David Sedaris

Author David Sedaris is known for his prickly, funny essays about his absurdist childhood in North Carolina and his absurdist adult life as a just-slightly-neurotic gay expatriate in Paris. His ... more

Rafael Nadal

Rafael Nadal was 19 years and two days old when he won the 2005 French Open in his very first appearance at the event. A left-hander with a booming ... more

George Orwell

George Orwell was the pen name of Eric Blair, who was born in India and educated in England. As a young man he spent 7 years in Burma working for the ... more

Amy Poehler

Small, bleach-blonde and crackling with energy, Amy Poehler is an actress whose sketch comedy talents took her from Saturday Night Live to feature films like Baby Mama (2008). Poehler ... more

Amy Sedaris

Amy Sedaris is an actress, prolific comedian, and the younger sister of humorist David Sedaris. She was a member of Chicago's Second City comedy troupe before moving to New York to write plays ... more

David Hume

David Hume was a prominent figure of the 18th century's Scottish Enlightenment, known especially for his skepticism and rejection of theism. His early philosophical work, ... more

Sergei Eisenstein

Russian filmmaker Sergei Mikhailovich Eisenstein is considered one of the architects of the language of cinema, a director-theorist whose reputation rests on a handful of films made in the 1920s and ' ... more

Sergei Prokofiev

One of the most prolific and celebrated Russian composers of the 20th century, Sergei Prokofiev is perhaps most famous for music he composed for the children's story Peter and the Wolf. He ... more

Bo Diddley

Bo Diddley was born in Mississippi and raised in Chicago, where he was exposed to music and the blues. After studying violin and trombone, he took up the electric ... more

Johannes Brahms

German pianist and composer Johannes Brahms is ranked among the masters of the Romantic era. Although he showed talent at the piano at an early age, he spent much of his young life performing rather ... more

John Henry "Doc" Holliday

John Henry Holliday went to the Pennsylvania College of Dental Surgery and in 1872 moved to Atlanta, Georgia to practice as a dentist. Only a few years into his profession, he was diagnosed with ... more

Wyatt Earp

Wyatt Berry Stapp Earp became a legend of the American West for his role in a 30-second gunfight in 1881 at the O.K. Corral in Tombstone, Arizona. For most of his life Earp was an itinerant ... more

Dmitry Medvedev

A protegé of outgoing President Vladimir Putin, Dmitry Medvedev was himself elected president of Russia in 2008. Medvedev is known as a sharp legal and ... more

Kathy Griffin

Kathy Griffin is best known for a stand-up act in which she makes derisive fun of other celebrities' behavior. Born and raised in the Chicago area, she broke into the Los Angeles entertainment scene ... more

Cynthia Nixon

Cynthia Nixon has been performing on stage and screen since her teen years, but it was her role as Miranda Hobbes on TV's Sex and the City (1998-2004) that made her a star. Nixon has worked ... more

Carol Burnett

From 1967 to 1978 Carol Burnett hosted one of the most popular shows on television, The Carol Burnett Show. A "variety hour" that was mostly comedy, the show featured the redheaded and ... more

Lizzie Borden

Lizzie Borden was a small town Sunday School teacher who gained notoriety in 1893 as the accused murderer of her father and step-mother. A lifelong resident of Fall River, Massachusetts, Lizzie ... more

Billy the Kid

Born in New York City, Billy the Kid (also known as William Antrim and William H. Bonney) moved west and became one of the most famous outlaws in American ... more

Jan Swammerdam

Dutch scientist Jan Swammerdam's microscopic studies of insects repudiated the notion of spontaneous generation and formed the basis for modern entomology. He had a medical degree ... more

Horace Mann

Horace Mann was a Massachusetts lawyer and social reformer whose advocacy of tax-supported "common schools" laid the groundwork for the American public school system. A Whig, Mann was a lawyer who ... more