John Harrison was a self-educated English carpenter and clockmaker. He invented the marine chronometer, a long-sought after device for solving the problem of establishing the East-West position or longitude of a ship at sea, thus revolution...

Leonhard Euler was a pioneering Swiss mathematician and physicist. He made important discoveries in fields as diverse as infinitesimal calculus and graph theory. He also introduced much of the modern mathematical terminology and notation, p...

Giacomo Girolamo Casanova was an Italian adventurer and author from the Republic of Venice. His autobiography, Histoire de ma vie (Story of My Life), is regarded as one of the most authentic sources of the customs and norms of European soc...

Filippo Antonio Pasquale di Paoli, was a Corsican patriot and leader, the president of the Executive Council of the General Diet of the People of Corsica. Paoli designed and wrote the Constitution of this first democratic republic of the...

Joseph Haydn was a prominent and prolific composer of the Classical period. He was instrumental in the development of chamber music such as the piano trio and his contributions to musical form have earned him the epithets "Father of the Sym...

Joseph Priestley was an 18th-century English theologian, Dissenting clergyman, natural philosopher, educator, and political theorist who published over 150 works. He is usually credited with the discovery of oxygen, having isolated it in it...

Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence and the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom, third president of the United States 1801-1809, and founder of the University of Virginia, voiced the aspirations of a new Americ...

Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes was a Spanish romantic painter and printmaker regarded both as the last of the Old Masters and the first of the moderns. Goya was court painter to the Spanish Crown; throughout the Peninsular War he remain...

James Parkinson FGS was an English surgeon, apothecary, geologist, palaeontologist and political activist. He is best known for his 1817 work An Essay on the Shaking Palsy, in which he was the first to describe "paralysis agitans", a condit...

William Wordsworth was a major English Romantic poet who, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, helped to launch the Romantic Age in English literature with their joint publication Lyrical Ballads (1798). Wordsworth's magnum opus is generally co...

American author Washington Irving is best known for his short stories which include "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" and "Rip Van Winkle." Also a historian, he wrote several biographies of historical figures such as George Washington and Muham...

John Tyler, 10th President of the United States (1841-1845), signaled the last gasp of the Old Virginia aristocracy in the White House. Born a few years after the American Revolution in 1790 to an old family from Virginia's ruling class, Ty...

Francisco José de Paula Santander y Omaña was a Colombian military and political leader during the 1810–1819 independence war of the United Provinces of New Granada (present-day Colombia). He was the acting President of Gran Colombia betwee...

Ferdinand I was Emperor of Austria, President of the German Confederation, King of Hungary and Bohemia (as Ferdinand V), as well as associated dominions from the death of his father, Francis II, Holy Roman Emperor, until his abdication afte...

Matthew Calbraith Perry was a Commodore of the U.S. Navy and commanded a number of ships. He served in several wars, most notably in the Mexican-American War and the War of 1812. He played a leading role in the opening of Japan to the West...