John Arthur Johnson, better known as Jack Johnson and nicknamed the “Galveston Giant”, was an American boxer and arguably the best heavyweight of his generation. He was the first black Heavyweight Champion of the World (1908-1915), a feat w...

Carl August Sandburg was an American poet, biographer, journalist, and editor. He won three Pulitzer Prizes: two for his poetry and one for his biography of Abraham Lincoln. During his lifetime, Sandburg was widely regarded as "a major figu...

Paul Cézanne, one of the creators of modern art, was called the "solidifier of Impressionism''. And indeed he does not draw his picture before painting it: instead, he creates space and depth of perspective by means of planes of color, whic...

The Anglo-Zulu War was fought in 1879 between the British Empire and the Zulu Empire. From complex beginnings, the war is notable for several particularly bloody battles, as well as for being a landmark in the timeline of colonialism in th...

Became a revolutionary in 1896. Later worked with Lenin on Iskra in 1902. He broke with Lenin the next year over the nature of the revolutionary party and aligned himself with the Menshevik faction of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Par...

Paul Klee was a Swiss German artist. His highly individual style was influenced by movements in art that included Expressionism, Cubism, and Surrealism. Klee was a natural draftsman who experimented with and eventually deeply explored color...

Chen Duxiu was a Chinese revolutionary socialist, educator, philosopher, and author, who co-founded the Chinese Communist Party (with Li Dazhao) in 1921, serving from 1921 to 1927 as its first General Secretary. Chen was a leading figure in...

Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was a Georgian-born Soviet revolutionary and political leader. He governed the Soviet Union as dictator from the mid-1920s until his death in 1953, serving as Premier of the Soviet Union from 1941 to 1953 and as...

Albert Einstein was a German-born theoretical physicist. Einstein developed the theory of relativity, one of the two pillars of modern physics (alongside quantum mechanics). Einstein's work is also known for its influence on the philosophy...

Otto Hahn was a German chemist and pioneer in the fields of radioactivity and radiochemistry. He was exclusively awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1944 for the discovery and the radiochemical proof of nuclear fission. He is referred t...

There were two Boer wars, one in 1880-81 and the second from October 11, 1899-1902 both between the British and the settlers of Dutch origin (called Boere, Afrikaners or Voortrekkers) in South Africa that put an end to the two independent r...

Alfred Lothar Wegener was a German polar researcher, geophysicist and meteorologist. During his lifetime he was primarily known for his achievements in meteorology and as a pioneer of polar research, but today he is most remembered as th...

Kipling was once the literary lion of the English-speaking world; within a generation his fame, as a poet at least, was all but extinguished. In a tendentious foreword to this edition of his complete verse, Kaye makes an unconvincing attemp...

George Catlett Marshall Jr. was an American statesman and soldier. He was Chief of Staff of the United States Army under presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman, and served as Secretary of State and Secretary of Defense under T...

Douglas MacArthur is a major figure in the US military and diplomatic history of WWII and post-WWII. As general of the army, he helped conquer the Japanese Empire and played a major role in rebuilding the nation and drafting its first democ...