Great Achievements By Teenagers

Some of the great achievements throughout history in the fields of art, culture, science and technology have been made by teenagers. This may be because they are able to think in new and innovative ways, or their thinking is not hidebound by discredited nostrums. It may be due to the emergence of God-given talent at an early age, and the natural open-mindedness of young people before they may experience attempts to indoctrinate them towards certain worldviews. Biologically the rate of brain development, and according to some studies IQ, reportedly peak in smart individuals just prior to their teenage years.^[1]

Achievements, listed by age at which they were made[edit]

• 12 - Mark, author of the Gospel of Mark, witnesses the arrest of Jesus and develops the first Gospel.^[2]
• 12 - Blaise Pascal secretly worked out the first twenty-three propositions of Euclid by himself.
• 12 - Jesus analyzes Scriptures for the experts in the temple in Jerusalem.
• 12 - William "Willie" Johnson earned the Medal of Honor for his actions during the Seven Days Battle and on the Peninsula Campaign during the American Civil War. [5]
• 13 - Joan of Arc was inspired and led France five years later to victory over the English in the Hundred Years War; was martyred at age 19.^[3]
• 13 - Anne Frank began writing her diary, later published as "Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl."
• 13 - Bobby Fischer wins the "Game of the Century" in Chess, by sacrificing his Queen to gain advantage in position.^[4]
• 14 - David slays Goliath.
• 14 - Ismail founded the Safavid dynasty and became its "shah" (military and spiritual ruler)
• 14 - Mozart wrote the opera, "Mitridate Rè di Ponto."
• 14 - Nadia Comaneci "achieved in her sport what no Olympian, male or female, ever had before: perfection."^[5]
• 14 - St. Theresa of Lisieux rejected by Bishop Hugonin, pleads with Pope Leo XIII so she may enter the Carmelites. Became Carmelite nun at age 15.
• 14 - Bernadette Soubirous (St Bernadette of Lourdes) has a vision of the Virgin Mary
• 14 - The publication of Charles Schulz's first drawing of a dog, which became an inspiration for his cartoon strip Peanuts about a dog named Snoopy^[6]
• 14 - Aaron Swartz develops RSS. Swartz would go on to contest the private ownership of data by trying to liberate millions of academic articles from a corporation.
• 15 - Carl Friedrich Gauss discovers what became the prime number theorem.
• 15 - Gian Lorenzo Bernini creates a sculpture of the Martyrdom of Saint Lawrence in 1614.^[7]
• 15 - Jack Andraka developed a new method to detect pancreatic cancer.^[8]
• 15 - Louis Braille invented the Braille system.
• 15 - Christopher Paolini writes the first draft of his Eragon trilogy which is published when he is 19.
• 16 - Jean-François Champollion, can speak a dozen languages and delivers a paper on the Coptic language to the Grenoble Academy. By 20, he can speak another 13 languages and at 32 he deciphers the Rosetta Stone.
• 16 - Boy sailor Jack Cornwall, of HMS Chester, is awarded a posthumous VC for gallantry at the Battle of Jutland.
• 16 - Taylor Swift releases her first studio album, which peaks at #1 on the US Top Country Albums chart.
• 16 - the average age of 58 homeschooled teenagers who founded Conservapedia, so that the light of truth would continue to shine and darkness would not overcome it.
• 16 - Franz Schubert wrote his First Symphony; having already composed songs, chamber pieces etc.,
• 16 - Sun Myung Moon writes Crown of Glory.
• 17 - Cassie Bernall defended her faith in front of an atheistic gunman at the Columbine massacre, and was martyred for it^[9]
• 17 - Georges Bizet wrote his Symphony in C of which is heard frequently today.
• 17* - Mary accepts God's will to conceive Jesus by the Holy Spirit, and gives birth nine months later.^[10]
• 17 - Shawn Fanning develops the first large-scale peer-to-peer file sharing program, Napster
• 17 - Private 1st Class Jacklyn H. Lucas, United States Marine Corps, earned the Medal of Honor five days after his 17th birthday during the Iwo Jima battle in World War II; he was a Marine for three years. [6]
• 17 - Mendelssohn composed his Octet, widely considered the best of its genre. He had already written 12 string symphonies by age 14.
• 17 - Young Tom Morris won the 1868 Open Championship, and remains the youngest ever winner of a major golf championship. He went on to win again in 1869, 1870 and 1872; effectively four consecutive victories as the Open was not contested in 1871.^[11][12][13]
• 17 - Pele scored six goals in four games in the 1958 World Cup, including perhaps the finest goal ever in the finals, leading Brazil to the championship.^[14]
• 17 - Malala Yousafzai became the youngest ever recipient of a Nobel Prize in 2014. Her Nobel Peace Prize was jointly awarded with Indian child rights campaigner Kailash Satyarthi. Malala was barely 11 years old when she began championing girls' education in Pakistan, writing a blog (Diary of a Pakistani Schoolgirl) which chronicled her hope to keep going to school and her fears for the future of the province of Swat. She was critically injured in a failed assassination attempt on Oct. 9, 2012, when a Taliban gunman boarded her school bus and shot her in the head.^[15][16]
• 18 - Lila Rose, a UCLA student who had been homeschooled, goes undercover and does a stinging expose of an abortion clinic.^[17]
• 18 - Shawn Goldsmith from Long Island has earned all 121 merit badges offered by the Boy Scouts.^[18]
• 18 - Mary Shelley writes the famous novel Frankenstein (The Modern Prometheus), later published when she was 21.
• 18 - Garry Kasparov, considered the greatest chess player ever, won the U.S.S.R. championship.
• 18 - Tiger Woods wins the U.S. Amateur Championship at the TPC at Sawgrass, becoming the youngest winner ever.^[19]
• 18 - Herschel Walker gains an average of 5.9 yards per carry as running back for the Georgia Bulldogs, the only player to rank in the top 3 for the Heisman Trophy 3 times.^[20]
• 19 - Captain Albert Ball, VC, MC, DSO & 2 bars, commences his career as a fighter pilot. By the time he is killed, aged 20, in 1917, he has become one of the First World War's greatest air aces, accounting for at least 44 German aircraft.
• 19 - was the average age of front-line US service personnel fighting to defend democracy in Indochina during the Vietnam War.
• 19 - Evariste Galois applies group theory to the insolvability of polynomial equations, before his death in a duel at age 20.
• 19 - Babe Ruth began playing for the Boston Red Sox, in what would become the greatest baseball career in history.
• 19 - Kirani James won the first Olympic gold medal for the small nation of Grenada, as the first non-American to run 400 meters in less than 44 seconds.
• 19 - John D. Rockefeller starts a new company, turning an enormous profit in its first year, and became the most influential businessman in history.^[21]
• 19 - Steve Jobs begins collaborating in electronics with Steve Wozniak^[22] in electronics, and developed the personal computer within two years.
• 19 - Mark Zuckerberg commercializes Facebook, which later became the leading social networking system on the internet.
• 19 - Jim Ryun broke the world record for running the mile.
• 19 - Bill Gates co-founds Microsoft.
• 19 - Pete Sampras wins his first of 14 Grand Slam titles, at the U.S. Open
• 19 - Ginny Thrasher wins the first gold medal for the United States at the 2016 Summer Olympics, in a firearms competition.^[23]
• 20 - Willis Carrier invents modern air conditioning.
• 20 - Trevor Bayne, who had been homeschooled, became the youngest driver to win a Daytona 500 race.
• 20 - Tim Tebow, who had been homeschooled, became the first sophomore and also the youngest person to win the Heisman Trophy.^[24]

(add more, sorted by age and then alphabetically)

See also[edit]

• Gallery of American Heroes
• Gallery of British Heroes

External links[edit]

• Top 10 Child Prodigies

References[edit]

1. ↑ http://articles.latimes.com/2006/mar/30/science/sci-brain30
2. ↑ Mark apparently referred to himself as "νεανίσκος" in Mark 14:51, which translates as "youth" or "young man" according to Strong's.
3. ↑ http://www.discoverfrance.net/France/History/Joan_of_Arc.shtml
4. ↑ https://www.chess.com/article/view/bobby-fischers-breakthrough-the-game-of-the-century
5. ↑ http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/events/1996/olympics/daily/july25/flashback.html
6. ↑ http://www.ripleys.com/weird/daily-dose-of-weird-wtf-blog/unbelievable-but-true/charles-schults-snoopy-was-first-a-believe-it-or-not/
7. ↑ Some estimate that the completion date was 1615 - [1]
8. ↑ [2]
9. ↑ Two witnesses, Craig Scott and Joshua Lapp, confirmed a question-and-answer confrontation; others said Cassie was praying when murdered.[3]
10. ↑ Mary's exact age is not known, but she was old enough to marry under Jewish law and was almost certainly a teenager.[4]
11. ↑ http://golf.about.com/od/progolftours/qt/youngmajorm.htm
12. ↑ https://www.bbc.co.uk/scotland/sportscotland/asportingnation/article/0006/
13. ↑ https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2010/jul/18/young-tom-morris-open-golf
14. ↑ https://www.thesun.co.uk/sport/football/6209210/pele-1958-world-cup-sweden/
15. ↑ http://www.people.com/article/malala-yousafzai-wins-nobel-prize
16. ↑ https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-24379018
17. ↑ https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/archive/ldn/2007/may/07051504
18. ↑ Boy Scout Earns All 121 Merit Badges AP, December 30, 2008
19. ↑ http://www.infoplease.com/spot/tigertime1.html
20. ↑ https://athlonsports.com/college-football/college-football-all-time-rushing-leaders
21. ↑ http://www.notablebiographies.com/Pu-Ro/Rockefeller-John-D.html
22. ↑ http://www.ideafinder.com/history/inventors/jobs.htm
23. ↑ https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/olympics/rio-2016/2016/08/06/teen-shooter-ginny-thrasher-wins-usa-first-gold-medal/88331356/
24. ↑ Subsequently, in 2009, a 19-year-old won the trophy also.