Avicenna
Avicenna was born in Afshana, a village near Bukhara (in present-day Uzbekistan), the capital of the Samanids, a Persian dynasty in Central Asia and Greater Khorasan. His mother, named Sitāra, was from Bukhara; his father, Abdullāh, was a respected Ismaili scholar from Balkh, an important town of the Samanid Empire, in what is today Balkh Province, Afghanistan. His father worked in the government of Samanid in the village Kharmasain, a Sunni regional power. After five years, his younger brother, Mahmoud, was born. Avicenna first began to learn the Quran and literature in such a way that when he was ten years old he had essentially learned all of them.
Agneta Horn
Agneta Horn was the daughter of Gustav Horn, Count of Björneborg and Kristina Oxenstierna, and the granddaughter of Axel Oxenstierna. She was born in Riga in what is now Latvia, because her father was a Swedish military officer stationed outside of the country at the time of her birth. At six weeks of age, despite the unusual nature of a whole family living together in a Swedish military camp, Agneta and her mother joined Gustav at a camp in Kurland, in western Lithuania. The family lived there together through the fall and winter. In the spring when Gustav traveled to Germany with the military, Agneta and her mother returned to their Swedish home. Soon after, Agneta's younger brother Axel was born. The family was reunited with Gustav again in Neumark after Axel's birth. Horn writes: "Because she took us both with her and sailed to Germany and landed at Wolgast, where my father met her. Then, he took her and us with him to the army, which at the time was in Neumark" ("Agneta Horn’s Leverne", 1910). Therefore, from a young age, Agneta was exposed to Swedish military campaigns, particularly the war between Sweden and Denmark. In her autobiography she recalls this experience: "But then came the King of Denmark and camped across from our army. And they began to shoot at each other's camps with guns. Because they were shooting so close together the bullets fell into our tent" ("Agneta Horn’s Leverne", 1910). In 1634 Gustav Horn was captured by Imperialist military forces and held as a prisoner of war for eight years. Kristina died when Agneta was child. Her father remarried, and Agneta was raised for much of her childhood by Ebba Leijonhufvud, a "cold and heartless" aunt.