John Ronald Reuel Tolkien was an English writer, poet, philologist, and university professor, best known as the author of the classic high fantasy works The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and The Silmarillion. After his father's death, Tolkien's son Christopher published a series of works based on his father's extensive notes and unpublished manuscripts, including The Silmarillion. These, together with The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings form a connected body of tales, poems,...

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 ...

Bill Gates is an American business magnate, philanthropist, investor, computer programmer, and inventor. Gates is the former chief executive and chairman of Microsoft, the world’s largest personal-computer software company, which he co-founded with Paul Allen.During his career at Microsoft, Gates held the positions of CEO and chief software architect, and remains the largest individual shareholder, with 6.4 percent of the common stock. He has also authored and co-authored several b...

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...

George Harrison was an English musician, singer and songwriter who achieved international fame as the lead guitarist of the Beatles. Although John Lennon and Paul McCartney were the band's primary songwriters, most of their albums included at least one Harrison composition, including "While My Guitar Gently Weeps", "Here Comes the Sun" and "Something", which became the Beatles' second-most-covered song. Harrison released several best-selling singles and albums as a solo perfor...

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...

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...

Sir Sean Connery is a Scottish actor and producer who has won an Academy Award, two BAFTA Awards (one of them being a BAFTA Academy Fellowship Award) and three Golden Globes (including the Cecil B. DeMille Award and a Henrietta Award). He was knighted by Elizabeth II in July 2000, and received the Kennedy Center Honors in the US.Connery is best known for portraying the character James Bond, starring in seven Bond films between 1962 and 1983 (six Eon Productions films and the non-Eo...

Louis C.K. is a Mexican-American comedian, screenwriter, producer, film director, actor, voice actor, and film editor. He is the creator, star, writer, director, and—until February 2012—editor of the FX comedy series Louie. C.K. is noteworthy for innovating direct-to-fan purchases of reasonably priced tickets to his stand-up shows and DRM-free video concert downloads via his website. Over the course of his career, he has been nominated for 25 Primetime Emmy Awards, winning Outstanding...

Shania Twain is a Canadian country pop singer-songwriter. Her 1995 album The Woman in Me brought her fame, and her 1997 album Come On Over became the best-selling studio album of all time by a female act in any genre and the best-selling country album of all time, selling over 40 million copies worldwide. Sometimes referred to as "The Queen of Country Pop", she is one of the most commercially successful artists of all time, having sold over 80 million albums and is ranked 10th...

Levardis Robert Martyn Burton, Jr, professionally known as LeVar Burton, is an American actor, presenter, director, producer, and author. Burton is best known for his roles as the young Kunta Kinte in the 1977 award-winning ABC television miniseries Roots, Lt. Commander Geordi La Forge in Star Trek: The Next Generation, and as the host and executive producer of the long-running PBS children's series Reading Rainbow. On May 28, 2014, Burton and numerous coworkers f...

Larry King is an American television and radio host, actor, voice artist, and comedian whose work has been recognized with awards including two Peabodys and 10 Cable ACE Awards. He began as a local Florida journalist and radio interviewer in the 1950s and 1960s and became prominent as an all-night national radio broadcaster starting in 1978. From 1985 to 2010, he hosted the nightly interview television program Larry King Live on CNN. He currently hosts Larry King Now on Hulu and RT Am...