Significant People Choices
My reasons for choosing my three people:
- Alan Turing: I know basic info on him and I would like to know more on him. so ill be learning also as well as the recipients.
- Noor Inayat Khan: I was swayed by the documents on offer at the national archives and deserves recognition for the courage shown in her field of work.
- Captain James Cook: I know nothing about Cook but I was intrigued to know more about him.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/timelines/z8bgr82
http://www.softschools.com/facts/scientists/alan_turing_facts/830/
http://www.facts-about.org.uk/famous-people-facts-starting-with-a/alan-turing.htm
http://primaryfacts.com/3062/interesting-alan-turing-facts/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Turing
http://www.bbc.co.uk/timelines/z8bgr82
http://www.biography.com/people/alan-turing-9512017
- Alan Turing OBE FRS 1912-1954
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Born
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23 June 1912
Maida Vale, London, England
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Died
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7 June 1954 (aged 41)
Wilmslow, Cheshire, England
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- Fellowship of the Royal Society (FRS) substantial contribution to the improvement of natural knowledge, including mathematics, engineering science and medical science.
- Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (OBE) rewarding contributions to the arts and sciences, work with charitable and welfare organisations and public service outside the Civil Service
During World War 2, Turing worked at Bletchley Park and was involved in breaking the German Enigma Machine codes.
In 1948 he wrote a chess programme for a computer that had yet to be invented
In 1936, he came up with the idea of a machine that was able to compute anything that could be computed. This was known as the Turing Machine and led to the modern computer.
During World War II, he worked for the Government Code and Cypher School where Alan Turing would become most famous for being the person to break the code enabling the reading of the Enigma machine.
With his invention, the Turing machine, he used those concepts in what can be called the first computer.
Urban Legend that the Apple logo was designed after him.
The machine that Turing used to break the German Enigma Code was called 'The Bombe'.
Enabled the Allies to defeat the Nazis in many crucial engagements, including the Battle of the Atlantic; it has been estimated that this work shortened the war in Europe by more than two years and saved over fourteen million lives
NASA named spacecraft after his ships.
Cook explored and mapped more territory than any navigator of his era, and his achievements later saw him honored by NASA. Cook’s HMS Discovery was one of several historical vessels that inspired the name of the third space shuttle, and NASA later named their final shuttle “Endeavour” after the ship he commanded on his first circumnavigation of the globe. When the shuttle Discovery made its final space flight in 2011, its crew carried a special medallion made by the Royal Society in honor of Cook.
Natives mistook him for a god when he landed in the Hawaiian Islands.
During Cook’s third voyage, he became the first European to set foot on Hawaii, which he called the “Sandwich Islands” after his patron the Earl of Sandwich. Hawaiians at Kealakekua Bay celebrated Cook’s January 1779 landing with joyous celebrations, and for good reason: by some strange coincidence, the explorer’s arrival coincided with an annual festival honoring the Hawaiian fertility god Lono. Since the natives had never seen white men or massive sailing ships like Cook’s, they assumed he was their deity and lavished him with feasts and gifts.
Cook’s first voyage included a secret mission from the British government.
Cook’s career as an explorer began in August 1768, when he left England on HM Bark Endeavour with nearly 100 crewmen in tow. Their journey was ostensibly a scientific expedition—they were charged with sailing to Tahiti to observe the transit of Venus across the face of the sun—but it also had a hidden military agenda. Cook carried sealed orders instructing him to seek out the “Great Southern Continent,” an undiscovered landmass that was believed to lurk somewhere near the bottom of the globe
He was an expert mapmaker.
Cook first rose to prominence as a cartographer during the Seven Years’ War, when his detailed charts of the Saint Lawrence River helped the British pull off a surprise attack against French-held Quebec. In the early 1760s, he was given a ship and tasked with charting the island of Newfoundland off the coast of Canada. The map he produced was so accurate that it was still in use in the 20th century. Cook’s skill at charting the seas would later become a crucial tool in his explorer’s arsenal. He won command of his first round-the-world voyage in part because he could be trusted to navigate in uncharted territory and bring home precise maps of the lands he discovered.
Cook joined the Royal Navy relatively late in life.
Cook worked on a Yorkshire farm in his youth before winning an apprenticeship with a merchant sailing company at age 17. He cut his teeth as a mariner on shipping voyages in the choppy waters of North and Baltic Seas, and spent the next decade rising through the ranks and mastering the art of navigation. He was being groomed to become a captain, but in 1755, he shocked his superiors by quitting his merchant sailing career and enlisting in the British Royal Navy as a common seaman. Cook was 26—far older than most new recruits—yet it didn’t take long for the Navy to recognize his talent. He was promoted to ship’s master in only two years, and later became one of the first men in British naval history to rise through the enlisted ranks and take command of his own vessel.
Captain James Cook FRS RN (Fellowship of Royal Society) (Royal Navy)
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Born
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James Cook was born on 27 October 1728 in a small village near Middlesbrough in Yorkshire
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Died
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14 February 1779
Kealakekua Bay, Hawaii
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Died: Killed by natives at the Hawaiian Islands on February 14, 1779
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Cook
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/cook_captain_james.shtml
http://www.history.com/news/10-things-you-may-not-know-about-captain-james-cook
http://www.ducksters.com/biography/explorers/captain_james_cook.php
Noor Inayat Khan was born on New Year's Day 1914 in Moscow to an Indian father and an American mother.
Khan was a wartime British secret agent of Indian descent who was the first female radio operator sent into Nazi-occupied France by the Special Operations Executive (SOE)
Khan escaped to England after the fall of France and in November 1940 she joined the WAAF (Women's Auxiliary Air Force). In late 1942, she was recruited to join SOE as a radio operator
in June 1943 she was flown to France to become the radio operator for the 'Prosper' resistance network in Paris, with the codename 'Madeleine'.
Many members of the network were arrested shortly afterwards but she chose to remain in France and spent the summer moving from place to place, trying to send messages back to London while avoiding capture.
In October, Khan was betrayed by a Frenchwoman and arrested by the Gestapo. She had unwisely kept copies of all her secret signals and the Germans were able to use her radio to trick London into sending new agents - straight into the hands of the waiting Gestapo.
For her courage, Noor Khan was posthumously awarded the George Cross in 1949.
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Nickname(s)
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"Madeleine" (Callsign: Nurse)
"Jeanne-Marie Renier"
"Nora Baker"
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Born
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2 January 1914
St. Petersburg, Russian Empire
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Died
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13 September 1944 (aged 30)
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Noor-un-Nisa Inayat Khan GC (George Cross)
Noor becomes a musician and successful writer of children's stories. (1931-1939)
http://historysheroes.e2bn.org/hero/minitimeline/4354
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noor_Inayat_Khan
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/inayat_khan_noor.shtml
