Dying young is a terrible tragedy, but some people do both with a few years on Earth that continue to inspire countless generations. These 10 people, who have never been beyond the age of 25, show that this is not the number of years you have on earth, which is what you do with them.10 short but inspiring lives
1. Terry Fox
In March 1977 18 years Canadian Terry Fox was diagnosed with a form of bone cancer. The cancer was so bad that his right leg had to be amputated after which will undergo chemotherapy in the hope he would beat the odds of survival by 50%.
The night before the amputation was given an article about Dick Traum, who ran the New York Marathon with a prosthetic leg. The article inspired Terry because he was concerned about the lack of attention and funding their cancer achieved despite the fact that it could affect anyone. So when he left the hospital he decided he was going to run across Canada, and try to collect $ 1 for every Canadian in the process.
Fox wrote to companies telling their plan, and companies like Ford gave any given caravan Adidas shoes. He began April 12, 1980, St. John and plans to finish on the west coast of Vancouver Island, September 10.
The Marathon of Hope started slowly, but more and more people applauded as he progressed. He was received in the villages by local mayors, and even Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau met. But week after passing the halfway mark, the health of Fox worsened. The cancer had spread to his lungs. I had to finish the Marathon of Hope in 3339 miles and 11.4 million raised. He died a month before his 23rd birthday June 28, 1981.
Terry fundraising stop there – since his death, there have been annual Terry Fox Run in Canada and 60 other countries. His foundation has raised more than $ 650 million for the treatment of cancer.
2. Iqbal Masih
Born into a poor on the outskirts of Lahore, Pakistan in 1982 the family Iqbal was sold as a slave child at the age of four years. He was forced to work in a weaving carpets, and sometimes he was chained to it. He was beaten and barely fed, leaving from malnutrition, while working for a maximum of 12 hours a day for the next six years.
It was not until 1992 that escaped from the factory. He managed to enter the school and learned to read and write. From there, he became active in campaigns to free hundreds of other children from slavery. He traveled to various countries in which he spoke of schools and other groups on the horrors of child labor. He won the Reebok Human Rights and planned to use the price of $ 15,000 to go to college and become a lawyer. Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts, offered him a full scholarship.
Unfortunately, a few months after his return to his home in Pakistan, 12 was killed on April 16, 1995. No one has been convicted of his murder, but sales significantly injured Pakistani carpets with declining sales $ 10 million in just one month.
The life and death of Iqbal brought new attention to the plight of working children. Iqbal was also the inspiration for other charities like Free the Children, which was launched by a 12-year-old Canadian named Craig Kielburger in 1995.
3. Sophie Scholl
Born May 9, 1921, Sophie Scholl was a German student and one of the six leading members of the Nazi nonviolent protest group La Rosa Blanca. Founded in June 1942, Scholl and five other members anonymously distributed pamphlets and leaflets asking people to oppose the Third Reich. The group was formed after boyfriend Scholl wrote the eastern front detailing the atrocities committed by the Nazis. One day, Scholl and her brother were seen throwing white rose brochures by a custodian at the University of Munich, who reported his actions. Sophie, her 25-year-old brother Hans, and another member, 25, Christoph Probst, were arrested on February 18, 1943. Four days later, they were tried and convicted of treason, and in a few hours took to the guillotine. The last words of Sophie were: “How can we expect justice to prevail when there is hardly anyone willing to individually delivered for a just cause. Such a beautiful sunny day, and I have to do, but what my business to death, if through us thousands of people are awakened and stirred to action? ” One of the brochures was out of the country and give the Allies, which dropped million copies in Germany. Today, Scholl and other members of the White Rose are considered heroes in Germany.
4. Nkosi Johnson
Since the emergence of HIV / AIDS, sub-Saharan Africa has been violated by the horrible disease. Of all HIV-related deaths worldwide, 70% are attributed to the continent. One of the victims was in South Africa Nkosi Johnson, who was born with AIDS, February 4, 1989. When he was two, his mother left him in a care center for people with HIV . It was adopted by a woman who works there, but when they tried to enroll in school Nkosi found many obstacles. Schools simply do not want a child with HIV. Nkosi’s foster mother began to fight in court, and their struggle made headlines around the world. This resulted in new policies that allowed children living with HIV or AIDS in school. Nkoski became the face of the 200 children born each day with HIV. Without proper treatment, have a chance to live beyond the age of two years 25%. In 2000, at age 11, Nkoski was invited to speak at the International AIDS Conference, where he had this heartbreaking message: “take care of us and we agree – we are all human beings, which is normal, we have hands, we have feet that can walk, we can talk, we have needs just like everyone else do not be afraid of us. – we are all equal. ” Nkoski died on June 1, 2001. Nelson Mandela called an “icon of the struggle for life.”
5. Edmund Thomas Clint
Born in 1976 in Kochi, India, Edmund Thomas Clint was a talented and prolific self-taught painter. He often painted Hindu festivals and was known for his strong use of color. He painted over 25 000 images in many different environments including watercolors, oils, chalk and even pencils, all in a life of only six and 11 months. At the age of three, Edmund had been diagnosed with a kidney disease that eventually took his life.
He has won several awards during his life and after his death had a series of books written on it and a filmed documentary. This was seen by Clint Eastwood, who was named after Edmund.
6. Stephen Sutton
Sutton was 15 when Stephen told him he had terminal cancer. After learning of his diagnosis, Stephen began helping with events organized by the Teenage Cancer Trust, a charity that supports young people with cancer.
In January 2013, in order to try to raise £ 10,000 ($ 15.500), Stephen launched a website with a blog where he wrote on his “bucket list.” List items include skydiving, getting a tattoo and drum against a large group of people. And one by one, Stephen went down the list. Skydiving left, he got a tattoo of a Troll doll scars and played drums in front of 90,000 people in the European Union of Football Associations Final League in 2013.
Stephen has also raised a lot of money for Cancer Trust. It changed its goal of 100,000 pounds and once he got to that noted for £ 1 million, all in one year. When Stephen died May 14, 2014 had raised £ 3.4 million, only 15 months after starting his blog. After his death, the figure was £ 5,000,000 ($ 7.8 million).
7. Sadako Sasaki
Sadako Sasaki put a face to the horrors of the atomic bomb and its long term effects. She was two years old and lives in Hiroshima less than two miles from where the bomb exploded.
Nine years after the bombing, Sadako developed bumps on the legs and neck. The children who survived the attack were more susceptible to leukemia and Sadako was diagnosed. While in the hospital, Sadako heard an old Japanese legend that if a person were to fold a thousand paper cranes would be granted a wish. Within three months he was in the hospital, he was able to address in 1000 before he died October 25, 1955, at the age of 12 years.
His story was adapted into a novel for children, Sadako and the thousand paper cranes by Eleanor Coerr. In 1958 unveiled a statue of Sadako holding a golden crane outside Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park. The cranes can be found in the Tribute WTC Visitor Center next to Ground Zero in New York, the Austrian Study Centre for Peace and Conflict Resolution, and Pearl Harbor Area.
8. Sam Berns
Progeria is a rare disease that causes young children to age rapidly. These will be the disease live around adolescence, when they die of a heart attack or stroke. Currently there is no cure, but there were only 200 known cases worldwide.
One such case was Sam Berns, who lived in Foxborough, Massachusetts, and was featured in an HBO documentary called Life According to Sam, who began to follow him when he was 13, documented his life for the next three years. At the opening, said he was doing the film because he wanted people to get to know, and certainly did not want the person pity. Sam does not have time to feel sorry for himself, saying. “I surround myself with people I want to be with her and keep moving forward.”
Sam had a number of different passions in his short life, including drums and Boston sports teams. Sam wanted to play in the school band, but only weighed 50 pounds and weighed exploit the drum 40. So Sam and his parents worked with an engineer to make a drum that could use what was a good analogy for how he looked her life. He did not focus on the obstacles and continued to push forward, which was the message of his TEDx talk about his philosophy of a happy life.
January 11, 2014, Sam was supposed to be the honorary captain when his New England Patriots beloved played the Indianapolis Colts. Instead, there was a moment of silence for Sam. He died last night at the age of 17 years.
9. Samantha Smith
One of the worst aspects of the Cold War was the fear of not knowing if the world would be there tomorrow. It was in the mind of 10-year Samantha Smith, who wrote the new leader of the Soviet Union, Yuri Andropov, in November 1982. His letter says:
Dear Mr. Andropov,
My name is Samantha Smith. I am ten years. Congratulations on your new job. I worry for Russia and the United States to enter into a nuclear war. Will you vote to have a war or not? If not please tell me how it will not be a war. This question has no answer, but I wonder why you want to conquer the world, or at least our country. God made the world for us to live together in peace and do not fight.
Yours Faithfully,
Samantha Smith
Relations between the United States and the Soviet Union were dark for the moment, though, Andropov did write back to the young Manchester, Maine live. In his letter, Andropov said that the Soviet Union would not go to war and was building its infrastructure. He also invited to visit his country, which she accepted. When she was in the Soviet Union from 7 to 21 July 1983, the television crews followed around and the two superpowers have a glimpse of the lives of people on the other side of the Cold War, making it famous in both countries. After returning home, she was considered an official ambassador of goodwill, and she continued to travel around the world to promote peace.
Two years after his visit, Samantha was a TV show called Lime Street when the plane she and her father crashed, killing both 25 August 1985. After his death, when Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and US President Ronald Reagan sent letters of condolence to the mother of Samantha. Samantha has such an impact on the Soviet Union as his face appeared on a stamp. His mother began Samantha Smith Foundation, which makes people of different cultures to share their experiences.
10. Anne Frank
Annelies Marie Frank was born June 12, 1929 in Frankfurt for an average family of upper middle class Jewish. His father had served in the German army during World War II, but when Anne was born the political climate in Germany was changing, and moved to Amsterdam. They lived a typical family life until 1940, when the Nazis invaded.
The Franks had to go into hiding in the back of the business of the father of Anne, who signed a two Christians, when Anne was 13. The four francs and three members of another family hid for two years Ana wrote her famous diary.
August 4, 1944, an anonymous tip led to his hideout is raided. They were sent to a concentration camp in the Netherlands, where they spent less than a month before being sent to Auschwitz. Finally, Ana and her sister were taken to the concentration camp of Bergen-Belsen, where both died.
Only Anne’s father, Otto, survived the concentration camps. He returned to Amsterdam, where he discovered that someone had saved Anne’s diary. Otto has asked to be released, and newspaper excerpts were printed in 1952 in English under the title Diary of Anne Frank. It has passed since published in 67 languages. Anne Frank was considered one of the most inspiring women of the last century, although only lived to the age of 15.
