Paul Tibbets was a brigadier general in the US Air Force and is best known for piloting the aircraft to drop the first atomic bomb in the history of warfare [6 August 1945]

Boris Yeltsin was the first freely elected President of Russia

Charles de Gaulle rose from French soldier in World War I to exiled leader and, eventually, president of the Fifth Republic [April 1960]

Alexander Graham Bell — Father of the Telephone

Amy Johnson pioneering English aviator. The first aviatrix, to fly solo 11 000 miles (18 000 km) from England to Australia [5 – 24 May 1930]

Ernest Hemingway is seen as one of the great American 20th century novelists, and is known for works like A Farewell to Arms and The Old Man and the Sea. In 1954, Hemingway won the Nobel Prize

Giuseppe Farina — Racer for Alfa Romeo and Ferrari. The very first Formula-1 Worldchampion

Today is Star Wars creator George Lucas’ birthday

Kamikaze pilot Kasui Nuki-ji (center) with fellow pilots. Yet another kamikaze who actually survived the war

Be here. Be present. Wherever you are, be there — Willie Nelson

Anton Drexler was German political leader of the 1920s, known for being Adolf Hitler’s mentor during his early days in politics

Noble Prize winner Alexander Fleming was a great Scottish biologist and pharmacologist who made way for antibiotic medicines with his discovery of penicillin from the mould "Penicillium notatum"

Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich of Russia, 1890s

Yuri Gagarin and Fidel Castro in Havana, 1961

Grigory Rasputin was the infamous "holy man" whose ability to heal the Tsar and Tsarina's son Alexis led to his being adopted as a supreme mystic at court, 1900

Henry Ford with his first car in 1896. After more than two years of experimentation, Ford, at the age of 32, had completed his first experimental automobile

Marina Raskova, a record-breaking aviatrix, organized the 588th night bomber squadron – composed entirely of women, summer of 1941

Mae Jemison Became first black woman to fly in to Space in 1992

Albert Ball, decorated British flying ace during World War I. Died at the age of 20 while pursuing the brother of the infamous Red Baron through a cloudbank

Ron and Nancy Reagan on the campaign trail, 1976