Birth and Naval Education
Nixon was born on the eve of the American Civil War, in Leesburg, Virginia, to Colonel Joel Lewis Nixon and Mary Jane Turner. Leesburg, only three miles into the Confederacy, changed hands several times over the course of the War. His brother George H. Nixon fought in the Virginia Cavalry as a member of "Mosby's Raiders."
Nixon graduated first in his class from the United States Naval Academy in 1882 and was sent to study naval architecture at the Royal Naval College, where, in 1885, he again graduated first in the class. At the Royal Naval College he was appointed an assistant naval constructor with the rank of lieutenant.
Read more about this topic: Lewis Nixon (naval Architect)
Famous quotes containing the words birth, naval and/or education:
“Heaven does not permit the birth of useless people.”
—Chinese proverb.
“It is now time to stop and to ask ourselves the question which my last commanding officer, Admiral Hyman Rickover, asked me and every other young naval officer who serves or has served in an atomic submarine. For our Nation M for all of us M that question is, “Why not the best?””
—Jimmy Carter (James Earl Carter, Jr.)
“Until we devise means of discovering workers who are temperamentally irked by monotony it will be well to take for granted that the majority of human beings cannot safely be regimented at work without relief in the form of education and recreation and pleasant surroundings.”
—Mary Barnett Gilson (1877–?)