Greatest [insert your nationality] Person

[gunkulator]

Re: Greatest [insert your nationality] Person

Originally posted by Locutus

This is the top 10 Greatest Dutchmen (yes, they're all men unfortunately) that I came up with myself:

What about the boy who stuck his finger in the dike?

[Drake Tungsten]

Originally posted by Q Cubed
korea has yi sun-shin and daewang sejong, among others...

Oh yeah? Well Japan has Hideyoshi and Kukai...

[Laertes]

Huygens and Lorentz must be up there in the "greatest dutchman" stakes. And what about the famous flying dutchman.

[Fake Boris]

Originally posted by nostromo
Locutus, you forgot Spinoza...

Once, I met a japanese who told me that his area of expertise was Canadian studies. I laughed.

Spinoza was born in Portugal, though.

[Locutus]

Re: Re: Greatest [insert your nationality] Person

Huygens and Lorentz must be up there in the "greatest dutchman" stakes.

Well, there's a lot of competition for that status, but they should certainly be in the top 30

Originally posted by gunkulator
What about the boy who stuck his finger in the dike?

That's actually a fictious novel character created by an American author (Mary Elizabeth Mapes Dodge). If Dutch people are familiar with the story at all, it's from American media (see here for an interesting explanation).

Originally posted by Oncle Boris
Spinoza was born in Portugal, though.

A lot of people seem to think that but I looked it up and he was actually born in Amsterdam. His parents were from Portugal.

[Locutus]

Originally posted by Flandrien
Is it really true that Pim Fortuyn got himself a Bush victory ?

( Winning the election while Willem Van Oranje still got more votes. )

Yep, and there's a big riot about it too

The network that organised the whole thing really screwed up bigtime and are now the laughing stock of the nation (but unfortunately our nation is now also the laughing stock of the civilised world )

[Hueij]

I want to trade my passport for one of another country. ANY country. I'm ashamed to be Dutch. First the torching of mosks and Islamic schools and now this.

[Agathon]

This sort of thing is a bit unfair. What about the Jews? Most famous Jewish people would be counted as Germans, Americans, etc.

(I moaned about this a while ago in the Civ III forum).

As for the rest...

New Zealand: Sir Edmund Hillary, mountaineer. He would be an almost unanimous pick, not least because he's a really good guy.

Australia: Jacko.

Canada: a toss up between Sir John A MacDonald, Pierre Trudeau and Tommy Douglas.

USA: Thomas Jefferson. Why is anyone saying anything different?

England: probably Churchill.

Scotland: Smith or Hume.

Ireland: James Joyce, Oscar Wilde, Jonathan Swift.

Finland: it has to be Sibelius, his music still makes my hair stand on end (and I hate Finlandia).

Germany: Ludwig van Beethoven, the most influential composer in history.

[Kontiki]

Originally posted by axi
What? Top 10 Greeks?

Can't we make it the top 1000 Greeks?

Homer
Pythagoras
Zenon
Heracletus
Herodote
Thucydides
Pericles
Socrates
Plato
Aristoteles
Sophocles
Euripides
Aristophanes
Lysias
Hippocrates
Xenophon
Demosthenes
Alexander the Great
Diogenes
Democritus
Epicure
Archimedes
Plutarch
....
....
oops! Too many already.

Of course, like the rest of Greek culture, no one worth mentioning for the last 2500 years.

[Agathon]

Of course, like the rest of Greek culture, no one worth mentioning for the last 2500 years.

Who cares when you would probably have 4 of the top three.

Plato, Aristotle and Homer are the core of the western literary, political and scientific tradition. No one else even compares.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Locutus


In terms of painters and the like, I have to agree. In fact, the only American painter I can think of is Andy Warhol, but I'm not sure if he'd actually rate as one of the greatest Americans ever.

There are lots of great writers though: Hemingway, Cummings, Whitman, Poe, Miller, Asimov, etc, etc.

And if you include popular musicians, actors and other pop artists then the list is endless. Many of them are amongst the most famous people who ever lived, world wide. But of course, it's very much an open question if they deserve to be in a top 10 of Greatest Americans...

American painters - off the top of my head
Jackson Pollack.
Jasper Johns.
Mark Rothko.
Georgia O'Keefe.
Barnett Newman (or was he born in Czecho?)
Roy Lichtenstein
Ben Shahn.
Robert Indiana.

IOW, mainly New York School Abstract Expressionists circa 1945-1960, or "pop" or "op" artists, 1955-1975.

Then there are some neo-expressionists, but i cant name any off the top of my head.

Oh, and Joseph Cornell, but he did constructions, not paintings. And if were gonna go the construction/sculpture direction, isnt Alexander Calder American?

For 19th century, theres Mary Cassatt, Frederick Remington, etc.

Writers youve only begun to scratch the surface.

Classical composers - several, but Aaron Copeland, Leonard Bernstein, stand out, off the top of my head.

[Locutus]

Originally posted by Agathon
Plato, Aristotle and Homer are the core of the western literary, political and scientific tradition. No one else even compares.

That's just one opinion. IMO people like Einstein, Da Vinci, Galilei, Newton, Erasmus, Voltaire, Descartes, Martin Luther, Marx, Adam Smith, Shakespeare, Twain, Dickens, Orwell, etc are right up there too. I don't know in what order I'd place them but it's by no means a given that the great Greeks would come out on top.

[alva]

Originally posted by Locutus


Yep, and there's a big riot about it too

The network that organised the whole thing really screwed up bigtime and are now the laughing stock of the nation (but unfortunately our nation is now also the laughing stock of the civilised world )

You'll get your own back when we do this thing next year....I can't wait!!

Wanne give any odds on it being Boudewijn ( previous king)?

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Agathon
This sort of thing is a bit unfair. What about the Jews? Most famous Jewish people would be counted as Germans, Americans, etc.
.

If they made their contributions in a "non-Jewish" language AND their contribution was largely part of the culture they lived in, id go with that. Thus Einstein, Mahler, Freud, Copeland, Pollack, etc should go as Germans, Austrians, Americans, etc. Someone whos work is essentially "Jewish" should be counted as such - thus Rosenzwieg, Buber, Scholem, even though they wrote in German, and in the case of the former have influenced non-Jewish thinkers. Similarly Maimonides should also be considered "Jewish" as the Guide, while part of the cultural discourse of the arab world of his day, was written in Judeo-Arabic, and applied it aristotelean doctrines to Jewish texts (not to mention his other more narrowly Jewish works)

In some cases this becomes difficult - should Leonard Bernstein go as "jewish" because his of "kaddish"? I dont think so, he belongs in American music. Or Chagall?

[BlackCat]

Famous Danes :

Niels Bohr Atomic theory
H.C. Andersen Don't have to explain
Ole Rømer Light speed
H.C. Ørsted Electromagnetism
Søren Kierkegaard Philosphy
Tycho Brahe Astronomy
Vitus Bering Explorer (Bering strait etc)
The Maersk family Ever seen a blue flag with a white star ?
Bjørn Lomborg Had the gut to stand up against PC


And not to forget :

Lars Ulrich Drummer in Metallica
Anja Andersen Godess of handball

Oups, one more than the allowed qoute.