The Lunar Society of Birmingham was a dinner club and informal learned society of prominent figures in the Midlands Enlightenment, including industrialists, natural philosophers and intellectuals, who met regularly between 1765 and 1813 in...

Robert Fulton was an American engineer and inventor who is widely credited with developing the first commercially successful steamboat. He also designed a new type of steam warship. In 1800 he was commissioned by Napoleon Bonaparte to desig...

Johann Friedrich Pfaff was a German mathematician. He was described as one of Germany's most eminent mathematicians during the 19th century. He studied integral calculus, and is noted for his work on partial differential equations of the fi...

Joseph Nicéphore Niépce was a French inventor, now usually credited as the inventor of photography and a pioneer in that field. Niépce developed heliography, a technique he used to create the world's oldest surviving product of a photograph...

William IV was King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and of Hanover from 26 June 1830 until his death. William, the third son of George III and younger brother and successor to George IV, was the last king and penultimate...

Louis Delgrès was a leader of the movement in Guadeloupe resisting reoccupation (and thus the reinstitution of slavery) by Napoleonic France in 1802. Delgrès was mulatto, born free in Saint-Pierre, Martinique. A military officer for Rev...

The Reverend Thomas Robert Malthus was a British scholar, influential in political economy and demography. Malthus popularized the economic theory of rent. Malthus has become widely known for his theories about population and its increase o...

Thomas Bruce, 7th Earl of Elgin and 11th Earl of Kincardine was a British nobleman and diplomat, known for the removal of marble sculptures (also known as the Elgin Marbles) from the Parthenon in Athens. Elgin was the second son of Charles...

John Dalton was an English chemist, meteorologist and physicist. He is best known for his pioneering work in the development of modern atomic theory, and his research into colour blindness. He developed the first useful atomic theory of...

Count Josef von Radetz was a Czech nobleman and field marshal, a member of House of Radetzky in the Kingdom of Bohemia. He served as chief of the general staff in the Austrian Habsburg Monarchy during the later period of the Napoleonic Wars...

Saint-Just was a military and political leader during the French Revolution. The youngest of the deputies elected to the National Convention in 1792, Saint-Just rose quickly in their ranks and became a major leader of the government of the...

Andrew Jackson was the seventh President of the United States (1829–1837). He was also military governor of Florida (1821), commander of the American forces at the Battle of New Orleans (1815), a founder of the modern Democratic Party, and...

John Quincy Adams was an American statesman who served as the sixth President of the United States from 1825 to 1829. He also served as a diplomat, a Senator and member of the House of Representatives. He was a member of the Federalist, Dem...

Marie-Anne Charlotte de Corday d'Armont, known to history as Charlotte Corday, was a figure of the French Revolution. In 1793, she was executed under the guillotine for the assassination of Jacobin leader Jean-Paul Marat, who was in part re...

Francis II (German: Franz II) was the last Holy Roman Emperor, ruling from 1792 until 6 August 1806, when he dissolved the Empire after the disastrous defeat of the Third Coalition by Napoleon at the Battle of Austerlitz. In 1804, he had fo...