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Well, I enjoyed doing it the first time, so why not again?

WARNING!
As anyone familiar with history knows, some people as they have come down to us were likely not as we think of them. Some of their lives have been exaggerated, stretched, mythologised, or sometimes straight made up. Figures like Sun Tzu, Socrates, or Jesus, may or may not have been real people, or may have been radically different than how history records them. Almost all of what we have of Socrates comes from his ostensible student, Plato, who was fond of using allegorical figures to illustrate his political theories. Sun Tzu quite likely never existed, and the work credited to him actually a compilation of Chinese military wisdom. Jesus might have existed, as there were a number of rising religious figures around his time and for centuries after, but as the only references to him come at least 50 years after his supposed death, the details of his life are at best, spotty.

Without further ado, here are brief descriptions of everyone here. I encourage everyone to read up on all of these people. They are all a fascinating bunch with sometimes absurd stories behind their lives.

Oda Nobunaga: Forged close to the end of the Sengoku Jidai, the Japanese Warring States Period, Oda Nobunaga was one of the three founding figures of the reunified Japanese nation along with Tokugawa Ieyasu, and Toyotomi Hideyoshi. He led the push on Kyoto to control the Shogunate but was betrayed by one of his own generals and chose to commit suicide rather than be killed or captured. His lieutenant, Hideyoshi, became the senior figure in Japan, although he too was usurped by Tokugawa following his death, creating a 250 year period of relative peace and international isolation under the Tokugawa Shogunate.

Timur (known in the west as Tamerlane): An eastern conqueror of Mongol descent famous for having created the Timurid Empire, one of the largest land empires in history. Also known as Timur the Cruel, he was infamously merciless in his prosecution of wars, reaching as far east as India and China, and as far west as the Ottoman Empire and Christian Europe. His empire collapsed into smaller states a century after his initial conquests, however his descendants founded the Mughal Empire, which ruled India until British expansion in the region centuries later.
The name Tamerlane comes from his eastern nickname, Timur the Lame. He is believed to have been injured and rendered semi-crippled in his right leg and arm in his mid-twenties, although the details of how are subject to myth and legend.

Suleiman the Magnificent: One of the most renowned and powerful Sultans of the Ottoman Empire. By reputation kinder than his father, Selim the Stern, Suleiman garnered a reputation as a quiet and scholarly sort; he nonetheless embarked on a number of conquests that pushed the Ottoman Empire the furthest it ever reached into Europe, and stabilised the empire’s infrastructure for future generations.
His reign endured a number of personal tragedies for Suleiman, and whilst his European campaigns were generally successful (with the major exception of Vienna), his pursuits into Safavid Iran were inconclusive.

Hongwu Emperor: When one imagines Imperial China, most think of the Qing Dynasty, the last dynasty before the eventual Communist Republic. But what if I told you that the Qing Dynasty was not, strictly speaking, Chinese? The knowledgeable of you will probably think “No shit, Sherlock, the Qing were Manchurian.”And you’d be right! However the dynasty before them is perhaps the more well-known and idealised, the Ming. Founded by this guy, Zhu Yuanzhang, the Hongwu Emperor, he unseated the Mongol-based Yuan Dynasty and set about reforming various parts of the Chinese economic and law systems, although his reign was concluded with a succession crisis.
(I was going to do Zheng He instead of this guy, but I figured that without Hongwu, Zheng He probably never would have done his thing under the next Emperor, Yongle.)

Manco Capac: One of the more mysterious figures on this list, Manco Capac (which translates to something like the “royal founder”) may or may not have existed, at least not as we know him now. Featured in Incan mythology, he is credited with founding the Incan civilisation (not the empire, that came later), in the city of Cusco.
Manco is a good example of historical figures that earn the (maybe) in the title, since even if he existed, he almost certainly didn’t exist as has been passed down to us, since he is featured in several legends with supernatural overtures, such as turning his brothers to stone, or communing with gods.

Charles V: Arguably the greatest ruler of the Hapsburgs, Emperor of the (not so) Holy Roman Empire, King of Spain and Italy, Archduke of Austria, and Lord of the Netherlands, just to name his main titles. Under his rule the Austrians survived the seemingly unstoppable Ottoman conquest of Europe, fought just about everyone else on the continent, and sanctioned Spanish conquests in South America, leading to the massive and destabilising import of gold and silver into Europe.
Perhaps the most astonishing thing he ever did was abdicate following four decades of rule, retiring to a monastery and spending the rest of his life as a monk. His empire was split in two between his brother, Ferdinand, who gained the Austrian section, and his son, Phillip, who succeeded to the Spanish throne.

Ivan the Terrible: What can be said of Ivan that hasn’t already been hammered into the head of his own son during a fit of rage? Ivan the Terrible was initially the Grand Prince of Moscow, but rose to unite a large portion of modern Russia, renaming himself Tsar of all the Russias. Reasonably popular amongst the common people, he had a ferocious reputation amongst the nobility, and accidentally killed his own son by bludgeoning him with the royal sceptre.
Ivan was one of the last of the Rurikid Dynasty before the tumultuous “Time of Troubles” that saw the deaths of 2 million Russians, and led to the rise of the Romanov Dynasty.

Prince Albert: So, you know how most of the time royalty flows down through agnatic succession? That is to say, only to the males. Well, what do you call a guy who’s married to a Queen, and can’t be called a king? Well in Albert’s day, you called the Prince Consort.
Of German descent, Albert and Victoria’s love is one of the most touching contemporary stories to come out of arranged marriages (despite being first cousins). Not favourably viewed by the British public for much of his life, Albert pushed a number of public causes, such as international abolition of slavery. Following his death and the Queen’s great feeling of loss the public warmed to him, and numerous monuments to him can be found throughout England (including my home town, actually), despite his protestations that none be raised.

Queen Victoria: Possibly the most well-known and iconic British monarch of all time, Victoria was also one of the most liked (following Albert’s death, it should be said. Nothing breeds approval like sympathy).
Her reign of 63 years is known as the Victorian Period, which saw some of the largest expansions of the British Empire, the Industrial Revolution, the Pax Britannia, and was until recently the longest reign of any British monarch in history.
Victoria was a generally private woman, often credited or criticised as being too personal with the regulation of her family and (behind the scenes) influencing the government. Much of this was forgiven in her time thanks to her mourning the loss of her husband, and becoming as a sort of moral standard that other Britons attempted to mirror.
Her nine children married into the various royal houses of Europe, earning her the nickname “the grandmother of Europe”.

John Hunyadi: An almost legendary military leader of Hungary, most well known as one of the heroes thwarting Ottoman expansion into Europe following the fall of the Byzantine Empire, defeating them in a long-term campaign. Although he suffered a number of defeats to the Ottomans, he ultimately led a successful Hungarian defence at Belgrade when a surprise counterattack injured the Ottoman Sultan, Mehmed II, forcing him to retreat.
On the orders of then Pope Callixtus III, church bells were to be rung throughout Europe on the anniversary of this victory against the Muslim incursion.

Kaiser Franz Joseph: Ultimately a tragic figure, Franz Joseph was the second-to-last Emperor of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and currently the third-longest reigning European monarch of all time. His reign was marked by a steady decline in Austrian power stemming mainly from nationalism and the rise of Germany. During his reign Austria lost a number of its territories across its borders, and lost its hegemonic supremacy to Prussia, and later the German Empire.
Franz Joseph himself suffered near continual personal loss, his wife being stabbed by an anarchist, his son committing suicide, and his nephew’s assassination sparking World War One. I mean, damn.
He eventually died in 1916 of pneumonia in his right lung, not living to see the collapse of his empire.
Franz Joseph was a mostly popular emperor to his people, regarded as a grandfatherly figure within the empire, and his death arguably hastened its inevitable destruction.

Tycho Brahe: Perhaps the most eccentric person here, Tycho Brahe was a 16th century scientist advanced in planetary observation, credited with being one of the most accurate astronomers of the age (despite not using advanced telescopes).
He lived in what is now Sweden for most of his life (although that part of Sweden was then owned by Denmark), although near the end of his life he was exiled by the new Danish King, and was invited to live in Prague by the Holy Roman Emperor, where he helped to build an observatory, and worked with Johannes Kepler, who later used Brahe’s observations to help create his Three Laws of Planetary Motion.
One of his more enduring features has generally been his prosthetic nose, having lost his actual nose in a duel.
(Not that this is important, but Tycho is also mentioned in a footnote during the Bartimaeus Trilogy, The Golem’s Eye, as one of Bartimaeus’ more genial and easy-going masters.)

Charles Darwin: Arguably the most contentious figure by today’s standards (although he shouldn’t be), Charles Darwin provided the Evolutionary Theory of Natural Selection, revolutionising modern biology.
Contrary to common thought, he did not create the idea of evolution, which had already existed and been generally accepted for centuries, and depending on your interpretation of ancient Greek, millennia. What he did do was identify one of the mechanisms by which evolution occurs, which (as he understood) put a bit of a kibosh on the generally accepted notion of the time that the process was guided by the will of a deity.
Darwin’s theory was heavily contested during his time by fellow scientist Richard Owen, who believed that evolution was guided by “creative power”, rather than by natural laws. However, the general consensus amongst scientists in biology eventually accepted and later improved upon Darwin’s work, with the vast majority of serious opposition to this day being relegated to religious extremism.

Shaka kaSenzangakhona: More commonly known in the west as Shaka Zulu (thanks to the movie) was the founder of the Zulu Empire, which flourished in southern Africa during the period of European expansion into Africa. Rising to power following the murder of his mentor (not by Shaka), Shaka gained a military advantage over his neighbours by breaking from ritualised military traditions and creating encircling tactics and reserve units.
The Zulu Empire, also known as the Zulu Kingdom, endured for nearly a century before conflicts between the Boers and the British Empire and the discovery of diamonds led to the Kingdom’s eventual defeat by the British Imperial Army (despite early Zulu victories). The kingdom was later annexed into the British Empire, and a fairly well known movie made about the embarrassing British defeats.

Lorenze de’ Medici: What do you do when you’re ruling a Republic, maintaining peace in Italy, and carrying on a successful banking system? Why, sponsor the arts, of course!
Arguably the most influential of the powerful Medici family, Lorenzo led a colourful life balancing the traditionally warring city-states of Italy and sponsoring some of the Renaissance’s most renowned artists. Escaping assassination at the age of 29, Lorenzo ruled Florence from behind the scenes alone when his brother was killed in the same attack.
Universally described as plain in appearance, he possessed a dignified expression and conducted himself with patrician grace.

Conrad von Hoetzendorf: Oh boy... Possibly one of the most deluded people of his generation, Conrad von Hoetzendorf was the Austrian Chief of Staff during World War One. He believed fervently in Austrian imperialism, and pushed for war numerous times during his tenure.
Just think about that for a moment. During the decline of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, whilst they were barely able to hold onto the territories they then had, he was advocating for expansion. Do you have any idea how bad an idea it usually is for an empire in decline to go to war, like, at all? It’s usually the death bell.
Curiously, he managed to stay in power during the entirety of the war, and was even regarded with admiration during his life for his military genius. You know, despite managing perhaps the second most incompetent side in the war (sorry Italy).
Sorry, I usually try to stay as neutral as I can in history, but damn was this guy short-sighted.

Alexios I Komnenos: Not the best, but certainly not the worst, Alexios I Komnenos, having arguably my favourite name of any Roman Emperor, was the Emperor of the Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire during the First Crusade. Asked the Pope, Urban II, for a few mercenaries, ended up getting several armies (one of them peasants no less) tromping across what remained of his empire, bent on taking back Jerusalem from the Muslims.
Oh, what this man must have been thinking when this insanity went down.
Nonetheless he managed the affair as well as could be expected, and used the distraction (and the fact that his Seljuk Muslim enemies were fighting other Muslims) to consolidate and strengthen his remaining presence in Anatolia.
A shrewd and calculating man, his family navigated a crisis before managing to halt the Seljuk push into Eastern Europe.

Voltaire: And representing the French, François-Marie Arouet! Or by his pen-name, Voltaire. Part of the Philosophe movement in the 18th century, Voltaire is most well-known for his attacks on Christianity and its domination of European affairs, including its repression of Enlightenment ideas. Advocating for a separation of church and state and freedom of speech, he heavily influenced rulers like Catherine the Great, and encouraged the absolute monarchies of France, Russia, Austria, and Prussia, to rule as enlightened monarchs, approving the rule of autocrats over democratic systems.
Witty and argumentative, rumours hinted that he was in a homoerotic relationship with Frederick the Great. (I like to think Catherine the Great spent her free time when not writing books on how to law and making love to all the men, writing fanfiction about Vol and Fred. It never happened, but still...)

Mohandas Ghandi: Did you know Mahatma wasn’t actually part of his name? I didn’t! Turns out it’s a Hindu-equivalent to “saint”.
Anywho, one of the leaders of Indian independence from Great Britain, Ghandi advocated for none-violent protests, despite earlier in life being perfectly fine with armed conflict. Famous for his fasting and breaking laws designed to curtail Indian freedoms, Ghandi was eventually assassinated by a nationalist.
A firm believer in Hinduism, Ghandi still advocated for a religiously pluralistic independent India, although this would be undermined by the creation of Pakistan.

Joseph Stalin: Cowboy film enthusiast, classical music lover, amateur gardener, and career dictator, Stalin is a complicated figure since he is credited with the deaths of millions, and possibly said “One man’s death is a tragedy; a million men is a statistic.”
Without doubt a monster to rival the likes of Hitler, Stalin’s rule oversaw such atrocities as the Great Purge, and the lingering effects of his socially catastrophic 5-year plans. Whilst outside of Russia he garnered a reputation as mediocre, in truth he was desperately clever and a superb actor, able to deceive most people and push a cult of personality around himself.
He died in 1953 of cerebral haemorrhaging brought on by several strokes. According to a story I heard (which may not be true), his staff were unwilling to wake him because of his growing temper in his old age. By the time anyone had the nerve to enter his room, he was found lying in a pool of his own drool and urine. He died three days later.

Steve Jobs: Hey, look! Someone from our time! He’s still dead though, so it counts.
For those who don’t know him, co-founder of Apple Inc., and involved in Pixar then later Disney. Played a large part of modern advances in computers, especially the commercialisation and commodity of computers into modern society, he gave you the iPhone, Apple computers, and Toy Story. It’s quite possible that without him, we might not have home computers, smart phones, and the possibility of a future war with the mighty Machine Imperial Protectorate. Also you wouldn’t be able to read this.
He died of complications from pancreatic cancer in 2011.

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien: Creator of the Legendarium, and all-round life-bringer to we nerds world-wide , J. R. R. Tolkien was a writer and linguist of the early 20th century. Writer of some of my favourite books, and advocator of some of my least favourite religious arguments, Tolkien created the essential template for medieval fantasy genre still used (sometimes overtly) today.
From D&D to Warcraft, all give praise to the mighty Tolkien!
I’m not writing any more about him, go look him up. You won’t be disappointed.

Herodotus: How could I, as a lover of history, not include the Father of History himself? Born in Halicarnassus (Modern day Turkey, then a part of Ancient Greece), Herodotus was the first recorded person to describe historical events in a chronological fashion, and to treat events and people as subjects to be investigated and set into a historiography (by which I mean a study of the history of the subject, rather than a historical study of the subject.) To put it as simply as I can, he was the first to try to actually study history from a critical perspective in any meaningful way.
He had his faults as well, though, having a tendency towards bias in his descriptions and almost certainly exaggerating accounts of the Greco-Persian wars.

Anton LaVeyThe founder of LaVeyan Satanism and the Church of Satan, Anton LaVey was an American author and occultist. An understandably contentious figure, he was a born showman with a magnetic personality and a flair for the dramatic, he wrote numerous books and appeared on a number of television shows.
He died in 1997 of heart failure.

Zoroaster: The founder of the Zoroastrian religion, Zoroaster (or Zarathustra) is a possibly mythical figure who wrote the Avesta, the holy book of the Zoroastrian faith. Much like Manco Capac, much of what we know of Zoroaster is handed down from oral tradition, as the original Zoroastrian writings were destroyed by Alexander the Great.
Zoroastrianism is currently the oldest extant world religion, although one on the decline, and was the dominant religion in the old Iranian (Persian) empires, such as the Achaemenid and Sassanian Empires, although following the Muslim conquest of Iran it was predominantly overtaken by Islam.

Sun Tzu: Again, Sun Tzu is another example of a figure who possibly never was. A reasonably potent opinion amongst historians has it that Sun Tzu was not a single person, but that the writings credited to him are simply the compiled work of multiple minds.
Traditionally he lived during Zhou China in the Wu Kingdom serving as a tactician and general. A popular story about him describes how his king ordered him to turn his (the king’s) harem into soldiers. Sun Tzu divided the harem into two groups, placing the king’s favourites in charge, and then gave them an order. After failing to follow the order twice, Sun Tzu had them decapitated, explaining that if an officer understood their general’s order, but failed to obey it, it was the fault of the officers. After that, the harem followed Sun Tzu’s orders.
Again, the historicity of Sun Tzu is questionable.

Leornard Nimoey: I’ll be honest, Leonard Nimoy is here mostly because of the effect he’s had on me, rather than history at large, although I can’t say he hasn’t hit popular culture hard. He was great until the end, and I am ill-equipped to sum up his life in a paragraph.

Cassius Dio: One of a number of Roman historians we generally rely on for information regarding the early Roman Imperial Period. Born in the second century, Dio wrote a detailed history of Rome beginning with its founding by the legendary figure, Aeneas, up to the Antonine Dynasty, taking just over two decades to write some 70 volumes, a lot of which has survived to this day.
Although his is one of the most detailed accounts of Roman history, like other Roman authors, his history is sometimes coloured by political feelings of the time.

Saint Nicholas: Yes. THAT Saint Nick. Born and lived in modern day Turkey, rather than Lapland, and was credited with a number of miracles giving him the nickname the “Wonder Worker”. Alive during the last years of the Roman oppression of Christians, he lived to see its establishment as the state religion by Constantine the Great, and participated in the first get-your-shit-together-christianity meeting, otherwise known as the First Nicene Council.
His status as Santa Clause arose from his reputation for secretive giving of presents, although his modern incarnation comes primarily from the Dutch legendary figure, Sinterklass.

Grigory Potemkin: Prominent during the reign of Catherine the Great, Potemkin was an intellectual, a statesman, a military genius, and perhaps most importantly, Catherine’s favourite lover. A man of vast contradictions, he was generally charismatic, good-natured, and curious.
One of the big questions during his time was whether or not he was married to Catherine, as if he did, it was almost certainly done in secret and with no records of it.
Leading the Russian armies during Catherine’s bid for expansion, he led the Russians to victory against the Ottoman Turks and became the governor of new Russian provinces.
During the 1905 Russian Revolution, a naval team mutinied aboard the Battleship Potemkin.

Thor Heyerdahl: You know how the Vikings used to go around defying the odds to survive long journeys in small boats? Well guess what their descendants are still doing.
Eager to prove that ancient peoples could in fact have made contact with each other, he embarked on several expeditions to prove that long distances could be traversed with simple technology, and so crossed the Pacific and Atlantic oceans using primitive ships.
Also his name is Thor.

Marie Curie: You ask any scientist today who was the most influential person on modern science, and you’ll get a list of people. Pretty high on this list, you’ll find this Polish wonder worker, Madam Marie Curie. Won two Nobel prizes in different areas of study, and most well known for her work on radioactivity, she eventually succumbed to her own work when she developed aplastic anemia as a consequence of damage done to her bone marrow from all the radiation she exposed herself too.
I’ve heard some treat this death with some levity, since it must be common sense that radiation is bad for you. To those of that frame of mind, you are currently being exposed to massive amounts of radiation, and are every second of your life. And I don’t mean the sun, although that is one big hot spot of it. I mean the planet you’re standing on. A big rotating ball of radiation sits just below your feet.
Sleep well.

Heinrich Schliemann: So, you know the Trojan War? Turns out that for the longest time we didn’t actually know where Troy was, so by the 19th century the Trojan War was treated as at least semi-fictional. There’s always a bit of truth to legends though, you know?
Well, this guy discovered what is generally accepted to be the site of Troy. A pioneer of archaeology, like many of his colleagues in the field he had no formal education or training in the subject (since it had barely been formally invented), but was a reasonably successful businessman who used his personal wealth to travel and investigate areas described by Homer.
He is additionally credited with discovering several ancient Mycenaean cities of the pre-classical bronze-age.

Themistocles: When talking about ancient Greeks, it’s often hard to define them as a “good guy” or a “bad guy”. Themistocles is no different. Often remembered as a hero whose foresight allowed the Greeks to survive the Greco-Persian War, he was a leader of Athens after the Battle of Marathon who persuaded the Athenians to spend a bunch of silver they’d just come into on a fleet of ships, creating Athens’ “wooden wall”, that he was alleged to have been granted visions of by the gods.
He eventually fell out of favour with the Athenians however and fled to Anatolia where he was made a governor of the Persian province of Magnesia.

Simon Bolivar: El Libatador, Simon Bolivar was the charismatic leader of the main rebellions against Spanish rule in South America. A native of Venezuela, his multiple failed and restarted wars against the Spanish led to the creation of the unified Gran Columbia, which instantly disintegrated into several smaller nations following his death of tuberculosis. However, he remains an iconic figure in South America to this day.

Joan of Arc: The heroine of France, Joan is another example of a figure whose existence is certain, but whose life details are a little obscure. Apparently having a vision from god to help the French king, she embarked on a series of successful military campaigns against English and Burgundian forces to establish the sovereignty of France, only to eventually be betrayed and given to the English.
She was burned at the stake as a witch.

Edward Teach: Better known to most as Blackbeard, Edward Teach was the archetypal golden age pirate, a mixture of cruelty and privateer honour, he gained a fearsome reputation that he preferred to employ to cow his opponents and victims rather than using force.
He was at one point issued a pardon, but the call of the sea was strong enough to pull him back, and he was eventually captured and executed by the Americans.

Martin Luther King Jr.: The smiling face and nonviolent representative of the American Civil Rights movement, MLK advocated nonviolent protest against entrenched social divisions of race in the United States, leading a successful campaign against racism in the justice and law system. Whilst it took many more years for social attitudes to change, his work served to end the normalisation of racism in the U.S.
Like many great men, he was assassinated in the midst of his work, although his death served to spur on his vision.

Mary Seacole: One of the most underrated figures on this list, Mary Seacole was a mostly forgotten figure until the modern day thanks to attitudes of her time. A shrewd businesswoman and usually successful entrepreneur, she is most well known for being “Mother” Seacole when she travelled to the Crimea during the Crimean War, acting as a nurse. She gained a reputation amongst the soldiers there for her kindness and warmth, and was eventually supported later in her life by her “sons” whom she had helped in the war.

Art: Daniel Gleebits

Description
Well, I enjoyed doing it the first time, so why not again?

WARNING!
As anyone familiar with history knows, some people as they have come down to us were likely not as we think of them. Some of their lives have been exaggerated, stretched, mythologised, or sometimes straight made up. Figures like Sun Tzu, Socrates, or Jesus, may or may not have been real people, or may have been radically different than how history records them. Almost all of what we have of Socrates comes from his ostensible student, Plato, who was fond of using allegorical figures to illustrate his political theories. Sun Tzu quite likely never existed, and the work credited to him actually a compilation of Chinese military wisdom. Jesus might have existed, as there were a number of rising religious figures around his time and for centuries after, but as the only references to him come at least 50 years after his supposed death, the details of his life are at best, spotty.

Without further ado, here are brief descriptions of everyone here. I encourage everyone to read up on all of these people. They are all a fascinating bunch with sometimes absurd stories behind their lives.

Oda Nobunaga: Forged close to the end of the Sengoku Jidai, the Japanese Warring States Period, Oda Nobunaga was one of the three founding figures of the reunified Japanese nation along with Tokugawa Ieyasu, and Toyotomi Hideyoshi. He led the push on Kyoto to control the Shogunate but was betrayed by one of his own generals and chose to commit suicide rather than be killed or captured. His lieutenant, Hideyoshi, became the senior figure in Japan, although he too was usurped by Tokugawa following his death, creating a 250 year period of relative peace and international isolation under the Tokugawa Shogunate.

Timur (known in the west as Tamerlane): An eastern conqueror of Mongol descent famous for having created the Timurid Empire, one of the largest land empires in history. Also known as Timur the Cruel, he was infamously merciless in his prosecution of wars, reaching as far east as India and China, and as far west as the Ottoman Empire and Christian Europe. His empire collapsed into smaller states a century after his initial conquests, however his descendants founded the Mughal Empire, which ruled India until British expansion in the region centuries later.
The name Tamerlane comes from his eastern nickname, Timur the Lame. He is believed to have been injured and rendered semi-crippled in his right leg and arm in his mid-twenties, although the details of how are subject to myth and legend.

Suleiman the Magnificent: One of the most renowned and powerful Sultans of the Ottoman Empire. By reputation kinder than his father, Selim the Stern, Suleiman garnered a reputation as a quiet and scholarly sort; he nonetheless embarked on a number of conquests that pushed the Ottoman Empire the furthest it ever reached into Europe, and stabilised the empire’s infrastructure for future generations.
His reign endured a number of personal tragedies for Suleiman, and whilst his European campaigns were generally successful (with the major exception of Vienna), his pursuits into Safavid Iran were inconclusive.

Hongwu Emperor: When one imagines Imperial China, most think of the Qing Dynasty, the last dynasty before the eventual Communist Republic. But what if I told you that the Qing Dynasty was not, strictly speaking, Chinese? The knowledgeable of you will probably think “No shit, Sherlock, the Qing were Manchurian.”And you’d be right! However the dynasty before them is perhaps the more well-known and idealised, the Ming. Founded by this guy, Zhu Yuanzhang, the Hongwu Emperor, he unseated the Mongol-based Yuan Dynasty and set about reforming various parts of the Chinese economic and law systems, although his reign was concluded with a succession crisis.
(I was going to do Zheng He instead of this guy, but I figured that without Hongwu, Zheng He probably never would have done his thing under the next Emperor, Yongle.)

Manco Capac: One of the more mysterious figures on this list, Manco Capac (which translates to something like the “royal founder”) may or may not have existed, at least not as we know him now. Featured in Incan mythology, he is credited with founding the Incan civilisation (not the empire, that came later), in the city of Cusco.
Manco is a good example of historical figures that earn the (maybe) in the title, since even if he existed, he almost certainly didn’t exist as has been passed down to us, since he is featured in several legends with supernatural overtures, such as turning his brothers to stone, or communing with gods.

Charles V: Arguably the greatest ruler of the Hapsburgs, Emperor of the (not so) Holy Roman Empire, King of Spain and Italy, Archduke of Austria, and Lord of the Netherlands, just to name his main titles. Under his rule the Austrians survived the seemingly unstoppable Ottoman conquest of Europe, fought just about everyone else on the continent, and sanctioned Spanish conquests in South America, leading to the massive and destabilising import of gold and silver into Europe.
Perhaps the most astonishing thing he ever did was abdicate following four decades of rule, retiring to a monastery and spending the rest of his life as a monk. His empire was split in two between his brother, Ferdinand, who gained the Austrian section, and his son, Phillip, who succeeded to the Spanish throne.

Ivan the Terrible: What can be said of Ivan that hasn’t already been hammered into the head of his own son during a fit of rage? Ivan the Terrible was initially the Grand Prince of Moscow, but rose to unite a large portion of modern Russia, renaming himself Tsar of all the Russias. Reasonably popular amongst the common people, he had a ferocious reputation amongst the nobility, and accidentally killed his own son by bludgeoning him with the royal sceptre.
Ivan was one of the last of the Rurikid Dynasty before the tumultuous “Time of Troubles” that saw the deaths of 2 million Russians, and led to the rise of the Romanov Dynasty.

Prince Albert: So, you know how most of the time royalty flows down through agnatic succession? That is to say, only to the males. Well, what do you call a guy who’s married to a Queen, and can’t be called a king? Well in Albert’s day, you called the Prince Consort.
Of German descent, Albert and Victoria’s love is one of the most touching contemporary stories to come out of arranged marriages (despite being first cousins). Not favourably viewed by the British public for much of his life, Albert pushed a number of public causes, such as international abolition of slavery. Following his death and the Queen’s great feeling of loss the public warmed to him, and numerous monuments to him can be found throughout England (including my home town, actually), despite his protestations that none be raised.

Queen Victoria: Possibly the most well-known and iconic British monarch of all time, Victoria was also one of the most liked (following Albert’s death, it should be said. Nothing breeds approval like sympathy).
Her reign of 63 years is known as the Victorian Period, which saw some of the largest expansions of the British Empire, the Industrial Revolution, the Pax Britannia, and was until recently the longest reign of any British monarch in history.
Victoria was a generally private woman, often credited or criticised as being too personal with the regulation of her family and (behind the scenes) influencing the government. Much of this was forgiven in her time thanks to her mourning the loss of her husband, and becoming as a sort of moral standard that other Britons attempted to mirror.
Her nine children married into the various royal houses of Europe, earning her the nickname “the grandmother of Europe”.

John Hunyadi: An almost legendary military leader of Hungary, most well known as one of the heroes thwarting Ottoman expansion into Europe following the fall of the Byzantine Empire, defeating them in a long-term campaign. Although he suffered a number of defeats to the Ottomans, he ultimately led a successful Hungarian defence at Belgrade when a surprise counterattack injured the Ottoman Sultan, Mehmed II, forcing him to retreat.
On the orders of then Pope Callixtus III, church bells were to be rung throughout Europe on the anniversary of this victory against the Muslim incursion.

Kaiser Franz Joseph: Ultimately a tragic figure, Franz Joseph was the second-to-last Emperor of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and currently the third-longest reigning European monarch of all time. His reign was marked by a steady decline in Austrian power stemming mainly from nationalism and the rise of Germany. During his reign Austria lost a number of its territories across its borders, and lost its hegemonic supremacy to Prussia, and later the German Empire.
Franz Joseph himself suffered near continual personal loss, his wife being stabbed by an anarchist, his son committing suicide, and his nephew’s assassination sparking World War One. I mean, damn.
He eventually died in 1916 of pneumonia in his right lung, not living to see the collapse of his empire.
Franz Joseph was a mostly popular emperor to his people, regarded as a grandfatherly figure within the empire, and his death arguably hastened its inevitable destruction.

Tycho Brahe: Perhaps the most eccentric person here, Tycho Brahe was a 16th century scientist advanced in planetary observation, credited with being one of the most accurate astronomers of the age (despite not using advanced telescopes).
He lived in what is now Sweden for most of his life (although that part of Sweden was then owned by Denmark), although near the end of his life he was exiled by the new Danish King, and was invited to live in Prague by the Holy Roman Emperor, where he helped to build an observatory, and worked with Johannes Kepler, who later used Brahe’s observations to help create his Three Laws of Planetary Motion.
One of his more enduring features has generally been his prosthetic nose, having lost his actual nose in a duel.
(Not that this is important, but Tycho is also mentioned in a footnote during the Bartimaeus Trilogy, The Golem’s Eye, as one of Bartimaeus’ more genial and easy-going masters.)

Charles Darwin: Arguably the most contentious figure by today’s standards (although he shouldn’t be), Charles Darwin provided the Evolutionary Theory of Natural Selection, revolutionising modern biology.
Contrary to common thought, he did not create the idea of evolution, which had already existed and been generally accepted for centuries, and depending on your interpretation of ancient Greek, millennia. What he did do was identify one of the mechanisms by which evolution occurs, which (as he understood) put a bit of a kibosh on the generally accepted notion of the time that the process was guided by the will of a deity.
Darwin’s theory was heavily contested during his time by fellow scientist Richard Owen, who believed that evolution was guided by “creative power”, rather than by natural laws. However, the general consensus amongst scientists in biology eventually accepted and later improved upon Darwin’s work, with the vast majority of serious opposition to this day being relegated to religious extremism.

Shaka kaSenzangakhona: More commonly known in the west as Shaka Zulu (thanks to the movie) was the founder of the Zulu Empire, which flourished in southern Africa during the period of European expansion into Africa. Rising to power following the murder of his mentor (not by Shaka), Shaka gained a military advantage over his neighbours by breaking from ritualised military traditions and creating encircling tactics and reserve units.
The Zulu Empire, also known as the Zulu Kingdom, endured for nearly a century before conflicts between the Boers and the British Empire and the discovery of diamonds led to the Kingdom’s eventual defeat by the British Imperial Army (despite early Zulu victories). The kingdom was later annexed into the British Empire, and a fairly well known movie made about the embarrassing British defeats.

Lorenze de’ Medici: What do you do when you’re ruling a Republic, maintaining peace in Italy, and carrying on a successful banking system? Why, sponsor the arts, of course!
Arguably the most influential of the powerful Medici family, Lorenzo led a colourful life balancing the traditionally warring city-states of Italy and sponsoring some of the Renaissance’s most renowned artists. Escaping assassination at the age of 29, Lorenzo ruled Florence from behind the scenes alone when his brother was killed in the same attack.
Universally described as plain in appearance, he possessed a dignified expression and conducted himself with patrician grace.

Conrad von Hoetzendorf: Oh boy... Possibly one of the most deluded people of his generation, Conrad von Hoetzendorf was the Austrian Chief of Staff during World War One. He believed fervently in Austrian imperialism, and pushed for war numerous times during his tenure.
Just think about that for a moment. During the decline of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, whilst they were barely able to hold onto the territories they then had, he was advocating for expansion. Do you have any idea how bad an idea it usually is for an empire in decline to go to war, like, at all? It’s usually the death bell.
Curiously, he managed to stay in power during the entirety of the war, and was even regarded with admiration during his life for his military genius. You know, despite managing perhaps the second most incompetent side in the war (sorry Italy).
Sorry, I usually try to stay as neutral as I can in history, but damn was this guy short-sighted.

Alexios I Komnenos: Not the best, but certainly not the worst, Alexios I Komnenos, having arguably my favourite name of any Roman Emperor, was the Emperor of the Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire during the First Crusade. Asked the Pope, Urban II, for a few mercenaries, ended up getting several armies (one of them peasants no less) tromping across what remained of his empire, bent on taking back Jerusalem from the Muslims.
Oh, what this man must have been thinking when this insanity went down.
Nonetheless he managed the affair as well as could be expected, and used the distraction (and the fact that his Seljuk Muslim enemies were fighting other Muslims) to consolidate and strengthen his remaining presence in Anatolia.
A shrewd and calculating man, his family navigated a crisis before managing to halt the Seljuk push into Eastern Europe.

Voltaire: And representing the French, François-Marie Arouet! Or by his pen-name, Voltaire. Part of the Philosophe movement in the 18th century, Voltaire is most well-known for his attacks on Christianity and its domination of European affairs, including its repression of Enlightenment ideas. Advocating for a separation of church and state and freedom of speech, he heavily influenced rulers like Catherine the Great, and encouraged the absolute monarchies of France, Russia, Austria, and Prussia, to rule as enlightened monarchs, approving the rule of autocrats over democratic systems.
Witty and argumentative, rumours hinted that he was in a homoerotic relationship with Frederick the Great. (I like to think Catherine the Great spent her free time when not writing books on how to law and making love to all the men, writing fanfiction about Vol and Fred. It never happened, but still...)

Mohandas Ghandi: Did you know Mahatma wasn’t actually part of his name? I didn’t! Turns out it’s a Hindu-equivalent to “saint”.
Anywho, one of the leaders of Indian independence from Great Britain, Ghandi advocated for none-violent protests, despite earlier in life being perfectly fine with armed conflict. Famous for his fasting and breaking laws designed to curtail Indian freedoms, Ghandi was eventually assassinated by a nationalist.
A firm believer in Hinduism, Ghandi still advocated for a religiously pluralistic independent India, although this would be undermined by the creation of Pakistan.

Joseph Stalin: Cowboy film enthusiast, classical music lover, amateur gardener, and career dictator, Stalin is a complicated figure since he is credited with the deaths of millions, and possibly said “One man’s death is a tragedy; a million men is a statistic.”
Without doubt a monster to rival the likes of Hitler, Stalin’s rule oversaw such atrocities as the Great Purge, and the lingering effects of his socially catastrophic 5-year plans. Whilst outside of Russia he garnered a reputation as mediocre, in truth he was desperately clever and a superb actor, able to deceive most people and push a cult of personality around himself.
He died in 1953 of cerebral haemorrhaging brought on by several strokes. According to a story I heard (which may not be true), his staff were unwilling to wake him because of his growing temper in his old age. By the time anyone had the nerve to enter his room, he was found lying in a pool of his own drool and urine. He died three days later.

Steve Jobs: Hey, look! Someone from our time! He’s still dead though, so it counts.
For those who don’t know him, co-founder of Apple Inc., and involved in Pixar then later Disney. Played a large part of modern advances in computers, especially the commercialisation and commodity of computers into modern society, he gave you the iPhone, Apple computers, and Toy Story. It’s quite possible that without him, we might not have home computers, smart phones, and the possibility of a future war with the mighty Machine Imperial Protectorate. Also you wouldn’t be able to read this.
He died of complications from pancreatic cancer in 2011.

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien: Creator of the Legendarium, and all-round life-bringer to we nerds world-wide , J. R. R. Tolkien was a writer and linguist of the early 20th century. Writer of some of my favourite books, and advocator of some of my least favourite religious arguments, Tolkien created the essential template for medieval fantasy genre still used (sometimes overtly) today.
From D&D to Warcraft, all give praise to the mighty Tolkien!
I’m not writing any more about him, go look him up. You won’t be disappointed.

Herodotus: How could I, as a lover of history, not include the Father of History himself? Born in Halicarnassus (Modern day Turkey, then a part of Ancient Greece), Herodotus was the first recorded person to describe historical events in a chronological fashion, and to treat events and people as subjects to be investigated and set into a historiography (by which I mean a study of the history of the subject, rather than a historical study of the subject.) To put it as simply as I can, he was the first to try to actually study history from a critical perspective in any meaningful way.
He had his faults as well, though, having a tendency towards bias in his descriptions and almost certainly exaggerating accounts of the Greco-Persian wars.

Anton LaVeyThe founder of LaVeyan Satanism and the Church of Satan, Anton LaVey was an American author and occultist. An understandably contentious figure, he was a born showman with a magnetic personality and a flair for the dramatic, he wrote numerous books and appeared on a number of television shows.
He died in 1997 of heart failure.

Zoroaster: The founder of the Zoroastrian religion, Zoroaster (or Zarathustra) is a possibly mythical figure who wrote the Avesta, the holy book of the Zoroastrian faith. Much like Manco Capac, much of what we know of Zoroaster is handed down from oral tradition, as the original Zoroastrian writings were destroyed by Alexander the Great.
Zoroastrianism is currently the oldest extant world religion, although one on the decline, and was the dominant religion in the old Iranian (Persian) empires, such as the Achaemenid and Sassanian Empires, although following the Muslim conquest of Iran it was predominantly overtaken by Islam.

Sun Tzu: Again, Sun Tzu is another example of a figure who possibly never was. A reasonably potent opinion amongst historians has it that Sun Tzu was not a single person, but that the writings credited to him are simply the compiled work of multiple minds.
Traditionally he lived during Zhou China in the Wu Kingdom serving as a tactician and general. A popular story about him describes how his king ordered him to turn his (the king’s) harem into soldiers. Sun Tzu divided the harem into two groups, placing the king’s favourites in charge, and then gave them an order. After failing to follow the order twice, Sun Tzu had them decapitated, explaining that if an officer understood their general’s order, but failed to obey it, it was the fault of the officers. After that, the harem followed Sun Tzu’s orders.
Again, the historicity of Sun Tzu is questionable.

Leornard Nimoey: I’ll be honest, Leonard Nimoy is here mostly because of the effect he’s had on me, rather than history at large, although I can’t say he hasn’t hit popular culture hard. He was great until the end, and I am ill-equipped to sum up his life in a paragraph.

Cassius Dio: One of a number of Roman historians we generally rely on for information regarding the early Roman Imperial Period. Born in the second century, Dio wrote a detailed history of Rome beginning with its founding by the legendary figure, Aeneas, up to the Antonine Dynasty, taking just over two decades to write some 70 volumes, a lot of which has survived to this day.
Although his is one of the most detailed accounts of Roman history, like other Roman authors, his history is sometimes coloured by political feelings of the time.

Saint Nicholas: Yes. THAT Saint Nick. Born and lived in modern day Turkey, rather than Lapland, and was credited with a number of miracles giving him the nickname the “Wonder Worker”. Alive during the last years of the Roman oppression of Christians, he lived to see its establishment as the state religion by Constantine the Great, and participated in the first get-your-shit-together-christianity meeting, otherwise known as the First Nicene Council.
His status as Santa Clause arose from his reputation for secretive giving of presents, although his modern incarnation comes primarily from the Dutch legendary figure, Sinterklass.

Grigory Potemkin: Prominent during the reign of Catherine the Great, Potemkin was an intellectual, a statesman, a military genius, and perhaps most importantly, Catherine’s favourite lover. A man of vast contradictions, he was generally charismatic, good-natured, and curious.
One of the big questions during his time was whether or not he was married to Catherine, as if he did, it was almost certainly done in secret and with no records of it.
Leading the Russian armies during Catherine’s bid for expansion, he led the Russians to victory against the Ottoman Turks and became the governor of new Russian provinces.
During the 1905 Russian Revolution, a naval team mutinied aboard the Battleship Potemkin.

Thor Heyerdahl: You know how the Vikings used to go around defying the odds to survive long journeys in small boats? Well guess what their descendants are still doing.
Eager to prove that ancient peoples could in fact have made contact with each other, he embarked on several expeditions to prove that long distances could be traversed with simple technology, and so crossed the Pacific and Atlantic oceans using primitive ships.
Also his name is Thor.

Marie Curie: You ask any scientist today who was the most influential person on modern science, and you’ll get a list of people. Pretty high on this list, you’ll find this Polish wonder worker, Madam Marie Curie. Won two Nobel prizes in different areas of study, and most well known for her work on radioactivity, she eventually succumbed to her own work when she developed aplastic anemia as a consequence of damage done to her bone marrow from all the radiation she exposed herself too.
I’ve heard some treat this death with some levity, since it must be common sense that radiation is bad for you. To those of that frame of mind, you are currently being exposed to massive amounts of radiation, and are every second of your life. And I don’t mean the sun, although that is one big hot spot of it. I mean the planet you’re standing on. A big rotating ball of radiation sits just below your feet.
Sleep well.

Heinrich Schliemann: So, you know the Trojan War? Turns out that for the longest time we didn’t actually know where Troy was, so by the 19th century the Trojan War was treated as at least semi-fictional. There’s always a bit of truth to legends though, you know?
Well, this guy discovered what is generally accepted to be the site of Troy. A pioneer of archaeology, like many of his colleagues in the field he had no formal education or training in the subject (since it had barely been formally invented), but was a reasonably successful businessman who used his personal wealth to travel and investigate areas described by Homer.
He is additionally credited with discovering several ancient Mycenaean cities of the pre-classical bronze-age.

Themistocles: When talking about ancient Greeks, it’s often hard to define them as a “good guy” or a “bad guy”. Themistocles is no different. Often remembered as a hero whose foresight allowed the Greeks to survive the Greco-Persian War, he was a leader of Athens after the Battle of Marathon who persuaded the Athenians to spend a bunch of silver they’d just come into on a fleet of ships, creating Athens’ “wooden wall”, that he was alleged to have been granted visions of by the gods.
He eventually fell out of favour with the Athenians however and fled to Anatolia where he was made a governor of the Persian province of Magnesia.

Simon Bolivar: El Libatador, Simon Bolivar was the charismatic leader of the main rebellions against Spanish rule in South America. A native of Venezuela, his multiple failed and restarted wars against the Spanish led to the creation of the unified Gran Columbia, which instantly disintegrated into several smaller nations following his death of tuberculosis. However, he remains an iconic figure in South America to this day.

Joan of Arc: The heroine of France, Joan is another example of a figure whose existence is certain, but whose life details are a little obscure. Apparently having a vision from god to help the French king, she embarked on a series of successful military campaigns against English and Burgundian forces to establish the sovereignty of France, only to eventually be betrayed and given to the English.
She was burned at the stake as a witch.

Edward Teach: Better known to most as Blackbeard, Edward Teach was the archetypal golden age pirate, a mixture of cruelty and privateer honour, he gained a fearsome reputation that he preferred to employ to cow his opponents and victims rather than using force.
He was at one point issued a pardon, but the call of the sea was strong enough to pull him back, and he was eventually captured and executed by the Americans.

Martin Luther King Jr.: The smiling face and nonviolent representative of the American Civil Rights movement, MLK advocated nonviolent protest against entrenched social divisions of race in the United States, leading a successful campaign against racism in the justice and law system. Whilst it took many more years for social attitudes to change, his work served to end the normalisation of racism in the U.S.
Like many great men, he was assassinated in the midst of his work, although his death served to spur on his vision.

Mary Seacole: One of the most underrated figures on this list, Mary Seacole was a mostly forgotten figure until the modern day thanks to attitudes of her time. A shrewd businesswoman and usually successful entrepreneur, she is most well known for being “Mother” Seacole when she travelled to the Crimea during the Crimean War, acting as a nurse. She gained a reputation amongst the soldiers there for her kindness and warmth, and was eventually supported later in her life by her “sons” whom she had helped in the war.

Art: Daniel Gleebits