In Ireland, the Great Famine was a period of mass starvation, disease and emigration between 1845 and 1852. It is also known, mostly outside Ireland, as the Irish Potato Famine. In the Irish language it is called an Gorta Mór, meaning "the...

Ludwig II was king of Bavaria from 1864 until shortly before his death. He is sometimes referred to as the Swan King in English and der Märchenkönig (the Fairy tale King) in German. Ludwig is sometimes referred to as Mad King Ludwig, though...

Amadeo I was the only King of Spain from the House of Savoy. He was the second son of King Victor Emmanuel II of Italy and was known for most of his life as Duke of Aosta, but reigned briefly as King of Spain from 1870 to 1873. Granted the...

Alexander III was the Emperor of Russia from 1881 until his death in 1894. Alexander was the second son of Alexander II and Marie of Hesse and by Rhine. In natural disposition he bore little resemblance to his soft-hearted, liberal minded f...

Georg Cantor was a German mathematician. He created set theory, which has become a fundamental theory in mathematics. Cantor established the importance of one-to-one correspondence between the members of two sets, defined infinite and well-...

Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen was a German physicist, of the University of Würzburg, who, on November 8, 1895, produced and detected electromagnetic radiation in a wavelength range today known as x-rays or Röntgen Rays. Röntgen's discovery of x-ra...

The Mexican–American War was an armed conflict between the United States and the Centralist Republic of Mexico from 1846 to 1848 in the wake of the 1845 U.S. annexation of Texas, which Mexico considered part of its territory despite the 183...

William Frederick "Buffalo Bill" Cody was an American soldier, bison hunter and showman. He was born in the Iowa Territory (now the American state of Iowa), near LeClaire. He was one of the most colorful figures of the American Old West, an...

Peter Carl Fabergé was a Russian jeweller, best known for the famous Fabergé eggs, made in the style of genuine Easter eggs, but using precious metals and gemstones rather than more mundane materials. In 1885, Tsar Alexander III gave the...

Sir Henry Alexander Wickham was a British explorer. He later claimed in publicity that he was responsible for stealing about 70,000 seeds from the rubber-bearing tree, Hevea brasiliensis, in the Santarém area of Brazil in 1876. However ther...

Georges Auguste Escoffier was a French chef, restaurateur and culinary writer who popularized and updated traditional French cooking methods. He is a legendary figure among chefs and gourmets, and was one of the most important leaders in t...

Joseph Pulitzer was a Hungarian-American publisher best known for posthumously establishing the Pulitzer Prizes and (along with William Randolph Hearst) for originating yellow journalism. After the war he settled in St. Louis, Missouri,...

Abraham "Bram" Stoker was an Irish author, best known today for his 1897 Gothic novel Dracula. During his lifetime, he was better known as the personal assistant of actor Henry Irving and business manager of the Lyceum Theatre in London, wh...

Alexander Graham Bell was an eminent Scottish-born scientist, inventor, engineer and innovator who is credited with inventing the first practical telephone. Bell's father, grandfather, and brother had all been associated with work on elo...

Thomas Alva Edison was an American inventor and businessman who developed many devices which greatly influenced life in the 20th century. Dubbed "The Wizard of Menlo Park" by a newspaper reporter, he was one of the first inventors to apply...