The Atlantic Unveils 100 Most Influential Americans List

Yahoo ^ | 11/22/06

[Borges]

1 Abraham Lincoln 2 George Washington 3 Thomas Jefferson 4 Franklin D. Roosevelt 5 Alexander Hamilton 6 Benjamin Franklin 7 John Marshall 8 Martin Luther King Jr. 9 Thomas Edison 10 Woodrow Wilson 11 John D. Rockefeller 12 Ulysses Grant 13 James Madison 14 Henry Ford 15 Theodore Roosevelt 16 Mark Twain 17 Ronald Reagan 18 Andrew Jackson 19 Thomas Paine 20 Andrew Carnegie 21 Harry Truman 22 Walt Whitman 23 Wright Brothers 24 Alexander Graham Bell 25 John Adams 26 Walt Disney 27 Eli Whitney 28 Dwight D. Eisenhower 29 Earl Warren 30 Elizabeth Cady Stanton 31 Henry Clay 32 Albert Einstein 33 Ralph Waldo Emerson 34 Jonas Salk 35 Jackie Robinson 36 William Jennings Bryan 37 J.P. Morgan 38 Susan B. Anthony 39 Rachel Carson 40 John Dewey 41 Harriet Beecher Stowe 42 Eleanor Roosevelt 43 W.E.B. DuBois 44 Lyndon Baines Johnson 45 Samuel F.B. Morse 46 William Lloyd Garrison 47 Frederick Douglass 48 Robert Oppenheimer 49 Frederick Law Olmsted 50 James K. Polk 51 Margaret Sanger 52 Joseph Smith 53 Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. 54 Bill Gates 55 John Quincy Adams 56 Horace Mann 57 Robert E. Lee 58 John C. Calhoun 59 Louis Sullivan 60 William Faulkner 61 Samuel Gompers 62 William James 63 George Marshall 64 Jane Addams 65 Henry David Thoreau 66 Elvis Presley 67 P.T. Barnum 68 James D. Watson 69 James Gordon Bennett 70 Lewis and Clark 71 Noah Webster 72 Sam Walton 73 Cyrus McCormick 74 Brigham Young 75 George Herman "Babe" Ruth 76 Frank Lloyd Wright 77 Betty Friedan 78 John Brown 79 Louis Armstrong 80 William Randolph Hearst 81 Margaret Mead 82 George Gallup 83 James Fenimore Cooper 84 Thurgood Marshall 85 Ernest Hemingway 86 Mary Baker Eddy 87 Benjamin Spock 88 Enrico Fermi 89 Walter Lippmann 90 Jonathan Edwards 91 Lyman Beecher 92 John Steinbeck 93 Nat Turner 94 George Eastman 95 Sam Goldwyn 96 Ralph Nader 97 Stephen Foster 98 Booker T. Washington 99 Richard Nixon 100 Herman Melville

[Geostorm]

I think that Charles Steinmetz invented alternating current for distribution purposes.

[meandog]

E.H. Armstrong invented the regeneration circuit, super-heterodyne receivers and FM radio. We would not have modern broadcast radio and television without his work.

...awww-w-w, come on, we know Howard Armstrong stole all his ingenuity from Lee DeForest--the real founder of radio receivers!

[HawaiianGecko]

67 P.T. Barnum??

I have to agree with you on Barnum.  Of course if 51% of Americans by into his position, then they are one of those suckers born every minute which would make him very astute and maybe influential... Self full-filling prophecy, heh?

[Walkingfeather]

hmmmmm not buying it.

[70times7]

not nearly as disturbing as 40 and 51. The saddest thing is that they should both be higher on the list.

[Christopher Lincoln]

I count six names on the list who were not native-born Americans: Hamilton, Paine, Carnegie, Bell, Einstein, and Fermi. Can anybody spot others?

[Jack Wilson]

How convenient to stop at 100.
101: Jack Wilson

[Alberta's Child]

Not a bad list, when you consider that every single position on this list can be disputed one way or another.

Lewis & Clark certainly don't belong on this list, though . . . their expedition may have made for some interesting discussion, but in retrospect is was one of the more inconsequential stories in American history.

[luckystarmom]

How about adding Clara Barton over the feminists?

[Always Right]

Are there any women that have done things that aren't liberal?

No. Just like blacks, women can not be conservative. Women and blacks who are not conservative, are not women nor are they black.

[Alberta's Child]

The absence of all things "Kennedy" from this list tells me that they did a pretty good job in focusing on people with real influence as opposed to abject mediocrities whose reputation is inflated by media exposure.

[in the Arena]

Samuel Colt ?

[Revolting cat!]

101. Michael Richards.

[Alberta's Child]

Along those lines, we may as well include Thaddeus Kosciuszko -- the Polish immigrant who was hired by George Washington to serve as the head of what would later be known as the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Without him, the U.S. probably would have lost the American Revolution.

[Red Badger]

Sitting Bull!..........

[Red Badger]

Lewis and Clark could just as well have been Lewis and Martin........Jefferson had to send somebody.............

[LWalk18]

I count six names on the list who were not native-born Americans: Hamilton, Paine, Carnegie, Bell, Einstein, and Fermi. Can anybody spot others?

95. Sam Goldwyn (Poland)

[Revolting cat!]

I once didn't get the job after I told the interviewer that I don't make up lists, in response to a question to list something or other, I don't remember exactly what.

[Alberta's Child]

This guy may be known as an "athlete," but his influence goes far beyond what he did in the spotlight.

Any list of the "100 Most Influential Americans" that doesn't include NASCAR legend Junior Johnson is seriously deficient. It would seem to me that discovering -- and perfecting -- the art of "drafting" in a race car ranks up there with the invention of the wheel by cave men and the discovery of electricity by Thomas Edison in terms of their influence on America today. LOL.

[Alberta's Child]

Right. And remember this, too . . .

1. They "explored" an area that had already been traveled extensively by Europeans.

2. They didn't leave much of a permanent record of their travels, and what they did leave really didn't have too many lasting impacts.