Two Things
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First of all, a huge thanks from Ryli's family for all the donations and raffle tickets that people purchased. SQLServerCentral.com raised quite a bit of money. If you hadn't heard, Ryli's Story is here and there are basically raffle tickets available for $20. Winner gets tickest to a hockey game in Denver, but you could easily sell these for $100 or more.
So my plea again, if this is your type of charity, buy a ticket and help a little girl.
Now, on to the daily rant and ramble.
One of the things that I used to do when I worked in an office was periodically send out polls on various topics. Not any particular reason, just something would strike me and I'd ask people or send out emails (as that become popular) and see what I got back. I also ran some polls on my site, but it got kind of crazy and I'd prefer you people don't kill my personal site. They usually were things like "What's the best movie of 2003?" or something like that.
But I had some interesting ones that people really liked, so I'd like to start dropping a few here and there to see what people say in the forums.
One hint, read the poll and then post your answers before reading everyone elses'. It will be more fun. For this time:
With Bill Gates turning 50 recently, I was thinking of a list I'd made some years ago. Now that we're in the 2000s, who are the top ten most influential people of the twentieth century?.
Take that as you will and post your list. I'll add mine in a day.
Steve Jones
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Jesus Christ
Billy Graham
Franklin D Roosevelt
Albert Einstein
Thomas J. Watson
Bill Gates
Sister Teressa
Lyndon Johnson
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Hitler
Stalin
Lenin
Mao
Churchill
Bob Dylan
Gandhi
Nelson Mandela
John Logie Baird
Alexander Fleming
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Scott -
That's my signature in the above post, not sheer hubris!
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Scott -
Gavrilo Princip
Josef Stalin
Mao Tse Tung
Alexander Fleming
Albert Einstein
Adolf Hitler
Emperor Hirohito
Winston Churchill
Franklin Roosevelt
Ronald Regan
(Mainly politicians but the political and socioeconomic changes for which they largely were responsible have been the drivers of technological and further social change. Without them, we still would be living in a Victorian era. If Bill Gates (or any other technological wunderkind) had not been born, another would have come along in due course, but the pace of change and the environment in which it is stimulated has resulted from political developments).
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Interesting thoughts. I'd argue, however, that if Reagan wasn't here or Mao or some of the others, that some other politician might have done made the impact.
There were lots of technical geniuses, but Bill Gates led a company that changed the world, for good and bad. Not saying you're wrong, but it's an debate.
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1) Homer Simpson. - everyone's foil
"Doh"
2) The six million dollar man. - hero
"Steve Austin, astronaut. A man barely alive. Gentlemen, we can rebuild him. We have the technology. We have the capability to build the world's first bionic man. Steve Austin will be that man. Better than he was before. Better, stronger, faster. "
3) James Burke -author / teacher
". . . the moment man first picked up a stone or a branch to use as a tool, he altered irrevocably the balance between him and his environment. From this point on, the way in which the world around him changed was different. It was no longer regular or predictable. New objects appeared that were not recognizable as a mutation of something that had existed before, and as each one emerged it altered the environment not for a season but for ever. While the number of these tools remained small, their effect took a long time to spread and to cause change. But as they increased, so did their effects: the more the tools, the faster the rate of change." --James Burke, Connections
4) Darth Vader- villian
"No. *I* am your father."
5) Joseph Lister - surgeon
The discoverer of the use of antiseptics for surgery.
By using antiseptics, death from post op-surgery septis ( bacteria infections) dropped down to 15% rather than 50%
6) Adolf Hitler- despot
His regime brought about the creation of international law and the creation of laws for dealing with war crimes. One might even support that his actions created the UN.
As this except from Un's website says:
"The name "United Nations", coined by United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt, was first used in the "Declaration by United Nations" of 1 January 1942, during the Second World War, when representatives of 26 nations pledged their Governments to continue fighting together against the Axis Powers."
7) Helen Keller - survivor
“The public must learn that the blind man is neither genius nor a freak nor an idiot. He has a mind that can be educated, a hand which can be trained, ambitions which it is right for him to strive to realise, and it is the duty of the public to help him make the best of himself so that he can win light through work.”
8) T.S. Elliot - poet
"We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats' feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar"
9) Bill Gates - business man
If you want to see 'money'. Bill is the definition of the word.
I suppose that he had bought and then redeveloped SQL Server to keep track of his assets.
And last but not least
10) Laika, a dog - the first earthing in outer space
She was launched into space on the Sputnik 2 in 1957. She survived the launch and for a time in space, but after a week, the air ran out and Laika died.
The following year, as its orbit deteriorated, the craft re-entered the Earth's atmosphere and, without heat shields, burned up along with Laika's body -
10 More Influential (but not always in a positive way!)
Martin Luther King
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Albert Einstein
Adolf Hitler
Winston Churchill
Ronald Reagan
Mikhail Gorbachev
Robert Oppenheimer
Orville & Wilbur Wright (I know, technically two in one slot...)
Henry Ford
But boss, why must the urgent always take precedence over the important? -
Wright Brothers
Henry Ford
Hank Williams
Jimi Hendrix
Babe Ruth
Michael Jordan
Albert Einstein
Jim Henson
Bill Gates
Ansel Adams
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J. Robert Oppenheimer
1904 - 1967
...Robert Oppenheimer's name has become almost synonymous with the atomic bomb, and also with the dilemma facing scientists when the interests of the nation and their own conscience collide.
...On July 16, 1945, Oppenheimer witnessed the first explosion of an atomic bomb in the New Mexico desert. "We knew the world would not be the same," he said
(source ref. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aso/databank/entries/baoppe.html)
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Martin Luther King
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Gandhi
Muhammad Ali
Douglas McArthur
Jonas Salk
General Leslie Groves (Head of Manhattan Project)
John F. Kennedy
Nelson Mandela
Thomas Edison
May you live to be 100 and me 100 but minus a day so I never know that nice people like you have passed away -
While all those listed are heroes or villains to many people, I would suggest that we should be looking for those who have had a fundamental impact on a global scale; not just North America and Western Europe. With respect, I would suggest that the Manhattan project was just an engineering exercise and that the fundamental work had been done by Einstein, Bohr et al. Germany, the UK and perhaps Japan were doing similar work at the same time and somebody would have got there eventually.
I also would suggest that many of the sportsmen and human rights activists have only influenced the more developed regions with little impact on the lives of the majority of the world's population.
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Here's my list. I have to say that #7 is new from when I first did this about 8 years ago. These aren't in any particular order.
- Hitler - World War II hit almost every corner of the glove.
- Stalin - Under Stalin, much of the second half of the 20th century was lived under fear of nuclear war.
- Elvis - The Beatles may be close here, but Elvis changed the world. People still journey to his home in Memphis from all over the world.
- Gandhi - An amazing human being. Mother Theresa is right here with him, but I chose Gandhi because I'd heard of him more.
- Muhammed Ali - I debated with Pele here, but I heard that in the 70s, after God, he was the most recognized name on the planet.
- Martin Luther King, Jr. - I'm not sure to what extent he impacted the rest of the world, but his fight for civil rights has impacted generations of Americans and the ripples following, I believe, are responsible for much of the human rights work around the globe today.
- Saddam Hussein - I'm not sure who I had here before, but his reign impacted the last 20 years of the century, including bringing a war to the globe when I least expected it.
- Einstein - Who else would you pick?
- Bill Gates - Computers, while really only being in popular consumption for 15-18 years, have changed the world tremendously. As the face of Microsoft, Bill Gates really brought them to the masses cheaply and open enough to grow at a tremendous pace.
- Franklin Delanor Roosevelt - The 4 term US President who helped the US recover from the Depression and in doing so set the stage for US domination of the world. He also ended WWII and Hitler.
I started with a list of 12 that popped into my head and I have to admit I searched for a few names on the Internet as well to see who Time picked. It's easy to forget some categories. And I tried to weed out some US influence with mine, though I think I haven't been tremendously successful.
This was hard for me and I'm not sure it's easy to do. I tried to choose people that I thought had really changed the world, made an impact that affected a tremendous number of people's lives. I tried to choose from different areas as well as the arts and sports affect people as much as political leaders sometimes.
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I never get to post anymore, but this was so interesting ... so here's my list. I've also tried (not entirely successfully, since I've lived in the US my whole life) to not have a list of only Western figures. Further, I've attempted to not let my list be dominated by people that lived in my own lifetime. So maybe it's best to call this the most influential people in my experience of the 20th Century. Anyway, here's my list:
* Jesus - I would enjoy, but am not trying to start, a debate about whether Jesus "lived" in the 20th Century; I am stating that His influence was still very dramatic.
* Hitler - On almost everyone's list.
* Mao Tse Tung - I don't know what the preferred spelling is, but he is here to represent the huge force that China was during the 20th Century. It is still a huge force, of course, but in a fundamentally different way.
* F.D. Roosevelt - Also on a lot of people's lists.
* Churchill - Ditto.
* Nelson Mandela - I was less sure about this one, but it seems to me that someone should be on this list to represent the end of Apartheid in S. Africa. I have a friend who grew up there and she said that in spite of the changes that are still needed, the end of Apartheid essentially changed (or at least challenged) the worldview of a lot of people.
* M. Ghandi - Also on a lot of lists
* Y. Arafat - I am not sure if he's THE person to pick regarding Middle East politics, but it seems that somebody from that arena should make the list.
* M. Gorbachev / R. Reagan - A twin entry ... for the changes that occurred while they were in office.
* Einstein - Still the source of standard theories that science is aiming to prove / disprove / refine / replace.
Runners-up:
* Mother Teresa / Billy Graham - Impacted lots of individual lives in the name of Christ, though in very different ways. Luis Palau probably belongs on the list if Billy Graham is there, by the way.
* Several other Soviet / American / Chinese / Middle East / African political figures (Kennedy, Brezhnev, Hussein, Truman(?), Kissinger(?), Khadafi, Idi Amin, Stalin, etc.)
* Bill Gates - definitely a standout in the tech. and business field
Maybe not as well-thought-out a list as others have posted, but it was certainly interesting to think about. Thanks!
-Chris
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Sadly almost all of these are Americans. I'm going to go back and read more WORLD history.
Benjamin Franklin
Albert Einstein
Adolf Hitler
Richard Nixon
Carl Bernstein
John F. Kennedy
Bill Gates
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Marilyn Monroe
Edith Keeler
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