Rainier III ruled the Principality of Monaco for almost 56 years, making him one of the longest ruling monarchs in European history. Though internationally known for his marriage to the American actress Grace Kelly, he was also responsible...

Simeon ten Holt is a Dutch composer. Ten Holt studied with Jakob van Domselaer, eventually developing a highly personal style of minimal composition. Ten Holt generally uses consonant, tonal materials and his works are organized in numerous...

Hitler, although extremely evil, was possibly one of the best orators of all time. He could move crowds like no one else with his powerful speeches and yet virtually nothing he said is still quoted today. Why? Because it was not what Hitler...

Robert Mugabe became Zimbabwe's first president after the establishment of majority rule and the official granting of independence from Britain in 1980. He still holds that position today. Mugabe was a hero in the struggle for majority rule...

Jimmy Carter, 39th President of the United States (1977-1981). His one-term presidency is remembered for the events that overwhelmed it -— inflation, energy crisis, war in Afghanistan, and hostages in Iran. After one term in office, voters...

James Arthur Baldwin was an American novelist, playwright, essayist, poet, and activist. His essays, as collected in Notes of a Native Son (1955), explore intricacies of racial, sexual, and class distinctions in Western societies, but most...

Benoît B. Mandelbrot was a Franco-American mathematician. Born in Poland, he moved to France with his family when he was a child. Mandelbrot spent much of his life living and working in the United States, acquiring dual French and American...

George Herbert Walker Bush, 41st President of the United States (1989-1993), belongs to a political dynasty; he sits in the middle of three generations of politicians, including his father Prescott, a senator from Connecticut; his son Jeb,...

Patrice Emery Lumumba, African nationalist leader, the first prime minister of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (June-September 1960). Forced out of office during a political crisis, he was assassinated a short time later. In January...

Malcolm X, born Malcolm Little, was an African-American Muslim minister and a human rights activist. To his admirers he was a courageous advocate for the rights of blacks, a man who indicted white America in the harshest terms for its crime...

Helmut Krone was an art director and is considered to be a pioneer of modern advertising. Krone spent over 30 years at the advertising agency Doyle Dane Bernbach. He was the art director for the popular 1960's campaign for the Volkswagen Be...

Pol Pot was a Cambodian politician and revolutionary who led the Khmer Rouge from 1963 until 1997 and took part in orchestrating the Cambodian genocide. From 1963 to 1981, he served as the General Secretary of the Communist Party of Kampuch...

Carlos Castaneda was an author of a series of books that claimed to describe his training in traditional Native American shamanism, which he referred to as a form of "sorcery". Castaneda claimed to have met a Yaqui shaman named Don Juan Mat...

Eugene Luther Gore Vidal was an American writer known for his essays, novels, screenplays, and Broadway plays. As a well-known public intellectual, he was known for his patrician manner and witty aphorisms. Vidal's grandfather was the U.S....

Margaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher, was the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990 and the Leader of the Conservative Party from 1975 to 1990. She was the longest-serving British Prime Minister of the 20th century an...