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...

Andrew Johnson, 17th President of the United States (1865-1869), gives truth to the saying that in America, anyone can grow up to become President. Born in a log cabin in North Carolina to nearly illiterate parents, Andrew Johnson did not m...

Johann Benedict Listing was a German mathematician. J. B. Listing was born in Frankfurt and died in Göttingen. He first introduced the term "topology", in a famous article published in 1847, although he had used the term in correspondence s...

Jefferson Finis Davis was an American military officer, statesman and leader of the Confederacy during the American Civil War, serving as the president of the Confederate States of America for its entire history, 1861 to 1865. After Davis w...

Thomas Cook of Melbourne, Derbyshire, England founded the travel agency that in 2007 became Thomas Cook Group. Cook's idea to offer excursions came to him while waiting for the stagecoach on the London Road at Kibworth. With the opening of...

Felix Mendelssohn has sometimes been called the "classical romantic." Born in 1809 in the first generation of romantic composers, Mendelssohn's music is the most conservative of the group. If Chopin and Schumann are the Shelly and Keats of...

Edgar Allan Poe was an American writer, editor, and literary critic. Poe is best known for his poetry and short stories, particularly his tales of mystery and the macabre. He is widely regarded as a central figure of Romanticism in the Unit...

Louis Braille was a French educator and inventor of a system of reading and writing for use by the blind or visually impaired. His system remains virtually unchanged to this day, and is known worldwide simply as braille. Blinded in both...