Sir Edmund Percival Hillary, was a New Zealand mountaineer and explorer. On 29 May 1953 at the age of 33, he and Sherpa mountaineer Tenzing Norgay became the first climbers known to have reached the summit of Mount Everest. They were part o...

Nicolae Ceausescu was a Romanian communist politician. He was General Secretary of the Romanian Communist Party from 1965 to 1989, and as such was the country's second and last Communist leader. He was also the country's head of state from...

Leonard Bernstein was an American composer, conductor, author, music lecturer, and pianist. He was among the first conductors born and educated in the US to receive worldwide acclaim. According to music critic Donal Henahan, he was "one of...

Edward Aloysius Murphy Jr. was an American aerospace engineer who worked on safety-critical systems. He is best known for his namesake Murphy's law, which is said to state, "Anything that can go wrong will go wrong". Born in the Panama C...

Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela was a South African anti-apartheid revolutionary, politician and philanthropist who served as President of South Africa from 1994 to 1999. He was South Africa's first black chief executive, and the first elected in...

John Fitzgerald Kennedy, commonly known as Jack Kennedy, or by his initials JFK, was an American politician who served as the 35th President of the United States from January 1961 until he was assassinated in November 1963. Notable events d...

Anthony Burgess was an English novelist and critic. He was also active as a composer, librettist, poet, playwright, screenwriter, journalist, essayist, travel writer, broadcaster, translator and educationalist. Born John Burgess Wilson in t...

Roald Dahl was a British novelist, short story writer and screenwriter, born in Wales of Norwegian parents, who rose to prominence in the 1940s with works for both children and adults, and became one of the world's bestselling authors. His...

Francis Crick was an English molecular biologist, biophysicist, and neuroscientist, and most noted for being one of two co-discoverers of the structure of the DNA molecule in 1953, together with James D. Watson. He, Watson and Maurice Wilki...

George Orson Welles was a uniquely talented artist, but one who was doomed to spend much of his life unable to realize his ambitions. It didn't start that way: Welles was a precocious and gifted child who began acting, writing, and directin...

Arthur Asher Miller was an American playwright, essayist, and figure in twentieth-century American theater. Among his most popular plays are All My Sons (1947), Death of a Salesman (1949), The Crucible (1953) and A View from the Bridge (195...

Augusto Pinochet was dictator of Chile between 1973 and 1990 and Commander-in-Chief (Comandante en Jefe) of the Chilean Army from 1973 to 1998. He was also president of the Government Junta of Chile between 1973 and 1981. Pinochet assume...

Joseph Louis Barrow, better known as Joe Louis, was an American professional boxer and the World Heavyweight Champion from 1937 to 1949. He is considered to be one of the greatest heavyweights of all time. Nicknamed the Brown Bomber, Louis...

Lyman Strong Spitzer, Jr. was an American theoretical physicist, astronomer and mountaineer. As a scientist, he carried out research into star formation, plasma physics, and in 1946, conceived the idea of telescopes operating in outer space...

Joseph Paul DiMaggio, nicknamed "Joltin' Joe" and "The Yankee Clipper", was an American baseball center fielder who played his entire 13-year career in Major League Baseball for the New York Yankees. He is perhaps best known for his 56-game...