| Description | Name |
| Spanish conquistador who conquered the Aztecs | Hernando Cortes |
| Spanish conquistador who conquered the Incas | Francisco Pizarro |
| Spanish king and queen who finanaced Columbus' voyage | Ferdinand & Isabella |
| Patron of exploration; from Portugal | Prince Henry the Navigator |
| Portuguese explorer; first to find a water route to India | Vasco da Gama |
| His crew was the first to circumnavigate the globe | Ferdinand Magellan |
| French explorer who claimed much of modern eastern Canada | Jacques Cartier |
| English explorer; ship was the Golden Hind; second to circumnavigate the globe | Francis Drake |
| Tried to find a westward route to Asia; instead he discovered the New World | Christopher Columbus |
| Leader of the Aztecs | Montezuma |
| Patron family of the renaissance | Medici |
| Writer of Praise of Folly; humanist | Erasmus |
| Writer of Don Quixotre | Miquel de Cervantes |
| Renaissance English playwriter | Shakespeare |
| developed the printing press | Gutenberg |
| painter of the Sistine Chapel; sculpted David and the Pieta | Michelangelo |
| painted the Last Supper and Mona Lisa; ideal Renaissance man | Leonardo da Vinci |
| Romantic painter; used landscapes; painted Liberty Leading the People | Eugene Delacroix |
| Protestant reformer; believed in predestination | John Calvin |
| First protestant reformer; 95 theses | Martin Luther |
| Protestant reformer; became leader of Anglican Church of England with the Act of Supremacy; split with the Catholic Church because he was refused a divorce | Henry VIII |
| Catholic group who tried to convert people to Catholicism | Jesuits |
| founder of Judaism | Abraham |
| he led the Jews out of Egypt; 10 Commandments | Moses |
| founder of Buddhism | Siddhartha Gautama |
| founder of Islam | Muhammad |
| founder of Christianity; he is called the Messiah | Jesus |
| Queen who continued strengthening the Anglican Church; daughter of Henry VIII | Elizabeth I |
| head of the Catholic Church | Pope |
| came to power during the Glorious Revolution; had to accept Parliament's Bill of Rights which limited the power of the monarch(s) and increased the power of Parliament | William and Mary |
| English king during the Restoration period | Charles II |
| killed during the English Civil War | Charles I |
| fled during the Glorious Revolution | James II |
| changed the 30 years war from a religious to a political one | Cardinal Richelieu |
| leader of the Reign of Terror | Robespierre |
| French king who was guillotined along with his wife Marie Antoinette | Louis XVI |
| absolute monarch of Prussia; militarism | Frederick the Great |
| absolute monarch of Russia; westernization | Peter the Great |
| Absolute monarch of France; "I am the state"; Palace of Versailles | Louis XIV |
| Leader of the Congress of Vienna; conservative | Prince Klemens von Metternich |
| He ended the French Revolution with his coup de etat; wanted to conquer all of Europe; defeated at Waterloo | Napoleon |
| He united southern Italy; leader of the Red Shirts | Guiseppe Garibaldi |
| He united northern Italy; great politican | Camillo Cavour |
| He is responsible for uniting Prussia to become Germany; believed in realpolitik | Otto von Bismarck |
| Led a slave revolt in Haiti | Toussaint L'Ouverture |
| Led independence movement in much of South America | Simon Bolivar |
| Developed the heliocentric theory | Copernicus |
| Founded the scientific method | Francis Bacon |
| Discovered the laws of planetary motion; said the planets revolved around the sun in ellipses not perfect circles; the closer the planet got to the sun the faster it orbited around | Johannes Kepler |
| He supported the heliocentric theory; used the telescope to discover Saturn's rings; and 4 of the moons around Jupiter; brought before the Inquisition for heresy | Galileo |
| He discovered the laws of motion; gravity; developed calculus | Isaac Newton |
| He is responsible for discovering the circulation of the blood in the human body | William Harvey |
| Enlightenment philosopher who believed in separation of church and state; wrote Candide | Voltaire |
| Enlightenment philosopher; natural rights of life, liberty, and property which was later used by Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence | John Locke |
| Enlightenment philosopher who wrote about three equal branches of government (judicial, legislative, and executive). | Montesquieu |
| Enlightenment philosopher who wrote Leviathan; said people were naturally selfish and brutal and needed an absolute monarch to govern | Thomas Hobbes |
| Enlightenment philosopher who wrote Social Contract; said people had the power to rule (popular sovereignty) | Rousseau |
| leader of the Roundheads during the English Civil War | Oliver Cromwell |
| ruling family of the southern part of the Holy Roman Empire; Catholic; involved in the Thirty Years War | Hapsburg |
| discovered a cheaper way for making steel | Henry Bessemer |
| inventor of the cotton gin | Eli Whitney |
| developed the first steam engine | James Watt |
| discovered germs; bacteria | Louis Pasteur |
| discovered vaccination for small pox | Edward Jenner |
| wrote "Wealth of Nations"; founder of capitalism | Adam Smith |
| wrote the "Communist Manifesto" and "Das Kapital"; founder of communism | Karl Marx |
| US Navy Admiral who forced Japan to open trade | Commodore Matthew Perry |
| He gained India's independence with passive resistance | Gandhi |
| leader of South Africa; help to end apartheid | Nelson Mandela |
| leader of Kenya in Africa | Jumo Kenyatta |
| his death started World War I; leader of Austria-Hungary | Archduke Franz Ferdinand |
| US President during WWI; his peace plan was the 14 points, which called for the League of Nations | Woodrow Wilson |
| Russian czar who was killed along with his family in the Russian Revolution of 1917 | Nicholas II |
| leader of the Bolsheviks; created the first communist state | Vladimir Lenin |
| fascist dictator of Germany; leader of the Nazi Party; wrote "Mein Kampf". He was able to come to power because of the Great Depression and the failure of the Treaty of Versailles | Adolf Hitler |
| fascist dictator of Italy during WWII | Benito Mussolini |
| Emperor of Japan during WWII | Hirihito |
| general of Japan during WWII; he had more power than the emperor | Tojo |
| totalitarian leader of Russia/Soviet Union during WWII; 5 Year Plan; collectivization; Great Purge | Joseph Stalin |
| US General of Europe during WWII; later becomes President | Dwight D. Eisenhower |
| US General of the Pacific during WWII; responsible for rebuilding Japan after WWII | Douglas MacArthur |
| His plan gave billions to rebuild Western Europe after World War II | George Marshall |
| US President at the end of WWII; he decided to drop the atomic bomb on Japan; his doctrine said the US would stop the spread of communism | Harry S. Truman |
| US President during the Great Depression and most of WWII | Franklin D. Roosevelt |
| Prime minister of Great Britain/England during World War II; "iron curtain" speech during the Cold War | Winston Churchill |
| Leader of Germany during World War I | Kaiser Wilheim |
| communist leader of Cuba; allowed Soviet Union to put nuclear weapons in Cuba | Fidel Castro |
| Soviet leader at the end of the Cold War | Mikhail Gorbachev |
| US President contributed with ending the Cold War; built up the US military | Ronald Reagan |
| leader of the Communists during the Chinese Revolution | Mao Zedong or Tse-tung |
| Leader of the Nationalists during the Chinese Revolution; went to Taiwan after he was defeated | Chinag Kai Shek |
| Communist leader of Vietnam | Ho Chi Minh |
| responsible for the genocide in Cambodia | Pol Pot |
