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A biography, or simply bio, is a detailed description of a person's life. It involves more than just the basic facts like education, work, relationships, and death; it portrays a person's experience of these life events. Unlike a profile or curriculum vitae (résumé), a biography presents a subject's life story, highlighting various aspects of their life, including intimate details of experience, and may include an analysis of the subject's personality.

Biographical works are usually non-fiction, but fiction can also be used to portray a person's life. One in-depth form of biographical coverage is called legacy writing. Works in diverse media, from literature to film, form the genre known as biography.

An authorized biography is written with the permission, cooperation, and at times, participation of a subject or a subject's heirs. An autobiography is written by the person themselves, sometimes with the assistance of a collaborator or ghostwriter. (Full article...)

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Featured articles are displayed here, which represent some of the best content on English Wikipedia.

Image 1

Rejewski, c. 1932

Marian Adam Rejewski (Polish: [ˈmarjan rɛˈjɛfskʲi] (listen); 16 August 1905 – 13 February 1980) was a Polish mathematician and cryptologist who in late 1932 reconstructed the sight-unseen German military Enigma cipher machine, aided by limited documents obtained by French military intelligence. Over the next nearly seven years, Rejewski and fellow mathematician-cryptologists Jerzy Różycki and Henryk Zygalski developed and used techniques and equipment to decrypt the German machine ciphers, even as the Germans introduced modifications to their equipment and encryption procedures. Five weeks before the outbreak of World War II the Poles, at a conference in Warsaw, shared their achievements with the French and British, thus enabling Britain to begin reading German Enigma-encrypted messages, seven years after Rejewski's original reconstruction of the machine. The intelligence that was gained by the British from Enigma decrypts formed part of what was code-named Ultra and contributed—perhaps decisively—to the defeat of Germany.

In 1929, while studying mathematics at Poznań University, Rejewski attended a secret cryptology course conducted by the Polish General Staff's Cipher Bureau (Biuro Szyfrów), which he joined in September 1932. The Bureau had had no success in reading Enigma-enciphered messages and set Rejewski to work on the problem in late 1932; he deduced the machine's secret internal wiring after only a few weeks. Rejewski and his two colleagues then developed successive techniques for the regular decryption of Enigma messages. His own contributions included the cryptologic card catalog, derived using the cyclometer that he had invented, and the cryptologic bomb. (Full article...)
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William Matthews (December 16, 1770 – April 30, 1854), occasionally spelled Mathews, was an American who became the fifth Roman Catholic priest ordained in the United States and the first such person born in British America. Born in the colonial Province of Maryland, he was briefly a novice in the Society of Jesus. After being ordained, he became influential in establishing Catholic parochial and educational institutions in Washington, D.C. He was the second pastor of St. Patrick's Church, serving for most of his life. He served as the sixth president of Georgetown College, later known as Georgetown University. Matthews acted as president of the Washington Catholic Seminary, which became Gonzaga College High School, and oversaw the continuity of the school during suppression by the church and financial insecurity.

Matthews was vicar apostolic and apostolic administrator of the Diocese of Philadelphia during a period of ecclesiastical turmoil. He was a co-founder and president of the Washington Library Company for thirteen years—the first public library in the District of Columbia. He also was co-director and trustee of the District of Columbia Public Schools, where he was one of the superintendents of a school. He played a significant role in the founding of Washington Visitation Academy for girls, St. Peter's Church on Capitol Hill, and the parish that now includes the Cathedral of St. Matthew the Apostle. (Full article...)
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Clinkscales in March 2016

Clifford Clinkscales (born March 11, 1984) is an American professional basketball assistant coach for the KW Titans of the National Basketball League of Canada (NBL Canada) and a former player. A 6-foot-1-inch (1.85 m) point guard, Clinkscales began playing professionally in 2008, with two seasons in the NBA Development League (NBA D-League). He spent most of his professional career in NBL Canada, playing from 2013 to 2020 in Halifax for the Rainmen and the Hurricanes. With the Halifax Hurricanes, he set the record for the most career assists in NBL Canada history.

A native of Jamaica, Queens, in New York City, Clinkscales rose to prominence as a basketball player at a young age, drawing attention from coaches around the country. After his freshman year at Springfield Gardens High School, he transferred to Shores Christian Academy in Ocala, Florida, where his team won the National Association of Christian Athletes title. He was rated as a three-star recruit, and several major college basketball programs showed interest in him. Clinkscales played college basketball for the DePaul Blue Demons from 2004 to 2008. He averaged 8.3 points per game in his first season in college while also becoming the fifth freshman in DePaul history to record 100 assists in a season. Although most of his statistics stagnated in his remaining years in college and his scoring average dropped, he led NCAA Division I in assist-to-turnover ratio as a senior. (Full article...)
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Henry Washington Sawyer III (December 23, 1918 – July 31, 1999) was an American lawyer, civil rights activist and politician. Born in Philadelphia, he served in the U.S. Navy in World War II, afterwards returning to the University of Pennsylvania Law School. Sawyer worked as a corporate lawyer but is best known for his advocacy of civil liberties, especially in First Amendment cases. In Abington School District v. Schempp and Lemon v. Kurtzman, he successfully argued cases on behalf of the American Civil Liberties Union before the Supreme Court of the United States that became the basis for all modern Establishment Clause jurisprudence. Sawyer also pursued civil rights causes in Philadelphia and in the South during the civil rights movement of the 1960s. Originally a Republican, he was elected as a Democrat to serve a four-year term on the Philadelphia City Council, where he worked for civil service reform and to increase the amount of public art in the city. (Full article...)
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Cantor, c. 1910

Georg Ferdinand Ludwig Philipp Cantor (/ˈkæntɔːr/ KAN-tor, German: [ˈɡeːɔʁk ˈfɛʁdinant ˈluːtvɪç ˈfiːlɪp ˈkantɔʁ]; March 3 [O.S. February 19] 1845 – January 6, 1918) was a German mathematician. He created set theory, which has become a fundamental theory in mathematics. Cantor established the importance of one-to-one correspondence between the members of two sets, defined infinite and well-ordered sets, and proved that the real numbers are more numerous than the natural numbers. In fact, Cantor's method of proof of this theorem implies the existence of an infinity of infinities. He defined the cardinal and ordinal numbers and their arithmetic. Cantor's work is of great philosophical interest, a fact he was well aware of.

Originally, Cantor's theory of transfinite numbers was regarded as counter-intuitive – even shocking. This caused it to encounter resistance from mathematical contemporaries such as Leopold Kronecker and Henri Poincaré and later from Hermann Weyl and L. E. J. Brouwer, while Ludwig Wittgenstein raised philosophical objections; see Controversy over Cantor's theory. Cantor, a devout Lutheran Christian, believed the theory had been communicated to him by God. Some Christian theologians (particularly neo-Scholastics) saw Cantor's work as a challenge to the uniqueness of the absolute infinity in the nature of God – on one occasion equating the theory of transfinite numbers with pantheism – a proposition that Cantor vigorously rejected. It is important to note that not all theologians were against Cantor's theory, prominent neo-scholastic philosopher Constantin Gutberlet was in favor of it and Cardinal Johann Baptist Franzelin accepted it as a valid theory (after Cantor made some important clarifications). (Full article...)
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Anning with her dog, Tray, painted before 1842; the hill Golden Cap can be seen in the background

Mary Anning (21 May 1799 – 9 March 1847) was an English fossil collector, dealer, and palaeontologist who became known around the world for the discoveries she made in Jurassic marine fossil beds in the cliffs along the English Channel at Lyme Regis in the county of Dorset in Southwest England. Anning's findings contributed to changes in scientific thinking about prehistoric life and the history of the Earth.

Anning searched for fossils in the area's Blue Lias and Charmouth Mudstone cliffs, particularly during the winter months when landslides exposed new fossils that had to be collected quickly before they were lost to the sea. Her discoveries included the first correctly identified ichthyosaur skeleton when she was twelve years old; the first two nearly complete plesiosaur skeletons; the first pterosaur skeleton located outside Germany; and fish fossils. Her observations played a key role in the discovery that coprolites, known as bezoar stones at the time, were fossilised faeces, and she also discovered that belemnite fossils contained fossilised ink sacs like those of modern cephalopods. (Full article...)
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Official portrait, 1989

Wendell Hampton Ford (September 8, 1924 – January 22, 2015) was an American politician from the Commonwealth of Kentucky. He served for twenty-four years in the U.S. Senate and was the 53rd Governor of Kentucky. He was the first person to be successively elected lieutenant governor, governor and United States senator in Kentucky history. The Senate Democratic whip from 1991 to 1999, he was considered the leader of the state's Democratic Party from his election to governor in 1971 until he retired from the Senate in 1999. At the time of his retirement, he was the longest-serving senator in Kentucky's history, a mark which was then surpassed by Mitch McConnell in 2009. He is the most recent Democrat to have served as a Senator from the state of Kentucky.

Born in Daviess County, Kentucky, Ford attended the University of Kentucky, but his studies were interrupted by his service in World War II. After the war, he graduated from the Maryland School of Insurance and returned to Kentucky to help his father with the family insurance business. He also continued his military service in the Kentucky Army National Guard. He worked on the gubernatorial campaign of Bert T. Combs in 1959 and became Combs' executive assistant when Combs was elected governor. Encouraged to run for the Kentucky Senate by Combs' ally and successor, Ned Breathitt, Ford won the seat and served one four-year term before running for lieutenant governor in 1967. He was elected on a split ticket with Republican Louie B. Nunn. Four years later, Ford defeated Combs in an upset in the Democratic primary en route to the governorship. (Full article...)
Image 8

Combs in 1960

Bertram Thomas Combs (August 13, 1911 – December 4, 1991) was an American jurist and politician from the Commonwealth of Kentucky. After serving on the Kentucky Court of Appeals, he was elected the 50th Governor of Kentucky in 1959 on his second run for the office. Following his gubernatorial term, he was appointed to serve as a United States Circuit Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit by President Lyndon B. Johnson, serving from 1967 to 1970.

Combs rose from poverty in his native Clay County to earn a law degree from the University of Kentucky and open a law practice in Prestonsburg. He was decorated for prosecuting Japanese war criminals before military tribunals following World War II, then returned to Kentucky and his law practice. In 1951, Governor Lawrence Wetherby appointed him to fill a vacancy on the Kentucky Court of Appeals. Later that year, he was elected to a full term on the court, defeating former governor and judge Simeon S. Willis. Kentucky's Democratic Party had split into two factions by 1955 when Earle C. Clements, the leader of one faction, chose Combs to challenge former governor and U.S. Senator A. B. "Happy" Chandler, who headed the other, in the upcoming gubernatorial primary. (Full article...)
Image 9

David Hillhouse Buel in 1908

David Hillhouse Buel Jr. (July 19, 1862 – May 23, 1923) was an American priest who served as the president of Georgetown University. A Catholic priest and Jesuit for much of his life, he later left the Jesuit order to marry, and subsequently left the Catholic Church to become an Episcopal priest. Born at Watervliet, New York, he was the son of David Hillhouse Buel, a distinguished Union Army officer, and descended from numerous prominent New England families. While studying at Yale University, he formed an acquaintance with priest Michael J. McGivney, resulting in his conversion to Catholicism and joining the Society of Jesus after graduation.

In 1901, Buel became a professor at Georgetown University. He took charge of the university in 1905, after the sudden removal of the president. In this role, he promoted intramural sports, oversaw construction of Ryan Gymnasium, and reformed the curriculum and university governance. He also instituted strict discipline and curtailed intercollegiate athletics, stoking fierce opposition from the student body and their parents, which resulted in his removal by the Jesuit superiors in 1908. Buel then performed pastoral work and taught for several years, before resigning from the Jesuit order in 1912 and secretly marrying in Connecticut. When word reached Washington, D.C., his former Jesuit colleagues publicly condemned him, and the media claimed his actions resulted in his excommunication latae sententiae. (Full article...)
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Stereolab performing at the London Pitchfork Festival in 2021

Stereolab are an Anglo-French avant-pop band formed in London in 1990. Led by the songwriting team of Tim Gane and Lætitia Sadier, the group's music combines influences from krautrock, lounge and 1960s pop music, often incorporating a repetitive motorik beat with heavy use of vintage electronic keyboards and female vocals sung in English and French. Their lyrics have political and philosophical themes influenced by the Surrealist and Situationist movements. On stage, they play in a more feedback-driven and guitar-oriented style. The band also draw from funk, jazz and Brazilian music, and were one of the first artists to be dubbed "post-rock". They are regarded among the most innovative and influential groups of the 1990s.

Stereolab were formed by Gane (guitar and keyboards) and Sadier (vocals, keyboards and guitar) after the break-up of McCarthy. The two were romantically involved for fourteen years and are the group's only consistent members. Other longtime members include 1992 addition Mary Hansen (backing vocals, keyboards and guitar), who died in 2002, and 1993 addition Andy Ramsay (drums). The High Llamas' leader Sean O'Hagan (guitar and keyboards) was a member from 1993 to 1994 and continued appearing on later records for occasional guest appearances. (Full article...)
Image 11

Solti by Allan Warren, 1975

Sir Georg Solti, (/ˈdʒɔːrdʒ ˈʃɒlti/; Hungarian: [ˈʃolti]; born György Stern; 21 October 1912 – 5 September 1997) was a Hungarian-British orchestral and operatic conductor, best known for his appearances with opera companies in Munich, Frankfurt and London, and as a long-serving music director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Born in Budapest, he studied there with Béla Bartók, Leó Weiner and Ernő Dohnányi. In the 1930s, he was a répétiteur at the Hungarian State Opera and worked at the Salzburg Festival for Arturo Toscanini. His career was interrupted by the rise of the Nazis' influence on Hungarian politics and, being of Jewish background, he fled the increasingly harsh Hungarian anti-Jewish laws in 1938. After conducting a season of Russian ballet in London at the Royal Opera House he found refuge in Switzerland, where he remained during the Second World War. Prohibited from conducting there, he earned a living as a pianist.

After the war, Solti was appointed musical director of the Bavarian State Opera in Munich in 1946. In 1952 he moved to the Oper Frankfurt, where he remained in charge for nine years. He took West German citizenship in 1953. In 1961 he became musical director of the Covent Garden Opera Company, London. During his ten-year tenure, he introduced changes that raised standards to the highest international levels. Under his musical directorship the status of the company was recognised with the grant of the title "the Royal Opera". He became an honorary citizen of the coastal holiday town of Castiglione della Pescaia, and a British subject in 1972. (Full article...)
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Gustav Holst, c. 1921 photograph by Herbert Lambert

Gustav Theodore Holst (born Gustavus Theodore von Holst; 21 September 1874 – 25 May 1934) was an English composer, arranger and teacher. Best known for his orchestral suite The Planets, he composed many other works across a range of genres, although none achieved comparable success. His distinctive compositional style was the product of many influences, Richard Wagner and Richard Strauss being most crucial early in his development. The subsequent inspiration of the English folksong revival of the early 20th century, and the example of such rising modern composers as Maurice Ravel, led Holst to develop and refine an individual style.

There were professional musicians in the previous three generations of Holst's family and it was clear from his early years that he would follow the same calling. He hoped to become a pianist, but was prevented by neuritis in his right arm. Despite his father's reservations, he pursued a career as a composer, studying at the Royal College of Music under Charles Villiers Stanford. Unable to support himself by his compositions, he played the trombone professionally and later became a teacher—a great one, according to his colleague Ralph Vaughan Williams. Among other teaching activities he built up a strong tradition of performance at Morley College, where he served as musical director from 1907 until 1924, and pioneered music education for women at St Paul's Girls' School, where he taught from 1905 until his death in 1934. He was the founder of a series of Whitsun music festivals, which ran from 1916 for the remainder of his life. (Full article...)
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James Hogun (died January 4, 1781) was an Irish-American military officer who was as one of five generals from North Carolina to serve with the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War. Born in Ireland, Hogan migrated to North Carolina – then a British colony – in 1751. Settling in Halifax County, he raised a family and established himself as a prominent local figure.

A member of the county's Committee of Safety, he represented it at the North Carolina Provincial Congress and helped to draft the first Constitution of North Carolina. Initially a major in the 7th North Carolina Regiment, Hogun advanced quickly in rank during 1776 to become the unit's commanding officer. He participated in the battles of Brandywine and Germantown in 1777. The Continental Congress promoted Hogun to brigadier general in 1779, although several congressmen and the North Carolina General Assembly wished to see Thomas Clark of North Carolina promoted instead. (Full article...)
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Painting of Tecumseh based on an 1808 sketch

Tecumseh (English: /tɪˈkʌmsə, tɪˈkʌmsi/ ti-KUM-sə, ti-KUM-see; c. 1768 – October 5, 1813) was a Shawnee chief and warrior who promoted resistance to the expansion of the United States onto Native American lands. A persuasive orator, Tecumseh traveled widely, forming a Native American confederacy and promoting intertribal unity. Even though his efforts to unite Native Americans ended with his death in the War of 1812, he became an iconic folk hero in American, Indigenous, and Canadian popular history.

Tecumseh was born in what is now Ohio, at a time when the far-flung Shawnees were reuniting in their Ohio Country homeland. During his childhood, the Shawnees lost territory to the expanding American colonies in a series of border conflicts. Tecumseh's father was killed in battle against American colonists in 1774. Tecumseh was thereafter mentored by his older brother Cheeseekau, a noted war chief who died fighting Americans in 1792. As a young war leader, Tecumseh joined Shawnee Chief Blue Jacket's armed struggle against further American encroachment, which ended in defeat at the Battle of Fallen Timbers in 1794 and with the loss of most of Ohio in the 1795 Treaty of Greenville. (Full article...)
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Gilbert in 1878

Sir William Schwenck Gilbert (18 November 1836 – 29 May 1911) was an English dramatist, librettist, poet and illustrator best known for his collaboration with composer Arthur Sullivan, which produced fourteen comic operas. The most famous of these include H.M.S. Pinafore, The Pirates of Penzance and one of the most frequently performed works in the history of musical theatre, The Mikado. The popularity of these works was supported for over a century by year-round performances of them, in Britain and abroad, by the repertory company that Gilbert, Sullivan and their producer Richard D'Oyly Carte founded, the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company. These Savoy operas are still frequently performed in the English-speaking world and beyond.

Gilbert's creative output included over 75 plays and libretti, and numerous short stories, poems and lyrics, both comic and serious. After brief careers as a government clerk and a lawyer, Gilbert began to focus, in the 1860s, on writing light verse, including his Bab Ballads, short stories, theatre reviews and illustrations, often for Fun magazine. He also began to write burlesques and his first comic plays, developing a unique absurdist, inverted style that would later be known as his "topsy-turvy" style. He also developed a realistic method of stage direction and a reputation as a strict theatre director. In the 1870s, Gilbert wrote 40 plays and libretti, including his German Reed Entertainments, several blank-verse "fairy comedies", some serious plays, and his first five collaborations with Sullivan: Thespis, Trial by Jury, The Sorcerer, H.M.S. Pinafore and The Pirates of Penzance. In the 1880s, Gilbert focused on the Savoy operas, including Patience, Iolanthe, The Mikado, The Yeomen of the Guard and The Gondoliers. (Full article...)

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... that United Nations diplomat Enuga Sreenivasulu Reddy's anti-apartheid efforts were driven by a chance encounter with African National Congress activist A. B. Xuma?
... that Pita Limjaroenrat, the current leader of Thailand's Move Forward Party, was the first Thai student to receive an international student scholarship from Harvard University?
... that voice actor Justin Roiland got drunk to record the part of Rick in the Rick and Morty episode "Vindicators 3: The Return of Worldender"?
... that manga artist Keiko Takemiya intentionally submitted her manga Sanrūmu Nite immediately before its publication deadline to avoid it being edited?
... that Oswald Spengler and the artist can be seen in the painting Late Visitors to Pompeii?
... that during Sir George Smith's term as governor of Nyasaland, the area of land used for the cultivation of tea, cotton, and tobacco increased a hundredfold?
... that despite suffering from vertigo, actor Bob Barrett performed his own stunt on the hospital rooftop in the Holby City episode "Man Down"?
... that after a career as political journalist, Peter Merseburger wrote biographies of Der Spiegel founder Rudolf Augstein and chancellor Willy Brandt?

General images

The following are images from various biography-related articles on Wikipedia.

Image 1Cover of the first English edition of Benjamin Franklin's autobiography, 1793 (from Autobiography)
Image 2Third Volume of a 1727 edition of Plutarch's Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans printed by Jacob Tonson (from Biography)
Image 3James Boswell wrote what many consider to be the first modern biography, The Life of Samuel Johnson, in 1791. (from Biography)
Image 4A scene from the Baburnama (from Autobiography)
Image 5Einhard as scribe (from Biography)
Image 6John Foxe's The Book of Martyrs, was one of the earliest English-language biographies. (from Biography)
Image 7Saint Augustine of Hippo wrote Confessions, the first Western autobiography ever written, around 400. Portrait by Philippe de Champaigne, 17th century. (from Autobiography)
Image 8Eminent Victorians set the standard for 20th century biographical writing, when it was published in 1918. (from Biography)

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Image 1
Sitting Bull
Photo credit: D.F. Barry
Sitting Bull was a Hunkpapa Lakota chief and holy man. He is notable in American and Native American history in large part for his major victory at the Battle of the Little Bighorn against Custer's 7th Cavalry, where his premonition of defeating them became reality. Even today, his name is synonymous with Native American culture, and he is considered to be one of the most famous Native Americans in history. Years later, he also participated in Buffalo Bill's Wild West show, where he frequently cursed audiences in his native tongue as they applauded him.
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Image 2
Zishe Breitbart
Photo: National Photo Co.
Restoration: Michel Vuijlsteke
Siegmund "Zishe" Breitbart (1893–1925), shown here pulling a heavy weight using only his teeth, was a Polish strongman and circus performer who was known as the "Strongest Man in the World" during the 1920s. He was widely popular in both Europe and the U.S., but died at the age of 32 after an accident during a performance.
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Image 3
T206 Honus Wagner
Image credit: American Tobacco Company
The T206 Honus Wagner is a rare baseball card depicting Honus Wagner (February 24, 1874 – December 6, 1955), a dead-ball era shortstop considered one of the best players of all time. The card was designed and issued by the American Tobacco Company from 1909 to 1911. Only 50 to 200 cards were ever distributed to the public, and as a result of the card's rarity and popularity, prices have soared. In 2007, a collector paid $2.8 million for one, making it the most valuable baseball card in history. This specimen belongs to the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown, New York.
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Image 4
Moshe Ya'alon
Photograph: Reuven Kapuscinski
Moshe Ya'alon (b. 1950) is an Israeli politician and current Defense Minister. Ya'alon was called up as a reserve during the Yom Kippur War in 1973. After the war, he rejoined the army as an officer and rose through the ranks, leading the Sayeret Matkal commando unit, the Paratroopers Brigade, and Military Intelligence. In 2002 he was appointed Chief of Staff of the Israel Defense Forces, resigning in 2005. Since 2013 he has served as the country's Defense Minister.
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Image 5
Agnes Milowka
Photo: James Axford
Agnes Milowka (1981–2011) was an Australian technical diver, underwater photographer, author, and cave explorer. She gained international recognition for extending cave systems across Australia and in Florida, and as a public speaker and author on the subjects of diving and maritime archaeology. She participated in National Geographic and Discovery Channel expeditions. Her passion led her to act as a stunt double on Andrew Wight's feature film Sanctum and to participate in shooting real scenery in Mount Gambier caves, where she drowned just a few weeks after the movie's premiere.
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Image 6
Stephen Merchant
Photo: Carolyn Djanogly
Stephen Merchant (b. 1974) is an English writer, director, radio presenter, comedian, and actor. He is best known for his collaborations with Ricky Gervais, with whom he co-wrote and co-directed the popular British sitcom The Office, co-hosts The Ricky Gervais Show, and co-wrote, co-directed, and co-starred in Extras.
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Image 7
John Henry Newman
Painting: John Everett Millais
John Henry Newman (1801–90) was a British cleric and leader in the Oxford Movement, a group of Anglicans who wished to return the Church of England to many Catholic beliefs and forms of worship traditional in the medieval times. In 1845 Newman converted to Catholicism, eventually rising to cardinal.
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Image 8
Horatio Nelson, 1st Viscount Nelson
Painting: Lemuel Francis Abbott
Horatio Nelson, 1st Viscount Nelson, (1758–1805) was a British flag officer who served in the Royal Navy, particularly during the Napoleonic Wars. Born in Norfolk, Nelson entered the navy at age 13, and in 1778 he obtained his own command. During his career he suffered from seasickness, and by the time of the Trafalgar Campaign he had already lost his right arm and sight in an eye in battles in Santa Cruz de Tenerife and Corsica, respectively.

In 1805 he took over the Cádiz blockade, and on 21 October of that year Nelson's fleet engaged the Franco-Spanish one at the Battle of Trafalgar. The battle was a British victory, but during the action Nelson was fatally wounded by a French sharpshooter. Numerous monuments, such as Nelson's Column, have been created in his memory, and his signal "England expects that every man will do his duty" has been widely quoted, paraphrased and referenced.
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Image 9
Alice Manfield
Photo: Unknown; Restoration: John O'Neill
Alice Manfield (1878–1960), commonly known as Guide Alice, was a mountain guide, amateur naturalist, chalet owner, photographer, and early feminist figure from Victoria, Australia. Her pioneering work at Mount Buffalo from the 1890s to the 1930s led to her becoming a tourist attraction in her own right, and helped lead to the establishment of the Mount Buffalo National Park. Manfield's parents ran a hotel at Mount Buffalo, and she led tours up the mountain from her youth. Because of her enthusiasm and extensive knowledge of the area, she quickly became a highly sought-after guide. She continued guiding tourists until the 1930s.
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Image 10
Marguerite de Navarre
Engraver: John James Hinchliff; Restoration: Adam Cuerden
An engraving of Marguerite de Navarre (1492–1549), the queen consort of King Henry II of Navarre, from an 1864 English edition of the Heptaméron, a collection of her own short stories. She was a patron of humanists and reformers, and as the older sister of King Francis I of France, Marguerite held tremendous influence in France, so much so that French historian Jules Michelet called her the "Mother" of the French Renaissance and American scholar Samuel Putnam called her the "First Modern Woman".
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Image 11
Aminah Cendrakasih
Photograph credit: Tati Studio; restored by Chris Woodrich
Aminah Cendrakasih (born 29 January 1938) is an Indonesian actress. She started in films in her teens, her first starring role being in 1955. She continued acting into her seventies, appearing in almost 120 feature films during her career, as well as in several television roles. In 2012, she received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Bandung Film Festival, and received another at the 2013 Indonesian Movie Awards.
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Image 12
Frances Densmore
Photo: Harris & Ewing; Restoration: Michel Vuijlsteke
Frances Densmore (left) and Blackfoot chief Mountain Chief during a recording session for the Bureau of American Ethnology in 1916. Densmore (1867–1957) was an American ethnographer and ethnomusicologist who worked to document the music of Native Americans in the United States and its use in their cultures. She helped preserve their culture in a time when white settlers were encouraging Native Americans to become Americanized.
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Image 13
Walt Whitman
Photograph: George C. Cox; restoration: Adam Cuerden
Walt Whitman (1819–1892) was an American poet, essayist and journalist. A humanist, he was a part of the transition between transcendentalism and realism, incorporating both views in his works. Whitman is among the most influential poets in the American canon, often called the father of free verse. His work was very controversial in its time, particularly his poetry collection Leaves of Grass (first published in 1855, but continuously revised until Whitman's death), which was described as obscene for its overt sexuality.
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Image 14
L-to-R: Allan Pinkerton, Abraham Lincoln, Maj. Gen. John A. McClernand
Photo credit: Alexander Gardner
Allan Pinkerton (left), President Abraham Lincoln (center), and Major General John A. McClernand (right). This photo was taken not long after the Civil War's first battle on northern soil in Antietam, Maryland on October 3, 1862. Pinkerton was the head of Union Intelligence Services at the time. He also, allegedly, foiled an assassination attempt against Lincoln. His wartime work was critical in Pinkerton's development, which he later used to pioneer the American private detective industry when he formed the Pinkerton National Detective Agency.
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Image 15
Pedro II of Brazil
Photo: Mathew Brady/Levin Corbin Handy
Emperor of Brazil Pedro II was the second and last ruler of the Empire of Brazil, reigning for over 58 years. Born in Rio de Janeiro, his father Pedro I's abrupt abdication and flight to Europe in 1831 left him as Emperor at the age of five. Inheriting an Empire on the verge of disintegration, Pedro II turned Brazil into an emerging power in the international arena. On November 15, 1889, he was overthrown in a coup d'état by a clique of military leaders who declared Brazil a republic. However, he had become weary of emperorship and despaired over the monarchy's future prospects, despite its overwhelming popular support, and did not support any attempt to restore the monarchy.
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