Leopold I was a German prince who became the first King of the Belgians following the country's independence in 1830. He reigned between July 1831 and December 1865. Born into the ruling family of the small German duchy of Saxe-Coburg-Sa...

Charles Babbage was an English mathematician, analytical philosopher, mechanical engineer and (proto-) computer scientist who originated the idea of a programmable computer. Parts of his uncompleted mechanisms are on display in the London S...

William II (Willem Frederik George Lodewijk van Oranje-Nassau) was King of the Netherlands, Grand Duke of Luxembourg, and Duke of Limburg from 7 October 1840 until his death. On 7 October 1840, on his father's abdication, he acceded the thr...

Dost Mohammad Khan was the founder of the Barakzai dynasty and one of the prominent rulers of Afghanistan during the First Anglo-Afghan War. With the decline of the Durrani dynasty, he became Emir of Afghanistan from 1826 to 1839 and then f...

Ghalib was the prominent Urdu and Persian-language poet during the last years of the Mughal Empire. He used his pen-names of Ghalib (means "dominant") and Asad (means "lion"). His honorific was Dabir-ul-Mulk, Najm-ud-Daula. During his l...

Charles Goodyear was the inventor of vulcanization, a process that makes rubber harder, less soluble, and more durable. It is at the heart of rubber compounding, which played a key role at the onset of the Industrial Revolution. Goodyear ob...

Louis-Hector Berlioz was a French Romantic composer, best known for his compositions Symphonie fantastique, Grande messe des morts (Requiem), Les Troyens, and La damnation de Faust. Berlioz made significant contributions to the modern orche...

Benjamin Disraeli was a British Prime Minister, parliamentarian, Conservative statesman and literary figure. Starting from comparatively humble origins, he served in government for three decades, twice as Prime Minister of the United Kingdo...

Joseph Smith, Jr. was the American religious figure who founded the Latter Day Saint movement, also known as Mormonism. Smith's followers declared him to be the first latter-day prophet, whose mission was to restore the original Christian c...

Andrew Johnson, 17th President of the United States (1865-1869), gives truth to the saying that in America, anyone can grow up to become President. Born in a log cabin in North Carolina to nearly illiterate parents, Andrew Johnson did not m...

Kit Carson was an American frontiersman. He was a mountain man (fur trapper), wilderness guide, Indian agent, and U.S. Army officer. Carson became a frontier legend in his own lifetime via biographies and news articles. Exaggerated versions...

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...

Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace, born Augusta Ada Byron and now commonly known as Ada Lovelace, was an English mathematician and writer chiefly known for her work on Charles Babbage's early mechanical general-purpose computer, the An...

Gustave Flauber, French novelist. Flaubert is regarded as one of the supreme masters of the realistic novel. He was a scrupulous, slow writer, intent on the exact word (le mot juste) and complete objectivity. The son of a surgeon, he studie...

Louis Pasteur was a French biologist, microbiologist and chemist renowned for his discoveries of the principles of vaccination, microbial fermentation and pasteurization. He is remembered for his remarkable breakthroughs in the causes and p...