Scott began his feature film directing career with The Duellists, which brought him the Jury Prize at the 1978 Cannes Film Festival. His second film was the breakthrough hit Alien which won an Academy Award® for Special Effects. This was fo...

Philip Glass is an Academy Award-nominated American composer. His music is frequently described as minimalist, though he prefers the term theatre music. He is considered one of the most influential composers of the late-20th century and is...

Saddam Hussein was the fifth President of Iraq, serving in this capacity from 16 July 1979 until 9 April 2003. Saddam formally rose to power in 1979, although he had been the de facto head of Iraq for several years prior. He suppressed s...

Roy Kelton Orbison was an American singer, songwriter, and musician known for his impassioned singing style, complex song structures, and dark, emotional ballads. Many critics described his music as operatic, nicknaming him "the Caruso of R...

Mikhail Tal was a Soviet Latvian chess Grandmaster and the eighth World Chess Champion (from 1960 to 1961). Widely regarded as a creative genius and the best attacking player of all time, Tal played in a daring, combinatorial style. His...

His Holiness the XIVth Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso, is the spiritual and temporal leader of the Tibetan people. He was born in a small village called Takster in northeastern Tibet. Born to a peasant family, His Holiness was recognized at th...

Richard Saul Wurman is an architect and graphic designer. He is considered a pioneer in the practice of making information understandable. He has written and designed over 80 books and created the TED conferences (with which he is no longer...

Elvis Aaron Presley was an American singer, musician, and actor. Regarded as one of the most significant cultural icons of the 20th century, he is often referred to as "the King of Rock and Roll", or simply, "the King". Born in Tupelo, M...

Dame Jane Morris Goodall, is a British primatologist, ethologist, anthropologist, and UN Messenger of Peace. Considered to be the world's foremost expert on chimpanzees, Goodall is best known for her 45-year study of social and family inter...

Brigitte Bardot is a French actress and model, daughter of an industrialist. Also known simply as BB ("Bri-Bri" in childhood) she is considered the embodiment of the 1950s "sex kitten." Bardot starred with Trintignant in Vadim's film And...

Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin was a Soviet pilot and cosmonaut. He was the first human being to journey into outer space, when his Vostok spacecraft completed an orbit of the Earth on April 12, 1961. Gagarin became an international celebrity, a...

Ulrike Marie Meinhof (7 October 1934 – 9 May 1976) was a German left-wing militant. She co-founded the Red Army Faction (Rote Armee Fraktion) in 1970 after having previously worked as a journalist for the monthly left-wing magazine konkret....

What would the world of modern music be like without the inventions of Bob Moog? One answer would be: very boring. 1964 : Bob Moog’s namesake analog synthesizers have affected popular music in ways he might not have expected back in 1954 wh...

Antonius "Anton" Johannes Geesink was a Dutch 10th-dan judoka. He was a three-time World Judo Champion (1961, 1964 and 1965) and Olympic Gold Medalist (1964). He was 6'6" (1.98m) tall and at one time weighted 320 pounds (145 kg). He was bor...

Steven Weinberg (is an American theoretical physicist and Nobel laureate in Physics for his contributions with Abdus Salam and Sheldon Glashow to the unification of the weak force and electromagnetic interaction between elementary particles...