Handsome, heroic and horrible — famous men in history

The men who shaped empires, made scientific breakthroughs, and sometimes brought civilisations to their knees.

Julius Caesar (100–44 BC)

Military genius, political revolutionary, orator, writer. Caesar transformed the Roman Republic and his calendar reform gave us the year we still use today.

Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519)

Painter, sculptor, architect, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist. His notebooks show a mind that refused to be contained by any single discipline.

Napoleon Bonaparte (1769–1821)

The Corsican who became Emperor of France. Napoleon gave France its modern legal system, established the Bank of France and rebuilt Paris.

Nikola Tesla (1856–1943)

Perhaps the greatest inventor who never received the credit he deserved. Tesla's alternating current system became the standard for electricity distribution worldwide.

Winston Churchill (1874–1965)

Churchill's wartime leadership — his defiance, his oratory, his refusal to contemplate defeat — is genuinely difficult to separate from the Allied victory in World War Two.

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