Alphabetical Notable Historical People Name Game

Washiungton Irving

Washington Irving (April 3, 1783 – November 28, 1859) was an American author, essayist, biographer, historian, and diplomat of the early 19th century. He is best known for his short stories "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" and "Rip Van Winkle", both of which appear in his book The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. His historical works include biographies of George Washington, Oliver Goldsmith and Muhammad, and several histories of 15th-century Spain dealing with subjects such as Christopher Columbus, the Moors, and the Alhambra. Irving served as the U.S. ambassador to Spain from 1842 to 1846.

He made his literary debut in 1802 with a series of observational letters to the Morning Chronicle, written under the pseudonym Jonathan Oldstyle. After moving to England for the family business in 1815, he achieved international fame with the publication of The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. in 1819-20. He continued to publish regularly—and almost always successfully—throughout his life, and completed a five-volume biography of George Washington just eight months before his death, at age 76, in Tarrytown, New York.

Irving, along with James Fenimore Cooper, was among the first American writers to earn acclaim in Europe, and Irving encouraged American authors such as Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and Edgar Allan Poe. Irving was also admired by some European writers, including Walter Scott, Lord Byron, Thomas Campbell, Francis Jeffrey, and Charles Dickens. As America's first genuine internationally best-selling author, Irving advocated for writing as a legitimate profession, and argued for stronger laws to protect American writers from copyright infringement.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_Irving

Virginia E. Johnson, born Mary Virginia Eshelman (February 11, 1925 – July 24, 2013),[2] was an American sexologist, best known as the junior member of the Masters and Johnson sexuality research team. Along with William H. Masters, whom she subsequently married, she pioneered research into the nature of human sexual response and the diagnosis and treatment of sexual dysfunctions and disorders from 1957 until the 1990s.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia_E._Johnson

Martin Luther King

Martin Luther King, Jr. (January 15, 1929 – April 4, 1968) was an American clergyman, activist, humanitarian, and leader in the African-American Civil Rights Movement. He is best known for his role in the advancement of civil rights using nonviolent civil disobedience. King has become a national icon in the history of American progressivism

Fanny Kemble (27 November 1809 – 15 January 1893) was a British actress whose daughter was the mother of Owen Wister who was so precocious that Henry James called on him when he was 12.

David Livingstone (19 March 1813 – 1 May 1873), a British Congregationalist pioneer medical missionary with the London Missionary Society and an explorer in Africa. His meeting with H. M. Stanley on 10 November 1871 gave rise to the popular quotation "Dr. Livingstone, I presume?" It was considered the ultimate in "cool" at the time.

Nellie Melba

Dame Nellie Melba GBE (19 May 1861 – 23 February 1931), born Helen "Nellie" Porter Mitchell, was an Australian operatic soprano. She became one of the most famous singers of the late Victorian Era and the early 20th century. She was the first Australian to achieve international recognition as a classical musician....

Melba's name is associated with four foods, all of which were created in her honour by the French chef Auguste Escoffier:
Peach Melba, a dessert
Melba sauce, a sweet purée of raspberries and red currant
Melba toast, a crisp dry toast
Melba Garniture, chicken, truffles and mushrooms stuffed into tomatoes with velouté sauce.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nellie_Melba

Rudolf Khametovich Nureyev March 1938 – 6 January 1993) Famous for hormonic rhapsodies on a G-string.

Jacques Offenbach

Jacques Offenbach (20 June 1819 – 5 October 1880) was a German-born French composer, cellist and impresario of the romantic period. He is remembered for his nearly 100 operettas of the 1850s–1870s and his uncompleted opera The Tales of Hoffmann. He was a powerful influence on later composers of the operetta genre, particularly Johann Strauss, Jr. and Arthur Sullivan. His best-known works were continually revived during the 20th century, and many of his operettas continue to be staged in the 21st. The Tales of Hoffman remains part of the standard opera repertory.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques_Offenbach

Ignacy Jan Paderewski

Ignacy Jan Paderewski, GBE (Polish: [iɡˈnat͡sɨ ˈjan padɛˈrɛfskʲi]; 18 November [O.S. 6 November] 1860 – 29 June 1941) was a Polish pianist and composer, and also a politician, and spokesman for Polish nationalism.[1] He was a favorite of concert audiences across the globe. His musical fame opened access to diplomats and the media. He was the prime minister and foreign minister of Poland in 1919, and represented Poland at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919.

Dong Qichang

Dong Qichang--(1555–1636), was a Chinese painter, scholar, calligrapher, and art theorist of the later period of the Ming Dynasty.

His work favored expression over formal likeness. He also avoided anything he deemed to be slick or sentimental. This led him to create landscapes with intentionally distorted spatial features. Still his work was in no way abstract as it took elements from earlier Yuan masters. His views on expression had importance to later "individualist" painters.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dong_Qichang


Dong Qichang, Eight Views of Autumn Moods, dated 1620. Album of eight leaves, leaf four. Shanghai Museum.

François Rabelais; c. 1494 – 9 April 1553. French monk with an impish wit.

Mary Shelley

30 August 1797 – 1 February 1851

English novelist, short story writer, dramatist, essayist, biographer, and travel writer, best known for her Gothic novel Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus.

Georg Philipp Telemann

Georg Philipp Telemann (14 March 1681 – 25 June 1767) was a German Baroque composer and multi-instrumentalist. Almost completely self-taught in music, he became a composer against his family's wishes. After studying in Magdeburg, Zellerfeld, and Hildesheim, Telemann entered the University of Leipzig to study law, but eventually settled on a career in music. He held important positions in Leipzig, Sorau, Eisenach, and Frankfurt before settling in Hamburg in 1721, where he became musical director of the city's five main churches. While Telemann's career prospered, his personal life was always troubled: his first wife died only a few months after their marriage, and his second wife had extramarital affairs and accumulated a large gambling debt before leaving Telemann.

Telemann was one of the most prolific composers in history (at least in terms of surviving oeuvre) and was considered by his contemporaries to be one of the leading German composers of the time—he was compared favorably both to his friend Johann Sebastian Bach, who made Telemann the godfather and namesake of his son Carl Philipp Emanuel, and to George Frideric Handel, whom Telemann also knew personally. Telemann's music incorporates several national styles (French, Italian) and is even at times influenced by Polish popular music. He remained at the forefront of all new musical tendencies and his music is an important link between the late Baroque and early Classical styles.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georg_Philipp_Telemann

Umberto 1 of Italy

Umberto I or Humbert I (Italian: Umberto Ranieri Carlo Emanuele Giovanni Maria Ferdinando Eugenio di Savoia, English: Humbert Ranier Charles Emmanuel John Mary Ferdinand Eugene of Savoy; 14 March 1844 – 29 July 1900), nicknamed the Good (in Italian il Buono), was the King of Italy from 9 January 1878 until his death.

François Villon

François Villon born in Paris in 1431 and disappeared from view in 1463, is the best known French poet of the late Middle Ages. A ne'er-do-well who was involved in criminal behavior and got into numerous scrapes with authorities,Villon wrote about some of these experiences in his poems...

The refrain "Where are the snows of yester-year?" in Dante Gabriel Rossetti's translation The Ballad of Dead Ladies of Villon's "Mais où sont les neiges d'antan?" from Ballade des dames du temps jadis is one of the most famous lines of translated secular poetry in the English-speaking world.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fran%C3%A7ois_Villon

Slim Whitman


Born January 20, 1923
Tampa, Florida, US
Died June 19, 2013 (aged 90)
Orange Park, Florida, US
Occupations Singer-songwriter, musician
Instruments Acoustic guitar, vocals
Years active 1948–2010
Labels RCA/Imperial/United Artists/Epic/Suffolk

Ottis Dewey Whitman, Jr. (January 20, 1923 – June 19, 2013), known professionally as Slim Whitman, was an American country music and western music singer, songwriter and instrumentalist known for his yodeling abilities and his smooth high three octave range falsetto. He stated that he had sold in excess of 120 million records. In the 1950s Whitman toured with Elvis Presley.

Deng Xiaoping

Deng Xiaoping--(August 1904 – 19 February 1997) was a politician and reformist leader of the Communist Party of China who, after Mao's death led his country towards a market economy. While Deng never held office as the head of state, head of government or General Secretary of the Communist Party of China (the highest position in Communist China), he nonetheless served as the "paramount leader" of the People's Republic of China from 1978 to 1992. As the core of the second generation leaders Deng shared his power with several powerful older politicians commonly known as the Eight Elders.
Inheriting a country fraught with social and institutional woes resulting from the Cultural Revolution and other mass political movements of the Mao era, Deng became the core of the "second generation" of Chinese leadership. He is considered "the architect" of a new brand of socialist thinking, having developed "Socialism with Chinese characteristics" and led Chinese economic reform through a synthesis of theories that became known as the "socialist market economy". Deng opened China to foreign investment, the global market and limited private competition. He is generally credited with developing China into one of the fastest growing economies in the world for over 30 years and raising the standard of living of hundreds of millions of Chinese.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deng_Xiaoping

Chuck Yeager, (Charles Elwood Yeager) born February 13, 1923, in Myra West Virginia, is a retired brigadier general in the United States Air Force and noted test pilot. In 1947, he became the first pilot to (officially) travel faster than sound.
Yeager's career began in World War II as a private in the United States Army Air Forces. After serving as an aircraft mechanic, in September 1942 he entered enlisted pilot training and upon graduation was promoted to the rank of flight officer (the World War II USAAF equivalent to warrant officer) and became a North American P-51 Mustang fighter pilot.
After the war, Yeager became a test pilot of many types of aircraft including experimental rocket-powered aircraft. As the first human to break the sound barrier on October 14, 1947, he flew the experimental Bell X-1 at Mach 1 at an altitude of 45,000 ft (13,700 m). Although Scott Crossfield was the first to fly faster than Mach 2 in 1953, Yeager shortly thereafter set a new record of Mach 2.44.[1]
Yeager later commanded fighter squadrons and wings in Germany and in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War, and in recognition of the outstanding performance ratings of those units he then was promoted to brigadier general. Yeager's flying career spans more than 60 years and has taken him to every corner of the globe, including the Soviet Union during the height of the Cold War.

(Sturgis, Chuck Yeager is still living)

Emiliano Zapata

Emiliano Zapata Salazar (8 August 1879 – 10 April 1919) was a leading figure in the Mexican Revolution, which broke out in 1910, and which was initially directed against the president Porfirio Díaz. He formed and commanded an important revolutionary force, the Liberation Army of the South, during the Mexican Revolution. Followers of Zapata were known as Zapatistas. He is a figure from the Mexican Revolution era who is still revered today.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emiliano_Zapata

OOPS! Sorry, I forgot that part...