Phineas Taylor Barnum, or PT Barnum, was a centerpiece in nineteenth-century American showmanship and entrepreneurship. At 60 years of age, he partnered with James Bailey to tour the country as The Bailey and Barnum traveling circus of performers, acts and animals.

Calamity Jane was known as a frontierswoman, sharpshooter and lurid storyteller, but also a raging alcoholic and intermittent prostitute. Jane was a storyteller in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show and appeared in the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York.

Wampanoag chief Metacom, or King Philip—fed up with continued colonial expansion onto Indian land—forcefully defended his people’s territory in what became known as King Philip’s War, leading to attacks on English colonies throughout Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut and Maine.

Joseph Stalin was a youthful advocate of Marxism during the National Bolshevik Party’s ascendance to power and became dictator of the Soviet Union in 1929. Stalin’s reign of terror cost the lives of an estimated 20 million Russians.

Annie Oakley was born in 1860 and soon became an expert marksman while hunting in the Darke County, Ohio region. After besting professional sharpshooter Frank Butler, the pair of gunslingers would get married and travel the world as competitive sharpshooters.

Albert Einstein, educated in Physics and Math, had his “marvelous year” of theoretical productivity in 1905, catapulting him into the spotlight of intellectual fame and professorship until his death in 1955.

Leonardo da Vinci was a celebrated painter and polymath during the Italian Renaissance. He conceptualized many useful—and some fanciful—inventions and created masterworks like The Last Supper, Mona Lisa and the Vitruvian Man.