Greatest [insert your nationality] Person

[Locutus]

Originally posted by alva
I saw this on the tele a couple of weeks and must say that it did make me chuckle a little.
I mean; Fortuyn????? Hey, you no longer get to leugh at the English for including Dianna.

I couldn't agree more, the choice for Fortuyn hurts the credibility of the rest of the list (which aside from Fortuyn is better than I had expected). If I were to list all important Dutch people in history, I would rate Patty Brard higher than Fortuyn

Then again, every official list I've seen so far has at least one silly name on it: Fortuyn for us, Diana for the English, some hockey commentator for Canada...

I do hope they never do this show here though.
Gonna be pretty hard anyway, no idea where they would get 10 people anyway.

I can only agree there. I mean, who would win it, Manneke Pis?

But I have bad news for you: I heard the VRT will host a Greatest Belgian Person show on Canvas over the courses of next year. I *would* be seriously interested though to learn what the Belgian top 10 will be like (and how the Flemish/Walloon division will be )

Ann Frank ???
Never understud what makes her so special.
Could be my aversion to subjects being force-fed at school though.

I don't really like that choice either, but mostly because she's a symbol for something, not actually someone who made great contributions. I mean, her diary was fascinating to read and everything, but it doesn't compare to the works or Grotius, or the Constitution...

IIRC Rembrandts parents were Flemish??or was it his grandparents?

His parents most certainly weren't, and I've never heard of his grandparents being Flemish either. But even if they were, you can't blame Rembrandt, nobody's perfect

Clearly the winner should be Cruijf; a great footballer only topped by his poetry, in itself inferior to his unique philosophy.

He does have a rather unique perspective on things

[DaShi]

Originally posted by Lazarus and the Gimp
What about me?

Do you really want to be associated with evil, evil Finland?

[BeBMan]

German tv station ZDF did this a while ago, results:

1. Konrad Adenauer (first chancellor after WWII)
2. Martin Luther
3. Karl Marx
4. Hans and Sophie Scholl (opposed Nazi rule, killed by the Nazis)
5. Willy Brandt
6. Johann Sebastian Bach
7. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
8. Johannes Gutenberg
9. Otto von Bismarck
10. Albert Einstein

My personal favourites from those are Bach, Gutenberg and Brandt (in no particular order).

[DaShi]

Originally posted by BeBro
German tv station ZDF did this a while ago, results:

1. Konrad Adenauer (first chancellor after WWII)
2. Martin Luther
3. Karl Marx
4. Hans und Sophie Scholl (opposed Nazi rule, killed by the Nazis)
5. Willy Brandt
6. Johann Sebastian Bach
7. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
8. Johannes Gutenberg
9. Otto von Bismarck
10. Albert Einstein

My personal favourites from those are Bach, Gutenberg and Brandt (in no particular order).

All these guys are evil:

Konrad Adenauer: Anyone whose name starts with a K is evil.
Martin Luther: defied God!!!!
Karl Marx: K again. And communism.
Hans und Sophie Scholl: und? yeah und-erworld.
Willy Brandt: wasn't he a country western singer
Johann Sebastian Bach: ate babies. Prove he didn't!
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: He was the bad guy in Schindler's List, right?
Johannes Gutenberg: little known fact: first press used the blood of virgins
Otto von Bismarck: singlehandly responsible for WWI
Albert Einstein: started this whole WMD mess

[Locutus]

No one who speaks German could be an evil man...

[BeBMan]

Originally posted by DaShi


All these guys are evil:

Konrad Adenauer: Anyone whose name starts with a K is evil.
Martin Luther: defied God!!!!
Karl Marx: K again. And communism.
Hans und Sophie Scholl: und? yeah und-erworld.
Willy Brandt: wasn't he a country western singer
Johann Sebastian Bach: ate babies. Prove he didn't!
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: He was the bad guy in Schindler's List, right?
Johannes Gutenberg: little known fact: first press used the blood of virgins
Otto von Bismarck: singlehandly responsible for WWI
Albert Einstein: started this whole WMD mess

And a special to this:

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: He was the bad guy in Schindler's List, right?

[Flandrien]

Originally posted by Locutus
I can only agree there. I mean, who would win it, Manneke Pis?

I once made a popularity poll here about this here on Poly, and it was won by a great margin by Jan-Cleaude Van Damme.

[alva]

I once made a popularity poll here about this here on Poly, and it was won by a great margin by Jan-Cleaude Van Damme.

hmm, let's see:

1. Brel. ( Yep, he was flemish)
2. Merkx

Nope, that's it.

[Hueij]

Belgians:

Brueghel and Adolphe Sax perhaps?

[Locutus]

Rubens
Karel V -- it's pushing the limit of what qualifies as Belgian, but how else are you gonna find 10?
Merckx
Magritte
That guy from the Guldensporenslag...
Urbanus

That's about as many as I can think of...

Originally posted by Flandrien
I once made a popularity poll here about this here on Poly, and it was won by a great margin by Jan-Cleaude Van Damme.

Well, he is probably the greatest, but is he the Greatest?

[Buck Birdseed]

Who invented Trappist ale? He's gotta go up there.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by BeBro
German tv station ZDF did this a while ago, results:

1. Konrad Adenauer (first chancellor after WWII)
2. Martin Luther
3. Karl Marx
4. Hans and Sophie Scholl (opposed Nazi rule, killed by the Nazis)
5. Willy Brandt
6. Johann Sebastian Bach
7. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
8. Johannes Gutenberg
9. Otto von Bismarck
10. Albert Einstein

My personal favourites from those are Bach, Gutenberg and Brandt (in no particular order).

No Hitler?

[Hot Mustard]

Originally posted by Lazarus and the Gimp

It's a real sign of desperation to see Alexander Graham Bell cropping up on a list of "Great Canadians".

As someone pointed out already, it is because the masses who voted don't know any better. The top 50 included many unworthy popular figures. There were also a few non-Canadian people from the War of 1812.

Number 39 (?) is a current radio personality from Winnipeg who got people to vote for him. Just proves how silly this really is, and how few well informed people care about this kind of program.

[Zulu Elephant]

Great Britains in no particular order:

Winston Churchill
John Stuart Mill
John Locke
William Gladstone
Charles Dickens
Charles Darwin
John Maynard Keynes

[Kuciwalker]

Zulu: no Shakespeare? No Chaucer? No Newton?