Overcoming barriers

Paralyzed from the waist down by polio before running for office.

• Franklin Delano Roosevelt

• George Washington

• Harry S. Truman

• Ronald Reagan

He didn’t speak at all for the first three years of his life. But even though he received good grades throughout primary and elementary school, many of his teachers assumed he was lazy because he was always distracted by abstract concepts. He couldn't get a job in physics for two years after graduation.

• Richard Feynman

• Albert Einstein

• Erwin Schrödinger

• Heinrich Hertz

He grew up very poor without a dad, and his mom was put in a mental facility. He left school and started touring with entertainers, and become one of the most popular comic actors.

• Adam Sandler

• Charlie Chaplin

• Robin Williams

• Rowan Atkinson

When he was fifteen, he dropped out of school to support his family. Soon after, he and his family were living in a van. Despite these challenges, however, he continued to follow his dream of becoming a comedian.

• Charles Chaplin

• Jim Carrey

• Eddie Murphy

• Adam Sandler

He failed somewhere between 1,000 and 10,000 times before he invented the light bulb.

• Thomas Edison

• James Clerk Maxwell

• J. J. Thomson

• Benjamin Franklin

His first novel, Carrie, was rejected by thirty different publishers. He was so upset that he threw the novel in the trash, until his wife later fished it out and encouraged him to finish it.

• Lewis Carroll

• C. S. Lewis

• Stephen King

• Alexander Pushkin

He was born without a right hand. He became a Major league baseball pitcher for the California Angels, the New York Yankees, the Chicago White Sox, and the Milwaukee Brewers.

• Tarik El-Abour

• Chad Bentz

• Mordecai Brown

• Jim Abbot

He/She became blind shortly after birth. He/She is also a singer and songwriter who plays  several different  musical instruments, and received 22 grammy awards.

• Lachi

• Ray Charles

• Helen Keller

• Stevie Wonder

Attacked by a shark at age 13, resulting in the loss of her left arm. She started surfing again one month after her shark attack and losing her arm. She went on to win prizes in other surfing competitions and turning professional at age 17.

• Stephanie Gilmore

• Bethany Hamilton

• Maggie Drozdowski

• Kanya Sesser

He first began to serve meals to truck drivers at an old family dining room table wheeled into the front of his Corbin, service station. It became one of the US's leading fast food brands, opened up thousands of restaurants across the world.

• Colonel Harlan Sanders (KFC)

• Maurice McDonald (McDonald's)

• James McLamore (Burger king)

• Fred DeLuca (Subway)