World Socionics

Alfred the Great was the 27th King of Wessex from 871 to 899, the very first English monarch to have ever been given the epithet "the Great" and most well-known for commanding the successful defense of Wessex during Viking conquest, which eventually lead him to become the dominant monarch of England towards the end of his life. The history of his life and reign as monarch of Wessex is explained in detail through the written accounts of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, historical documentation of what his reign was like, those who personally knew him and the biography The Life of King Alfred, written by the Welsh monk Asser. The details of his early childhood are elaborated on in Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, in which young Alfred (suspected to be around age four) travelled with his family to Rome in 853, to be made "consul" by Pope Leo IV. This was early preparation for his eventual succession as King of Wessex, though the possibility of Alfred becoming the next in line was s...

Emperor Pedro II of Brazil, also called Dom Pedro II the "Magnanimous", was the second and last monarch of the Empire of Brazil, from his father’s abdication in 1831 to his deposition in a military coup in 1889. He was born in Rio in 1825, the son of Emperor Pedro I   (SEE) and Leopoldina of Austria. He was five years old when his father abdicated the Brazilian throne and returned to Portugal. Raised by tutors, he was a serious, studious and shy boy, very different from his impulsive, physically hyperactive father. As per the constitution, regents were elected by Parliament to rule while Pedro was a minor. However, it soon became clear that without the personal authority that Pedro I had wielded, Brazil’s internal tensions and rivalries re-emerged in the form of a series of regional rebellions, some with secessionist goals. So after 9 years of near-anarchy under the Regency, the consensus in Parliament was that their best chance of avoiding further chaos was to end t...

Angela Dorothea Merkel is a German physicist, research scientist and politician who has been serving as the Chancellor (i.e. equivalent to prime minister) of Germany since 1998. She is not only the first woman in that position, but also the youngest when sworn in, as well as the only one with a background in natural sciences. She was born in 1954 in Hamburg, in what was then West Germany. Soon afterwards her family moved to what was then East Germany so that her father, a Lutheran pastor, could take a position in Perleberg, to the north of Berlin. Therefore, she grew up under East Germany's Soviet-aligned communist regime. Always a very good student - among other things she learned to speak Russian fluently - she studied Physics in the University of Leipzig. Like every young East German who wanted to have a chance of being allowed to go to university, she joined the official youth organisation FDJ (Free German Youth) which led to some minor controversy later, although by all a...

Edward David Wood Jr ., best known simply as Ed Wood , was an American film director, producer, writer, and actor, as well as the author of plays and many books, mostly novels. He has often been called the “worst director of all time”, having directed the supposedly “worst film ever made”, Plan 9 from Outer Space in 1956. Although he achieved little recognition in his lifetime, he later became a cult figure, a status consolidated by Tim Burton’s 1994 biographical film Ed Wood starring Johnny Depp.  Ed Wood was born in 1924 in New York to middle-class parents. Already in his teens he showed enthusiasm for films and film-making. He served as a marine in WWII in the Pacific, seeing combat several times and being wounded more than once. Discharged as a corporal, he moved to Hollywood in 1947 to start working as a filmmaker. Although able to get work in the mainstream movie and television industry as a writer and director of commercials and very low-budget productions, from the...

Heraclitus was a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher who lived in the city of Ephesus, at the time part of the Persian Empire. In his most active period around 500 BCE, Heraclitus postulated a distinguishing theory which he called "Logos" or an ora torical method used to convince or persuasion through logic. He is famously known for his central dogma of philosophy, universal flux, unity of opposites and that fire is element that comprises everything in the universe. The supposed interpretation of these doctrines has been the subject of controversy for historians, since his original inference often drawn from this theory that in the world as Heraclitus conceived - that these contradictory propositions must be true. What interested Heraclitus the most in philosophy was metaphysics and epistemology, which is a very internal subject, which thus gave way for Heraclitus to implore it with absolute confidence in detached monologues that took the form of a perplexing riddle or puzzle. ...

Osamu Dazai was a Japanese novelist, considered to be one of the most important storytellers of postwar Japan. While known primarily as a novelist, Dazai also earned recognition for his numerous short stories, including “Omoide” (“Memories”), “Sarugashima” (“Monkey Island”), and “Ha” (“Leaves”), which were published in Bannen, his first collection of short stories. Like most of his longer fiction, Dazai's short stories are autobiographical and reflect a troubled life marred by alcoholism, drug addiction, and several suicide attempts. Nevertheless, Dazai's fiction showcases his artistic imagination and unique confessional narrative technique. Of what is known of Osamu during his youth, was his obsession with Japanese communities and society, nearly to the point where he would feel extremely desolate and depressed when people didn't take notice to his lamentations on what would happen to these societies in the future. Osamu was also interested in idealized projections of...

Marcus Ulpius Traianus , later Imperator Caesar Nerva Traianus Augustus, best known as Trajan , was the 13 th Roman Emperor from 98 to 117. His reign is usually regarded as the zenith of the classical Roman civilisation, in terms of territorial expansion and political and military self-confidence. Trajan himself was associated with and largely credited for that zenith.  He was born in 53 in Spain, the first emperor not born in Italy. His father was closely associated with the Flavian emperors and so Trajan climbed easily the steps of the typical aristocratic Roman public career. He had already reached the highest levels of public office as the Emperor Domitian, a gloomy ruler of authoritarian inclinations, was assassinated in his own bedroom and succeeded by the elderly senator Nerva (IEI)  as emperor. Nerva’s brief reign was marked by politico-military meltdown, until he abruptly appointed Trajan as his successor, who at the time was serving as a military governor on the ...