The Battle of Trafalgar, fought on 21 October 1805, is part of the War of the Third Coalition assembled by Britain against France. It was the most significant naval battle of the Napoleonic Wars and the pivotal naval battle of the 19th cent...

The Battle of Austerlitz, also known as the Battle of the Three Emperors, was Napoleon's greatest victory, where the French Empire effectively crushed the Third Coalition. On 2 December 1805 (20 November Old Style, 11 Frimaire, XIV, in the...

Captain Sir Alexander Burnes, was a Scottish traveller and explorer who took part in The Great Game. He was nicknamed Bokhara Burnes for his role in establishing contact with and exploring Bukhara, which made his name. At the age of six...

Joseph Smith, Jr. was the American religious figure who founded the Latter Day Saint movement, also known as Mormonism. Smith's followers declared him to be the first latter-day prophet, whose mission was to restore the original Christian c...

John Lloyd Stephens was an American explorer, writer, and diplomat. Stephens was a pivotal figure in the rediscovery of Maya civilization throughout Middle America and in the planning of the Panama railroad. Stephens read with interest...

Alexis de Tocqueville was a French political thinker and historian best known for his Democracy in America (appearing in two volumes: 1835 and 1840) and The Old Regime and the Revolution (1856). In both of these works, he analyzed the risin...

Joseph Locke was a notable English civil engineer of the 19th century, particularly associated with railway projects. Locke ranked alongside Robert Stephenson and Isambard Kingdom Brunel as one of the major pioneers of railway development....

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...