The Venezuelan War of Independence (1810–1823) was one of the Spanish American wars of independence of the early nineteenth century, when independence movements in Latin America fought against rule by the Spanish Empire, emboldened by Spain...

William George Armstrong, 1st Baron Armstrong CB, FRS was an effective Tyneside industrialist who founded the Armstrong Whitworth manufacturing empire. Armstrong was responsible for developing the hydraulic accumulator. Where water press...

Harriet Beecher Stowe was an American abolitionist and author. Her novel Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852) was a depiction of life for African-Americans under slavery; it reached millions as a novel and play, and became influential in the United Sta...

David Livingstone was a Scottish Congregationalist pioneer medical missionary and an explorer in Africa. His meeting with H. M. Stanley gave rise to the popular quotation, "Dr. Livingstone, I presume?" Perhaps one of the most popular nat...

Samuel Colt was an American inventor and industrialist from Hartford, Connecticut. He founded Colt's Patent Fire-Arms Manufacturing Company (today, Colt's Manufacturing Company), and made the mass production of the revolver commercially via...

Thomas Austin was an English settler in Australia who is generally noted for the introduction of rabbits into Australia in 1859. As a member of the Acclimatisation Society of Victoria, Thomas Austin helped to introduce many species from...

Frederick Douglass was an American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman. After escaping from slavery, he became a leader of the abolitionist movement, gaining note for his dazzling oratory and incisive antislavery writing. He stood...

Carlos Manuel de Céspedes del Castillo was a Cuban planter who freed his slaves and made the declaration of Cuban independence in 1868 which started the Ten Years' War. Céspedes was a landowner and lawyer in eastern Cuba, near Bayamo, wh...

Multatuli is the pseudonym of Eduard Douwes Dekker (1820-1887). After 18 years of civil service in the Dutch East Indies, he returned to Europe in 1856 a disillusioned man. The way the natives were treated by their own as well as by the Du...

Nathan Bedford Forrest was a lieutenant general in the Confederate Army during the American Civil War. He is remembered both as a self-educated, innovative cavalry leader during the war and as a leading southern advocate in the postwar year...

Sir Samuel White Baker was a British explorer, officer, naturalist, big game hunter, engineer, writer and abolitionist. He also held the titles of Pasha and Major-General in the Ottoman Empire and Egypt. He served as the Governor-General of...

Marcus Goldman (December 9, 1821 – July 20, 1904) was a German-born American businessman and entrepreneur. He was born in Trappstadt, Germany and emigrated to the United States in 1848. He was the founder of Goldman Sachs, which is now one...

Frederick Law Olmsted was an American landscape architect, journalist, social critic, and public administrator. He is popularly considered to be the father of American landscape architecture. Olmsted was famous for co-designing many well-kn...

The Anti-Slavery Society or A.S.S. was the everyday name of two different British organizations. The first was founded in 1823 and was committed to the abolition of slavery in the British Empire. Its official name was the Society for the Mi...

William Booth was an English Methodist preacher who founded The Salvation Army and became its first General (1878–1912). The Christian movement with a quasi-military structure and government founded in 1865 has spread from London, England,...