Woodrow Wilson was the grandson. of James Wilson, who had emigrated from Strabane in County Tyrone about 1807 and married another Ulster immigrant, Annie Adams. The future president was born on 28 December 1856 in Staunton, Virginia.

Dispite suffering from dyslexia, Wilson was a gifted student. He became professor of Jurisprudence and Political Economy at Princeton University at the early age of 34 and in 1902 was elected President of Princeton, embarking on a far- reaching programme of reform in relation to the teaching system and the curriculum.

In 1910 Wilson was persuaded to enter politics and was elected Governor of New Jersey. His reforming principles caught the public imagination and two years later he was on his way to the White House.

The Wilson presidency was marked by a programme of progressive domestic legislation, but it was as an international statesman that he was to find his place in the history books. He quickly established himself as the most influential figure among the Allied leaders in the Great War and his famous programme of'Fourteen Points' included plans for a League of Nations, the forerunner to today's United Nations.

Wilson was a semi-invalid for the last few years of his life. He died in Washington DC on 3 January 1923 at the age of 67.