Alexander Melville Bell was a Scottish teacher of elocution. He was born in 1819 at Edinburgh in 1819 and died in 1905. He was a distinguished teacher of elocution in Edinburgh until in 1865 he removed to London to act as a lecturer in University College. In 1870 he went to Canada and became connected with Queen's College, Kingston. Latterly he went to Washington, where he died. He was inventor of 'visible speech', in which all possible articulations of the human voice have corresponding characters designed to represent the respective positions of the vocal organs, a system employed in teaching the profoundly deaf to speak. Besides writing on this subject he wrote on elocution, stenography, etc. Research Alexander Melville Bell
George Munro Grant was a Canadian author and educationalist. He was born in 1835 at Nova Scotia and died in 1902. He was educated at Pictou Academy, and at West River Seminary of the Presbyterian Church of Nova Scotia, gaining there a bursary which entitled him to continue his studies at Glasgow University. Here he studied with distinction both in arts and theology, and took the degree of MA. Returning to Canada he was for some time a missionary, then pastor of St Matthew's Church, Halifax. In 1877 he was appointed principal of Queen's University, .Kingston, Ontario, a position which he filled with great ability. He wrote Ocean to Ocean, being the account of a tour across the Dominion; edited Picturesque Canada, and contributed to various periodicals. Research George Grant
Grant Alien was a Canadian writer on scientific subjects and novelist. He was born in 1848 at Kingston, Canada and died in 1899. His earlier education he received in America, he studied also in France, and he graduated at Oxford with honours in 1870. From 1873 to 1879 he was connected with Queen's College, Jamaica, but latterly resided chiefly in England, and became well known as an exponent of evolutionary science, and as a novelist. His first important work, Physiological AEsthetics, appeared in 1877; his other scientific or semi-scientific works include The Colour Sense; The Evolutionist at Large; Colin Clout's Calendar (the record of a summer); Vignettes from Nature; The Colours of Flowers; Flowers and their Pedigrees; and Force and Energy, a Theory of Dynamics. Other works by him are: Anglo-Saxon Britain; Charles Darwin; and The Evolution of the Idea of God. His novels were of little account. Research Grant Alien
Charles Grant Blair Allen was an English writer and scientist. He was born in 1848 at Kingston, Canada and died in 1899. Educated at King Edward's School, Birmingham and Merton College, Oxford, he was professor and principal at Spanish Town, Jamaica from 1873 until 1877. He wrote widely on evolution and biology and also wrote novels including the 1895 'The Woman Who Did'. Research Grant Allen
John Udall (John Uvedale) was an English puritan. He was born in 1560 and died in 1592. Educated at Christ's College and at Trinity College, Cambridge, he was an incumbent at Kingston-upon-Thames, and was in 1588 deprived for writing tracts against the bishops. He then became a preacher at Newcastle, and in 1590 was tried and condemned to death for complicity in the Marprelate tracts. He was subsequently pardoned and spent the remainder of his days writing a HebrewGrammar and Dictionary. Research John Udall
Mary Seacole was a Jamaican-born British nurse and healer. She was born in 1805 at Kingston, Jamaica and died in 1881. She was a holistic herbal healer who travelled to Russia in 1855 at her own expense to work in a hospital in the Crimea during the Crimean War at the same time as Florence Nightingale. Mary Seacole was well-liked by the troops, happy to sit up half the night with the patients drinking and talking with them. After the Crimean War she returned to England in financial difficulties - having insisted her patients pay only what they could afford - and became masseuse to Princess Alexandra. Research Mary Seacole
Sieur de La Salle (Robert Cavelier) was a French explorer. He was born in 1643 at Rouen and died in 1687. In 1669 he emigrated to Canada, and began the series of his remarkable journeys in the West. He visited Lake Michigan and the Illinois River, but whether he at this early stage saw the Mississippi is a disputed problem. In 1673 he received a grant of the station at Port Frontenac (now Kingston). He was again in France in 1677, but the next year was back in Canada and had reached Niagara. He ascended the chain of lakes to Mackinaw, thence up Lake Michigan and down the Illinois River to Peoria. Disappointments followed; but he was able to renew the canoe voyage, descend the Illinois and Mississippi to its mouth, which he reached in April, 1682, and to claim the entire region for Louis XIV. Returning to France, he organized an expedition which, in 1684, sailed directly for the mouth of the great river. But the explorers landed by mistake at Matagorda Bay, and after harassing wanderings Sieur de La Salle was murdered by his followers within the limits of Texas. Research Sieur de La Salle
Sir Thomas Octave Sopwith was a British airmen and inventor. He was born in 1888 at London and died in 1989. Educated at Cottesmore and Seafield Engineering College he developed an interest in aviation and aircraft design. In 1910 he won the Baron de Forest prize for a flight from England to the Continent, and in 1911 he founded the Sopwith Aviation and Engineering Company Ltd at Kingston on Thames, to design and build aeroplanes and seaplanes. In 1918 he was made a CBE. In 1925 he became chairman of the Society of British Aircraft Constructors, a post he held until 1927 and chairman, later President, of the Hawker Siddeley Group in 1935 and 1963. He was knighted in 1953. Among his famous aircraft that served in the British armed forces during the Great War were the Sopwith Pup and Sopwith Camel. Research Thomas Sopwith
Abbreviations
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