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While Nebuchadnezzar’s name lives on mostly due to the Bible and the Hanging Gardens, behind it all was a man documented by the Babylonians and his contemporaries as a competent and successful king.

When he died in 1904, most Americans who knew his people's story considered Chief Joseph a military genius and an "Indian Napoleon". This assessment of the Native American leader was based on a 1,500-mile odyssey during which he and his people left their reservation in the hopes of escaping to Canada, where the Nez Percé intended to join Sitting Bull and his Hunkpapa Sioux band. The real Chief Joseph was a gifted speaker and more diplomat than war leader.

The name Pontius Pilate is instantly familiar to anyone who has read the Bible or has heard of the passion of Christ, but the man himself has mostly eluded biblical scholars and historians. As the Roman prefect in Judaea during Christ's life and death, Pilate played a central role in the ultimate crucifixion of Jesus, but he is best remembered for literally washing his hands as a symbol that he did not consider the blood to be on his hands.

Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) is one of the most famous Americans in history and one of the country's most revered presidents. Schoolchildren can recite the life story of Lincoln, the "Westerner" who educated himself and became a self-made man, rising from lawyer to leader of the new Republican Party before becoming the 16th President of the United States.

Kaiser Friedrich Wilhelm II, who occupied the throne of the German Empire for more than 30 years from June 1888 to November 1918, remains as much an enigma in death as he was in life. Over 70 years after his death in 1941, the mention of his name still sparks unsettled debates among historians. Was he the duty-bound, hands-on leader and passionate pro-British reformer who ruled in challenging times, seemingly mild in comparison to Hitler?

The Lord's Resistance Army appeared on the conflict landscape of Central Africa at the dawn of perhaps one of the bleakest period of post-independence African history: the 1980s and 1990s. This was the era of Afro-pessimism, during which the proliferation of war and crisis in Africa appeared simply overwhelming.

In the early 20th century, Westerns were one of the most popular genres in Hollywood. One of the young stars at the forefront was Gene Autry, a Texan whose life story made him a natural to be the country's most famous "singing cowboy". Autry came of age at a time when the "singing cowboy" was at the apex of his popularity, and like his most famous successor, Roy Rogers, Autry actually got his start in show business as a singer. Of course, the popularity of Autry's music and country music in general was bolstered by the fact that he became one of the biggest stars in Hollywood.

The Babylonians were one of the earliest of history's great ancient civilizations, and the most famous Babylonian of them all was Hammurabi, who came to the throne as the first king of the Babylonian empire around the beginning of the 18th century BC. Hammurabi had a long and fruitful reign that saw him consolidate most of Mesopotamia under his control, but he's best known today for Hammurabi's Code, one of the earliest known code of laws in human history. Inscribed on stone tablets, Hammurabi's Code was found over 3,500 years later, in the early 20th century.

Over the course of a career that spanned several decades and ranged from the stage to movies and television, Shirley MacLaine has been one of the most critically acclaimed actresses in America.

"I believe that it is as much a right and duty for women to do something with their lives as for men and we are not going to be satisfied with such frivolous parts as you give us." - Louisa May Alcott, Rose in Bloom Louisa May Alcott (1832 - 1888) was one of the best authors of her day, but even though she's remembered primarily for being a late 19th century novelist, she was also a progressive Transcendentalist.

Of course part of what made Galileo such a monumental figure was the fact that he was ahead of his time and that he mostly refused to conform to the accepted dogmas of contemporary society. As he once put it, "Philosophy is written in that great book which ever lies before our eyes - I mean the universe - but we cannot understand it if we do not first learn the language and grasp the symbols, in which it is written."

The Wild West and the frontier have long held a special place in the narrative of American history, and all of the legends and folk heroes who lived in the 19th century owe their reputation to the original American frontier folk hero, Daniel Boone. Boone was literally a trailblazer: The legendary pioneer established his Wilderness Road by striking west into present-day Kentucky and establishing Boonesborough, one of the earliest white settlements west of the Appalachians.

Of all the great actors of the 20th century, none personifies acting royalty more than Laurence Olivier. Some of this is simply due to the fact that he was actually knighted in 1947, along with a lengthy list of other honors. Of course in addition to the literal sense of the term, there is undeniably a manner in which Olivier qualifies as acting royalty. It is not for nothing that Spencer Tracy once referred to Olivier as "the greatest actor in the English-speaking world".

In the majority of cases, a pop or rock fan who is asked about a particular celebrity will answer in unambiguous terms.

Ever since Machiavelli penned The Prince, his 1513 treatise on princely rule and the politics of reality, a work that infamously advises rulers to abandon virtue and morality when necessary, his name has been synonymous with deceit, duplicity, and amoral pragmatism. Since then a sinister reputation has posthumously plagued the controversial Florentine. But is this depiction of Machiavelli as wicked and immoral accurate?

Of all the screen legends whose names remain synonymous with Hollywood, few took as long to become a star as Spencer Tracy, who is today recognized as one of the greatest actors ever, but whose career did not truly take off until he was already in his mid-30s. However, after joining MGM in 1935, Tracy catapulted to fame with one of the most impressive runs in Hollywood history, winning Oscars for Best Actor in 1938 and 1939 after already being nominated in 1937.

The leader of Transcendentalism and the man who ushered the movement's practices and literature was Ralph Waldo Emerson (1802-1883), one of America's most famous writers and speakers. Whereas Romantic literature typically took the form of poetry, novels, and short stories, much of Emerson's writings disregarded those traditional structures and were written as essays.

In American history, there are few people as controversial or consequential as Nat Turner, who was one of millions of slaves in the South before the Civil War but ultimately led the nation's most notorious slave uprising. In August 1831, Turner led a rebellion that terrorized Virginia for several days, killing dozens of Whites and freeing slaves as his band moved from plantation to plantation.

To be sure, strong-willed women populated both cinema and popular culture before Barbra Streisand, but Streisand was unique in her ability to appeal to diverse groups in America. She also arrived at a time when acting roles for women were generally less flexible than they would become by the end of the century. Making her story all the more compelling is that Streisand never met conventional standards of American beauty or acting style.

When the American Film Institute assembled its top 100 actors of all time at the close of the 20th century, Jimmy Stewart ranked third, behind only Humphrey Bogart and Cary Grant. There is a certain inevitability to these three actors ranking at the top of the list; after all, they were the dominant faces of Hollywood during the height of the era known as classical Hollywood cinema, a time before the onset of television when the movies still enjoyed relatively uncontested supremacy over American entertainment.