Albert Einstein - Albert Einstein was born on March 14, 1879 in the small town of Ulm,

in southern Germany, near the source of Europe's longest river, the Danube. His parents,
Hermann and Pauline were Jewish.He is best known for his theories of special relativity
and general relativity. Einstein received the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics "for his services
to Theoretical Physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric
effect. Einstein died on 18 April, 1955 in Princeton, New Jersey, U.S.A.
Graham Bell - How often do you use the telephone? Every day, two or three times a day
or almost daylong? What would it be like if there was no phone? Thanks to Alexander
Graham Bell, who invented one of the most significant domestic device of today – the
Telephone. This Scottish – American scientist had an inventive mind and a great vision.
Alexander Graham Bell (3 March 1847 – 2 August 1922) was an eminent scientist,
inventor, engineer and innovator who is credited with inventing the first practical
telephone.

Bell's father, grandfather, and brother had all been associated with work on elocution and
speech, and both his mother and wife were deaf, profoundly influencing Bell's life's
work.[1] His research on hearing and speech further led him to experiment with hearing
devices which eventually culminated in Bell being awarded the first U.S. patent for the
telephone in 1876.[2] In retrospect, Bell considered his most famous invention an
intrusion on his real work as a scientist and refused to have a telephone in his study.[3]

Many other inventions marked Bell's later life, including groundbreaking work in
hydrofoils and aeronautics. In 1888, Alexander Graham Bell became one of the founding
members of the National Geographic Society
William Shakespeare - The Bard of Avon, as he was known, is still famous in this era
more than four hundred years after his birth.
William Shakespeare (baptised 26 April 1564 – 23 April 1616)[a] was an English poet
and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the
world's preeminent dramatist.[1] He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard
of Avon".[b] His surviving works consist of 38 plays,[c] 154 sonnets, two long narrative
poems, and several other poems. His plays have been translated into every major living
language and are performed more often than those of any other playwright.[2]

Shakespeare was born and raised in Stratford-upon-Avon. At the age of 18, he married
Anne Hathaway, who bore him three children: Susanna, and twins Hamnet and Judith.
Between 1585 and 1592, he began a successful career in London as an actor, writer, and
part owner of a playing company called the Lord Chamberlain's Men, later known as the
King's Men. He appears to have retired to Stratford around 1613, where he died three
years later. Few records of Shakespeare's private life survive, and there has been
considerable speculation about such matters as his physical appearance, sexuality,
religious beliefs, and whether the works attributed to him were written by others.[3]

Shakespeare produced most of his known work between 1589 and 1613.[4][d] His early
plays were mainly comedies and histories, genres he raised to the peak of sophistication
and artistry by the end of the sixteenth century. He then wrote mainly tragedies until
about 1608, including Hamlet, King Lear, and Macbeth, considered some of the finest
works in the English language. In his last phase, he wrote tragicomedies, also known as
romances, and collaborated with other playwrights. Many of his plays were published in
editions of varying quality and accuracy during his lifetime. In 1623, two of his former
theatrical colleagues published the First Folio, a collected edition of his dramatic works
that included all but two of the plays now recognised as Shakespeare's.

Shakespeare was a respected poet and playwright in his own day, but his reputation did
not rise to its present heights until the nineteenth century. The Romantics, in particular,
acclaimed Shakespeare's genius, and the Victorians hero-worshipped Shakespeare with a
reverence that George Bernard Shaw called "bardolatry".[5] In the twentieth century, his
work was repeatedly adopted and rediscovered by new movements in scholarship and
performance. His plays remain highly popular today and are constantly studied,
performed and reinterpreted in diverse cultural and political contexts throughout the
world.
Charles Babbage -
Charles Babbage, FRS (26 December 1791 – 18 October 1871)[2] was an English
mathematician, philosopher, inventor and mechanical engineer who originated the
concept of a programmable computer. Parts of his uncompleted mechanisms are on
display in the London Science Museum. In 1991, a perfectly functioning difference
engine was constructed from Babbage's original plans. Built to tolerances achievable in
the 19th century, the success of the finished engine indicated that Babbage's machine
would have worked. Nine years later, the Science Museum completed the printer
Babbage had designed for the difference engine, an astonishingly complex device for the
19th century. Considered a "father of the computer"[3] Babbage is credited with
inventing the first mechanical computer that eventually led to more complex designs.
Charlie Chaplin - Charlie Chaplin(16 April 1889 – 25 December 1977) was the first and
foremost comedy artist of the silent era. He meant many things to many people. His
working methods were a mystery until they rediscovered a cache of films he had stored
away, which was brought to light after his death. His fourth wife, Lady Oona Chaplin
generously consented to provide his film legacy.
Sir Charles Spencer Chaplin, KBE was an English comedic actor and filmmaker. Chaplin
became one of the most famous actors as well as a notable filmmaker, composer and
musician in the early to mid "Classical Hollywood" era of American cinema.
Chaplin acted in, directed, scripted, produced and eventually scored his own films as one
of the most creative and influential personalities of the silent-film era. His working life in
entertainment spanned over 65 years, from the Victorian stage and the Music Hall in the
United Kingdom as a child performer almost until his death at the age of 88. His high-
profile public and private life encompassed both adulation and controversy. With Mary
Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks and D. W. Griffith, Chaplin co-founded United Artists in
1919.

In a review of the book Chaplin: A Life (2008), Martin Sieff writes: "Chaplin was not
just 'big', he was gigantic. In 1915, he burst onto a war-torn world bringing it the gift of
comedy, laughter and relief while it was tearing itself apart through World War I. Over
the next 25 years, through the Great Depression and the rise of Hitler, he stayed on the
job. He was bigger than anybody. It is doubtful any individual has ever given more
entertainment pleasure and relief to so many human beings when they needed it the most
Christopher Columbus - Even after five centuries, Christopher Columbus remains a
figure shrouded in mystery and controversy; a persona who has been described in a
variety of ways; that of one of the greatest mariners in history, a visionary genius, mystic,
national hero, failed administrator, naïve entrepreneur, and a ruthless and greedy
imperialist.
(c. 1451 – 20 May 1506) was a Genoese navigator, colonizer and explorer whose voyages
across the Atlantic Ocean—funded by Queen Isabella of Spain—led to general European
awareness of the American continents in the Western Hemisphere. Although not the first
to reach the Americas from Europe—he was preceded by the Norse, led by Leif Ericson,
who built a temporary settlement 500 years earlier at L'Anse aux Meadows[1]—
Columbus initiated widespread contact between Europeans and indigenous Americans.
With his several attempts at establishing a settlement on the island of Hispaniola, he
personally initiated the process of Spanish colonization which foreshadowed general
European colonization of the "New World." (The term "pre-Columbian" is usually used
to refer to the peoples and cultures of the Americas before the arrival of Columbus and
his European successors.)

His initial 1492 voyage came at a critical time of growing national imperialism and
economic competition between developing nation states seeking wealth from the
establishment of trade routes and colonies. In this sociopolitical climate, Columbus's far-
fetched scheme won the attention of Queen Isabella of Spain. Severely underestimating
the circumference of the Earth, he estimated that a westward route from Iberia to the
Indies would be shorter and more direct than the overland trade route through Arabia. If
true, this would allow Spain entry into the lucrative spice trade — heretofore commanded
by the Arabs and Italians. Following his plotted course, he instead landed within the
Bahamas Archipelago at a locale he named San Salvador. Mistaking the North-American
island for the East-Asian mainland, he referred to its inhabitants as "Indios".
Academic consensus is that Columbus was born in Genoa, though there are other
theories. The name Christopher Columbus is the Anglicisation of the Latin Christophorus
Columbus. The original name in 15th century Genoese language was Christoffa[2]
Corombo[3] (pronounced [kriˈʃtɔffa kuˈɹuŋbu]) The name is rendered in modern Italian
as Cristoforo Colombo, in Portuguese as Cristóvão Colombo (formerly Christovam
Colom), and in Spanish as Cristóbal Colón.

The anniversary of Columbus's 1492 landing in the Americas is observed as Columbus

Day on October 12 in Spain and throughout the Americas, except that in the United
States it is observed on the second Monday in October.
William Wordsworth - Born in Cockermouth, England was the pioneer and central figure
of the English poetry in the Romantic Era, his effort was a brief flowering of creative
spirit midway between the collapse of 18th century authoritarianism and of the Victorian
Era.
(7 April 1770 – 23 April 1850) was a major English Romantic poet who, with Samuel
Taylor Coleridge, helped to launch the Romantic Age in English literature with the 1798
joint publication Lyrical Ballads.

Wordsworth's magnum opus is generally considered to be The Prelude, a

semiautobiographical poem of his early years which the poet revised and expanded a
number of times. The work was posthumously titled and published, prior to which it was
generally known as the poem "to Coleridge". Wordsworth was England's Poet Laureate
from 1843 until his death in 1850.
Adam Smith - Adam Smith was a genius among the economists along with also being a
philosopher. Not only did he extend the boundaries of economy, but also enlightened and
reformed the commercial policy of Europe.
(baptised 16 June 1723 – 17 July 1790 [OS: 5 June 1723 – 17 July 1790]) was a Scottish moral
philosopher and a pioneer of political economy. One of the key figures of the Scottish
Enlightenment, Smith is the author of The Theory of Moral Sentiments and An Inquiry into the
Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. The latter, usually abbreviated as The Wealth of
Nations, is considered his magnum opus and the first modern work of economics. Adam Smith is
widely cited as the father of modern economics.[1][2]

Smith studied moral philosophy at the University of Glasgow and Oxford University. After
graduating he delivered a successful series of public lectures at Edinburgh, leading him to
collaborate with David Hume during the Scottish Enlightenment. Smith obtained a professorship
at Glasgow teaching moral philosophy, and during this time wrote and published The Theory of
Moral Sentiments. In his later life he took a tutoring position which allowed him to travel
throughout Europe where he met other intellectual leaders of his day. Smith returned home and
spent the next ten years writing The Wealth of Nations (mainly from his lecture notes) which was
published in 1776. He died in 1790.