Pope Clement XI, was Pope from 1700 until his death. Born in Urbino, into a noble family that had established itself there from northern Albania in the 15th century and were originally soldiers of Scanderbeg against the Ottoman Empire. Duri...

Frederick I, of the Hohenzollern dynasty, was (as Frederick III) Elector of Brandenburg (1688–1713) and Duke of Prussia in personal union (Brandenburg-Prussia). The latter function he upgraded to royalty, becoming the first King in Prussia...

Joseph I, Holy Roman Emperor, King of Bohemia, King of Hungary, King of the Romans was the elder son of Emperor Leopold I and his third wife, Eleonore-Magdalena of Pfalz-Neuburg, who was the daughter of Philipp Wilhelm, Elector Palatine. Bo...

Christoph Willibald (von) Gluck was a German composer, one of the most important opera composers of the Classical music era, particularly remembered for Orfeo ed Euridice. He is also remembered as the music teacher of Marie-Antoinette who a...

Sir Joshua Reynolds, English portrait painter and aesthetician who dominated English artistic life in the middle and late 18th century. Through his art and teaching, he attempted to lead British painting away from the indigenous anecdotal p...

Jeremiah Dixon was an English surveyor and astronomer who is best known for his work with Charles Mason, from 1763 to 1767, in determining what was later called the Mason–Dixon line. Dixon was born in Cockfield, near Bishop Auckland, Cou...

Joseph Marie Charles Jacquard was a French weaver and merchant. He played an important role in the development of the earliest programmable loom (the "Jacquard loom"), which in turn played an important role in the development of other progr...

John Quincy Adams was an American statesman who served as the sixth President of the United States from 1825 to 1829. He also served as a diplomat, a Senator and member of the House of Representatives. He was a member of the Federalist, Dem...

Carl Philipp Gottlieb von Clausewitz was a Prussian soldier, military historian and military theorist. He is most famous for his military treatise Vom Kriege, translated into English as On War. Although Carl von Clausewitz participated i...

Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles was a British statesman, Lieutenant-Governor of British Java (1811 – 1815), Governor-General of Bencoolen (1817 – 1822), best known for his founding of the city of Singapore in 1819 (now the city-state of the Rep...

Simón Bolívar was a Venezuelan military and political leader. Together with José de San Martín, he played a key role in Hispanic-Spanish America's successful struggle for independence from the Spanish Empire, and is today considered one of...

George Green was a British mathematical physicist who wrote An Essay on the Application of Mathematical Analysis to the Theories of Electricity and Magnetism (Green, 1828). The essay introduced several important concepts, among them a theor...

Gabriel Lamé was a French mathematician who contributed to the theory of partial differential equations by the use of curvilinear coordinates, and the mathematical theory of elasticity. He became well known for his general theory of curv...

Nicholas I was the Emperor of Russia from 1825 until 1855, known as one of the most reactionary of the Russian monarchs. On the eve of his death, the Russian Empire reached its historical zenith spanning over 20 million square kilometers (7...

Sir George Biddell Airy was an English mathematician and astronomer, Astronomer Royal from 1835 to 1881. His many achievements include work on planetary orbits, measuring the mean density of the Earth, a method of solution of two-dimensiona...