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Ancient Greece & Macedon
Alexander the Great
356 BC – 323 BC
In thirteen years he created an empire stretching from Greece to India, spreading Greek culture throughout the ancient world.
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History’s most consequential figures.
14 titans and counting
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Ancient Egypt
Cleopatra VII
69 BC – 30 BC
The last active pharaoh of Egypt — a polyglot, a diplomat, and one of the most gifted political minds of the ancient world.
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Ancient China
Confucius
551 BC – 479 BC
The teacher whose ideas on governance, morality, and social harmony shaped Chinese civilization for two and a half millennia.
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Tudor England
Elizabeth I
1533 – 1603
The Virgin Queen who guided England through religious turmoil, survived invasion, and presided over one of history's great cultural flourishings.
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Renaissance Italy
Galileo Galilei
1564 – 1642
The father of modern observational astronomy and experimental physics, whose telescope revealed a universe the Church was not ready to accept.
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Medieval Asia
Genghis Khan
c. 1162 – 1227
Founder of the largest contiguous land empire in history, uniting the Mongolian steppe and unleashing conquests that reshaped Eurasia.
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19th-Century America
Harriet Tubman
c. 1822 – 1913
Born into slavery, she escaped and then returned nineteen times to lead others to freedom on the Underground Railroad — and later served as a Union spy and scout in the Civil War.
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Medieval North Africa
Ibn Khaldun
1332 – 1406
The father of historiography and sociology, whose Muqaddimah anticipated modern social science by four centuries.
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Ancient Rome
Julius Caesar
100 BC – 44 BC
Dictator perpetuo who transformed the Roman Republic and whose assassination set in motion the rise of the Roman Empire.
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Italian Renaissance
Leonardo da Vinci
1452 – 1519
Painter, engineer, anatomist, and philosopher — the Renaissance ideal of the universal man, incarnate.
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Modern Europe
Marie Curie
1867 – 1934
The only person to win Nobel Prizes in two different sciences, she discovered radioactivity, isolated radium and polonium, and transformed our understanding of the atom.
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Revolutionary & Napoleonic Europe
Napoleon Bonaparte
1769 – 1821
Rose from Corsican obscurity to become Emperor of the French, remaking the map of Europe and leaving a legal legacy that endures to this day.
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Early Modern Africa
Queen Nzinga
c. 1583 – 1663
Queen of Ndongo and Matamba who fought Portuguese colonialism for four decades with diplomacy, military brilliance, and an iron will.
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Ottoman Empire
Suleiman the Magnificent
1494 – 1566
The longest-reigning Ottoman sultan, who presided over the empire's golden age of military expansion, legal reform, and cultural brilliance.
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