• Born: 28 October 1955
• Birthplace: Seattle, Washington
• Best Known As: Founder of the Microsoft Corporation

Name at birth: William Gates III
Bill Gates is the head of the software company Microsoft and is one of the world's wealthiest men. Gates and Paul Allen founded Microsoft in the 1970s, though Allen left the company in 1983.

Gates oversaw the invention and marketing of the MS-DOS operating system, the Windows operating interface, the Internet Explorer browser, and a multitude of other popular computer products. Along the way he gained a reputation for fierce competitiveness and aggressive business savvy.

During the 1990s rising Microsoft stock prices made Gates the world's wealthiest man; his wealth has at times exceeded $75 billion, making Gates a popular symbol of the ascendant computer geek of the late 20th century. In June of 2006, Gates announced that he would step down from day-to-day involvement in Microsoft by July of 2008. He said he would then remain chairman of the Microsoft board while focusing on his charitable foundation, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Gates married Melinda French, a Microsoft employee, on 1 January 1994. The couple have three children: daughters Jennifer Katharine (b. 1996) and Phoebe Adele (b. 2002) and son Rory John (b. 1999)... Gates's personal charitable initiative, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, has focused on global health issues, especially on preventing malaria and AIDS in poor countries... For their philanthropic activities, Time magazine named Bill and Melinda Gates (along with rock star and activist Bono) its Persons of the Year for 2005.




His Microsoft software shaped the way millions use the technology that has transformed communications and commerce -- making him the world's richest man and, now, a leading philanthropist.

 
(born Feb. 6, 1911, Tampico, Ill., U.S.—died June 5, 2004, Los Angeles, Calif.) 40th president of the United States (1981–89), noted for his conservative Republicanism, his fervent anticommunism, and his appealing personal style, characterized by a jaunty affability and folksy charm. The only movie actor ever to become president, he had a remarkable skill as an orator that earned him the title “the Great Communicator.” His policies have been credited with contributing to the demise of Soviet communism. (For a discussion of the history and nature of the presidency, presidency of the United States of America.)
 
Elected in 1980 and re-elected in 1984, he put the United States on a more conservative course, restored buoyancy and confidence in the presidency and forged a partnership with a reformist Soviet leader who helped end the Cold War.


 As a talk show host, first at WLS-TV's AM Chicago in 1984, she pioneered a form of intimate public discourse that brought taboo subjects into the open and sparked a confessional, self-help culture.

Oprah's Beginnings

American television host, actress, producer, philanthropist. Oprah Gail Winfrey was born January 29, 1954, in Kosciusko, Mississippi. After a troubled adolescence in a small farming community, where she was sexually abused by a number of male relatives and friends of her mother, Vernita, she moved to Nashville to live with her father, Vernon, a barber and businessman. She entered Tennessee State University in 1971 and began working in radio and television broadcasting in Nashville.

In 1976, Winfrey moved to Baltimore, where she hosted the TV chat show, People Are Talking. The show became a hit and Winfrey stayed with it for eight years, after which she was recruited by a Chicago TV station to host her own morning show, A.M. Chicago. Her major competitor in the time slot was Phil Donahue. Within several months, Winfrey's open, warm-hearted personal style had won her 100,000 more viewers than Donahue and had taken her show from last place to first in the ratings. Her success led to nationwide fame and a role in Steven Spielberg's 1985 film, The Color Purple, for which she was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress.

Winfrey launched the Oprah Winfrey Show in 1986 as a nationally syndicated program. With its placement on 120 channels and an audience of 10 million people, the show grossed $125 million by the end of its first year, of which Winfrey received $30 million. She soon gained ownership of the program from ABC, drawing it under the control of her new production company, Harpo Productions ('Oprah' spelled backwards) and making more and more money from syndication.



Francis Sellers Collins (born April 14, 1950), is an American physician-geneticist, noted for his discoveries of disease genes and his leadership of the Human Genome Project (HGP). He currently serves as Director of the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland. Prior to being appointed Director, he founded and was president of the BioLogos Foundation. Collins has written a book about his Christian faith, and Pope Benedict XVI appointed Francis Collins to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences.

Raised on a small farm in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley, Collins was home schooled until the sixth grade. He attended Robert E. Lee High School. Through most of his high school and college years, he aspired to be a chemist, and had little interest in what he then considered the "messy" field of biology. What he refers to as his "formative education" was received at the University of Virginia, where he earned a B.S. in Chemistry in 1970. He went on to attain a Ph.D. in physical chemistry at Yale University in 1974. While at Yale, however, a course in biochemistry sparked his interest in the subject. After consulting with his old mentor from the University of Virginia, Carl Trindle, he changed fields and enrolled in medical school at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, earning there an M.D. in 1977.

From 1978 to 1981, he served a residency and chief residency in internal medicine at North Carolina Memorial Hospital in Chapel Hill. He then returned to Yale, where he was named a Fellow in Human Genetics at the medical school from 1981 to 1984. He worked under the direction of Sherman Weissman, and in 1984 they published an important work, a paper titled Directional cloning of DNA fragments at a large distance from an initial probe: a circularization method. This method was named chromosome jumping, to remark the contrast with the then current method of chromosome walking, that required to walk along the DNA chain.

He joined the University of Michigan in 1984, rising to the rank of Professor of Internal Medicine and Human Genetics. He heightened his reputation as a gene hunter. That gene-hunting approach, which he named "positional cloning", developed into a powerful component of modern molecular genetics.

In the 1980s, several scientific teams were working to identify the genes for cystic fibrosis. Toward the end of the decade, progress had been made, but Lap-Chee Tsui, heading the team working at Toronto's Hospital for Sick Children, considered that a shortcut was needed, to speed up the process. For this purpose, he contacted Francis Collins, who had recently developed a technique of "chromosome jumping". Collins joined the team, and combining this technique with Tsui's previous research the gene was discovered in June 1989. The discovery was covered by Science Sept 8, 1989. This was soon followed by other scientific teams genetic discoveries, including isolation of the genes for Huntington's disease, neurofibromatosis, and multiple endocrine neoplasia type 1.

Mention of his guitar playing and motor-cycle riding can often be found in articles about him. Collins' music draws on a sense of humor and fun. While directing the National Human Genome Research Institute, he formed a rock band with other NIH scientists. In its rare appearances, the band entertained selected Maryland and Washington, D.C.-area audiences, such as science writers. Sometimes the band, called "The Directors", dueled with a rock band from Johns Hopkins University, led by cancer researcher Bert Vogelstein. Lyrics of The Directors' songs included spoofs of rock and gospel classics re-written to address the challenges of contemporary biomedical research.

The Human Genome Project headed by Francis Collins with a parallel private effort by Celera Genomics under Craig Venter jointly announced the mapping of the human genome in 2000, opening the door to breakthroughs in identifying, treating and preventing the world's most-feared diseases.

• Born: 1957
• Birthplace: Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
• Died: 2 May 2011 (shot to death)
• Best Known As: The mastermind of the 11 September 2001 attacks
• Also known as: Usama bin Laden, Ussamah bin Laden

Osama bin Laden was America's most-wanted terrorist from the moment he masterminded the attacks of September 11th in 2001 until he was shot and killed by an American military team in Pakistan on 2 May 2011. Osama Bin Laden joined the Afghanistani resistance in 1979 and became a commander in the guerilla wars against the Soviet Union in the 1980s. After that war ended, Osama bin Laden founded a loose organization of pro-Islamic terrorists known as al-Qaeda ("the base"). He then joined with the Egyptian militants led by Ayman al-Zawahiri to form an international group whose goals included driving the United States out of the Middle East and overthrowing the government of Saudi Arabia. Attacks which Osama bin Laden is believed to have plotted or inspired include the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, the 1995 truck bombing of a Saudi National Guard training center, and the 1998 explosions at U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. (Bin Laden was added to the FBI's "Ten Most Wanted Fugitive" list after the embassy attacks.) Along with captured suspect Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, he was responsible for the September 2001 attacks that crippled the Pentagon and destroyed New York's World Trade Center. Despite intense American efforts in the following years, bin Laden was not found or captured until 2011, when American intelligence learned he was living in Abbottabad, Pakistan. On 2 May 2011 a team of Navy SEALS, acting on orders from President Barack Obama, attacked bin Laden's compound and killed him in a gun battle. Osama bin Laden's body was taken by the U.S. forces and buried at sea later that day.

Osama bin Laden was between 6'4" and 6'6" tall and weighed "approximately 160 pounds," according his most-wanted poster from the FBI... Some sources, including the FBI, spell his first name "Usama"... Osama Bin Laden's supporter Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was killed in a U.S. bomb strike in Iraq on 7 June 2006... There is no truth to the e-mail rumor that Osama bin Laden was identified as a terrorist by Oliver North during the Iran-Contra hearings of 1987... Osama bin Laden was one of 52 children fathered by Muhammad bin Laden, a Saudi Arabian construction magnate... Osama bin Laden's neice, Wafah Dufour, is an aspiring pop musician who posed for a photo shoot in the January 2006 issue of GQ magazine.
For most Americans, the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, by the al Qaeda network he leads marked the beginning of a global battle against radical Islamists 12 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall marked the end of the Cold War.


 

• Born: 8 January 1942
• Birthplace: Oxford, England
• Best Known As: The author of A Brief History of Time

In the tradition of Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein, he explored the nature of the universe. He popularized science, wrote the best-selling "A Brief History of Time" in 1988 and remains a puckish personality despite being severely disabled by Lou Gehrig's disease.

Stephen Hawking is considered the world's foremost living theoretical physicist. He's an expert on black holes whose stated intention is to unify quantum mechanics with Einstein's general theory of relativity, forming a single theory to explain the origin (and end) of the universe. Hawking, a professor of mathematics at Cambridge University, is the author of the best-selling book A Brief History of Time and something of a celebrity: he has made guest appearances on the TV shows Star Trek and The Simpsons. Hawking has suffered from ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also called Lou Gehrig's disease) since he was a young man and is confined to a wheelchair. He held the celebrated post of Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge from 1979 until his retirement in 2009.

According to Hawking's own site, the Lucasian Chair at Cambridge "was founded in 1663 with money left in the will of the Reverend Henry Lucas, who had been the Member of Parliament for the University. It was first held by Isaac Barrow, and then in 1663 by Isaac Newton."

 

• Born: 18 September 1971
• Birthplace: Plano, Texas
• Best Known As: The seven-time winner of the Tour de France

He won a record-breaking seven consecutive Tour de France races, cycling's most prestigious event, after battling testicular cancer. Sales of his iconic "Livestrong" wristbands have raised millions of dollars to help fight cancer.

Lance Armstrong won the prestigious Tour de France an unprecedented seven straight times, from 1999-2005. Armstrong's string broke the previous Tour de France record of five victories, held by Miguel Indurain (1991-95) and three others. Armstrong is equally famous for surviving cancer. He was a top amateur cyclist until after the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, when he began a successful pro career. In 1996 Armstrong discovered that he had testicular cancer, which had spread to his brain and lungs. After surgery and heavy chemotherapy, Armstrong returned to cycling in 1997. Two years later he won his first Tour de France, as the lead rider of the U.S. Postal Service team, and then repeated the victory the next five years in a row. In 2005 he won the Tour for a seventh time, then retired from cycling. After nearly four years in retirement, he un-retired and raced in the Tour de France again in 2009, finishing third as his teammate Alberto Contador won the race. Armstrong then retired again in 2011, amid continued -- and unverified -- allegations that he had used performance enhancing drugs. Lance Armstrong is the author of the memoirs It's Not About the Bike (2000) and Every Second Counts (2003).

In his 2005 season, Lance Armstrong's racing team was sponsored by the Discovery Channel rather than the U.S. Postal Service. In 2009 he raced for Astana... He has his own organization for cancer survivors, the Lance Armstrong Foundation... Armstrong is the second American to win the Tour de France: the first was Greg LeMond (1986 and 1989-90)... Five-time Tour de France winners: Jacques Anquetil of France (1957, 1961-64), Eddie Merckx of Belgium (1969-72, 1974), Bernard Hinault of France (1978-79, 1981-82, 1985) and Miguel Indurain of Spain (1991-95)... Armstrong and the former Kristin Richard were married in 1998. They have three children: Luke (b. 1999) and twins Isabelle and Grace (b. 2001). The couple separated early in 2003 and were divorced that December... The same year, Armstrong began dating singer Sheryl Crow; they became engaged in 2005 but ended the engagement in 2006... Lance Armstrong had another son, Maxwell Armstrong, with his girlfriend Anna Hansen in 2009. Armstrong announced in May 2010 that Hansen was pregnant with their second child... Lance Armstrong is 5'11" tall, according to a 2006 article in the Austin American-Statesman.

• Born: 18 May 1920
• Birthplace: Wadowice, Poland
• Died: 2 April 2005
• Best Known As: History's first Polish pope

Polish-born Karol Jozef Wojtyla helped propel a peaceful revolution in Poland in 1989 that ended Soviet domination and reverberated through Eastern Europe. In a 26-year papacy, he redefined the Roman Catholic Church's role in modern times.

Karol Wojtyla was elected pope on 16 October 1978, becoming the Catholic Church's first non-Italian pontiff in over 450 years. He took the name John Paul II as a nod to his predecessor, John Paul I, whose term lasted only one month. John Paul II became known particularly for his globetrotting ways; as pope he visited more than 100 countries worldwide. He was also known as a champion of human rights and for his conservative positions on social issues like abortion, homosexuality and contraception. He survived an assassination attempt in 1981 when a Turk named Mehmet Ali Agca shot him in St. Peter's Square at the Vatican. John Paul II was hit four times and nearly died while being rushed to surgery, but he lived and publicly forgave Agca. John Paul II marked his 20th year as pope in 1998, making him the longest-serving pontiff of the 20th century. By then he was struggling with increasingly poor health, visibly suffering from the slurred speech and trembling hands of Parkinson's Disease. He received the last rites of the church on 31 March 2005, after suffering what church officials called "septic shock and a cardio-circulatory collapse" brought on by a urinary tract infection. John Paul II died in his apartments at the Vatican on 2 April 2005 and was succeeded by his friend and aide, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who became Pope Benedict XVI on 19 April 2005. John Paul II was beatified by Benedict XVI on 1 May 2011, putting the late pope one step from sainthood. The beatification came more quickly than is normally possible: soon after Benedict XVI took office, he waived the usual five-year waiting period so that the Vatican's Congregation for the Causes of Saints could begin considering John Paul II immediately.

In Italian, the pope's name was Giovanni Paolo II; in Latin, Ioannes Paulus II... Pius IX had the longest term as pope in modern history; he served more than 31 years from 1846-78... John Paul II died just four days before another longtime European head of state, Rainier III of Monaco... The pope's funeral on 8 April 2005 forced the rescheduling of the marriage of Britain's Prince Charles to Camilla Parker-Bowles, which had been planned for that same day... Mehmet Ali Agca, the man who shot John Paul II in 1981, was pardoned in 2000 at the pope's request. He then spent several years in a Turkish prison before his release in 2010.






10. Bono, rock musician and activist for Africa
 

• Born: 10 May 1960
• Birthplace: Dublin, Ireland
• Best Known As: Lead singer of the rock band U2

Born Paul Hewson, the lead singer of the Irish rock band U2 has shrewdly pressed world leaders to forgive Third World debt and address the AIDS pandemic in Africa.

Name at birth: Paul Hewson:

Bono is the lead singer and front man for the Irish rock band U2, one of the most successful bands of the 1980s and 1990s. The group's albums include The Unforgettable Fire (1984), The Joshua Tree (1987), Pop (1997) and How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb (2005); their singles include "Mysterious Ways," "Where The Streets Have No Name," and "Beautiful Day." As a public figure, Bono is also known as an earnest advocate for various political causes, in particular world hunger and African poverty. In 2005 he shared Time magazine's Person of the Year award with Bill and Melinda Gates. In 2006 he was awarded an honorary knighthood by Queen Elizabeth II; he received the award in March of 2007.

Bono reportedly got his nickname from Bono Vox, the Latin term for "good voice" and a brand of hearing aid... The other members of U2 include Larry Mullen, Adam Clayton, and Dave Evans (AKA 'The Edge')... Bono joined Sting, Paul McCartney and dozens of other musicians in Bob Geldof's charity supergroup Band Aid; their 1984 single "Do They Know It's Christmas" sold three million copies and raised millions of pounds for famine relief in Africa... Though he has received an honorary knighthood, Bono is not eligible for the formal title of "Sir." Bono is Irish, and that title is reserved for citizens of the U.K. and the British commonwealth.

• Born: 2 March 1931
• Birthplace: Privolnoye, Stavropol, Russia
• Best Known As: The Nobel Prize-winning last leader of the Soviet Union

The last leader of the Soviet Union, from 1985 to 1991, he introduced economic and political reforms -- glasnost and perestroika -- and forged a partnership with an anti-communist U.S. president. On Gorbachev's watch, the Berlin Wall fell and the Soviet Union dissolved.

• Born: 21 August 1973
• Birthplace: Moscow, Russia
• Best Known As: The co-founder of Google

Sergey Brin and his fellow Stanford student Larry Page invented the Internet search engine Google. Sergey Brin's parents were Russian immigrants; he was six when the family moved to the United States. His father became a professor of math at the University of Maryland, and Sergey Brin graduated from the same university in 1993 with honors in computer science. He moved on to graduate school at Stanford University, where he studied data mining and then joined forces with Page. Together they wrote the paper "The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine" and created their own search engine, at first known as BackRub and then in 1998 incorporated as Google. The company was an immediate success, growing so quickly that in a few years "Google" had become a verb for Internet search. The company's 2004 public stock offering made both men billionaires and leading high-tech figures of the new century. From 2001-2011, Brin and Page ran Google along with their hand-picked CEO, Eric Schmidt; Brin had the title of "Co-Founder and President of Technology." In 2011, Larry Page was named CEO, with Schmidt moving to the job of executive chairman and Sergey Brin returning to the simple title of "Co-Founder." The company said Brin would oversee new and strategic products.

Sergey Brin and Larry Page both received master's degrees from Stanford, but never completed their doctorates; Google describes Brin as being "on leave" from the Ph.D. program in computer science at Stanford... Sergey Brin married biochemist Anne Wojcicki in May of 2007. Anne Wojcicki is a co-founder of the genetic data service 23andMe. In 2008, Brin announced that testing done by 23andMe showed that he had a greater-than-average risk of contracting Parkinson's Disease later in his life... The name Google is a play on the mathematical term googol -- a one followed by 100 zeroes.

ergey Mikhaylovich Brin (Russian: Сергей Михайлович Брин; born August 21, 1973) is a Russian-born American computer scientist and internet entrepreneur who, with Larry Page, co-founded Google, one of the largest internet companies. As of 2011, his personal wealth is estimated to be $16.7 billion.

Brin immigrated to the United States from the Soviet Union at the age of six. He earned his undergraduate degree at the University of Maryland, following in his father's and grandfather's footsteps by studying mathematics, as well as computer science. After graduation, he moved to Stanford University to acquire a Ph.D in computer science. There he met Larry Page, with whom he later became friends. They crammed their dormitory room with inexpensive computers and applied Brin's data mining system to build a superior search engine. The program became popular at Stanford and they suspended their PhD studies to start up Google in a rented garage.

The Economist magazine referred to Brin as an "Enlightenment Man", and someone who believes that "knowledge is always good, and certainly always better than ignorance", a philosophy that is summed up by Google’s motto of making all the world’s information "universally accessible and useful" and "Don't be evil".

 
After meeting as doctoral students at Stanford in 1995, they devised a way to organize information on the Internet by analyzing relationships between Web sites. Google is now the Web's most-used search engine -- so familiar it's become a verb.

• Born: 26 March 1973
• Birthplace: Lansing, Michigan
• Best Known As: The co-founder of Google

Name at birth: Lawrence Edward Page
Larry Page and Sergey Brin are the creators of the search engine Google. Larry Page's father was a professor of computer science at Michigan State, and Larry studied computing at the University of Michigan. Larry Page earned his B.S.E. in 1995 and then moved on to graduate school at Stanford University. There he began to create and analyze his own catalogue of Internet links and was joined by Brin, a fellow Stanford grad student he met in 1995. Together they wrote the paper "The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine" and created their own search engine, at first known as BackRub and then in 1998 officially incorporated as Google. It was soon enormously popular. Google became a public company in 2004, making Page and Brin billionaires at age 27. The company brought in Eric Schmidt as CEO in 2001, and he ran the company in a triumvirate with Page and Brin for the next successful decade as Google became the most-used search engine on the planet. During those years, Larry Page had the title of co-founder and president of products. Google announced in 2011 that Larry Page would take over as CEO of Google, with Schmidt becoming executive chairman.
Google is a play on the mathematical term googol -- a one followed by 100 zeroes... Larry Page married Lucy Southworth in December 2007; Southworth studied biomedical informatics as a doctoral candidate at Stanford.

• Born: 6 July 1946
• Birthplace: New Haven, Connecticut
• Best Known As: President of the United States, 2001-2009

Taking office after a 5-4 Supreme Court decision settled the 2000 presidential election, he led America's response to the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and ordered the invasion of Iraq in 2003 -- engaging the United States in its longest war since Vietnam.

(born July 6, 1946, New Haven, Conn., U.S.) Governor of Texas (1995 – 2000) and 43rd president of the U.S. (2001 – 09). The eldest child of George Bush, the 41st president of the U.S. (1989 – 93), George W. Bush attended Yale University and Harvard Business School. After a decade in the oil business, he served as managing general partner of the Texas Rangers professional baseball franchise. In 1994 he was elected governor of Texas and won reelection by a landslide in 1998.

As the candidate of the Republican Party in the presidential election of 2000, Bush won 500,000 fewer votes than Al Gore but gained the presidency when the U.S. Supreme Court halted a recount of votes in Florida, enabling him to secure a narrow majority in the electoral college (271 – 266). In response to the September 11 attacks launched by Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda network in 2001, Bush ordered a military campaign against Afghanistan that deposed the country's Taliban government, which had harboured bin Laden.

The U.S. was later accused of mistreating captured Taliban fighters and suspected terrorists at a prison on the U.S. naval base at Gauntánamo Bay, Cuba. In March 2003 Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair led an invasion of Iraq that toppled the government of Saddam Hussein, whom they accused of concealing weapons of mass destruction; no such weapons were found (see Iraq War). In 2002 Congress passed the administration's controversial No Child Left Behind Act, which required regular tests of public school students. In 2004 Bush won reelection in a close contest over Democratic Senator John Kerry. Bush's later proposals to replace Social Security with private retirement savings accounts and to reform immigration laws attracted little support.

The Bush administration developed significant foreign-aid programs, particularly for Africa, designed to serve its declared goal of promoting democracy abroad.

A farm boy from Oklahoma who started his retailing empire with Walton's Five and Dime in Bentonville, Ark., he relied on high-volume and low markups to build the world's biggest retailer -- and swamp the competition.

• Born: 29 March 1918
• Birthplace: Kingfisher, Oklahoma
• Died: 6 April 1992 (multiple myeloma)
• Best Known As: Founder of discount retailer Wal-Mart

Sam Walton, with his brother Bud Walton, founded Wal-Mart, the chain of discount variety stores that in the 1990s became the world's largest retailer.

Sam Walton went into the retail business in 1945, and by the time Wal-Mart first opened in 1962 he owned a chain of 15 variety stores in Arkansas, Missouri and Oklahoma. Walton's savvy marketing skills and attention to detail led to Wal-Mart's expansion throughout the United States. By 1990 Wal-Mart was the nation's top retailer in terms of sales, and Walton was one of the richest men in the world.

After his death in 1992 the company continued to expand, including online commerce and stores around the world. By 2001 there were more than 4,500 Wal-Mart stores worldwide.

Since Walton's death the chain has come under fire for its labor practices and aggressive marketing tactics. Arguing that Wal-Marts drove out other merchants, many local communities fought to keep new stores from opening, and in June of 2004 a lawsuit was filed on behalf of 1.6 million women, charging that Wal-Mart discriminated against female employees.

• Born: 22 August 1904
• Birthplace: Paifang, Sichuan province, China
• Died: 19 February 1997 (respiratory failure)
• Best Known As: Leader of China, 1978-89

One of the old guard of the Chinese Communist Party, Deng Xiaoping became the party's Secretary General in 1954, but was purged by Chairman Mao in 1966 for his strong objections to the excesses of the Great Leap Forward. By 1974 Deng had been "rehabilitated" and returned to power. After Mao's death, Deng was the de facto leader of China until he finally expired in 1997. He was succeeded by his protege Jiang Zemin.
Deng lived and studied in Paris from 1920-26.
The de facto leader of China from 1978 into the 1990s, he opened the nation to global markets and economic modernization through "socialism with Chinese characteristics" -- and cracked down on Tiananmen Square protesters in 1989.

• Born: 17 February 1963
• Birthplace: Brooklyn, New York
• Best Known As: The super-duper-star guard for the Chicago Bulls

Michael Jordan was the dominant basketball player in the world during the 1990s.

He won the NBA's Most Valuable Player award five times, and six times led the Chicago Bulls to the league championship. Jordan led the Bulls to his first three championships came in 1991, 1992 and 1993 with superb shooting and playmaking and a competitive killer instinct. In October of 1993 he stunned his fans by retiring from basketball and beginning a professional baseball career, saying that playing baseball had been an early dream of his.

He played the 1994 baseball season for the minor league Birmingham Barons. In March of 1995 he ended his baseball career and returned to the Bulls. With Jordan, the Bulls won three more championships in 1996, 1997 and 1998.

He retired from basketball in 1999. In the year 2000 he became a part owner and executive for the NBA's Washington Wizards. In 2001 Jordan began considering another comeback as an NBA player, and that fall, at age 38, he returned once again to play for the Wizards. He played for two more full seasons, retiring again in April of 2003. Jordan was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame in 2009.

Jordan wore uniform number 23... His endorsement deal with Nike led to the creation of Air Jordans, the popular athletic shoe... Jordan married the former Juanita Vanoy in 1989. They had three children: Jeffrey (born 1988), Marcus (b. 1990), and Jasmine (b. 1992). Juanita filed for divorce in 2002; she and Jordan reconciled later that year, but then split again and were divorced in 2007. Jordan paid a reported $168 million to Juanita in the settlement... Jordan starred with Bugs Bunny in the 1996 feature film Space Jam.
Arguably the greatest basketball player of all time, mostly for the Chicago Bulls, his athletic leaps and slam dunks influenced a generation of players. With a likeable persona, he also led all leagues in lucrative endorsements.

A poor kid from Brooklyn who wanted to replicate Italian espresso bars, he cultivated a chain of coffeehouses that have influenced many Americans' daily habits and tastebuds much as Ray Kroc's McDonalds did a generation earlier

Howard Schultz was born to a German-Jewish family on July 19, 1953 in Brooklyn, New York, the son of ex-US Army trooper and then truck driver Fred Schultz, and his wife Elaine. With his younger sister, Ronnie, and brother, Michael, he grew up in the Canarsie Bayview Houses of the New York City Housing Authority. As Schultz's family was poor, he saw an escape in sports such as baseball, football, and basketball. He went to Canarsie High School, from which he graduated in 1971. In high school, Schultz excelled at sports and was awarded an athletic scholarship to Northern Michigan University – the first person in his family to go to college. A member of Tau Kappa Epsilon, Schultz received his bachelor's degree in Communications in 1975. He has two children, named Eliahu Jordan, who goes by Jordan, and Addison.

After graduating, he worked as a salesperson for Xerox Corporation. In 1979 he became a general manager for Swedish drip coffee maker manufacturer, Hammarplast. In 1981, Schultz visited a client of Hammarplast, a fledgling coffee-bean shop called Starbucks Coffee Company in Seattle which he joined as the Director of Marketing a year later. On a buying trip to Milan, Italy for Starbucks, Schultz noted that coffee bars existed on practically every street. He learned that they not only served excellent espresso, they also served as meeting places or public squares; they were a big part of Italy's societal glue, and there were 200,000 of them in the country.

On his return, he tried to persuade the owners (including Jerry Baldwin) to offer traditional espresso beverages in addition to the whole bean coffee, leaf teas and spices they had long offered. After a successful pilot of the cafe concept, the owners refused to roll it out company-wide, saying they didn't want to get into the restaurant business. Frustrated, Schultz started his own coffee shop in 1985, named 'Il Giornale' after the Milanese newspaper. Two years later, the original Starbucks management decided to focus on Peet's Coffee & Tea and sold its Starbucks retail unit to Schultz and Il Giornale for $3.8 million.

Schultz renamed Il Giornale with the Starbucks name, and aggressively expanded its reach across the United States. Schultz's keen insight in real estate and his hard-line focus on growth drove him to expand the company rapidly. Schultz did not believe in franchising, and made a point of having Starbucks retain ownership of every domestic outlet. Schultz also went 50-50 with Magic Johnson on stores in minority communities.

Schultz authored the book "Pour Your Heart Into It: How Starbucks Built a Company One Cup at a Time" with Dori Jones Yang in 1997. His second book "Onward: How Starbucks Fought for Its Life Without Losing Its Soul" with Joanne Gordon, was published 2011.

On January 8, 2008 Schultz regained his status as CEO of Starbucks after an eight-year hiatus. At this time, Schultz was earning a total compensation of $9,740,471, which included a base salary of $1,190,000, and options granted of $7,786,105.

• Born: 18 July 1918
• Birthplace: Umtata, Transkei
• Best Known As: The first black president of South Africa

Name at birth: Rolihlahla Mandela:

Nelson Mandela spent 27 years as a political prisoner in South Africa before becoming the country's first black president. Mandela was a leading member of the African National Congress (ANC), which opposed South Africa's white minority government and its policy of racial separation, known as apartheid.

The government outlawed the ANC in 1960. Mandela was captured and jailed in 1962, and in 1964 he was convicted of treason and sentenced to life in prison. He began serving the sentence as prisoner 46664 on Robben Island, near Cape Town, but instead of disappearing from view, Mandela became a prison-bound martyr and worldwide symbol of resistance to racism. South African President F.W. de Klerk finally lifted the ban on the ANC and released Mandela in 1990.

Mandela used his stature to help dismantle apartheid and form a new multi-racial democracy, and he and de Klerk shared the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993. Mandela was elected the country's president in 1994. He served until 1999, when he was succeeded by his deputy Thabo Mbeki. Mandela's autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom, was published in 1994.

He is also called 'Madiba,' a nickname taken from his clan... Mandela says in Long Walk to Freedom that he was given the English name "Nelson" by his teacher on his first day at school... Mandela has been married three times: to the former Evelyn Mase from 1944 to 1957, to Winnie Madikizela from 1958 to 1996, and to Graca Machel since 1998... Mandela's wife Winnie became a powerful figure in her own right while Mandela was imprisoned; however, her entanglement in a series of scandals led to the couple's estrangement in 1992, her dismissal from his cabinet in 1995, and their official divorce in 1996... He has been played in the movies by Morgan Freeman (Invictus, 2009), Sidney Poitier (Mandela and de Klerk, 1997), and Danny Glover (Mandela, 1987).

Released in 1990 after 27 years in prison, he preached reconciliation and was the first elected president of a fully democratic South Africa

• Born: 31 July 1965
• Birthplace: Chipping Sodbury, England
• Best Known As: The creator of the fictional wizard Harry Potter

Joanne K. Rowling (pronounced rolling) is the author of the Harry Potter series of books, which began with the 1997 tale Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. (U.S. title: Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone.) The book told the story of Harry Potter, a seemingly ordinary boy who discovered that he was actually a wizard.

The book was a sensational hit, and by the end of 1999 the top three slots on the New York Times list of bestsellers were taken by the first three books in the Harry Potter series. By the 2000 release of the fourth book in the series, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Harry Potter had become a global pop culture phenomenon, with parents and children standing in line at bookstores waiting for the book's release. J.K. Rowling herself had become one of the world's best-known and best-paid authors.

After the 2003 release of the fifth Harry Potter book, The Order of the Phoenix, the BBC reported that Rowling's books had been translated into 60 languages (including ancient Greek) and had sold over 250 million copies worldwide. The sequels to the original book are: Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (1999), Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (1999), Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2000), Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (2003), Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (2005), and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (2007).

The final book wrapped up the story, and Rowling has stated that it will be the last in the Harry Potter series. However, in 2008 she published The Tales of Beedle the Bard, a collection of fairy tales that was mentioned in the book Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

The Harry Potter film series starred Daniel Radcliffe as Harry, Rupert Grint and Emma Watson as Harry's friends Ron and Hermione, and Tom Felton as Draco Malfoy. The films are: Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (2001), Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (2002), Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004), Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2005), Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (2007), Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (2009), Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 (2010), and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 (2011)... J.K. Rowling married Dr. Neil Murray in Scotland on 26 December 2001; their children are David (b. 2003) and Mackenzie (b. 2005). Rowling has one child, Jessica (b. 1993), from her previous marriage to Jorge Arantes, a Portuguese TV journalist.

Her first Harry Potter book, completed in 1995 and initially rejected by several publishing houses, launched a seven-volume series that absorbed children and adults in complicated fantasies spanning thousands of pages.



    Born: 19 August 1946
    Birthplace: Hope, Arkansas
    Best Known As: 42nd President of the United States, 1993-2001

Name at birth: William Jefferson Blythe

Bill Clinton was president of the United States for two terms, from 1993 to 2001, and is best known as the president who survived impeachment after a sex scandal. Clinton spent the 1970s as a law professor and then Attorney General of Arkansas, and for most of the 1980s he was Governor of Arkansas.

A moderate Democrat, in 1992 he defeated the incumbent George Bush for the U.S. presidency. His first term was characterized by a strong economic recovery, and in 1996 he beat Republican Bob Dole and was re-elected. His second term was dominated by scandal: accusations of corruption and investigations into rumors of his marital infidelity.

On December 19, 1998 the U.S. House of Representatives voted (along party lines) in favor of two articles of impeachment. Clinton was accused of committing perjury and obstruction of justice in his attempt to cover up an extra-marital affair with a White House intern, Monica Lewinsky. In the subsequent senate trial, Clinton was acquitted of the charges and remained in office. Days before leaving office, Clinton struck a deal with the office of the special prosecutor in the case: in order to avoid an indictment, Clinton admitted to making misleading testimony, and he was suspended from practicing law in Arkansas for five years.

His wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton was elected as a U.S. Senator from New York in 2000, the first time a First Lady had ever been elected to public office. She was re-elected in 2006, then accepted the post of Secretary of State under President Barack Obama in 2009.

Clinton's father, William Blythe, died in a car accident before Clinton was born; after his mother remarried, the future president took the last name of his stepfather, Roger Clinton... While in office, Clinton was sued by Paula Jones, an Arkansas state employee who claimed Clinton had sexually harassed her in 1991. The lawsuit went on from 1994 to 1998 and was settled when Clinton agreed to pay Jones $850,000... Clinton was succeeded by George W. Bush, the son of the president Clinton defeated in 1992...

The younger Bush defeated Clinton's vice president Al Gore in the 2000 presidential elections... Bill and Hillary Clinton have one daughter, Chelsea, who attended Stanford University while her father was president... During his first presidential campaign Clinton was nicknamed Elvis, a play on his southern roots and populist style... His critics sometimes refer to him derisively as "Bubba," an epithet that is supposed to bring to mind the image of an obese rube... Clinton's memoir, "My Life," was published in 2004. Clinton's advance from publishers Alfred A. Knopf was reported to be over $10 million... Clinton underwent quadruple heart bypass surgery in September of 2004.

• Born: 26 October 1947
• Birthplace: Chicago, Illinois
• Best Known As: The former First Lady who became Secretary of State

Name at birth: Hillary Diane Rodham
Formerly the First Lady and a senator from New York, Hillary Rodham Clinton became the U.S. Secretary of State in 2009.

She is the wife of former President Bill Clinton, making her the first American First Lady ever elected to national office. After graduating from Wellesley College in 1969, Hillary Rodham went to Yale Law School, where she met Clinton, a fellow student. She served as a staff attorney for the Children's Defense Fund and was also on the congressional Impeachment Inquiry staff in 1974, at the tail end of Richard Nixon's Watergate scandal. Hillary married Bill Clinton and left Washington for Arkansas in 1975.

She raised their daughter Chelsea and practiced law during Clinton's 12 years as the state's governor. Bill Clinton was elected president in 1992 and Hillary became a somewhat controversial First Lady, weathering criticism about everything from her hairstyles to her involvement in public policy to her role in a questionable Arkansas land deal (the so-called Whitewater affair). She also endured her husband's much-publicized affair with intern Monica Lewinsky and supported him during the subsequent impeachment hearings. In 2000 the Clintons took residency in New York and Hillary was elected to the U.S. Senate, in the same year that George W. Bush was elected to succeed her husband. She was re-elected to a second term in 2006.

She ran for the Democratic nomination for president in 2008, finally conceding to fellow senator Barack Obama after a lengthy campaign. After winning the general election that November, Obama nominated her to the post of Secretary of State. She was confirmed and took office on 21 January 2009, the day after Obama's inauguration.

Clinton published a 562-page memoir, Living History, in 2003. It detailed her eight years in the White House... Her 1996 book It Takes a Village and Other Lessons Children Teach Us was a best-seller, though the phrase "It takes a village to raise a child" was frequently lampooned by her opponents.

 
He was the first Democrat elected to two terms in the White House since Franklin Delano Roosevelt, then survived impeachment. She went from wronged wife to New York senator to the most viable female presidential contender in U.S. history.


He helped popularize a distinctively American form of music -- co-founding the hip-hop label Def Jam -- that has influenced mainstream pop culture, from music to dance to dress, since the mid-1980s.

Born c. 1957; raised in Hollis, Queens, New York City; son of Daniel Simmons (a public school attendance supervisor); married Kimora Lee, 1998; children: Ming Lee, Aoki Lee.

Education: City College of New York, attended.

Co-founder and owner of Def Jam Records and Rush Productions, 1985-; owner of Rush Artist Management; founded Rush Communications, 1990; launched Phat Fashions, 1992; started producing Def Comedy Jam for HBO, 1991; founded Rush Philanthropic Arts Foundation, 1995; founded Def Pictures with producer Stan Lathan, 1995; director of music videos; published autobiography, Life and Def: Sex, Drugs, Money and God, Crown, 2001; organized Hip-Hop Summit Action Network, 2002; launched Russell Simmons' Def Poetry Jam on HBO and on Broadway, 2002; launched jewelry line, 2005; founded Russell Simmons Music Group, 2005.


Ryan Wayne White (December 6, 1971 – April 8, 1990) was an American teenager from Kokomo, Indiana, who became a national poster child for HIV/AIDS in the United States, after being expelled from middle school because of his infection. As a hemophiliac, he became infected with HIV from a contaminated blood treatment and, when diagnosed in December 1984, was given six months to live.

Doctors said he posed no risk to other students, but AIDS was poorly understood at the time, and when White tried to return to school, many parents and teachers in Kokomo rallied against his attendance. A lengthy legal battle with the school system ensued, and media coverage of the case made White into a national celebrity and spokesman for AIDS research and public education.

He appeared frequently in the media with celebrities such as Elton John, Michael Jackson and Phil Donahue. Surprising his doctors, White lived five years longer than predicted and died in April 1990, one month prior to his high school graduation.

Before White, AIDS was a disease widely associated with the male gay community, because it was first diagnosed among gay men. That perception shifted as White and other prominent HIV-infected people, such as Magic Johnson, the Ray brothers and Kimberly Bergalis, appeared in the media to advocate for more AIDS research and public education to address the epidemic. The U.S. Congress passed a major piece of AIDS legislation, the Ryan White Care Act, shortly after White's death. The Act has been reauthorized twice; Ryan White Programs are the largest provider of services for people living with HIV/AIDS in the United States.
 
The 13-year-old hemophiliac from Kokomo, Ind., was diagnosed with AIDS in 1984, then banned from attending his public middle school. A human face for a stigmatized disease, he died in 1990.

The doughy star of the animated TV series "The Simpsons" epitomized the irony and irreverence at the core of American humor -- the same force that helped make "The Daily Show's" Jon Stewart a major source of news for young people.

Homer Jay Simpson is a fictional character in the animated television series The Simpsons and the patriarch of the eponymous family. He is voiced by Dan Castellaneta and first appeared on television, along with the rest of his family, in The Tracey Ullman Show short "Good Night" on April 19, 1987. Homer was created and designed by cartoonist Matt Groening while he was waiting in the lobby of James L. Brooks' office. Groening had been called to pitch a series of shorts based on his comic strip Life in Hell but instead decided to create a new set of characters. He named the character after his father, Homer Groening. After appearing for three seasons on The Tracey Ullman Show, the Simpson family got their own series on Fox that debuted December 17, 1989.

Homer and his wife Marge have three children: Bart, Lisa, and Maggie. As the family's provider, he works at the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant. Homer embodies several American working class stereotypes: he is crude, overweight, incompetent, clumsy, lazy and ignorant; however, he is essentially a decent man and fiercely devoted to his family. Despite the suburban blue-collar routine of his life, he has had a number of remarkable experiences.

In the shorts and earlier episodes, Castellaneta voiced Homer with a loose impression of Walter Matthau; however, during the second and third seasons of the half-hour show, Homer's voice evolved to become more robust, to allow the expression of a fuller range of emotions. He has appeared in other media relating to The Simpsons – including video games, The Simpsons Movie, The Simpsons Ride, commercials and comic books – and inspired an entire line of merchandise. His catchphrase, the annoyed grunt "D'oh!", has been included in The New Oxford Dictionary of English since 1998 and the Oxford English Dictionary since 2001.

Homer is one of the most influential fictional characters on television, having been described by the British newspaper The Sunday Times as "the greatest comic creation of [modern] time". He was named the greatest fictional character "of the last 20 years" in 2010 by Entertainment Weekly, was ranked the second greatest cartoon character by TV Guide, behind Bugs Bunny, and was voted the greatest television character of all time by Channel 4 viewers. For voicing Homer, Castellaneta has won four Primetime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Voice-Over Performance and a special-achievement Annie Award. In 2000, Homer and his family were awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.





    Born: 24 February 1955
    Birthplace: San Francisco, California
    Died: 5 October 2011 (cancer)
    Best Known As: The co-founder and mastermind of Apple computers

Steve Jobs was a college dropout when he teamed up with Steve Wozniak in 1976 to sell personal computers assembled in Jobs' garage. 

That was the beginning of Apple Computers, which revolutionized the computing industry and made Steve Jobs a multimillionaire before he was 30 years old. 

He was forced out of the company in 1985 and started the NeXT Corporation, but returned to his old company in 1996 when Apple bought NeXT. 

Steve Jobs soon became Apple's chief executive officer and sparked a resurgence in the company with products like the colorful iMac computer and the iPod music player. Steve Jobs was also the CEO of Pixar, the animation company responsible for movies like Toy Story and Monsters, Inc. Pixar was purchased by the Walt Disney Company in 2006 for $7.4 billion in stock; the deal made Jobs the largest individual shareholder of Disney stock. 

Jobs was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2003 and had surgery in July of 2004, and was criticized by some for not disclosing his illness to stockholders until after the fact. His health was in the news again in 2008, when his extreme weight loss sparked rumors that his cancer had recurred. Jobs refused to speak publicly about his health, but in January of 2009 he took a formal six-month leave of absence from Apple, saying that his health problems were "more complex than I originally thought." He had a liver transplant later that year and returned to work at Apple in June of 2009. In January of 2011 he again announced, without offering details, that he was taking a medical leave of absence. He resigned as Apple CEO on 24 August 2011, saying "I have always said if there ever came a day when I could no longer meet my duties and expectations as Apple's CEO, I would be the first to let you know. Unfortunately, that day has come." He remained with the company as Chairman of the Board until he died about five weeks later.

Some sources list Los Altos, California as Steve Jobs's place of birth. However, in a 1995 oral history interview with The Smithsonian, Jobs said, "I was born in San Francisco, California, USA, planet Earth, February 24, 1955." Jobs was given up for adoption after birth and raised by his adoptive parents in Silicon Valley... His biological sister is novelist Mona Simpson, the author of Anywhere But Here... Jobs attended Reed College in Portland, Oregon for one semester in 1972 before dropping out... He married the former Laurene Powell on 18 March 1991. They have three children: Eve, Erin, and Reed. Jobs also has a daughter, Lisa Brennan-Jobs, born in 1978 to Jobs and his then-girlfriend Chrisann Brennan.