By Authors
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A Tale of Two Cities- Is a historical novel published in 1859 by Charles Dickens. It is set in London and Paris before and during the French Revolution.
The novel tells the story of the French Doctor Manette: his 18-year-long imprisonment in the Bastille in Paris, and his release to live in London with his daughter Lucie whom he had never met. The story's setting is during the French Revolution and the Reign of Terror.
It is known as one of the best-known work of historical fiction. It is also one of the best-selling novels of all time. In 2003, the novel was ranked 63rd on the BBC's The Big Read poll. The novel has been adapted for films, television, radio, and the stage. It has also continued to influence popular culture.
Abraham Lincoln- (February 12, 1809 – April 15, 1865) was an American lawyer, politician and statesman. He became the 16th president of the United States from 1861 until he was assassinated in 1865. He led the American Union Government through the American Civil War defending the nation as a constitutional union. He succeeded in abolishing slavery, bolstering the federal government and modernizing the U.S. economy.
Aesop- Was a Greek fabulist and storyteller credited with a number of fables collectively known as Aesop's Fables.
Albert Einstein- A German-born theoretical physicist. He is best known for developing the theory of relativity, but he also made important contributions to the development of the theory of quantum mechanics.
Alexander the Great- Alexander III of Macedon (July 20/21 356 BC – June 10/11 323 BC), or more commonly known as Alexander the Great, was a king of the ancient Greek kingdom of Macedon. At the age of 20, he succeeded his father Philip II to the throne in 336 BC. He spent most of his ruling years conducting lengthy military campaigns throughout Western Asia and Egypt. By the age of 30, he had one of the largest empire in history. It stretched from Greece to northwestern India. He was also undefeated in battle and is considered to be one of history's greatest and most successful military commanders.
He was tutored by Aristotle until the age of 16. In 335 BC, shortly after he became the king of Macedon, he reasserted control over Thrace and Illyria and destroyed Thebes. He then led the League of Corinth, and launched the pan-Hellenic project envisioned by his father. He assumed leadership over all Greece in their conquest of the Persian Empire.
Alexander invaded India but due to the demand of his homesick troops, he eventually turned back and later died in 323 BC in Babylon, the city of Mesopotamia that he had planned to establish as his empire's capital.
His death marked the start of the Hellenistic period. He founded more than twenty cities, with the most prominent being the city of Alexandria in Egypt. Alexander became a legend, compared to the classical heroes in the mould of Achilles. His military achievements made him the measure against which many later military leaders would be compared. His tactics remain a significant subject of study in military academies worldwide.
Alice in Wonderland- Actual title: "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" is an 1865 English children's novel by Lewis Carroll.
It is a story of a young girl named Alice who falls through a rabbit hole and into a fantasy world of anthropomorphic creatures. It is now one of the best-known works of Victorian literature. The titular character Alice shares her given name with Alice Liddell, a girl Carroll knew.
The book has never been out of print and has been translated into 174 languages. It has been adaptated for screen, radio, art, ballet, opera, musicals, theme parks, board games and video games.
Amelia Earhart- Amelia Mary Earhart (born July 24, 1897; disappeared July 2, 1937; declared dead January 5, 1939) was an American aviation pioneer and writer.
She was the first female aviator to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean. She set many other records and was one of the first aviators to promote commercial air travel. She also wrote best-selling books about her flying experiences, and was instrumental in the formation of The Ninety-Nines, an organization for female pilots.
Andrew Carnegie-
(November 25, 1835 – August 11, 1919) was an American industrialist and philanthropist. He led the expansion of the American steel industry in the late 19th century. He also became one of the richest Americans in history.
He also became a leading philanthropist in the United States, Great Britain, and the British Empire. He gave away around $350 million which is about $5.9 billion in 2022 and represents about 90% of his fortune, during the last 18 years of his life. He gave to charities, foundations and universities. His 1889 article proclaiming "The Gospel of Wealth", called on the rich to use their wealth to improve society, expressed support for progressive taxation and an estate tax, and to stimulate a wave of philanthropy.
He was born in Dunfermline, Scotland. In 1848 at the age of 12, he emigrated to Pittsburgh, United States together with his parents. He worked as a telegrapher but by the 1860s had investments already in railroads, railroad sleeping cars, bridges, and oil derricks. He further accumulated wealth as a bond salesman, raising money for American enterprise in Europe.
He built Pittsburgh's Carnegie Steel Company, which he later sold to J. P. Morgan in 1901 for $303,450,000, which is equal to $10,674,157,200 in today’s money. This formed the basis of the U.S. Steel Corporation. After selling Carnegie Steel, he surpassed John D. Rockefeller as the richest American for the next several years.
Carnegie devoted the remainder of his life to large-scale philanthropy. He specialized on building local libraries, education, scientific research and world peace. He funded the Carnegie Hall in New York City, the Peace Palace in The Hague, founded the Carnegie Corporation of New York, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Carnegie Institution for Science, Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland, Carnegie Hero Fund, Carnegie Mellon University, and the Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh, among others.
(Source: Wikipedia)
Andry Warhol- Andy Warhol born Andrew Warhola Jr.; (August 6, 1928 – February 22, 1987) was an American artist, film director, producer, and leading figure in the pop art movement.
He is known for mixing artistic expression with advertising, and celebrity culture which flourished in the 1960s.
He used a variety of media including film, painting, photography, silkscreening, and sculpture. Some of his best-known works are the silkscreen paintings "Campbell's Soup Cans" (1962) & "Marilyn Diptych" (1962), the experimental films "Chelsea Girls" (1966) & "Empire" (1964), and the multimedia events known as the "Exploding Plastic Inevitable" (1966–67).
Anne Frank- Annelies Marie Frank (June 12, 1929 – March 31, 1945) was a German-born Jewish girl who kept a diary documenting her life in hiding under Nazi persecution.
She is a celebrated diarist who described her and her family's life while hiding in an Amsterdam attic. She is one of the most-discussed Jewish victims of the Holocaust. She gained fame posthumously with the 1947 publication of "The Diary of a Young Girl" ("originally Het Achterhuis" in Dutch, which means "the back house" or in English: The Secret Annex).
She documented her life in hiding from 1942 to 1944, during the German occupation of the Netherlands in World War II. It is one of the world's best-known books and has been the basis for several plays and films.
Aristotle- (384–322 BC) was an Ancient Greek philosopher and polymath. His work covered a broad range of subjects which include aesthetics, biology, drama, economics, ethics, geology, government, linguistics, logic, metaphysics, meteorology, music, physics, poetry, politics, psychology, rhetoric and zoology.
He is the founder of the Peripatetic school of philosophy in the Lyceum in Athens. He began the wider Aristotelian tradition that followed. This set the groundwork for the development of modern science.
Arnold Schwarzenegger- Was born on July 30, 1947, near Graz, Austria. As a kid, Arnold’s favorite movies were the B-level Hercules movies that Reg Parker, a bodybuilder, starred in. These movies fueled Arnold’s love and obsession with bodybuilding and America.
He wooed Joe Weider to get to America. Weider was the man behind the International Federation of Body Building. Arnold would go on to win five Mr. Universe titles and six Mr. Olympia crowns during his bodybuilding career, which was a record.
After his bodybuilding career ended, Arnold set his sights on Hollywood to become an actor.
After winning a Golden Globe Award for Best Newcomer for his performance in Stay Hungry (1976), he became world famous an action hero in movies like Conan the Barbarian (1982), The Terminator (1984), Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991), and Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (2003).
He also married a member of the Kennedy's and became governor of California in 2003. He went back to Hollywood subsequently.
He was nicknamed the "Austrian Oak" in his bodybuilding days, "Arnie" or "Schwarzy" during his acting career, and "the Governator" (a portmanteau of "Governor" and "Terminator") during his political career.
Audre Lorde- born Audrey Geraldine Lorde (February 18, 1934 – November 17, 1992) was an American writer, womanist, radical feminist, professor, philosopher and civil rights activist. She was a self-described "black, lesbian, feminist, socialist, mother, warrior, and poet who dedicated both her life and her creative talent to confronting and addressing injustices of racism, sexism, classism, and homophobia." (Source: Wikipedia).
Audrey Hepburn- Audrey Kathleen Ruston (May 4, 1929 – January 20, 1993) was a British actress and humanitarian. She is recognised as a film and fashion icon.
Ranked by the American Film Institute as the "3rd Greatest Female Screen Legend" from the Classical Hollywood cinema. She was also inducted into the International Best Dressed List Hall of Fame.
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bell hooks- Gloria Jean Watkins (September 25, 1952 – December 15, 2021) who is better known by her pen name "bell books", was an American author, educator, social critic and theorist who was a Distinguished Professor in Residence at Berea College.
She is best known for her writings on capitalism, class, feminism, gender, race. She published about 40 books ranging from essays, poetry, children's books and scholarly articles. She was also featured in documentary films and participated in public lectures.
She has taught in several educational institutions and founded the bell hooks Institute in 2014. Her pen was taken off her maternal great-grandmother, Bell Blair Hooks. She died of kidney failure on December 15, 2021, aged 69.
She purposely wrote her pen name in lower case as she wanted the focus to be on her ideas and not her identity.
Benjamin Franklin- He was an American polymath who was a writer, scientist, inventor, statesman, diplomat, printer, publisher, forger and political philosopher. He is one of the Founding Fathers of the United States.
Bertrand Russel- Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, was a British mathematician, philosopher, logician, and a public intellectual. He had a considerable influence on such fields as mathematics, logic, set theory, linguistics, artificial intelligence, cognitive science, computer science and analytic philosophy.
Betty White- Betty Marion White (January 17, 1922 – December 31, 2021) was an American actress and comedian. She is an early television pioneer with a career spanning almost seven decades.
She was noted for her vast body of work in entertainment and for being one of the first women to work both in front of and behind the camera. She produced and starred in the sitcom Life with Elizabeth (1953–1955), making her the first woman to produce a sitcom.
Bill Gates- William Henry Gates III (born October 28, 1955) is an American business technology magnate, investor, and philanthropist. He is best known for co-founding Microsoft, the software giant responsible for the DOS and Windows PC Operating Systems, along with his late childhood friend Paul Allen.
He held the positions of chairman, chief executive officer (CEO), president and chief software architect, while also being Microsoft's largest individual shareholder until May 2014.
He is widely considered as one of the people who popularized the microcomputer revolution of the 1970s and 1980s. He previously held the title of the world's richest man for decades, although he is still one of the most richest person in the world today. He is worth USD 120.9 billion as of 2023.
Bob Marley- Robert Nesta Marley (February 6, 1945 – May 11, 1981) was a Jamaican singer, musician, and songwriter. He is considered as one of the pioneers of reggae.
He contributed to the increased visibility of Jamaican music worldwide. He is also a global figure in popular culture. He became a Rastafari icon. He survived an assassination attempt in his home in 1976 which was thought to be politically motivated.He also supported the legalisation of marijuana, and advocated for Pan-Africanism.
Bruce Lee- born as Lee Jun-fan (November 27, 1940 – July 20, 1973) was a Hong Kong and American martial artist, actor, philosopher and filmmaker. He founded Jeet Kune Do, a hybrid martial arts discipline which drew from many combat disciplines. It is often credited with paving the way for modern mixed martial arts (MMA).
He is considered by critics, media, and other martial artists to be the most influential martial artist of all time and a pop culture icon of the 20th century who bridged the gap between East and West. He is also credited with promoting Hong Kong action cinema and helping to change the way Chinese people were presented in American films.
BTS- also known as the Bangtan Boys, is a South Korean boy band formed in 2010. The band is made up by Jin, Suga, J-Hope, RM, Jimin, V, and Jungkook. They co-write or co-produce much of their material. They were originally a hip hop group, but have expanded their musical style to incorporate a wide range of genres. Their songs have focused on subjects including mental health, the troubles of school-age youth & coming of age, loss, the journey towards self-love, individualism, and the consequences of fame & recognition. Their discography and adjacent work has also been referenced in literature, philosophy and psychology, and includes an alternate universe storyline.
They debuted in 2013 under Big Hit Entertainment with the single album "2 Cool 4 Skool". in 2014, they released their first Korean and Japanese-language albums, "Dark & Wild" and "Wake Up" respectively. The group's second Korean studio album, "Wings" (2016), was their first to sell one million copies in South Korea. By 2017, BTS had crossed into the global music market and led the Korean Wave into the United States, becoming the first Korean ensemble to receive a Gold certification from the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) for their single "Mic Drop", as well as the first act from South Korea to top the Billboard 200 with their studio album "Love Yourself: Tear" (2018). In 2020, they became one of a few groups since the Beatles (in 1966–1968) to chart four US number-one albums in less than two years, "with Love Yourself: Answer" (2018) becoming the first Korean album certified Platinum by the RIAA; in the same year, they also became the first all-South Korean act to reach number one on both of the Billboard Hot 100 and Billboard Global 200 with their Grammy-nominated single "Dynamite". Follow-up releases "Savage Love", "Life Goes On", "Butter", and "Permission to Dance" made them the fastest act to earn four US number-one singles since Justin Timberlake in 2006...
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Calvin Coolidge-
Born John Calvin Coolidge Jr. (July 4, 1872 – January 5, 1933) was an American attorney and politician who served as the 30th president of the United States from 1923 to 1929. He was a Republican from New England who became Massachusetts’ 48th governor. He rose to national prominence with his decisive action on the Boston Police Strike of 1919. He was elected as the 29th vice president the following year and then became president after the death of President Warren G. Harding in 1923. Elected again in 1924, he was known for his small government conservative policy and termed as "Silent Cal" for his taciturn personality and dry sense of humor. He never ran for reelection in 1928 despite his popularity. His words were: "longer than any other man has had it – too long!"
His gubernatorial career was known for fiscal conservatism, strong support for women's suffrage, and vague opposition to Prohibition. His presidency was known for restoring public confidence in the White House after the many scandals of the Harding administration, the signing into law of the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924 which granted U.S. citizenship to all Native Americans, a period of rapid and expansive economic growth known as the "Roaring Twenties", made his office considerably popular. He was known for his hands-off governing approach and pro-business stances. Biographer Claude Fuess remarked this about him: "He embodied the spirit and hopes of the middle class, could interpret their longings and express their opinions. That he did represent the genius of the average is the most convincing proof of his strength."
Scholars rank him in the lower half of U.S. presidents. He is nearly universally praise for his stalwart support of racial equality during a period of heightened racial tension in the United States. He is highly praised by advocates of smaller government and laissez-faire economics. Supporters of an active central government generally view him less favorably. His critics argue that he failed to use the country's economic boom to help struggling farmers and workers in other flailing industries. There is also much debate among historians as to the extent to which his economic policies contributed to the onset of the Great Depression.
Carl Jung- Carl Gustav Jung (July 26, 1875 – June 6, 1961) was a Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst who founded analytical psychology.
His work has been influential in the fields of anthropology, archaeology, literature, philosophy, psychiatry, psychology and religious studies.
He worked as a research scientist at the Burghölzli psychiatric hospital in Zurich under Eugen Bleuler. He established himself as an influential mind of his time, developing a friendship with Sigmund Freud, founder of psychoanalysis.
He is highly regarded as one of the most influential psychologists of all time.
Carl Sagan Pale Blue Dot- "Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space" is a 1994 book by the astronomer Carl Sagan. It is the sequel to Sagan's 1980 book: "Cosmos". It was inspired by the famous 1990 Pale Blue Dot photograph of which he provided a poignant description.
He mixes philosophy about the human place in the universe in the book, together with a description of the current knowledge about the Solar System. He also detailed a human vision for the future.
The audiobook of Pale Blue Dot, which was read by him, was selected by the Library of Congress in 2023 for preservation in the United States National Recording Registry. It was deemed as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant."
Che Guevara- Ernesto "Che" Guevara (June 14, 1928 – October 9, 1967) was an Argentine Marxist revolutionary, guerilla leader, diplomat, military theorist, author and physician. He was a major figure of the Cuban Revolution. His stylized visage has become a ubiquitous countercultural symbol of rebellion and a global insignia in popular culture
His political ideology and involvements were formed by what he perceived as the capitalist exploitation of Latin America. He eventually joined Raúl and Fidel Castro's resistance movement. After the Cuban Revolution, Guevara played key roles in the new government including being a diplomat which enabled him to travel the world.
In 1965, he left Cuba to foment continental revolutions across both Africa and South America, first unsuccessfully in Congo-Kinshasa and later in Bolivia, where he was captured by CIA-assisted Bolivian forces and summarily executed.
He remains both a revered and reviled historical figure. As a result of his perceived martyrdom, poetic invocations for class struggle, and desire to create the consciousness of a "new man" driven by moral rather than material incentives, he has evolved into a quintessential icon of various leftist movements. In contrast, his critics on the political right accuse him of promoting authoritarianism and endorsing violence against his political opponents.
Clint Eastwood-
Clinton Eastwood Jr. (born May 31, 1930) is an American actor, film director and composer. He achieved success in the Western TV series "Rawhide". He rose to international fame with his role as the "Man with No Name" in Sergio Leone's "Dollars Trilogy" of Spaghetti Westerns during the mid-1960s. He also gained more fame as antihero cop "Harry Callahan" in the five "Dirty Harry films" throughout the 1970s and 1980s. These roles, among others, have made him an enduring cultural icon of masculinity. He also served for two years as the mayor of Carmel-by-the-Sea, California starting in 1986.
His greatest commercial successes are the adventure comedy "Every Which Way but Loose" (1978) and its action comedy sequel "Any Which Way You Can" (1980). Some of his other popular films include the Westerns "Hang 'Em High" (1968) and "Pale Rider" (1985), the action-war film Where "Eagles Dare" (1968), the prison film "Escape from Alcatraz" (1979), the war film "Heartbreak Ridge" (1986), the action film In the "Line of Fire" (1993), and the romantic drama "The Bridges of Madison County" (1995). His more recent films include "Gran Torino" (2008), "The Mule" (2018), and "Cry Macho" (2021).
Since 1967, his film company, Malpaso Productions, has produced all but four of his American films.
An Academy Award nominee for Best Actor, Eastwood won Best Director and Best Picture for his Western film "Unforgiven" (1992) and his sports drama "Million Dollar Baby" (2004). Besides directing many of his own films, he has also directed films such as the mystery drama "Mystic River" (2003) and the war film "Letters from Iwo Jima" (2006), for which he received an Academy Award nominations. He also directed the biographical films "Changeling" (2008), "Invictus" (2009), "American Sniper" (2014), "Sully" (2016), and "Richard Jewell" (2019).
His achievements include four Academy Awards, four Golden Globe Awards, three César Awards, and an AFI Life Achievement Award. In 2000, he received the Italian Venice Film Festival's Golden Lion award, honoring his lifetime achievements. He is bestowed two of France's highest civilian honors. He received the Commander of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 1994 and the Legion of Honour in 2007. He has eight children.
Confucius- A Chinese philosopher and politician of the Spring and Autumn period who is traditionally considered the paragon of Chinese sages.
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Dale Carnegie- Was an American writer and lecturer. He developed courses in self-improvement, salesmanship, corporate training, public speaking, and interpersonal skills. He was the author of the bestselling book: How to Win Friends and Influence People which he wrote in 1936.
Dan Kennedy- Dan S. Kennedy (Born: December 22, 1954) is an American businessman and is the founder of Magnetic Marketing.
He has three bestselling books:
- The Ultimate Sales Letter
- The Ultimate Marketing Plan
- No B.S. Wealth Attraction In The New Economy
Dave Ramsey- David Lawrence Ramsey III (born September 3, 1960) is an American personality who is known for his financial advice.
He hosts the nationally syndicated radio program The Ramsey Show. He has written several books which includes The New York Times bestseller: "The Total Money Makeover"
He also hosted a television show on Fox Business from 2007 to 2010.
David Goggins- David Goggins (born February 17, 1975) is an American triathlete, ultramarathon runner, ultra-distance cyclist, public speaker and author.
He is a retired United States Navy SEAL and former United States Air Force Tactical Air Control Party member who served in the Iraq War. He is the only member of the U.S. Armed Forces to complete SEAL training, Army Ranger School, and Air Force Tactical Air Controller training.
His first memoir: "Can't Hurt Me" was released in 2018 and the sequel: "Never Finished" in 2022.
David Hume- (May 7, 1711 – August 25, 1776) was a Scottish Enlightenment economist, essayist, historian, librarian and philosopher. He is best known today for his highly influential system of philosophical empiricism, naturalism and skepticism.
He strove to create a naturalistic science of man that examined the psychological basis of human nature beginning with "A Treatise of Human Nature" (1739–40). He argued against the existence of innate ideas. He posited that all human knowledge derives solely from experience. This places him with Francis Bacon, George Berkeley, John Locke, and Thomas Hobbes as an Empiricist.
DJ Khaled-
Khaled Mohammed Khaled (born November 26, 1975), or more known as DJ Khaled, is an American musician, DJ, record producer, and record executive. He first gained recognition as a radio host in the 1990s on the radio station 99 Jamz. He translated his popularity by working with the hip hop collective Terror Squad as a DJ for their live performances. After gaining production credits on the group's material, he released his debut album "Listennn... the Album" in 2006. It earned a gold certification. He followed it with "We the Best" (2007), which contained the top 20 single "I'm So Hood" which featured T-Pain, Trick Daddy, Rick Ross and Plies. His next two releases, "We Global" (2008) and "Victory" (2010) were released after he founded the record label "We the Best Music Group". Both albums charted in the top ten on the US Billboard 200, with the latter containing the single "All I Do Is Win" featuring T-Pain, Ludacris, Snoop Dogg and Rick Ross. It was eventually certified triple platinum.
His fifth album "We the Best Forever" (2011) also saw similar commercial success. It also made him popular internationally. It featured the song "I'm on One" featuring Drake, Rick Ross and Lil Wayne. It was his first top ten hit. His sixth and seventh albums which are "Kiss the Ring" (2012) and "Suffering from Success" (2013) topped the top ten on the Billboard 200. His eighth album, "I Changed a Lot" (2015), peaked at number 12. In 2015 and 2016, he gained further attention as a media personality and Internet meme due to his activity on social media. This foresaw the release of his ninth studio album "Major Key" (2016). It gained critical and commercial success. It debuted at number one on the Billboard 200. It was certified gold and received a Grammy nomination for Best Rap Album...
Dr Seuss- Theodor Seuss Geisel (March 2, 1904 – September 24, 1991) was an American children's author and cartoonist.
He is widely known for his work writing and illustrating more than 60 books under the pen name Dr. Seuss. His work includes many of the most popular children's books of all time, selling over 600 million copies and being translated into more than 20 languages by the time of his death.
He is perhaps most remembered for his creation "The Cat in the Hat", which has been made into cartoons and was even made into a movie.
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Earl Nightingale- Was an American radio speaker and author. He dealt mostly with the subjects of human character development, motivation, and meaningful existence.He was the author of The bestselling book: Strangest Secret.
Eleanor Roosevelt- Anna Eleanor Roosevelt (October 11, 1884 – November 7, 1962) was an American political figure, diplomat, pacifist and activist. She was the first lady of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's 4 terms in office from 1933 to 1945, which made her the longest serving first lady of the United States.
She served Delegate to the United Nations General Assembly from 1945 to 1952. In 1948 she was given a standing ovation by the assembly upon their adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. President Harry S. Truman later called her "First Lady of the World" in tribute to her human rights achievements.
Elon Musk- Elon Reeve Musk (born June 28, 1971) is a technologist, business magnate and investor.
He is the founder, CEO, and chief engineer of SpaceX. He is also an angel investor, CEO and product architect of Tesla, Inc. . He is also the owner and CTO of Twitter. He also founded The Boring Company and a co-founder of Neuralink and OpenAI. He is also the president of the Musk Foundation, a philanthropic organization.
Musk is the wealthiest person in the world with an estimated net worth of USD 239 billion as of July 2023. This is according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. He is worth USD 248.8 billion according to Forbes' Real Time Billionaires list. This is primarily due to his ownership stakes in Tesla and SpaceX.
Emily Dickinson- Emily Elizabeth Dickinson (December 10, 1830 – May 15, 1886) was an American poet. She is little-known during her life but has since been regarded as one of the most important figures in American poetry.
She was born in Amherst, Massachusetts, into a prominent family with strong ties to its community. After studying at the Amherst Academy for seven years in her youth, she briefly attended the Mount Holyoke Female Seminary before returning to her family's home in Amherst.
Evidence suggests that she lived much of her life in isolation. She was considered an eccentric by locals. She developed a penchant for white clothing. She is also known for her reluctance to greet guests or even later in life, to leave her bedroom. She never married, and most of her friendships with others depended entirely upon correspondence.
Epictetus- Was a Greek Stoic philosopher. He was born into slavery at Hierapolis, Phrygia which is present day Pamukkale, in western Turkey.
He lived in Rome until his banishmen where he went to Nicopolis in northwestern Greece for the rest of his life. His teachings were written down and published by his pupil Arrian in his Discourses and Enchiridion.
Erma Bombeck-
Erma Louise Bombeck (February 21, 1927 – April 22, 1996) was an American humorist. She achieved great popularity for her newspaper humor column describing suburban home life. It was syndicated from 1965 to 1996. She also published 15 books, of which most became bestsellers.
By the 1970s, her columns were read semi-weekly by 30 million readers of the 900 newspapers in the U.S. and Canada. Her work stands as a humorous chronicle of middle-class life in America after World War II. It was among the generation of parents who produced the Baby Boomers.
Between 1965 and before April 17, 1996, or five days before her death, She wrote over 4,000 newspaper columns. She used broad and sometimes eloquent humor. She chronicled the ordinary life of a Midwestern suburban housewife.
Ernest Hemingway- Ernest Miller Hemingway (July 21, 1899 – July 2, 1961) was an American novelist, short-story writer, and journalist. His understated and economical style including his iceberg theory had a strong influence on 20th-century fiction.
He was known for his adventurous lifestyle and public image. He produced most of his work between the mid-1920s and the mid-1950s. He was awarded the 1954 Nobel Prize in Literature.
He published 7 novels, 6 short story collections, and 2 nonfiction works. Many of his works are considered classics of American literature.
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Florence Nightingale- (May 12, 1820 – August 13, 1910) was an English social reformer, statistician and the founder of modern nursing.
She came to prominence while serving as a manager and trainer of nurses during the Crimean War, in which she organised care for wounded soldiers at Constantinople. She significantly reduced the death rates by improving hygiene and living standards.
She gave nursing a favourable reputation and became an icon of Victorian culture, especially in the persona of "The Lady with the Lamp" making rounds of wounded soldiers at night.- Source: Wikipedia.
Forrest Gump- Forrest Gump is a 1994 American film directed by Robert Zemeckis and written by Eric Roth. It is based on the 1986 novel of the same name by Winston Groom.
The movie is composed by Tom Hanks, Robin Wright, Gary Sinise, Mykelti Williamson and Sally Field. The film differs substantially from the novel.
The film is about the life of Forrest Gump (Tom Hanks), a slow-witted but kindhearted Alabama man and his experiences in the 20th-century United States.
FDR- Franklin D. Roosevelt- Franklin Delano Roosevelt (January 30, 1882 – April 12, 1945) was commonly known as FDR. He was an American statesman and political leader who served as the 32nd president of the United States from 1933 until his death in 1945.
He previously served as the 44th governor of New York from 1929 to 1933, the Assistant Secretary of the Navy from 1913 to 1920, and a member of the New York State Senate from 1911 to 1913.
He led America during World War II but never lived long enough to see its end and America's victory.
Frederick Douglass- born Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey ( February 1817 or 1818 – February 20, 1895) was an American abolitionist, orator, social reformer, statesman and writer.
He became a national leader of the abolitionist movement in Massachusetts and New York after escaping from slavery in Maryland. He became a famous antislavery orator and writer.
Frida Kahlo- Magdalena Carmen Frida Kahlo y Calderón (July 6, 1907 – July 13, 1954) was a Mexican painter known for her many portraits, self-portraits, and works inspired by the nature and artifacts of Mexico.
She was inspired by Mexico's popular culture. She employed a naïve folk art style to explore questions of class, gender, identity, postcolonialism, and race in Mexican society. Her paintings often had strong autobiographical elements and mixed realism with fantasy.
In addition to belonging to the post-revolutionary Mexicayotl movement, which sought to define a Mexican identity, Kahlo has been described as a surrealist or magical realist. She is also known for painting about her experience of chronic pain.
Source: Wikipedia
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche- Was a German philosopher, prose poet, cultural critic, philologist, and composer who greatly influenced contemporary philosophy.
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Gandhi- Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was an Indian lawyer, anti-colonial nationalist and political ethicist. He employed nonviolent resistance which led to the successful campaign for India's independence from British rule. He inspired nonviolent movements for civil rights and freedom all across the world.
George Carlin- Or George Denis Patrick Carlin- Was an American comedian, actor, author, and social critic. He is widely regarded as one of the most important and influential stand-up comedians of all time. His "Seven Dirty Words" routine caused the US Supreme Court to affirm its power to censor indecent material on public airwaves.
George Orwell- Eric Arthur Blair (25 June 1903 – 21 January 1950), was better known by his pen name George Orwell.
He was an English critic, essayist, journalist, and journalist. His work is widely known for its lucid prose, opposing view to totalitarianism, social criticism, and support of democratic socialism.
George Washington- (February 22, 1732 – December 14, 1799) was an American military officer, statesman, and Founding Father who served as the first president of the United States from 1789 to 1797.
He was by the Continental Congress as Commander of the Continental Army. He led Patriot forces to victory in the American Revolutionary War and served as president of the Constitutional Convention of 1787.
He created and ratified the Constitution of the United States and the American federal government. He has been called the "Father of his Country" for his various leadership in the nation's founding.
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Harriett Tubman- born Araminta Ross ( March 1822 – March 10, 1913) was an American abolitionist and social activist. She made about 13 operations to rescue about 70 slaves after she herself escaped slavery, including her family and friends. She used the Underground Railroad, a network of antislavery activists and safe houses.
She served as an armed scout and spy for the Union Army during the American Civil War. In her later years, she was an activist in the movement for women's suffrage.
Harry Potter- is a series of seven fantasy novels written by British author J. K. Rowling.
The novels chronicle the lives of a young wizard named Harry Potter and his friends Hermione Granger and Ron Weasley. All them are students at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.
The main story arc concerns Harry's conflict with Lord Voldemort, a dark wizard who wants to become an immortal and overthrow the wizard governing body known as the Ministry of Magic. He also wants to subjugate all wizards and Muggles who are non-magical people.
The novels became a movie franchise produced and distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures They consist of eight fantasy films beginning with "Harry Potter and the Philosopher&apos:s Stone" (2001) and ending with "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2" (2011).
A spin-off prequel series which is planned to consist of five films, started with Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (2016). This marked the beginning of the Wizarding World shared media franchise.
Harry Truman-
Harry S. Truman (May 8, 1884 – December 26, 1972) was the 33rd president of the United States. He served from 1945 to 1953. He is a member of the Democratic Party and previously served as the 34th vice president from January to April 1945 under Franklin D. Roosevelt. He was previously a senator from Missouri from 1935 to January 1945.
He assumed the presidency after Roosevelt's death. He implemented the Marshall Plan to rebuild the economy of Western Europe. He established both the Truman Doctrine and NATO to contain the expansion of Soviet communism. He proposed numerous liberal domestic reforms, but only a few were enacted by the conservative coalition that dominated the Congress.
Truman was elected to the United States Senate from Missouri in 1934. Between 1940 and 1944, he gained national prominence as chairman of the Truman Committee, which was aimed at reducing waste and inefficiency in wartime contracts.
Truman was elected vice president in the 1944 presidential election and assumed the presidency upon Roosevelt’s death. It was only when Truman assumed the presidency that he was informed about the ongoing Manhattan Project and the atomic bomb. Truman authorized the first and only use of nuclear weapons in war against the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Investigations revealed corruption in parts of the Truman administration, and this became a major campaign issue in the 1952 presidential election, although they did not implicate Truman himself. He was eligible for reelection in 1952, but with poor polling he chose not to run. Truman went into a retirement marked by the founding of his presidential library and the publication of his memoirs. It was long thought that his retirement years were financially difficult for Truman, resulting in Congress establishing a pension for former presidents, but evidence eventually emerged that he amassed considerable wealth, some of it while still president. When he left office, Truman's administration was heavily criticized, though critical reassessment of his presidency has improved his reputation among historians and the general population.
Helen Keller-
Helen Adams Keller (June 27, 1880 – June 1, 1968) was an American author, disability rights advocate, lecturer and political activist.
She lost her sight and hearing after a bout of illness when she was only 19 months old. She then communicated primarily using home signs until the age of seven until she met her first teacher and life-long companion Anne Sullivan.
Sullivan taught Keller language which includes reading and writing. After being educated in both specialist and mainstream schools, Keller attended Radcliffe College of Harvard University and became the first deafblind person in the United States to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree.
Henry David Thoreau- (July 12, 1817 – May 6, 1862) was an American essayist, naturalist, poet, and philosopher.He is a leading transcendentalist best known for his book "Walden" and his essay "Civil Disobedience" which was originally titled as "Resistance to Civil Government".
He was a lifelong abolitionist, attacking the fugitive slave law while praising the writings of Wendell Phillips and defending the abolitionist John Brown. His philosophy of civil disobedience later influenced the political thoughts and actions of such notable figures as Leo Tolstoy, Mahatma Gandhi, and Martin Luther King Jr.
Henry Ford- Was an American industrialist and business magnate. He founded the Ford Motor Company which made the first affordable car for the masses which directly impacted America. He is also chiefly credited with the development of the modern assembly line technique of mass production.
Hulk Hogan- Terry Gene Bollea (born August 11, 1953), better known by his ring name Hulk Hogan, is a retired American professional wrestler and actor. He is widely regarded as the most globally recognized wrestler, the most popular wrestler of the 1980s, as well as one of the greatest professional wrestlers of all time.
In 1977, he began his professional wrestling career, but only gained worldwide recognition in 1983, after signing for the World Wrestling Federation or WWF, now known as WWE. His persona as a heroic all-American helped usher in the 1980s professional wrestling boom. He headlined WrestleMania for a record of eight times. He headlined a combined 31 times the Saturday Night's Main Event and its spin-off The Main Event. He won the WWF Championship five times, with his first reign being the second-longest in the championship's history. He is the first wrestler to win consecutive Royal Rumble matches, winning in 1990 and 1991. His match with Andre the Giant on WWF's The Main Event on February 5, 1988, still holds American television viewership records for wrestling with a 15.2 Nielsen rating and 33 million viewers.
In 1993, he departed the WWF to pursue a career in film and television but he was lured back to the ring when he signed with rival promotion World Championship Wrestling (WCW) in 1994. He won the WCW World Heavyweight Championship six times, and holds the record for the longest reign.
In 1996, he underwent a career renaissance upon adopting the villainous persona of "Hollywood Hulk Hogan" in which he led the popular New World Order (nWo) stable of wrestlers..This resulted in him becoming a major figure during the "Monday Night Wars", which was another boom for mainstream professional wrestling. He headlined WCW's annual flagship event Starrcade three times, including the most profitable WCW pay-per-view ever, Starrcade 1997.
He returned to the WWF in 2002 following its acquisition of WCW the prior year, winning the Undisputed WWF Championship for his record equaling (for the time) sixth reign before departing in 2003. He was inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame in 2005, and inducted a second time in 2020 as a member of the nWo.
He has also performed for the American Wrestling Association (AWA), New Japan Pro-Wrestling (NJPW) where he was the inaugural winner of the original IWGP Heavyweight Championship, and Total Nonstop Action Wrestling or TNA which is now Impact Wrestling.
During and after wrestling, he had an extensive acting career, beginning with his 1982 cameo role in Rocky III. He has also starred in several films which includes "No Holds Barred", "Suburban Commando" and "Mr. Nanny". He also has three television shows which are "Hogan Knows Best", "Thunder in Paradise", and "China, IL". He also did "Right Guard commercials" and the video game "Hulk Hogan's Main Event". He was also the frontman for "The Wrestling Boot Band", whose sole record, "Hulk Rules", reached No. 12 on the "Billboard Top Kid Audio chart" in 1995.
(Source: Wikipedia).
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Ice Cube-
O'Shea Jackson Sr. (born June 15, 1969), better known as "Ice Cube", is an American rapper, songwriter, actor, and film producer. His lyrics on N.W.A's 1988 album "Straight Outta Compton" contributed to gangsta rap's widespread popularity. His political rap solo albums "AmeriKKKa's Most Wanted" (1990), "Death Certificate" (1991), and "The Predator" (1992) were all critical and commercial successes. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of N.W.A in 2016.
He is a native of Los Angeles where he formed his first rap group called C.I.A. in 1986. In 1987, he formed the gangsta rap group N.W.A. with "Eazy-E" and "Dr. Dre". As its lead rapper, he wrote some of Dre's and most of Eazy's lyrics on Straight Outta Compton, which is a landmark album that shaped West Coast hip hop's early identity and helped differentiate it from East Coast rap. N.W.A was also known for their violent lyrics, threatening to attack abusive police and innocent civilians alike, stirring controversy and fame for the group. After a monetary dispute over the group's management by Eazy-E and Jerry Heller, Ice Cube left N.W.A in late 1989, teaming up with New York artists and launching a solo rap career.
He has also starred in films since the early 1990s. He first starred as "Doughboy" in director John Singleton's film debut "Boyz n the Hood", a 1991 drama named after a 1987 rap song he wrote. He also co-wrote and starred in the 1995 comedy film "Friday". The film spawned a successful franchise and reshaped his public image as a bankable movie star. He made his directorial debut with the 1998 film "The Players Club", and also produced and curated the film's accompanying soundtrack. As of 2020, he has appeared in about 40 films, including the 1999 war comedy "Three Kings", family comedies like the "Barbershop series", and buddy cop comedies "21 Jump Street", "22 Jump Street", and "Ride Along". He was an executive producer of many of these films, as well as of the 2015 biopic "Straight Outta Compton". In 2020, Ice Cube’s net worth is estimated to be USD 140 million, showing just how impressive his entertainment career has been.
Isaac Newton- Sir Isaac Newton was an English mathematician, physicist, astronomer, alchemist, theologian, author and "natural philosopher". He was a key figure in the Enlightenment philosophical revolution. His book: Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, established today's classical mechanics. He also made contributions to optics and infinitesimal calculus.
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James Baldwin- James Arthur Baldwin (August 2, 1924 – December 1, 1987) was an American writer known for his essays, novels, plays, and poems.
He was also a well-known public figure and orator especially during the civil rights movement in the United States.
He is primarily known for his themes on masculinity, sexuality, race, and class. He is also known for using gay characters in his works.
Jane Goodall- Dame Jane Morris Goodall was born Valerie Jane Morris-Goodall and was born on April 3, 1934). She was formerly also formerly known as Baroness Jane van Lawick-Goodall. She is an English anthropologist and primatologist and is considered the world's foremost expert on chimpanzees.
She studied the social and family interactions of wild chimpanzees for 60 years. She first went to Gombe Stream National Park in Tanzania in 1960 where she reported witnessing human-like behaviours amongst chimpanzees.
She is the founder of the Jane Goodall Institute and the Roots & Shoots programme. She worked extensively on animal welfare and conservation issues. She has been on the board of the Nonhuman Rights Projec as of 2022. She was named a UN Messenger of Peace in April 2002. She is an honorary member of the World Future Council.
Jim Rohn- Emanuel James Rohn (September 17, 1930 – December 5, 2009) or more known as "Jim Rohn", was an American entrepreneur, author and motivational speaker.
Jocko Willink- John Gretton "Jocko" Willink (born September 8, 1971) is a retired United States Navy officer who formerly served in the Navy SEALs and is a former member of SEAL Team 3. He is now an author and podcaster.
His military service includes combat actions in the Iraq War, where he commanded SEAL Team 3's Task Unit Bruiser. It was the unit that fought in the battle against the Iraqi insurgents in Ramadi. He was honored with the Silver Star and Bronze Star Medal for his service. He achieved the rank of lieutenant commander.
He co-authored the books "Extreme Ownership and The Dichotomy of Leadership" together with fellow retired SEAL Leif Babin. He also co-founded the management consulting firm Echelon Front, LLC.
He hosts a weekly podcast with Brazilian jiu-jitsu practitioner Echo Charles which is called "The Jocko Podcast." He holds a B.A. in English from the University of San Diego.
JFK- John F. Kennedy- John Fitzgerald Kennedy (May 29, 1917 – November 22, 1963), and often referred to as JFK, was an American politician who served as the 35th president of the United States from 1961 until his assassination in 1963.
He was the youngest person to become president as well as during the end of his tenure.
He served at the height of the Cold War.The majority of his foreign policy concerned relations with the Soviet Union and Cuba.
He is a Democrat which represented Massachusetts in both houses of the U.S. Congress prior to becoming president.
John Lennon- John Winston Ono Lennon (born John Winston Lennon; October 9, 1940 – December 8, 1980) was an English singer, songwriter, musician, and peace activist. He gained global fame as one of the founders, co-songwriter, co-lead vocalist, and rhythm guitarist of the Beatles. His work included music, writings, drawings, and films. His songwriting partnership with Paul McCartney remains as one of the most successful in history.
He was born in Liverpool, England and became involved in the skiffle craze as a teenager. In 1956, he formed The Quarrymen which later evolved into the Beatles in 1960. Sometimes called "The Smart Beatle", He was initially the band's de facto leader, a role he gradually ceded to McCartney.
Initially just a musician, he soon expanded to other media like films, writings and drawings. His songs were adopted as anthems by the anti-war movement and the larger counterculture of the 1960s. In 1969, he started the Plastic Ono Band with his second wife, the multimedia artist Yoko Ono. The couple held the two-week-long anti-war demonstration Bed-ins for Peace, and left the Beatles to embark on a solo career.
Between 1968 and 1972, he and Ono collaborated on many works, including a trilogy of avant-garde albums, several more films, his solo debut John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band, and the international top-10 singles "Give Peace a Chance", "Instant Karma!", "Imagine", and "Happy Xmas (War Is Over)".
Lennon and Ono separated from 1973 to 1975, during which time he produced Harry Nilsson's album Pussy Cats. He also had chart-topping collaborations with Elton John with "Whatever Gets You thru the Night" and David Bowie with "Fame". In 1980. after a five-year hiatus, Lennon returned to music collaborating with Ono on Double Fantasy. He was murdered by a Beatles fan, Mark David Chapman, three weeks after the album's release.
As a performer, writer or co-writer, Lennon had 25 number-one singles in the Billboard Hot 100 chart. Double Fantasy, his best-selling album, won the 1981 Grammy Award for Album of the Year. In 1982, Lennon won the Brit Award for Outstanding Contribution to Music. In 2002, Lennon was voted eighth in a BBC history poll of the 100 Greatest Britons. Rolling Stone ranked him the fifth-greatest singer and 38th greatest artist of all time. In 1997, he was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame twice, first as a member of the Beatles in 1988 and second as a solo artist in 1994.
John Lewis- John Robert Lewis (February 21, 1940 – July 17, 2020) was an American politician and civil rights activist. He served in the United States House of Representatives for Georgia's 5th congressional district from 1987 until his death in 2020.
In 1965, he led the first of three Selma to Montgomery marches across the Edmund Pettus Bridge, an incident which became known as Bloody Sunday. State troopers and police attacked Lewis and the other marchers.
He served 17 terms in the U.S. House of Representatives. Due to his length of service, he became the dean of the Georgia congressional delegation. He received many honorary degrees and awards which includes the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2011.
John Locke-
John Locke FRS (August 29, 1632 – October 28, 1704) was an English philosopher and physician who is widely regarded as one of the most influential of the Enlightenment thinkers. He is commonly known as the "father of liberalism". He is considered as one of the first of the British empiricists, following the tradition of Francis Bacon. He is equally important to social contract theory. His work greatly affected the development of epistemology and political philosophy.
His writings were an influence to Voltaire & Jean-Jacques Rousseau and many Scottish Enlightenment thinkers. He was also an influence to American Revolutionaries. The United States Declaration of Independence was affected by his contributions to classical republicanism and liberal theory. On an international basis, his political-legal principles continue to have a profound influence on the theory and practice of limited representative government and the protection of basic rights and freedoms under the rule of law.
His theory of mind is often cited as the origin of modern conceptions of identity and the self. It figures prominently in the work of later philosophers such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau, David Hume, and Immanuel Kant. He postulates that, at birth, the mind was a blank slate, or "tabula rasa". Contrary to Cartesian philosophy based on pre-existing concepts, he maintained that we are born without innate ideas, and that knowledge is instead determined only by experience derived from sense perception, a concept now known as empiricism (Source: Wikipedia).
John Muir- (April 21, 1838 – December 24, 1914) was also known as "John of the Mountains" and "Father of the National Parks". He was an influential Scottish-American author, botanist, environmental philosopher, glaciologist, naturalist, zoologist and early advocate for the preservation of wilderness in the United States.
His activism helped to preserve the Yosemite Valley and Sequoia National Park. His example served as inspiration for the preservation of many other wilderness areas. He co-founded The Sierra Club.
The first John Muir Day was celebrated in Scotland on April 21, 2013, which marked the 175th anniversary of his birth.
John Wayne- Marion Robert Morrison (May 26, 1907 – June 11, 1979), was professionally known as John Wayne and nicknamed The Duke or Duke Wayne.
He was a popular American actor and icon known for films during Hollywood's Golden Age. He was well known for his western and war movie roles.
His career started from the silent era of the 1920s through the American New Wave. He appeared in 179 film and television productions. He was a top box-office draw for three decades. In 1999, he was selected by the American Film Institute as one of the greatest male stars of classic American cinema.
John Wick-
is an American action film series created by Derek Kolstad. John Wick is the name of the hero in the movie who is a former hitman who avenges the attack made on him by the son of a powerful mob boss and his gang.
The films in the series are: "John Wick" (2014), "John Wick: Chapter 2" (2017), "John Wick: Chapter 3- Parabellum" (2019), and "John Wick: Chapter 4" (2023). It also has two spin-offs, the limited series "The Continental: From the World of John Wick" (2023), and the film "Ballerina" (2024). The films are all huge successes with a collective income of more than USD 1 billion worldwide.
Film Synopsis: John Wick (Keanu Reeves) was born Jardani Jovonovich in Belarus who was an orphan taken in by the Ruska Roma crime syndicate. He was raised as an assassin and eventually rose to become the top enforcer of the Russian Mafia and known as "Baba Yaga" ("the one you sent to kill [the] Boogeyman") under crime boss Viggo Tarasov (Michael Nyqvist), who deemed him so ruthless that many came to respect and fear him. The film starts with Wick already a retired hitman for five years after undertaking an "impossible task" for Tarasov, wiping out all other organized crime syndicates in New York City in order to be allowed to leave to marry Helen (Bridget Moynahan) before her eventual death from cancer, leaving him known as a legend in the assassin underworld worldwide. He was attacked by the son of a powerful mob boss and his gang which triggered his return to a life of violence.
John Wooden- John Robert Wooden (October 14, 1910 – June 4, 2010) was an American basketball coach and player. He was nicknamed as the "Wizard of Westwood" because of his remarkable basketball coaching achievements.
He won ten National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) national championships in a 12-year period as head coach for the UCLA Bruins, which includes a record seven wins in a row. No other team has won more than four in a row in Division I college men's or women's basketball. In this period, his teams won an NCAA men's basketball record by 88 consecutive games.
He won the prestigious Henry Iba Award as national coach of the year a record seven times and won the AP award five times.
Johnny Depp-
John Christopher Depp II (born June 9, 1963) is an American actor and musician. He is the recipient of multiple awards which includes a Golden Globe Award and a Screen Actors Guild Award. He has also been nominated for three Academy Awards and two BAFTA awards.
He made his feature film debut in the horror film "A Nightmare on Elm Street" (1984) and appeared in "Platoon" (1986). He rose to fame as a teen idol on the television series 21 "Jump Street" (1987–1990). In the 1990s, he mostly acted in independent films with auteur directors, often playing eccentric characters. These films included "Cry-Baby" (1990), "What's Eating Gilbert Grape" (1993), "Benny and Joon" (1993), "Dead Man" (1995), "Donnie Brasco" (1997), and "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" (1998). He also began his longtime collaboration with the director Tim Burton. He portrayed lead roles in the films "Edward Scissorhands" (1990), "Ed Wood" (1994), and "Sleepy Hollow" (1999).
In the 2000s, he became one of the most commercially successful film stars by playing "Captain Jack Sparrow" in the Walt Disney swashbuckler film series "Pirates of the Caribbean" (2003–2017). He also received acclaim for "Chocolat" (2000), "Finding Neverland" (2004) and "Public Enemies" (2009). He also continued his commercially successful collaboration with Burton with such films as "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" (2005), "Corpse Bride" (2005), "Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street" (2007), and "Alice in Wonderland" (2010)...
Jordan Peterson- Jordan Bernt Peterson (born 12 June 1962) is a Canadian psychologist, author, and media commentator. He began to receive wide attention during the late 2010s for his often described conservative views on cultural and political issues.
He is self-described as a classic British liberal and traditionalist. He is regarded by many as a modern philosopher. His lectures and writings have been proven as highly influential among political and business leaders.
Joseph Campbell- Joseph John Campbell (March 26, 1904 – October 30, 1987) was an American writer. He was a professor of literature at Sarah Lawrence College.
He worked in comparative mythology and comparative religion. His work covers many aspects of the human experience. His best-known work is his book "The Hero with a Thousand Faces" (1949). It discusses his theory regarding the journey of the archetypal hero shared by world mythologies, termed as the monomyth.
Since its publication, his theories have been applied by a wide variety of modern writers and artists. He is known for his philosophical phrase: "Follow your bliss". He gained recognition in Hollywood when George Lucas stated that his work influenced the Star Wars saga. However, his work has been subject to criticism, especially by academic folklorists.
Julius Caesar- Gaius Julius Caesar was a Roman general and statesman. A member of the First Triumvirate, he led the Roman armies in the Gallic Wars and then defeated his political rival Pompey in a civil war. He then held the title dictator until his assassination. He played a critical role in the events that led to the demise of the Roman Republic and the rise of the Roman Empire.
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Karl Lagerfeld-
Karl Otto Lagerfeld (September 10, 1933 – February 19, 2019) was a German fashion designer.
He began his career in fashion in the 1950s, working for several top fashion houses including Balmain, Patou, and Chloé before eventually joining Chanel in 1983. He became the creative director of Chanel from 1983 until his death. He oversaw every aspect of the fashion house's creative output. He designed collections and was in charge of advertising campaigns and store displays.
He was instrumental in the revitalization of the Chanel brand. He helped it regain its position as one of the top fashion houses in the world. He was also the creative director of the Italian fur and leather goods fashion house Fendi, as well as his own eponymous fashion label. Throughout his career he collaborated on a variety of fashion and art-related projects.
He was well recognized for his signature white hair, black sunglasses, fingerless gloves, and high starched detachable collars.
Karl Marx-
Karl Heinrich Marx was a German philosopher, economist, historian, sociologist, political theorist, journalist, critic of political economy, and socialist revolutionary. He is the author of The Communist Manifesto and Das Kapital.
Katharine Hepburn- Katharine Houghton Hepburn (May 12, 1907 – June 29, 2003) was an American actress who for six decades had a career as a Hollywood leading lady.
She was known for her headstrong independence, outspokeness, and spirited personality. She cultivated a screen persona that matched this public image. She regularly played strong-willed and sophisticated women.
She worked on a range of genres, from screwball comedy to literary drama which earned her various accolades, including four Academy Awards for Best Actress which is a record for any performer. In 1999, she was named the greatest female star of classic Hollywood cinema by the American Film Institute.
Kendrick Lamar-
Kendrick Lamar Duckworth (born June 17, 1987) is an American rapper and songwriter. He is known for his progressive musical style and socially conscious songwriting. He is often considered as one of the most influential hip hop artists of his generation. He was born and raised in Compton, California. He began his career performing under the stage name “K.Dot” while still a teenager. He was given a recording contract by Top Dawg Entertainment (TDE) in 2005 when he attracted local attention.
He dropped his stage name and started using his first and middle name professionally after becoming a founding member of the hip hop supergroup Black Hippy. He released his debut studio album titled "Section.80" in 2011, His album included the debut single "HiiiiPOwer" and garnered positive reviews. He secured a record deal with Dr. Dre's Aftermath Entertainment, under the aegis of Interscope Records and released his second studio album Good Kid, M.A.A.D City. It gained widespread critical recognition and commercial success, largely attributed to its West Coast and gangsta rap influence. It produced hit singles such as "Swimming Pools (Drank)", "Backseat Freestyle", and "Bitch, Don't Kill My Vibe".
His jazz themed third album "Pimp a Butterfly" (2015) was inspired by his visit to South Africa. It received acclaim in the US and became his first number-one album on the Billboard 200. During the same year, he went on top of the Billboard Hot 100 for the first time with his remix of "Bad Blood" by Taylor Swift. His fourth album was released in 2017 and contained pop, psychedelic, R&B, and soul influences. It gave him his first solo number-one single "Humble" and it became the first non-classical and non-jazz work to be awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Music. He released his fourth studio album "Mr Morale & Big Steppers" in 2022 after a four-year hiatus. It was his swan song with TDE...
Kevin Gates-
Kevin Jerome Gilyard (born February 5, 1986), better known by his stage name "Kevin Gates", is an American rapper, singer, songwriter, and entrepreneur. He is currently signed to Bread Winners' Association with a partnership with Atlantic Records. His debut studio album, Islah, was released in January 2016. It peaked at number two on America’s US Billboard 200 chart. Prior to this, he also released a number of mixtapes. These include "Stranger Than Fiction" (2013), "By Any Means" (2014), and "Luca Brasi 2" (2014), all of which peaked in the top 40 on the Billboard 200 chart.
His songs are described as autobiographical in nature with lyrics often dealing with subjects like: depression, poverty and prison time. He began his rap music career at the early age of 14. Although successful in music, he has had many legal issues and has been in and out of prison multiple times.
He had a checkered upbringing and was arrested for the first time at 13 for being a passenger in a stolen vehicle.
Kim Kardashian-
Kimberly Noel Kardashian (formerly Kardashian West; born October 21, 1980) is an American media personality, socialite, businesswoman, model, and actress. She first gained popular media attention as a friend and stylist of Paris Hilton, but she then received wider notice i 2007 after the sex tape "Kim Kardashian, Superstar", which she filmed in 2003 with her then-boyfriend Ray J, was released. Later that year, she and her family began to appear on the E! reality television series "Keeping Up with the Kardashians", which aired until 2021. Its success led to the formation of the spin-off series "Kourtney and Kim Take New York" (2011–2012), "Kourtney and Kim Take Miami" (2009–2013), and Hulu's “The Kardashians" (2022–present).
She has developed a significant presence online and across numerous social media platforms, including her hundreds of millions of followers on Twitter and Instagram. Together with Kourtney and Khloé, she launched the fashion boutique chain "Dash", which operated from 2006 to 2018. She founded "KKW Beauty" and "KKW Fragrance" in 2017, and the shaping underwear or foundation garment company "Skims" in 2019.
She has released a variety of products tied to her name, including the 2014 mobile game "Kim Kardashian: Hollywood" and the 2015 "photo book Selfish". She has acted on such films as "Disaster Movie" (2008), "Temptation: Confessions of a Marriage Counselor" (2013), and "PAW Patrol: The Movie (2021)", She has also starred in television, appearing in the twelfth season of the anthology horror series "American Horror Story" (2023).
Time magazine includes her on their list of 2015's 100 most influential people. Her critics and admirers describes her as exemplifying the notion of being famous just for being famous. She has an estimated worth of USD 1.8 billion as of 2022.
She has become more politically active by lobbying for prison reform and clemency. She is currently under a four-year law apprenticeship supervised by the legal nonprofit "#cut50". Her relationship with Kanye West has also received significant media coverage. They were been married from 2014 to 2022, and currently have four children together.
King Von-
Dayvon Daquan Bennett (August 9, 1994 – November 6, 2020), who is more famously known as King Von, was an American gangsta rapper from Chicago, Illinois. He was signed in to Lil Durk's record label Only the Family and Empire Distribution. During his life, and after his killing, he was implicated in various homicides and alleged crimes related to the Chicago gang scene.
He garnered acclaim for singles like "Crazy Story" and "Took Her to the O", which reached the forty-fourth position of the Billboard Hot 100, as well as for the studio album Welcome to O'Block (2020), which placed fifth on the Billboard 200.
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Lady Gaga-
Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta (born March 28, 1986), known professionally as Lady Gaga, is an American singer, songwriter, and actress. She is known for her image reinventions and versatility in the entertainment industry. She began performing while still a teenager. She sang at open mic nights and acted in school plays. She studied at Collaborative Arts Project 21, through the New York University Tisch School of the Arts. She later dropped out to pursue a career in music.
In 2007, After Def Jam Recordings canceled her contract, she worked as a songwriter for Sony/ATV Music Publishing, where she signed a joint deal with Interscope Records and KonLive Distribution. In 2008, she had her breakthrough with her debut studio album, "Fame". The album featured hits like "Just Dance" and "Poker Face". In 2009, her album was extended and reissued as the "The Fame Monster" which yielded hits like "Bad Romance", "Telephone" and "Alejandro". Her five succeeding albums all debuted on top of the US Billboard 200.
She also ventured into acting. Between 2015 and 2016, she won an award for her leading role in the miniseries "American Horror Story: Hotel". In 2018, she won an award for the musical film "A Star Is Born". Her contributions to the latter's soundtrack, which spawned the chart-topping single "Shallow", made her the first woman to win an Academy Award, BAFTA Award, Golden Globe Award, and Grammy Award all in one year...
Lao Tzu- A Chinese Taoist Philosopher
Les Brown- Leslie Calvin "Les" Brown (born February 17, 1945) is an American politician and motivational speaker. He was a member of the Ohio House of Representatives from 1977 to 1981.
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Macho Man- Randy Mario Poffo (November 15, 1952 – May 20, 2011), better known by his ring name "Macho Man" Randy Savage, was an American professional wrestler and actor who is best known for his time in the World Wrestling Federation (WWF) and World Championship Wrestling (WCW).
Sportswriter Bill Simons described him as "one of the greatest pro wrestlers who ever lived", which is widely echoed by multiple industry performers. Wrestling fans recognize him for his distinctively flamboyant ring attire and raspy voice, his intensity exhibited in and out of the ring, his use of the finale from "Pomp and Circumstance March no. 1" by Elgar as his entrance music, and signature catchphrase, "Oooh yeah!". For most of his tenures in the WWF and WCW, he was managed and escorted by his real-life wife, Miss Elizabeth Hulette, or more popularly known as "Miss Elizabeth".
He had six world championship reigns during his 32-year career, including two as WWF World Heavyweight Champion and four as WCW World Heavyweight Champion. As a WWF superstar, he held similar drawing power as Hulk Hogan. A one-time WWF Intercontinental Heavyweight Champion, he was named by WWE as the greatest titleholder of all time and credited for bringing "a higher level of credibility to the title through his amazing in-ring performances".
Savage was the 1987 WWF King of the Ring and the 1995 WCW World War 3 winner. He headlined many pay-per-view events throughout his career, including WrestleMania IV, V, and VIII (being part of a double main event at VIII), two of the first five SummerSlam shows, and 1995 Starrcade. In 1996, he was inducted into the Wrestling Observer Newsletter Hall of Fame upon its inception. He also dabbled into acting, like his cameo in the Toby Maguire Spiderman movie where he played a wrestler named Bonesaw. In 2015, he was posthumously inducted to the WWE Hall of Fame. (Source: Wikipedia).
Mao Zedong- (December 26, 1893 – September 9, 1976), was also known as Chairman Mao. He was a Chinese revolutionary, military strategist, political theorist, politician and poet.
He was the founder of the People's Republic of China (PRC). He led as the chairman of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) from the establishment of the PRC in 1949 until his death in 1976. He is ideologically a Marxist–Leninist. His theories, military strategies, and political policies are collectively known as "Maoism".
Marcus Aurelius- Marcus Aurelius Antoninus was Roman emperor from 161 to 180 AD and a Stoic philosopher. He was the last of the rulers known as The Five Good Emperors which is a term coined some 13 centuries later by Niccolò Machiavelli. He was the last emperor of the Pax Romana, which was characterized as an age of relative peace, calmness and stability for the Roman Empire lasting from 27 BC to 180 AD. He served as Roman consul in 140, 145, and 161.
Marcus Garvey- Marcus Mosiah Garvey Jr. (August 17, 1887 – June 10, 1940) was a Jamaican political activist. He was the founder and first President-General of the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League (UNIA-ACL, commonly known as UNIA).
He even declared himself Provisional President of Africa. Ideologically a black nationalist and a Pan-Africanist, his ideas came to be known as Garveyism.
Margaret Mead-
Margaret Mead (December 16, 1901 – November 15, 1978) was an American cultural anthropologist who was featured frequently as an author and speaker in the mass media during the 1960s and the 1970s.
She earned her bachelor's degree at Barnard College of Columbia University and her M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from Columbia. She served as the president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1975.
Mead was a communicator of anthropology in modern American and Western culture. She was often seen as a controversial academic. Her reports detailing the attitudes towards sex in South Pacific and the Southeast Asian traditional cultures influenced the 1960s sexual revolution. She was a proponent of broadening sexual conventions within the context of Western cultural traditions.
Margaret Sanger-
Margaret Higgins Sanger (born Margaret Louise Higgins; September 14, 1879 – September 6, 1966) and also known as Margaret Sanger Slee, was an American birth control activist, sex educator, writer, and nurse. She popularized the term "birth control", opened the first birth control clinic in the United States, and established organizations that evolved into the Planned Parenthood Federation of America. She is widely regarded as a founder of the modern birth control movement.
She used her writings and speeches primarily to promote her way of thinking. She was prosecuted for her book "Family Limitation" under the Comstock Act in 1914. She fled to Britain because she feared the consequences of her writings. She waited until public opinion had died down. She helped in the legalization of contraception in the United States, to which she was frequently criticized by abortion opponents.
Sanger drew a sharp distinction between birth control and abortion which she opposed. She declined to participate in them as a nurse. She remains an admired figure in the American reproductive rights movement. She was also criticized for supporting negative eugenic, she opposed eugenics along racial lines and did not believe that poverty was hereditary.
Margaret Thatcher- Margaret Hilda Thatcher/ Baroness Thatcher (October 13, 1925 – April 8, 2013), was a British stateswoman and Conservative politician who ultimately became the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990. She is also the Leader of the Conservative Party from 1975 to 1990.
She was the first female British prime minister. She is also the longest-serving prime minister of the 20th century.
She implemented economic policies that became widely known as Thatcherism. A Soviet journalist dubbed her the "Iron Lady", which became a monicker associated with her uncompromising politics and leadership style.
Maria Montessori- Maria Tecla Artemisia Montessori (August 31, 1870 – May 6, 1952) was an Italian physician and educator. She is best known for the philosophy of education that bears her name. She is also known for her writing on scientific pedagogy.
Montessori enrolled in classes at an all-boys technical school at an early age, hoping to become an engineer. She soon changed her mind attended medical school at the Sapienza University of Rome.
She become one of the first women to attend medical school in Italy. She graduated with honors in 1896. Her educational method is still in use today in many public and private schools globally.
Marilyn Monroe- born Norma Jeane Mortenson (June 1, 1926 – August 4, 1962) was an American actress, model, and singer.
She is famous for playing comic "blonde bombshell" characters. She became one of the most popular sex symbols of the 1950s and early 1960s, as well as an emblem of the era's sexual revolution.
She further became famous due to her alleged relationship with President John F. Kennedy as well as the other Kennedy brothers.
She was a top-billed actress for a decade, and her films grossed $200 million (equivalent to $2 billion in 2021) by the time of her death in 1962.
Long after her death, Monroe remains a major icon of pop culture.In 1999, the American Film Institute ranked her sixth on their list of the greatest female screen legends from the Golden Age of Hollywood.
Mark Twain- his real name was Samuel Langhorne Clemens (November 30, 1835 – April 21, 1910) and his pen name was Mark Twain> He was an American writer, humorist, entrepreneur, publisher, and lecturer. Praised as the "greatest humorist the United States has produced".
William Faulkner, a famous American writer called him "the father of American literature". His two most famous novels are: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and its sequel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884). The latter has often been called the "Great American Novel".
He also wrote A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889) and Pudd'nhead Wilson (1894)>. He co-wrote The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today (1873) with Charles Dudley Warner.
Martin Luther King Jr.- (January 15, 1929 – April 4, 1968) was an American Baptist minister and activist. He was one of the most prominent leaders in the civil rights movement from 1955 until his assassination in 1968.
A Black church leader and a son of early civil rights activist and minister Martin Luther King Sr., King advanced civil rights for people of color in the United States through nonviolence and civil disobedience.
He was inspired by his Christian beliefs and Mahatma Gandhi. He led targeted, nonviolent resistance against Jim Crow laws and other forms of discrimination in the United States.
Mel Robbins- Melanie Robbins (born on October 6, 1968) is an American podcast host, author, motivational speaker, and former lawyer. She is known for her TEDx talk, "How to Stop Screwing Yourself Over".
She is also known for her books, "The 5 Second Rule" and The "High 5 Habit", and so on. She is also well as the host of "The Mel Robbins Podcast".
Michael Scott- Michael Gary Scott is a fictional character and the protagonist of the NBC sitcom The Office, portrayed by Steve Carell.
He serves as the regional manager of the Scranton, Pennsylvania branch of paper company: Dunder Mifflin Inc. .
Michelangelo- Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni was an Italian sculptor, painter, architect, and poet during the High Renaissance period. Born in the Republic of Florence, His works have greatly influenced western art. Michelangelo is best known for his Pietà and David sculptures.
Mike Tyson- Michael Gerard Tyson (born June 30, 1966) is an American former professional boxer who competed from 1985 to 2005. He was nicknamed "Iron Mike" and "Kid Dynamite" early on in his career. He was later known by the monicker "The Baddest Man on the Planet".
He is widely regarded as one of the greatest heavyweight boxers of all time. He reigned as the undisputed world heavyweight champion from 1987 to 1990. He won his first 19 professional fights by knockout, 12 of them coming in the first round. He claimed his first belt at 20 years, four months, and 22 days old, making him the youngest boxer to ever win a heavyweight title.
He was also the first heavyweight boxer to simultaneously hold the WBA, WBC and IBF titles, as well as the only heavyweight to unify them in succession. The following year, Tyson became the lineal champion when he knocked out Michael Spinks in 91 seconds of the first round. In 1992, he went to prison for six years but made a successful comeback by regaining the WBC and WBA titles.
Tyson was known for his ferocious and intimidating boxing style as well as his controversial behavior inside and outside the ring. With a knockout-to-win percentage of 88%, he was ranked 16th on The Ring magazine's list of 100 greatest punchers of all time, and first on ESPN's list of "The Hardest Hitters in Heavyweight History". Sky Sports described him as "perhaps the most ferocious fighter to step into a professional ring". He has been inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame and the World Boxing Hall of Fame. (Source: Wikipedia)
Milton Friedman- (July 31, 1912 – November 16, 2006) was an American economist and statistician. He received the Nobel Memorial Prize on 1976 for his contribution to Economic Sciences for his research on consumption analysis, monetary history and theory and the complexity of stabilization policy.
Together with George Stigler and others, he was considered among the intellectual leaders of the Chicago school of economics. It was a neoclassical school of economic thought associated with the work of the faculty at the University of Chicago. It rejected Keynesianism in favor of monetarism until the mid-1970s, when it turned to new classical macroeconomics heavily based on the concept of rational expectations.
Several students, young professors and academics who were recruited or mentored by him at Chicago went on to become leading economists. They include Gary Becker, Robert Fogel, Thomas Sowell and Robert Lucas Jr. .
Morgan Freeman- (born June 1, 1937) is an American actor, producer, and narrator. He is widely known for his distinctive deep voice and the various roles he played in a wide variety of film genres.
He has received numerous accolades throughout his career spanning over five decades. This includes an Academy Award, a Golden Globe Award, and a Screen Actors Guild Award. In 2008, he became the recipient of the Kennedy Center Honor. In 2011, he became the recepient of the AFI Life Achievement Award. In 2012, he became the recepient of the Cecil B. DeMille Award. In 2018. he also became the recepient of the Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award.
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Napoleon Bonaparte- Was a French military commander and political leader who rose to prominence during the French Revolution. He led successful campaigns during the Revolutionary Wars and eventually became emperor of France. He is considered as one of the greatest military commanders of all time.
Neil Gaiman-
Neil Richard MacKinnon Gaiman (born on November 10, 1960) is an English author of short fiction, novels, comic books, graphic novels, audio theatre, and a screenwriter. His succesful works include the comic book series The "Sandman" and the novels "American Gods", "Anansi Boys", "Coraline", "Good Omens", "Stardust", "The Graveyard Book" and "The Ocean at the End of the Lane". Some of these novels were later made into movies and television series.
He has won numerous awards, including the Hugo, Nebula, and Bram Stoker awards, as well as the Newbery and Carnegie medals. He is the first author to win both the Newbery and the Carnegie medals for the same work" "The Graveyard Book" (2008). "The Ocean at the End of the Lane" was voted Book of the Year in the British National Book Awards. It was later adapted into a critically acclaimed stage play at the Royal National Theatre in London.
Before he became a successful author, his works were initially rejected by publishers. Dejected but not discouraged, he resolved to learn the in and outs of the publishing industry by becoming a journalist concentrating on the writing industry, determined to know its secrets. After decades of becoming a journalist while at the same time still being an author, he eventually became a successful and famous author.
Nelson Mandela- Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela (July 18, 1918 – December 5, 2013) was a South African anti-apartheid activist and politician. He served as the first president of South Africa from 1994 to 1999.
He was the country's first black head of state and the first elected in a fully representative democratic election. His government focused on dismantling the legacy of apartheid by fostering racial reconciliation. He was ideologically an African nationalist and socialist who served as the president of the African National Congress (ANC) party from 1991 to 1997.
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The Greatest Salesman in the World- is a book written by Og Mandino. It tells the story of Hafid, a poor camel boy in the middle east during the ancient times, who became an extremely wealthy businessperson and even managed to win the heart and marry the woman he loved.
The book serves as a guide to salesmanship and how to achieve success & happiness in life. It was first published in 1968 and was republished by Bantam Books in 1983. A hardcover edition was published by Buccaneer Books in June, 1993. The Success Motivation Institute purchased the rights to produce audio versions of the book.
Oscar Wilde-
Oscar Fingal O'Fflahertie Wills Wilde was an Irish poet and playwright. He became one of the most popular playwrights in London in the early 1890s. His novel: The Picture of Dorian Gray is now a literary classic.
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Carl Sagan Pale Blue Dot- "Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space" is a 1994 book by the astronomer Carl Sagan. It is the sequel to Sagan's 1980 book: "Cosmos". It was inspired by the famous 1990 Pale Blue Dot photograph of which he provided a poignant description.
He mixes philosophy about the human place in the universe in the book, together with a description of the current knowledge about the Solar System. He also detailed a human vision for the future.
The audiobook of Pale Blue Dot, which was read by him, was selected by the Library of Congress in 2023 for preservation in the United States National Recording Registry. It was deemed as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant."
Peter Drucker-
Peter Ferdinand Drucker was an Austrian-American management consultant, educator, and author. His writings contributed to the philosophical and practical foundations of the modern business corporation. He was also a leader in the development of management education. He invented the "Management by Objectives and Self-Control Concept. He is widely known as "The Founder of Modern Management."
Plato-
(428/427 or 424/423 – 348/347 BC) was an ancient Greek philosopher born in Athens during the Classical Period of Ancient Greece. In Athens, he founded the Academy, a philosophical school where he taught the philosophical doctrines that would later became known as Platonism.
Plato or "Platon" was a pen name derived from his nickname given to him by his wrestling coach to allegedly reference his physical broadness. Diogenes of Sinope quoted Alexander of Miletus who said Plato's actual name was Aristocles, son of Ariston, of the deme Collytus (Collytus being a district of Athens).
Princess Diana- Diana, Princess of Wales; born Diana Frances Spencer (July 1, 1961 – August 31, 1997) was a member of the British royal family.
She was the first wife of King Charles III who was then Prince of Wales, and mother of Prince William and Prince Harry. Her activism and glamour made her an international icon, and earned her enduring popularity even after her untimely death from a car accident.
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Ray Bradbury-
Ray Douglas Bradbury (August 22, 1920 – June 5, 2012) was an American author and screenwriter. He is one of the most celebrated 20th-century American writer who wrote in many genres which includes contemporary, fantasy, horror, mystery, and science fiction.
He is widely known for his novel "Fahrenheit 451" (1953) and his short-story collections "The Martian Chronicles" (1950) and "The Illustrated Man" (1951). Most of his best known work is in speculative fiction, but he has also written coming of age novel "Dandelion Wine" (1957) and the fictionalized memoir "Green Shadows, White Whale" (1992). He also wrote and consulted on screenplays and television scripts, including "Moby Dick" and "It Came from Outer Space". Many of his works were adapted into television and film productions as well as comic books. Additionally, he wrote poetry and published several collections of his poems, such as "They Have Not Seen the Stars" (2001).
Richard Bach-
Richard David Bach (born June 23, 1936) is an American writer. He has written numerous works of both fiction and also non-fiction flight-related titles. His works include "Jonathan Livingston Seagull" (1970) and "Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah (1977)". Both were bestsellers in the 1970s.
Most of his books have been semi-autobiographical. He used actual or fictionalized events from his life to illustrate his philosophy. His books teach his philosophy that people' apparent physical limits and mortality are merely appearance.
He noted his love of aviation and for his books related to flying in a metaphorical context. He has flown as a hobby since the age of 17. In late August 2012, he was severely injured when on approach to landing at Friday Harbor, Washington, his aircraft clipped some power lines and crashed upside down in a field.
Richard Branson- Sir Richard Charles Nicholas Branson (born 18 July 1950) is a British business magnate and commercial astronaut. He founded the Virgin Group in the 1970s, which today controls more than 400 companies in various industries.
He started his business empire at the age of 16 when he published a magazine called "Student". He then opened a mail-order business, a chain or record stores which would be known as "Virgin Records" and later renamed as "Virgin Megastores" in 1972. In the 1980s. he started "Virgin Atlantic Airline". In 1997, he created the "Virgin Rail Group". In 2004, he founded spaceflight corporation Virgin Galactic.
In March 2000, Branson was knighted at Buckingham Palace for "services to entrepreneurship" which includes his efforts in retail, music and transport which includes land, air, sea and space travel.
His adventurer image and humanitarian work made him a global celebrity. In 2007, Time put him in their "100 Most Influential People in the World list". In June 2023, Forbes estimated his net worth to be USD 3 billion.
On July 11, 2021, he became a passenger on Virgin Galactic Unity 22 which traveled on the edge of space, in a suborbital test flight for his spaceflight company Virgin Galactic. At 70, Branson became the third oldest person to fly to space.
Ricky Gervais- Ricky Dene Gervais (born June 25, 1961) is an English comedian, actor, writer, and director. He co-created, co-wrote, and acted in the British television sitcoms The Office (2001–2003), Extras (2005–2007), An Idiot Abroad (2010–2012), and Life's Too Short (2011–2013).
He also created, wrote and starred in Derek (2012–2014) and After Life (2019–2022).He has won seven BAFTA Awards, five British Comedy Awards, two Emmy Awards, three Golden Globe Awards, and the Rose d'Or twice (2006 and 2019).
The Observer named Gervais one of the 50 funniest performers in British comedy in 2003. In 2007, he was placed at No. 11 on Channel 4's 100 Greatest Stand-Ups, and at No. 3 in their 2010 list. In 2010, he was included in the Time 100 list of World's Most Influential People. (Source: Wikipedia).
Robert E Lee- Robert Edward Lee (January 19, 1807 – October 12, 1870) was a Confederate general during the American Civil War in which towards the end he was appointed the overall commander of the Confederate States Army. He led the Army of Northern Virginia—the Confederacy's most powerful army—from 1862 until its surrender in 1865, earning himself a reputation as a skilled tactician.
A son of Revolutionary War officer Henry "Light Horse Harry" Lee III, he was a top graduate of the United States Military Academy and was an exceptional officer and military engineer in the United States Army for 32 years. He served across the United States, distinguishing himself extensively during the Mexican–American War, and was Superintendent of the United States Military Academy. He married Mary Anna Custis Lee, great-granddaughter of George Washington's wife Martha.
He opposed slavery from a philosophical perspective, but he supported its legality and held hundreds of slaves himself. When Virginia declared secession from the Union in 1861, he chose to follow his home state, despite his desire for the country to remain intact and an offer of a senior Union command. During the first year of the Civil War, he served in minor combat operations and as a senior military adviser to Confederate President Jefferson Davis.
Lee took command of the Army of Northern Virginia in June 1862 during the Peninsula Campaign following the wounding of Joseph E. Johnston. By April 1865 Lee's army was already largely destroyed. He finally surrendered to Grant at Appomattox Court House.
In 1865, he became president of Washington College which is now Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia. In this position, he supported reconciliation between North and South. He accepted the extinction of slavery provided for by the Thirteenth Amendment, but opposed racial equality for African Americans. After his death in 1870, he became a cultural icon in the South and is largely hailed as one of the Civil War's greatest generals.
He fought most of his battles against armies of significantly larger size as the commander of the Army of Northern Virginia, and managed to win many of them. In spite of his success, his two major strategic offensives into Union territory both ended in failure. His aggressive and risky tactics, especially at Gettysburg, which resulted in high casualties at a time when the Confederacy had a shortage of manpower, have come under criticism.
Robert Frost- Robert Lee Frost (March 26, 1874 – January 29, 1963) was an American poet. His work was initially published in England before it was published in the United States.
He is known for his realistic depictions of rural life and his command of American colloquial speech. He frequently wrote about settings from rural life in New England in the early 20th century. He used them to examine complex social and philosophical themes.
He was frequently honored during his lifetime. He is the only poet to receive four Pulitzer Prizes for Poetry. He was considered one of America's rare "public literary figures, almost an artistic institution". He was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal in 1960 for his poetic works. He was named poet laureate of Vermont on July 22, 1961.
Ronald Reagan- Ronald Wilson Reagan (February 6, 1911 – June 5, 2004) was an American politician and actor who served as the 40th president of the United States from 1981 to 1989.
He previously served as the 33rd governor of California from 1967 to 1975. He previously also served as the president of the American Screen Actors Guild from 1947 to 1952 and from 1959 to 1960.
Rumi- Jalāl al-Dīn Muḥammad Rūmī, also known as Jalāl al-Dīn Muḥammad Balkh, Mevlânâ/Mawlānā (Persian: 'our master') and Mevlevî/Mawlawī (Persian: 'my master'), but more popularly known simply as Rumi (September 30, 1207 – December 17, 1273), was a 13th-century poet, Hanafi faqih, Islamic scholar, Maturidi theologian and Sufi mystic. He is originally from Greater Khorasan in Greater Iran.
He influenced Iranians, Kurds, Tajiks, Turks, Greeks, Pashtuns, Central Asian Muslims and Muslims of the Indian subcontinent.
His poems have been translated in many languages. He is considered the best poet in the United States.
Ronnie Coleman-
Ronald Dean Coleman (born May 13, 1964) is an American retired professional bodybuilder. He won bodybuilding's most prestigious title, "Mr. Olympia", a record of eight consecutive times. He is considered the greatest bodybuilder of all time.
He was the winner of 26 IFBB (International Federation of Bodybuilding and Fitness). He is known for his massive physique and strength in weightlifting. He was inducted into the International Sports Hall of Fame in 2016 and was bestowed with the 'Arnold Classic Lifetime Achievement Award' in 2021.
He is often quoted as saying that the there is no secret formula, secret or magic tricks to success. According to him the secret to success in life is simple: simply outwork everyone else and be number one in whatever you do that no one else can come close to you.
russelison.com- Original quotes from this website.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg- Joan Ruth Bader Ginsburg (March 15, 1933 – September 18, 2020) was an American lawyer and jurist who served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1993 until her death in 2020.
She was nominated by President Bill Clinton. She was the first Jewish woman and the second woman to serve on the Court. She was dubbed with the monicker: "the Notorious R.B.G.", which she later embraced.
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Selena Gomez- Selena Marie Gomez (born July 22, 1992) is an American singer, actress, producer, and businesswoman.
She began her acting career on the Barney & Friends (2002–2004). As a teenager, she starred on the Disney Channel television series Wizards of Waverly Place (2007–2012).
She also appeared in the films: Another Cinderella Story (2008), Wizards of Waverly Place: The Movie (2009), Ramona and Beezus (2010), Monte Carlo (2011), Spring Breakers (2012), Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising (2016), and The Dead Don't Die (2019). She is also a voice actor in the Hotel Transylvania film franchise (2012–2022).
Seneca- Lucius Annaeus Seneca the Younger was usually known mononymously as Seneca. He was a Stoic philosopher of Ancient Rome, a statesman, dramatist, and, in one work, a satirist from the post-Augustan age of Latin literature.
Socrates- Was a Greek philosopher from Athens who is credited as the founder of Western philosophy. He is also among the first moral philosophers of the ethical tradition of thought.
He authored no texts and is known mainly through the posthumous accounts of classical writers, particularly his students Plato and Xenophon.
These accounts are written as dialogues, in which Socrates and his interlocutors examine a subject in the style of question and answer. They gave rise to the Socratic dialogue literary genre.
Contradictory accounts of Socrates make reconstructing his philosophy nearly impossible, This is alos known as the Socratic problem.
He was a polarizing figure in Athenian society. In 399 BC, he was accused of impiety and corrupting the youth. After a trial that lasted a day, he was sentenced to death. He spent his last day in prison, refusing offers to help him escape.
Star Wars- Is an American epic space opera franchise created by George Lucas in 1977.
The original Star Wars film was retroactively subtitled "Episode IV: A New Hope (1977)" and was followed by the sequels "Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back" (1980) and "Episode VI: Return of the Jedi" (1983), forming the original Star Wars trilogy.
Lucas later returned to the series to direct a prequel trilogy, consisting of "Episode I: The Phantom Menace" (1999), "Episode II: Attack of the Clones" (2002), and "Episode III: Revenge of the Sith" (2005).
In 2012, Disney gained ownership of the Star Wars franchise and further expanded the franchise by producing more movies.
Stephen Covey- Stephen Richards Covey (October 24, 1932 – July 16, 2012) was an American author, businessman, educator and speaker. His most popular book is "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People".
His other books are:
- First Things First, Principle-Centered Leadership
- The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Families
- The 8th Habit
- The Leader In Me: How Schools and Parents Around the World Are Inspiring Greatness, One Child at a Time.
Time magazine named him one of the 25 most influential people in 1996. At the time of his death, he was also a professor at the Jon M. Huntsman School of Business at Utah State University (USU).
Stephen Hawking- Stephen William Hawking (8 January 1942 – 14 March 2018) was an English theoretical physicist, cosmologist, and author.
His last position was as director of research at the Centre for Theoretical Cosmology at the University of Cambridge. He was the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge from 1979 to 2009. It is widely viewed as one of the most prestigious academic posts in the world.
In 1963, at age 21, He was diagnosed with an early-onset slow-progressing form of motor neurone disease that gradually, over decades, paralysed him. After he lost his ability for speech, he communicated through a speech-generating device initially through the use of a handheld switch, and eventually by using a single cheek muscle.
Stephen King- Stephen Edwin King (born September 21, 1947) is an American author of horror, supernatural, fantasy, crime, science-fiction, suspense, and fantasy novels.
Widely known as the "King of Horror", his books have sold more than 350 million copies as of 2006. Many have been adapted into films, television series, miniseries, and comic books. He has published over 65 novels and novellas which includes seven under his pen name Richard Bachman, as well as five non-fiction books. He has also written approximately 200 short stories, of which most have been published in book collections.
He has received many awards including the Bram Stoker Awards, World Fantasy Awards, and British Fantasy Society Awards. In 2003, the National Book Foundation awarded him the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. He has also received awards for his contribution to literature for his entire bibliography, such as the 2004 World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement and the 2007 Grand Master Award from the Mystery Writers of America. In 2015, he was awarded with a National Medal of Arts from the U.S. National Endowment for the Arts for his contributions to literature.
Steve Jobs- Steven Paul Jobs (February 24, 1955 – October 5, 2011) was an American inventor, business magnate, and investor. He was the co-founder, chairman, and CEO of Apple. He was also the chairman and majority shareholder of Pixar.
He was also a member of The Walt Disney Company's board of directors following its acquisition of Pixar. He is also and the founder, chairman, and CEO of NeXT. He was a pioneer of the personal computer revolution of the 1970s and 1980s, along with his early business partner and fellow Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak.
Stevie Nicks- Stephanie Lynn Nicks (born May 26, 1948) is an American singer, songwriter, and producer. She is known for her work with the band Fleetwood Mac and as a solo artist.
She initially started her career in a duo together with her then-boyfriend Lindsey Buckingham. However their duo only found little success. She then joined Fleetwood Mac in 1975. The band to became one of the best-selling music acts of all time with over 120 million records sold worldwide.
Rumours, the band' second album, became one of the best-selling albums worldwide, being certified 20× platinum in the US.
In 1981, while still a member of Fleetwood Mac, she began her solo career. She released the studio album Bella Donna. It topped the Billboard 200 and has reached multiplatinum status. She has released eight studio solo albums and seven studio albums with Fleetwood Mac, selling a certified total of 65 million copies in the US alone.
Sun Tzu- Sun Tzu was a Chinese military general, strategist, philosopher, and writer who lived during the Eastern Zhou period of 771 to 256 BCE. He is credited as the author of The Art of War, an influential book of military strategy that has also been adapted to business world.
Susan B Anthony- born Susan Anthony (February 15, 1820 – March 13, 1906) was an American social reformer and women's rights activist.
She played a pivotal role in the women's suffrage movement. She was born from a Quaker family committed to social equality. She started to collect anti-slavery petitions at the early age of 17. In 1856, she became the New York state agent for the American Anti-Slavery Society.
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Taylor Swift- Taylor Alison Swift (born December 13, 1989) is an American singer-songwriter. She is recognized for her genre-spanning discography, songwriting, and artistic reinventions.
She is a prominent cultural figure. She has been cited as an influence on a generation of music artists.
She is one of the world's best-selling musician, having sold over 200 million records. She is the most streamed woman on Spotify, and the only act to have five albums open with over one million copies sold in the US.
Among her accolades are 12 Grammy Awards including three Album of the Year wins, a Primetime Emmy Award, 40 American Music Awards, 29 Billboard Music Awards, 12 Country Music Association Awards, three IFPI Global Recording Artist of the Year awards, and 92 Guinness World Records. She is honored with such titles as Artist of the Decade and Woman of the Decade. She is an advocate for artists' rights and women's empowerment.
Tesla- Nikola Tesla (July 10, 1856 – January 7, 1943) was a Serbian-American electrical engineer, mechanical engineer, inventor and futurist.
He is best known for his contributions to the design of the modern alternating current (AC) electricity supply system. Many of his inventions have been continuously studied and improved even today.
Teddy Roosevelt - Theodore Roosevelt Jr. (October 27, 1858 – January 6, 1919), often referred to as "Teddy" or by his initials, T.R., was an American conservationist, historian, naturalist, politician, soldier, statesman and writer. He was the 26th president of the United States from 1901 to 1909.
He previously served as the 25th vice president under President William McKinley from March to September 1901 and as the 33rd governor of New York from 1899 to 1900.
He assumed the presidency after McKinley's assassination. He emerged as a leader of the Republican Party and became a driving force for anti-trust and Progressive policies.
The Greatest Salesman in the World- is a book written by Og Mandino. It tells the story of Hafid, a poor camel boy in the middle east during the ancient times, who became an extremely wealthy businessperson and even managed to win the heart and marry the woman he loved.
The book serves as a guide to salesmanship and how to achieve success & happiness in life. It was first published in 1968 and was republished by Bantam Books in 1983. A hardcover edition was published by Buccaneer Books in June, 1993. The Success Motivation Institute purchased the rights to produce audio versions of the book.
The Matrix-
It is a science fiction and action film series written and directed by the Wachowskis. It starred Keanu Reeves in the title role together with Laurence Fishburne, Carrie-Anne Moss, Hugo Weaving, and Joe Pantoliano.
It depicts a dystopian future in which humanity is unknowingly trapped inside the Matrix, a simulated reality that intelligent machines have created to distract humans while using their bodies as an energy source. When computer programmer Thomas Anderson, under the hacker alias "Neo", uncovers the truth, he joins a rebellion against the machines along with other people who have been freed from the Matrix.
The Notebook- is a 2004 American romantic drama film directed by Nick Cassavetes, screenplay by Jeremy Leven and Jan Sardi.
It was based on the 1996 novel of the same name by Nicholas Sparks. The film stars Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams as a young couple who fell in love in the 1940s. Their story is read from a notebook in the present day by an elderly man, telling the tale to a fellow nursing home resident.
It performed well at the box office and received a number of award nominations, winning eight Teen Choice Awards, a Satellite Award, and an MTV Movie Award. The film gained a cult following. On November 11, 2012, ABC Family premiered an extended version with the deleted scenes added back into the original storyline.
Theo Von- Theodor Capitani von Kurnatowski (born March 19, 1980) is an American stand-up comedian, podcaster, television personality, and actor.
He is the host of the "This Past Weekend" podcast and former co-host of "The King and the Sting" podcast.
Thomas Edison- Thomas Alva Edison (February 11, 1847 – October 18, 1931) was an American inventor and businessman. He or his companies developed many devices in such fields as electric power generation, mass communication, sound recording, and motion pictures.
He has 1,093 U.S. Patents and 2,332 patents worldwide and is responsible for every item that uses electricity as well as the concrete in commercial buildings. He created the motion picture industry, the recording industry, the X-ray machine through his inventions like the phonograph, motion picture camera, and early versions of the electric light bulb.
He was one of the first inventors to apply the principles of organized science and teamwork to the process of invention by working with many researchers and employees. He established the first industrial research laboratory.
He is considered as the father of modern corporate research & development. Many mistakenly think Edison was a better inventor than businessman, but he created companies, was a marketing genius and amassed $200 million in wealth in today's dollars). He changed the world as we know it.
Thomas Jefferson- (April 13, 1743 – July 4, 1826) was an American architect, diplomat, lawyer, philosopher, statesman and Founding Father who served as the third president of the United States from 1801 to 1809.
He was among the Committee of Five charged by the Second Continental Congress with authoring the Declaration of Independence. He was it's primary author.
Following the American Revolutionary War and prior to becoming president in 1801, he was the first U.S. Secretary of State under George Washington and the nation's second vice president under John Adams.
Thomas Paine- (January 29, 1737 – June 8, 1809) born Thomas Pain, was an English-born American Founding Father, philosopher, political activist & theorist, and revolutionary.
His two writings: Common Sense (1776) and The American Crisis (1776–1783), are two of the most influential pamphlets at the start of the American Revolution. He helped to inspire the Patriots in 1776 to declare independence from Great Britain.
Thomas Sowell- (born June 30, 1930) is an American economist, author, and social commentator. He is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution.
He is a well-known voice in the American conservative movement as a prominent black conservative. He was a recipient of the National Humanities Medal from President George W. Bush in 2002.
Tim Burton- Timothy Walter Burton is an American filmmaker and animator. He is most known for his gothic fantasy and horror films. His top-grossing films are Beetlejuice (1988), Batman (1989), Edward Scissorhands (1990), Batman Returns (1992), The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993), Ed Wood (1994), Sleepy Hollow (1999), Planet of the Apes (2001), Big Fish (2003), Corpse Bride (2005), Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005), Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007), Alice in Wonderland (2010), Dark Shadows (2012), Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children (2016), and the television series Wednesday (2022).
Tolstoy (Leo Tolstoy)- Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy (September 9, 1828 – November 20, 1910) who is usually referred to in English as "Leo Tolstoy", was a Russian writer who is regarded as one of the greatest authors of all time.
He received nominations for the Nobel Prize in Literature every year from 1902 to 1906 and for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1901, 1902, and 1909. He is best known for his novels: "War and Peace" and "Anna Karenina".
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Victor Hugo- Victor-Marie Hugo (February 26, 1802 – May 22, 1885) was a French Romantic writer and politician. His literary career spanned for more than 60 years. He wrote in a variety of genres and forms. He is considered to be one of the greatest French writers of all time.
His most famous works are the novels "The Hunchback of Notre-Dame" (1831) and "Les Misérables" (1862). He is also renowned in France for his poetry collections, such as "Les Contemplations" (The Contemplations) and "La Légende des siècles" (The Legend of the Ages). He was also at the forefront of the Romantic literary movement with his play "Cromwell" and drama "Hernani". Many of his works have inspired music, both during his lifetime and after his death, including the opera "Rigoletto" and the musicals "Les Misérables" and "Notre-Dame de Paris". He produced more than 4,000 drawings in his lifetime.
As a politician, he campaigned for social causes such as the abolition of capital punishment.
Though he was a committed royalist when he was still young, his views changed as decades passed. He became a passionate supporter of republicanism, serving in politics as both deputy and senator. His work touched upon most of the political and social issues and the artistic trends of his time. His opposition to absolutism and his literary stature established him as a national hero.
When he died, he was given a state funeral in the Panthéon of Paris, an honor that just a few French people get. It was also attended by over 2 million people, the largest in French history. A number of streets in Paris were named after him. Many songs and movies were based on his books, and his statue made, but above all, a Parisian museum known as Maison de Victor Hugo (House of Victor Hugo in English) was created to remember all his work.
Van Gogh- Vincent Willem van Gogh (March 30, 1853 to July 29, 1890) was a Dutch Post-Impressionist painter. He posthumously became one of the most famous and influential figures in Western art history.
In just a decade, he created about 2,100 artworks which includes around 860 oil paintings. Most where done during the last two years of his life.
He was not commercially successful in his career. He struggled with severe depression and poverty. This eventually led to his suicide at age 37.
Virginia Woolf- Adeline Virginia Woolf (January 25, 1882 – March 28, 1941) was an English writer. She is considered as one of the most important modernist 20th-century authors and a pioneer in the use of stream of consciousness as a narrative device.
She was born into an affluent household in South Kensington, London, the seventh child of Julia Prinsep Jackson and Leslie Stephen in a blended family of eight, which included the modernist painter Vanessa Bell. From a young age, she was home-schooled in English classics and Victorian literature. From 1897 to 1901, she attended the Ladies' Department of King's College London, where she studied classics and history. She also came into contact with the early reformers of women's higher education and the women's rights movement.
Encouraged by her father, she began writing professionally in 1900. After her father's death in 1904, the Stephen family moved from Kensington to the more bohemian Bloomsbury, where, in conjunction with her brothers' intellectual friends, they formed the artistic and literary Bloomsbury Group. In 1912, she married Leonard Woolf, and in 1917, the couple founded the Hogarth Press, which published much of her work. They rented a home in Sussex and moved there permanently in 1940.
She had romantic relationships with women. One of her female lovers was Vita Sackville-West, who published Woolf's books through Hogarth Press. Both women's literature became inspired by their relationship, which lasted until Woolf's death...
Voltaire- François-Marie Arouet was a French Enlightenment writer, historian, and philosopher. He is well known as "M. de Voltaire". He is known for his anti-religion and anti-slavery sentiments. He advocated freedom of speech & of religion, and of the separation of church and state. His best-known work and magnum opus is Candide, a novella which comments on, criticizes, and ridicules many events, thinkers, and philosophies of his time.
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Walt Disney- Walter Elias Disney was an American animator, film producer and entrepreneur. He is a pioneer of the American animation industry. He introduced many innovations cartoon production. He holds the most Academy Awards earned and nominations by an individual: He won 22 Oscars from 59 nominations. He was awarded two Golden Globe Special Achievement Awards and an Emmy Award, among other honors. Several of his films are included in the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress and have also been named as some of the greatest films ever by the American Film Institute. He was the first person to be nominated for Academy Awards in six different categories.
Walt Whitman- Walter Whitman Jr. (May 31, 1819 – March 26, 1892) was an American essayist, journalist and poet. He is considered as one of the most influential poets in American history.
He incorporated both realism and transcendentalism in his writings. He is often called the father of free verse. His work was controversial in its time. He is particularly noted for his 1855 poetry collection "Leaves of Grass", described by some as obscene for its overt sensuality.
Warren Buffet- Warren Edward Buffett (born August 30, 1930) is an American business magnate, investor, and philanthropist.
He is currently the chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway. He is one of the best-known fundamental investors in the world as a result of his immense investment success. He is known by his monicker as "The Oracle of Omaha".
As of 2023, he is worth $104 billion, making him the fifth-richest person in the world.
Wayne Dyer- Wayne Walter Dyer (May 10, 1940 – August 29, 2015) was an American self-help author and a motivational speaker. He completed a Guidance and Counseling degree at Wayne State University in 1970. He first worked as a high school guidance counselor before successfully running a private therapy practice. He became a popular professor of counselor education at St. John's University where he was approached for a book deal.
His first book, "Your Erroneous Zones (1976)", became one of the best-selling books of all time, with an estimated 100 million copies sold. This launched his career as a motivational speaker and self-help author. He published 20 more best-selling books and produced a number of popular specials for PBS.
Influenced by thinkers such as Abraham Maslow and Albert Ellis, his early work focused on psychological themes such as motivation, self actualization and assertiveness, but the focus of his work had shifted to spirituality by the 1990s. He collaborated with alternative medicine advocate Deepak Chopra on a number of projects, and was a frequent guest on the Oprah Winfrey Show.
Wendell Berry-
Wendell Erdman Berry (born August 5, 1934) is an American novelist, poet, essayist, environmental activist, cultural critic, and farmer. He is closely identified with rural Kentucky.
He developed many of his agrarian themes in such early essays as "The Gift of Good Land" (1981) and "The Unsettling of America" (1977). His attention to the culture and economy of rural communities is also found in the novels and stories of "Port William, such as A Place on Earth" (1967), "Jayber Crow" (2000), and "That Distant Land" (2004).
He is an elected member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers. He is also a recipient of The National Humanities Medal and the Jefferson Lecturer for 2012. He is also a 2013 Fellow of The American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Since 2014, he has been a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He was named the recipient of the 2013 Richard C. Holbrooke Distinguished Achievement Award. On January 28, 2015, he became the first living writer to be inducted into the Kentucky Writers Hall of Fame.
Will Rogers- William Penn Adair Rogers (November 4, 1879 – August 15, 1935) was an American vaudeville performer, actor, and humorous social commentator.
He was born as a citizen of the Cherokee Nation, in the Indian Territory which is now a part of Oklahoma. He was known as "Oklahoma's Favorite Son". He traveled around the world three times being an entertainer and humorist. He made 71 films of which 50 were silent films and 21 were "talkies"). He also wrote more than 4,000 nationally syndicated newspaper columns.
He was hugely popular in the United States by the mid-1930s for his leading political wit and was one of the highest paid Hollywood film stars. He died in 1935 when the small airplane he was riding together with aviator Wiley Post crashed in northern Alaska.
Will Ferrell- John William Ferrell (born July 16, 1967) is an American actor, comedian, writer, and producer. He is known for his leading man roles in comedy films and for his work as a television producer. He has earned four Emmy Awards and in 2011 was honored with the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor. In 2015, he received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and was named the best comedian in British GQ.
He first established himself in the mid-1990s as a cast member on the NBC sketch comedy series Saturday Night Live. He performed from 1995 to 2002, and has subsequently starred in a string of comedy films. He is considered a member of the "Frat Pack", a generation of leading Hollywood comic actors who emerged in the late 1990s and the 2000s. The list includes Ben Stiller, Jack Black, Paul Rudd, Steve Carell, Vince Vaughn, and brothers Owen and Luke Wilson. He founded the comedy website Funny or Die in 2007 with his former writing partner Adam McKay.
His comedy films include "Elf" (2003), "Anchorman" (2004), "Kicking & Screaming" (2005), "Talladega Nights" (2006), "Blades of Glory" (2007), "Step Brothers" (2008), "The Other Guys (2010), Daddy's Home (2015), and Spirited (2022). Other notable film roles include Semi-Pro" (2008), "The Campaign" (2012), "Get Hard" (2015), and "Barbie" (2023). He has also taken dramatic roles in "Stranger than Fiction" (2006), "Everything Must Go" (2010), and "Downhill" (2020). He has voiced roles in "Curious George" (2006), "Megamind" (2010) and "The Lego Movie" film franchise (2014–2019).
He has received four Primetime Emmy Awards for his work as a producer on the HBO drama series "Succession" (2019–2023) and for the ABC specials "Live in Front of a Studio Audience" (2019–2022). He also produced the TruTV series "I'm Sorry" (2017–2019), the Netflix series "Dead to Me" (2019–2022), and the Comedy Central series "Drunk History" (2013–2019). For his work on Broadway he received a Tony Award nomination for Best Special Theatrical Event for his satirical portrayal as George W. Bush in "You're Welcome America" (2009)- (Source: Wikipedia).
Will Smith-
Willard Carroll Smith II (born September 25, 1968), also briefly known as the "Fresh Prince", is an American actor, rapper and film producer. He has received many awards which includes an Academy Award, a BAFTA Award, and four Grammy Awards. As of 2023, his films have grossed over $9.3 billion globally, making him one of Hollywood's most bankable stars
He began his acting career starring as a fictionalized version of himself on the NBC sitcom "The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air" (1990–1996). He first gained recognition as part of a hip hop duo with DJ Jazzy Jeff, with whom he released five studio albums and the US Billboard Hot 100 top 20 singles "Parents Just Don't Understand", "A Nightmare on My Street", "Summertime", "Ring My Bell", and "Boom! Shake the Room" from 1984 to 1994. He released the solo albums Big Willie Style (1997), Willennium (1999), Born to Reign (2002), and Lost and Found (2005), which contained the US number-one singles "Gettin' Jiggy wit It" and "Wild Wild West". He has received four Grammy Awards for his rap performances.
He achieved wider fame as a leading man in such films as the action film "Bad Boys" (1995), its sequels "Bad Boys II" (2003) and "Bad Boys for Life" (2020), and the sci-fi comedies "Men in Black" (1997), "Men in Black II" (2002), and "Men in Black III" (2012). After starring in the thrillers "Independence Day" (1996) and "Enemy of the State" (1998), he received an Academy Best Actor Award for his portrayal as Muhammad Ali in "Ali" (2001), and as Chris Gardner in The "Pursuit of Happyness" (2006). He then starred in a range of commercially successful films, including "I, Robot" (2004), “Shark Tale" (2004), "Hitch" (2005), "I Am Legend" (2007), "Hancock" (2008), "Seven Pounds" (2008), "Suicide Squad" (2016) and "Aladdin" (2019).
For his portrayal of Richard Williams in the biographical sports drama "King Richard" (2021), he won the Academy Award, BAFTA Award, Golden Globe Award, and Screen Actors Guild Award for Best Actor. At the 2022 Academy Awards ceremony, shortly before winning, he faced public backlash for slapping and shouting at Oscar presenter Chris Rock after Rock made an unscripted joke referencing Smith's wife, Jada Pinkett Smith. Smith subsequently resigned from the Academy and was banned from attending all Academy functions, including the Oscars, for ten years (Source: Wikipedia).
William Blake-
(November 28, 1757 – August 12, 1827) was an English poet, painter, and printmaker. He was largely unrecognised during his life, but he is now considered a seminal figure in the history of the poetry and visual art of the Romantic Age. What he called his "prophetic works" were described by 20th-century critic Northrop Frye to form "what is in proportion to its merits the least read body of poetry in the English language". 21st-century critic Jonathan Jones described his visual artistry as: "far and away the greatest artist Britain has ever produced".
In 2002, he was placed by a BBC poll at number 38 among the 100 Greatest Britons. Though he lived in London his entire life, except for three years spent in Felpham, he was able to produce a diverse and symbolically rich collection of works embracing his imagination as "the body of God" or "human existence itself".
Although he was considered mad by contemporaries for his idiosyncratic views, he came to be highly regarded by later critics and readers for his expressiveness and creativity as well as for the philosophical and mystical undercurrents within his work. His paintings and poetry have been characterized as part of the Romantic movement and as "Pre-Romantic". He is even considered "a key early proponent of both Romanticism and Nationalism".
He was a committed Christian but was hostile to the Church of England or to almost all forms of organized religion). He was influenced by the ideals and ambitions of the French and American revolutions, although he later rejected many of these political beliefs. He maintained an amiable relationship with the political activist Thomas Paine. He was also influenced by thinkers such as Emanuel Swedenborg. Despite these, the singularity of his work makes him difficult to classify. The 19th-century scholar William Michael Rossetti characterized him as a "glorious luminary", and "a man not forestalled by predecessors, nor to be classed with contemporaries, nor to be replaced by known or readily surmissable successors".
William James- William James (January 11, 1842 – August 26, 1910) was an American philosopher, historian, and psychologist. He is the first educator to offer a psychology course in the United States. He is considered to be a leading thinker of the late 19th century. He is also considered as one of the most influential philosophers of the United States. He is also called as the "Father of American psychology".
He established the philosophical school known as "Pragmastism along with Charles Sanders Peirce. He is also cited as one of the founders of "Functional Psychology". "A Review of General Psychology Analysis which was published in 2002, ranked him as the 14th most eminent psychologist of the 20th century. A survey published in "American Psychologist" in 1991 ranked his reputation in second place, after Wilhelm Wundt, who is widely regarded as the founder of "Experimental Psychology". James also developed the philosophical perspective known as "Radical Empiricism". His work has influenced philosophers and academics such as Bertrand Russell, Edmund Husserl, Émile Durkheim, Hilary Putnam, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Marilynne Robinson, Richard Rorty and W. E. B. Du Bois.
Born from a wealthy family, he was the son of the Swedenborgian theologian Henry James Sr. and the brother of both the prominent novelist Henry James and the diarist Alice James. He trained as a physician and taught anatomy at Harvard, although he never practiced medicine. He instead pursued his interests in psychology and then philosophy. He tackled many topics which includes education, epistemology, metaphysics, mysticism, psychology and religion. Among his most influential books are The "Principles of Psychology", which is about a groundbreaking text in the field of psychology; "Essays in Radical Empiricism", which is an important text in philosophy; and "The Varieties of Religious Experience", which is an investigation of the different forms of religious experience, including theories on mind-cure.
Winnie the Pooh- also known as Pooh Bear or simply Pooh, is a fictional anthropomorphic teddy bear created by English author A. A. Milne and English illustrator E. H. Shepard.
In 1961, The Walt Disney Company licensed certain film and other rights of the Winnie-the-Pooh stories from the estate of A. A. Milne and the licensing agent Stephen Slesinger, Inc., and adapted the Pooh stories, using the unhyphenated name "Winnie the Pooh", into a series of features that would eventually become one of its most successful franchises.
Winston Churchill- Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill was a British statesman, soldier, and writer who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom twice. This was from 1940 to 1945 during the Second World War and again from 1951 to 1955. Apart from two years between 1922 and 1924, he was a Member of Parliament (MP) from 1900 to 1964 and represented a total of five constituencies. He was an economic liberal and imperialist> For most of his career he was a member of the Conservative Party which he led from 1940 to 1955. He was a member of the Liberal Party from 1904 to 1924.
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Zig Ziglar- Hilary Hinton Ziglar (November 6, 1926 – November 28, 2012) was an American author, salesman, and motivational speaker.