Not to toot the America centric horn, but the Rosa Parks clue is really mostly important as it pertains to American history, not world history...Sure civil rights movements are important everywhere. But in the rest of the world, they happened at different times, and had different figureheads...Rosa Parks is the American symbol.
Thomas1VL, that's on you mate, Belgian too here and I think most of my friends and family know her. I think she's a lot more important in world history than Earhart or Keller. But that's just me, maybe expecting some more non-American people in there. Bismarck. Mandela. Castro. Siddartha Gautama. Ya know
I wonder when you learnt that/how old you are now. Its good they taught that and I hope they taught about a few more people on this list. I finished school in 2000 and got good grades but I wasn't taught about many of the people on this list and what they did including Rosa parks. I have learnt that since though, from the Internet. Think I saw her name crop up with a few others on this list so looked her up - or maybe she came up on a similar quiz to this but on Sporcle.
Mandela was a typical freedom fighter of the era. If South Africa didn't have white people then Mandela's cause would have been lost in history books as one of several African conflicts.
jmellor13: Mao, Gavrillo Princip (started WWI leading to WWII), Lenin, Stalin, FDR and his work with the depression, Truman for dropping the bombs... Hitler had an impact be it's debatable to say he had the biggest impact
My candidate for the person who had the greatest influence on the 20th century is Karl Marx (even though he died in 1883) I wonder what history would have looked like if Marx had never been born. Would someone else have come up with his theories or would we have been spared? His influence still exists today. Without Marx, it's very possible we'd have a democratic China.
Why are you placing so much importance on this quiz? This isn't something that children are going to have to know in schools around the world, it's just a small quiz meant for some fun and maybe for people to learn a little, not to get all angry about it.
Pedantry I know but Soviet is a bit dodgy as demonym for USSR; first Soviet leader made me think of the Petrograd Soviet first. Perhaps Bolshevik or USSR leader might be better.
I mostly agree with this list but not having Aristotle, Plato and Stalin on this list is a mistake. I have to disagree with having Hannibal and Nelson on this list. Great generals but Hannibal didn't conquer Rome and Nelson, well why?? He is a footnote in history if you are not from the UK. Aristotle and Plato's influence on our modern ideas of politics and science can still be seen. Stalin rapidly transformed an agrarian county into a industrial world superpower. Omitting them is foolish.
What do you mean "you mostly agree"? This isn't some definitive list that EVERYONE should know, it's a lighthearted quiz. I think you're taking this far too seriously - perhaps a bit of perspective is in order.
That's just a way to get more people to take it, many quizzes do it as if to challenge the quiz taker. It's not meant to be taken literally, especially since I don't think everyone on the planet will know who Laozi is.
-Said superpower influenced billions of laws and teaching around the Globe.
If it was not for Nelson, the entire planet would be much more heavily focused on Spanish laws and rulings (nothing against Spain btw. Just that it's fairly different from Britain).
On another note, why the heck am I not on this list??? Clearly an awful oversight.
Hannibal's achievements helped push the Roman Republic to become the Roman Empire. That change is absolutely significant as the Empire would conquer the Mediterranean area and more, exist for about a thousand years and influence Western civilization to this day.
As for Nelson, his achievements enabled the British navy to replace the Spanish as the greatest navy in the world. This resulted in the expansion of the British Empire. And just like the Romans, the British Empire has had a large influence on the history of the world.
Using this type of historical influence, I wonder why Genghis Khan is not included.
Everyone needs to quit being so disrespectful to the people on this list. Just because someone wasn't as great of an influence to you, doesn't mean they weren't to someone else.
Yes. To be historically correct, his name should be added. During the Civil War Lincoln was President of the Union and Davis President of the Confederate States.
I have 27 General Knowledge quizzes in jetpunk and none of them get the comments like this and many others. Maybe my questions are too factual and not as controversial and contentious as these.
Humphrey Davy was not English, he was Cornish from Penzance in Cornwall. I think the inventor of the steam locomotive Richard Trevithick (another Cornishman) is more worthy of knowing about than the great industrial destroyer Thatcher.
It's called general knowledge. Quizzes are meant to test you, not to so easy that you get everything right all of the time. If you didn't know it, then you do now. It's not as though you haven't got a way of finding things out quickly afterwards.
Well, for starters, she helped raise awareness for millions of people with natural ailments. So, unless you have something against the blind and deaf, I personally think helping millions of people around the world would be a decent thing to do, wouldn't it?
first heard of Helen Keller in an episode of South Park ( which includes a wonderfully hilarious non PC Cartman scene ) , but I have since seen some other TV about her and she was an inspirational woman especially for her time.
Only one-fourth of the people named here are Americans. Who are the ten people you would replace them with on your own quiz? (Which you are quite welcome to make.)
You're right. Nobody should know the name of the man who started WW2 and committed a genocide of Jews. No one should know the first leader of the most powerful nation in the world. Not a single human should know the "father" of the soon to be most populous nation in the world. Discoverer of huge scientific theory? Nah.
I tried Tesla first..... yet to my dismay, it was he who stole it and took credit for it. That works in line with a lot of the other clues and answers though...
The authors of the Tao Te Ching and Great Expectations are also included. FDR is considered by many to be the greatest of all American presidents, except maybe Lincoln and Washington (both included), and was the American counterpoint to Hitler, who, along with Churchill (also included), steered America through World War II. Washington was not just the first president. He is considered the father of the United States. You mean to tell me that the founding figure of the most influential country in the world is not important enough to make this list? The first presidents or prime ministers of countries like France, the UK, Australia, Argentina, etc. are not as significant because their countries existed before they did. Great Britain was a sovereign state long before Sir Walpole came along. This is not an exhaustive list. It's just a list of 40 very famous people. Get over it.
Some countries fell into the Great Depression because they depended to heavily on our economy's success. When FDR brought relief to the U.S., he brought a little relief to other countries as well. Also, U.S. citizens are this site's number one demographic, so it is highly probable that the author of this quiz is a U.S. resident.
The glorification of Rosa Parks is misdirected; she was just a prop used by civil rights activists. Claudette Colvin is actually the person who resisted bus segregation almost an entire year before the Rosa Parks incident, but civil rights leaders knew they couldn't use Claudette to promote the cause because she was an unmarried pregnant teen. So they coached and used Rosa Parks instead because she was a gentle old lady. Claudette Colvin gets no credit
You are correct, but the crime is not that Rosa Parks gets credit. It's that Claudette Colvin does not *also* get credit. What Rosa Parks did took a lot of courage, even if she wasn't the first person to do it, and she deserves recognition. But you're right that Claudette Colvin deserves recognition too.
Odysseus is a character in the Iliad, and is also the main character in the Odyssey (hence the name and the origin of the word). Both were written by Homer.
This quiz should be called 40 people that all Americans should know. So many great people in worlds history but of course half have to be American or british
The quiz didn't claim that these were the top 40. But to please you, perhaps the quiz should be called "40 of the Many Important People You Should Know." Quit complaining
I'm not religious, but I'm marginally concerned about Jesus being called "Christian Messiah" while Muhammad is called "Founder of Islam". My suggestion is to change Jesus' description to "Founder of Christianity", because that is a title that is literally true, while it cannot be proven that Jesus was actually a messiah, let alone THE messiah.
It used to say "founder of Christianity," which is actually less accurate. Jesus, if he was a real person, did not found Christianity. Jesus was Jewish. So were his followers. According to Christian tradition, Jesus and his followers believed him to be the messiah. To Christians- he is the messiah. Therefore it's accurate to say he's the Christian messiah. He's definitely not the founder of Christianity. The man most directly responsible for founding the religion of Christianity, as distinct and separate from Judaism, is probably Paul.
A similar argument could be made for Muhammad, and it would probably be more accurate to call Muhammad the "last Muslim prophet" rather than the founder of Islam; even putting aside whether he was or was not a legitimate prophet, and the fact that Islamic tradition holds he had more to do with founding a religion than Jesus did. The Quran supposedly came straight from Muhammad's mouth. Jesus did not write the Bible.
Right from the start, Adam (the first man on earth) was influenced and knew God. Therefore Christianity was present before Man. The beginning of the Bible says "In the beginning God created the Heavens and the Earth".
The Jewish messiah was supposed to be a great king and conquering warrior who would defeat and slaughter all the enemies of the Jews ushering in a Jewish kingdom that would rule the world.
Jesus, by contrast (if he was a real person and according to what we know from the gospels), was the hippy leader of a tiny Jewish apocalypse cult who made a bunch of prophecies that never came true, got arrested for treason, accused of blasphemy, and then was humiliated and tortured before his public execution.
Is it any wonder that early Christians had such a hard time converting Jews with this story and instead turned to trying to convince gentiles?
...and then later his most lasting contribution became that he served as inspiration for another religion that came to persecute and villify the Jewish people like no other. Quite a poor Jewish messiah, on balance!
If you wanted to add more women, you could have added famous and significant women like Maria Curie, Eva Peron, Florence Nightingale, Catherine the Great, Cleopatra, Dolores Ibarruri... Helen Keller, Jane Austen and Amelia Earhart, with all due respect, absolutely don't belong in this list. Not to mention Rosa Parks, nobody outside US knows who she is, or should even care.
I am outside the USA and I know who Rosa Parks is. There is nothing wrong with learning the history of a country other than your own, particularly such an influential country as the USA.
Perhaps. But the list isn't supposed to be comprehensive or to contain exactly the top 40 most influential people. The quiz is fine the way it is and there is a lot of knowledge to be gained by knowing about the Civil Rights movement in the USA, and Rosa Parks was someone particularly famous in the movement.
One I didn't know altogether—Oliver Cromwell—and one I could only come up with the first name for—Horatio Nelson. But other than that, I guess I know my important historical figures!
Why is it when someone goes to the trouble of making a little quiz for jetpunkers many people try and pick fault or choose alternatives for the quiz. Make your own quizzes and then we can all pick holes in yours.
Interesting that you have incontrovertible proof of this, going back a few years where records are shady and claims are exaggerated. "Supposedly" is not denying it, so don't be so offended; it's merely implying that it isn't proven and some uncertainty exists. I don't think merely stating this as fact using capital letters will change many minds
Yes I did pay attention in history lessons (UK) but I only learnt 10 of these facts at school (and I couldn't remember all of those) and they were mostly in geography or science lessons! Many of the other facts I have learnt since although I couldn't remember their names. Some I only learnt in my late 20s.
No one reads her books or speeches, and the only reason anyone cared about them was that it was her giving them. In a sense, I suppose that makes her as a person more significant than someone like Braille; if he hadn't done his work, someone else would have. Still, her contributions are not likely to stand the test of time.
I have always felt that although what Rosa Parks did was brave and nobel, never was really that important. The civil rights movement would have happened without her, and a man like MLK was really who pushe the movement. Did her act affect the movement? Absolutley, but there have been thousands of people who have had a bigger affect on the world.
Hold up, quiz is called historical people that everyone should know, therefore my concern is why isn't Cyrus The Great on the list? Wrote the first human bill of rights, which is incorporated in the Constitution of the USA. He freed the Jews and his name is mentioned in the Bible, Torah and the Quran.
No one is saying that this is a competition and that some names are more notable than others. The name of this quiz isn't to be taken too seriously or literally you know.
Is it bad I don't know half the people here and some I do know I don't know the listed accomplishments (I have never heard of Moonlight Sonata) or was only being able to think robert downy jr?
I feel like the moon landing was a much more difficult accomplishment than simply getting into low earth orbit. Yes, the first person in space is an extremely important step, but landing on the surface of the moon was a larger step.
Nikola Tesla actually invented the lightbulb. Edison stole all his paperwork and stole everything from him. I would change Thomas Edison to Nikola Tesla.
Guttenburg did not invent the printing press. This is common knowledge at this point, people really need to stop repeating this nonsense. The first printed book was made in 849 AD. He didn't even invent moveable metal type. Various versions of this were made in China and Korea over the three or four centuries before Guttenburg made his. His only legitimate claim to fame is printing the Christian bible. Tesla also didn't invent the light bulb. This is even taught in schools nowadays.
Also, Lao Tzu is about as "supposed" as Homer. His existence is not verified by any evidence other than there is a book credited to an "Old Master."
What Gutenberg invented, and the Chinese did not, was the "mechanical" printing press, which I just added to the clue. There's a reason that Gutenberg's innovation shook the world in a way that the Asian printing press did not. According to Wikipedia... "Mechanical presses as used in European printing remained unknown in East Asia. Instead, printing remained an unmechanized, laborious process...".
1) It's complicated. No single person invented the light bulb. Edison did more than any other person to make electric light a reality. 2) In ancient times, Macedonians were Greeks.
People were well aware of gravity's existence long before either of those people, they just didn't know what caused it. What newton did was create an equation that could calculate the force of gravity. His equation does a pretty good job, but it's not quite right in more complex scenarios. Einstein came up with the idea of relativity and the equations of relativity are much more accurate than newtons equations. Interestingly, of the 4 fundamental forces, gravity might be the least well understood.
US-American is not a demonym, worldwidely is not a word, your sentence is not a sentence, your ignorance isn't representative of everyone who takes this quiz, and your point is incorrect if I'm going to describe it as generously as possible.
Not really to be honest. I've never heard of them in school, or after that for that matter. A lot of them are not really noteworthy people. And there are definetely more famous writers than those. I agree that the quiz is quite UK and American centric.
camus listed 3 authors, all of whom are extremely noteworthy and world famous authors, and you say "a lot" of them are not noteworthy? How much is "a lot" of 3? 2? Which 2 aren't noteworthy compared to the 1 other? What other authors, aside from Shakespeare, and maybe Paul the Apostle if you want to count him, and perhaps Muhammad if dictating an oral recitation counts as authorship, would you consider more noteworthy? I don't know what school you went to but you sound very uneducated.
It is hard to be a more famous author internationally than Dickens, Austen, Twain. Maybe Shakespeare. I could ask my Polish-German grandma, who probably hasn't read a book during the last 50 years, and if she's heard of any international authors, it's likely one of those. komtooverdebakker, either you 1) come from a country that has its own, non-Western literary canon 2) just don't know much about literature in general 3) have a blind hate for everything anglo. tzhg, we were talking about the most famous authors, not the most important ones. That's a difference.
This is pretty a European and American list. Only 4 Asians (assuming you count Muhammad an Asian, which I do). I'm pretty sure Asia isn't just 14% of all history. The Gautama Buddha created a religion which currently is followed by 10% of the world's people today, yet he's not important enough to be on this list? Akbar introduced a policy of religious tolerance to India and promoted arts, literature, education,etc. Ashoka expanded the Maurya Empire to the size of the peak Roman Empire. Zheng He created a Ming Fleet twice the size of Napoleon's. Qin Shihuangdi unified China for the first time. Cyrus the Great founded the first Persian Empire. Other ones - Otto Van Bismarck, Hernan Cortes (he is the reason most of the Americas speak Spanish), Galileo, Copernicus, and finally Catherine & Peter of Russia. They all did more work than most of the authors and English people on your list.
This isn't a top 40 list. QM took a crack at doing a most important people in history quiz, but that's on a different page. Should direct your complaints there.
To make it even more specific: It is more an American and UK list, with some other Europeans. And there should be more Asian people on the list. But European centric? That's hard, we don't really know much about for example the Oceanic or African history. I can't come up with another African king besides Musa.
It is truly a matter of perspective ... I didn't get a lot of the American related questions (I DID get Washington and the two Martin Luthers though!), but the one related to Australia and India not a problem.
Because I'm involved with the deaf community and understand how important it is for others to accept both them and their language - I was well versed with Helen Keller. If I didn't have the interest I have in sign language - then maybe she wouldn't seem that important to me. There is definitely more room for more quizzes like this one and perhaps take out the word 'most' and consider other perspectives? We will all learn things we didn't know then, I reckon.
Its worth noting that the quiz is not titled 'the 40 most important ppl in history'
So yes, there is nothing wrong with knowing who these ppl were. And obviously the list is very biased toward modern history . For example why is Mao more important than the emperors who actually united China into a massive nation?
And Thatcher? Rosa Parks? America thinks it is the only country with a civil rights movement?
I think the title is nice. This is just a non-exhaustive list of some people that anyone should know. Or at least any English speaker... Furthermore, the Quizmaster clearly tried to include as many women as possible, which is praiseworthy though a bit biased.
Ouch, that hurt my French speaker eyes, mm84. It is "Jeanne d'Arc", whose translation into English is always "Joan of Arc". Jean is masculine in French, it's the equivalent of John. Secondly, we always elide the article before a vowel.
Probably should change the name to 40 historical people all Americans should know... Surprised that no Yuri Gagarin, Confucius, Bismark, Stalin, Gorbachev. They are much more significant and well known than people here like Elizabeth the virgin queen or Rosa Parks
I had a dream tonight about Russian Jetpunk and its quiz "40 Historical People that Everyone Should Know". Its American and British commenters complained that Lenin was just some guy who started a minor revolution in a remote part of the world, that Joseph Stalin may have caused the death of millions but most of them were Soviet citizens so this was only of local importance, and that no one outside Russian has ever heard of the hack that is Alexander Pushkin.
You should add in the most successful and impactful African-American, Elon Musk. He has changed the technology landscape in only 15 years. Quite a visionary
Helen Keller was the first American deaf and blind graduate - I don't think you can be sure that she was the first in the world. Could you please add the word 'American'.
"Helen Adams Keller (June 27, 1880 – June 1, 1968) was an American author, political activist, and lecturer. She was the first deaf-blind person to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree."
I feel like Nelson is the least important person on the list, no idea why anyone should know of him. You could add Catherine the Great (was suggested earlier) instead. Or Marie Curie.
All respect to those people, but how can you put Cromwell, Roosevelt, Queen Elizabeth, Parks or Austen over Curie, Mandela, Pol Pot, Castro, Stalin, Copernicus, Galileo or Socrates?
Totally agree. There's more than enough fascinating figures from the world outside Anglo-America such that Cromwell being on the list but Khan being absent seems like a massive oversight.
What about Harriet Tubman, Babe Ruth, Erik the Red, Charles II, Henry VIII, Vlad the Impaler, Genghis Khan, Emmeline Pankhurst, Attila the Hun, um, the list just goes on and on!
It's disappointing that there's there's a lot of spots taken by people who had at best only local influence, mostly of America and England. There are several outstanding mathematicians and scientists that deserve at least an honorable mention, from Einstein and Turing to Al-Khawarizmi and Maxwell.
-Britain become a global Superpower.
-Said superpower influenced billions of laws and teaching around the Globe.
If it was not for Nelson, the entire planet would be much more heavily focused on Spanish laws and rulings (nothing against Spain btw. Just that it's fairly different from Britain).
On another note, why the heck am I not on this list??? Clearly an awful oversight.
As for Nelson, his achievements enabled the British navy to replace the Spanish as the greatest navy in the world. This resulted in the expansion of the British Empire. And just like the Romans, the British Empire has had a large influence on the history of the world.
Using this type of historical influence, I wonder why Genghis Khan is not included.
Spear,
Kick in the rear.
Roger Bannister?
Pele?
There are way too much US citizens in this quizz.
Except in the US, who cares about the US President during the New Deal ?
Why the first US President and no other countries one ?
There plenty of books far better than Huckleberry Finn, so why this one in particular (except the nationality I mean) ?
A similar argument could be made for Muhammad, and it would probably be more accurate to call Muhammad the "last Muslim prophet" rather than the founder of Islam; even putting aside whether he was or was not a legitimate prophet, and the fact that Islamic tradition holds he had more to do with founding a religion than Jesus did. The Quran supposedly came straight from Muhammad's mouth. Jesus did not write the Bible.
Jesus, by contrast (if he was a real person and according to what we know from the gospels), was the hippy leader of a tiny Jewish apocalypse cult who made a bunch of prophecies that never came true, got arrested for treason, accused of blasphemy, and then was humiliated and tortured before his public execution.
Is it any wonder that early Christians had such a hard time converting Jews with this story and instead turned to trying to convince gentiles?
Homer DID write the Iliad.
Please remove the 'supposedly' from the quiz
If you have proof that Homer existed and authored those books, then many historians would be very grateful to you for sharing it
-Bolivar isn't the only one called Liberator in Latinamerica.
-Hellen Keller, Cromwell, Cook, Nelson, Parks, none of these I would consider part of basic general knowledge everyone should have.
- Austen, Dickens and Twain but no Cervantes, writer of one of the most influential books ever?
This list is heavily anglocentric. No suprise, of course.
I can't see why no one has mentioned that yet
Also, Lao Tzu is about as "supposed" as Homer. His existence is not verified by any evidence other than there is a book credited to an "Old Master."
1. Edison didn't invent a lightbulb - he patented it and used his enterprising skills to become famous.
2. Alexander the Great wasn't a Greek, but Macedonian.
"40 Historical People that Every US-AMERICAN Should Know"
Dickens, Austen, Earhart, Parks, Keller,Twain are not worldwidely important.
Because I'm involved with the deaf community and understand how important it is for others to accept both them and their language - I was well versed with Helen Keller. If I didn't have the interest I have in sign language - then maybe she wouldn't seem that important to me. There is definitely more room for more quizzes like this one and perhaps take out the word 'most' and consider other perspectives? We will all learn things we didn't know then, I reckon.
Good quiz - I enjoyed it.
So yes, there is nothing wrong with knowing who these ppl were. And obviously the list is very biased toward modern history . For example why is Mao more important than the emperors who actually united China into a massive nation?
And Thatcher? Rosa Parks? America thinks it is the only country with a civil rights movement?
Sure, it is newtonian physics, but there's a reason why we call them Kepler's laws of planetary motion....
"Helen Adams Keller (June 27, 1880 – June 1, 1968) was an American author, political activist, and lecturer. She was the first deaf-blind person to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree."
"Yes but I've never even heard the name Horatio Nelson."
All respect to those people, but how can you put Cromwell, Roosevelt, Queen Elizabeth, Parks or Austen over Curie, Mandela, Pol Pot, Castro, Stalin, Copernicus, Galileo or Socrates?
Just search for the last and you'll see.
Where's Chopin? Maria Sklodowska-Curie? Sun Tzu? Mussolini? And many others?
proof