Oscar Wilde, Irish poet and dramatist whose reputation rests on his comic masterpieces Lady Windermere's Fan (1892) and The Importance of Being Earnest (1895). Among Wilde's other best-known works are his only novel The Picture of Dorian Gr...

Aletta Jacobs was the first woman in Dutch history to be officially admitted to university. This took place in 1871. As a schoolgirl she had written a letter to Prime Minister Thorbecke requesting permission to be allowed to attend “academi...

Ned Kelley is Australia's most famous bushranger and, to many, a folk hero for his defiance of the colonial authorities. From the age of fourteen, Ned began committing a series of minor crimes that escalated into more serious crimes and eve...

The Second Opium War, the Second Anglo-Chinese War, the Second China War, the Arrow War, or the Anglo-French expedition to China, was a war pitting the British Empire and the Second French Empire against the Qing Dynasty of China, lasting f...

Booker Taliaferro Washington was an African-American educator, author, orator, and advisor to presidents of the United States. Between 1890 and 1915, Washington was the dominant leader in the African-American community. Washington was of...

Emmeline Pankhurst was a British political activist and leader of the British suffragette movement who helped women win the right to vote. In 1999 Time named Pankhurst as one of the 100 Most Important People of the 20th Century, stating "sh...

Henry McCarty, also known as William H. Bonney, and known popularly as Billy the Kid, was an American Old West gunfighter who participated in New Mexico's Lincoln County War. He is known to have killed eight men. Before he started using...

When Max Havelaar was first published in Holland in 1860, it ignited a major political and social brouhaha. The novel, written by a former official of the Dutch East Indian Civil Service under the pen name Multatuli, exposed the massive cor...

The American Civil War, widely known as simply the Civil War in the United States as well as other sectional names, was fought from 1861 to 1865. Seven Southern slave states individually declared their secession from the United States a...

The Emancipation Proclamation consists of two executive orders issued by United States President Abraham Lincoln during the American Civil War. The first one, issued on September 22, 1862, declared the freedom of all slaves in any state of...

The ICRC is an independent, neutral organization ensuring humanitarian protection and assistance for victims of war and armed violence. The ICRC has a permanent mandate under international law to take impartial action for prisoners, the wou...

Louis Marie-Anne Couperus was a Dutch novelist and poet of the late 19th and early 20th Century. He is usually considered one of the foremost figures in Dutch literature. Born in the Netherlands in 1863, Couperus grew up in a wealthy pat...

Colonel Reginald Edward Harry Dyer was a British Indian Army officer who, as a temporary Brigadier general, was responsible for the Jallianwala Bagh massacre in Amritsar (in the British Indian province of Punjab). Dyer was removed from duty...

Robert LeRoy Parker, better known as Butch Cassidy, was an American train and bank robber and the leader of a gang of criminal outlaws known as the "Wild Bunch" in the Old West. Parker engaged in criminal activity for more than a decade...

Pakubuwono X was the tenth Susuhunan (ruler of Surakarta). His reign corresponded with the political changes happening in the Dutch East Indies at the time, in particular the growth of local indigenous political organizations such as Budi U...