Joseph Stalin – Weatherman
Joseph Stalin was born Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili in the town of Gori in the Tiflis Governorate of the Russian Empire. Today the area is part of Georgia. His father was a cobbler by profession and his mother was a housemaid. As a child, Stalin hoped to follow in his father’s footsteps, but as his father descended into alcoholism, his mother insisted that he attend school.
When his father found out that Stalin had been enrolled in school he went on a drunken violent rampage that had him expelled from his hometown. Stalin did well in school and earned a scholarship to attend the Tiflis Spiritual Seminary. Within one year, Stalin became an atheist.
Instead of focusing on his studies he threw himself into books and became a Georgian cultural nationalist. He started publishing poetry in Georgian in the local papers and became involved in student politics. In 1899, he was expelled from the Seminary for failing to show up for his final exams and being unable to pay his tuition. Free from the confines of school, Stalin had more time to pursue his own interests which led him to discover the writings of Vladimir Lenin. Inspired by the worlds of the revolutionary, Stalin joined the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party. To focus on his love of learning and still have time for his revolutionary activities, Stalin took a job in a meteorological office at the age of 21.
He was employed as an observer and recorder of meteorological data at the Tiflis Main Physical Observatory. His revolutionary activities would bring an end to his time at the Observatory when the Tsar’s secret police came looking for him. On April 3, 1901 Stalin saw the police waiting to ambush him at the Observatory and was able to flee to avoid capture. From that moment on he became a full-time revolutionary, living off donations and eventually joining Lenin’s Bolsheviks in 1903.