Portal:Liberia/Featured biography
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Featured biography/1[edit]
Charles McArthur Ghankay Taylor (born 28 January 1948) served as the 22nd President of Liberia from 2 August 1997 to 11 August 2003. He was once one of Africa's most prominent warlords during the First Liberian Civil War in the early 1990s and was elected president at the end of that conflict. He was subsequently forced into exile, and is currently being held in the United Nations Detention Unit on the premises of the Penitentiary Institution Haaglanden in The Hague, and on trial by the Special Court for Sierra Leone.
Featured biography/2[edit]
William Vacanarat Shadrach Tubman (November 29, 1895 – July 23, 1971) was a Liberian politician. He was the 19th President of Liberia from 1944 until his death in 1971.
He is regarded as the "father of modern Liberia"; his presidency was marked by the influx of foreign investment in his country and its modernization. During his tenure, Liberia experienced a period of prosperity. He also led a policy of national unity in order to reduce the social and political differences between his fellow Americo-Liberians and the indigenous Liberians. However, further into his years in power, his way of governing became increasingly dictatorial.
Featured biography/3[edit]
Hendrik Pieter Nicolaas Muller (2 April 1859 in Rotterdam - 11 August 1941 in The Hague, Netherlands) was a Dutch businessman, diplomat, world traveler, publicist, and philanthropist. He was a son of Hendrik Muller Sz., a Rotterdam-based Dutch businessman and politician, and Marie Cornelie van Rijckevorsel, member of another prominent Rotterdam based business family.
Muller started his career as a businessman, trading with East and West Africa. He was a manager in his father's trading company Hendrik Muller & Co. that did business in Liberia, and made several visits to the country, in addition to travels to many parts of Africa and Asia. Later in life the Liberian government bestowed several honors on the Dutchman.
Featured biography/4[edit]
Billy or William Johnson Hippopotamus (1920s – October 11, 1955) was a Pygmy Hippopotamus given as a pet to U.S. President Calvin Coolidge. Captured in Liberia on one of the Firestone Tire and Rubber Company plantations, he was given to Coolidge by Harvey Firestone in 1927. Billy spent most of his life in the National Zoo in Washington D.C.. In addition to his fame as an exotic presidential pet—which afforded him a trip to the 1939 New York World's Fair—Billy is also notable as the common ancestor to most pygmy hippos in American zoos. By the time of his death in 1955, Billy had sired 23 calves, 13 of whom survived at least a year.