The Dowager Empress Cixi popularly known in China as the Western Empress Dowager, and officially known posthumously as Empress Xiaoqin Xian, was a powerful and charismatic figure who was the de facto ruler of the Manchu Qing Dynasty, rulin...

Leopold Louis-Philippe Marie Victor of Saxe-Coburg, succeeded his father, Leopold I of Belgium, to the Belgian throne in 1865 as Leopold II, King of the Belgians and remained king until his death. Outside of Belgium, however, he is chiefly...

Cesare Lombroso was an Italian criminologist and physician, founder of the Italian School of Positivist Criminology. Lombroso rejected the established Classical School, which held that crime was a characteristic trait of human nature. Inste...

Andrew Carnegie was a Scottish American industrialist who led the enormous expansion of the American steel industry in the late 19th century. He was also one of the highest profile philanthropists of his era and had given away almost 90 per...

Abraham Kuijper generally known as Abraham Kuyper, was a Dutch politician, journalist, statesman and theologian. He founded the Anti-Revolutionary Party and was prime minister of the Netherlands between 1901 and 1905....

Johannes Diderik van der Waals was a Dutch scientist and thermodynamicist famous for his work on the equation of state for gases and liquids which describe the relation between the pressure, volume, and temperature of fluids (gases and liq...

Graf Ferdinand von Zeppelin, German army officer and airship inventor and builder. He entered the Prussian army in 1858 and served in the Seven Weeks War and in the Franco-Prussian War. He was an observer with the Union army during the Amer...

Josiah Willard Gibbs was an American theoretical physicist, chemist, and mathematician. He devised much of the theoretical foundation for chemical thermodynamics as well as physical chemistry. As a mathematician, he invented vector analysis...

John Davison Rockefeller, Sr. was an American industrialist who played a prominent role in the early oil industry with the founding of Standard Oil (ExxonMobil is the largest of its descendants). Over a forty-year period, Rockefeller built...

Auguste-René Rodin, French sculptor and draughtsman. He is the only sculptor of the modern age regarded in his lifetime and afterwards to be on a par with Michelangelo. Both made images with widespread popular appeal, and both stressed the...

Antonin Dvorak was the greatest Bohemian composer and one of the leading masters of symphonic and chamber music of the late 19th century. Dvorak displayed unusual musical talent at an early age and learned to play the violin from the local...

Edward VII was King of the United Kingdom and the British Dominions and Emperor of India from 22 January 1901 until his death on 6 May 1910. He was the first British monarch of the House of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, which was renamed the House of...

Pierre-Auguste Renoir was a French artist who was a leading painter in the development of the Impressionist style. As a celebrator of beauty, and especially feminine sensuality, it has been said that "Renoir is the final representative of a...

Georges Benjamin Clemenceau was a French statesman, physician and journalist. He served as the Prime Minister of France from 1906 to 1908, and again from 1916 to 1920. For nearly the final year of World War I he led France, and was one of t...

Abdul Hamid II was the 34th sultan of the Ottoman Empire. He oversaw a period of decline in the power and extent of the Empire, ruling from 31 August 1876 until he was deposed on 27 April 1909. Abdülhamid II was the last Ottoman Sultan to r...