Captain James Cook Last Will and Testament

Download this free copy of the Last Will and Testament of Alfred Nobel (1833-1896).

• Nobel was born in 1833 in Stockholm, Sweden. His family was descended from Olof Rudbeck, the best-known technical genius of Sweden's 17th century era as a great power in northern Europe.
• Nobel invented dynamite in 1866.
• In 1895, Nobel signed his last will providing for the establishment of the Nobel Prize. He died in San Remo, Italy on December 10, 1896.

Download a free copy of the Last Will and Testament of Charles II of Spain (1661-1700).

• Charles II was the last Habsburg King of Spain and the ruler of large parts of Italy, the Spanish territories in the Southern Low Countries, and Spain's overseas Empire, stretching from Mexico to the Philippines.
• Charles was noteworthy for his extensive physical, intellectual, and emotional problems - which contributed to his ineffectual rule - as well as his role in the developments preceding the War of the Spanish Succession.
• Historians Will and Ariel Durant wrote that Charles II was "short, lame, epileptic, senile, and completely bald before thirty-five, he was always on the verge of death, but repeatedly baffled Christendom by continuing to live."
• Towards the end of his life Charles became increasingly strange, at one point demanding that the bodies of his family be exhumed so he could look upon their corpses.

Source of biographical information: Wikipedia.org.

Download a free copy of the Last Will and Testament of Darius I (550BCE-486BCE), king of Persia.

• Darius I (also known as Darius the Great) was the third king of kings of the Achaemenid Empire. Darius held the empire at its peak, then including Egypt, and parts of Greece. The decay and downfall of the empire commenced with his death and the coronation of his son, Xerxes I.
• Darius ascended the throne by assassinating his predecessor Gaumata with the help of six other Persian noble families; Darius was crowned the following morning. The new emperor met with rebellions throughout his kingdom, and quelled them each time.
• A major event in Darius' life was his expedition to punish Athens and Eretria and subjugate Greece - an attempt which failed.
• Darius expanded his empire by conquering Thrace and Macedon, and invading the Saka, Iranian tribes who had invaded Medes and even killed Cyrus the Great.
• Darius organized the empire by dividing it into provinces and installing governors to govern each region. He organized a new monetary system, and made Aramaic the official language of the empire. Darius also worked on construction projects throughout the empire, particularly in Susa, Babylon, and Egypt. Darius created a codification of laws for Egypt.

Biographical information taken from Wikipedia.org

Read a portion of the Last Will of Henry VIII (1491-1547), King of England, Ireland and France.

• Henry Tudor was a significant figure in the history of the English monarchy. Besides his six marriages, he is more popularly known for his role in the separation of the Church of England from the Roman Catholic Church, and establishing himself as the Supreme Head of the Church of England.
• Henry changed religious ceremonies and rituals and suppressed the monasteries, while remaining a fervent believer in core Catholic theological teachings, even after his excommunication from the Roman Catholic Church.
• Henry was, by all accounts, an attractive and charismatic man, educated and accomplished, who ruled with absolute power. His overwhelming desire to provide England with a male heir led to the two things that Henry is remembered for today: his six wives, and the English Reformation that made England a Protestant nation.
• Henry Tudor's historical image is lustful, egotistical, deceitful, opinionated, and insecure, and his vast wasteful luxuries and useless wars depleted the English treasury.

Source of information: Wikipedia.org

This is a copy of the Last Will and Testament of James Smithson, who founded the Smithsonian Institution (1765-1826).

• James Smithson was a chemist and mineralogist in the late 1700s.
• He made numerous excursions throughout Europe to collect mineral and ore samples.
• He was made a member of the Royal Society of London in 1787 only a year after he graduated from college.
• His concise one-page Will set up a fund which established the Smithsonian Institution.

Download a copy of the last will and testament of French King Louis XVI (1754-1793).

• Louis XVI was King of France from 1774 to 1792. Louis' reign ended in the face of the French Revolution.
• He tried to redress the social injustices that had made the monarchy hated, but came to be influenced by his extravagant queen Marie Antoinette and the aristocracy, who blocked reforms intended to end widespread poverty.
• Louis XVI and his wife were executed on the guillotine.

This is a copy of the Last Will of the maestro Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519).

• Leonardo was an Italian painter, sculptor, architect and engineer, musician, scientist, mathematician, inventor, botanist, anatomist, and cartographer. He is considered the archetypal Renaissance man, and is perhaps the most diversely talented person ever to have existed. A brilliant artist and inventor, his use of logic and empirical methods were unusual for his time.
• To the average person, Leonardo has always been known primarily as a painter. His most famous works, the Mona Lisa and The Last Supper, are the most reproduced and most parodied paintings of all time. His drawing of the Vitruvian Man is also an instantly recognizable cultural icon, having been reproduced on everything from the Euro to T-shirts.
• In addition to the brilliance of his artistic endeavours, Leonardo's drawings show that he conceptualized prototypes for the helicopter, the tank, concentrated solar power, a calculator, the double hull, and a rudimentary theory of plate tectonics. He also invented an automated bobbin winder and a machine for testing the tensile strength of wire, and these devices were manufactured during his lifetime.
• As a scientist, he greatly advanced the state of knowledge in the fields of anatomy, civil engineering, optics, and hydrodynamics.

Source: Wikipedia.org

Download a free copy of the Last Will and Testament of Captain Myles Standish (1584-1656).

• According to Wikipedia.com, Myles Standish (aka Miles Standish) was an English born military officer hired by the Pilgrims as military advisor for the Plymouth colony. After arriving at Plymouth on the Mayflower, he worked on colonial defense.
• In 1622, he was appointed the first commander of Plymouth colony. Later, he served as Plymouth's representative in England, and served as assistant governor and as the colony's treasurer.
• Standish is often remembered for his bravery in battle and his reputation as the military captain of the Pilgrims, as well as his appearance as a character in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's fictitious poem "The Courtship of Miles Standish".
• The former Fort Standish, located on Lovell's Island, Massachusetts, was named in his honor, as well as the town of Standish, Maine.