to pursue musical
careers, so she never realized her full potential.

Amadeus could play the following instruments:

Harpsichord
Keyboard
Organ
Piano
Viola
Violin

The first extended trip Mozart took with his father was successful, and music historians
have discovered letters in which the father extols the virtues of his son's
accomplishments. But because of their great talent, both people occasionally clashed
with one another. After first expressing romantic interest in her sister, Mozart eventually
crossed paths with Constanze, a gifted singer, in Austria. Over the years, Mozart and
his wife struggled to get along. According to legend, Leopold did not want Amadeus to
get married since it would have derailed his developing musical career, but Constanze
tore up the stern letters. Karl Thomas and Franz Xaver were reared by Wolfgang and
Constanze together. Sadly, four additional children did not make it through their early
years.

Journey as a Composer

In Italy, Mozart was usually recognized. In Milan, he received an opera commission; in

Rome, the Pope made him a member of an honorary knightly order; and in Bologna,
Italy, the Accademia Filarmonica granted him membership despite the requirement that
applicants be at least twenty years old. He composed his first large-scale opera seria
works, or court opera on serious issues, Mitridate (1770), Ascanio in Alba (1771), and
Lucio Silla (1772), as well as his first string quartets, during these years of travel in Italy
and intermissions in Salzburg. He restarted writing symphonies in Salzburg in late 1771.
(Nos. 14–21).

For Mozart's talents, Paris was a much bigger stage. In a letter to his son, his father
pushed the boy to visit Paris because "from Paris the fame of a man of great genius
reverberate over the whole world." But after struggling for nine trying months in Paris,
from March 1778 to January 1779, Mozart returned once more to Salzburg, having
failed to establish a foothold and feeling saddened by the entire experience, which had
included his mother's passing in the middle of his stay in Paris. The Sinfonia
Concertante for four solo wind instruments and orchestra, the Concerto for flute and
harp, various chamber pieces, and the ballet score Les Petits riens were all composed
by him in Paris after he was unsuccessful in getting hired for an opera. He also started
teaching lessons to earn money.

From the time he was twenty-five years old until his death at age thirty-five, Mozart lived
in Vienna and witnessed some of the biggest changes in music history. In these 10
years, Mozart's music advanced quickly beyond the capabilities of many of his
contemporaries; it displayed concepts and elaboration techniques that few could imitate,
and to many, the late Mozart appeared to be a challenging composer.

The Later Life and Death of Mozart

Although it is claimed that Mozart's nemesis Antonio Salieri had something to do with
his passing in the well-known 1984 film Amadeus, this has never been conclusively
established. In actuality, the circumstances are still up for question among many music
historians. However, Mozart's personal doctor determined that a severe fever was to
blame for his passing. It is well known that Mozart experienced spells of depression in
addition to financial difficulties as a result of his extravagant spending in his final years.
He may have had bipolar disorder, which would have caused his mood swings between
exhilaration and depression and been reflected in his music, according to some
historians. He overcame some of these financial difficulties thanks to the success of his
opera The Magic Flute. At the time of his passing, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was 35
years old. He was buried in Vienna, Austria.

Leonardo da Vinci
Polymath

In 1452, Da Vinci was born in Anchiano,

Tuscany (now Italy), not far from the town
of Vinci, which gave him the surname we
now identify with him. Since he resided
close to Florence, he was also known as "Il
Florentine" or just "Leonardo" in his own
time. He was renowned for being an artist,
inventor, and philosopher.

His parents were not married, and when he

was a very little child, Caterina, a peasant,
started a new family by marrying another
man. He resided on the Vinci estate owned
by his father's family, Ser Peiro, a lawyer
and notary, starting about the age of 5.
Additionally, Da Vinci was raised by his
uncle, who shared a strong love of nature
with him.

Early Professional
Da Vinci didn't have a formal education beyond the fundamentals of reading, writing,
and math, but his father recognized his creative talent and apprenticed him to the
renowned Florentine sculptor and painter Andrea del Verrocchio when he was about 15
years old. Da Vinci studied mechanical arts and improved his painting and sculpture
techniques for roughly ten years.

The Florence Painters' Guild offered da Vinci admission when he was 20 years old in
1472, but he stayed with Verrocchio until he was an independent master in 1478. He
started working on The Adoration of the Magi around 1482 at Florence's San Donato, a
Scopeto monastery.

But soon after moving to Milan to work for the governing Sforza family as an engineer,
painter, architect, designer of court festivals, and—most notably—a sculpture, da Vinci
never finished that task.

The family commissioned da Vinci to produce a beautiful, 16-foot-tall bronze equestrian

statue in Francesco Sforza's memory. After 12 years of intermittent effort, the project
was completed in 1493 with a clay model that could be seen. However, because to the
impending war, the bronze intended for the sculpture had to be converted into guns,
and the clay replica was obliterated in the fighting that ensued after the ruling Sforza
duke was overthrown in 1499.

From "The Last Supper"

Two of Leonardo da Vinci's existing works are among the most well-known and admired
paintings in the entire world, despite the fact that comparatively few of his paintings and
sculptures have survived, in part due to his overall output being quite small.

The first is da Vinci's "The Last Supper," which was created between 1495 and 1498
while he was living in Milan. "The Last Supper" is a tempera and oil mural on plaster
that was made for the refectory of the city's Santa Maria delle Grazie Monastery. The
only remaining fresco by the artist, it is also referred to as "The Cenacle," and it is
roughly 15 by 29 feet in size. When Jesus Christ addresses the Apostles at the
Passover dinner and predicts that "One of you shall betray me," the scene is depicted.

Each Apostle's unique emotional expression and body language are outstanding
aspects of the picture. Generations of painters have been impacted by this composition,
which places Jesus in the middle of the Apostles while isolating him from them.

To "Mona Lisa"
Da Vinci may have first gone to Venice and subsequently to Florence when the French
seized Milan in 1499 and the Sforza dynasty fled. The figure seen in "La Gioconda," a
21 by 31-inch painting better known today as "Mona Lisa," was painted there by
Leonardo da Vinci between around 1503 and 1506, and has long been the topic of
conjecture due to her enigmatic small smile.

She was often frequently identified as the courtesan Mona Lisa Gherardini, but recent
research suggests she was actually Francisco del Giocondo's wife, Lisa del Giocondo.
The portrait is currently housed at the Louvre Museum in Paris, France, where it draws
millions of tourists each year. It is the sole remaining da Vinci portrait from this time
period.

Around 1506, Leonardo da Vinci left for Milan with a number of his pupils and followers,
including the young aristocrat Francesco Melzi, who would remain the artist's closest
friend until his passing. Ironically, Gian Giacomo Trivulzio, the victor against Duke
Ludovico Sforza, commissioned da Vinci to create his elaborate equestrian-statue
monument. It was also never finished (this time because Trivulzio scaled back his
plan). Da Vinci lived in Milan for seven years before spending three more years there
after Milan's political unrest made it uninhabitable once more.

Philosophies and inventions

Da Vinci had many interests besides only great art. He conducted extensive research
on a variety of topics, including nature, mechanics, anatomy, physics, architecture, and
weapons. He frequently produced precise, functional blueprints for inventions like the
bicycle, helicopter, submarine, and military tank that would not be realized for
generations. He was "like a guy who awoke too early in the darkness, while the others
were all still asleep," as Sigmund Freud put it.

His many interests might be said to be united by a number of themes. Most significantly,
he held that "saper vedere" (or "learning how to see") was essential to experiencing life
to the fullest extent possible and that it was humanity's most vital sense. He believed
that the fields of science and art should inform one another rather than being seen as
separate but complementary disciplines.

He left many of his paintings and projects unfinished, probably as a result of his wide
range of interests. He devoted a lot of time to immersing himself in nature, testing
scientific theories, dissecting human and animal corpses, and reflecting on and
documenting his findings.

Notebook by Leonardo da Vinci

Early in the 1490s, Leonardo da Vinci started filling notebooks with information on four
main subjects: painting, architecture, mechanics, and human anatomy. He produced
thousands of pages of meticulously detailed illustrations and dense commentary, some
of which was difficult for others to read due to his left-handed "mirror script."

Following his death, the notebooks—often referred to as da Vinci's manuscripts and

"codices"—were dispersed, and today they are kept in museum collections. One such
example is a plan for a 65-foot mechanical bat described in the Codex Atlanticus, which
is essentially a flying machine based on the physiology of the bat and the laws of
physics and aeronautics.

A larger audience gained new insight into the human anatomy because to da Vinci's
anatomical studies of the skeleton, muscles, brain, digestive, and reproductive systems
found in other notebooks. Da Vinci's notes didn't see publication until the 1500s, though,
so their impact on scientific development throughout the Renaissance was little.

Leonardo da Vinci's Cause of Death

Da Vinci permanently left Italy in 1516 when Francis I, the king of France, bestowed
upon him the title of "Premier Painter and Engineer and Architect to the King," allowing
him the freedom to create art at his own pace while residing in the Château of Cloux, a
country manor house close to Amboise.

Da Vinci's final years may not have been particularly joyful ones, even being
accompanied by Melzi, to whom he would bequeath his estate, as seen by the caustic
tone in some of his correspondence from this time. Melzi eventually got married and
had a son, whose descendants sold da Vinci's estate after he passed away.

Age 67, Da Vinci passed away in 1519 in Cloux (now Clos-Lucé). In close proximity, he
was laid to rest in the Saint-Florentin Palace Church. The church was largely destroyed
during the French Revolution and its remnants were entirely destroyed in the early
1800s, making it impossible to pinpoint the the location of Leonardo da Vinci's grave.