Benjamin Spooner Briggs was an experienced United States seaman and master mariner. He is famous today for being the Captain of the merchant ship Mary Celeste when she was discovered unmanned and drifting in the Atlantic Ocean near the Stra...

The Dowager Empress Cixi popularly known in China as the Western Empress Dowager, and officially known posthumously as Empress Xiaoqin Xian, was a powerful and charismatic figure who was the de facto ruler of the Manchu Qing Dynasty, rulin...

Leopold Louis-Philippe Marie Victor of Saxe-Coburg, succeeded his father, Leopold I of Belgium, to the Belgian throne in 1865 as Leopold II, King of the Belgians and remained king until his death. Outside of Belgium, however, he is chiefly...

Cesare Lombroso was an Italian criminologist and physician, founder of the Italian School of Positivist Criminology. Lombroso rejected the established Classical School, which held that crime was a characteristic trait of human nature. Inste...

Samuel Langhorne Clemens, known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American writer, humorist, entrepreneur, publisher, and lecturer. He was lauded as the "greatest humorist this country has produced", and William Faulkner called him "the fa...

Andrew Carnegie was a Scottish American industrialist who led the enormous expansion of the American steel industry in the late 19th century. He was also one of the highest profile philanthropists of his era and had given away almost 90 per...

Wilhelm (later William) Steinitz was an Austrian and later American chess Master player, and the first undisputed world chess champion from 1886 to 1894. He was also a highly influential writer and chess theoretician. When discussing che...

Winslow Homer was an American landscape painter and printmaker, best known for his marine subjects. He is considered one of the foremost painters in 19th-century America and a preeminent figure in American art. Largely self-taught, Homer...

James Butler Hickok, known as "Wild Bill" Hickok, was a folk character of the American Old West. Some of his exploits as reported at the time were fictionalized, but his skills as a gunfighter and gambler provided the basis for his enduring...

Paul Charles Morphy was an American chess player. He is considered to have been the greatest chess master of his era and an unofficial World Chess Champion. He was a chess prodigy. He was called "The Pride and Sorrow of Chess" because he ha...

Sitting Bull, Hunkpapa Sioux Leader and Medicine Man, born about 1837. He was the principal chief of the Dakota Sioux, who were driven from their reservation in the Black Hills by miners in 1876, and took up arms against the whites and fri...

Elisabeth of Austria was the wife of Emperor Franz Joseph I, and thus Empress of Austria and Queen of Hungary. Born into Bavarian royalty, Elisabeth (Sisi) enjoyed an informal upbringing, before marrying Franz Joseph at 16. She was sudde...

Stephen Grover Cleveland was both the twenty-second and twenty-fourth President of the United States. Cleveland is the only President to serve two non-consecutive terms (1885–1889 and 1893–1897). He was the winner of the popular vote for Pr...

John Pierpont Morgan was an American financier, banker and art collector who dominated corporate finance and industrial consolidation during his time. In 1892 Morgan arranged the merger of Edison General Electric and Thompson-Houston Electr...

Abraham Kuijper generally known as Abraham Kuyper, was a Dutch politician, journalist, statesman and theologian. He founded the Anti-Revolutionary Party and was prime minister of the Netherlands between 1901 and 1905....