User:Cool3/Selected biography
Selected Biographies
Sir Ronald Evelyn Leslie Wingate, 2nd Baronet CB, CMG, CIE, OBE (30 September 1889 – 31 August 1978) was a British colonial administrator, soldier and author. Wingate was born in 1889 and educated at Bradfield College and Balliol College, Oxford before entering the Indian Civil Service. In the Civil Service, he served as an Assistant Commissioner in Punjab and the city magistrate of Delhi. During the First World War, Wingate was sent on a special assignment to Mesopotamia, where he joined in the fight against the Ottoman Empire. After the war, he served as British Consul in Muscat, Oman, and helped to negotiate the Treaty of Seeb. He then briefly served in India before returning to Oman. After his second tour in Oman, Wingate held a variety of positions in British India, including service as the Acting Secretary of the Foreign and Political Department of the Indian Government and Commissioner of Baluchistan. (more...)
Don Chafin (June 26, 1887 – August 9, 1954) was the sheriff of Logan County, West Virginia and a commander in the Battle of Blair Mountain. As sheriff of Logan County, Chafin was a fierce opponent of unionization and received hundreds of thousands of dollars from coal mine operators in return for his violent suppression of the United Mine Workers union. Chafin's most notable anti-union measures came during the 1921 Battle of Blair Mountain, when he organized an effort to prevent armed miners from crossing through Logan County. He assembled a force of thousands of local townspeople, sheriff's deputies, and national guardsmen. His forces successfully prevented the advance of the miners until federal troops intervened and forced the latter to disperse. As a result of his actions, Chafin became a hero of the mine operators and an enemy of the miners. (More...)
George Babcock Cressey (December 15, 1896 - October 21, 1963) was an American geographer, author, and academic. Born in Tiffin, Ohio, he attended Denison University and then the University of Chicago, where he received a PhD in geology. After receiving his degree, he taught at Shanghai college and traveled widely in China. Upon his return to the United States in 1929, he completed a pioneering book on the country, China's Geographic Foundations. In 1931, Cressey received a second PhD from Clark University in geography. He then joined the faculty of Syracuse University, where he remained for the rest of his professional career. At Syracuse, Cressey wrote on a variety of subjects, but focussed on "population problems as related to the worldwide distribution of land and arable resources,"[1] and primarily studied Asia, though he traveled to 75 countries on six continents (all but Australia), over the course of his career.[2] Cressey also served as chair of the department and helped to develop the geography graduate program at Syracuse into one of the best in the country. (more...)