Benjamin Franklin was one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. A noted polymath, Franklin was a leading author, printer, political theorist, politician, postmaster, scientist, musician, inventor, satirist, civic activist, statesman...

The Honourable Thomas Gage was a British general, best known for his many years of service in North America, including his role as military commander in the early days of the American War of Independence. Born to an aristocratic family in E...

Samuel Adams was a statesman, political philosopher, and one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. As a politician in colonial Massachusetts, Adams was a leader of the movement that became the American Revolution, and was one of the...

George Washington was the first, and only nonpartisan, President of the United States (1789–97), the Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War, and one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. He...

Jeremiah Dixon was an English surveyor and astronomer who is best known for his work with Charles Mason, from 1763 to 1767, in determining what was later called the Mason–Dixon line. Dixon was born in Cockfield, near Bishop Auckland, Cou...

Daniel Boone was an American pioneer, explorer, and frontiersman whose frontier exploits made him one of the first folk heroes of the United States. Boone is most famous for his exploration and settlement of what is now Kentucky, which was...

John Adams was the second President of the United States of America. He was President from 1797 until 1801. His Vice-President was Thomas Jefferson. Adams belonged to the Federalist Party. John Adams was born in Quincy, Massachusetts, on Oc...

Thomas Paine, intellectual, scholar, revolutionary, and idealist, is widely recognized as one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. A radical pamphleteer, Paine anticipated and helped foment the American Revolution through his power...

Charles Cornwallis, 1st Marquess Cornwallis KG, PC, styled Viscount Brome between 1753 and 1762 and known as The Earl Cornwallis between 1762 and 1792, was a British Army officer and colonial administrator. In the United States and the...

Britain's King George III was the 18th century monarch who lost the fight to keep control over the American colonies. The third monarch of the Hanover house and the first to be born in England, he held the throne from 1760 until 1820, a rei...

The War of Jenkins' Ear was a conflict between Great Britain and Spain that lasted from 1739 to 1748, with major operations largely ended by 1742. Its unusual name relates to Robert Jenkins, captain of a British merchant ship, who exhibited...

The Battle of Cartagena de Indias was an amphibious military engagement between the forces of Britain under Vice-Admiral Edward Vernon and Spain under Admiral Blas de Lezo. It took place at the city of Cartagena de Indias in March 1741, in...

François-Dominique Toussaint Louverture, also Toussaint Bréda, was a leader of the Haitian Revolution. Born in Saint-Domingue, in a long struggle for independence Toussaint led enslaved Africans and Afro-Haitians to victory over French colo...

Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence and the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom, third president of the United States 1801-1809, and founder of the University of Virginia, voiced the aspirations of a new Americ...

Samuel Hearne, explorer, fur trader. He joined the Hudson's Bay Company (HBC) in 1766 and was chosen to search for a western passage, by river or sea, across the Barren Lands. His first 2 attempts ended ingloriously, as he was bullied, robb...