Herbert Clark Hoover, the 31st President of the United States (1929-1933), was a world-famous mining engineer and humanitarian administrator before turning to political administration. A Republican, he defeated Democrat Alfred E. Smith in t...

Winston Churchill was a politician, a soldier, an artist, and the 20th century's most famous and celebrated Prime Minister. His father was Lord Randolph Churchill, a Nineteenth Century Tory politician. He was educated at Harrow and at Sandh...

Richard Horatio Edgar Wallace was a prolific British crime writer, journalist and playwright, who wrote 175 novels, 24 plays, and countless articles in newspapers and journals. Over 160 films have been made of his novels, more than any othe...

Joseph-Maurice Ravel was a, best known for his orchestral work, Boléro, and his famous 1922 orchestral arrangement of Modest Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition. He himself had described Boléro as "a piece for orchestra without music". R...

John Buchan is most famous for The Thirty-Nine Steps and Greenmantle, and his thrillers and short stories are all in print today. The list of his published books is well over a hundred in number, and only about 40 of these are fiction....

Edgar Rice Burroughs is best remembered as the creator of the world famous character of Tarzan, one of the indispensable icons of popular culture. Burroughs also published science fiction and crime novels. In 1912 Burroughs's breakthrough n...

Vallabhbhai Patel, popularly known as Sardar Patel, was the first Deputy Prime Minister of India. He was an Indian barrister and statesman, a senior leader of the Indian National Congress and a founding father of the Republic of India who p...

Prof. Dr. Ing h.c. Ferdinand Porsche was an Austrian automotive engineer. He is best known for creating the Volkswagen (Beetle) as well as the first of many Porsche automobiles, and for his contributions to advanced German tank designs: Tig...

Paul Thomas Mann was a German novelist, social critic, philanthropist and essayist, lauded principally for a series of highly symbolic and often ironic epic novels and mid-length stories, noted for their insight into the psychology of the a...

Hiram Bingham III was an American academic, explorer and politician. He rediscovered the Inca settlement of Machu Picchu in 1911. Later, Bingham served as Governor of Connecticut and a member of the United States Senate. Machu Picchu ha...

Carl Gustav Jung was a Swiss psychiatrist and founder of Analytical Psychology. Often mentioned along with Sigmund Freud, with whom he initially collaborated, Carl Jung was one of the first and most widely read writers of the twentieth cent...

Albert Schweitzer was a French-German theologian, organist, writer, humanitarian, philosopher, and physician. A Lutheran, Schweitzer challenged both the secular view of Jesus as depicted by historical-critical methodology current at this ti...

The Battle of the Little Bighorn, also known as Custer's Last Stand and, by the Indians involved, as the Battle of the Greasy Grass, was an armed engagement between combined forces of Lakota, Northern Cheyenne and Arapaho people against the...

Margaretha Geertruida "Margreet" Zelle MacLeod, better known by the stage name Mata Hari, was a member of the Frisian minority from the Netherlands, and was an exotic dancer and courtesan who was convicted of being a spy and executed by fir...

Pope Pius XII, born Eugenio Maria Giuseppe Giovanni Pacelli, was head of the Catholic Church from 2 March 1939 to his death in 1958. Before his election to the papacy, Pacelli served as secretary of the Department of Extraordinary Eccle...