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Maya Angelou
Poet and Historian
Dr. King was profoundly intelligent. That is to say, he was able to see, to examine, to analyze, to evaluate, to measure the climate of the times, the expediency of his calling, of his ministry. That's intelligence. Now intellect, of course, helped him to be able to explain what he saw with grace and eloquence and wonderful quotations, whether from Paul Laurence Dunbar or Longfellow. That was out of the virtue of his studies. View Interview with Maya Angelou View Biography of Maya Angelou View Profile of Maya Angelou View Photo Gallery of Maya Angelou
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Robert Ballard
Discoverer of the Titanic
Robert Ballard: I learned how to think. I learned how to problem-solve. I learned how to bust things up and develop a logic tree. Classic example was, someone asked me, "How many barbers are there in the United States?" Now, how would you dissect that question? You can calculate it, if you just run a number. You take the population of the United States, 250 million, you cut it in half, because half are women. Then you say, how many of those would have a haircut? Well, one year-olds don't. How many haircuts do you have in a year? How many haircuts can a barber give in a day? Before you know it, the number spits out: the right answer, or doggone close. So, I learned how to order my thoughts, and most important, learned how to develop a plan. I discovered the power of a plan. If you can plan it out, and it seems logical to you, you can do it. And that was the secret to success. View Interview with Robert Ballard View Biography of Robert Ballard View Profile of Robert Ballard View Photo Gallery of Robert Ballard
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Robert Ballard
Discoverer of the Titanic
When I played college basketball, I'd practice for two hours, and just as I wanted to go to the locker room, the coach would say, "Give me 20 wind sprints." "I don't want to do 20 wind sprints." And he would say, "Do you want to play in tomorrow's game? Then you'd better do 20 wind sprints." And I did those 20 wind sprints, which gave me the stamina to survive four quarters of basketball. You will never sell a kid on mental wind sprints. You've got to sell them on the game, then they'll do the wind sprints. So what we wanted to do, is to show them what excitement exploration is, and sell them on exploration, on the quest for knowledge. Sell them on that, and how exciting it is and rewarding it is. And when you hook them, then they will go prepare themselves. View Interview with Robert Ballard View Biography of Robert Ballard View Profile of Robert Ballard View Photo Gallery of Robert Ballard
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Sir Roger Bannister
Track and Field Legend
The target of the four minute mile then came into view. It was talked about in the '30s and the Swedes got very close, but it had just taken us after the war to gradually come down to a time closer and in '53, which was the year, if you remember, when Everest was climbed by a British Commonwealth team, I ran 4:03 and I felt the next year it should be possible. It was my last year anyway, and so I trained hard through the winter with two friends, Chris Chataway and Chris Brasher, Brasher from Cambridge, Chataway from Oxford, and they helped with the pace making and really made it possible because you could only break a time really by running evenly. It's a question of spreading the available energy, aerobic and anaerobic, evenly over four minutes. If you run one part very much too fast, you pay a price. If you run another part more slowly your overall time is slower. So that was really the secret. View Interview with Sir Roger Bannister View Biography of Sir Roger Bannister View Profile of Sir Roger Bannister View Photo Gallery of Sir Roger Bannister
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Sir Roger Bannister
Track and Field Legend
Sir Roger Bannister: Essentially, muscles contain two sorts of fiber. They are called simply fast twitch and slow twitch fibers. And, we have a mixture of them and that's genetic. But you can, by training, alter the balance of some of the intermediate fibers, make more fast ones or make more slow ones, according to the training you do. So, the sprinters have more fast twitch fibers and concentrate on developing them. Distance runners have more slow twitch fibers. And, obviously I was born with more slow twitch fibers, but the whole of my training was developing these fibers. View Interview with Sir Roger Bannister View Biography of Sir Roger Bannister View Profile of Sir Roger Bannister View Photo Gallery of Sir Roger Bannister
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Sir Roger Bannister
Track and Field Legend
Sir Roger Bannister: I must be the international athlete who trained least. In other words, I had worked out from my knowledge of physiology what was the minimum amount of training that would be needed to continue to improve year by year and every year, I suppose, I would be reducing my mile best time by two or three seconds, you know, starting 4:18 and then gradually, gradually coming down. And basically I was doing interval training. I had so many other interests that I wanted to have my evenings free and I would usually miss lunch and sometimes there were rather unimportant lectures at 12 o'clock. View Interview with Sir Roger Bannister View Biography of Sir Roger Bannister View Profile of Sir Roger Bannister View Photo Gallery of Sir Roger Bannister
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