Political: Caesar, Napoleon, Hitler, Gandhi, Mao, Reagan, Bush, Hussein, Bin Laden
Arts, Literature, and Entertainment: Michelangelo, Leonardo Da Vinci, Shakespeare, Mozart, Beethoven, Vincent Van Gogh, Agatha Christie, the Beatles, Bob Marley, Stephen King, Michael Jackson, Madonna, various Hollywood, Bollywood, and TV stars
Philosophy and Science: Socrates, Plato, Galileo, Newton, Nietzsche, Einstein

You said "no religious folks", but they still count as people, don't they? If so, throw Moses, Jesus, Mohammed, Buddha, Pope John Paul II, the Dalai Lama, and a few others into the mix.

I'm still curious as to what criteria led you to choose Haydn.

[ 12 June 2004: Message edited by: Mike Keenan ]

Baseball Nolan Ryan
Art Picasso
Music Mozart/
Medicine This one is interesting. I say Salk but there are many.

One person that maxed out and strides several generations to help man.

Elvis died too young.Good thinking.

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Originally posted by Mike Keenan:

Political: Caesar, Napoleon, Hitler, Gandhi, Mao, Reagan, Bush, Hussein, Bin Laden

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Famous means anything you want.

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Originally posted by Gir Draxon:

Don't forget Marx and Stalin.

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I was unaware this was a Canadian BB. Being born in Canada does not make me Canadian.

The responses to this post are stupid and silly. Just a few gave it a try, Mike Keenan was on the right track.

I don't know why Durango did that flounce, but I'm sure that everyone else here agrees with you.

xoxox

[ 12 June 2004: Message edited by: skdadl ]

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May i infer that you are using it in the second sense?

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Originally posted by Sharon:
[Editor's note] My, how I love it when someone uses the word "infer" correctly.

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Are you implying that some of us don't know our inferences from our elbows? Or should I infer that you were implying something else?

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Originally posted by Sharon:
You make my day.

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Is that a pun?

Since this thread has irretrievably drifted (especially since the only potential retriever has wagged off):

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Originally posted by Durango:
I am going to pass on this BB and leave.

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I think poor baby hasn't got his hemispheres figured out, and has a bit of a control issue (no religious for example).

Hope his butt didn't get too badly bruised by the door on his way out.

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by 'lance -- flounce out

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Originally posted by Durango:

The responses to this post are stupid and silly. Just a few gave it a try, Mike Keenan was on the right track.

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According to a study I read long ago, Mickey Mouse is in fact the most famous figure in the world, and given that there are so many more people now than there ever has been, it would indicate that he is the most famous ever.

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Sure. But the question specifies person. Mickey Mouse is definitely more famous than the stop sign, though.

[ 12 June 2004: Message edited by: flotsom ]

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Sure. But the question specifies person. Mickey Mouse is definitely more famous than the stop sign, though.

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Originally posted by Jacob Two-Two:
How can Haydn be the most famous person ever if I've never heard of him? I mean, I'm a part of his culture and everything. What are chances that people in China know who he is?

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[ 12 June 2004: Message edited by: Soar ]

My statement was clear. Vinobe Bhave: In India as famous as Gandhi. Outside of India an obscurity.

[ed. I must be on a three-minute time delay]

G'day flotto. If the weather here remains as it's been the last coupla weeks, I'll be able to float my barge from the front yard to chez toi.

[ 12 June 2004: Message edited by: al-Qa'bong ]

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...I was thinking of Vinoba Bhave of India. As famous as Gandhi is in India, he is an obscurity outside of India.

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Originally posted by rasmus raven:
Where did Durango? Is he Haydn?

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Boo! Attacks on a person's Handel are so lame.

[ 13 June 2004: Message edited by: al-Qa'bong ]

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As 'lance said though, these flouncers usually come Bach to flounce again.

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(psst, oldgoat... repetition!)

[ 13 June 2004: Message edited by: 'lance ]

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Originally posted by Willowdale Wizard:
with the internationalization of english-language pop/rock music, i would think people like brittney spears and madonna are among the most famous of all time.

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Remember that news conference that started all that fuss, with the record-burnings in the deep South and whatnot? Madonna having to explain that she didn't think she was "better" than Jesus Christ, but that she "breastfed" Jesus Christ?

[ 13 June 2004: Message edited by: al-Qa'bong ]

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Remember that news conference that started all that fuss, with the record-burnings in the deep South and whatnot? Madonna having to explain that she didn't think she was "better" than Jesus Christ, but that she "breastfed" Jesus Christ?

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[ 13 June 2004: Message edited by: 'lance ]

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Originally posted by skdadl:
You guys sure that was Madonna and not John Lennon?

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*cough cough cough*

With a couple of exceptions, you used 20th century composers, so I just thought it was the area you liked. Able and Field, were early classical, and pretty obscure. I know a bit about John Field, but I'd not heard of Able until I just now looked him up. That's a good site BTW, thanks.

[ 13 June 2004: Message edited by: oldgoat ]

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Probably about 90% of my music collection, such as it is, is "classical". I have Borodin on vinyl. I don't own any Delius because I don't much care for his music, but I know a bit about him.

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Ewps. Well, I hope you'll forgive my snarkiness.

Then of course there's that soulless hyper-speed jazz-guitar wankery that someone I used to know referred to as "weedla-jazz." Onomatopoeia, you might say (provided you take your hat off first, it being a Sunday-type word). The ECM label seems to be home to a lot of this stuff.

But past all that there's still lots of great stuff to sample. Kind of Blue by Miles Davis is always a good place to start.

[ 14 June 2004: Message edited by: 'lance ]

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Onomatopoeia

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So that's how you spell that!

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So that's how you spell that!

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Never too late to enter the Field, flotsom.

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I think that I am going to make up an entire biography for him, so that others may share in the enjoyment.

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Great musical judgement, though:

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...as a teenager he did assist in the construction of the loudest instrument ever created, the pandemonium, but he wisely skipped town before the instrument’s completion, having sensed with uncanny accuracy, that the Pavilion of Glass was perhaps not the most felicitous location for the inaugural concert.

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[ 14 June 2004: Message edited by: 'lance ]

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Originally posted by Michelle:
I like Rachmaninoff of this classical stuff!

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Actually, I do have somewhere a lovely fictional biography of a C18 personality of some kind, utterly made up by someone who is a serious Mozart biographer as well.

By C18 personality, I mean someone like Casanova.

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He became famous in English-speaking countries with his unconventional biography Mozart (1977), which portrays Mozart as a kind of absurdist; his next book, Marbot, a fictional biography, is about an English nobleman of the early nineteenth century who is purported to have met and spoken with Goethe, Byron, the German Romantic poet Platen, Leopardi, and other luminaries of the period: Marbot has recently attracted considerable critical attention on both sides of the Atlantic, and Stanley provides illuminating discussions of the critical controversy surrounding the problematic relationship of author and subject. She also shows that Hildesheimer has close links to some of the great European writers of the age, such as Ionesco, but that henevertheless, in the later works, owes much to Goethe and Thomas Mann.

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Listen to P.D.Q. Bach On The Air: The Hearer’s Digest Condensed Version. This Condensed Version gives you the intangible essence of the original recording in one small, easy-to-swallow capsule summary. The hyper folks at Hearer’s Digest have created this sample by slicing, dicing, and splicing, until it somewhat resembles excerpts of the original recording that are “severely truncated, but shorter.”

This Hearer’s Digest Condensed Version is made of excerpts from the following: New Horizons in Music Appreciation—Intro to Echo Sonata for Two Unfriendly Groups of Instruments—“Do you Suffer?”—Echo Sonata for Two Unfriendly Groups of Instruments—Intro to Fugue in C Minor—Presto Hey Nonny Nonnio from Schleptet in E flat Major—Weather—News—“If You Have Never”—Traumarai for Unaccompanied Piano.

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[Ed. note: I would dispute that "An." ]

And I have a vague memory of some of these classics: Oratorio -- "The Seasonings"; The "Unbegun" Symphony; and Pervertimento for Bagpipes, Bicycle, and Balloons, S. 66.

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'lance, were you aware that it was P.D.Q. who invented that organ-pedal technique known as the Tootsie Roll?

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I was not. But as Prof. Schikele reminds us:

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This most mini musical life has been divided into three creative periods: the Initial Plunge, the Soused Period, and Contrition. The middle period was by far the longest of the three, and was characterized by a multiplicity of contrapuntal lines and a greater richness of harmony due to almost constant double vision. It was during this period that he emulated (i.e., stole from) the music of Haydn and Mozart, but his pathetic attempts to be au courant were no more successful than his pathetic attempts to be passé had been during the Initial Plunge; having to cope with the problems that accompany immense popularity was something P.D.Q. Bach managed to avoid. It has been said that the only original places in his music are those places where he forgot what he was stealing.

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I mean, I am sorry.