Samuel Taylor Coleridge was an English poet, literary critic, philosopher and theologian who, with his friend William Wordsworth, was a founder of the Romantic Movement in England and a member of the Lake Poets. He wrote the poems The Rime...

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...

Charles X ruled as King of France and of Navarre from 16 September 1824 until 2 August 1830. A younger brother to Kings Louis XVI and Louis XVIII, he supported the latter in exile and eventually succeeded him. His rule of almost six years c...

Henry Cavendish was a British scientist noted for his discovery of hydrogen or what he called "inflammable air". He described the density of inflammable air, which formed water on combustion, in a 1766 paper "On Factitious Airs". Antoine La...

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...

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...

Denis Diderot was a French philosopher, art critic and writer. He was a prominent figure during the Enlightenment and is best known for serving as co-founder, chief editor and contributor to the Encyclopédie along with Jean le Rond d'Alembe...

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...

Charles VI was the penultimate Habsburg sovereign of the Habsburg Empire. He succeeded his elder brother, Joseph I, as Holy Roman Emperor, King of Bohemia, Croatia and Hungary, Archduke of Austria, etc., in 1711. He unsuccessfully claimed t...

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...

Frederick IV was the king of Denmark and Norway from 1699 until his death. Frederick was the son of Christian V and Charlotte Amalie of Hesse-Kassel (or Hesse-Cassel). For much of Frederik IV's reign Denmark was engaged in the Great Northe...

William Penn was an English real estate entrepreneur, philosopher, early Quaker and founder of the Province of Pennsylvania, the English North American colony and the future Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. He was an early advocate of democrac...

King James II of England and VII of Scotland was the last Catholic monarch to rule over England, Scotland, and Ireland. His reign, from 1685 to 1688, culminated with the Glorious Revolution, in which Protestants deposed him in favor of Mary...

Johan de Witt or Jan de Witt, heer van Zuid- en Noord-Linschoten, Snelrewaard, Hekendorp and IJsselveere, was a key figure in Dutch politics in the mid-17th century, when its flourishing sea trade in a period of globalization made the Unite...