Word: french
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Born near Bordeaux in 1910, Cousteau had dreamed of a career as a French navy aviator until a near fatal automobile crash dashed those hopes--and serendipitously led him to his true vocation. Taking up swimming to strengthen his broken arms, Cousteau fell in love with the sea. "Sometimes we are lucky enough to know that our lives have been changed, to discard the old, embrace the new, and run headlong down an immutable course," he later wrote. "It happened to me on that summer's day when my eyes were opened...
...life until Archduke Francis Ferdinand of Austria was assassinated in Sarajevo and Europe was plunged into World War I. Keynes was called to Britain's Treasury to work on overseas finances, where he quickly shone. Even his artistic tastes came in handy. He figured a way to balance the French accounts by having Britain's National Gallery buy paintings by Manet, Corot and Delacroix at bargain prices...
Piaget grew up near Lake Neuchatel in a quiet region of French Switzerland known for its wines and watches. His father was a professor of medieval studies and his mother a strict Calvinist. He was a child prodigy who soon became interested in the scientific study of nature. When, at age 10, his observations led to questions that could be answered only by access to the university library, Piaget wrote and published a short note on the sighting of an albino sparrow in the hope that this would influence the librarian to stop treating him like a child. It worked...
...French psychologist Alfred Binet devises the first intelligence tests...
...Albert Schweitzer, a missionary, opens a hospital in Lambarene, French Equatorial Africa (now Gabon), for the treatment of leprosy and sleeping sickness