Avul Pakir Jainulabdeen "A. P. J.

" Abdul Kalam; (15 October 1931 27 July 2015) was the
11th President of India from 2002 to 2007. A career scientist turned statesman, Kalam was born
and raised in Rameswaram, Tamil Nadu, and studied physics and aerospace engineering. He
spent the next four decades as a scientist and science administrator, mainly at the Defence
Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) and Indian Space Research Organisation
(ISRO) and was intimately involved in India's civilian space programme and military missile
development efforts. He thus came to be known as the Missile Man of India for his work on the
development of ballistic missile and launch vehicle technology. He also played a pivotal
organisational, technical, and political role in India's Pokhran-II nuclear tests in 1998, the first
since the original nuclear test by India in 1974.

Kalam was elected as the 11th President of India in 2002 with the support of both the ruling
Bharatiya Janata Party and the then-opposition Indian National Congress. Widely referred to as
the "People's President," he returned to his civilian life of education, writing and public service
after a single term. He was a recipient of several prestigious awards, including the Bharat Ratna,
India's highest civilian honour.

While delivering a lecture at the Indian Institute of Management Shillong, Kalam collapsed and
died from an apparent cardiac arrest on 27 July 2015, aged 83. Thousands including national-
level dignitaries attended the funeral ceremony held in his hometown of Rameshwaram, where
he was buried with full state honours.

Kalam served as the 11th President of India, succeeding K. R. Narayanan. He won the 2002
presidential election with an electoral vote of 922,884, surpassing the 107,366 votes won by
Lakshmi Sahgal. His term lasted from 25 July 2002 to 25 July 2007.[38]

On 10 June 2002, the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) which was in power at the time,
expressed that they would nominate Kalam for the post of President, [39][40] and both the
Samajwadi Party and the Nationalist Congress Party backed his candidacy.[41][42] After the
Samajwadi Party announced its support for Kalam, Narayanan chose not to seek a second term in
office, leaving the field clear.[43] Kalam said of the announcement of his candidature:

I am really overwhelmed. Everywhere both in Internet and in other media, I have been asked for
a message. I was thinking what message I can give to the people of the country at this juncture.

Kalam became the 11th president of the Republic of India in an easy victory, and moved into the
Rashtrapati Bhavan after he was sworn in on 25 July. Kalam was the third President of India to
have been honoured with a Bharat Ratna, India's highest civilian honour, before becoming the

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President. Dr Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (1954) and Dr Zakir Hussain (1963) were the earlier
recipients of Bharat Ratna who later became the President of India. He was also the first scientist
and the first bachelor to occupy Rashtrapati Bhawan.

During his term as president, he was affectionately known as the People's President, saying that
signing the Office of Profit Bill was the toughest decision he had taken during his tenure. Kalam
was criticised for his inaction in deciding the fate of 20 out of the 21 mercy petitions submitted
to him during his tenure. Article 72 of the Constitution of India empowers the President of India
to grant pardons, and suspend or commute the death sentence of convicts on death row. Kalam
acted on only one mercy plea in his five-year tenure as president, rejecting the plea of rapist
Dhananjoy Chatterjee, who was later hanged. Perhaps the most notable plea was from Afzal
Guru, a Kashmiri terrorist who was convicted of conspiracy in the December 2001 attack on the
Indian Parliament and was sentenced to death by the Supreme Court of India in 2004. While the
sentence was scheduled to be carried out on 20 October 2006, the pending action on his mercy
plea resulted in him remaining on death row. He also took the controversial decision to impose
President's Rule in Bihar in 2005.

--------------

Martin Luther King Jr. (born Michael King Jr., January 15, 1929 April 4, 1968) was an
American Baptist minister and activist who was a leader in the African-American Civil Rights
Movement. He is best known for his role in the advancement of civil rights using nonviolent
civil disobedience based on his Christian beliefs.

King became a civil rights activist early in his career. He led the 1955 Montgomery bus boycott
and helped found the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) in 1957, serving as its
first president. With the SCLC, King led an unsuccessful 1962 struggle against segregation in
Albany, Georgia (the Albany Movement), and helped organize the 1963 nonviolent protests in
Birmingham, Alabama. King also helped to organize the 1963 March on Washington, where he
delivered his famous "I Have a Dream" speech. There, he established his reputation as one of the
greatest orators in American history.

On October 14, 1964, King received the Nobel Peace Prize for combating racial inequality
through nonviolent resistance. In 1965, he helped to organize the Selma to Montgomery
marches, and the following year he and SCLC took the movement north to Chicago to work on
segregated housing. In the final years of his life, King expanded his focus to include opposition
towards poverty and the Vietnam War, alienating many of his liberal allies with a 1967 speech
titled "Beyond Vietnam".

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In 1968, King was planning a national occupation of Washington, D.C., to be called the Poor
People's Campaign, when he was assassinated on April 4 in Memphis, Tennessee. His death was
followed by riots in many U.S. cities.

King was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Gold
Medal. Martin Luther King Jr. Day was established as a holiday in numerous cities and states
beginning in 1971, and as a U.S. federal holiday in 1986. Hundreds of streets in the U.S. have
been renamed in his honor, and a county in Washington State was also renamed for him. The
Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., was dedicated in
2011.

MALALA

Malala Yousafzai born 12 July 1997 is a Pakistani activist for female education and the
youngest-ever Nobel Prize laureate. She is known mainly for human rights advocacy for
education and for women in her native Swat Valley in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province of
northwest Pakistan, where the local Taliban had at times banned girls from attending school.
Yousafzai's advocacy has since grown into an international movement.

Her family runs a chain of schools in the region. In early 2009, when she was 1112, Yousafzai
wrote a blog under a pseudonym for the BBC Urdu detailing her life under Taliban occupation,
their attempts to take control of the valley, and her views on promoting education for girls in the
Swat Valley. The following summer, journalist Adam B. Ellick made a New York Times
documentary about her life as the Pakistani military intervened in the region. Yousafzai rose in
prominence, giving interviews in print and on television, and she was nominated for the
International Children's Peace Prize by South African activist Desmond Tutu.

On the afternoon of 9 October 2012, Yousafzai boarded her school bus in the northwest Pakistani
district of Swat. A gunman asked for her by name, then pointed a pistol at her and fired three
shots. One bullet hit the left side of Yousafzai's forehead, travelled under her skin through the
length of her face, and went into her shoulder. In the days immediately following the attack, she
remained unconscious and in critical condition, but later her condition improved enough for her
to be sent to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham, England, for intensive rehabilitation.
On 12 October, a group of 50 Muslim clerics in Pakistan issued a fatw against those who tried
to kill her, but the Taliban reiterated their intent to kill Yousafzai and her father, Ziauddin
Yousafzai. The assassination attempt sparked a national and international outpouring of support
for Yousafzai. Deutsche Welle wrote in January 2013 that Yousafzai may have become "the most
famous teenager in the world." United Nations Special Envoy for Global Education Gordon

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Brown launched a UN petition in Yousafzai's name, demanding that all children worldwide be in
school by the end of 2015; it helped lead to the ratification of Pakistan's first Right to Education
Bill.

The 2013, 2014 and 2015 issues of Time magazine featured Yousafzai as one of "The 100 Most
Influential People in the World". She was the winner of Pakistan's first National Youth Peace
Prize, and the recipient of the 2013 Sakharov Prize. In July that year, she spoke at the
headquarters of the United Nations to call for worldwide access to education, and in October the
Government of Canada announced its intention that its parliament confer Honorary Canadian
citizenship upon Yousafzai. In February 2014, she was nominated for the World Children's Prize
in Sweden.

On 10 October 2014, Yousafzai was announced as the co-recipient of the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize
for her struggle against the suppression of children and young people and for the right of all
children to education. Having received the prize at the age of 17, Yousafzai is the youngest
Nobel laureate. Yousafzai shared the prize with Kailash Satyarthi, a children's rights activist from
India. She is the second Pakistani to receive a Nobel Prize, Abdus Salam being a 1979 Physics
laureate, and the only prior winner of a Nobel Prize from Pakistan.

In May 2014, Yousafzai was granted an honorary doctorate by the University of King's College
in Halifax, Nova Scotia. She was the subject of Oscar-shortlisted 2015 documentary He Named
Me Malala.

Kailash Satyarthi (born 'Kailash Sharma'; 11 January 1954) [7] is an Indian children's rights and
education advocate and an activist against child labour.[5][8] He founded the Bachpan Bachao
Andolan (lit. Save the Childhood Movement) in 1980 and has acted to protect the rights of more
than 83,000 children from 144 countries.[9][10] It is largely because of Satyarthi's work and
activism that the International Labour Organization adopted Convention No. 182 on the worst
forms of child labour, which is now a principal guideline for governments around the world.[8]

His work is recognized through various national and international honours and awards including
the Nobel Peace Prize of 2014, which he shared with Malala Yousafzai of Pakistan.

Satyarthi has been the subject of a number of documentaries, television series, talk shows,
advocacy and awareness films.[33] Satyarthi has been awarded the following national and
international honours:

2015: Harvard's University Award "Humanitarian of the Year"[34]

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 2015: Honorary Doctorate by Amity University, Gurgaon[35]

2014: Nobel Peace Prize[5]

2009: Defenders of Democracy Award (US)[36]

2008: Alfonso Comin International Award (Spain)[37]

2007: Gold medal of the Italian Senate (2007)[38]

2007: recognized in the list of "Heroes Acting to End Modern Day Slavery" by the US
State Department[39]

2006: Freedom Award (US)[40]

2002: Wallenberg Medal, awarded by the University of Michigan[41]

1999: Friedrich Ebert Stiftung Award (Germany)[42]

1998: Golden Flag Award (Netherlands)[43]

1995: Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award (US)[44]

1995: The Trumpeter Award (US)[45]

1994: The Aachener International Peace Award (Germany)[46][47]

1993: Elected Ashoka Fellow (US)[48]

Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela (/mndl/;[1] 18 July 1918 5 December 2013) was a South
African anti-apartheid revolutionary, politician, and philanthropist, who served as President of
South Africa from 1994 to 1999. He was the country's first black head of state and the first
elected in a fully representative democratic election. His government focused on dismantling the
legacy of apartheid by tackling institutionalised racism and fostering racial reconciliation.
Ideologically an African nationalist and socialist, he served as President of the African National
Congress (ANC) party from 1991 to 1997.

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A Xhosa, Mandela was born in Mvezo to the Thembu royal family. He studied law at the
University of Fort Hare and the University of the Witwatersrand before working as a lawyer in
Johannesburg. There he became involved in anti-colonial and African nationalist politics, joining
the ANC and co-founding its Youth League. After the National Party's white-only government
established apartheida system of racial segregation that privileged whiteshe and the ANC
committed themselves to the apartheid government's overthrow. Mandela was appointed
President of the ANC's Transvaal branch, rising to prominence for his involvement in the 1952
anti-apartheid Defiance Campaign and the 1955 Congress of the People. He was repeatedly
arrested for seditious activities and was unsuccessfully prosecuted in the 1956 Treason Trial.
Influenced by Marxism, he secretly joined the South African Communist Party (SACP).
Although initially committed to non-violent protest, in association with the SACP he co-founded
the militant Umkhonto we Sizwe in 1961 and led a sabotage campaign against the government.
In 1962, he was arrested for conspiring to overthrow the state and sentenced to life imprisonment
in the Rivonia Trial.

Mandela served 27 years in prison, initially on Robben Island, and later in Pollsmoor Prison and
Victor Verster Prison. Amid international pressure and growing fear of a racial civil war,
President F. W. de Klerk released him in 1990. Mandela and de Klerk negotiated an end to
apartheid and organised the 1994 multiracial general election in which Mandela led the ANC to
victory and became President. Leading a broad coalition government which promulgated a new
constitution, Mandela emphasised reconciliation between the country's racial groups and created
the Truth and Reconciliation Commission to investigate past human rights abuses. Economically,
Mandela's administration retained its predecessor's liberal framework despite his own socialist
beliefs, also introducing measures to encourage land reform, combat poverty, and expand
healthcare services. Internationally, he acted as mediator in the Pan Am Flight 103 bombing trial
and served as Secretary-General of the Non-Aligned Movement from 1998 to 1999. He declined
a second presidential term and in 1999 was succeeded by his deputy, Thabo Mbeki. Mandela
became an elder statesman and focused on charitable work, combating poverty and HIV/AIDS
through the Nelson Mandela Foundation.

Mandela was a controversial figure for much of his life. Although critics on the right denounced
him as a communist terrorist and those on the radical left deemed him too eager to negotiate and
reconcile with apartheid's supporters, he gained international acclaim for his activism. Widely
regarded as an icon of democracy and social justice, he received more than 250 honours
including the Nobel Peace Prizeand became the subject of a cult of personality. He is held in
deep respect within South Africa, where he is often referred to by his Xhosa clan name, Madiba,
and described as the "Father of the Nation".

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