He imagined the computer a decade early and helped win the Atlantic war in total secrecy — then Britain prosecuted him for his private life.

Five years carving a fortress into a quarry wall no one could reach — then he died building the staircase so someone could.

Chosen by Kennedy to be the first Black astronaut, blocked in 1963 — he answered in bronze, then reached space at 90.

The man who named oxygen died on the guillotine — not for his chemistry, but for the tax-farming fortune that had paid for every balance he owned.

Rejected three times by the academy and accused of faking his first masterpiece, he turned a career of scandals into modern sculpture itself.

A Frankish warlord who could not sign his name conquered half a continent, revived its learning, and became the emperor every later age fought to claim.

A condemned general with no army told a defeated France it had not surrendered — then spent thirty years making the nation ratify the claim.

He served six regimes and betrayed most of them — yet twice, when France lay beaten, the turncoat was the only man who could save it.

A serial betrayer and convicted machine boss who also broke France’s fifty-year silence over Vichy — and his country loved him for both.

Britain jailed him on perjured evidence for a rebellion he did not lead. He answered by founding modern Kenya on forgiveness for the powerful — and forgetting for the poor.