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...

General Gregor MacGregor was a Scottish soldier, adventurer and confidence trickster who attempted from 1821 to 1837 to draw British and French investors and settlers to "Poyais", a fictional Central American territory that he claimed to ru...

Jacob Ludwig Carl Grimm also known as Ludwig Karl, was a German philologist, jurist, and mythologist. He is known as the discoverer of Grimm's law (linguistics), the co-author with his brother Wilhelm of the monumental Deutsches Wörterbuch,...

Aleksander Pavlovich Romanov or Tsar Alexander I (The Blessed), was Emperor of Russia from 1801-1825 and King of Poland from 1815–1825. The son of the Grand Duke Paul Petrovich, afterwards Paul I, and Maria Fedorovna, daughter of the Duke o...

Joseph Napoleon Bonaparte, King of Naples and Sicily, King of Spain and the Indies, Count of Survilliers was the older brother of French Emperor Napoleon I, who made him King of Naples and Sicily (1806–1808) and later King of Spain. He was...

Alexander Hamilton was a Founding Father, soldier, economist, political philosopher, one of America's first constitutional lawyers and the first United States Secretary of the Treasury. As Secretary of the Treasury, Hamilton was the prim...

Charles Cornwallis, 1st Marquess Cornwallis KG, PC, styled Viscount Brome between 1753 and 1762 and known as The Earl Cornwallis between 1762 and 1792, was a British Army officer and colonial administrator. In the United States and the...

James Watt was a Scottish inventor and mechanical engineer whose improvements to the Newcomen steam engine were fundamental to the changes brought by the Industrial Revolution in both his native Great Britain and the rest of the world. W...

Edmund Burke PC was an Irish statesman, author, orator, political theorist and philosopher who, after moving to England, served for many years in the House of Commons of Great Britain as a member of the Whig party. He is mainly remembered f...

Jeanne-Antoinette Poisson marchioness de Pompadour was the mistress of Louis XV. Educated in art and literature, she married Charles-Guillaume Le Normant d'Étoiles in 1741 and became admired by Parisian society and by the king, who installe...

Jean François de Saint-Lambert was a French poet and military officer, but he is most remembered for his involvement in two love affairs. Over the winter of 1747-48, Voltaire and his entourage took up residence in Lunéville. Saint-Lambe...

Giovanni Battista Pergolesi, Italian composer of the Neapolitan school. Although he died at the age of 26, he is credited with masterpieces in two fields of music: La serva padrona (The Maid as Mistress, c.1733), an intermezzo, or short com...

Elizaveta Petrovna, also known as Yelisavet and Elizabeth, was the Empress of Russia (1741–1762) who took the country into the War of Austrian Succession (1740–1748) and the Seven Years' War (1756–1763). On the eve of her death in 1762, the...

Benjamin Franklin was one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. A noted polymath, Franklin was a leading author, printer, political theorist, politician, postmaster, scientist, musician, inventor, satirist, civic activist, statesman...

James Edward Oglethorpe was an English general, a philanthropist, and a founder of the state of Georgia. It was through his initiatives in England in 1732 that the British government authorized the establishment of its first new colony in N...