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...

Sir Austen Henry Layard was an English traveller, archaeologist, cuneiformist, art historian, draughtsman, collector, politician and diplomat. He is best known as the excavator of Nimrud and of Nineveh, where he uncovered a large proportion...

Charles Dickens was an English writer and social critic. He created some of the world's most memorable fictional characters and is generally regarded as the greatest novelist of the Victorian period. During his life, his works enjoyed unpre...

Abraham Lincoln, the 16th president of the United States (1861-1865), guided his country through the most devastating experience in its national history-the CIVIL WAR (1861-1865). He is considered by many historians to have been the greates...

Charles Robert Darwin was an English naturalist who realised and presented compelling evidence that all species of life have evolved over time from common ancestors, through the process he called natural selection. The fact that evolution o...

Franz Peter Schubert was an Austrian composer. In a short lifespan of less than 32 years, Schubert was a prolific composer, writing some 600 Lieder, ten complete or nearly complete symphonies, liturgical music, operas, incidental music and...

Jean-Marie Constant Duhamel was a French mathematician and physicist. His studies were affected by the troubles of the Napoleonic era. He went on to form his own school École Sainte-Barbe. Duhamel's principle, a method of obtaining solut...

Philipp Franz Balthasar von Siebold was a German physician, botanist, and traveler. He taught some pupils Western medicine in Japan. He achieved prominence for his study of Japanese flora and fauna, and was the father of female Japanese doc...

Antonio José de Sucre y Alcalá, known as the "Gran Mariscal de Ayacucho" (English: "Grand Marshal of Ayacucho"), was a Venezuelan independence leader who served as the fourth President of Peru and the second President of Bolivia. Sucre was...

Lord Byron was an English poet and a leading figure in the Romantic movement. Among Byron's best-known works are the lengthy narrative poems Don Juan and Childe Harold's Pilgrimage and the short lyric She Walks in Beauty. He is regarded as...

William Henry Harrison, 9th President of the United States (1841) served the shortest time of any American President - only thirty-two days. He also was the first President from the Whig Party. He had won his nickname, "Old Tip," as the tou...

Francis II (German: Franz II) was the last Holy Roman Emperor, ruling from 1792 until 6 August 1806, when he dissolved the Empire after the disastrous defeat of the Third Coalition by Napoleon at the Battle of Austerlitz. In 1804, he had fo...

Robert Burns (also known as Robbie Burns, Rabbie Burns, Scotland's favourite son, the Ploughman Poet, Robden of Solway Firth, the Bard of Ayrshire and in Scotland as The Bard) was a Scottish poet and lyricist. He is widely regarded as the n...

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical era. Born in Salzburg, Mozart showed prodigious ability from his earliest childhood. Already competent on keyboard and violin, he composed from the age of five...

Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord, Prince de Benevente, the Prince of Diplomats, was a French diplomat. He worked successfully from the regime of Louis XVI, through the French Revolution and then under Napoleon I, Louis XVIII and Louis...