Carlos Manuel de Céspedes del Castillo was a Cuban planter who freed his slaves and made the declaration of Cuban independence in 1868 which started the Ten Years' War. Céspedes was a landowner and lawyer in eastern Cuba, near Bayamo, wh...

Herman Melville was an American novelist, short story writer, and poet of the American Renaissance period. His best known works include Typee (1846), a romantic account of his experiences in Polynesian life, and his whaling novel Moby-Dick...

Cyrus West Field was an American businessman and financier who led the Atlantic Telegraph Company, the company that successfully laid the first telegraph cable across the Atlantic Ocean in 1858. The cable broke down three weeks afterwar...

William Tecumseh Sherman was an American soldier, businessman, educator and author. He served as a General in the Union Army during the American Civil War (1861–65), for which he received recognition for his outstanding command of military...

Nathan Bedford Forrest was a lieutenant general in the Confederate Army during the American Civil War. He is remembered both as a self-educated, innovative cavalry leader during the war and as a leading southern advocate in the postwar year...

Marcus Goldman (December 9, 1821 – July 20, 1904) was a German-born American businessman and entrepreneur. He was born in Trappstadt, Germany and emigrated to the United States in 1848. He was the founder of Goldman Sachs, which is now one...

Red Cloud was a war leader and the head Chief of the Oglala Lakota (Sioux). His reign was from 1868 to 1909. One of the most capable Native American opponents the United States Army faced, he led a successful conflict in 1866–1868 known as...

Spotted Elk was the name of a chief of the Miniconjou Lakota Sioux. He was a son of chief One Horn (Miniconjou) and became a chief upon the death of his father. He was a highly renowned chief with skills in war and negotiations. He became k...

Dr. Ferdinand Vandeveer Hayden was an American geologist noted for his pioneering surveying expeditions of the Rocky Mountains in the late 19th century. He was also a physician who served with the Union Army during the Civil War. In 1871...

Levi Strauss was a German-American businessman who founded the first company to manufacture blue jeans. His firm, Levi Strauss & Co., began in 1853 in San Francisco, California. At the age of 18, Strauss, his mother and two sisters trave...

Geronimo ("one who yawns") was a prominent Native American leader of the Chiricahua Apache who defended his people against the encroachment of the United States on their tribal lands for over 25 years. Geronimo was born to the Bedonkohe ban...

John Stith Pemberton was an American pharmacist who is best known for being the founder of Coca-Cola. In May 1886, he developed an early version of a beverage that would later become world-famous as Coca-Cola, but sold his rights to the dri...

Paul Belloni du Chaillu was a French-American traveler and anthropologist. He became famous in the 1860s as the first modern outsider to confirm the existence of gorillas, and later the Pygmy people of central Africa. He later researched th...

Maximilian I was the only monarch of the Second Mexican Empire. After a distinguished career in the Austrian Navy, he was proclaimed Emperor of Mexico on April 10, 1864, with the backing of Napoleon III of France and a group of Mexican mona...

Baron (Nils) Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld also known as A. E. Nordenskioeld was a Finnish-Swede geologist, mineralogist and arctic explorer, and a member of the prominent Finland-Swedish Nordenskiöld family of scientists. Born in the Grand Duchy...