World Biographical Encyclopedia

Helena Balavatsky

Helena Blavatsky was a Russian spiritualist, author, and co-founder of the Theosophical Society to promote theosophy, a pantheistic philosophical-religious system.

Zinaida Gippius was a Russian poet, novelist, playwright, religious thinker, and critic, and one of the most prominent figures of the Symbolist movement during Russia's Silver Age. In addition to her poetry, she wrote plays, novels, short stories, and critical and political essays. For some critical literary essays a little later, she used the pseudonym Anton Krainy.

Joseph Story

Joseph Story was an American lawyer and jurist who served on the Supreme Court of the United States from 1811 to 1845. He is most remembered for his opinions in Martin v. Hunter's Lessee and The Amistad case, and especially for his magisterial Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States, first published in 1833.

Federico Mayor Zaragoza

Federico Mayor Zaragoza is a Spanish scientist, scholar, politician, diplomat, and poet. He is former Director-General of UNESCO from 1987 to 1999.

Jean Arthur

Jean Arthur was an American actress and a film star of the 1930s and 1940s.

Pope Clement VII

Pope Clement VII must be a standout amongst the most insulted pontiffs the Catholic Church has had, and quite often unjustifiably so. His notoriety endures, not just from his own behavior, but rather from the season of his rule, toward the end of the celebrated Italian Renaissance. The offenses (generally overstated) of a portion of the pontiffs of this time have brought about numerous individual...

Montague Summers

Montague Summers was an eccentric British author, historian, poet and clergyman. He is known primarily for his scholarly work on the English drama of the 17th century, as well as for his idiosyncratic studies on witches, vampires, and werewolves, in all of which he professed to believe.

Oliver Holmes Jr.

Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. was an American justice of the United States Supreme Court, U.S. legal historian and philosopher who advocated judicial restraint. He was a key figure in the debate concerning the role of law in a rapidly changing America during the early twentieth century. Not only did Mr. Holmes personally contribute to the debate, but he also served as a symbol to a generation of lega...

John Abraham

John Abraham is an Indian actor and film producer. A youth icon, he started his career as a model and gradually appeared in hits like Dhoom, Jism, and Dostana. Abraham was also voted as the sexiest actor in India.

Joseph Rotblat

Sir Joseph Rotblat, was a Polish-born British physicist who became a leading critic of nuclear weaponry. He was a founding member of the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs, a London-based worldwide organization of scholars that seeks solutions to problems of national development and international security.

Whitney Houston

Whitney Elizabeth Houston was an American singer, actress, producer and model and is considered to be one of the world's best-selling music artists, whose albums have diamond, multi-platinum, platinum or gold certification. Moreover, she is the most awarded female artist of all time.

Pope John XXIII

Pope John XXIII was the head of the Catholic Church from 28 October 1958 to his death in 1963.

Ichiro Suzuki

Ichiro Suzuki is a former Japanese baseball player who has amassed the most total hits across all professional baseball leagues in the history of the sport. He was notably also the first non-pitcher to shift from Japanese professional baseball to the American major leagues.

Otto Preminger

Otto Ludwig Preminger was an American theatre and film director, originally from Austria-Hungary.

Marcel Paul Pagnol

Marcel Pagnol was a French novelist, playwright, and filmmaker. Regarded as an auteur, in 1946, he became the first filmmaker elected to the Académie française. Although his work is less fashionable than it once was, Pagnol is still generally regarded as one of France's greatest 20th-century writers and is notable for the fact that he excelled in almost every medium memoir, novel, drama and film.

Hyman Minsky

Hyman Philip Minsky was an American professor of economics, writer, and economist in the field of Domestic Monetary and Financial Theory and Institutions, Economic Fluctuations, Macroeconomic Theory.