My father made do with food stamps but I wanted my life to be different
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Miroslav Šnejdar was born on November 14th, 1928 in Brno. He grew up in Česká Třebová in a very poor family. In 1945 he was sent to Slovakia to dig trenches. He came back home after the Second World War had ended. His father refused to support him during his studies due to lack of finances. Despite that he trained as a lathe operator, passed the secondary school leaving exams and graduated from Technical University of Ostrava. He settled down in Ostrava working as a constructor at the Vítkovice Ironworks. He had several patents registered to his name and came up with many inventions, he learned English, German, Russian, Portuguese and Spanish, got a CSc. title. In the 1970s he led the construction of a soil moving machine of his own design in Brazil. After that he had been studying ore in Mozambique for the United Nations. He had a successful career despite the fact that he refused to join the Communist party and had been denounced by his colleagues who envied him. His hobby was traveling. He visited every country in the world and is in the Guinness book of World Records as the Czech citizen who visited most countries. He continues to venture abroad even after his 90th birthday.
