| A | B |
|---|
| Sargon | his Akkadian Empire was the world's first |
| Cyrus the Great | founder of the long-lasting Persian Empire |
| Alexander the Great | this Macedonian king created a Hellenistic Empire from Greece to India |
| Shi Huant-Ti | first emperor of a unified China; built the Great Wall |
| Augustus | first emperor of Rome; presided over the Golden Age of Rome |
| Trajan | Roman emperor under whom the empire reached its greatest extent |
| Clovis | first king of the Franks; he united the tribes of France and converted them to Christianity |
| Charlemagne | ruler of the Carolingian Empire; he was crowned Roman Emperor by the Pope; he helped establish feudalism in Europe |
| Genghis Khan | Mongol ruler who conquered China, the Middle East and Eastern Europe; he created the largest empire the world has ever seen |
| Abraham | the patriarch of the Jewish people; he led them from Ur into the Promised Land of Canaan |
| Moses | led the the Jewish people out of slavery in Egypt; received the 10 Commandments from God |
| Gautama | Indian prince and founder of Buddism |
| Jesus Christ | considered by believers to be the Messiah and Son of God |
| Mohammed | founder of Islam |
| Martin Luther | German monk whose complaints against the Catholic church began the Protestant Reformation |
| John Calvin | Protestant preacher and founder of the Presbyterian Church |
| Themistocles | Athenian commander who helped the Greeks win the Persian Wars |
| Hannibal | Carthaginian general who nearly defeated he Romans in the 2nd Punic Wars |
| Julius Caesar | Roman general and dictator who was asassinated on the Ides of March |
| Alaric | Visigoth chieftain whose sack of Rome marked the end of Roman greatness |
| Attila | ruler of the Huns who plundered Europe before settling in Hungary |
| Charles Martel | Frankish general who stopped the advance of Islam at the battle of Tours |
| William the Conqueror | he conquered England and became it first Norman king |
| Saladin | Muslim leader who defeated he Crusaders and regained control of the Holy Lands |
| Joan of Arc | French peasant girl who helped turn the tide of the 100 Years War |
| Napoleon Bonaparte | general and eventual Emperor of France who expanded French power and republicanism across much of the 19th century Europe |
| Simon Bolivar | Venezuelan freedom fighter who helped 6 Central and South America countries gain independence from Spain |
| The Virgin Mary | the mother of Jesus Christ; her veneration helped raise the dignity and status of women in the Christian tradition |
| St. Peter | chief apostle of Jesus, and the first bishop of Rome; later bishops of Rome were known as Pope |
| St. Paul | his missionary work spread Christianity and his letters gave the young religion the intellectual rigor to appeal to the educated class |
| St. Augustine | the bishop of Hippo and author of "The Confessions"; he combined the philosophy of Plato with Christian theology |
| Leo the Great | he cemented the status of Pope as head of the Catholic church, beginning 1000 years of immense papal power over the religious lives of Western Europeans |
| St. Benedict | founder of the Abbey of Monte Casino, his rules for how monks should live and pray influenced all later monastic movements |
| Gregory the Great | this reforming pope increased papal power, reformed the liturgy and sent 1st missionaries to England |
| Urban II | he preached the First Crusade against the Seljuk Turks, setting off 200 years of religious warfare between Christians and Muslims |
| St. Thomas Aquinas | Christian thinker who is considered the father of scholasticism, a blending of faith and reason |
| St. Ignatius of Loyola | the founder of the Jesuits, he spearheaded the Catholic Counter Reformation |
| Menes | united upper and lower Egypt |
| Hammurabi | Babylonian king who was responsible for the world's first written law code |
| Nebuchadnezzar | ruler of the 2nd Babylonian Empire who destroyed Jerusalem and built he Hanging Gardens |
| Solon | Athenian reformer whose reforms helped create a democracy in Athens |
| Pericles | leader of Athens during its Golden Age; order the building of the Parthenon |
| Diocletian | divided the Roman Empire into Eastern and Western halves |
| Constantine | first Christian ruler of Rome |
| Chandragupta II | ruled over India during the Golden Age of the Gupta Empire |
| Justinian | Byzantine emperor who briefly revived the glory of Rome; most famous for his law code and the construction of the Hagia Sophia |
| Harun Al-Rashid | greatest Abassid caliph of the Islamic Empire; he made Bagdad great |
| Phillip Augustus | this king permanently united France; allowing it to become a major power |
| King John | English king forced to sign the Magna Carta, which limited royal power |
| Edward I | English king who was the first to call a regularly meeting Parliament that included commoners |
| Mansa Musa | King of Mali who made Mali a center of Islamic learning in Africa |
| Chu Yuan-Chan | founder of the long lasting and prosperous Ming Dynasty in China |
| Queen Isabel | her marriage united Castille and Aragon to form Spain; as ruler she was responsible for the Inquisition and sponsoring Christopher Columbus |
| Suleiman | greatest Sultan of the Ottoman Empire |
| Henry VIII | English king who broke with the Catholic Church, thus opening the door to Protestantism in England |
| Ivan the Terrible | Russian czar conquered Siberia; his harsh oppression of the nobles and peasants alike limited Russia's progress, cutting it off from Western Europe |
| Akbar the Great | greatest ruler of the Mughal Empire of India |
| Elizabeth | queen of England who defeated the Spanish Armada and oversaw an artistic flourishing that included authors like Shakespeare |
| Louis XIV | Frances "Sun King", his reign was the peak of royal power in France |
| Peter the Great | Russian czar who began the process of Westernizing Russia |
| George Washington | leader of the Continental Army and first president of the US |
| Thomas Jefferson | author of the Declaration of Independence and 3rd US president |
| Frederick the Great | King of Prussia who made Prussia a great power within Europe |
| Catherine the Great | Czarina of Russia who expanded Russian territory to make it a world power |
| Abraham Lincoln | 16th president of the US whose wise leadership during the Civil War helped preserve the Union |
| Otto von Bismarck | Iron Chancellor who oversaw the unification of Germany |
| Victoria | Queen of the United Kingdom at the peak of the British Empire |
| Mutsuhito | Emperor of Japan who oversaw the rapid industrialization of Japan |
| Mohandas Gandhi | he was the force behind India's nonviolen independence movement |
| Vladimir Lenin | led the Communist Bolsheviks to victory in the Russian Revolution |
| Josef Stalin | Communist leader who made Russia a super power after WWII |
| Adolph Hitler | leader of Nazi Germany during WWII |
| Franklin Roosevelt | Four term president of the US during the Great Depression and WWII |
| Winston Churchill | inspirational Prime Minister of Britain during WWII |
| Mao Zedong | leader of Communist revolution in China |
| Nelson Mandela | first black president of South Africa who helped end apartheid |
| Homer | blind poet believed to have written "The Iliad" and "The Odyssey" |
| Confucius | most influential of all Chinese philosophers |
| Socrates | one of the founding fathers of Greek philosophy; famous for his teaching, "know thyself" |
| Plato | philosopher who founded the Academy at Athens and authored the "Republic" |
| Aristotle | Greek philosopher who greatly influenced the field of ethics, physics, logic an science; noted for the Golden Mean |
| John Locke | Enlightenment era philosopher whose ideas about a person's right to life and liberty greatly influenced other philosophers and politicians |
| Adam Smith | economist whose book "The Wealth of Nations" established him as the father of modern capitalism |
| Mary Wollstonecraft | she is considered one of the first feminists |
| Karl Marx | father of modern Communism |
| Jean Monnet | banker who masterminded the establishment of the European Union |
| Marco Polo | Italian explorer whose account of his time in China sparked Western interest in going there |
| Henry the Navigator | Portugese prince who helped sponsor explorers |
| Johann Gutenberg | made the first European movable type printing press |
| Christopher Columbus | explorer who discovered America |
| Copernicus | Polish astronomer who developed the heliocentric theory |
| Sir Issac Newton | English mathematician and physicist who developed the law of gravitation and the three laws of motion |
| James Watt | Scottish inventor who created the first practical steam engine |
| Charles Darwin | English naturalist who developed the theory of evolution |
| Louis Pasteur | French scientist who developed the germ theory of disease |
| Thomas Edison | American inventor of the first practical light bulb |
| Sigmund Freud | father of modern psychology and psychiatry |
| Henry Ford | developed the moving assembly line to expedite producing cars |
| Albert Einstein | brilliant physcist who developed the theory of relativity (E=mc2) |
| Ashoka | ruler of Mauryan Empire, expanded by his bloody warfare; his conversion to Buddism and support of Buddist monks allowed Buddism to spread across China and Southeast Asia |
