Hürrem Sultan (Roxelana). She was born a Ruthenian (modern-day Ukrainian) commoner, captured by Crimean Tatars in a slave raid as a teenager, and taken to Constantinople, where she entered the imperial harem. She eventually became Sultan Suleiman’s favorite concubine. In a complete break with Ottoman tradition, Suleiman freed and married her, making her his legal wife. Until then, sultans generally married freeborn foreign noblewomen, if they married at all, and had children with slave concubines instead. Hürrem went on to become one of the most powerful and influential women in Ottoman history and the first of the prominent women of the Sultanate of Women. She’s widely considered the first, and perhaps the most powerful, Haseki Sultan. It’s probably the most fairy tale-like rags-to-riches story I’ve ever come across.
Aneurin Bevan, a true Cymro and a humanitarian. Focused on the local ideal of providing healthcare to all no matter.
John Brown. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Brown_(abolitionist)
He believed that he was “an instrument of God”,[3] raised to strike the “death blow” to slavery in the United States, a “sacred obligation”.[4] Brown was the leading exponent of violence in the American abolitionist movement,[5] believing it was necessary to end slavery after decades of peaceful efforts had failed.[6][7]
Cassius Marcellus Clay. No, not the name Mohamed Ali was given at birth. Cassius was a badass abolitionist who fought slavery with a printing press when possible and a gun/cannon/big knife when not.
I dunno about favorite, but liked reading about St. Augustine of Hippo. Really interesting life.
Leonardo da Vinci.
… his love for animals, likely including vegetarianism and … a habit of purchasing caged birds and releasing them.
Stede Bonnet, Gentleman Pirate. The HBO show Our Flag Means Death was a highly fictionalized accounting of his story, but the general outline is right: wealthy landowner gets tired/bored of life with his family and buys a ship to go become a pirate. He is, understandably, terrible at it, and runs into Actual Goddamned Blackbeard, who pretty much just steals his lunch money then and there, but after a time decides to help a brother out and actually teaches Stede to be a not completely shit pirate. Neither one lasts much longer before getting caught and executed, but what a bizarre and hilarious journey.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-gentleman-pirate-159418520/
Ben Franklin was fucking nuts.
Scientist, statesman, and filthy pervert.
When he went to England he fell in with the notorious Hellfire Club.
These guys would hire ruffians to steal corpses, then do autopsy parties, because “science.”
steinmetz comes to mind but its a toughie.
George Washington Carver. Born enslaved, became a chemist, and proceeded to look around his community and ask, “What do we need? What do we have?” Most famously, what they needed was crop rotation. What they had to rotate in was peanuts, so they needed a market for peanuts, so GWC set out to create a bunch of peanut- and peanut-oil-based products. That’s just the most famous example out of many; he spent his whole adult life doing this over and over.
Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, also known as Lenin.
I am the walrus
Bismarck. Because he is controversial.
Being german my first exposure to Bismarck was “He’s the father of our Nation. His schemes allowed the geman states to become one” which is true. But later we learned how he created out-groups as a tool to unite people. Groups like “jews” or “catholics”, and probably many others I don’t recall.
He is not my favourite because he is such a golden boy, but because he is the complete opposite. And because the way he was discussed in history class throughout the years: It was a wonderful decunstruction of his myth.
My favorite history textbook was written right after WW1 and follows the “great man” approach. The chapters on the unification of German (focusing on Bismarck) and the unification of Italy (focusing on Cavour) are a lot of fun.
Diogenes. Guy had it right and also produced some of the sickest burns in history.
Caliph Al-Ma’mun for his groundwork of advancing science and philosophy during the Golden Age of Islam (establishing the House of Wisdom etc)
Spent 7 years developing a vaccine for polio. Didn’t patent it or attempt to make any money from it. Polio transmission eradicated in the US 25 years after his vaccine. Spent the later part of his life researching a vaccine for HIV/AIDS.
I only remember him because an online friend of mine went to a school named after him. So glad there have been people like this throughout history who didn’t decide to just profit off of others suffering.
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