Marie Louise, Empress of the French (1810–1815) as consort of Napoleon I and duchess of Parma, Piacenza, and Guastalla (1816–47), daughter of Holy Roman Emperor Francis II (later Emperor of Austria as Francis I.) She was married (1810) to N...

Count István Széchenyi was a Hungarian politician, theorist and writer, one of the greatest statesmen of Hungarian history. An important Széchenyi initiative was the development of Buda and Pest as a major political, economical and cultural...

Michael Faraday was an English chemist and physicist (or natural philosopher, in the terminology of the time) who contributed to the fields of electromagnetism and electrochemistry. Although Faraday received little formal education and knew...

James Buchanan, 15th President of the United States (1857-1861). In the 1850s, the question of slavery divided the United States. Hopes ran high that the new President, "Old Buck," might be the man to avert national crisis. He failed entire...

Charles Babbage was an English mathematician, analytical philosopher, mechanical engineer and (proto-) computer scientist who originated the idea of a programmable computer. Parts of his uncompleted mechanisms are on display in the London S...

Samuel Finley Breese Morse was an American painter and inventor. After having established his reputation as a portrait painter, in his middle age Morse contributed to the invention of a single-wire telegraph system based on European telegra...

The major powers of Europe - Austria, Britain, Russia and Prussia - feared the rise of France's revolutionaries because of the effect they could have upon their own populations. They banded together in various combinations and coalitions th...

Percy Bysshe Shelley was one of the major English Romantic poets, and is regarded by some as among the finest lyric poets in the English language, and one of the most influential. A radical in his poetry as well as in his political and soci...

Alexander Ypsilantis was a member of a prominent Phanariot Greek family, a prince of the Danubian Principalities, a senior officer of the Imperial Russian cavalry during the Napoleonic Wars, and a leader of the Filiki Eteria, a secret organ...

Francisco José de Paula Santander y Omaña was a Colombian military and political leader during the 1810–1819 independence war of the United Provinces of New Granada (present-day Colombia). He was the acting President of Gran Colombia betwee...

William II (Willem Frederik George Lodewijk van Oranje-Nassau) was King of the Netherlands, Grand Duke of Luxembourg, and Duke of Limburg from 7 October 1840 until his death. On 7 October 1840, on his father's abdication, he acceded the thr...

Baronin Therese von Droßdik, born Therese Malfatti, was an Austrian musician and friend of Ludwig van Beethoven. She is best known as one of the supposed dedicatees of Beethoven's famous bagatelle, Für Elise, WoO 59....

Gioacchino Antonio Rossini was an Italian musical composer who wrote more than 30 operas as well as sacred music and chamber music. His best known works include Il barbiere di Siviglia (The Barber of Seville), and Guillaume Tell (William Te...

Stephen Fuller Austin, known as the "Father of Texas," led the Anglo-American colonization of the region. The capital city of Austin, Texas and Austin County, Texas, Stephen F. Austin State University in Nacogdoches, Texas as well as severa...

George Green was a British mathematical physicist who wrote An Essay on the Application of Mathematical Analysis to the Theories of Electricity and Magnetism (Green, 1828). The essay introduced several important concepts, among them a theor...