William Wordsworth was a major English Romantic poet who, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, helped to launch the Romantic Age in English literature with their joint publication Lyrical Ballads (1798). Wordsworth's magnum opus is generally co...

David Thompson was an English-Canadian fur trader, surveyor, and map-maker, known to some native peoples as "Koo - Koo - Sint" or "the Stargazer". Over his career he mapped over 3.9 million square kilometres of North America and for this ha...

Sir Walter Scott was a Scottish historical novelist, playwright, and poet. Scott was the first English-language author to have a truly international career in his lifetime, with many contemporary readers in Europe, Australia, and North A...

Richard Trevithick was a British inventor and mining engineer from Cornwall, UK. His most significant contribution was to the development of the first high-pressure steam engine. He also built the first full-scale working railway steam loco...

Among the young men whom Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier deeply influenced was Eleuthère Irénée du Pont (1771–1834), the founder of the DuPont Company. His father, Pierre Samuel du Pont—an economist, government official, and publicist—was among t...

Adam François Jules Armand graaf van der Duyn van Maasdam was een voorname officier en kamerheer van de erfprins, die na het vertrek van de Fransen eind 1813 met Gijsbert Karel van Hogendorp en Leopold van Limburg Stirum het Voorlopig Bewin...

La Mulâtresse Solitude was a historical figure and heroine in the fight against slavery on French Guadeloupe. She has been the subject of legends and a symbol of women's resistance in the struggle against slavery in the history of the islan...

Karl Wilhelm Friedrich (later: von) Schlegel was a German poet, critic and scholar. He was the younger brother of August Wilhelm Schlegel. Of the two brothers, Friedrich was unquestionably the more original genius. He was the real founder o...

Raja Ram Mohan Roy was a founder (with Dwarkanath Tagore and other Bengali Brahmins) of the Brahmo Samaj in 1828 which engendered the Brahmo Samaj, an influential Indian socio-religious reform movement. His influence was apparent in the fie...

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...

William I Frederick, born Willem Frederik Prins van Oranje-Nassau, was a Prince of Orange and the first King of the Netherlands and Grand Duke of Luxembourg. In Germany, he was ruler (as Fürst) of the Principality of Nassau-Orange-Fulda fro...

Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire was a French naturalist who established the principle of "unity of composition". He was a colleague of Jean-Baptiste Lamarck and expanded and defended Lamarck's evolutionary theories. Geoffroy's scientific vie...

The Boston Tea Party was a direct action by colonists in Boston, a town in the British colony of Massachusetts, against the British government and the monopolistic East India Company that controlled all the tea coming into the colonies. On...

William Henry Harrison, 9th President of the United States (1841) served the shortest time of any American President - only thirty-two days. He also was the first President from the Whig Party. He had won his nickname, "Old Tip," as the tou...

Louis Philippe I was King of the French from 1830 to 1848 as the leader of the Orléanist party. As a member of the cadet branch of the Royal House of France and a cousin of King Louis XVI of France by reason of his descent from their common...