Tolstoy is widely regarded as one of the greatest novelists in history, author of War and Peace and Anna Karenina. In his later years he became a passionate moral reformer, advocating for pacifism, Christian anarchism, and simple living. His ideas influenced figures from Mahatma Gandhi to Martin Luther King Jr.

Armand Jean du Plessis, Cardinal Richelieu, served as the powerful chief minister to King Louis XIII and effectively governed France from 1624 to 1642. He centralized royal power, crushed the political power of the Huguenots, and maneuvered France skillfully through the Thirty Years' War. He is often credited with laying the foundations of the modern French state.

Galvani discovered that muscles could be made to contract by applying an electrical charge, a phenomenon he called "animal electricity." His experiments with frogs' legs laid the groundwork for the science of electrophysiology and inspired the term "galvanize." His work directly influenced Mary Shelley's conception of Frankenstein.

Dennis Ritchie created the C programming language and co-developed the Unix operating system at Bell Labs, two of the most foundational contributions in the history of computing. C became the lingua franca of systems programming and directly influenced virtually every major programming language that followed. Ritchie's work underpins nearly all modern software infrastructure.

Harland Sanders began franchising his fried chicken recipe at the age of 62 after his roadside restaurant in Corbin, Kentucky was bypassed by a new highway. His persistence transformed Kentucky Fried Chicken into one of the world's most recognizable fast-food brands, with thousands of locations across the globe. His white suit and string tie became one of the most iconic corporate images in American history.