A patriot, soldier, journalist and scientist, General Antonio Luna scintilled during the Filipino-American War. He was born in a stonehouse owned by the Cortez family on Urbiztondo Street, formerly Barranca, in Binondo, Manila on October 29,1866, to Don Joaquin Luna y Posadas, a revenue inspector and Doņa Laureana Novicio y Ancheta, daughter of a prominentfamily from Badoc, Ilocos Norte. Their surname Luna and Novicio were adopted in compliance with the decree of Governor General Narciso Claveria in 1849, prohibiting the use of the names of saints as surnames. He was the youngest of the Luna chidren: Jose, Juan, Joaquin, Manuel, Remedios and Numeriana. Their paternal grandparents were Don Agustin de San Pedro and Doņa Mauricia Posadas and Don Leonardo de San Pedro and Doņa Dolores Lanuza on their mother's side.  
 
     He was a preciously athletic child. When he got hurtin the physical games, he would rather go to servants for relief than to his parents for fear of being scolded. He learned to play well piano, mandolin and guitar along with his brother and sisters. He learned his first letters under a teacher named Intong and, at age eight, entered the Ateneo de Manila where he began to take interest in literature and chemistry and obtained Bachelor of arts in 1881. He dedicated to the colegialas of La Concordia the poem Las Estrellas de Mi Cielo. He spent long hours in the laboratory under Jesuit Fr. Francisco de Paula Sanchez. He enrolled in the University of Santo Thomas where he won first prize for his composition "Dos Cuerpos Fundamentales de Quimica," on the occasion of the elevation of Fr. Ceferino Gonzales to the Cardinate.