Little-known people who changed the world. Outstanding people of our time. Outstanding Russian people The most famous world personalities of our time

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Time is a harmful and elusive thing. It always oozes through your fingers and flows away to no one knows where. What to do if all your life you wanted to write symphonies better than Mozart's, and you have two children, a wife, a mother, and a burning project in addition to everything?

We are in site We are also extremely concerned about this problem: we want to realize ourselves in life and not choke on a bone. Not to give up and do great things, we are helped by examples of famous people who certainly had enough 24 hours a day.

Leonardo da Vinci

The famous “universal man” will head our list. Recall that Leonardo is an outstanding Renaissance artist (does everyone remember Gioconda?), an inventor (all his inventions formed the basis for the construction of modern submarines), a scientist, as well as a writer and musician. And he was the first to explain why the sky is blue: "The blue of the sky is due to the thickness of the illuminated particles of air, which is located between the Earth and the blackness above." He managed all this thanks to his own developed sleep system: he slept for a total of 2 hours (lights out for 15 minutes several times a day), and in all the rest of his free time he changed the world and himself for the better.

Anton Chekhov

The brilliant brother of his brother (he had such a pseudonym). The famous master of the short story, humorist and satirist, the greatest playwright and part-time doctor. He himself admitted: “Medicine is my legal wife, and literature is my mistress. When one gets bored, I spend the night at the other. Constantly torn at the crossroads of his two talents, Chekhov was engaged in medical affairs until the end of his life. He even gave his dogs names according to the name of drugs: Bromine and Hina. But he also respected his “mistress”: over the course of his life, Chekhov created more than 300 works, including short stories and impressive dramas. And the great comedian loved to collect stamps. Here was a man!

Vladimir Nabokov

Writer and entomologist, self-taught entomologist. In honor of Vladimir Vladimirovich, more than 20 genera of butterflies are named, one of which (that's cute!) Is called Nabokovia. Nabokov also played chess very well. They made several difficult chess problems. His love for this intellectual sport was reflected in the novel "Luzhin's Defense". Recall that Nabokov was fluent in English. "Lolita" in America is loved just as much as we do.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Goethe was known not only as a great writer and poet, but also as a scientist: he made some discoveries in the field of the theory of light. In addition, he actively collected minerals - his collection includes 18,000 copies (it is clear where Faust got such a craving for alchemy). The author of the famous drama was so lucky or well done that he slept only 5 hours a day, and he had enough strength for many, many accomplishments. Perhaps this is because Goethe adhered to strict rules and was a supporter of a healthy lifestyle: he did not drink alcohol at all and could not stand the smell of tobacco smoke. That is why he lived for 82 years and managed to create so many things.

Hugh Jackman

Not only a famous actor, but also a Broadway artist, and what a one! Within one season, he managed to get all the major theater awards. Everyone knows the third area of Jackman's activity, in which he achieved success - family life. Hugh and Deborra-Lee Furness have been married for 20 years, and together they have two children. Yes, what is there! Our Hugh is generally capable of everything: he can play the piano, guitar, violin, and also ... vibrate his pupils and even juggle. Probably even Wolverine can't do that.

Salvador Dali

Everyone says that he is crazy, but they are silent about the fact that he was universal. Dali is famous not only as a painter and sculptor, but also as the director of the terrible Andalusian Dog. Dali also wrote several "works": "The Secret Life of Salvador Dali, told by himself" and "The Diary of a Genius." For the sake of his psychedelic masterpieces, the humble genius often "perverted" in terms of sleep. Let us explain: Dali hired a special servant for himself, who, seeing that the owner was starting to fall asleep in complete exhaustion, woke him up after waiting a few seconds. The tousled Dali immediately grabbed the paper and tried to sketch what he saw in the first seconds of the superficial phase of sleep.

Mikhail Lomonosov

Russian natural scientist, chemist and physicist, poet, artist... you can hardly list everything here. Lomonosov is not just an active figure - he is revered as a reformer. It was he who carried out the reform of versification. Therefore, by memorization of iambs and choreas, we, oddly enough, are obliged to an outstanding chemist. By the way, being smart does not mean being bullied. While studying in Marburg, for example, Lomonosov perfectly mastered the ability to handle a sword. Local bullies avoided this overly capable and skillful Muscovite. That's certainly a talented person is talented in everything!

Isaac Newton

Everyone should know that he is not only famous for the apple that fell on his head. Newton wrote books on theology, where he spoke about the denial of the Holy Trinity, and was also chairman of the Royal Society of Arts. Not many people know that Newton also invented two stunningly ingenious things: a means for carrying cats and a door for them (where would we be without them now?). His love for furry and mustachioed friends is to blame for this. Newton preferred vigorous activity to sleep - he took only 4 hours a day for night rest.

Benjamin Franklin

We all know him as an uncle from the dollar and politics, but Franklin is still like our Lomonosov. He was a journalist and inventor. He invented, for example, the stove (“Pennsylvania fireplace”), and also predicted the weather. The first developed a detailed map of the Gulf Stream. He founded the Philadelphia Academy, as well as the first public library in the States. Franklin also had musical talent. Uncle Ben managed to keep up with everything by strictly following the daily regimen, in which only 4 hours a day were allotted for sleep.

Alexander Borodin

A man whose portrait hangs both in the music class and in the chemistry class. Do you know that the author of the famous opera "Prince Igor" was also a chemist and physician? He jokingly called himself a "Sunday musician": he had to sacrifice days off in order to create something of that kind for the world of music. The memory of Borodin's everyday life was left by his wife: "I could sit for ten hours in a row, I could not sleep at all, not have lunch." Still would! After all, as you know, one of Borodin's mottos was such a super-motivating phrase: "All that we do not have, we owe only to ourselves." Alexander Porfiryevich was also an active public figure - he was one of the initiators of the opening of Women's Medical Courses.

Flea (Michael Peter Balzary)

In his youth, Bulgakov worked as a zemstvo doctor, and he had to be a generalist: a general practitioner, a gynecologist, a surgeon, and a dentist. "Notes of a Young Doctor" owe their birth to that period of the young Bulgakov's life. It was difficult to combine healing and creativity, so I had to “plow” a shift, treat the unpretentious village people all day, and then also carve out time for writing ... Whatever you don’t sacrifice for the sake of art. Once, in a letter to his mother, he wrote: “At night I write“ Notes of a Zemstvo Doctor. It might turn out to be a solid thing." Bulgakov is also an example of the correct attitude towards criticism. He collected critical articles about his work, including 298 negative and 3 positive reviews from critics.

Well, do you still think that you do not have enough time?

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For various reasons, the people on this list are not widely known, but they have had a great impact on the world. Some have something unique that was inherent only to them. Others did something that had the massive, ripple effect that we still feel today.

Some of the people on this list, who are as faceless to you as that strange neighbor you diligently avoid while taking out the trash, are responsible for saving millions of lives. In other cases, they have caused millions of deaths. Although, again, they are probably as familiar to you as that strange neighbor.

James Garrison

In 1951, the Australian James Garrison, then 14 years old, underwent a major operation to remove one lung. After he woke up from the operation, his father told him that he had received 13 doses of blood during the operation; they were all from random strangers. As he lay in bed recovering, he had time to think and realized that without blood donation he would have died, so he vowed to become a blood donor as soon as he reached the required age.

Four years later, Garrison began donating blood, and shortly thereafter, doctors noticed something unique in his blood. This uniqueness has been associated with blood group systems. In total there are 35 such systems, the most common of which is the ABO system. For example, in most people, the blood is O or A negative.

The Rh factor system is the second most common blood type. The problem with Rh is that if an Rh-negative woman is pregnant with an Rh-positive fetus, it can lead to hemolytic disease. This disease leads to the fact that antibodies appear in the body of a woman that attack the blood cells of the fetus, because they are foreign. This often leads to brain damage and miscarriages. Thousands of babies die every year because of this disease.

Doctors found a unique and very rare antibody in Harrison's blood. Based on this antibody, doctors have developed a drug called Anti-D, the introduction of which prevents hemolytic disease; it was the first drug of its kind. As a result, Harrison's blood is believed to have saved the lives of two million babies.

John Bardeen

John Bardeen was born in Madison, Wisconsin in May 1908; he was a gifted child. He entered the engineering department of the University of Wisconsin at the age of 15. After graduating from university, he got a job as a geophysicist at Gulf Oil. He worked there for three years, but he was not interested in this work, so he went to Princeton University and received a Ph.D. in mathematical physics there.

After three years as a junior research fellow at Harvard University, Bardeen began working at Bell Laboratories in 1945. Together with Walter Brattain and William Shockley, he invented the transistor. Transistors could replace cathode ray tubes in electronic devices, which were large and bulky, and could be used to reduce the size of components and the electronics themselves. Over time, transistors will play an important role in the evolution of computers. For their work, Bardeen, Shockley, and Brattain received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1956.

After helping with this life-changing invention, Bardeen returned to work on what had fascinated him throughout his life. It was superconductivity. Together with L. N. Cooper and J. R. Schrieffer, he developed the BCS theory of superconductivity, on which all subsequent work on superconductivity was based. This theory explains the almost complete absence of electrical resistance at material temperatures close to absolute zero. This theory led to the invention of computed tomography and MRI. For this theory, Bardeen also received a second Nobel Prize in Physics in 1972, making him one of only four people to win two Nobel Prizes and the only person to win it twice for achievements in physics. However, despite receiving two Nobel Prizes for inventions that have changed our daily lives, Bardeen is little known outside the world of science.

Olauda Equiano

We now know that slavery is evil. Enslaving another person may well be considered one of the worst things one can do. To say the least, it is cruel and inhumane. However, as you probably know, not everyone thought so for a long time. Olauda Equiano is responsible for helping to change the way many people see slavery.

At the age of 11, Equiano and his sister were kidnapped by local slave traders in present-day Nigeria. They were separated a few days later, and Equiano was sent by ship to Barbados, where he traveled the horrific middle route (the slave trade route from Africa to the West Indies), in which slaves were locked up in cages and sent across the Atlantic Ocean from their homes in Africa to the New Light. He ended up in Virginia. Unfortunately, there is no way to verify the history of his earlier life. However, after his arrival in Virginia, there are many documents confirming the statements he later made.

In Virginia, he was sold to a Royal Navy officer and spent eight years sailing the seas. During this time, he learned to read and write. He was also given the name Gustav Vasa. Then he was sold to a merchant, for whom he worked as a deckhand, servant and barber. He also worked on the side and saved up money in three years to buy his freedom.

Over the next 20 years, Equiano traveled the world and became active in the abolitionist movement in Europe. But most importantly, in 1798 he became the first ex-slave to publish an autobiography entitled "A Fascinating Tale of the Life of Olaudah Echiano, or Gustav Vasa, an African." This book was hugely popular and made Equiano a well-known activist.

His book presented slavery in a new light because it was a first hand story. Thousands of people either read his book or listened to him speak, which made him incredibly popular when it came to changing slavery laws. In England, the slave trade was finally abolished in 1807, 10 years after Equiano's death.

Joseph Lister

Isn't it good that people have a much better chance of surviving after a limb amputation? What about the fact that now people can undergo surgery and not fight the possibility of sepsis only with hope and prayer? Well, so, for this we must thank the English surgeon Joseph Lister, who is called the father of modern surgery.

Lister proposed generally accepted rules that are still followed and will always be followed by all doctors and surgeons. This includes rules such as the need to wash hands and sterilize surgical instruments. Today this seems commonplace, but oddly enough, he was apparently the first surgeon to follow these simple rules. This idea came to him in 1865, in connection with the theory of Louis Pasteur that microorganisms cause infections.

Although Lister is respected in the medical world and a mouthwash was named after him, he never reached the fame of other doctors, despite the fact that he came up with rules that have saved countless lives over the past 150 years.

Henrietta Lacks

Loretta Pleasant was born in Roanoke, Virginia in August 1920. She will then change her name to Henrietta. Her mother died when she was 4 years old, and the girl was sent to her grandmother, who lived in a log hut that had previously served as housing for slaves working on the plantation. She shared a room with her cousin, David Laks. 10 years later, when Henrietta was 14 years old, she gave birth to a child from David. They had a daughter four years later and then married in 1941. In January 1951, they were living in Maryland, and Henrietta went to Johns Hopkins Hospital, the only place in the area that treated African Americans, because of abdominal pain and bleeding. Sadly, she was diagnosed with cervical cancer. For several months, Henrietta went to radiation therapy, and during one of the sessions, doctors, without her knowledge, took two samples of the tumor. Henrietta died on October 4, 1951, at the age of 31, but a part of her lived forever.

For decades, scientists at Johns Hopkins have been trying to grow tissue, but they haven't been very successful; usually the cells died after a few days. However, for some reason, Henrietta's cells were more durable. Dr. George Otto Gay was able to isolate and propagate a special cell that belonged to Henrietta, growing immortal cells in culture for the first time.

This cell line called HeLa has become very popular in the scientific world and has been an important part of many discoveries and breakthroughs. For example, it was used in the discovery of polio vaccination. Her cells were used on the first space flights to monitor what happens to human cells in space. This cell line has also been important in gene mapping, in vitro fertilization and cloning. The HeLa cell line is still popular and has been used in over 10,000 patents.

However, Henrietta's family did not know anything about the use of her cells until 1970. Since then, they have been unsuccessfully trying to gain control of this cell line for many years. Then in 2013, Henrietta's genomic sequence was released, again without her family's knowledge or permission, in a serious breach of privacy. After this happened, the National Institutes of Health invited Henrietta's descendants to the HeLa Genome Data Access working group, which monitors cell usage. Finally, the family gained some control over this cell line.

Mohammed Bouazizi

In 2011, Mohammed Bouazizi was 26 years old and lived in the small poor town of Sidi Bouzid, Tunisia. Bouazizi was the main breadwinner for his family of eight and made his living by selling fruits and vegetables in the market. According to his family, he dreamed of buying a pickup truck to replace the cart he used to sell his goods.

On December 17, 2010, a municipal inspector named Media Hamdi confiscated Bouazizi's fruit weighing scale for not having a sales license. Bouazizi has been harassed by civil servants in the past, but this incident was especially ugly. According to stories, when Bouazizi tried to pay a fine or give a bribe, call it what you like, Hamdi became furious. She allegedly slapped him, spat in his face, and insulted his late father.

Humiliated Bouazizi went to complain to the mayor's office. When he was unable to talk to anyone, he went for gasoline. Returning to the city hall building, he doused himself with gasoline and set himself on fire. Bouazizi died from his burns not immediately, but two weeks later, on January 4, 2011.

Even before his death, people were already drawing inspiration from his act of self-immolation. At that time, Tunisia was ruled by the dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, who came to power in a bloody coup in 1987. Under his rule, the country had a very high level of corruption and unemployment, especially among recent university graduates. So when Bouazizi set himself on fire, a false rumor spread that he was a university student. Thanks to this, the news of his death made an even greater impression on his compatriots.

However, the death of Bouazizi, caused by desperation from dealing with a corrupt government led by a dictator, became symbolic and led to mass protests in Tunisia. Due to popular unrest, Ben Ali went into exile in early 2011, and in 2014 the country held its first free and fair elections since independence in 1956.

These protests also inspired protests in other countries in the region, starting the so-called Arab Spring. This led to the removal or overthrow of three more dictators and the ongoing war in Syria.

Rosalind Franklin

At the age of 15, Rosalind Franklin, who was born in England in 1920, decided that she wanted to be a scientist. As she grew older, she entered the University of Cambridge and at 26 she received her PhD in chemistry. After her studies, Franklin began working on a technique called X-ray diffraction, which uses X-rays to take pictures of crystalline solids. This allowed her to view objects at the molecular level.

In 1950, Franklin began working at King's College London. Her work involved using X-ray diffraction to study DNA. During her tenure at the college, she came close to answering the question of the structure of DNA, but she never got that chance because a colleague named Maurice Wilkins tricked her into doing so.

When Franklin began working at King's College, Wilkins was on leave. When he returned to work, he pretended not to know what Franklin was doing in the lab and simply assumed that since she was a woman, she had been sent to him as an assistant in his work. On the other hand, Franklin did not know that anyone else was working on DNA, so she shared information about her work with Wilkins. Another problem was that Franklin and Wilkins had conflicting personalities, which led to tension in the workplace. It all came together and changed history forever—and at the same time, robbed Franklin of an award for her work.

In May 1952, Franklin and her student Raymond Gosling received an x-ray, called Photograph 51, containing a piece of DNA. Unbeknownst to her, Wilkins showed the picture to the American biologist James Watson, and when he saw it, something clicked. Watson and a molecular biologist named Francis Crick used Photo 51 to write an article about the DNA double helix. The article was published in the journal Nature in April 1953, but it forgot to mention Franklin's contribution to this discovery.

At that point, Franklin's relationship with the leadership of King's College was tense, and the head of her department allowed her to quit on the condition that she never work on DNA again. At her new job at Bierbeck University, she wrote 17 papers, and her team created the foundation of structural virology. In 1956, she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer and died two years later on April 16, 1958, at the age of 37.

Four years later, in 1962, Watson, Crick, and, you won't believe it, Maurice Wilkins received the Nobel Prize in Medicine, but Franklin never received official recognition for his contribution to one of the greatest discoveries in modern science.

Norman Borlaug

Norman Borlaug was born in Cresco, Iowa in March 1914. When he was 27, he received his Ph.D. in plant protection. During the 1930s and 1940s, he worked in Mexico and helped farmers there improve their techniques and methods. He also developed a special type of wheat for them, called dwarf wheat, which is ideal for growing in Mexico. By 1956, thanks to Borlaug's work, Mexico was able to provide its own wheat.

At about the same time, other countries in the world were experiencing population explosions and their governments were having trouble producing enough food for all of their citizens. Two countries that experienced acute food shortages due to growing populations were India and Pakistan. During the 1960s, Borlaug brought his techniques and dwarf wheat to India and Pakistan, greatly improving their agricultural systems.

Borlaug was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970, but it never made him famous. On the contrary, for five decades he continued to work in developing countries, trying to improve their agricultural systems. During this time, his work is believed to have saved one billion people. Borlaug, who is considered the main figure of the Green Revolution, died in September 2009 at the age of 95.

Dona Marina

Dona Marina, who was given the name Malinche at birth, was born into a noble Aztec family in 1501. Her father, who was a chief, died when she was very young. Her mother remarried, and a son was born in this marriage, and Malinche, most likely, at the insistence of his stepfather, who wanted his son to become a leader, was sold into slavery.

She was sent to the city of Tabasco, and when she arrived there, she could speak both the Aztec language, which was called Nahuatl, and the Mayan language. In 1519, the Spanish conquistador Hernan Cortes arrived in Tabasco, who was presented with a gift of 20 slaves, whom he christened. One of these slaves was Malinche, whom he named doña Marina at baptism.

Cortes soon learned that Marina knew the Mayan language and the Nahuatl language. This was important because Cortés had a cleric who was a slave and could speak Maya and Spanish. With the help of these two interpreters, Cortes sent messages offering peace to the Aztec leader, Montezuma.

Marina, who apparently had a knack for learning languages, quickly learned to speak Spanish, and Cortés used her as an interpreter when his troops began attacking non-Aztec cities. But the fact is that the Spaniards attacked the Indians, who did not belong to the Aztec tribe, and then retreated. Then Marina appeared to negotiate peace. As part of these negotiations, she also asked the Indians for help in Spain's upcoming war with the Aztecs. The non-Aztec Indian population agreed to help not only to save their cities from the Spaniards, but also because the Aztecs used their cities as farms for human sacrifice. They didn't like it very much, but they were never strong enough to do anything about it.

All of Marina's work proved useful to Cortes and the Spanish troops, because when they invaded the Aztec capital, Tenochtitlan, the Aztecs were surprised, as they thought they had come in peace. In fact, they invited Cortes and his people to the city. Not only did the Spanish take them by surprise, but because the Spaniards made alliances with the non-Aztec Indians, they outnumbered and outgunned the Aztecs and conquered them in just two years.

In addition to helping in the conquest of the Aztec empire, Marina also served as the mistress of Cortes. She became pregnant and gave birth to a son, Martin Cortes, who became the first mestizo, that is, a person with European and Indian blood.

Although Marina can be considered a traitor because she helped foreigners take over their native land, her contemporaries respected her. She is credited with saving thousands of lives by negotiating peace instead of declaring all-out war by Cortés. Of course, the Spanish conquest of the Aztecs led not only to the formation of a state like Mexico, but also to the colonization of South America.

Gavrilo Princip

At the beginning of the article, we said that not everyone on this list is involved in saving lives. Now we have reached the one who is responsible for the death of millions of people. Although the First World War was caused by many factors, the assassination attempt on Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria is considered the spark that led to its start.

On June 28, 1914, Ferdinand, who was heir to the throne of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, was touring the newly acquired Bosnia. A group of Serbs of Bosnian origin were unhappy that they were now under Austrian rule, so they decided to kill the heir to the throne.

According to the most famous version of this story, Nedelko Kabrinovich threw a grenade into the motorcade, but it was an old grenade that exploded after 10 seconds. Therefore, she did nothing to Ferdinand's car, but only caused chaos, which allowed the Archduke's limousine to leave the motorcade. Kabrinovic then swallowed a cyanide pill and jumped into the river. However, the pill was expired and didn't kill him, it only made him vomit. Besides, the river was shallow, so he was arrested.

At the same time, one of Kabrinović's accomplices, 20-year-old Gavrilo Princip, saw that the assassination attempt had failed and decided to go into hiding. He walked several streets and went into a restaurant where he ordered a sandwich. Meanwhile, Ferdinand and his wife, Sofia, who were hiding in the town hall, decided to visit the people who had been injured by the grenade explosion in the hospital. However, along the way, their driver got lost and they ended up on the same street where Princip was eating his sandwich. Seizing this opportunity, Princip drew his pistol and fired two bullets; the first bullet hit Sofia, and the second hit Ferdinand. They were both killed, and Princip was arrested.

This story that a series of coincidences led to the First World War is certainly interesting, but it is hardly plausible. First, sandwiches were not popular in Bosnia at the time. Secondly, the restaurant near which Princip murdered the Archduke and his wife was on the original path of the motorcade before it deviated from it after the grenade explosion.

However, in October 1914 Princip was sentenced to 20 years in prison, where he died on April 28, 1918. While he may be the most famous person on this list, he still didn't become widely known, given that his actions were directly related to the start of a war that killed 80 million people, and the war itself led to such historical events as the advent of to the power of Hitler, the Russian Revolution and, in the end, the Second World War.

Especially for readers of my blog site - based on materials from toptenz.net- translated by Sergey Maltsev

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Read more: There are many people in history who have changed the world, for better or worse. However, for various reasons, they often went unnoticed and were rarely talked about, or worse, completely forgotten. Here are ten people who have had a profound impact on the world.

1. Herschel Grynszpan

17-year-old Herschel Grynszpan was a German Jew, and after the Nazis came to power, he moved to France. On November 7, 1938, he bought a pistol and a box of cartridges, and then went to the German embassy, approached the Nazi diplomat Ernst vom Rath and shot him 5 times. Fom Rat died two days later.

On the day of his death, Joseph Goebbels made a speech and used this assassination attempt as evidence of the danger of the Jews. This speech led directly to Kristallnacht, also known as the "Night of the Broken Windows". That night, 200 synagogues were destroyed, many Jewish businesses were robbed, 100 Jews were killed and over 30,000 Jews were arrested and sent to concentration camps. Many historians consider Kristallnacht to be the beginning of the Holocaust.

As for Grynszpan, he was arrested and held by the French. After the capture of France by the Germans in June 1940, he was sent to Germany for interrogation by the Gestapo. No one knows for sure what happened to him afterwards, and for many decades many people thought that he died in a concentration camp. But in 2016, a historian found a photograph in the archives of the Jewish Museum in Vienna that showed a man who looked like Grynszpan. The photo was taken in a displaced persons camp in 1946. However, this has not been confirmed and his true fate is still unknown.

2. Abraham Flexner

In 1908, Abraham Flexner, founder and director of Louisville Preparatory College, Kentucky, USA, published The American College: A Critique, which contained suggestions and critiques of American college education. It attracted the attention of the Carnegie Endowment, which commissioned Flexner to review 155 medical colleges in the US and Canada.

The result of his research was the Flexner Report, which had a major impact on medical colleges. In particular, Flexner recommended reducing the volume of lectures and expanding practice. He also believed that many colleges were in poor condition and recommended closing two-thirds of them. In 25 years, the number of medical colleges dropped from 155 to 66. Most of them were closed on Flexner's advice. Ultimately, all his proposals were accepted, which laid the foundation for the modern school of medicine.

3. Malcolm McLean

Malcom McLean was born into a farming family in North Carolina in 1914. During the Great Depression, he opened a small trucking company. McLean was always struck by the irrationality of cargo handling in commercial ports, where goods were first unloaded from ships and then loaded onto trucks. In his opinion, it would be better to simply move the containers from the ship to the truck.

McLean decided to implement his idea in the 1950s. He sold his interest in a trucking company, which then had 1,700 trucks, for $6 million, and then took out a bank loan for $42 million (other sources say $500 million). He bought two old oil tankers and used the rest of the money to rebuild them and dock and repair facilities in Newark, New Jersey. After completion of work in April 1956, his tanker was 9 meters long and carried 58 boxes.

McLean's shipping containers caught on because they were much more efficient and saved money. In addition, the containers were hermetically sealed, making it difficult to steal goods from trucks. Soon other ports were rebuilt for shipping containers, and after 40 years the latter became the norm. In 1996, about 90% of all goods were transported in shipping containers on specially equipped ships.

McLean sold his stake in the shipping company for $160 million in 1969. After that, he did various things, but spent most of his time on his pig farm, where he worked until his death in 2001.

4. Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky

Psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky met at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in the 1960s. Between 1971 and 1979, their joint and very important work focused on two topics - judgment and decision making.

In particular, Kahneman and Tversky found that people don't think like statisticians. Even professional statisticians don't think like logical statisticians when it comes to judgment and decision making. In fact, people respond to so-called heuristics, which are workarounds designed by our brains that force us to focus on just one aspect of complex problems. They initially identified three such heuristics, but other heuristics were discovered in later years.

One of the heuristics they identified is accessibility. Example: Which is more common in the US, gun suicide or gun homicide? Even though suicide is more common, many people think gun homicide is more common. This is because when people think of gun death, they think of gun homicide, because they are often in the news, and gun suicide is rarely mentioned.

In 1979, Kahneman and Tversky published Prospect Theory: An Analysis of Decision Making under Risk, which revolutionized the world of behavioral economics and changed the social sciences forever. In 2002, Kahneman received the Nobel Prize in Economics, which he would no doubt have shared with Tversky, but, unfortunately, he died of metastatic melanoma in June 1996.

5. Dietrich Eckart

Dietrich Eckart was one of the founders of the German Workers' Party. He was an implacable opponent of the Treaty of Versailles and blamed Jews and Social Democrats for Germany's defeat in World War I.

A few months before meeting Hitler, Eckart wrote a poem in which he meets a man whom he calls "great", "nameless" and "the one whom everyone can feel, but no one sees." When Hitler met with Eckart after one of his speeches, Eckart felt that he had found his "German messiah". He helped Hitler reveal himself and taught him how to use his charisma. Eckart also brought Hitler into influential circles, which allowed the latter to raise money for the German Workers' Party.

In 1920, the party co-founded by Eckart was led by people carefully selected by him, who renamed it the National Socialist German Workers' Party, better known as the Nazi Party.

On November 9, 1923, Eckart participated in the failed coup attempt known as the Beer Putsch. He was arrested but soon released because he was heavily addicted to morphine. He died a few weeks later on November 26, 1923.

Hitler dedicated a volume of his book "Mein Kampf" to Eckart, in which he calls him "father's friend", and also named the stadium that hosted the 1936 Summer Olympics after him.

6. Hedy Lamarr

In the 1930s and 40s, Hedy Lamarr starred in several well-known films, including Busy City starring Clark Gable and Samson and Delilah starring Victor Mature. However, she didn't change the world because she starred in a number of old films. In fact, her hobby changed the world. In her free time, she was engaged in invention.

In 1942, at the peak of her acting career, Lamarr wanted to take part in the war as much as she could. In particular, she wanted to help the Allies develop a communications system that could not be intercepted. Therefore, she, along with her friend, composer George Antheil, patented a device called "secret communication system". This system could change radio frequencies in a pre-programmed way. If someone was eavesdropping, they could only hear short snippets of messages before switching to another frequency. Ultimately, the military did not use this system. But over the years, the invention of Lamarr and Antheil became very important because it was a cheap and effective way to provide security in new technologies such as military communications, cell phones and Wi-Fi.

As for Lamarr, her acting career began to decline in the 50s, and the last film with her participation was released in 1958. She died at the age of 86 on January 19, 2000.

7. Dennis Ritchie

Dennis Ritchie, who was born in September 1941, received degrees in physics and applied mathematics from Harvard University and then took a job at the Bell Lab in Murray Hill, New Jersey. In the mid-1960s, Ritchie worked on Multics ("Multiplex Information and Computing Service"), which was a joint project between Bell Lab, General Electric and MIT. Bell Lab withdrew from the project in 1969.

The problem with Multics was that the operating system was too complex. So Ritchie, along with his partner Ken Thomson, decided to create a simpler, smaller operating system, which they called Unix. Then, to make this operating system run quickly and efficiently, Ritchie developed the C programming language, which was based on a never used programming language called CPL (Combined Programming Language), jointly developed by the University of Cambridge and London in 1964.

Ritchie and Thomson provided the Unix operating system free of charge to universities, which trained future programmers on it. Steve Jobs was one of the fans of Unix. He used it after opening Apple, and when he was fired in 1985, he used it in the development of his NeXT workstation.

Ritchie died on October 12, 2011, exactly one week after the death of Steve Jobs. After Ritchie's death, Wired magazine called him "the shoulders that Steve Jobs stood on."

8. Percy Julian

Percy Julian was born in 1899 in Montgomery (Alabama, USA) and was the grandson of former slaves. Because he was black, he was not allowed to attend high school. Then he applied to Depot University in Greencastle (Indiana, USA) and was accepted into it; but in order to keep up, he had to go to evening classes. Subsequently, he received a professorship in chemistry at the University of Vienna, which he had been denied at Harvard University.

In 1935, while working at Depot University, he made an impressive discovery. He and his partner were the first in the world to synthesize physostigmine, which is used in the treatment of glaucoma. Although many other people would have been offered a teaching position for such a discovery, Julian was black and was not offered such an offer. And in the end, he left the academy and got a job at the Glidden Company in Chicago, where he worked with soybeans.

There he also made a number of important discoveries. In particular, he was the first to synthesize progesterone, which helps women prevent miscarriages, and is also used in the treatment of cancer. He also synthesized testosterone, which is still used in steroids to this day. Finally, he also succeeded in obtaining inexpensive synthetic cortisone, which is used in the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis. In total, Julian held over 100 chemical patents.

However, despite his successes, Julian led a life of hardship and was heavily discriminated against because of the color of his skin. However, he did not give up and was active in the black civil rights movement. He died in 1975.

9. Edward Bernays

Bernays was born in Vienna, Austria in 1891, but his family moved to New York when he was only a year old. As an adult, Bernays opened an advertising company, and his uncle, the famous psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, sent him a copy of his Introduction to Psychoanalysis. After reading this book, Bernays realized that he could use psychoanalysis to convince people to buy things and do things without their knowledge.

To test his hypothesis, he tried to get women to smoke. In 1929, smoking was taboo for women because it made them look like women of easy virtue. Bernays knew that if women started smoking, his client, the tobacco company Lucky Strike, would make a lot of money.

Bernays came up with a campaign in which he called Lucky Strike cigarettes "torches of freedom". Then he pulled out a list of debutantes from Vogue magazine and convinced them that if they smoked in public places like Fifth Avenue, they would be promoting women's rights. They were told to assemble for a "protest" at the Easter parade on April 1, 1929, having notified the press in advance. While this action did little to help women's rights, it certainly helped Bernays and the tobacco industry.

Beech-nut also hired Bernays because they were having trouble selling one of their products, bacon. To get people to eat more bacon, Bernays asked doctors which was better: a light breakfast or a hearty breakfast. Most doctors answered that a hearty breakfast was better, so Bernays mentioned in his campaign that doctors recommend eating bacon, eggs, and toast for breakfast, and he ultimately laid the foundation for an all-American breakfast.

These are just two specific ways in which Bernays "changed the world," but his use of psychoanalysis for mass persuasion had a ripple effect on advertising and propaganda that is still being felt today.

10. Maurice Hilleman

Hilleman was born in Montana in 1919 and received his Ph.D. in microbiology from the University of Chicago in 1944. After graduating from university, he went to work as a researcher at E.R. Squibb & Sons, where he developed his first vaccine, which was used to protect the US military against the Japanese encephalitis B virus.

Hilleman then worked for Merck & Co., Inc, where he developed or improved about 40 different vaccines, including vaccines for chickenpox, hepatitis A, hepatitis B, measles, meningitis, mumps, and rubella. Of the 14 vaccines recommended for children today, 9 were developed by Hilleman. According to The New York Times, he saved more lives than any other scientist of the 20th century.

However, Hilleman did not receive the Nobel Prize he certainly deserved. Instead, in 1998, towards the end of Hilleman's life, quite the opposite happened. The respected medical journal, The Lancet, published an article by Andrew Wakefield that linked the rise in autism in the country to M.M.R., Hilleman's vaccine for meningitis, mumps, and rubella. And instead of the Nobel Prize, Hilleman began to receive threatening letters by e-mail.

In later years, this article was widely criticized as there was absolutely no evidence of a link between vaccinations and an increase in autism. The Lancet withdrew the article, and in 2010 Wakefield was stripped of his medical license. However, the damage has already been done.

Especially for readers of my blog site - according to an article from toptenz.net- translated by Sergey Maltsev

The Russian prince Svyatoslav, who ruled in Kiev, had three sons - Yaropolk, Oleg and Vladimir. Immediately after the death of Svyatoslav, the brothers went to war with each other, each wanted to rule in Kiev, to become an autocratic prince. Vladimir showed great foresight in this struggle and turned out to be the winner. He converted to Christianity, baptized Russia and in every possible way contributed to the education of ordinary people.

Prince Ivan III Vasilyevich (1440-1505) - Unifier of Russian lands

The Grand Duke of Moscow Vasily II, nicknamed the Dark One, attracted his son Ivan to manage the affairs of the state during his lifetime. Thus, he confirmed his legal rights to the throne. All business papers were signed by both of them. Ivan entered into full rights after the death of his father, when he was 22 years old. Ivan III began to unite the Russian lands around Moscow, turning it into the capital of the all-Russian state. Under him, the Moscow principality got rid of the Mongol-Tatar yoke. He knew how to carefully listen to the advice of his boyars. In adulthood, Prince Ivan 3 did not like to take part in military campaigns, believing that commanders should fight, and the sovereign should decide important matters at home. For 43 years of his reign, the Moscow principality freed itself from the power of the Horde khans, significantly expanded and strengthened. Under him, the code of laws "Sudebnik" was adopted, a local system of land tenure appeared.

Peter I (1672-1725) - "What I want, it must be"

Peter 1 was truly great. Everything was great with Peter - growth, army, battles, territories, plans. He sought not only to expand the borders of the Russian state, but also to make life in it similar to what he saw in Europe. He learned a lot himself and taught others. However, in his desire to quickly introduce new orders, he often went to extremes, massacres in his time were not uncommon. He was in a hurry in everything, as if he felt that fate had given him a not very long life.

Catherine II (1729-1796) - Enlightened Monarchine

On June 28, 1762, a bloodless palace coup took place in St. Petersburg. The wife of Emperor Peter III, Ekaterina Alekseevna, with the help of the guards, removed her husband from power and declared herself an autocratic empress. Once on the Russian throne, Catherine II tried to win the loyalty and love of her subjects. She carried out many economic transformations, promoted the development of trade in every possible way, torture and executions were abolished in Russia, and elected courts appeared. The period of her reign was called the "golden age", and the empress herself was called the Great.

Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin (1799-1837) - The sun of Russian poetry

Time inexorably moves us away from Pushkin, the poet, playwright, prose writer, but his creative genius becomes more and more distinct from this. His poems, poems and stories showed different aspects of Russian reality, secular life and peasant life, they reflected the restless soul of the poet, deep feelings and experiences. His poetry and prose were enthusiastically received by readers of the 19th century. It was then that the halo of his greatness was created, he was considered the founder of Russian literature, the creator of the modern literary language. It is no coincidence that the time in which he lived is called the “Pushkin era”.

Nikolai Ivanovich Pirogov (1810-1881) - Surgeon from God

Nikolai Ivanovich Pirogov worked for hours in the anatomical theater, cutting soft tissues, examining diseased organs, sawing bones, looking for replacements for damaged joints. Anatomy became a practical school for him, which laid the foundation for his further successful surgical activity. Pirogov was the first to come up with the idea of plastic surgery, applied anesthesia in military field surgery, for the first time applied a plaster cast in the field, suggested the existence of pathogens that cause suppuration of wounds. His works, various medical atlases put forward Russian surgery to one of the first places in the world.

Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky (1821- 1881) - Defender of the poor

Despite the wide popularity of Fyodor Dostoevsky in Russia, worldwide recognition and interest in his work came after his death. Everyone noted his deep psychologism, passion in depicting "humiliated and offended". The German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche wrote that Dostoevsky was the only psychologist from whom he learned anything. The works of Fyodor Mikhailovich had a noticeable influence on writers: the Austrian Stefan Zweig, the Frenchman Marcel Proust, the Englishman Oscar Wilde, the Germans Thomas and Heinrich Mann.

Leo Nikolayevich Tolstoy (1828-1910) - Preacher of morality

The famous Russian theater director and creator of the acting system, Konstantin Stanislavsky, wrote in his book “My Life in Art” that in the difficult years of the first revolutions, when despair gripped people, many recalled that at the same time Leo Tolstoy lived with them. And it became easier on the soul. He was the conscience of mankind. At the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century, Tolstoy became the spokesman for the thoughts and hopes of millions of people. He was a moral support for many. It was read and listened to not only by Russia, but also by Europe, America and Asia.

Dmitry Ivanovich Mendeleev (1834-1907) - Legislator in chemistry

Dmitry Ivanovich Mendeleev was a versatile scientist: in the laboratory he studied new properties of materials, at plants and factories he analyzed the results of their use, and carefully summarized information at his desk. Every year he traveled to different regions of the country, traveled abroad. The Periodic Table of Chemical Elements created by him - a brilliant discovery - established the dependence of various properties of elements on the charge of the atomic nucleus and was accepted throughout the world. The collection of his scientific works is 25 volumes.

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840-1893) - Composer for all time

Foreign performers of piano music, violinists, cellists and vocalists are well aware of the International Tchaikovsky Music Competition, which is held in Moscow every 4 years. The symphonic works of the Russian composer have long been heard in the concert halls of many leading capitals of the world, his operas and ballets are in the repertoire of the world's outstanding opera houses. Tchaikovsky left behind a huge musical legacy that has become part of the global culture.

Ivan Petrovich Pavlov (1849-1936) - Teacher of the theory of reflexes

Awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine and Physiology for 1904, the creator of the science of higher nervous activity, the Russian scientist Ivan Pavlov was recognized as the foreman of physiologists around the world.

Vladimir Ivanovich Vernadsky (1863-1945) - Discoverer of the biosphere

Vladimir Vernadsky entered the history of Russian and world science as an outstanding natural scientist, thinker, and public figure. He studied such special branches of knowledge about the Earth as geology, crystallography, mineralogy, geochemistry, and biology. And he determined the paths of the general evolution of the Earth, introduced the concepts of "biosphere" and "noosphere" - the areas of distribution of life on Earth as a result of evolutionary impact on it by humans. He was the forerunner of a new branch of science - ecology.

Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov (Lenin) (1870-1924) - Practitioner of building communism

Vladimir Ilyich Lenin is the most famous politician of the 20th century. For over 70 years in the Soviet Union, he was considered an unsurpassed genius who set the goal of building communism in Russia. In 1917, Lenin took on the impossible task of making backward agrarian Russia socialist and then communist. He dreamed that the working people would receive everything according to their needs. The idea turned out to be untenable. True, after Lenin, the country gradually switched to an industrial path of development. Communism was not achieved, but at the cost of enormous efforts, including millions of human victims, the USSR approached the leading positions on the world stage.

Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili (Stalin) (1878 -1953) - The inspirer of all victories

The General Secretary of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks), the head of the Soviet government, Joseph Stalin led the country to an industrial path of development, with his name the Soviet people won the Great Patriotic War, he caused mass labor heroism, under him the country became a superpower. But he planted a totalitarian, dictatorial regime in the country, carried out forced collectivization, during his time famine broke out in the country, mass repressions were carried out, the world community was divided into two camps - socialist and capitalist. In history, Stalin remained a double personality: the winner in the war and the tyrant of his own people.

Sergei Pavlovich Korolev (1906-1966) - Chief Designer

Sergei Pavlovich Korolev was an outstanding design engineer who dreamed of conquering space. He made a huge contribution to organizing the production of rocket and space technology and rocket weapons in the Soviet Union. He was the first in the world to launch satellites, scientific stations, and spaceships into earth orbit. The news shocked the whole world. He dreamed of exploring the expanses of the Universe with the help of automatic devices and began to prepare a flight to Mars, but he did not manage to carry out his plan.

photo from internet

Who do you consider the most worthy example and inspiration for yourself personally? Martin Luther King Jr., Yuri Gagarin, or maybe your grandfather? Our world has been forming for several millennia, and a lot of historical figures took part in this difficult process, who made their invaluable contribution to science, culture and many other spheres of life, both in their countries and all of humanity. It is very difficult and almost impossible to choose those whose influence was the most significant. However, the authors of this list still decided to try and collect in one publication the most inspiring personalities in the history of world civilizations. Some of them are known to everyone, others are not known to everyone, but they all have one thing in common - these people have changed our world for the better. From the Dalai Lama to Charles Darwin, here are 25 of the most outstanding personalities in history!

25. Charles Darwin

The famous British traveler, naturalist, geologist and biologist, Charles Darwin is best known for his theory, which changed the idea of human nature and the development of the world in all its diversity. Darwin's theory of evolution and natural selection suggests that all kinds of living organisms, including humans, descended from common ancestors, and this concept shocked the entire scientific community at one time. Darwin published The Theory of Evolution, with some examples and evidence, in his revolutionary On the Origin of Species in 1859, and our world and the way we know it has changed a lot since then.

24. Tim Berners-Lee

Photo: Paul Clarke

Tim Berners-Lee is a British engineer, inventor and computer scientist, best known as the creator of the World Wide Web. He is sometimes called the "Father of the Internet" and it was Berners-Lee who developed the first hypertext web browser, web server, and web editor. The technologies of this outstanding scientist have spread worldwide and have forever changed the way information is generated and processed.

23. Nicholas Winton

Photo: cs:User:Li-sung

Nicholas Winton was a British philanthropist, and since the late 80s, he became known primarily for taking 669 Jewish children from the territory of Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia right on the eve of World War II. Winton moved all these children to British orphanages, and some of them even managed to be placed in families, which definitely saved them all from certain death in concentration camps or during the bombing. The philanthropist organized as many as 8 trains from Prague and also took the children out of Vienna, but with the help of other modes of transport. The Englishman never sought fame, and for 49 years he kept his heroic deed a secret. In 1988, Winton's wife found a notebook with records from 1939 and the addresses of the families who received the young rescuers. Since then, recognition, orders and awards have fallen upon him. Nicholas Winton died at the age of 106 in 2015.

22. Buddha Shakyamuni (Gautama Buddha)

Photo: Max Pixel

Also known as Siddhartha Gautama (from birth), Tathagata (who has come), or Bhagavan (blissful), Buddha Shakyamuni (the awakened sage of the Shakya family) was the spiritual leader and founder of Buddhism, one of the world's three leading religions. The Buddha was born in the 6th century BC into a royal family and lived in absolute isolation and luxury. When the prince matured, he left his family and all his possessions to plunge into self-discovery and seek to save humanity from suffering. After several years of meditation and contemplation, Gautama attained enlightenment and became a Buddha. Through his teachings, Shakyamuni Buddha influenced the lives of millions of people around the world.

21. Rosa Parks

Photo: wikimedia commons

Also known as the “First Lady of Civil Rights” and “the mother of the freedom movement,” Rosa Parks was a true pioneer and founder of the black rights movement in Alabama in the 1950s, where there was still a strong racial segregation of citizens in those days. In 1955, in Montgomery, Alabama, a courageous African-American woman and passionate civil rights activist, Rosa Parks, refused to give up her seat on a bus to a white passenger, disobeying the driver's orders. Her rebellious act provoked other blacks into what was later nicknamed the legendary "Montgomery Bus Boycott." This boycott lasted 381 days and became one of the key events in the history of the black civil rights movement in the United States.

20. Henry Dunant

Photo: ICRC

A successful Swiss businessman and active public figure, Henri Dunant became the first person to receive the Nobel Peace Prize in 1901. During a business trip in 1859, Dunant faced the terrible aftermath of the Battle of Solferino (Solferino, Italy), where the troops of Napoleon, the Kingdom of Sardinia and the Austrian Empire clashed under the leadership of Franz Joseph I, and the battlefield was left to die almost 9 thousand wounded. In 1863, in response to the horrors of war and the brutality of the fight, the entrepreneur founded the well-known International Committee of the Red Cross. Adopted in 1864, the Geneva Convention for the Amelioration of the Condition of the Wounded was also based on the ideas expressed by Henri Dunant.

19. Simon Bolivar

Photo: wikimedia commons

Also known as the Liberator (El Libertador), Simón Bolivar was an outstanding Venezuelan military and political leader who played a key role in the liberation from Spanish domination of as many as 6 countries of South and Central America - Venezuela, Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Panama. Bolivar was born into a wealthy aristocratic family, but he devoted most of his life to military campaigns and the struggle for the independence of the Spanish colonies in America. The country of Bolivia, by the way, was named after this hero and liberator.

18. Albert Einstein

Photo: wikimedia commons

Albert Einstein is one of the most respected and influential scientists of all time. This outstanding theoretical physicist, Nobel laureate and humanist public figure gave the world over 300 scientific papers on physics and about 150 books and articles on history, philosophy and other humanitarian areas. His whole life was full of interesting research, revolutionary ideas and theories, which later became fundamental for modern science. Einstein was best known for his theory of relativity, and thanks to this work he became one of the greatest personalities in the history of mankind. Even after almost a century, this Theory continues to influence the thinking of the modern scientific community, working on the creation of the Theory of Everything (or the Unified Field Theory).

17. Leonardo da Vinci

Photo: wikimedia commons

It is difficult to describe and list all the directions in which Leonardo da Vinci succeeded, a man who changed the whole world with his mere existence. Throughout his life, this Italian Renaissance genius managed to achieve unprecedented heights in painting, and in architecture, and in music, and in mathematics, and in anatomy, and in engineering, and in many other areas. Da Vinci is recognized as one of the most versatile and talented people who ever lived on our planet, and he is the author of such revolutionary inventions as the parachute, helicopter, tank and scissors.

16. Christopher Columbus

Photo: wikimedia commons

The famous Italian explorer, traveler and colonizer, Christopher Columbus was not the first European to sail to America (after all, the Vikings had been here before him). However, his voyages launched a whole era of the most outstanding discoveries, conquests and colonizations, which lasted for several more centuries after his death. Columbus' travels to the New World greatly influenced the development of the geography of those times, because at the beginning of the 15th century people still believed that the Earth was flat, and that there were no more lands beyond the Atlantic.

15 Martin Luther King Jr.

Photo: wikimedia commons

This is one of the most influential personalities of the 20th century. Martin Luther King Jr. is best known for his peaceful movement against discrimination, racial segregation and for the civil rights of black Americans, for which he even received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964. Martin Luther King Jr. was a Baptist preacher and vibrant speaker who inspired millions around the world to fight for democratic freedoms and their rights. He played a key role in promoting civil rights through peaceful protests based on the Christian faith and philosophy of Mahatma Gandhi.

14. Bill Gates

Photo: DFID – UK Department for International Development

The founder of the legendary multinational company Microsoft, Bill Gates was considered the richest man in the world for almost 20 years. More recently, however, Gates has become known primarily as a generous philanthropist, rather than for his success in business and the information technology market. At one time, Bill Gates stimulated the development of the personal computer market, making computers accessible to the most ordinary users, which is exactly what he was trying to achieve. Now he is passionate about the idea of providing Internet access to the whole world. Gates also works on projects dedicated to combating global warming and combating gender discrimination.

William Shakespeare is considered one of the greatest writers and playwrights in the English language, and he has had a profound influence on a whole galaxy of writers, as well as on millions of readers around the world. In addition, Shakespeare introduced about 2,000 new words, most of which are still in use in modern English. With his work, the national poet of England has inspired a great many composers, artists and filmmakers from around the world.

12. Sigmund Freud

Photo: wikimedia commons

The Austrian neurologist and founder of the science of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud is famous precisely for his unique studies of the mysterious world of the human subconscious. With them, he forever changed the way we evaluate ourselves and the people around us. Freud's work influenced the psychology, sociology, medicine, art, and anthropology of the 20th century, and his therapeutic techniques and theories in the field of psychoanalysis are still being studied and applied in practice.

11. Oskar Schindler

Photo: wikimedia commons

Oskar Schindler was a German entrepreneur, Nazi Party member, spy, womanizer and drinker. All this does not sound very attractive and certainly does not sound like a characterization of a real hero. However, contrary to all of the above, Schindler was on this list absolutely deservedly, because during the Holocaust and World War II, this man saved about 1,200 Jews, rescuing them from death camps to work in his plants and factories. The heroic story of Oskar Schindler has been described in many books and films, but the most famous adaptation was Steven Spielberg's 1993 film Schindler's List (Steven Spielberg, Schindler's List).

10. Mother Teresa

Photo: wikimedia commons

A Catholic nun and missionary, Mother Teresa devoted almost her entire life to serving the poor, the sick, the disabled, and orphans. She founded the charitable movement and the women's monastic congregation "Missionary Sisters of Love" (Congregatio Sororum Missionarium Caritatis), which exists in almost all countries of the world (in 133 countries as of 2012). In 1979, Mother Teresa won the Nobel Peace Prize, and 19 years after her death (in 2016), she was canonized by Pope Francis himself.

9 Abraham Lincoln

Photo: wikimedia commons

Abraham Lincoln was the 16th President of the United States and one of the most influential personalities in American history. Coming from a poor farming family, Lincoln fought for the reunification of the country during the Civil War between North and South, strengthened the federal government, modernized the American economy, but he earned a reputation as an outstanding historical figure primarily for his contribution to the development of a democratic society and the fight against slavery and oppression. the black population of the USA. The legacy of Abraham Lincoln still has a defining influence on the American people.

8 Stephen Hawking

Photo: Lwp Kommunikacio / flickr

Stephen Hawking is one of the most famous and respected scientists in the world, and he has made an invaluable contribution to the development of science (especially cosmology and theoretical physics). The work of this British researcher and ardent popularizer of science is also impressive because Hawking made almost all of his discoveries despite a rare and slowly progressing degenerative disease. The first signs of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis appeared in his student years, and now the great scientist is completely paralyzed. However, a severe illness and paralysis did not prevent Hawking from marrying twice, becoming the father of two sons, flying in zero gravity, writing many books, becoming one of the founders of quantum cosmology and the winner of a whole collection of prestigious awards, medals and orders.

7. Unknown rebel

Photo: HiMY SYeD / flickr

This conditional name refers to an unknown man who independently held back a column of tanks for half an hour during the protests on Tiananmen Square (Tiananmen, China) in 1989. In those days, hundreds of protesters, most of whom were ordinary students, were killed in clashes with the military. The identity and fate of the unknown rebel remain unknown, but this photograph has become an international symbol of courage and peaceful resistance.

6. Muhammad

Photo: wikimedia commons

Muhammad was born in 570 AD in the city of Mecca (Mecca, modern Saudi Arabia). He is considered a Muslim prophet and the founder of the Islamic religion. Being not only a preacher, but also a politician, Muhammad united all the Arab peoples of those times into a single Muslim empire that conquered most of the Arabian Peninsula. The author of the Qur'an began with a few followers, but eventually his teachings and practices formed the basis of the Islamic religion, which has become the second most popular religion in the world today, with about 1.8 billion believers.

5. Dalai Lama XIV (The 14th Dalai Lama)

Photo: wikimedia commons

Dalai Lama XIV or at birth Lhamo Dhondup (Lhamo Thondup) is a 1989 Nobel Peace Prize winner and a well-known preacher of the Buddhist philosophy of peace, professing respect for all life on Earth, and calling for the harmonious coexistence of man and nature. The former spiritual and political leader of Tibet in exile, the 14th Dalai Lama always tried to find a compromise and sought reconciliation with the Chinese authorities who invaded Tibet with territorial claims. In addition, Lhamo Dhondrub is a zealous supporter of the women's rights movement, interfaith dialogues and advocates for solving global environmental problems.

4. Princess Diana (Princess Diana)

Photo: Auguel

Also known as "Lady Di" and "The People's Princess," Princess Diana has won millions of hearts around the world with her philanthropic work, hard work, and sincerity. She devoted most of her short life to helping those in need from third world countries. The Queen of Human Hearts, as she was also called, founded the movement to stop the production and use of anti-personnel mines, and was actively involved in the activities of several dozen humanitarian campaigns and non-profit organizations, including the Red Cross, Great Ormond Street Children's Hospital (London's Great Ormond Street Hospital) and AIDS research. Lady Dee died at the age of 36 from injuries sustained in a car accident.

3. Nelson Mandela

Photo: Library of the London School of Economics and Political Science

Nelson Mandela was a South African politician, philanthropist, revolutionary, reformer, passionate human rights activist during apartheid (racial segregation policy) and President of South Africa from 1994 to 1999. He had a profound influence on the history of South Africa and the world. For his beliefs, Mandela spent almost 27 years in prison, but he did not lose faith in the liberation of his people from the oppression of the authorities, and after leaving prison he achieved democratic elections, as a result of which he became the first black president of South Africa. His tireless work for the peaceful overthrow of the apartheid regime and for the establishment of democracy has inspired millions of people around the world. In 1993, Nelson Mandela won the Nobel Peace Prize.

2. Jeanne d'Arc (Jeanne d "Arc)

Photo: wikimedia commons

Also known as the Maid of Orleans, Joan of Arc is the greatest heroine in French history and one of the most famous women in world history. Born into a poor farming family in 1412, she believed she had been chosen by God to lead France to victory in the Hundred Years' War with England. The girl died before the end of the war, but her courage, passion and devotion to her goal (especially during the siege of Orleans) caused a long-awaited moral upsurge and inspired the entire French army for the final victory in the protracted and seemingly hopeless confrontation with the British. Unfortunately, in the battle, the Maid of Orleans was captured by the enemies, was condemned by the Inquisition and burned at the stake at the age of 19.

1. Jesus Christ

Photo: wikimedia commons

Jesus Christ is the central figure of the Christian religion, and He has had such a strong influence on our world that He is often called the most influential and inspiring person in the history of mankind. Compassion, love for neighbors, sacrifice, humility, repentance and forgiveness, to which Jesus called in his sermons and personal example, were concepts that were absolutely opposite to the values of ancient civilizations during His life on Earth. Nevertheless, today there are about 2.4 billion followers of His teachings and Christian faith in the world.