Czechs in History | All stories

Jara Cimrman is known to many in this country as perhaps the greatest Czech inventor, artist, explorer and musician of all time. He has been the subject of a dozen plays, which are frequently staged in a Prague theatre that is named after him. The plays aim to highlight the contribution of a man who many believe has never received proper recognition for his achievements.

All of us are familiar with the Olympics and many moments of sweet victory, captured in time, that slowly form part of the patchwork of nations' collective identities. There are Czechs who will never forget the feats of runners like Emil Zatopek and his triple triumph in Helsinki. "Less than 200 metres to go it's Zatopek in front! Zatopek wins...what a beautiful race!" Others will always remember gymnast Vera Caslavska's seven gold.

In this edition of Czechs in History, we look at the life and career of Gustav Husak, a Slovak native who left an indelible mark on Czech history as the last communist president of Czechoslovakia. Gustav Husak was born in Bratislava in 1913. A gifted and talented student, he trained as a lawyer at Comenius University, where he also joined the Communist Party in 1933.

In this edition of Czechs in History we look at the life and work of Czech photographer Frantisek Drtikol, arguably one of the most important photographers of the early half of the 20th century. Born in 1883 in the mining town of Pribram, west of Prague, Drtikol would go on to study photography in Munich, where he would be heavily influenced by the Art Nouveau. Early on he divided his time among both drawing and photography, but focused primarily on the latter upon his return home; both as an art form and as a means for making a living. In the

October 31st - Halloween - is just around the corner, a date that historically marks the end of the harvest and the slow ushering in of long dark winter. A time of year humans long believed saw the fading of the boundary between the living and the dead, so that shades again walked the earth, among them - Vampyres - stalking the living for their blood.

In this edition of 'Czechs in History,' Brian Kenety takes a look at the life of Czechoslovakia's greatest race car driver, Eliska Junkova, the "queen of the steering wheel" and Jazz Age belle, whose stellar career came to a screeching halt after a tragic accident claimed the love of her life.

Today we look at the roles of some of those who believed in the Czech branch of socialism, announcers at Radio Prague during the 50s and 60s. We'll find out what inspired them to leave their homes in Canada and the U.S. to make a new start in Prague - to help build socialism in former Czechoslovakia - a very unusual fate.

Homer called it a "divine substance;" Plato held that it was "especially dear" to the gods. As essential to the human body as water, the earliest historical records show that the abundance or scarcity of salt could drastically affect the health of entire populations. It was the quest for a cheaper way to transport salt that inspired the engineering Gerstners to build the first horse-drawn railway in continental Europe.

Jan Masaryk was the son of Czechoslovakia's first president T.G. Masaryk. Like his father, he would come be defined by his service for his country, working as both a diplomat and later as foreign minister during some of Czechoslovakia's darkest days. Following the Second World War he witnessed the 1948 Communist coup that ended hopes of a return to democracy in Czechoslovakia and paved the way for forty years of oppressive rule.

When one looks back on a thousand years of Czech history one of the names that still carries great weight is that of 17th century thinker Jan Amos Komensky - the humanist reformer, Protestant bishop, and philosopher the world came to know as Comenius. A man who witnessed the tragic subjugation of his country in the era of religious and political conflict known as the Thirty Years' War. Who would be forced to flee his own homeland, yet never wavered in his overriding belief that the reform of mankind was possible, necessary, and indeed within