Citizens - Klein

Queen Elizabeth I

Queen Elizabeth I

• Daughter of Anne Bolynn and Henry the Eighth

• Ushered in England's most powerful era

• Defeated the Spanish armada

• Rejected King Phillip of Spain; Married to England

William Shakespeare

• Very prominent Renaissance author

• Focused highly on the 'human condition'

• Most quoted author of all time

John Locke

• British Philosopher

• Believed the government should be derived through the will of the people

• Inspired the Declaration of Independence

Queen Isabella I

• Sponsored Columbus' mission

• Symbol of the Dark Ages

• Insistence on strict adherence to religion started the decent of Spain

• Close with the Pope; starts the Spanish Inquisition

• Spain was very powerful during her reign, due to muslim influence in the south.

Christopher Columbus

• In 1492, he sailed the ocean blue

• Started off looking for the 'Spice Islands', or Indonesia

• Although he ended up in the Caribbean, thought he had found Indonesia at the time of his death

• Kicked off a new period of colonization

Benjamin Franklin

• Founding Father, Inventor

• Diplomat to France

• Invented the lightning rod, bifocals, the stove

George Washington

• General of the US army during the US Revolution

• First President of the United States

• Natural leader, apolitical

• The President's position was made for him

Thomas Jefferson

• Favorite philosopher was John Locke

• Vice president to John Adams

• Authored the Declaration of Independence

• Third President

• Negotiated the Louisiana Purchase

Abraham Lincoln

• Emancipates slaves in the US

• Entire presidency was the Civil Was

• Manages to keep the Union together

• Assassinated by John Wilkes Booth

Franklin D. Roosevelt

• Weelchair-bound due to a bought of polio when he was young

• Hid his immobility during his Presidency

• Created the New Deal; President during the Great Depression

• His 'Fireside Chats' revolutionized the way presidents communicated

Eleanor Roosevelt

• Franklin Roosevelt's wife

• Reporter while First Lady

• Worked for woman's suffrage, the red cross

• Incredibly involved in the Roosevelt institution

• US Representative to the UN; helped create the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

• "Nobody can make you feel inferior without your permission"

William the Conqueror

• From Norman

• Last successful invader of the British Isles; in 1066

• Illiterate, but brought huge change to the English language

Margaret Sanger

• Founder of Planned Parenthood

• Feminist Activist during the first wave

• Started periodical called 'Woman Rebel'; promoted woman's autonomy and birth control

Queen Victoria I

• Oversaw the height of the British Empire

• Mourned her husband., Albert, for nearly 40 years

• The 'Victorian Morals' came from her

• Lead the conquest of Ireland, created Irish stereotypes

Johann Gutenberg

• Created the printing press

• Promotion of literacy and reading brought education and the end of the Dark Ages

• Promoted thought outside of the Bible

Julius Caesar

• Ruler of Ancient Rome

• Great general, incredibly charismatic

• Famous for conquering and expanding Rome

• Good speaker, known for a 'flamboyant' lifestyle

• "Every woman's man and every man's woman"

• Changed Rome from an Oligarchy to a single leadership

• Assassinated by the Senate

Cleopatra VII

• Ruled the Egyptian empire with her brother, hated each other

• Wanted to merge the Roman and Egyptian empires

• Knew how to manipulate men to get what she wanted

• Becomes close with Julius to merge their empires

• After Julius was assassinated, she became close to Mark Antony thinking he'll be the next leader

• Commits suicide after Augustus is elected

Octavius 'Augustus' Caesar

• 'Cleans up' Rome after Julius

• A family man

• Sets up the 'Pox Romana'; the Peace of Rome

• Promotes education, arts, and family

Charles Darwin

• Created theory of natural selection and evolution

• Naturalist, curious, and intelligent

• Goes to the Galapagos Islands; writes the Origins of Species

Buddha

• Prince in Northern India/Nepal

• Not allowed to leave the palace; sheltered

• Becomes obsessed with the idea of suffering; not comfortable to chalking up misery to bad Karma after leaving the palace for the first time

• Meditates for 49 days and comes up with the philosophy of Buddhism

Moses

• Received the 10 commandments in the Ark of the Covenant

• Freed the Jews from Egypt through the Red Sea

• 10 commandments are the foundation of the Torah

Muhammad

• Founder of Islam

• Founder and political ruler of the Islamic Empire, which became the Ottoman Empire

• Creates the Quaran, influenced by the angel Gabriel

Umar ibn al-Khattah

• Most important Caliph of the Islamic empire

• Expands it greatly, spreads Islam around the whole of the Middle East and Northern Africa

• Conquers Israel but Jews had already been driven out

• Builds a mosque beside the Western Wall to ensure the place stayed sacred

Jesus Christ

• Founder of Christianity

• Attractive personality, was a Rabbi

Martin Luther

• Christian monk teaching theology during the Renaissance

• Triggers the Protestant Reformation

• Had issues with the way the Catholic church let people into heaven

• 95 theses

Peter the Great

• Trained for Czarship starting at 4

• Travels to Europe, brings ideas back to Russia

• Ushers forth the Golden Age for Russia

• Westernizes Russia and expands it

Karl Marx

• Philosopher in the 1800s

• Father of Communism

• "Workers of the world, unite. There will be revolutions."

• Kicked out of continental Europe for revolutionary ideas

Lenin

• Well-educated, from a family of revolutionaries

• Led the Bolshevik revolution in Russia

• Helped overthrow the Czar in 1917

• Disliked Stalin

• Immortalized after his death

Joseph Stalin

• Shrewd, manipulated Communism in Russia to benefit him

• Cold and unempathetic leader, eliminated competition

• May be responsible for the most deaths caused by one person

• Starved country to stop protests

Martin Luther King, Jr.

• Civil rights activist, renowned speaker

• Baptist reverend who prioritized peaceful protest

• Won the Nobel Peace Prize

• Assassinated in Memphis, Tennesee, in 1968

• FBI was always investigating him, was labeled an enemy of the state due to socialist views

• Villified until death

Simon Bolivar

• Greatest revolutionary leader in the world

• Freed Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, Columbia, and Cuba

• Became the ruler of Venezuela, not great one

• Always gave first, died in poverty

Eva Duarte Peron

• Born in rural Argentina, to a poor, single mother

• Had to support her family from a young age, dropped out of school at 12

• Moves to Buenos Aries at 18

• Rising general in the military, Juan ______, takes interest in her

• Juan becomes military dictator, she's First Lady

• Hated by the ruling class

• Wanted to help the poor, becomes very popular with the working class

• Dies due to cancer

Napoleon Bonaparte

• French Emperor after the Revolution

• Talented general, overambitious

• Sold Louisiana Purchase to Thomas Jefferson at a loss

• Believed he could take on anyone

• Last defeat at Waterloo

Aristotle

• Influential greek philosopher

• Views controversial now, yet were respected at the time

• Was regarded on the expert for everything, from medicine to zoology

Niccolo Machiavelli

• Writer and Philosopher in the beginning of the Renissance

• Italian, wrote The Prince

• "The ends justify the means"

• It's better to be feared than loved

• Pessimistic, 'Machiavellian' outlook

St. Thomas More

• Was in charge of the Catholic church in England

• Childhood friend with Henry the Eighth

• Refuses to let Henry get divorced

• Beheaded by Henry

• Writes 'Utopia', focuses on the journey, not the process

Golda Meir

• Born in the then Russian Empire, moves to the US

• Enamored with Zionism

• Leading fundraiser / advocate for the creation of a Jewish state

• The first and only female Prime Minister of Israel

• Refused to negotiate the hostage crisis during the Munich Olympics

Nicolas Copernicus

• Polish astronomer, discovered Heliocentrism

• Led to the Copernican revolution

• Didn't publish findings until on his deathbed, afraid of the Catholic Church

Galileo Galilei

• One of the most influential scientists

• Invented the telescope

• Developed the Scientific Method

• Religious, Italian, believed in experimentation

• Dropped things off the Tower of Pisa

• Gets arrested by the Catholic Church, has to recant its statements

Issac Newton

• British scientist who took off where Galileo left

• Links different fields of science together

• Discovered gravity, Newton's laws, calculus

• Buried at Westminster Abbey

Albert Einstein

• Man of the 20th century

• Jewish, from Germany

• Creates the Atomic bomb, theory of relativity

• Taught at Princeton after moving to the US from Switzerland

• Most wanted individual by the Nazis

Steven Hawking

• Disabled, diagnosed with ALS, given two years to live in 1960

• One of the smartest people in the world, could only speak with the help of the computer

• Wrote 'a brief history of time'

• Continued Einstein's work

• Born 300 years after Galileo's death, worked in the same university spot as Issac Newton

Benazir Bhutto

• Father was military dictator of Pakistan

• Well educated on world affairs

• First and only female leader of female leader of a muslim country, takes control after father dies

• Removed from power after her husband was arrested, exiled from Pakistan and moves to London

• While in London, she works to create democracy in Pakistan, and becomes the forerunner in the February 2008 election

• Advised not to visit Pakistan but goes anyway

• Assassinated by Al Qaeda on December 25th, 2007

Mohandas Gandhi

• The Mahatma, 'great soul'

• Spiritual leader of the Indian Independence movement

• Led through peaceful protests; civil disobedience

• Boycotting, fasting

• Assassinated by Hindu nationalists for pushing against the caste system

Marie Curie

• Friend of Albert Einstein

• Polish scientist who discovered Radium and Polonium

• Only person to win multiple Nobel prizes

• Helps to create the periodic table

• Died of radiation poisoning

Joan of Arc

• Lived in medieval France

• War was ongoing between Britain and France, and Britain was winning

• Starts having visions when she's 13, telling her to raise an army and reinstate King Charles

• Musters up an army and defeats the British in the Battle of Orleans

• Captured, burned at the stake

Rene Descartes

• French philosopher and mathematician

• His philosophy? Doubt everything.

• 'I think therefore I am'

• Dies of pneumonia, as the tudor for the Queen of Sweeden

Louis Pasteur

• Creates pasteurization, theory for vaccines

• Spread belief in Germ Theory and preventative inoculation

• Huge impact on life expectancy

Mary Wollstonecraft

• British author, single mother for most of her life

• Worked as a nanny, self-educated

• Wrote 'A vindication of the rights of women' and 'An education of daughters'

• Set founding ideas of feminism

• Dies in childbirth, giving birth to her daughter, Mary Shelly

Charles Babbage

• British inventor

• Creates the 'analytical engine': basis of modern computers

• Had an outsized impact on the development of computing

Mother Teresa

• Albanian nun, the 'ultimate giver'

• Felt her purpose in life was to care for those in need

• Operated in Northern India; Calcutta

• Cared for leopars

• Believed no one should die alone

• Wins the Nobel Peace Prize

• Canonized on September 4, 2016

Alexander Graham Bell

• Invented the telephone

• Worked with the deaf

• Felt as though his invention hindered his work

• Starts Atlantic Telephone and Telegraph (AT&T)

Ghengis Khan

• Ruler of the Ancient Mongol empire

• Conquers much of Asia, some of Europe

• Makes the Mongol empire the largest land empire on earth

• His descendants lose the empire; Opium addictions

Meiji Tenno

• Young emperor of Japan at the time of the US's breaking of Japanese isolation

• Modernizes and Westernizes Japan, pushing it into the globalizing world

• Makes a shift to militarism, drawing inspiration from the British

• Breaks with the traditions of Japan at the time

Frank Lloyd Wright

• The most famous American architect

• Known for 'human-proportioned' designed

• Became famous after his buildings withstood the Great Tokyo Quake of 1923

• Believed that architecture should be built as one with nature

Adolf Hitler

• Failed artist

• Fought for Germany in WWI, was wounded

• Became radicalized, extremist after Germany's defeat

• Creates Nazi Germany, institutes the Holocaust and begins WWII

• Ultimately failed on every task he set to acomplish

Winston Churchill

• Militarist, author, historian

• Prime Minister of Britain during WWII

• Hitler's foil

• Had a massive ego, very witty and rude

• Voted out of power for a period following the end of WWII

Confucius

• Philosopher and politician

• Emphasizes the importance of ancestral worship, obeying parents, and honoring grandparents.

• De-emphasizes the importance of god or gods

• Family is above all else

• His ideas are still ingrained in China's culture

Shih Huang Ti

• Emperor of the Q'in Dynasty, united China

• Builds the Great Wall to protect from invaders

• Incredibly ruthless, tortured dissenters, built workers into the Great wall

• Worried that those he wronged would take revenge on him in the spiritual realm

• Sent out missions for immortality, they never came back

• Creates a terracotta army to protect him around his tomb, has a mercury moat, kills everyone at his memorial service

Ts'ai Lun

• Chinese Eunech; a man who served the wife and children of the emperor

• Creates the recipe for paper

• China guards the secret of paper for hundreds of years.

Mao Tse-tung

• Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party

• Grows up reasonably wealthy, in Beijing

• Falls in love with Communism; appeals to those in rural areas

• Wins the Chinese civil war, rules over the largest population at the time

Leonardo da Vinci

• Renaissance man, paints the Mona Lisa and Last Supper

• Only truly made about 20 paintings

• Inventive genius, but not an inventor

• Thought of ideas like the tank and helicopter, but never made working prototypes

• Lived as part of the high society, in Florence, Italy

Michelangelo

• Best sculptor in history

• Paints the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel

• Workaholic, had many unfinished projects even after death

• Looked down upon da Vinci and others in high society

Rembrandt van Rijn

• Considered one of the greatest Dutch Baroque artists

• Famous for his portraits

• Had an exceptional ability to render people in their various moods and dramatic expressions

• Most famous artist of the Dutch Golden Age

Claude Monet

• French painter, impressionist

• Painted the Water Lillies

• Went blind later in life, but continued to paint

Vincent Van Gogh

• One of the most famous artists; paintings are most expensive in history

• Painted the Starry Night and Sunflowers

• Struggled with mental health, didn't become rich off of his art in his lifetime

• Used art as an escape when he was institutionalized, mainly supported by his brother

Pablo Picasso

• Greatest artist of the 20th century

• Goes through different 'periods' of art

• Creates more pieces of art than anyone else, in many different mediums

• From Spain, lives a high society life

• Known for abstract style

Richard Wagner

• Most famous Opera composer, German

• Had a castle dedicated to him

• Fed off stereotypes at the time, many of his antagonists were Jewish

• Hitler was a big fan of Operas

Wenher von Braun

• German rocket scientist

• Member of the Nazi party

• Rockets of the Germans in WWII was his design

• After WWII, the US and Soviets raced to find him for help in the Space Race

• US captured him but did not imprison him; lead NASA in the Cold War

Nelson Mandela

• Leading advocate in the fight to end apartheid

• Leader of the ANC (African National Congress)

• Was arrested for speaking on apartheid and put in jail for 26 years

• Released as apartheid began to fall apart

• Elected president of South Africa in 1998

Jean Henri Dunant

• Swiss

• Wins the first Nobel Peace Prize

• Starts the YMCA and Red Cross

Thomas Edison

• Inventor of the lightbulb

• One of the most important American inventors

• Only received a few months of formal education

• Secured many patents to enrich himself

• Invents movie camera and projector

• 'Genius is 2% inspiration and 98% perspiration’

Sigmund Freud

• The father of modern Psychology

• Developed psychoanalysis

• Ideas of 'id', ego, and superego

• Oedipus complex, addicted to cocaine

Homer

• A Greek poet, author of the Iliad and the Odyssey

• Through these poems, he affected Western standards and ideas

Socrates

• Founder of western philosophy

• One of the first moral philosophers, considered ethical questions

• Mentor to Plato

Plato

• Writer of the Republic

• Founded the Academy in Athens

• Believed conflicting forces in a society could be brought together.

Alexander the Great

• One of the most successful conquerers in history

• Conquers Greece, Egypt, and the Middle East

Mikhail Gorbachev

• Final leader of the Soviet Union

• Moved the country towards social democracy

• Limited creation and deployment of nuclear weapons

• Established diplomatic relations with the US