I have been
writing about Very Important People (VIPs) for nearly five years. Since I wrote two or more posts about some of
the people, I estimate that I have written about two hundred different VIPs. I reached a point where I am having a
difficult time coming up with still another VIP.
I decided to ask Google for some
new names and discovered a site about the top one hundred influential leadersin American history. While going through the names, I was surprised
to see Abraham Lincoln listed as #1 and George Washington as #2 and wondered
about the ranking. Is
it more important to save the Union, free the slaves, and preside over America’s
second founding than it is to preside over the first founding of America and
then declining to make himself king? I personally
believe the first founding is more important because the second founding would
never take place without the first one.
I noticed that not all Presidents of the United States were included,
such as John F. Kennedy.
The next observation I made was
the inclusion of the names of the first two presidents of The Church of Jesus
Christ of Latter-day Saints. This was
closely followed by the names of authors, entertainers, musicians, inventors. I have already written about many of the
people on the list and look forward to researching other names. There are some names that I will probably
never consider.
I did not recognize some of the
names and thought the list leaned toward liberalism. What do you think of the list in general and
any particular ranking? Do you recognize
all the names? Do you think they belong
on the list of the 100 most influential people in American history? Who do you think should be on the list but is
not?
Here are the names and their
ranking: (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 S. 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) Orville and Wilbur Wright, (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 B. Johnson, (45) Samuel F.
B. Morse,
(46)
William Lloyd Garrison, (47) Frederick Douglas, (48) Robert Oppenheimer, (49)
Frederick Law Olmstead, (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) Franklin 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 Lippman, (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, and
(100) Herman Melville.
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