[5 Epic Battles That Changed History Forever]

And the sacking of Constantinople, of course.  That was huge, lol.

[5 Epic Battles That Changed History Forever]

I read somewhere that the Battle of Salami was important because if the Athenians and others lost, classical Greek civilization's development might have been hampered significantly, lol.

[100 most influential people in history]

I sincerely apologize for dropping in on you guys like this but here is my updated list on the most influential people in history.    I apologize in any way if this rubs anybody the wrong way.   The list is an attempt at diversity, so some of the more influential people might have been excluded due to the main field they influenced ran out of the number of entries.   

1.    "Mitochondrial Eve"
2.    Otto von Guericke
3.    Cyrus II
4.    Johannes Gutenberg
5.    Muhammed
6.    James Watt
7.    Christopher Columbus
8.    Carl Bosch
9.    Isaac Newton
10.    Genghis Khan
11.    Aristotle
12.    Homer
13.    "ancestor of all that has natural blue eyes"
14.    Louis Pasteur
15.    William Paterson
16.    Charles Darwin
17.    Malcolm McLean
18.    Mehmed II
19.    James Clerk Maxwell
20.    Tiglath-Pileser III
21.    Abbes Sieyes
22.    Alhacen
23.    Li Si
24.    Euclid
25.    Julius Caesar
26.    Claude Shannon
27.    Edward Coke
28.    Justinian I
29.    Maharshi Veda Vyasa
30.    Karl Marx
31.    Brahmagupta
32.    Alexander Fleming
33.    Cai Lun
34.    Martin Luther
35.    Francis Russell (Duke of Bedford)
36.    Menes/Narmer
37.    Napoleon Bonaparte
38.    Alyattes/Alyattes II
39.    Johann van Oldenbarnevelt
40.    John Snow
41.    Thespis
42.    Abu Bakr
43.    Luca Pacioli
44.    Edwin Drake
45.    Gavrilo Princep
46.    Marquess of Shen
47.    Thomas Edison
48.    David Ogilvy
49.    Sundiata Keita
50.    Harun al-Rashid
51.    Adam Smith
52.    John Montagu (Earl of Sandwich)
53.    Richard Arkwright
54.    Robert Peel
55.    Ebenezer Cobb Morley
56.    Parameswara
57.    Peter Peregrinus of Maricourt
58.    John Locke
59.    Norbert Weiner
60.    Charles Frederick Worth
61.    Nicolas Appert
62.    Friedrich Wohler
63.    Elvis Presley
64.    Dhabhani
65.    George Cayley
66.    Cesare Beccaria
67.    Simon Stevin
68.    John Smeaton
69.    Pericles
70.    Boulanger
71.    Sumu-Abum
72.    Gratian
73.    Henry Bessemer
74.    Vasili Arkhipov
75.    Carl Wilhelm Scheele
76.    Russell Marker
77.    Saints Cyril and Methodius
78.    Zhong Yao
79.    Wilhelm von Humboldt
80.    Otto Hahn/Lise Meitner
81.    Thomas Cook
82.    William Cullen
83.    Hugh Capet
84.    Norman Borlaug
85.    Henrietta Lacks
86.    Charles Henry Brent
87.    Otto von Bismarck
88.    Sanford Fleming
89.    James Bonsack
90.    William Shockley, Walter Brittain, John Bardeen
91.    Henry Ford
92.    Hennig Brandt
93.    Charles Gordon Greene
94.    Henry Luce
95.    Charles Augustus Fey
96.    James Ritty
97.    Rachel Carson
98.    Elizabeth Arden
99.    Professor Ludovico Brunetti
100.    Matthew Prior

 

[100 most influential people in history]

Ah crap, I killed this thread.

[100 most influential people in history]

Ok.

 

My first thought on your list was why Jesus (7th), Mohamed (1st) and Abraham(13) was in that order?

 

Wouldn't it be logical to assume that Mohamed is basing his influence on what Abraham and Jesus did, and Jesus on Abraham? I would personally revers the order of those three in my list to begin with.

 

Then, by that logic, Newton might not even make the list because of all of the "giants" whose shoulders he stood on.

[100 most influential people in history]

The list seems very abitrary.

 

Mohammad at 1. Christ at 7, Abraham at 13.....

 

How were these names/positions reached?

 

Newton (at 14) said 'he saw a little further by standing on the shoulders of giants'. Did he mean the 13 above him in this list?

 

Well, I downgraded Newton because most of the things that Newton discovered in Optics was already discovered by Arab scientists. Liebniz "invented" Calculus, independent of Newton, and came up with the notations. And most or all of his first two laws of motion had already been discovered by Arab scientists. Those are just what I've read, I don't really know. The basis for the rankings is based on how influential were the movements that these people were a part of and how big of a part did these people play in these movements, all subjective. And Jesus is 5th, not 7th.

[100 most influential people in history]

Mcpon, what are the basis for your list? What have you taking into account?

 

No real basis, just what I felt. I just went around the internet, searching for "most influential (scientists, ideas, inventions, etc.)" lists and topics and see who they came up with. I made predictions, such as that Marxism will be kind of like Manichaeism - prominent on the world stage for a time but then fade away eventually, but Marxism on a larger scale, so I knocked him down. I'm not a historian, just a history major, so my knowledge is limited. I'm more interested in what other people have to offer. They may think, hmmm, mcpon put up some interesting names, maybe I will too.

[100 most influential people in history]

Edit: I added this spiel to the op.

[100 most influential people in history]

Adam Smith is not only the father of modern economics and responsible for the liberalization of international trade that has financed most of the big ideas on this list, Smith's idea of the "invisible hand" is precisely identical to (and a predecessor of) Darwin's idea of "natural selection." Biologists and historians of science have noted many times that Darwin's "most dangerous idea" owed its genesis to the Scottish economist Smith, and any list of the 100 most influential people in history should include Adam Smith. He was one of the greatest geniuses of an era that is humbling in its talent.

 

Informative and yeah, you're probably right.

[100 most influential people in history]

I know you guys already have a most influential scientist & historical leader threads, so I apologize if this thread seems too similar to those. But after I read Michael Hart's list, I decided to come up with my own. I know that some of the entries are questionable. But who would you guys put on your list? Who do you think is the most influential people?? And, lastly, I tried the search and didn't find a thread exactly like this one, so sorry if this thread is just a repeat.

 

#

1. Mohammed
   
2. # Jesus of Nazareth
   
3. # Aristotle
   
4. # Tsai Lun (credited with the invention of paper)
   
5. # Johann Gutenberg
   
6. # Paul of Tarsus
   
7. # Shih Huang Ti
   
8. # Louis Pasteur
   
9. # Plato
   
10. # Siddhartha Guatama
    
11. # Confucius
    
12. # Abraham (reportedly the founder of Judaism)
    
13. # Isaac Newton
    
14. # Sri Krishna (since I included Abraham, I'm going to include him too, his historiocity wasn't challenged until Christian missionaries did so)
    
15. # Euclid
    
16. # Tim Berners Lee (invented the world wide web (with help))
    
17. # Adolf Hitler
    
18. # James Watt / Matthew Boulton (Watt invented it, but Boulton manufactured it and made it into big business)
    
19. # Constantine I (the Great)
    
20. # Genghis Kahn
    
21. # Thomas Edison
    
22. # Karl Marx
    
23. # Alexander the Great
    
24. # Nikolai Tesla (invented the radio as found by the Supreme Court & pioneered AC polyphase power distribution system)
    
25. # Christopher Columbus
    
26. # Hernan Cortes
    
27. # Nicolas Copernicus
    
28. # Socrates (just because of his reputation)
    
29. # Philo T. Farnsworth (invented electronic television that most closely resembles contemporary ones)
    
30. # Asoka (for turning Buddhism from a tiny sect into a world religion, brought Mauryan empire to largest land extent)
    
31. # Moses
    
32. # Augustus Caesar
    
33. # Gavrilo Princip (unwittingly, triggered the two World Wars and Cold War)
    
34. # Albert Einstein
    
35. # Henry Bessemer
    
36. # Sui Wen Ti (reunified China)
    
37. # Martin Luther
    
38. # Umar ibn al-Khattab (greatly expanded the Islamic empire outside of Saudi Arabia and most responsible for establishing the Islamic government of today, and most of his conquests have stayed Muslim)
    
39. # Pope Urban II (his speech ignited the Crusades)
    
40. # Sigmund Freud
    
41. # Saint Augustine of Hippo
    
42. # Charles Darwin
    
43. # St. Thomas Aquinas
    
44. # Alexander Graham Bell (telephone would have been invented anyways without him, but still beat Gray to it)
    
45. # Nikolas August von Otto
    
46. # Al-Khwarizmi / Leonardo Fibonacci (for their parts in getting the West to adopt the Hindu-Arabic numeral system that is used by most countries in the world today (along with their other influences on math))
    
47. # Galileo Galilei
    
48. # Charlemagne
    
49. # Queen Isabella & Ferdinand
    
50. # Zayd ibn Thabit (prepared the "definitive" version of the Koran as commissioned (Sunni view))
    
51. # Karl Benz (built the first automobile)
    
52. # William the Conqueror
    
53. # Napoleon
    
54. # Lao Tse
    
55. # Zoroaster
    
56. # Galen (his emphasis on investigation and observation influenced Arabic science and he was the leading medical authority in the west for around 1400 years)
    
57. # Charles Babbage / Howard Aiken (Aiken's model was based on Babbage's design)
    
58. # Wilbur & Orville Wright (Wright brothers)
    
59. # Bardeen, Brattain, Shockley (invented the transistor)
    
60. # Julius Caesar
    
61. # Cyrus II (the Great)
    
62. # Menes (started the dynastic tradition of Egypt)
    
63. # George Washington
    
64. # Saints Clement of Ohrid, Cyrill, and Methodius (for their contributions in the development of the Cyrillic alphabet)
    
65. # William Shakespeare
    
66. # Jack Kilby / Robert Noyce (for inventing the silicon chip)
    
67. # John Locke
    
68. # Sir Alexander Fleming
    
69. # Francisco Pizarro
    
70. # Muawiya I (of the Umayyad dynasty)
    
71. # Michael Faraday (eletric motor, etc.)
    
72. # Adi Sankara (revived Hinduism after Buddhism and Jainism were starting to take over Southeast Asia)
    
73. # Vladimir Lenin
    
74. # Simon Bolivar
    
75. # Maharshi Veda Vyasa (credited with the Mahabharata and the Bhagavad Gita)
    
76. # Mencius
    
77. # Richard Arkwright
    
78. # Mao Zedong
    
79. # Ibn Firnas / Salvino D'Armati / Alessandro Spina (supposed inventors of reading stones and eyeglasses, respectively; Spina made it known)
    
80. # Madhavira
    
81. # Nagarjuna
    
82. # John Calvin
    
83. # Leo Baekeland (invented the first "real" plastic)
    
84. # Mani
    
85. # Edward Jenner / Lady Montagu
    
86. # Louis Daguerre / Joseph Niepce (would have happened anyways, but still beat Fox Talbot to it)
    
87. # Adam Smith
    
88. # Alessandro Volta
    
89. # Han Wu Ti ("martial emperor" not the other one)
    
90. # Johann Karl Frederich Gauss
    
91. # Homer (wrote Greece's national epic poems)
    
92. # Carl von Linde (for his contribution to the field of refrigeration)
    
93. # Queen Elizabeth I
    
94. # Sulieman the Great
    
95. # Vinton Cerf (often regarded as the "father of the Internet")
    
96. # Ibn al-Haytham (arguably, the "first real modern scientist")
    
97. # Zhu Xi
    
98. # Tribonian (codified Roman Law, under Justinian I)
    
99. # James Watson, Francis Crick, Rosalind Franklin
    
100. # Ferdowsi
     

I tried to lower the percentage of Europeans / Americans on the list than was on Hart's list. His had around 80 percent. I got it down to around 70 percent. And I also tried to emphasize people that influenced the late 20th century technologically (which made me end up with more Americans than I wanted) since Hart's list came out in the 1970's. And I also tried to balance out people before the modern age (Middle Ages & before) with those of the modern age. I'm biased against the arts because I don't know much about it and don't know how certain artists influenced later art.

 

And besides, all lists like these are arbitrary and biased, even Hart's. How can it not be?

[Most Influential Historical Leader]

I voted for Shi Huang Ti because he was the first to unify China (although Sui Wen Ti would reunify it because Huang Ti had such incompetent successors) and standardized the language (among other things) that would last for such a long time. And he built the great wall. Second, I would put Constantine. He gave the church such power, elongated the longevity of the Roman empire (in the east), and established the feudal system (so people couldn't move up on the economic ladder).