 |
 Amaterasu
Omikami is the most
important of all Shinto goddesses. In addition to
being "responsible" for the daytime
realm, tradition says that she is the direct
ancestor of the Japanese imperial family. |
 Isis
was the most important goddess of
the ancient Egyptians. She was both the sister
and wife of Osiris, and the mother of Horus (God
of the Sun). Her worship, originally centered
around Memphis, spread throughout all Egypt, and
by about 100 B.C. had reached Greece and Rome. |
 William
Booth believed that a sinful man
will endure eternal suffering without personal
acceptance of Christ as his savior, and wanted to
make sure everyone, including those not normally
accepted into "established" churches,
had the opportunity to make that commitment. To
that end, he founded a mission in East London in
1865 that, in 1878, became The Salvation Army. |
 Democritus
suggested that all substance in the universe was
made up of particles so minute that nothing
smaller was possible. He regarded those particles
(atoms) as unchangeable and indestructible, and
as the only content of the universe besides the
very space in which they existed. |
 Charles
Monroe Sheldon believed in living
one's life according to the principle of
"What Would Jesus Do?" According
to Sheldon, every situation in which someone
found himself could be handled easily by simply
acting as Jesus would, even if doing so meant
lowering one's social standing or popularity. |
 Henry
Ward Beecher was known for using his pulpit to speak out on issues
of the day, especially slavery. A strong opponent
of the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, he launched a
fund-raising drive to purchase rifles to arm
anti-slavery forces in the territories; those
rifles became known as "Beecher
Bibles." |
 Emily
Post was the author of articles on
architecture and interior design and of romantic
stories on American and European society before
becoming known for her 1922 book Etiquette in
Society, in Business, in Politics, and at Home,
which remains the standard by which all social
manners are judged today. |
 The
Tower of Babel was the central theme of a Biblical story told in
Genesis 11, in which the descendants of Noah
sought to build a tower tall enough to reach
Heaven so they could communicate directly with
God. |
 William
Tyndale is best remembered for being
the first man to ever print the New Testament
into English using the movable-type press
invented by Johannes Gutenberg, which he
completed in 1525-26. |
 John
Broadus Watson argued
that psychologists should devote themselves
exclusively to studying the behavior, rather than
the mind or mental activity, of organisms, and
that the task of psychology was to predict and
control human behavior. |
 Hades
was the Greek lord of the dead and ruler of the
underworld. The kingdom of Hades
was a neutral region reserved for the souls of
people who deserved neither punishment nor reward
upon death. He was probably the least favored of
all the Greek gods. |
 Baal
Shem-Tov was the founder of what is
now known as Hasidism, which stresses the spirit
rather than the letter of the Jewish law. He
taught a type of Jewish mysticism in which God
was everywhere and should be served with a joyful
heart. |
 John
Raleigh Mott was one of the world's
leading Protestant missionary statesmen, and
played a major role in creation of the World
Council of Churches. As general secretary of the
American YMCA, he put himself in charge of
running military canteens in the U.S. and France
during World War I. He was rewarded for all his
work with the Nobel Peace Prize in 1946. |
