Scientist and early advocate for industrial uses for farm crops (bio-energy). Carver earned a B.S. from the Iowa Agricultural College in 1894 and an M.S. in 1896. He became a member of the faculty of Iowa State College and then Tuskegee Ins...

British poet, critic and magazine editor Arthur Symons was born in Wales, but spent much of his adulthood and academic years in France and Italy. In addition to many collections of verse, he wrote "The Symbolist Movement in Literature" (189...

Gifford Pinchot was an American forester and politician. He served as the 4th Chief of the U.S. Division of Forestry, as the 1st head of the United States Forest Service, and as the 28th Governor of Pennsylvania. He was a member of the Repu...

Baroness Emma Orczy was a British novelist, playwright and artist of Hungarian noble origin. She was most notable for her series of novels featuring the Scarlet Pimpernel. In 1903, she and her husband wrote a play based on one of her short...

Sven Anders Hedin was a Swedish geographer, topographer, explorer, photographer, and travel writer, as well as an illustrator of his own works. During four expeditions to Central Asia he discovered the Transhimalaya (once named the Hedin Ra...

Johan Julius Christian Sibelius was a Finnish composer of classical music and one of the most notable composers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. His music played an important role in the formation of the Finnish national identity....

Jules Verne's novel "From the Earth to the Moon" is the imaginative story of an attempt, made shortly after the U.S. Civil War, to send a projectile to the moon. This daring plan is masterminded by veteran artilleryman Impey Barbicane, pres...

Robert LeRoy Parker, better known as Butch Cassidy, was an American train and bank robber and the leader of a gang of criminal outlaws known as the "Wild Bunch" in the Old West. Parker engaged in criminal activity for more than a decade...

George Edward Stanhope Molyneux Herbert, 5th Earl of Carnarvon was an English aristocrat best known as the financier of the excavation of the Egyptian New Kingdom Pharaoh Tutankhamun's tomb in Egypt's Valley of the Kings. The 5th Earl was a...

Erik Satie was a French composer and pianist. Satie was a colourful figure in the early 20th-century Parisian avant-garde. His work was a precursor to later artistic movements such as minimalism, Surrealism, repetitive music, and the Theatr...

Sun Yat-sen was a Chinese politician, physician and philosopher who provisionally served as the first president of the Republic of China; and the first leader of the Kuomintang (Nationalist Party of China). He is referred as the "Father of...

Adrien de Gerlache, Belgian naval officer and explorer. Sailing with Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen who would later be the first to reach the South Pole, Gerlache led a scientific expedition to Antarctica in 1897–99. During the expeditio...

Pakubuwono X was the tenth Susuhunan (ruler of Surakarta). His reign corresponded with the political changes happening in the Dutch East Indies at the time, in particular the growth of local indigenous political organizations such as Budi U...

Beatrix Potter was the author and illustrator of a popular series of children's books that includes The Tale of Peter Rabbit (1902), The Tailor of Gloucester (1903) and The Tale of the Flopsy Bunnies (1909). Illustrated with watercolors, he...

Wassily Kandinsky was a Russian painter and art theorist. One of the most famous 20th-century artists, he is credited with painting the first modern abstract works. Kandinsky was born in Moscow but spent his childhood in Odessa. He enrolled...