Otto, King of Greece was made the first modern king of Greece in 1832 under the Convention of London, whereby Greece became a new independent kingdom under the protection of the Great Powers (the United Kingdom, France and the Russian Empir...

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...

Jacques Offenbach is best known for his opera Les contes d'Hoffman (Tales of Hoffmann) and for a work he did not compose, Gaîté parisienne, which used his themes as assembled and arranged by Manuel Rosenthal. Offenbach was one of those popu...

Johan Barthold Jongkind was a Dutch painter and printmaker. He painted marine landscapes in a free manner and is regarded as a forerunner of Impressionism. Jongkind's most frequent subject was the marine landscape, which he painted both...

John Henry "Professor" Pepper was a British scientist and inventor who toured the English-speaking world with his scientific demonstrations. He entertained the public, royalty, and fellow scientists with a wide range of technological innova...

The Right Honourable William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin, GCVO, OM, PC, PRS was a Scottish-Irish mathematical physicist and engineer, an outstanding leader in the physical sciences of the 19th century. Kelvin is known especially for his work...

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 Clerk Maxwell was a Scottish mathematical physicist. His most notable achievement was to formulate the classical theory of electromagnetic radiation, bringing together for the first time electricity, magnetism, and light as manifestat...

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...

Paul Gauguin was a French post-Impressionist artist. Unappreciated until after his death, Gauguin is now recognized for his experimental use of color and Synthetist style that were distinctly different from Impressionism. Towards the end of...

Field Marshal Horatio Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener, was an Irish-born British Field Marshal and proconsul who won fame for his imperial campaigns and later played a central role in the early part of the First World War, although he...

Antoni Gaudí i Cornet was an architect from Reus, Catalonia, Spain. He is the best known practitioner of Catalan Modernism. Gaudí's works have a highly individualized, and one-of-a-kind style. Most are located in Barcelona, including his ma...

Prof Cargill Gilston Knott was a Scottish physicist and mathematician who was a pioneer in seismological research. He spent his early career in Japan. He later became a Fellow of the Royal Society, Secretary of the Royal Society of Edinburg...

Sir Edward William Elgar, English composer. He received his training from his father, who was an organist, music seller, and amateur violinist. In 1885 he succeeded his father as organist of St. George's Church, Worcester. Imperial March, c...

Louis Marie-Anne Couperus was a Dutch novelist and poet of the late 19th and early 20th Century. He is usually considered one of the foremost figures in Dutch literature. Born in the Netherlands in 1863, Couperus grew up in a wealthy pat...