PEOPLE KNOWN FOR: independence
1st president of the United States
George Washington was an American general and commander in chief of the colonial armies in the American Revolution (1775–83) and subsequently first president of the United States (1789–97). Washington’s...
3rd president of the United States
Thomas Jefferson was the draftsman of the Declaration of Independence of the United States and the nation’s first secretary of state (1789–94) and second vice president (1797–1801) and, as the third president...
Indian leader
Mahatma Gandhi was an Indian lawyer, politician, social activist, and writer who became the leader of the Indian Independence Movement against British rule. As such, he came to be considered the father...
American author, scientist, and statesman
Benjamin Franklin was an American printer and publisher, author, inventor and scientist, and diplomat. One of the foremost of the Founding Fathers, Franklin helped draft the Declaration of Independence...
president of Turkey
Kemal Atatürk was a soldier, statesman, and reformer who was the founder and first president (1923–38) of the Republic of Turkey. He modernized the country’s legal and educational systems and encouraged...
prime minister of India
Jawaharlal Nehru was the first prime minister of independent India (1947–64), who established parliamentary government and became noted for his neutralist (nonaligned) policies in foreign affairs. He was...
2nd president of the United States
John Adams was an early advocate of American independence from Great Britain, a major figure in the Continental Congress (1774–77), the author of the Massachusetts constitution (1780), a signer of the...
president of France
Charles de Gaulle was a French soldier, writer, statesman, and architect of France’s Fifth Republic. De Gaulle was the second son of a Roman Catholic, patriotic, and nationalist upper-middle-class family....
stadholder of United Provinces of The Netherlands
William I was the first of the hereditary stadtholders (1572–84) of the United Provinces of the Netherlands and leader of the revolt of the Netherlands against Spanish rule and the Catholic religion. William,...
Italian revolutionary
Giuseppe Garibaldi was an Italian patriot and soldier of the Risorgimento, a republican who, through his conquest of Sicily and Naples with his guerrilla Redshirts, contributed to the achievement of Italian...
prime minister of United Kingdom
David Lloyd George was a British prime minister (1916–22) who dominated the British political scene in the latter part of World War I. He was raised to the peerage in the year of his death. Lloyd George’s...
Piedmontese statesman
Camillo Benso, count di Cavour was a Piedmontese statesman, a conservative whose exploitation of international rivalries and of revolutionary movements brought about the unification of Italy (1861) under...
president of North Vietnam
Ho Chi Minh was the founder of the Indochina Communist Party (1930) and its successor, the Viet-Minh (1941), and president from 1945 to 1969 of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (North Vietnam). As the...
Italian revolutionary
Giuseppe Mazzini was a Genoese propagandist and revolutionary, founder of the secret revolutionary society Young Italy (1832), and a champion of the movement for Italian unity known as the Risorgimento....
Pakistani governor-general
Mohammed Ali Jinnah was an Indian Muslim politician, who was the founder and first governor-general (1947–48) of Pakistan. Jinnah was the eldest of seven children of Jinnahbhai Poonja, a prosperous merchant,...
Hungarian political leader
Lajos Kossuth was a political reformer who inspired and led Hungary’s struggle for independence from Austria. His brief period of power in the revolutionary years of 1848 and 1849, however, was ended by...
president of Tunisia
Habib Bourguiba was the architect of Tunisia’s independence and first president of Tunisia (1957–87), one of the major voices of moderation and gradualism in the Arab world. Bourguiba was born the seventh...
British-American author
Thomas Paine was an English-American writer and political pamphleteer whose Common Sense pamphlet and Crisis papers were important influences on the American Revolution. Other works that contributed to...
Berber leader
Abd el-Krim was the leader of the Berber forces during the Rif War (1921–26) against Spanish and French rule in North Africa and founder of the short-lived Republic of the Rif (1923–26). A skilled tactician...
Dutch statesman
Johan van Oldenbarnevelt was a lawyer, statesman, and, after William I the Silent, the second founding father of an independent Netherlands. He mobilized Dutch forces under William’s son Maurice and devised...
president of Kenya
Jomo Kenyatta was an African statesman and nationalist, the first prime minister (1963–64) and then the first president (1964–78) of independent Kenya. Kenyatta was born as Kamau, son of Ngengi, at Ichaweri,...
Indian revolutionary
Udham Singh was an Indian political activist who fought against the British raj in India and sought revenge for the 1919 massacre of civilians by the British army at Jallianwala Bagh in Amritsar in the...
prime minister of Israel
David Ben-Gurion was a Zionist statesman and political leader, the first prime minister (1948–53, 1955–63) and defense minister (1948–53; 1955–63) of Israel. It was Ben-Gurion who, on May 14, 1948, at...
Argentine revolutionary
José de San Martín was an Argentine soldier, statesman, and national hero who helped lead the revolutions against Spanish rule in Argentina (1812), Chile (1818), and Peru (1821). San Martín’s father, Juan...
Congolese politician
Patrice Lumumba was an African nationalist leader, the first prime minister of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (June–September 1960). Forced out of office during a political crisis, he was assassinated...
Indian statesman
Vallabhbhai Patel was an Indian barrister and statesman who was one of the leaders of the Indian National Congress during the struggle for Indian independence. During the first three years of Indian independence...
prime minister of United Kingdom
Clement Attlee was a British Labour Party leader (1935–55) and prime minister (1945–51). He presided over the establishment of the welfare state in Great Britain and the granting of independence to India,...
president of Indonesia
Sukarno was the leader of the Indonesian independence movement and Indonesia’s first president (1949–66), who suppressed the country’s original parliamentary system in favour of an authoritarian “Guided...
Polish revolutionary and statesman
Józef Piłsudski was a Polish revolutionary and statesman, the first chief of state (1918–22) of the newly independent Poland established in November 1918. After leading a coup d’état in 1926, he rejected...
Russian prince
Ivan III was the grand prince of Moscow (1462–1505) who subdued most of the Great Russian lands by conquest or by the voluntary allegiance of princes, won again parts of Ukraine from Poland–Lithuania,...
prime minister of Singapore
Lee Kuan Yew was a politician and lawyer who was prime minister of Singapore from 1959 to 1990. Widely regarded as the founding father of modern Singapore, Lee transformed the city-state from a small,...
Egyptian statesman
Saad Zaghloul was an Egyptian statesman and patriot, leader of the Wafd party and of the nationalist movement of 1918–19, which led Britain to give Egypt nominal independence in 1922. He was briefly prime...
Haitian leader
Toussaint Louverture was the leader of the Haitian independence movement during the French Revolution (1787–99). He emancipated the enslaved people and negotiated for the French colony on Hispaniola, Saint-Domingue...
president of Zambia
Kenneth Kaunda was a politician who led Zambia to independence in 1964 and served as that country’s president until 1991. Kaunda’s father, who was from Nyasaland (now Malawi), was a schoolteacher; his...
Israeli president and scientist
Chaim Weizmann was the first president of the new nation of Israel (1949–52), who was for decades the guiding spirit behind the World Zionist Organization. Chaim Azriel Weizmann was born of humble parents...
Indian leader
Subhas Chandra Bose was an Indian revolutionary prominent in the Indian Independence Movement against British rule. Popularly known as Netaji, he led an armed force composed of former Indian prisoners...
Indian political leader
Bal Gangadhar Tilak was a scholar, mathematician, philosopher, and ardent nationalist who helped lay the foundation for India’s independence by building his own defiance of British rule into a national...
American first lady
Abigail Adams was an American first lady (1797–1801), the wife of John Adams, second president of the United States, and mother of John Quincy Adams, sixth president of the United States. She was a prolific...
American politician
Samuel Adams was a politician of the American Revolution, leader of the Massachusetts “radicals,” who was a delegate to the Continental Congress (1774–81) and a signer of the Declaration of Independence....
president of Namibia
Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah is a politician who became the president of Namibia in March 2025 after having won the country’s November 2024 presidential election. She is the first woman to serve as Namibia’s...
president of Tanzania
Julius Nyerere was the first prime minister of independent Tanganyika (1961), who later became the first president of the new state of Tanzania (1964). Nyerere was also the major force behind the Organization...
president of Ireland
Eamon de Valera was an Irish politician and patriot, who served as taoiseach (prime minister; 1932–48, 1951–54, 1957–59) and president (1959–73) of Ireland. An active revolutionary from 1913, he became...
Sikh leader
Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale was a Sikh religious leader and political revolutionary whose violent campaign for autonomy for a Sikh state in Punjab and armed occupation of the Golden Temple (Harmandir Sahib)...
Chilean head of state
Bernardo O’Higgins was a South American revolutionary leader and the first Chilean head of state (“supreme director,” 1817–23), who commanded the military forces that won independence from Spain. Bernardo...
president of Czechoslovakia
Tomáš Masaryk was the chief founder and first president (1918–35) of Czechoslovakia. Masaryk’s father was a Slovak coachman; his mother, a maid, came from a Germanized Moravian family. Though he was trained...
king of Scotland
Robert the Bruce was the king of Scotland (1306–29), who freed Scotland from English rule, winning the decisive Battle of Bannockburn (1314) and ultimately confirming Scottish independence in the Treaty...
American first lady
Dolley Madison was an American first lady (1809–17), the wife of James Madison, fourth president of the United States. Raised in the plain style of her Quaker family, she was renowned for her charm, warmth,...
Indian political leader
Chittaranjan Das was an Indian politician, a leader of the Indian National Congress, a lawyer, and a poet. He was an integral part of the Indian Independence Movement and the founder of the Swaraj (“Self-Rule”)...
president of Senegal
Léopold Senghor was a poet, teacher, and statesman, the first president of Senegal, and a major proponent of the concept of Negritude. Senghor was the son of a prosperous Serer planter and trader. His...
president of Angola
João Lourenço is an Angolan politician and, since 2017, the president of Angola. He has been a longtime member of the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (Movimento Popular de Libertação de Angola;...
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