Lucy is the common name of AL 288-1, the 40% complete Australopithecus afarensis skeleton discovered on November 30, 1974 by the International Afar Research Expedition (IARE; director: Maurice Taieb, co-directors: Donald Johanson and Yves C...

John Edgar Hoover was the first Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) of the United States. Appointed director of the Bureau of Investigation—predecessor to the FBI—in 1924, he was instrumental in founding the FBI in 1935, w...

Friedrich August Hayek was an economist and philosopher best known for his defense of classical liberalism and free-market capitalism against socialist and collectivist thought. In 1974, Hayek shared the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sci...

Charles Francis Richter , was an American seismologist and physicist. Richter is most famous as the creator of the Richter magnitude scale which, until the development of the moment magnitude scale in 1979, quantified the size of earthquake...

One of the old guard of the Chinese Communist Party, Deng Xiaoping became the party's Secretary General in 1954, but was purged by Chairman Mao in 1966 for his strong objections to the excesses of the Great Leap Forward. By 1974 Deng had be...

Lucille Désirée Ball Morton was an American actress, comedian, model, film-studio executive, and producer. She was best known as the star of the self-produced sitcoms I Love Lucy, The Lucy–Desi Comedy Hour, The Lucy Show, and Here's Lucy....

Kim Il-sung was the leader of North Korea from its founding in 1948 until his death, when he was succeeded by his son Kim Jong-il. He held the posts of Prime Minister from 1948 to 1972 and President from 1972 to his death, in addition to Ge...

Milton Friedman is the twentieth century's most prominent economist advocate of free markets. He was born in 1912 to Jewish immigrants in New York City. He attended Rutgers University, where he received his B.A. at the age of twenty, then w...

Richard Milhous Nixon, 37th President of the United States (1969-1974), was the first and (so far) the only President of the United States to resign the office. Before the spectacular fall, there was an equally spectacular rise. John F....

Gerald R. Ford, 38th President of the United States (1974-1977), became President of the United States on August 9, 1974, under extraordinary circumstances. Owing to the Watergate scandal, Ford's predecessor, Richard Nixon, had resigned und...

Augusto Pinochet was dictator of Chile between 1973 and 1990 and Commander-in-Chief (Comandante en Jefe) of the Chilean Army from 1973 to 1998. He was also president of the Government Junta of Chile between 1973 and 1981. Pinochet assume...

Nicolae Ceausescu was a Romanian communist politician. He was General Secretary of the Romanian Communist Party from 1965 to 1989, and as such was the country's second and last Communist leader. He was also the country's head of state from...

Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn was a Russian novelist, dramatist and historian. Through his writings, he made the world aware of the Gulag, the Soviet Union's labour camp system, and for these efforts Solzhenitsyn was exiled from the Sovi...

Federico Fellini was an Italian film director. Known for a distinct style that blends fantasy and baroque images, he is considered one of the most influential and widely revered filmmakers of the 20th century. Personal and highly idiosyncra...

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. was an American writer. His works such as Cat's Cradle (1963), Slaughterhouse-Five (1969), and Breakfast of Champions (1973) blend satire, gallows humor, and science fiction. As a citizen he was a lifelong supporter of th...