A bit of (noding) history: Back when people were actually interested in this, I started "The Biography of the millennium reformation node string" (this was still on E1). That has now become redundant, so I'm gathering it together to repost it here. TheLady, Samhunt, and Gamaliel have helped node many of the names in the original string, but there's still work to do! As long as that list is up there at the top of this node, we need the addendum down here at the bottom.
No matter what the dufuses over at A&E might imagine, The Beatles were absolutely not one of the most influential persons of the last thousand years. They were not even four of the most influential persons of the last thousand years. Nor was Elvis. We deserve a better list.
Here's some I want to get rid of... This is not the whole list. I haven't added anyone to this list unless I knew something about them.
Steven Spielburg
James Joyce
Ronald Reagan
Charles Darwin (Alfred Russel Wallace also came up with natural selection, as did Patrick Matthew)
Dante Alighieri
William Shakespeare
Thomas Jefferson
Michelangelo
St. Thomas Aquinas
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Johan Sebastian Bach
Princess Diana took me completely by surprise. Did she do something that I don't know about?
And here are a few people to add.
Stanislav Petrov
Alfred Nobel
Blaise Pascal
James Clerk Maxwell
John Harrison (The chronometer, cased ball bearings, and the bi-metalic strip.)
Leonardo Fibonacci (Introduced Indo-Arabic numerals to Europe)
Acamapichtli
Hernando Cortes
Sun Yat-sen
Henri Dunant
Viktor Zhdanov
Norman Borlaug
Grace Hopper
And, of course,
Nikola Tesla.