William Ewart Gladstone was a British Liberal Party statesman and four times Prime Minister (1868–74, 1880–85, 1886 and 1892–94). He was a champion of the Home Rule Bill which would have established self-government in Ireland. Gladstone...

Edward Blyth was an English zoologist and pharmacist. He was one of the founders of zoology in India. Blyth was born in London in 1810. In 1841 he travelled to India to become the curator of the museum of the Royal Asiatic Society of Bengal...

Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker was one of the greatest British botanists and explorers of the 19th century. Hooker was a founder of geographical botany, and Charles Darwin's closest friend. He was Director of the Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew, for...

Frederick Douglass was an American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman. After escaping from slavery, he became a leader of the abolitionist movement, gaining note for his dazzling oratory and incisive antislavery writing. He stood...

Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky was a Russian writer of novels, short stories and essays. Dostoyevsky's literary works explore human psychology in the troubled political, social and spiritual context of 19th-century Russian society. A Slavo...

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...

Paul Kruger was instrumental in negotiations with the British, which later led to the restoration of Transvaal as an independent state under British rule. In 1882, the 57 year old Paul Kruger was elected president of Transvaal. He l...

Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy was a Russian writer who primarily wrote novels and short stories. Later in life, he also wrote plays and essays. His two most famous works, the novels War and Peace and Anna Karenina, are acknowledged as two of the...

Chester Alan Arthur was an American politician who served as the twenty-first President of the United States (1881-1885). Arthur was a member of the Republican Party and worked as a lawyer before becoming the twentieth vice president under...

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...

James A. Garfield, 20th President of the United States (1881), is remembered as one of the four "lost Presidents" who served rather uneventfully after the Civil War. Of the four lost Presidents -- Hayes, Garfield, Arthur, and Harrison -- Ga...

Hendrik Willem Mesdag was a Dutch marine painter. He was born in Groningen, the son of the banker Klaas Mesdag and his wife Johanna Wilhelmina van Giffen. Mesdag was encouraged by his father, an amateur painter, to study art. He married...

Major-General Charles George Gordon, CB, also known as Chinese Gordon, Gordon Pasha, and Gordon of Khartoum, was a British army officer and administrator. He saw action in the Crimean War as an officer in the British army, but he made hi...

Benjamin Harrison was the twenty-third President of the United States, serving one term from 1889 to 1893. Harrison was born in North Bend, Ohio, and at age 21 moved to Indianapolis, Indiana, where he became a prominent state politician. Du...

Ferdinand Freiherr von Richthofen was a German traveller, geographer, and scientist. He traveled or studied in the Alps of Tyrol and the Carpathians in Transylvania. In 1860, he joined the Eulenburg Expedition, a Prussian expedition which...