10 Profiles of historical people
No.1 .CHARLEMAGNE,though unable to write his own name,promoted schools,arts,civilization,and was the most powerful and enterprising monarch of his day. No.2.JAMES BOSWELL,the celebrated biographer of Dr.Samuel Johnson.He resembled Johnson as a fly does an elephant,while his self-assurance and impudence have rarely been equalled. No.3.CINGHALESE,a gentleman from the mountains of Ceylon. No.4.JOHN LOCKE,a distinguished philosopher. No.5.TASMANIAN,an aboriginee of Tasmania.His head does not,while his face does,manifest his cruel and cannibal habits. No.6.LORD BYRON,a poet of marvellous genius. No.7.CASSIUS,a famous Roman general,described in Shakespeare's "Julius Cæsar.” No.8.REV.ROWLAND HILL,an English clergyman. No.9.LAVATER,an eloquent Swiss preacher,poet,and physiognomist. No.10.PAUL I,Emperor of Russia,as his feeble face indicates,he was one of the weakest rulers in Europe.
A Prussian King's Daughter
Princess Wilhelmine of Prussia was a princess of the German Kingdom of Prussia and composer. She was the eldest daughter of Frederick William I of Prussia and Sophia Dorothea of Hanover, and granddaughter of George I of Great Britain. In 1731, she married Frederick, Margrave of Brandenburg-Bayreuth. [Wikipedia]
Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln (1)
Adam Smith
Addison
Agricola
Albert Engstrom
Albert Engstrom
Alexander H. Stephens
Alexander H. Stephens
Alexander Hamilton
Alexander Smith
Alexander the Great
Alfred Tennyson
Alice Cunningham Fletcher
This little girl was Alice Cunningham Fletcher. She was born in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1845. As she grew older, the thought came to her that if she felt so happy out in the open, how must the Indians feel who had lived a free out-of-door life for generations. Gradually she began to think that these people, whom the world called savages, must have learned something about how to live happily. Alice Fletcher resolved that, if ever there came a time when it was possible, she would go to the home of the Indians and try to discover their secrets. Meanwhile she studied all that books and museums could teach her of the story of the Red Men. At last, there did come a day when she decided to go and live among them. It meant leaving behind her, beloved libraries, fine concerts, beautiful pictures, and even a comfortable bed and easy chair. Miss Fletcher felt, however, that there was something that meant more than comfort to her. It was the doing of a definite piece of work that she believed would be useful to the world. Therefore, she left the friends with whom she could talk of books, pictures, and music, and went to live among the Dakota and Omaha Indians. From the door of her rude wigwam of buffalo skins, she could watch the little Indian children at play and see the everyday life of the older members of the tribe.
Alton B. Parker
Alton B. Parker
Andrew Carnegie
Andrew Carnegie
Andrew Carnegie
Andrew Carnegie
Anna Jameson
Barry Cornwall
Benjamin Disraeli
Benjamin Disraeli
Benjamin Franklin
Benjamin Franklin
Benjamin Franklin
It is hard to measure the men of one period of history with those in another. Some writers, even American writers, impressed by the artificial splendours of the European courts and by the tawdry and destructive exploits of a Frederick the Great or a Great Catherine, display a snobbish shame of something homespun about these makers of America. They feel that Benjamin Franklin at the court of Louis XVI, with his long hair, his plain clothes, and his pawky manner, was sadly lacking in aristocratic distinction. But stripped to their personalities, Louis XVI was hardly gifted enough or noble-minded enough to be Franklin’s valet.
Benjamin Franklin
American independence, the beginnings of which we have just been considering, was accomplished after a long struggle. Many brave men fought on the battle-field, and many who never shouldered a musket or drew a sword exerted a powerful influence for the good of the patriot cause. One of these men was Benjamin Franklin. He was born in Boston in 1706, the fifteenth child in a family of seventeen children. His father was a candle-maker and soap-boiler. Intending to make a clergyman of Benjamin, he sent him, at eight years of age, to a grammar-school, with the purpose of fitting him for college. The boy made rapid progress, but before the end of his first school-year his father took him out on account of the expense, and put him into a school where he would learn more practical subjects, such as writing and arithmetic. The last study proved very difficult for him.
Bernard Palissy
Bettina von Arnim
Billy the Kid
Billy the Kid
Birthplace of Lamarck - Front View
Birthplace of Lamarck - Front View
Bismarck
Prussian affairs were then very much in the hands of a minister of the seventeenth-century type, Von Bismarck (count in 1865, prince in 1871), and he saw brilliant opportunities in this trouble. He became the champion of the German nationality in these duchies—it must be remembered that the King of Prussia had refused to undertake this rôle for democratic Germany in 1848—and he persuaded Austria to side with Prussia in a military intervention. Denmark had no chance against these Great Powers; she was easily beaten and obliged to relinquish the duchies. Then Bismarck picked a quarrel with Austria for the possession of these two small states. So he brought about a needless and fratricidal war of Germans for the greater glory of Prussia and the ascendancy of the Hohenzollern dynasty in Germany. German writers of a romantic turn of mind represent Bismarck as a great statesman planning the unity of Germany; but indeed he was doing nothing of the kind.
Blaise Pascal
Booth Tarkington
Booth Tarkington
Bradlaugh
Bródy Sándor
Bródy Sándor
Byron
Captain James Cook
His choice fell upon James Cook, who was cordially recommended by Sir Hugh Palliser, and to him therefore the command of the Endeavour was given, whilst he was at the same time raised to the `rank` of ship's lieutenant. Cook was now forty years of age. This was his first appointment in the Royal Navy. The mission entrusted to him called for varied qualifications, rarely to be met with in a sailor. For, although the observation of the transit of Venus was the principal object of the voyage, it was by no means the only one. Cook was also to make a voyage of discovery in the Pacific Ocean. But the humbly born Yorkshire lad was destined to prove himself equal to his task.
Caricature of Joseph Smith
Joseph Smith
Carl Benz
Carl Benz Born, November 26, 1844, at Karlsruhe, Baden, Germany. Died, April 4, 1929, Ladenburg, Germany In 1880 he began to commercialize a two-cycle stationary engine. In 1883 he organized his business as Benz & Co., and produced his first vehicle in 1884. In the beginning of 1885 his three-wheeled vehicle ran through the streets of Mannheim, Germany, attracting much attention with its noisy exhaust. This was the subject of his patent dated January 29, 1886, claimed by him to be the first German patent on a light oil motor vehicle. This embodied a horizontal flywheel belt transmission through a differential and two chains to the wheels; but it is noteworthy primarily as having embodied a four-cycle, water jacketed, three-quarter horse-power engine, with electric ignition.
Carolina of Austria
Cato the censor
The orations of Cato are unhappily lost. But Cicero, a master of eloquence, and well enabled to compare them with similar compositions, passes upon them the highest eulogiums. The eloquence of Cato has been compared, for its force and energy, to the eloquence of that Demosthenes before whom Philip of Macedon quailed, and whose tremendous orations have given the name of Philippics to all sarcastic and vehement invectives.
Charles Bradlaugh
Charles Bradlaugh, politician and atheist
Charles Darwin
Charles Darwin
Charles E. Duryea, about 1894
Of the numerous American automotive pioneers, perhaps among the best known are Charles and Frank Duryea. Beginning their work of automobile building in Springfield, Massachusetts, and after much rebuilding, they constructed their first successful vehicle in 1892 and 1893.
Charles G. Dawes
Charles G. Dawes
Charles Rivers Wilson
Sir Charles Rivers Wilson
Charles Robert Leslie
Charles Sprague
Charles V
Holy Roman Emperor Charles V Most of the figures that stand out in history, do so through some exceptional personal quality, good or bad, that makes them more significant than their fellows. But there was born at Ghent in Belgium in 1500 a man of commonplace abilities and melancholy temperament, the son of a mentally defective mother who had been married for reasons of state, who was, through no fault of his own, to become the focus of the accumulating stresses of Europe. The historian must give him a quite unmerited and accidental prominence side by side with such marked individualities as Alexander and Charlemagne and Frederick II. This was the Emperor Charles V. For a time he had an air of being the greatest monarch in Europe since Charlemagne. Both he and his illusory greatness were the results of the matrimonial statecraft of his grandfather, the Emperor Maximilian I (born 1459, died 1519).
Christopher Columbus
Christopher Columbus
Christopher Columbus
Columbus was a man of commanding presence. He was large, tall, and dignified in bearing, with a ruddy complexion and piercing blue-gray eyes. By the time he was thirty his hair had become white, and fell in[Pg 4] wavy locks about his shoulders. Although his life of hardship and poverty compelled him to be plain and simple in food and dress, he always had the air of a gentleman, and his manners were pleasing and courteous. But he had a strong will, which overcame difficulties that would have overwhelmed most men.
Clara Barton
The Girl Who Unfurled The First American Red Cross Flag. It was Big Brother David who taught the little sister many things that were to make her a very practical “Angel of the Battlefield.” At five years of age, thanks to his training, she rode wild horses like a young Mexican. This skill in managing any horse meant the saving of countless lives when she had to gallop all night in a trooper’s saddle to reach the wounded men. David taught her, also, to drive a nail straight, to tie a knot that would hold, and to think and act quickly.
Constantine
Constantine Phipps
Constantine Phipps, 1st Marquess of Normanby, author of "Matilda"
Copernicus
Corelli
Arcangelo Corelli (1653-1713) left his home in Fusignano, near Bologna, a young violinist, for an extended concert tour. His gentle, sensitive disposition proving unfitted to cope with the jealousy of Lully, chief violinist in France, and with sundry annoyances in other lands, he returned to Italy and entered the service of Cardinal Ottoboni in Rome. In the private apartments of the prelate there gathered a choice company of music lovers every Monday afternoon to hear his latest compositions. Besides his solos these comprised groups of idealized dance tunes with harmony of mood for their bond of union, and played by two violins, a viola, violoncello and harpsichord. They were the parents of modern Chamber Music, the place of assemblage furnishing the name.
Correggio
Daniel Dancer, a miser and hermit
Daniel Webster
Dante
Dante
Descartes