Marinus (Rinus) van der Lubbe was a Dutch council communist convicted of, and executed for, setting fire to the German Reichstag building on 27 February 1933, an event known as the Reichstag fire. According to the Berlin police, van der...

James Agee (1909) Agee was an American novelist, screenwriter, journalist, poet, and film critic who worked for Fortune, Time, and The Nation. His first major book, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, a commentary on the life of tenant farmers i...

Fleming is the creator of the fictional superspy James Bond. Bond is a suave, lady-killing British agent who travels the globe, battles super-villains bent on world domination, and famously prefers his vodka martinis "shaken, not stirred."...

Edwin Herbert Land was a American scientist, inventor, and industrialist. While studying physics at Harvard in the 1920s he became interested in the polarization of light. He developed a new polarizing material, which he called Polaroid, an...

Clarence Leonidas "Leo" Fender was an American inventor who founded Fender Electric Instrument Manufacturing Company, or "Fender" for short. He left the company in the late 1960s, and later founded two other musical instrument companies, Mu...

Irish-British painter. He lived in Berlin and Paris before settling in London (1929) to begin a career as an interior decorator. With no formal art training, he started painting, drawing, and participating in gallery exhibitions, with littl...

Max Miedinger was a Swiss typeface designer. He was famous for creating the Neue Haas Grotesk typeface in 1957 that was renamed Helvetica in 1960. Marketed as a symbol of cutting-edge Swiss technology, Helvetica achieved immediate global su...

Momofuku Ando, born Go Pek-Hok, was an inventor and businessman who founded Nissin Food Products Co., Ltd. He is known as the inventor of instant noodles (ramen noodles) and the creator of the brands Top Ramen and Cup Noodles....

The Xinhai Revolution, also known as the Chinese Revolution or the Revolution of 1911, was a revolution that overthrew China's last imperial dynasty (the Qing dynasty) and established the Republic of China (ROC). The revolution was named Xi...

Sir Robert Falson Scott's last journey to Antarctica, and his race for the South Pole. On November 1st 1911, twelve men, each with a pony and sledge, left Cape Evans in detachments. This included the final party of five that would push o...

Lucille Désirée Ball Morton was an American actress, comedian, model, film-studio executive, and producer. She was best known as the star of the self-produced sitcoms I Love Lucy, The Lucy–Desi Comedy Hour, The Lucy Show, and Here's Lucy....

Mikhail Moiseyevich Botvinnik was a Soviet and Russian International Grandmaster and World Chess Champion for most of 1948 to 1963. Working as an electrical engineer and computer scientist at the same time, he was one of the very few profes...

Ronald Wilson Reagan was an American actor and politician. He was the 40th President of the United States (1981–1989), and served as the 33rd Governor of California (1967–75) prior to his presidency. As president, Reagan implemented swee...

RMS Titanic was the second of a trio of superliners intended to dominate the transatlantic travel business. Owned by the White Star Line and built at the Harland and Wolff shipyard in Belfast, Ireland, the Titanic was the largest passenger...

Alan Mathison Turing OBE FRS was an English mathematician, computer scientist, logician, cryptanalyst, philosopher, and theoretical biologist. Turing was highly influential in the development of theoretical computer science, providing a for...