Michael Jackson was an American singer-songwriter, actor, and businessman. Called the King of Pop, his contributions to music, dance, and fashion, along with his publicized personal life, made him a global figure in popular culture for over four decades. The eighth child of the Jackson family, he debuted on the professional music scene along with his brothers as a member of The Jackson 5 in 1968, and began his solo career in 1971. In the early 1980s, Jackson became a dominant ...

Shakira Isabel Mebarak Ripoll (born February 2, 1977), is a Colombian singer-songwriter, dancer, record producer, choreographer, and model. Born and raised in Barranquilla, she began performing in school, demonstrating Latin, Arabic, and rock and roll influences and belly dancing abilities. She has won many awards including five MTV Video Music Awards, two Grammy Awards, eight Latin Grammy Awards, seven Billboard Music Awards, twenty-eight Billboard Latin Music Awards and has been ...

Oprah Winfrey is an American media proprietor, talk show host, actress, producer, and philanthropist. Winfrey is best known for her multi-award-winning talk show The Oprah Winfrey Show which was the highest-rated program of its kind in history and was nationally syndicated from 1986 to 2011. Dubbed the "Queen of All Media", she has been ranked the richest African-American of the 20th century, the greatest black philanthropist in American history, and is currently North America's ...

Leonardo da Vinci was an Italian Renaissance polymath: painter, sculptor, architect, musician, mathematician, military-engineer, inventor, anatomist, geologist, cartographer, botanist, and writer. His genius, perhaps more than that of any other figure, epitomized the Renaissance humanist ideal. Leonardo has often been described as the archetype of the Renaissance Man, a man of "unquenchable curiosity" and "feverishly inventive imagination". He is widely considered to be one of the greatest...

Farrah Fawcett was an American actress and artist. A four-time Emmy Award nominee and six-time Golden Globe Award nominee, Fawcett rose to international fame when she posed for her iconic red swimsuit poster and starred as private investigator Jill Munroe in the first season of the television series Charlie's Angels (1976–77). In 1996, she was ranked No. 26 on TV Guide's "50 Greatest TV stars of All-Time". Her breakthrough role came in 1976, when she was cast as Jill Munroe in th...

Harvey Milk was an American politician who became the first openly gay person to be elected to public office in California when he won a seat on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. Politics and gay activism were not his early interests; he was not open about his homosexuality and did not participate in civic matters until around the age of 40, after his experiences in the counterculture of the 1960s. Despite his short career in politics, Milk became an icon in San Francisc...

Margaret Thatcher was the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990 and the Leader of the Conservative Party from 1975 to 1990. She was the longest-serving British Prime Minister of the 20th century and is the only woman to have held the office. A Soviet journalist called her the "Iron Lady", a nickname that became associated with her uncompromising politics and leadership style. She became Prime Minister after winning the 1979 general election. As Prime Ministe...

The Blessed Teresa of Calcutta, M.C., commonly known as Mother Teresa, was a Roman Catholic Religious Sister and missionary of Albanian origin who lived most of her life in India of which, since 1948, she was a citizen. A controversial figure both during her life and after her death, Mother Teresa was widely admired by many for her charitable works, but also widely criticised, particularly for her campaigns against contraception and for substandard conditions in the hospices for which...

Whitney Houston was an American singer, actress, producer, and model. In 2009, Guinness World Records cited her as the most awarded female act of all time. Houston was one of the world's best-selling music artists, having sold over 200 million records worldwide. She released six studio albums, one holiday album and three movie soundtrack albums, all of which have diamond, multi-platinum, platinum or gold certification. Houston's crossover appeal on the popular music charts, as well as...

Walter Elias "Walt" Disney was an American business magnate, animator, cartoonist, producer, director, screenwriter, philanthropist and voice actor. A major figure within the American animation industry and throughout the world, he is regarded as an international icon, well known for his influence and contributions to the field of entertainment during the 20th century. As a Hollywood business mogul, he, along with his brother Roy O. Disney, co-founded Walt Disney Productions, which la...

Barack Obama is the 44th and current President of the United States, and the first African American to hold the office. Born in Honolulu, Hawaii, Obama is a graduate of Columbia University and Harvard Law School, where he served as president of the Harvard Law Review. He was a community organizer in Chicago before earning his law degree. He worked as a civil rights attorney and taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School from 1992 to 2004. He served three terms repres...

Elon Musk is a South African-born, Canadian-American business magnate, inventor and investor. He is currently the CEO and CTO of SpaceX and CEO and Chief Product Architect of Tesla Motors. He was an early investor in SpaceX, PayPal, Inc.Tesla Motors, and Zip2, and is widely considered a co-founder of each. He has also envisioned a conceptual high-speed transportation system known as the Hyperloop. Tesla Motors was co-founded by Martin Eberhard, Marc Tarpenning, JB Straubel, Ian Wri...