Manuel José Joaquín del Corazón de Jesús Belgrano, usually referred to as Manuel Belgrano, was an Argentine economist, lawyer, politician, and military leader. He took part in the Argentine Wars of Independence and created the Flag of Argen...

José de San Martín was an Argentine general and the prime leader of the southern part of South America's successful struggle for independence from Spain. Born in Yapeyú, he left his mother country at an early age and studied in Madrid, Spai...

Simón Bolívar was a Venezuelan military and political leader. Together with José de San Martín, he played a key role in Hispanic-Spanish America's successful struggle for independence from the Spanish Empire, and is today considered one of...

John James Audubon (Jean-Jacques) was a French American ornithologist, naturalist, and painter. He was notable for his expansive studies to document all types of American birds and for his detailed illustrations that depicted the birds in t...

General Gregor MacGregor was a Scottish soldier, adventurer and confidence trickster who attempted from 1821 to 1837 to draw British and French investors and settlers to "Poyais", a fictional Central American territory that he claimed to ru...

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...

Antonio José de Sucre y Alcalá, known as the "Gran Mariscal de Ayacucho" (English: "Grand Marshal of Ayacucho"), was a Venezuelan independence leader who served as the fourth President of Peru and the second President of Bolivia. Sucre was...

Dom Pedro I, nicknamed "the Liberator", was the founder and first ruler of the Empire of Brazil. As King Dom Pedro IV, he reigned briefly over Portugal, where he also became known as "the Liberator" as well as "the Soldier King". Born in Li...

Charles Robert Darwin was an English naturalist who realised and presented compelling evidence that all species of life have evolved over time from common ancestors, through the process he called natural selection. The fact that evolution o...

Henry Walter Bates was an English naturalist and explorer who gave the first scientific account of mimicry in animals. He was most famous for his expedition to the rainforests of the Amazon with Alfred Russel Wallace, starting in 1848. Wall...

Machado de Assis was a pioneer Brazilian novelist, poet, playwright and short story writer, widely regarded as the greatest writer of Brazilian literature. Nevertheless, Assis did not achieve widespread popularity outside Brazil during his...

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...

Cornelis Lely was a Dutch civil engineer and statesman. He was the figure responsible for the Zuiderzee Works, which meant the enclosure of the Zuiderzee by means of the Afsluitdijk, and subsequently draining parts of it into polders. All t...

Cornelis Gerard Anton de Kom was a Surinamese resistance fighter and anti-colonialist author. On May 10, De Kom was sent to The Netherlands without trial and exiled from his native country. He was unemployed and continued writing his boo...

Oscar Niemeyer, known as Master Niemeyer, was a Brazilian architect who is considered one of the key figures in the development of modern architecture. Niemeyer was best known for his design of civic buildings for Brasília, a planned city w...