.... the famous fifth, or parallel, postulate that one and only one line can be drawn through a point parallel to a given line. Euclid's decision to make this an axiom led to Euclidean geometry. It was not until the 19th century that this axiom was dropped and non-Euclidean geometry's were studied. The Elements is divided into 13 books. Books 1-6, plane geometry: books 7- 9, number theory: book 10, Exodus's theory of irrational numbers: books 11-13, solid geometry. The book ends with a discussion of the properties of the five regular polyhedral and a proof that there are precisely five. More than one thousand editions of The Elements have been published since it was first ....

.... on May 29,1917 in Brookline, Massachusetts. His father, Joe, Sr., was a successful businessman with many political connections. Appointed by President Roosevelt, Joe, Sr., was given the chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission and later the prestigious position of United States ambassador to Great Britain(Anderson 98). His mother, Rose, was a loving housewife and took young John on frequent trips around historic Boston learning about American revolutionary history. Both parents impressed on their children that their country had been good to the Kennedys. Whatever benefits the family received from the country they were told, must be returned by performing some service ....

.... (The Gregorian calendar was not adopted in England until 1752.) Isaac Newton came from a family of farmers but never knew his father, also named Isaac Newton, who died in October 1642, three months before his son was born. Although Isaac's father owned property and animals which made him quite a wealthy man, he was completely uneducated and could not sign his own name. How Newton was introduced to the most advanced mathematical texts of his day is slightly less clear. According to de Moivre, Newton's interest in mathematics began in the autumn of 1663 when he bought an astrology book at a fair in Cambridge and found that he could not understand the mathematics in it. A ....

.... second year of college. He and his friends were assigned thirteen honors questions in the area of electricity and magnetism. It took his friends, Derek, Gordan, and Richard, a week to complete two and a half of the problems. Hawking did the first ten in three hours, he did not complete the others because he said he did not have enough time. Once, in college, he fell down a flight of stairs. After he fell down, he could not remember anything, gradually he began remembering, until he remembered it all, which took all of two hours. graduated from Oxford University at the age of twenty in 1962. He then took a trip to Prussia with a friend. During the visit, he became il ....

.... field. Everyone knew that they had seen someone very special. This person was Jim Abbott. Jim Abbott has led an eventfully life. He brought his college team to the championship in 1985, brought Team USA to gold in 1988, and threw a no hitter against the Cleveland Indians in 1993. These achievements are not what make him so special; what makes Jim Abbott even more remarkable is that he only has one hand. As a child Jim's parents always told him that he could do anything he wanted to do. They knew that their son loved sports. They hoped that Jim would play soccer, which didn't require the use of hands, but right from the very beginning, Jim loved baseball. So, Jim's par ....

.... he has always come back to the theatre. His initial success came as a somewhat reluctant lyricist to Leonard Bernstein on West Side Story (1957) and Jule Styne on Gypsy (1959). Exciting and adventurous as those shows were in their day, and for all their enduring popularity, Sondheim's philosophy since is encapsulated in one of his song titles: "I Never Do Anything Twice". His first score as composer-lyricist was A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum (1962) - a show so funny few people spotted how experimental it was: it's still the only successful musical farce. In the following three decades, critics detected a Sondheim style - a fondness for the harmonic langu ....

.... which disturbed her perception of the world as beautiful. She hated dirty diapers, upset stomachs, and cleaning house; they were not fit for a lady. She taught her children to always act with decorum. She adored the singing of the birds and the smell of flowers. Her children were expected to behave properly and to please her, always. Mrs. Hemingway treated Ernest, when he was a small boy, as if he were a female baby doll and she dressed him accordingly. This arrangement was alright until Ernest got to the age when he wanted to be a "gun-toting Pawnee Bill". He began, at that time, to pull away from his mother, and never forgave her for his humiliation. The town of Oak Pa ....

.... well off as some of the other noble families. Between 81 BC and 79 BC, Caesar served in Asia Minor on the personal staff of Marcus Minucius Thermus, the praetor. He was then sent on a mission to King Nicomedes of Bithynia. During the conquest of the island Lesbos, Caesar gained a prize for bravery. Later he was captured by pirates and paid the usual ransom of 25 talents (500 kg) of silver. When Sulla (the dictator in Rome) died, Caesar felt safe to return to Italy where he started a career as a criminal lawyer. In 75 BC he went to Rhodes for more education and was once again captured by pirates, who asked the usual tariff. Caesar demanded it doubled and threatened to ki ....