Marie Antoinette helped provoke the popular unrest that led to the French Revolution and to the overthrow of the monarchy in August 1792.
Jeanne Bécu, Countess Du Barry, mistress to French King Louis XV, asserted her influence on the court throughout his reign and was later executed for treason.
Anne Boleyn, the second wife of King Henry VIII, served as queen of England in the 1530s. She was executed on charges of incest, witchcraft, adultery and conspiracy against the king.
Maximilien de Robespierre was an official during the French Revolution and one of the principal architects of the Reign of Terror.
Saint John Fisher was a Roman Catholic bishop and cardinal who was martyred when he resisted King Henry VII's encroachments on the Church.
Louis XVI was the last king of France (1774–92) in the line of Bourbon monarchs preceding the French Revolution of 1789. He was executed for treason by guillotine in 1793.
Thomas More is known for his 1516 book Utopia and for his untimely death in 1535, after refusing to acknowledge King Henry VIII as head of the Church of England. He was canonized by the Catholic Church as a saint in 1935.
Explorer and conquistador Vasco Núñez de Balboa became the first European to see the Pacific Ocean.
German serial killer Peter Kürten, known as the "Dusseldorf Vampire", murdered at least nine people before surrendering to police in 1931.
Sir Walter Raleigh was an English adventurer and writer who established a colony near Roanoke Island, now known as Virginia. He was imprisoned in the Tower of London and eventually put to death for treason.
St. John the Baptist was a Jewish prophet who preached the imminence of God's final judgment, had several disciples and baptized a number of people.
William Wallace, a Scottish knight, became a central early figure in the wars to secure Scottish freedom from the English, becoming one of his country's greatest national heroes.