Early Life
Alves dos Reis was a child of a humble family; his father was a financially troubled undertaker who ended up being declared insolvent. Reis wanted to study engineering. He started his degree but quit in the first year to marry Maria Luísa Jacobetti de Azevedo, sister of Octávio Jacobetti de Azevedo and daughter of ... de Azevedo and Beatriz ..., in August 1916. In 1916 he decided to emigrate to Portuguese Angola which, at the time, was a Portuguese colony, to try to make a fortune and escape the humiliations from his wife's family, due to their differences in social status.
Reis forged himself a diploma of engineering, supposedly from Oxford University, although in reality it was from a school which didn't exist: the "Polytechnic School of Engineering". According to the diploma, he had studied engineering sciences, geology, geometry, physics, metallurgy, pure mathematics, paleography, electric and mechanical engineering, applied mechanics and physics. He started as a public employee in the public sewers constructions and repairs. With an uncovered cheque, he bought the major part of the stocks of the Transafrican Railways of Angola, in Moçâmedes. He became rich and gained credit.
Read more about this topic: Alves Dos Reis
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or life:
“I taught school in the early days of my manhood and I think I know something about mothers. There is a thread of aspiration that runs strong in them. It is the fiber that has formed the most unselfish creatures who inhabit this earth. They want three things only; for their children to be fed, to be healthy, and to make the most of themselves.”
—Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908–1973)
“If you were to destroy the belief in immortality in mankind, not only love but every living force on which the continuation of all life in the world depended, would dry up at once.”
—Feodor Dostoyevsky (1821–1881)