|
#
|
Known for
|
Answer
|
|
1
|
President during the U.S. Civil War
|
Abraham Lincoln
|
|
2
|
Commander of the Continental Army
|
George Washington
|
|
3
|
Wrote the Declaration of Independence
|
Thomas Jefferson
|
|
4
|
President during the Great Depression and WWII
|
Franklin D. Roosevelt
|
|
5
|
First U.S. Treasury Secretary
|
Alexander Hamilton
|
|
6
|
Founding Father, inventor, and diplomat who flew a kite in a storm
|
Benjamin Franklin
|
|
7
|
The first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court
|
John Marshall
|
|
8
|
"I Have a Dream", he said
|
Martin Luther King
|
|
9
|
Invented the practical light bulb, movie camera, phonograph, etc...
|
Thomas Edison
|
|
10
|
Proposed the League of Nations
|
Woodrow Wilson
|
|
11
|
Founder of Standard Oil
|
John D. Rockefeller
|
|
12
|
Commander of the Union Army
|
Ulysses S. Grant
|
|
13
|
Author of the Bill of Rights
|
James Madison
|
|
14
|
Pioneered the assembly line and the Model T
|
Henry Ford
|
|
15
|
President who shot many animals that ended up in the American Museum of Natural History |
Theodore Roosevelt
|
|
16
|
Author of "Huckleberry Finn"
|
Mark Twain
|
|
17
|
Hollywood actor who became President
|
Ronald Reagan
|
|
18
|
Hero of the 1815 Battle of New Orleans
|
Andrew Jackson
|
|
19
|
Author of "Common Sense"
|
Thomas Paine
|
|
20
|
Steel magnate who built thousands of libraries
|
Andrew Carnegie
|
|
21
|
President who made the decision to drop the bomb on Japan
|
Harry S. Truman
|
|
22
|
"Leaves of Grass" poet
|
Walt Whitman
|
|
23
|
Invented the airplane
|
Wilbur Wright
|
|
Orville Wright
|
|
24
|
Invented the telephone
|
Alexander Graham Bell
|
|
25
|
Second President of the U.S.
|
John Adams
|
|
26
|
Creator of Mickey Mouse
|
Walt Disney
|
|
27
|
Invented of the cotton gin
|
Eli Whitney
|
|
28
|
Supreme Allied Commander in WWII
|
Dwight D. Eisenhower
|
|
29
|
Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, 1953–1969
|
Earl Warren
|
|
30
|
Organized the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention on women's rights
|
Elizabeth Cady Stanton
|
|
31
|
Kentucky senator known as "The Great Compromiser"
|
Henry Clay
|
|
32
|
"E = mc²", he theorized
|
Albert Einstein
|
|
33
|
Transcendentalist philosopher who championed self-reliance
|
Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
34
|
Developed the polio vaccine
|
Jonas Salk
|
|
35
|
Broke baseball's color barrier in 1947
|
Jackie Robinson
|
|
36
|
Many-time Presidential candidate who have the "Cross of Gold" speech
|
William Jennings Bryan
|
|
37
|
Banker who helped defuse the Panic of 1907
|
J. P. Morgan
|
|
38
|
Co-founded the National Woman Suffrage Association
|
Susan B. Anthony
|
|
39
|
Author of "Silent Spring"
|
Rachel Carson
|
|
40
|
University of Chicago scholar who wrote "Democracy and Education" (1916)
|
John Dewey
|
|
41
|
Author of "Uncle Tom's Cabin"
|
Harriet Beecher Stowe
|
|
42
|
First Lady for twelve years
|
Eleanor Roosevelt
|
|
43
|
Co-founder of the NAACP
|
W.E.B. Du Bois
|
|
44
|
President who envisioned a "Great Society"
|
Lyndon B. Johnson
|
|
45
|
"What hath God wrought", he sent in 1844 using his new method
|
Samuel Morse
|
|
46
|
Radical abolitionist who edited "The Liberator"
|
William Lloyd Garrison
|
|
47
|
"What to a slave is the Fourth of July", he said
|
Frederick Douglass
|
|
48
|
Father of the atomic bomb
|
Robert Oppenheimer
|
|
49
|
Landscape architect who designed Central Park
|
Frederick Law Olmstead
|
|
50
|
President from 1845–1849 who added more territory to the U.S. than any other
|
James K. Polk
|
|
51
|
Founder of Planned Parenthood
|
Margaret Sanger
|
|
52
|
Founder of the Mormon religion
|
Joseph Smith
|
|
53
|
Supreme Court justice from 1902–1932 known for advocating free speech
|
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
|
|
54
|
In 1999, he became the first person in history to reach a net worth of $100 billion |
Bill Gates
|
|
55
|
Only President to return to Congress after his term
|
John Quincy Adams
|
|
56
|
Considered the father of the American public education system
|
Horace Mann
|
|
57
|
Commander of the Confederate States Army
|
Robert E. Lee
|
|
58
|
Vice President from 1825–1832 who was a strong advocate of slavery
|
John C. Calhoun
|
|
59
|
Chicago architect considered to be the "father of skyscrapers"
|
Louis Sullivan
|
|
60
|
Write "The Sound and the Fury"
|
William Faulkner
|
|
61
|
Founded the American Federation of Labor
|
Samuel Gompers
|
|
62
|
Considered the father of American psychology, his brother Henry was an accomplished author as well |
William James
|
|
63
|
General who made a plan to rebuild Europe after WWII
|
George Marshall
|
|
64
|
Founded Hull House
|
Jane Addams
|
|
65
|
Wrote "Walden" and "Civil Disobedience"
|
Henry David Thoreau
|
|
66
|
"The King of Rock and Roll"
|
Elvis Presley
|
|
67
|
"There's a sucker born every minute" he said (supposedly)
|
P.T. Barnum
|
|
68
|
Co-discover of the double helix shape of DNA
|
James D. Watson
|
|
69
|
Founded the "New York Herald" newspaper
|
James Gordon Bennett
|
|
70
|
Explored the Louisiana Purchase
|
Meriwether Lewis
|
|
William Clark
|
|
71
|
Compiled the first major American dictionary
|
Noah Webster
|
|
72
|
Founder of Wal-Mart
|
Sam Walton
|
|
73
|
Invented the mechanical reaper
|
Cyrus McCormick
|
|
74
|
Led the Mormon pioneers to Salt Lake City
|
Brigham Young
|
|
75
|
Often considered the greatest baseball player of all-time
|
Babe Ruth
|
|
76
|
Architect who designed Fallingwater
|
Frank Lloyd Wright
|
|
77
|
Wrote "The Feminine Mystique"
|
Betty Friedan
|
|
78
|
Radical abolitionist who raided Harpers Ferry
|
John Brown
|
|
79
|
Jazz trumpeter who claimed to be born on July 4th, 1900
|
Louis Armstrong
|
|
80
|
Yellow journalism pioneer who "Citizen Kane" was based on
|
William Randolph Hearst
|
|
81
|
Anthropologist who studied sexual culture in the South Pacific and Melanesia |
Margaret Mead
|
|
82
|
Started a public opinion poll which bears his name
|
George Gallup
|
|
83
|
Wrote "The Last of the Mohicans"
|
James Fenimore Cooper
|
|
84
|
First black Supreme Court Justice
|
Thurgood Marshall
|
|
85
|
Wrote "A Farewell to Arms"
|
Ernest Hemingway
|
|
86
|
Founder of Christian Science
|
Mary Baker Eddy
|
|
87
|
Wrote "The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care"
|
Benjamin Spock
|
|
88
|
Built Chicago Pile-1, the first nuclear reactor
|
Enrico Fermi
|
|
89
|
Considered possibly the most influential journalist of the 20th century, he popularized the terms "stereotype" and "Cold War" |
Walter Lippmann
|
|
90
|
Puritan who delivered the sermon "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God"
|
Jonathan Edwards
|
|
91
|
Preacher and abolitionist who had 13 children, several of which became writers or ministers |
Lyman Beecher
|
|
92
|
Wrote "The Grapes of Wrath"
|
John Steinbeck
|
|
93
|
Led the largest slave rebellion in U.S. history
|
Nat Turner
|
|
94
|
Invented the Kodak camera
|
George Eastman
|
|
95
|
Co-founded MGM
|
Samuel Goldwyn
|
|
96
|
Author of "Unsafe at Any Speed", later a Presidential spoiler candidate
|
Ralph Nader
|
|
97
|
Composed "Oh! Susanna"
|
Stephen Foster
|
|
98
|
Founded the Tuskegee Institute
|
Booker T. Washington
|
|
99
|
President who established diplomatic relations with China
|
Richard Nixon
|
|
100
|
Wrote "Moby-Dick"
|
Herman Melville
|
Also, the guy lived to be 75. You're really going to discount the last 52 years?
Even said so himself.
For most rational people, Einstein will always be German, Rupert Murdoch will always be Australian, and Jim Carrey will always be Canadian.
While it makes more sense to become a citizen of the country your main business is based in (Bell, Murdoch etc), it does not alter your place of birth and upbringing which correctly defines your nationality.
I'd love to see a split of how Americans and non Americans scored, as I suspect the average is dragged down by us non Americans.
Born: March 3, 1847, Edinburgh. Unless Scotland is now part of the USA I am quite confused to see how he got on this list... Did he get American citizenship in later life? Am I missing something here?
much rather have JFK here than Clarence Thomas. PLEASE!
The man is an affront to humanity.
JFK should also be on this list.
What Edison did was much more than tinker in a lab. He built a system that greatly advanced technology, far beyond what a single inventor could ever do (or indeed has ever done).
Had he shut himself in his lab, tinkering in solitude, we'd have never heard of him.
Also, while Samuel Goldwyn helped start MGM pictures he was only involved at the very begining. He also helped start Paramount back when he was known as Saumuel Goldfish. Most of his career he was an independent producer, one of the most successful in Hollywood history.
Margaret Mitchell
Billy Graham
Gene Roddenberry
Leon Uris
and toss up between George and Ira Gershwin/Aaron Copeland
And there's no avoiding Trump at this point.
Karl Rove? No way he's top 100. I don't think some of the pop-culture figures deserve mentions either. I just don't see how they fundamentally reshape society beyond their era of popularity.
Must've been pretty good opinions to have shaped America so
That being said, there is a typo for Frederick Law Olmsted: it should be “Olmsted”, not “Olmstead”.
Instead people talk about Moby Dick which is nothing but a master class in word filling. Bleah...