Russian-born American poet Joseph Brodsky was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1987 for his important lyric and elegiac poems.
Charlemagne was the founder of the Carolingian Empire, best known for uniting Western Europe for the first time since the fall of the Roman Empire.
English admiral Sir Francis Drake circumnavigated the globe in 1577-1578, helped defeat the Spanish Armada and was the most renowned seaman of the Elizabethan era.
Henry VIII, king of England, was famously married six times and played a critical role in the English Reformation, turning his country into a Protestant nation.
Anthropologist and novelist Zora Neale Hurston was a fixture of the Harlem Renaissance before writing her masterwork, Their Eyes Were Watching God.
Richard Loeb, of Leopold and Loeb, is best known for murdering 14-year-old Bobby Franks with Nathan Leopold in an attempt to carry out the 'perfect crime.'
High school teacher Christa McAuliffe was the first American civilian selected to go into space. She died in the space shuttle Challenger’s explosion in 1986.
William Butler Yeats was one of the greatest English-language poets of the 20th century and received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1923.