Burnham was an American adventurer whose outdoorsmanship helped inspire the founding of the international scout movement. He was born on an Indian reservation to a missionary family and became a horseback messenger for Western Union Telegraph Company at age 13 and soon after a scout and tracker. After two decades of ranging in the Southwest and Mexico, he moved to Africa to become the British army’s chief of scouts during the Boer War. His tracking skills earned him what nickname in Africa? Discuss
Source: The Free Dictionary
Born John Simon Ritchie, Sid Vicious was an English punk rock musician who played bass for the Sex Pistols. After the band broke up in 1978, he embarked on a solo career, with his girlfriend, Nancy Spungen, acting as his manager. The two—heroin addicts—quickly spun out of control. On October 12, 1978, he awoke to find Spungen dead from a stab wound on the bathroom floor of their hotel room. Though he claimed to have no memory of the event, Vicious was arrested for her murder. Did he kill her? 
Brown was an American abolitionist who advocated and practiced armed insurrection as a means to abolish all slavery. After murdering five proslavery settlers in Kansas in 1856, Brown led an unsuccessful raid on the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, in 1859. He was convicted of treason and hanged. His raid made him a martyr to northern abolitionists and increased the sectional animosities that led to the American Civil War. What future general captured Brown at Harpers Ferry? 
A national hero in Mexico, where the state of Hidalgo bears his name, Miguel Hidalgo was a priest and revolutionary leader who is regarded as the founder of the Mexican War of Independence movement. Influenced by the French Revolution, he launched a revolt against Spain in the early 19th century. Hidalgo led the rebels to several early victories but was captured, defrocked, and executed by firing squad along with other revolutionary leaders in 1811. What was done with their remains? 
Born Marie Gouze, de Gouges was a French author whose feminist writings during the French Revolution demanded the same rights for French women that French men were demanding. In 1791, alarmed that the new constitution did not address woman’s suffrage, she wrote Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen, challenging the practice of male authority and the notion of male-female inequality. Why was she executed by guillotine during the Reign of Terror? 
Peary was a US naval officer and explorer who made several attempts to reach the geographic North Pole between 1898 and 1909. On April 6, 1909, accompanied by fellow explorer Matthew Henson and four Inuit men, he reached what he thought was the pole and became widely acknowledged as the first explorer to attain that goal. His claims, however, have since come into question. What factors have led experts to doubt the veracity of Peary’s account of the expedition? 
Though largely ignored during his lifetime, Marx was perhaps one of the most influential figures in history. His ideas, particularly those he expounded in his two most notable works, The Communist Manifesto and Das Kapital, have become the core intellectual tradition for communism and socialism, and many scholars consider him the founder of economic history and sociology. His philosophy significantly influenced communist thinking for the next century. What anarchist was his enemy? 
Scholars believe that though Cristofori was employed as the custodian of musical instruments at the court of Prince Ferdinand de’ Medici, he was hired for the position largely because of his other talent—inventing instruments. His most successful creation was the pianoforte, which, unlike the harpsichord, varies the volume of its sound depending on the force with which its keys are struck. He is thus generally regarded as the inventor of the piano. What other instruments did Cristofori invent? 
Meir was Israel’s first female prime minister and the third woman in the world to hold such an office, after Sirimavo Bandaranaike of Sri Lanka and Indira Gandhi of India. A signer of Israel’s declaration of independence in 1948, she served in the fledgling nation’s parliament and held posts as minister of labor and foreign minister before becoming Israel’s fourth prime minister in 1969. During her tenure, she sought to ease tensions in the region through diplomacy. Why did she resign in 1974? 
One of history’s great polymaths, Kircher was a German archeologist, mathematician, biologist, astronomer, musicologist, and physicist who knew Hebrew, Aramaic, Coptic, Persian, Latin, Greek, and various modern languages. He tried to decipher one of the most ancient writing systems—Egyptian hieroglyphics—but most of his thoughts on the subject proved incorrect. An avid inventor, he built playful devices including a talking and eavesdropping statue that used a primitive intercom, and what else?