Alphabetical Notable Historical People Name Game

Robert Goddard, (1882-1945)
American phyisict and inventor. Often regarded as the founder of modern rocketry, Goddard created the first liquid-fueled rocket. He published “A Method of Reaching Extreme Altitudes” in 1919, a classic treatise that remains the most influential work in 20th century rocket science.

Hannibal

Hannibal, son of Hamilcar Barca (247 – 183/182/181 BC) was a Punic Carthaginian military commander, generally considered one of the greatest military commanders in history. His father, Hamilcar Barca, was the leading Carthaginian commander during the First Punic War, his younger brothers were Mago and Hasdrubal, and he was brother-in-law to Hasdrubal the Fair.

Hannibal lived during a period of great tension in the Mediterranean, when the Roman Republic established its supremacy over other great powers such as Carthage, the Hellenistic kingdoms of Macedon, Syracuse, and the Seleucid empire. One of his most famous achievements was at the outbreak of the Second Punic War, when he marched an army, which included war elephants, from Iberia over the Pyrenees and the Alps into northern Italy. In his first few years in Italy, he won three dramatic victories—Trebia, Trasimene, and Cannae, in which he distinguished himself for his ability to determine his and his opponent's strengths and weaknesses, and to play the battle to his strengths and the enemy's weaknesses—and won over many allies of Rome. Hannibal occupied much of Italy for 15 years, but a Roman counter-invasion of North Africa forced him to return to Carthage, where he was decisively defeated by Scipio Africanus at the Battle of Zama. Scipio had studied Hannibal's tactics and brilliantly devised some of his own, and finally defeated Rome's nemesis at Zama, having previously driven Hasdrubal, Hannibal's brother, out of the Iberian Peninsula.

After the war, Hannibal successfully ran for the office of suffete. He enacted political and financial reforms to enable the payment of the war indemnity imposed by Rome; however, Hannibal's reforms were unpopular with members of the Carthaginian aristocracy and in Rome, and he fled into voluntary exile. During this time, he lived at the Seleucid court, where he acted as military adviser to Antiochus III in his war against Rome. After Antiochus met defeat at the Battle of Magnesia and was forced to accept Rome's terms, Hannibal fled again, making a stop in Armenia. His flight ended in the court of Bithynia, where he achieved an outstanding naval victory against a fleet from Pergamon. He was afterwards betrayed to the Romans and committed suicide by poisoning himself.

Often regarded as one of the greatest military strategists in history, Hannibal would later be considered one of the greatest generals of antiquity, together with Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Scipio, and Pyrrhus of Epirus. Plutarch states that, when questioned by Scipio as to who was the greatest general, Hannibal is said to have replied either Alexander or Pyrrhus, then himself, or, according to another version of the event, Pyrrhus, Scipio, then himself. Military historian Theodore Ayrault Dodge once famously called Hannibal the "father of strategy",because his greatest enemy, Rome, came to adopt elements of his military tactics in its own strategic arsenal. This praise has earned him a strong reputation in the modern world, and he was regarded as a great strategist by men like Napoleon Bonaparte.

Indira Gandhi

Indira Priyadarshini Gandhi, 19 November 1917 – 31 October 1984) was the third Prime Minister of India and a central figure of the Indian National Congress party. Gandhi, who served from 1966 to 1977 and then again from 1980 until her assassination in 1984, is the second-longest-serving Prime Minister of India and the only woman to hold the office

Jezebel. A lady who featured in the Bible and has a reputation for the abilty to cast spells on men which deprived them of their wits.

Johannes Kepler

Johannes Kepler (December 27, 1571 – November 15, 1630) was a German mathematician, astronomer, and astrologer. A key figure in the 17th century scientific revolution, he is best known for his laws of planetary motion, based on his works Astronomia nova, Harmonices Mundi, and Epitome of Copernican Astronomy. These works also provided one of the foundations for Isaac Newton's theory of universal gravitation.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johannes_Kepler

Antoine Lavoisier (August 26, 1743-May 8, 1794)

The son of a wealthy Parisian lawyer, Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier (1743–1794) completed a law degree in accordance with family wishes. His real interest, however, was in science, which he pursued with passion while leading a full public life.

Lavoisier’s chemistry had a systematic determination of the weights of reagents and products involved in chemical reactions, including the gaseous components, and his underlying belief that matter—identified by weight—would be conserved through any reaction (the law of conservation of mass). Among his contributions to chemistry associated with this method were the understanding of combustion and respiration as caused by chemical reactions with the part of the air (as discovered by Priestley) that he named “oxygen,” and his definitive proof by composition and decomposition that water is made up of oxygen and hydrogen. His giving new names to substances—most of which are still used today—was an important means of forwarding the Chemical Revolution, because these terms expressed the theory behind them. In the case of oxygen, from the Greek meaning “acid-former,” Lavoisier expressed his theory that oxygen was the acidifying principle. He considered 33 substances as elements—by his definition, substances that chemical analyses had failed to break down into simpler entities.

Learn more here: www.chemheritage.org/discover/online-resources/chemistry-in-history/themes/early-chemistry-and-gases/lavoisier.aspx

Marcus Aurelius
Roman emperor
Marcus Aurelius was a Roman Emperor from 161 to 180. He ruled with Lucius Verus as co-emperor from 161 until Verus' death in 169. He was the last of the Five Good Emperors, and is also considered one of the most important Stoic philosophers.

During his reign, the Empire defeated a revitalized Parthian Empire in the East; Aurelius' general Avidius Cassius sacked the capital Ctesiphon in 164. In central Europe, Aurelius fought the Marcomanni, Quadi, and Sarmatians with success during the Marcomannic Wars, with the threat of the Germanic tribes beginning to represent a troubling reality for the Empire. A revolt in the East led by Avidius Cassius failed to gain momentum and was suppressed immediately.

Marcus Aurelius' Stoic Tome Meditations, written in Greek while on campaign between 170 and 180, is still revered as a literary monument to a philosophy of service and duty, describing how to find and preserve equanimity in the midst of conflict by following nature as a source of guidance and inspiration.

Theodor Mommsen (30 November 1817 – 1 November 1903). German historian, politician and Nobel prize winner.

oops!

Sir Isaac Newton PRS. MP. 25 December 1642 – 20 March 1727.

English physicist and mathematician.

Odysseus

Odysseus, also known by the Roman name Ulysses, was a legendary Greek king of Ithaca and a hero of Homer's epic poem the Odyssey. Odysseus also plays a key role in Homer's Iliad and other works in that same Epic Cycle.

Husband of Penelope, father of Telemachus, and son of Laërtes and Anticlea, Odysseus is renowned for his brilliance, guile, and versatility, and is hence known by the epithet Odysseus the Cunning. He is most famous for the ten eventful years he took to return home after the decade-long Trojan War and his famous Trojan Horse ploy to capture the city of Troy.

Everybody should read Homer.

Blaise Pascal. 19 June 1623 – 19 August 1662. Philosopher and many other things.

Karen Ann Quinlan

Karen Ann Quinlan (March 29, 1954 – June 11, 1985) was an important figure in the history of the right to die controversy in the United States.

When she was 22, Quinlan became unconscious after arriving home from a party. She had consumed diazepam, dextropropoxyphene, and alcohol (however, it is disputed whether any drugs (diazepam, dextropropoxyphene) were found in her system). After she collapsed and stopped breathing twice for 15 minutes or more, the paramedics arrived and took her to a hospital, where she lapsed into a persistent vegetative state. After she was kept alive on a ventilator for several months without improvement, her parents requested the hospital to discontinue active care and allow her to die. The hospital refused, and the subsequent legal battles made newspaper headlines and set significant precedents. The New Jersey Supreme Court eventually ruled in her parents' favor. Although Quinlan was removed from mechanical ventilation during 1976, she lived on in a persistent vegetative state for almost a decade until her death from pneumonia in 1985.

Quinlan's case continues to raise important questions in moral theology, bioethics, euthanasia, legal guardianship and civil rights. Her case has affected the practice of medicine and law around the world. A significant outcome of her case was the development of formal ethics committees in hospitals, nursing homes and hospices.

Porfirio Rubirosa --January 22, 1909 – July 5, 1965. Internationally renowned playboy.

Domenico Scarlatti

Giuseppe Domenico Scarlatti (26 October 1685 – 23 July 1757) was an Italian composer who spent much of his life in the service of the Portuguese and Spanish royal families. He is classified as a Baroque composer chronologically, although his music was influential in the development of the Classical style. Like his renowned father Alessandro Scarlatti he composed in a variety of musical forms, although today he is known mainly for his 555 keyboard sonatas.

Anthony Trollope. 24 April 1815 – 6 December 1882. Victorian writer of fiction.

John Updike

John Hoyer Updike (18 March 1932 – 27 January 2009) was an American novelist, poet, short story writer, art critic, and literary critic.

Updike's most famous work is his Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom series (the novels Rabbit, Run; Rabbit Redux; Rabbit Is Rich; Rabbit At Rest; and the novella "Rabbit Remembered"), which chronicles Rabbit's life over the course of several decades, from young adulthood to his death. Both Rabbit Is Rich (1981) and Rabbit At Rest (1990) received the Pulitzer Prize. Updike is one of only three authors (the others were Booth Tarkington and William Faulkner) to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction more than once. He published more than twenty novels and more than a dozen short story collections, as well as poetry, art criticism, literary criticism and children's books. Hundreds of his stories, reviews, and poems appeared in The New Yorker, starting in 1954. He also wrote regularly for The New York Review of Books.

Updike is considered one of the greatest American fiction writers of his generation.

Paul-Marie Verlaine. 30 March 1844 – 8 January 1896.

French symbolist poet and notorious hooligan.

John Greenleaf Whittier

John Greenleaf Whittier (December 17, 1807 – September 7, 1892) was an influential American Quaker poet and ardent advocate of the abolition of slavery in the United States. He is usually listed as one of the Fireside Poets. Whittier was strongly influenced by the Scottish poet Robert Burns. Highly regarded in his lifetime and for a period thereafter, he is now remembered for his poem Snow-Bound, and the words of the hymn Dear Lord and Father of Mankind, from his poem "The Brewing of Soma", sung to music by Hubert Parry.


Whittier's Birthplace", painted by Thomas Hill.

Xerxes I
Xerxes I of Persia, also known as Xerxes the Great, was the fourth king of the kings of Achaemenid Empire. Xerxes I is more than likely the Persian king identified as Ahasuerus in the biblical book of Esther.

Paramahansa Yogananda

Paramahansa Yogananda (January 5, 1893 – March 7, 1952), born Mukunda Lal Ghosh, was an Indian yogi and guru who introduced millions of westerners to the teachings of meditation and Kriya Yoga through his book, Autobiography of a Yogi.