Vice-Admiral Robert FitzRoy RN achieved lasting fame as the captain of HMS Beagle during Charles Darwin's famous voyage, and as a pioneering meteorologist who made accurate weather forecasting a reality. He was an able surveyor and hydrogra...

Giuseppe Mazzini was an Italian patriot, philosopher and politician. Mazzini's efforts helped bring about the modern Italian state in place of the several separate states, many dominated by foreign powers, that existed until the 19th centur...

Hans Christian Andersen was a Danish author. Although a prolific writer of plays, travelogues, novels, and poems, Andersen is best remembered for his fairy tales. Andersen's popularity is not limited to children; his stories, called eventyr...

Ferdinand de Lesseps was the French developer of the Suez Canal, which joined the Mediterranean and Red Seas in 1869, and substantially reduced sailing distances and times between the West and the East. He attempted to repeat this success w...

Isambard Kingdom Brunel was a leading British civil engineer, famed for his bridges and dockyards, and especially for the construction of the first major British railway, the Great Western Railway; a series of famous steamships, including t...

Victorian poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning published her first poem in 1820, at the age of fourteen. In 1826, she published her first collection of poems, entitled "An Essay on Mind and Other Poems." In 1845, she met fellow poet Robert Brown...

Benito Juárez was a Mexican lawyer and politician of Zapotec origin from Oaxaca who served five terms as president of Mexico: 1858–1861 as interim, 1861–1865, 1865–1867, 1867–1871 and 1871–1872. Benito Juárez was the first Mexican leader wh...

Maria Christina of the Two Sicilies was Queen consort of Spain (1829 to 1833) and Regent of Spain (1833 to 1840). Born in Palermo, Sicily, Italy on 27 April 1806, she was the daughter of King Francis I of the Two Sicilies by his second wife...

The Slave Trade Act sometimes called the Slave Trade Act 1807 or the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act 1807, was an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom passed on 25 March 1807, with the title of "An Act for the Abolition of the Slave...

Robert Edward Lee was an American general known for commanding the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia in the American Civil War from 1862 until his surrender in 1865. A son of Revolutionary War officer Henry "Light Horse Harry" Lee III,...

Raden Saleh Sjarif Boestaman is one of the best known painters from Indonesia and a pioneer of modern Indonesian art. He was considered to be the first modern artist from the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia), and his paintings corresponded...

Giuseppe Garibaldi was an Italian patriot and soldier of the Risorgimento. He personally led many of the military campaigns that brought about the formation of a unified Italy. He was called the "Hero of the Two Worlds," in tribute to his m...

Goethe's masterpiece and perhaps the greatest work in German literature, Faust has made the legendary German alchemist one of the central myths of the Western world. Here indeed is a monumental Faust, an audacious man boldly wagering with t...

The Spanish American wars of independence were the numerous wars against Spanish rule in Spanish America that took place during the early 19th century, after the French invasion of Spain during Europe's Napoleonic Wars. These conflicts star...

Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte was the first President of the French Second Republic and, as Napoleon III, the Emperor of the Second French Empire. He was the nephew and heir of Napoleon I. He was the first President of France to be elected by a...