Where would you be if your were at a world-class university that boasts among its alumni 23 Heads of State, including 8 U.S. Presidents; a Japanese Crown Princess; 2 U.S. Chief Justices; 7 world Prime Ministers; 49 Nobel Prize laureates; 23 Pulitzer Prize winners; a UN Secretary General; and 22 billionaires? You would unmistakably be standing before that famed 1636 sandstone and iron gate with the emblem containing the Latin word Veritas - the Truth. The truth is that you would be at Harvard.

There are so many impressive things about Harvard, including the many fine art galleries containing world-famed paintings by Monet, Pollock, Klimt, Renoir, Rubens and Munch. Museums with Greek marble carvings of Emperor Augustus and Domitian, dating back to the first Century AD. Theser are Egyptian statues of Ramesses II, carved in 1279 BC. Add to that a Natural History museum that houses some of the rarest fossil records ever discoered on Earth, and a magnificient campus spread over 120 hectares... and you begin to have somethign thatis not just special, it is perhaps unique. 

One of the most interesting and unique places at Harvard has to be the Widener Library. Harry Widener was a successful busiensesman and bibliophile who had graduated from Harvard in 1907, aged only 22. He was a rare book collector and had begun his 3,300 collection, whist still an undergraduate at Harvard. With his first editions that included Dickens, Robert Louis Stevenson, Charlotte Bronte and William Shakespeare, Widener's collection is today regarded as one of the most valuable in the world.

On Wednesday April 10th, 1912, Widener boarded the RMS Titanic at Cherbourg with his father, mother, his father's valet and mother's maid. Sadly, however, the RMS Titantic, shortly after midnight on April 15th, 1912, collided with an iceberg and sank with a heavy loss of life. His mother and maid survived by boardign a lifeboat, but Harry and his father were both amongst the Titanic's many victim, who met an icy cold death in the North Atlantic.

After his death in 1912, his mother donated the then-massive total of $2 Million for the construction of the building that is now the iconic Harry Elkins Widener Memorial Library. Today, the Widener Library houses over 3.2 Million books and adds some 60,000 volumes to its collection annually.

The gift of knowledge is a truly beautiful thing and out of intense tragedy was born eternal triumph. The triumph of the written word that gives every student the power of knowledge, made possible by the generosity of spirit and hand of the magnanimous Widener familt, whose gift of Harvard university will contribute to the education of thousands of students and scholars for generations to come. As Benjamin Frankling once said: "An investment in knowledge pays the best interest."