Who do you consider the most fascinating people in history?

[np33]

In no particular order and it's mostly just off the top of my head. So I can gurantee that I left a ton of people off the my list.

Dr. Nicola Tesla
Khan family
Che Guevara
Patrice Lumumba
Qin Shi Huang
the borgias
Chairman Mao Zedong
Nina Simone

[DarkTirade]

1. Khan?

KHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAN!!!!!!!

[np33]

4. The most famous Genghis Khan

but his decedents were also very prolific in their conquering. They are overlooked entirely too much by history in my humble opinion

[DarkTirade]

5. Yeah, everybody's heard of Genghis, a lot of people have heard of Kubla, but

there were a lot of other ones about.

[np33]

9. Mongke Khan

allowed women to own property and seek litigation. Same as Genghis Khan he allowed people to worship freely and this all took place around 1252.

[nickgutierrez]

2. Tesla is pretty interesting.

I think Bobby Fischer is a fascinating character, in that it's oddly fascinating to see someone so obviously, brilliantly talented fall so quickly off the deep end.

[Oeditpus Rex]

3. Adolf Hitler

Julius Robert Oppenheimer

Jack Roosevelt Robinson

Amelia Earhart

William Randolph Hearst

Henry Ford

George Herman "Babe" Ruth



This is a very thought-provoking question.

[DarkTirade]

6. Hmm... a lot of world-changing people...

are the kind of people I wouldn't want babysitting my kids.

[Pierre.Suave]

7. wait just one minute here

you have kids?

Did something happen I am un aware of?

[DarkTirade]

17. Not that I know of...

and I haven't been around THAT much, so probably not at all...

[Oeditpus Rex]

8. I don't think I'd want mine playing with Oppie's toys

"Herbert! You're positively glowing!"

[Inchworm]

10. Gypsy

Not so much in the original Hindu people that the term originated, but in wandering people all together.

Sailors
Voyagers
Adventurers
Searchers
Nomadic peoples
Gatherers
Pioneers
Bohemians
Explorers
Wanderers
Etc

So many peoples broke off into these sub-groups that I couldnt really say one people. I am facinated with the Appalachian people though. But underneath it is really because most fit into one of those segments I mentioned.

[HEyHEY]

11. T.E. Lawrence for one

Howard Hughes, Muhamed Ali, Lady Bathori, Greta Garbo, Mozart

[lunatica]

12. People who took on the authorities and put their lives on the line

Harriet Tubman who not only kept going back to lead slaves to freedom, but who turned out to be a very valuable spy for Union forces in the Civil war. She would just walk into the Confederate camps and wait on them as if she was one of their slaves and they never even noticed or cared that she would be there during their strategy meetings. She also lead the Union army through deadly swamps on a few occasions saving their lives.

Suffragettes who fought over many generations to bring us the vote.

Black civil rights leaders Rosa Parks, MLK jr. Medgar Evers,

Mahatma Ghandi and the Dalai Lama.

With so much fear that paralyzes people now I wonder what they would think of us.

[cemaphonic]

13. Akbar the Great

Suleyman is pretty underrated too.

[jobycom]

14. George Washington, Ghenghis Khan, Muhammad, Eleanor or Aquitaine,

Francis of Assissi, Leonardo Da Vinci, Sappho, Pope Sylvester II (Gerbert of Aurilac)...

That's off the top of my head.

[yellowdogintexas]

15. definitely Eleanor of Aquitaine, Queen Elizabeth I, Thomas Jefferson

Theodore Roosevelt

for starters.

[WinkyDink]

16. OP should state a limit! :) Cleopatra; Newton; JFK; Nixon; "King Arthur".

[np33]

18. No limit!

Really I was hoping to generate discussion about prominent figures from the past. Most of the people listed in this topic barely get a paragraph in most History books (well at least the American educational system).


For example Dr. Nicola Tesla was probably one of the most brilliant inventors the world has ever known yet he is almost non-existent from American history books.

[dawgmom]

19. Margaret Sanger. Thomas Jefferson. Abraham Lincoln....

Eleanor Roosevelt.
Amelia Earhardt (sp?)
Hunter S. Thompson
Studs Terkel
Molly Ivins
Dorothea Lange
Susan B. Anthony
Eugene V. Debs

Just the ones that come to mind.

[YankeyMCC]

20. Sam Adams

John Admas
Jefferson
Washington
Lincoln
Homer
Metacomet
Shackleton
James Cook

[clyrc]

21. There are so many!

Eleanor of Aquitaine is one, and Thomas Jefferson another, but there are many many more I find fascinating.

[Mojambo]

22. Napoleon. n/t

[RFKHumphreyObama]

23. My list

1. Jesus Christ and his disciples
2. Emperor Akbar of India
3. Shah Jehan (who built the Taj Mahal) in India
4. JFK and Robert Kennedy
5. Mary Pinchot Meyer (President Kennedy's lover)
6. Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi of Iran
7. Abraham Lincoln
8. Martin Luther King Jr.
9. Mahatma Gandhi and Prime Minister Nehru of India
10. Pierre Trudeau
11. Emperors Claudius, Caligula and Nero of Rome

And many more...

[femmocrat]

24. The early feminists, of course!

Amazing women.

[nytemare]

25. Viktor Frankl

Col. Klauss Von Stauffenburg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claus_Schenk_von_Stauffenb...

Chiune Sugihara http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiune_Sugihara

Carl Sagan

In recent history Liviu Librescu http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liviu_Librescu

Adolf Hitler.

And I have to add Amelia Earhart.

I guess there is some theme to my picks, being that one was a dictator, and many of the others tried to fight him and/or his ilk.

[Withywindle]

26. Wow, lots

here is a partial list:

Hypatia
Erik the Red
all the women especially of the Icelandic Sagas
Empress Theodora
Rabia al-Adawiyya
Jalal ad-din Muhammad Balkhi (aka Rumi)
Borte (first and favorite wife of Genghis Khan, a real power broker in her own right.)
Timur-i-Leng (aka Tamurlane)
Vlad Tepes
Rabbi Judah Loew ben Bezalel
Dr. John Dee
Sir Philip Sidney
Aphra Behn
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
Walt Whitman
Marie LaVeau
Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin
William Butler Yeats
Maud Gonne
Mata Hari
"Two-Gun" Sid Hatfield
Aleister Crowley
Doreen Valiente
Alan Turing


...I could go on and on and on....

[enigmatic]

27. Henry Darger

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Darger

[T_i_B]

28. Hmmmm.......

Charles James Fox - Radical Whig and scourge of William Pitt and George III.

Duke of Wellington - probably Britain's greatest general. Probably Britain's worst prime minister.

Nye Bevan - the creator of the British NHS

Erasmus of Rotterdam - great renaissance scholar and theologian

Ivan the Terrible - fascinating, but for all the wrong reasons.

But there's plenty more then that.