1 She and husband Cosmo Duff Gordon were accused in the press of bribing crew to row faster after 12 were saved in their boat, which was built for 40. 2  Tabloids of the day dubbed it the 'Money Boat' though a British Wreck Commissioner's inquiry would later clear the couple of wrongdoing.
Updated March 30, 2017. Simon Bolivar (1783-1830) was the greatest leader of Latin America's independence movement from Spain. A superb general and a charismatic politician, he not only drove the Spanish from northern South America but also was instrumental in the early formative years of the republics that sprang up once the Spanish had gone.
Simon Bolivar was born on July 24, 1783 in Caracas to wealthy Creole aristocrats. His father died when he was three years old, and his mother died six years later. His inheritance made him one of the richest men in Caracas. Bolivar traveled to Spain in 1799, and at court he was under the protection of Manuel Mallo and then the Marquis de Ustariz. In 1802 he married the daughter of a nobleman from Caracas.