Wikipedia:Today's featured article/June 17, 2014

Tadeusz Kościuszko (1746–1817) was a military leader who became a national hero in Poland, Lithuania, Belarus, and the United States. He graduated from the Corps of Cadets in Warsaw, Poland, before studying in France. In 1776, he moved to North America, where he took part in the American Revolutionary War as a colonel in the Continental Army. An accomplished military architect, he designed and oversaw the construction of state-of-the-art fortifications, including those at West Point, New York. He returned to Poland, and was commissioned a major general in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth Army in 1789. Two years after the Polish–Russian War of 1792 had resulted in the Second Partition of Poland, he led an uprising against Russia in March 1794. Russian forces captured him at the Battle of Maciejowice, and the defeat of the uprising led to the Third Partition in 1795, which ended Poland's independent existence for 123 years. He was pardoned by Tsar Paul I in 1796 and emigrated to the United States. A close friend of Thomas Jefferson, Kościuszko wrote a will in 1798 dedicating his American assets to the education and freedom of U.S. slaves. (Full article...)

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