Something simple to get the ball rolling

Che Guevara - Selfless and fearless, an intellectual heavyweight and easily the most inspirational man of the 20th century.

Fidel Castro - For his unrivalled iron will, resolve and magnificent leadership in spite of countless foreign intervention.

Lenin - True genuis andvisionary. Laid the foundations for the defeat of Nazism. No Soviet Union = petential Nazi victory.

Karl Marx - enough said


You all agree ?

__________________
Viva Fidel

"If there ever was in the history of humanity an enemy who was truly universal, an enemy whose acts and moves trouble the entire world, threaten the entire world, attack the entire world in any way or another, that real and really universal enemy is precisely Yankee imperialism"

"North Americans don't understand... that our country is not just Cuba; our country is also humanity"

lol- I don't agree fully with those choices. ;)

but mine would be.

FDR

Churchhill.

Aristotle.

etc.

Men:

Hippocrates, farther of Medic, or so they say, but still a pretty good guy

Confucius, a thinker and social philosopher,

Frederick IX of Denmark, only because of something he said to the germen during ww2, when they asked him why he dared to ride around without a escort, he said he didnt need one because the danish people protected him. Think he was a cool king,

Women:

Joan of Arc, I love a fighting lady, I can name many other great fighting women from 2000bc to nw, but I will spare you ^^

Pope Joan; I know it might be a legend, but I sitll like the idea of a women becoming pope, now that takes some skill

Queen Margrethe I, one of many great queens, her name sake, our current queen is also pretty cool

Well, Hugo, you're leaning alittle hard on Socialism and the 20th century !

I'd have to reach back abit further.

Men -
King Leonidas of Sparta - Had he not stopped the Persians at Thermopalae the history and culture of Europe and western civilization would have been entirely different. We'd all be Persians.
The Early Irish Monks that preserved much of the knowledge of the western world during the early Medieval Ages.
Sir Issac Newton mathematics
Galileo - solar system science
Domienico Ghirlandaio - Teacher of da Vinci and unsung hero of the High Rennaisance
Da Vinci - engineering
Jesus and Buddah
Paul the Apostle of Jesus- Chrisyaianity would not exist today in its form without his writings to the early churches.
Voltaire - the Enlightenment
Mozart - transformed music out of its early techniques
Benjamin Franklin - largely for insisting that the Constitution be written based on the constitution of the 5 Civilized Tribes of the Americas.

Women -
Queen Catherine the Great of Russia - for bringing the principles of the Enlightenment to Russia
Madame Marie Curie-for her discovery and work with radium
Madame Einstein for her early mathematical work with her husband (yes, she was quite the intellect all on her own) during which time he perfected the formula for energy.
Queen Hatshepsut of Egypt - for political and architectural development of ancient Egypt
Mary Magdalene - apostle and teacher of Jesus and the early church, she broke all norms for the time according to the Nag Hammadi
There are a number of unknown female artists of the Rennaisance that developed portraiture and perspective in their work.
8)
uh, that's a fair start.

.....Don't recall who he was !!!

__________________

www.westernusawx.com

Let's see.
Whoever invented fire, the written word, and the wheel (hmmm...)

Miltiades, Callimachus, Arimnestus (victors at Battle of Marathon)

Themistocles (the real mastermind behind Sparta, and victor at Salamis

Leonidas of Sparta (led the Greeks to victory, may have saved democracy)

Pausanias (victor at Plataea)

Herodotus (he wrote down the above, and made sure we'd know about it)

Alexander the Great (...duh.)

Scipio (beat Hannibal)

Hannibal (almost beat Rome)

Spartacus (led a slave revolt against Rome.)

Julius Caesar (greatest general in recorded history)

Augustus (founded the Roman Empire)

Claudius (one of the better Emperors)

Vercingetorix (led the province of Gaul in revolt against Caesar, defeated at
Alesia but the effort was nice)

Jesus of Nazareth (worshipping him is going a little far, though)

Sun Tzu (The Art of War is great reading )

Gautama Buddha (his religion is by far the coolest)

Muhammad (started a religion)

King Richard the Lionhearted (was, by all accounts, a charismatic king and great general who cared for his people)

Robin Hood (robbed the rich, gave to the poor [right on])

George Washington (father of our country)

Nathaniel Greene (victor at Saratoga, which brought France in and allowed us to win)

Benjamin Franklin (another father of our country)

Robert E. Lee (not for who he fought for, but his great generalship and the fact that he didn't like slavery)

Ulysses S. Grant (beat the Confederacy. Those guys were serious assholes.)

Abraham Lincoln (helped hold the Union together)

Otto von Bismarck (for uniting Germany.)

Georges Clemenceau gets an honorable mention here for being the major voice behind the Treaty of Versailles and letting the Nazis come to power later. What an asshole, right?

Woodrow Wilson (had some great ideas that were ahead of his time. Too bad the League of Nations didn't work out.)

Franklin Delano Roosevelt (the New Deal, leading us to victory in WW2)

Harry Truman (when he was Vice President. He led a commission that rooted out corruption from the military. Cheney might have taken a leaf out of his book.)

Eisenhower (for keeping the British and Americans together, not because he was a great general)

George S. Patton (a fascist dog, but the best US general of WW2.)

Marshal Zhukov (he brought about Soviet victories at Moscow and Kursk, and engineered the Vistula-Oder offensive. Commanded the defense of Stalingrad. Commanded the northern part of the Berlin offensive.)

Marshal Koniev (engineered the cutting off of the German Sixth Army in Stalingrad. Commanded troops at Moscow, Kursk, defeated German armies in Hungary, Austria, Romania, commanded the southern part of the Berlin assault)

Heinz Guderian (for inventing Blitzkrieg. As a bonus, he loathed Hitler.)

Douglas MacArthur (led us to victory in the Pacific)

Winston Churchill (prevented British surrender in 1940)

Werner Heisenberg [and other German physicists] (delayed Germany's atomic bomb project, stopping them from getting it.)

Mohandas Ghandi (if you can't figure this out, you're retarded)

Martin Luther King, Jr. (...uhh...)

Tupac Shakur (best rapper ever, and strong advocate of social change through his music. Yes, I am including him.)

__________________
"Moreover, I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communities and states...Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial "outside agitator" idea. Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere within its bounds."



~Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Eratosthenes, who proved the world was round.
Archimedes, who liked to run through cities naked shouting "Eureka!"
Franklin, who realized what electricity is.
Newton, who realized that gravity was universal and discovered Calculus.
Einstein, who realized that mass is energy and that the speed of light in a vacuum is the cosmic speed limit.

Hmm... my list seems to be biased toward one particular profession for some reason...

All the "initials" presidents (TR, FDR, JFK, LBJ)
Anti-Ronald Anti-Reagan

Probably a bunch of others too.

Extensive list Zephyr. I cant say i agree with them all,. but i cant believe i left Zhukov out, good inclusion, as was Caesar


And one more i will throw into the mix because i rushed my choices - Simon Bolivar, the great liberator of Latin America and influential to this day.

__________________
Viva Fidel

"If there ever was in the history of humanity an enemy who was truly universal, an enemy whose acts and moves trouble the entire world, threaten the entire world, attack the entire world in any way or another, that real and really universal enemy is precisely Yankee imperialism"

"North Americans don't understand... that our country is not just Cuba; our country is also humanity"

I'd just like to add that Robin Hood was a mythical character, perhaps based on contemporary people, but not an actual person.
When I was in Nottingham last, they were sure to point that out. No castle existed at that time, though there is a much later castle in existence.

__________________

www.westernusawx.com

I caught a documentary about the first Emperor of China yesterday. It was really fascinating. He was reponsible for uniting China for the first time, building the Great Wall of China, his is the tomb in which the terracotta warrior army was found and it is still under excavation.
He was a ruthless tyrant as he had to be to retain power, he caused the deaths of many innocent people but seemed to be aware of this and have some conscience about it. He was also a great ruler, but depends on your perspective if he is viewed as one of the greatest men.

Something is rolling here, no doubt of that...

The man was a Trotskyte. Nothing admirable about that.

Pretty lightweight on the intellectual side too. Most violence loving killers tend to be.

Actually, I can think of a dozen that easily rivil him for iron will.

Notwithstanding your eulogizing rhetoric, Castro is rather impressive figure.

Lenin only misses top billing as one of the 20th century's greatest monsters and that's only because Hitler and Stalin were much worse.

Great man? The guy couldn't even get a job to feed his own children. He needs more than a few obscure books to be considered 'great' in my book.

Indeed, I'd argue that Marx couldn't even stand his own theory and had to ignore it completely in order to construct that silly Manifesto pamphlet.

Only Fidel deserves to be on such a list, but I'd be hardpressed to give Fidel a position in the top 50.