Gilbert Du Motier, marquis de La Fayette was a French aristocrat and military officer. La Fayette is considered a national hero in both France and the United States for his participation in the American and French revolutions. In 2002, he w...

Charles X ruled as King of France and of Navarre from 16 September 1824 until 2 August 1830. A younger brother to Kings Louis XVI and Louis XVIII, he supported the latter in exile and eventually succeeded him. His rule of almost six years c...

Maximilien François Marie Isidore de Robespierre, known to his contemporaries also as "the Incorruptible", is one of the best known of the leaders of the French Revolution. He earned the nickname of "the Incorruptible" through his selfless...

Horatio Nelson was a British flag officer in the Royal Navy. He was noted for his inspirational leadership and superb grasp of strategy and unconventional tactics, which resulted in a number of decisive naval victories, particularly during...

Jean-Jacques Dessalines was a leader of the Haitian Revolution and the first ruler of an independent Haiti under the 1801 constitution. Initially regarded as governor-general, Dessalines later named himself Emperor Jacques I of Haiti (1804–...

Sir David Ochterlony, 1st Baronet GCB, was a British general. In 1777, he went as a cadet to India, where he served under Lord Lake in the battles of Koil, Aligarh and Delhi, and was appointed resident at Delhi in 1803. As the official Brit...

Franz Josef Gall was a German neuroanatomist, physiologist and pioneer in the study of the localization of mental functions in the brain. Claimed as the founder of phrenology, Gall was an early and important researcher in his fields. His...

James Monroe was the fifth President of the United States (1817-1825), and the fourth Virginian to hold the office. Monroe, a close ally of Thomas Jefferson was a diplomat who supported the French Revolution. He played a leading role in the...

Leopold Count van Limburg Stirum (born Hoogeveen March 12, 1758, died 's-Gravenhage June 25, 1840) was a politician who was part of the Dutch triumvirate that took power in 1813 in order to re-establish the monarchy in the Netherlands. L...

Voltaire wrote Candide at the age of sixty-five as a response, in the form of satirical mockery, to the optimism of Leibniz. "Everything is for the best in the best of worlds..." said the optimists. In Candide, both optimism and pessimism a...

Kew Gardens (Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew) is the world's largest collection of living plants. Founded in 1840 from the exotic garden at Kew Park in the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames, UK, its living collections include more than 30,0...

Georges Jacques Danton was a leading figure in the early stages of the French Revolution and the first President of the Committee of Public Safety. Danton's role in the onset of the Revolution has been disputed; many historians describe him...

Robert Burns (also known as Robbie Burns, Rabbie Burns, Scotland's favourite son, the Ploughman Poet, Robden of Solway Firth, the Bard of Ayrshire and in Scotland as The Bard) was a Scottish poet and lyricist. He is widely regarded as the n...

Wollstonecraft's lasting place in the history of philosophy rests upon A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792). In this classical feminist text, she appealed to egalitarian social philosophy as the basis for the creation and preservatio...

Johann Christoph Friedrich (later: von) Schiller, was a German poet, philosopher, historian, and dramatist. During the last several years of his life (1788–1805), Schiller struck a productive, if complicated, friendship with already famous...