Portal:Biography

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The Biography Portal

Biography (from the Greek words bios (βιος), meaning 'life', and graphein, meaning 'to write') is a genre of literature or film which presents a relatively full account of the most interesting and important events of a notable person's life. While a biography may focus on a fictional person, the term usually refers to non-fiction works. As opposed to summaries of people's lives, such as profiles or curriculum vitae, a biography is a continuous narrative which interprets and explains the person's character, personality, and social context.

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Featured biography

Hasekura Tsunenaga was a Japanese samurai and retainer of Date Masamune, the daimyo of Sendai. He led an embassy to Mexico and then Europe between 1613 and 1620 (called the Keichō Embassy), after which he returned to Japan. He was the first-ever Japanese official ambassador to the Americas and arguably Europe, and became the key protagonist in the first recorded instance of Franco-Japanese relations. Although Hasekura's embassy created a strong impression in Europe, it happened at a time when Japan was moving towards the suppression of Christianity, so that European monarchs such as the King of Spain ultimately denied the trading agreements Hasekura had been seeking. Hasekura returned to Japan in 1620 and died of illness a year later, his embassy seemingly ending with few results in an increasingly isolationist Japan. (Read more...)

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Selected portrait

Alfred McCoy Tyner (born December 11, 1938) is a jazz pianist from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He is best known for his work with the John Coltrane Quartet, playing with Coltrane, Jimmy Garrison and Elvin Jones. His brother, Jarvis Tyner was the Communist Party USA vice-presidential candidate in 1976. (read more...)

Photo credit: Gisle Hannemyr

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Did you know...

• ...that former child actor Richard Eyer, who played the boy who runs "afowl" of the goose in William Wyler's 1956 film Friendly Persuasion, is now an elementary school teacher in Bishop, California?
• ...that 1985 NCAA hurdling champion Thomas Wilcher won the Michigan High School Athletic Association team track & field championship three consecutive times, both as an athlete and a coach?
• ...that after winning three medals at the 1992 Summer Olympics as a 16-year-old, Anita Nall retired from competitive swimming in 2000 due to chronic fatigue syndrome?

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WikiProjects

See also: Biographies of living persons

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On this day - June 9

Births

• 1640 - Leopold I, Holy Roman Emperor (d. 1705)
• 1672 - Tsar Peter I of Russia (d. 1725)
• 1843 - Bertha von Suttner, (pictured) Austrian novelist and pacifist, recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize (d. 1914)
• 1891 - Cole Porter, American composer and lyricist (d. 1964)
• 1915 - Les Paul, influential American guitarist
• 1916 - Robert McNamara, United States Secretary of Defense and president of the World Bank
• 1961 - Michael J. Fox, Canadian-born actor
• 1963 - Johnny Depp, American actor
• 1978 - Matthew Bellamy, British guitarist, keyboard player and vocalist (Muse)
• 1981 - Natalie Portman, Israeli-born actress

Deaths

• 68 - Nero, Roman Emperor (b. 37)
• 1870 - Charles Dickens, English author (b. 1812)
• 1964 - Max Aitken, 1st Baron Beaverbrook, Canadian-born business tycoon and politician (b. 1879)
• 1974 - Miguel Ángel Asturias, Guatemalan writer, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1899)

Recent days: June 8 – June 7 – June 6

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