People Who Made A Difference

Number One Son has a school project on People Who Made A Difference. (Stimulating Learning Projects?)

He's thinking about doing it on Andrew Jackson. I'm trying to nudge him off Jackson since the kid is already overly obsessed with warfare, and Jackson doesn't have a whole lot to his history besides the BattleOfNewOrleans and the TrailOfTears.

It's kinda hard to pick someone in the arts, because it's hard for a 2nd-grader to evaluate how one artist makes more of a difference than another one.

Likewise most of the sciences are too complicated to understand/explain.

Some other ideas:

• Thomas Edison

• Ben Franklin

• Thomas Jefferson

He ended up picking Horatio Nelson (who died at the Battle Of Trafalgar). Some things I learned:

• the French navy was at a disadvantage because many of the best officers had been killed or at least removed from service following the French Revolution

  • Pierre Charles Villeneuve who led the French fleet in Trafalgar seem particular chicken-hearted, but perhaps because he'd already lost to Nelson at the Battle Of The Nile (although he hadn't been in charge of the French side at that time).

    • On his return to France, he was found stabbed six times in the chest with a dining knife in his inn room while returning to Paris. The verdict was that he had committed suicide.

• some credit the Battle Of Trafalgar with keeping Napoleon from invading England, but he had given up waiting for his navy months before Trafalgar and sent his men off to invade Germany.

• Napoleon didn't even hear the result of the battle until weeks later.

• Nelson's body was shipped back home in a barrel of brandy