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People of the Cold War

  • John F. KennedyJohn Fitzgerald Kennedy entered the world on the 29th of May 1917 in Brookline, Massachusetts. His father Joseph P. Kennedy Sr.
  • Ronald ReaganRonald Wilson Reagan was born on the 6th of February 1911, in an apartment located in Tampico, Illinois. His mother Nelle Clyde Wilson led prayer meetings at…
  • George H. W. BushOn the 9th of June 1943, George Herbert Walker Bush became one of the youngest pilots ever commissioned in the United States Navy, a distinction that would…
  • Richard NixonRichard Milhous Nixon was born on the 9th of January 1913, in a small house built by his father on a lemon ranch in Yorba Linda, California.
  • Nikita KhrushchevNikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev was born on the 15th of April 1894 in Kalinovka, a small village in western Russia. His parents were poor peasants who…
  • Winston ChurchillOn the 30th of November 1874, Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill was born at his family's ancestral home, Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire.
  • Joseph StalinJoseph Stalin was born Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili on the 5th of March 1878 in Gori, Georgia. His father Besarion worked as a shoemaker until his…
  • Jimmy CarterJames Earl Carter Jr. was born on the 1st of October 1924, in the small town of Plains, Georgia. He entered the world at the Wise Sanitarium where his mother…
  • Harold WilsonJames Harold Wilson stood on the doorstep of 10 Downing Street as an eight-year-old boy in a photograph that would later become famous.
  • Mohammad Reza PahlaviMohammad Reza Pahlavi entered the world on the 26th of October 1919 in Tehran. He was born to Reza Khan, a Brigadier-General of the Persian Cossack Brigade…
  • Margaret ThatcherMargaret Hilda Roberts was born on the 13th of October 1925 in Grantham, Lincolnshire. Her father Alfred Roberts owned a tobacconist and grocery shop that…
  • Pierre TrudeauPierre Trudeau was born at home in Outremont, Quebec, on the 18th of October 1919. His father Charles-Émile Trudeau owned a gas station chain and the…
  • Che GuevaraOn the 14th of May 1928, Ernesto Guevara de la Serna was born into an upper-class family in Rosario, Argentina. His father, a staunch supporter of…
  • Dwight D. EisenhowerDwight David Eisenhower was born in Denison, Texas, on the 14th of October 1890. His family moved to Abilene, Kansas, the following year and lived there for…
  • Ferdinand MarcosFerdinand Marcos entered the world on the 11th of September 1917 in Sarrat, Ilocos Norte. His father Mariano was a lawyer and congressman who later died as a…
  • Helmut KohlOn the 3rd of April 1930, a boy named Helmut Kohl was born in the industrial city of Ludwigshafen. He grew up as the third child of Hans Kohl and Cäcilie…
  • Lyndon B. JohnsonLyndon Baines Johnson was born on the 27th of August 1908, in a small farmhouse near Stonewall, Texas. His family lived on the Pedernales River where the…
  • Mao ZedongMao Zedong was born on the 26th of December 1893 in Shaoshan village, Hunan. His father Mao Yichang had risen from poverty to become one of the wealthiest…
  • Fidel CastroFidel Alejandro Castro Ruz was born out of wedlock on the 13th of August 1926 at his father's farm in Birán, Cuba. His father, Ángel Castro y Argiz, had…
  • Mikhail GorbachevMikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev was born on the 2nd of March 1931 in Privolnoye, a small village in the North Caucasus region of what is now Russia.
  • François MitterrandFrançois Maurice Adrien Marie Mitterrand was born on the 26th of October 1916 in Jarnac, Charente. His family was devoutly Catholic and conservative.
  • Harry S. TrumanHarry S. Truman was born in Lamar, Missouri, on the 8th of May 1884. He grew up as the oldest child of John Anderson Truman and Martha Ellen Young Truman.
  • Leonid BrezhnevLeonid Ilyich Brezhnev was born on the 19th of December 1906 in Kamenskoye, Ukraine. His father worked as a metalworker and his mother came from Yenakiieve.
  • Henry KissingerHeinz Alfred Kissinger was born on the 27th of May 1923 in Fürth, Bavaria. His family lived under Nazi rule when he was nine years old and Adolf Hitler…
  • Charles de GaulleCharles de Gaulle was born on the 22nd of November 1890 in the northern French city of Lille. He entered the military academy at Saint-Cyr in October 1910…
  • Clement AttleeClement Richard Attlee was born on the 3rd of January 1883 in Putney, Surrey. He grew up in a two-storey villa with a large garden and tennis court.
  • Yuri AndropovYuri Vladimirovich Andropov was born on the 15th of June 1914 in Stanitsa Nagutskaya, a town that now belongs to Stavropol Krai.
  • Kim Il SungKim Song Ju arrived in the small village of Namni near Pyongyang on the 15th of April 1912. His family belonged to the Jeonju Kim clan, which had settled in…
  • Konrad AdenauerKonrad Adenauer was born on the 5th of January 1876 in Cologne, Rhenish Prussia. He grew up as the third of five children to Johann Konrad Adenauer and…
  • Konstantin ChernenkoKonstantin Chernenko was born to a poor family in the Siberian village of Bolshaya Tes on the 24th of September 1911. He joined the Komsomol Communist Youth…
  • Francisco FrancoOn the 4th of December 1892, Francisco Franco was born in the Calle Frutos Saavedra of Ferrol, Galicia. He entered the Infantry Academy in Toledo at age…
  • Aleksandr SolzhenitsynAleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn was born on the 11th of December 1918 in Kislovodsk. His father Isaakiy Semyonovich Solzhenitsyn died in a hunting accident…
  • Mobutu Sese SekoIn 1949, a young Joseph-Désiré Mobutu stowed away aboard a boat traveling down the Congo River to Léopoldville. He was only nineteen years old and had been…
  • Willy BrandtHerbert Ernst Karl Frahm was born on the 18th of December 1913 in the Free City of Lübeck. His mother Martha Luise Wilhelmine Frahm worked as a cashier for a…
  • Claude ShannonClaude Elwood Shannon was born on the 30th of April 1916 in a hospital near Petoskey, Michigan. His family lived in the small town of Gaylord where he spent…
  • Josip Broz TitoJosip Broz was born on the 7th of May 1892 in Kumrovec, a small village in northern Croatia. At that time, the land belonged to the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
  • Imre NagyImre Nagy was born prematurely on the 7th of June 1896 in Kaposvár, a small town within the Kingdom of Hungary. His father József Nagy worked as a carriage…
  • Wojciech JaruzelskiIn June 1941, a young boy named Wojciech Jaruzelski stood on a railway platform in Poland. He watched his family stripped of their possessions before being…
  • George H. W. BushOn the 12th of June 1943, a young man named George Herbert Walker Bush stood on the deck of the USS San Jacinto. He was only nineteen years old and had just…
  • Andrei SakharovAndrei Dmitrievich Sakharov entered the world on the 21st of May 1921 in Moscow. His father, Dmitri Ivanovich Sakharov, worked as a physics professor at the…
  • Efraín Ríos MonttEfraín Ríos Montt was born on the 16th of June 1926 into a large ladino family of the rural middle class in Huehuetenango, a small city in the highlands of…
  • Urho KekkonenUrho Kekkonen was born on the 3rd of September 1900 inside a small log cabin called Lepikon torppa in Pielavesi. His father Juho worked as a forestry manager…
  • Erich HoneckerErich Honecker was born on the 25th of August 1912 in Neunkirchen, a town in what is now Saarland. His father Wilhelm worked as a coal miner and political…
  • Samantha SmithNovember 1982 marked a turning point in global tension when Yuri Andropov succeeded Leonid Brezhnev as leader of the Soviet Union.
  • Bernard BaruchBernard Mannes Baruch entered the world on the 19th of August 1870 in Camden, South Carolina. He was born into a Jewish family where his father Simon worked…