Karl Friedrich Benz was a German engine designer and automobile engineer, generally regarded as the inventor of the gasoline-powered automobile. Other German contemporaries, Gottlieb Daimler and Wilhelm Maybach, also worked independently on...

Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen was a German physicist, of the University of Würzburg, who, on November 8, 1895, produced and detected electromagnetic radiation in a wavelength range today known as x-rays or Röntgen Rays. Röntgen's discovery of x-ra...

Otto Lilienthal was a German pioneer of human aviation who became known as the Glider King. He was the first person to make well-documented, repeated, successful gliding flights. He followed an experimental approach established earlier by S...

Friedrich Ludwig Gottlob Frege was a German philosopher, logician, and mathematician. Considered a major figure in mathematics, he is responsible for the development of modern logic and making contributions to the foundations of mathemat...

Robert Louis Stevenson was born in Edinburgh’s New Town in 1850. He died 44 years later on a small Samoan island in the Pacific. During his short life he travelled the world, defied convention, and made himself one of the most famous writer...

Cut Nyak Dhien or Tjoet Nja' Dhien was a leader of the Acehnese guerrilla forces during the Aceh War. Following the death of her husband Teuku Umar, she led guerrilla actions against the Dutch for 25 years. She was posthumously awarded the...

Field Marshal Horatio Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener, was an Irish-born British Field Marshal and proconsul who won fame for his imperial campaigns and later played a central role in the early part of the First World War, although he...

Charles Henry Dow was an American journalist who co-founded Dow Jones & Company with Edward Jones and Charles Bergstresser. Dow also founded The Wall Street Journal, which has become one of the most respected financial publications in the w...

Sir Arthur John Evans was a British archaeologist most famous for unearthing the palace of Knossos on the Greek island of Crete at Kephala Hill and for developing the concept of "Minoan civilization" from the structures and artifacts there...

Sir George Scott Robertson KCSI was a British soldier, author, and administrator who was best known for his arduous journey to the remote and rugged region of Kafiristan in what is now northeastern Afghanistan. He chronicled his Kafiristan...

One of the four great Post-impressionists (along with Paul Gauguin, Georges Seurat, and Paul Cézanne), Vincent van Gogh is generally considered the greatest Dutch painter after Rembrandt. His reputation is based largely on the works of the...

Cecil John Rhodes was a British imperialist and the effective founder of the state of Rhodesia (since 1980 known as Zimbabwe), named after himself. He profited greatly from southern Africa's natural resources. Rhodes was born in Bishop's...

Salomon August Andrée, during his lifetime most often known as S. A. Andrée, was a Swedish engineer, physicist, aeronaut and polar explorer who died while leading an attempt to reach the Geographic North Pole by hydrogen balloon. The balloo...

Oscar Wilde, Irish poet and dramatist whose reputation rests on his comic masterpieces Lady Windermere's Fan (1892) and The Importance of Being Earnest (1895). Among Wilde's other best-known works are his only novel The Picture of Dorian Gr...

Jules Henri Poincaré was a French mathematician, theoretical physicist, and a philosopher of science. He is often described as a polymath, and in mathematics as The Last Universalist, since he excelled in all fields of the discipline as it...