Persons of the Century

[Torie]

Great list from what I know, but I would switch out Victoria for Lincoln. The now lone superpower changed in massive ways, in ways it would not have changed but for Lincoln, whose character has inspired the planet. He is spoken of with admiration in the most remote places on the globe. For the last half of the 20th century, I would put Kennan up there, and Gandhi although he was dead by then. The guy (Prince Klemens Wenzel von Metternich)who put together the peace treaty of 1815 (Treaty of Paris) that held more or less until 1914 is in the running for the first half of the 19th century.

[Torie]

You never cease to amaze me, Xahar and that was an amazing post of yours, but on the one below I think you are mistaken. Lincoln changed the US fundamentally (towards robust capitalism, industrialism and unified economic markets,and by the time of McKinley it was a done deal), and had a lot to do with the idea of liberation becoming mainstream across the planet. And his prose poetry inspires mankind, and always will as long as our species exists - across the planet. One other lagniappe: Lincoln was the first practitioner of modern politics as we know it, which you will discern if you read Kearns marvelous book, Team of Rivals.

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PS: I am bumping  you up to an estimated IQ of 150. You have run past me now.

[Torie]

Check out the growth of the American economy from 1865 to 1900. Sometime during that period, the US economy became the largest on the planet, surpassing Britain. American was unleashed to achieve its full potential.

[Torie]

Economic muscle is the trump card Xahar. Buying military toys was relatively cheap then if one needed to retool That is what maybe nobody then understood maybe, but understood more after WWI, and even more after WWII, and even more after the Evil Empire collapsed. Here is what  I am talking about as to how the US became THE economic giant between 1865 and 1900, and by late in the 19th century, Britain basically took in the US as a partner to enforce Pax Britainica -  an alliance that has stood more or less ever since.

[Torie]

I get that, but you'll never get me to believe that Lincoln was more important than Bismarck.

Well that is because perhaps you have an unheathy interest in things Teutonic perhaps. Granted my genes are Teutonic, but at least leavened by a bit of Norman French language wise, and maybe genetically by some Celt stuff. Actually I am not sure my English ancestors were Norman or Celt, or a mix - probably a mix, there are a lot of Welsh names on my Dad's side. In any event, my Dad always referred to Germans as "the Hun" and wanted Germany divided until the day he died. He thought their mentality was the Churchillian one, that they were either at your throat or at your feet. I have transcended that, and just observe that Germans  seem not to be breeding much anymore, and their educational system is collapsing, so the Hun are largely headed to being a done deal.

And so it goes. 

[Torie]

Ya Winston "the un-Hilter" Churchill. He may not be the most influential personage of the 20th century, but definitely he is  the most interesting and estimable in the political sphere, in my opinion. Genius, literary gifts, courage, both physical and moral, eloquence, charisma, the right connections and good character, tend  sometimes given the confluence of events, to result in that. I love the man!

[Torie]

There was a book that was published back in the 1970's that created quite a buzz listing the 100 most influential persons in history. From that list, if I have my dates right, here is the list of the most influential for each of the last 6 centuries:

20th Einstein
19th Pasteur
18th Lavoisier
17th Newton
16th Luther
15th Gutenberg