Horatio Nelson was a British flag officer in the Royal Navy. He was noted for his inspirational leadership and superb grasp of strategy and unconventional tactics, which resulted in a number of decisive naval victories, particularly during...

Gilbert Du Motier, marquis de La Fayette was a French aristocrat and military officer. La Fayette is considered a national hero in both France and the United States for his participation in the American and French revolutions. In 2002, he w...

Vice-Admiral William Bligh FRS RN was an officer of the British Royal Navy and a colonial administrator. A notorious mutiny occurred during his command of HMS Bounty in 1789; Bligh and his loyal men made a remarkable voyage to Timor, after...

In 1795 Jean Baptiste Joseph Delambre was admitted to the Bureau des Longitudes, becoming President in 1800. In 1801 he was appointed secretary to the Académie des Sciences making him the most powerful figure in science in France. In 17...

Galvani was born, educated and taught anatomy in Bologna. The Italian physiologist made one of the early discoveries that advanced the study of electricity. His work with frogs led to his discovery in 1781 of galvanic or voltaic electricity...

Major-General Robert Clive, also known as Clive of India, Commander-in-Chief of British India, was a British officer and privateer who established the military and political supremacy of the East India Company in Bengal. He is credited with...

Guillaume Le Gentil was a French astronomer. He discovered what are now known as the Messier objects M32, M36 and M38, as well as the nebulosity in M8, and he was the first to catalogue the dark nebula sometimes known as Le Gentil 3 (in the...

Samuel Adams was a statesman, political philosopher, and one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. As a politician in colonial Massachusetts, Adams was a leader of the movement that became the American Revolution, and was one of the...

Ferdinand VI (Spanish: Fernando VI), called the Learnt, was King of Spain from 9 July 1746 until his death. He was the fourth son of the previous monarch Philip V and his first wife Maria Luisa of Savoy. Ferdinand, the third member of the S...

William IV, Prince of Orange-Nassau was the first hereditary Stadtholder of all the United Provinces. William was born in Leeuwarden, Netherlands, the son of John William Friso, Prince of Orange, head of the Frisian branch of the House o...

The Qianlong Emperor was the sixth emperor of the Manchu-led Qing Dynasty, and the fourth Qing emperor to rule over China proper. The fourth son of the Yongzheng Emperor, he reigned officially from 11 October 1735 to 8 February 1796. On 8 F...

Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon was a French naturalist, mathematician, cosmologist, and encyclopedic author. His works influenced the next two generations of naturalists, including Jean-Baptiste Lamarck and Georges Cuvier. Buffon pu...

Jean-Philippe Rameau, French composer and theorist. For much of the reign of Louis XV (1715–1774), Rameau dominated the French musical scene: several of his contributions to the Opéra were the most successful of the time and continued to be...

Ivan V Alekseyevich Romanov was a joint Tsar of Russia (with his younger half-brother Peter I) who co-reigned between 1682 and 1696. He was the youngest son of Alexis I of Russia and Maria Miloslavskaya. His reign was only formal, since he...

Daniel Defoe was an English trader, writer, journalist, pamphleteer, and spy. He is most famous for his novel Robinson Crusoe, which is second only to the Bible in its number of translations. Defoe is noted for being one of the earliest pro...