People

Copernicus: heliocentric theory, 1543

Galileo: telescope, trial by Inquisition

Newton: universal laws of motion and gravity

Bacon: inductive method, empiricism

Descartes: "I think therefore I am," deductive reasoning

Hobbes: Leviathan, absolute government for security

Locke: natural rights, consent of the governed, right of revolution

Montesquieu: separation of powers

Rousseau: Social Contract, general will, popular sovereignty

Voltaire: free speech, religious toleration

Mary Wollstonecraft: women's rights and education

Beccaria: reform of criminal law, against torture

Adam Smith: free markets, attack on mercantilism

Thomas Jefferson: Declaration of Independence

Louis XVI: French king executed 1793

Marie Antoinette: French queen, executed 1793

Maximilien Robespierre: Jacobin leader, architect of the Terror

Olympe de Gouges: author of the Declaration of the Rights of Woman (1791)

Napoleon Bonaparte: Emperor of the French, conqueror of Europe

Klemens von Metternich: Austrian foreign minister, architect of the Congress of Vienna

Toussaint L'Ouverture: leader of the Haitian Revolution

Jean-Jacques Dessalines: declared Haitian independence in 1804

Simón Bolívar: El Libertador, liberated northern South America

José de San Martín: liberated southern South America

Miguel Hidalgo: launched Mexican independence with the Grito de Dolores

Giuseppe Mazzini: Young Italy, soul of Italian unification

Camillo di Cavour: Sardinian PM, brain of Italian unification

Giuseppe Garibaldi: Red Shirts, sword of Italian unification

Victor Emmanuel II: first king of unified Italy

Otto von Bismarck: Prussian PM, architect of German unification

Wilhelm I: first kaiser of unified Germany