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Oddball Facts: Adversity and Accomplishment

by Miki Saxon

http://www.sxc.hu/photo/642052Adversity: a condition marked by misfortune, calamity, or distress. Plenty of that around these days, but adversity is relative and doesn’t necessarily preclude world-shattering accomplishments. Consider these examples of adversity and accomplishment.

  • Sir Walter Raleigh, after getting in deep doo-doo with the queen, spent 13 years in prison. How did he spend his time? He wrote The History of the World.
  • Beethoven composed his greatest music after he went deaf.
  • The poet Dante worked–and died–in exile.
  • Daniel DeFoe wrote Robinson Crusoe while in prison.
  • Pilgrim’s Progress was penned by John Bunyan during his imprisonment in Bedford Jail.
  • He was too poor to buy paper so he used scraps of leather. That’s how Miguel de Cervantes managed to produce Don Quixote while jailed in Madrid.

If you want more current examples think about Dawn Loggins, whose life started among bullying, a broken home, drug use, squalor and, finally, abandonment by her parents, but was just accepted to Harvard.

Or Samantha Garvey of Long Island, who spent the last year in a homeless shelter with her family, but was one of 300 semi-finalists for the annual Intel Science Talent Search.

Now, what were you saying about adversity?

Hat tip to Steve Roesler for the historical adversity list.

Image credit: emospada

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