Posted on 11/22/2006 7:51:12 AM PST by 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
And your point is?
Excellent point!
Ditto that.
He invented rock guitar. Major oversight.
Without a doubt, Goldwater was the most influential politician of the 1960s, and one of the most influential of the 20th Century. While he lost in a landslide, his influence some 40 years later is much greater than that of the one who beat him in 1964. What other "loser" of a presidential election can make that claim.
How was he more influential than any other liberal on the SC over the last couple hundred years?
As a lawyer, he argued Brown vs. Board Of Education before the SC.
Was the elder Bennett really a more "influential American" than Pulitzer or Hearst who came later or his own contemporaries Horace Greeley of the Tribune and Henry Raymond of the Times?
Probably since Bennett came before Pulitzer and Hearst he was more influential in history than they were, but in mid-19th century America Greeley was far more important than the shady Bennett was.
51 and 81 even more - Margaret Sanger and Margaret Mead
Most certainly not with me- I'm tone deaf [glory be] and thus immune to the audible baboonery.
Or you have an agenda.
I think the reasoning may be that there are several founders -- Washington, Jefferson, Adams, Hamilton -- and votes split between them, while Lincoln is clearly the most important figure in 19th century America.
For whatever it's worth, I would put Washington above Lincoln. The founding and the Constitution were more important than what came after, but it's at least arguable that the great change in our history came in the 19th, rather than the 18th century.
It would be interesting to make a simulation and wipe off the contribution of each person on the list to the American way of life.
Wipe off Tesla's contribution and simulation would have to continue with pencil and paper. During daylight.
My point is that the physical appearance of developed areas of the US would be very different without Olmstead. That is influence.
More streets are named after MLK than Edison. But I avoid all the MLK streets because they tend to be in high crime areas.
Same reason the Wright Brothers do, apparently.
And what, no Chuck Noll?
SD
Speaking of street names, Bolling Air Force Base in Washingtom DC is on a street named Malcolm X Blvd. Can you believe this (I read the autobiography of Malcolm X and he was no saint). I worked at Bolling for a while.
> Influence doesn't necessarily mean positive effects...we're still dealing with impacts of LBJ's policies and actions. <
I'd never say that LBJ lacked influence. But I do maintain that Samuel F. B. Morse has had an influence much greater than that of ole Lyndon.
[Who ever heard of the "Johnson" code?]
> If it weren't for Polk, the entire Southwest would be equivalent to a third-world nation <
Maybe. But if Andrew Jackson hadn't won the Battle of New Orleans, the whole Mississippi River Basin plus the Southwest might now be a part of Canada!
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