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Welsh musician Pete Ham soared to fame as the lead singer and composer of the rock band Badfinger. Known for iconic hits such as No Matter What, he also co-wrote the classic Without You. After the band’s manager defrauded and vanished, Ham committed suicide by hanging himself in his garage.
Oliver Tambo was a South African revolutionary and politician who played an important role in the anti-apartheid movement alongside Nelson Mandela and Walter Sisulu. In 1943, he helped found the ANC Youth League and later served as the African National Congress' president. He is also remembered for organizing several guerilla units that facilitated attacks against the apartheid state.
Eugene Stoner is largely remembered for developing the ArmaLite AR-15 rifle, which was a forerunner of the M16 rifle used by the American military. Though he didn’t have any formal education beyond high school, Stoner, like his Russian counterpart, Mikhail T. Kalashnikov, revolutionized the arms industry with his inventions.
Helmuth von Moltke the Elder was a Prussian field marshal who served as the chief of staff in the Royal Prussian Army for 30 years. Moltke, who commanded troops during Austro-Prussian War, Second Schleswig War, and the Franco-Prussian War, is credited with creating a new method of directing armies. He is also credited with pioneering the military usage of railways.
Ramdhari Singh Dinkar was an Indian poet, academic, patriot, and essayist. Regarded as one of the most prominent modern Hindi poets, Dinkar played an important role during the Indian independence movement,; writing poems that sparked nationalism. In 1959, he was honored with the prestigious Padma Bhushan, India's third-highest civilian award. The same year, he also received the Sahitya Akademi Award.
Padma Bhushan-winning artist Jamini Roy is remembered for introducing his own style of painting that mingled Western and Indian influences. Once a disciple of Rabindranath Tagore, he excelled in the Kalighat Pat style and depicted Bengali folk life through his works. He was declared as one of the ASI’s Nine Masters of Art.
Nobel Prize-winning German pathologist and bacteriologist Gerhard Domagk is best remembered for his pathbreaking discovery of Prontosil, the first sulfonamide antibiotic. The Nazis, however, didn’t allow him to accept the Nobel Prize immediately and detained him briefly instead. He had also served as a soldier in World War I.
Indian guru and philanthropist, Sathya Sai Baba, was both a much-revered and controversial personality. He founded the Sathya Sai Organisation, through which he established a network of free hospitals, clinics, and educational institutions. His devotees believed in his alleged omnipotence and omniscience. His critics have accused him of sexual abuse, money laundering, and fraud.
British economist Angus Maddison specialised in quantitative macroeconomic history and is noted for documenting economic performances of major countries across continents. He served as the Head of OEEC Economics Division and as Assistant Director at the Economic Development Department of OECD. He authored several books on historical economic analysis, most notably The World Economy: Historical Statistics.
Born as an illegitimate son of a Russian landowner father and a Turkish slave mother, Vasily Zhukovsky had initially been the tutor of Tsar-Liberator Alexander II. He later co-founded the Arzamas society, which opposed classicism in poetry. With his poems and translations, he brought the Romantic Movement to Russia.
German physician Johann Peter Frank is remembered for his pathbreaking ideas on public health. Though he initially studied theology, he later switched to medicine. He had been a court physician, a councillor, and a professor. He was one of the first to suggest international monitoring of health issues.
One of the most significant figures of postmodern architecture, Austrian architect Hans Hollein is a Pritzker Prize winner. While he initially studied civil engineering, he later focused on architecture and rose to build structures that were characteristic of the Modernist Viennese architecture. He also taught at Yale and had his own firm.
Born into a poor neighborhood, Leon Sullivan later bagged an athletic scholarship but had to abandon his sports career due to an injury. He later became a Zion Baptist Church pastor and was actively involved in the civil rights movement and Operation Breadbasket, the latter meant to uplift Blacks economically.
Swiss-born Cuban author Alejo Carpentier is regarded as one of the greatest Latin American literary personalities. The Cervantes Prize-winning writer was one of the pioneers of magic realism. Known for novels such as The Lost Steps, he also contributed to the Afro-Cuban movement and was the Cuban ambassador to France.
Tadeusz Różewicz is remembered as one of the finest poets and dramatists of the post-World War II era. Kartoteka, or The Card Index, and Twarz trzecia, or The Third Face, remain 2 of his best-known works. He had also been part of the Polish Home Army during World War II.
Ville Ritola was a Finnish athlete who specialized in long-distance running. He is best remembered for winning five Olympic gold medals, four of which were won at the 1924 Olympic Games in Paris. Ville Ritola also won two silver medals at the 1924 Games, a record for the most number of athletics medals won at a single Olympic event.
Born to the ceramicist-painter couple Doris and Merric Boyd, Arthur Boyd followed in his parents’ footsteps to become a painter, printmaker, and potter. His works were often set against the backdrop of the Australian bush. He was also part of the Antipodeans, a group of artists who encouraged figurative art.
Soviet cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov was the first from his country to fly into space twice. He died when his Soyuz 1 capsule crashed while re-entering the Earth, due to a parachute failure, on April 24, 1967, which made him the first human to die in a space flight.
Wallis Simpson was an American socialite. She remains a controversial figure in the history of British politics as she played a major role in causing a constitutional crisis that eventually led to the abdication of British King Edward VIII. Edward VIII abdicated in order to marry Wallis as he could not marry Wallis, a divorcée, while remaining on the throne.
