RoR: Forum

Post 0

Friday, November 1, 2002 - 2:36pm

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Well done, Marcus. I like an article that educates and has some substance. Yours succeeds on both counts.

Ross

Post 1

Friday, November 1, 2002 - 2:38pm

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I greatly enjoyed reading this Marcus! Thanks for writing it. I too would likely have skipped over any media hype surrounding top ten of anything for the reasons you stated. LOL!

Goes to show you that people can still surprise and that real greatness can't be forgotten, even in this postmodernist culture!

It is rather heartening to know that the great heroes haven't been forgotten in this day and age!

Joy :)

Post 2

Wednesday, February 26, 2003 - 3:01am

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Good for you. I agreed totally with what you said. Even though I consistently voted Cromwell, I was pleased with the final choice of Winstone Churchill.

Post 3

Friday, November 25, 2005 - 6:59am

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Marcus,
Bravo!
I love reading about such men as Brunel. I'll look more into his life and work.

Post 4

Monday, December 3, 2007 - 2:07pm

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Random past article.

So well done, and so full of interesting information about Brunel, it deserves a second (or first, for many here) reading.

Post 5

Monday, December 3, 2007 - 2:42pm

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Benjamin Franklin tops my list.

Post 6

Monday, December 3, 2007 - 2:55pm

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Er, yeah, but the poll was about Britons.

Franklin was born in Boston. (Although, I suppose technically he might be considered British, given the year of his birth, 1706.)

Still, I agree he was an extraordinary man.

Franklin's Biography

Post 7

Monday, December 3, 2007 - 5:04pm

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Technically?

Jeff, you have obviously not read Franklin's Compleated Autobiography. It should be mandatory reading for all English speakers. I repeat my assertion. Franklin, who lived in Britain and proudly worked as an agent of the Crown, easily ranks with Newton, Churchill and Shakespeare. George Washington also ranks high on that list. I don't think any sane and educated Englishman would even contest the fact that George Washington was a better Briton than was George III. Although, technically, George III was a German.

Ted Keer

(Edited by Ted Keer on 12/03, 5:08pm)

Post 8

Monday, December 3, 2007 - 5:23pm

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You're probably right about the biography. I intend to rectify that soon. (It's been on my list for a while.)

As for ranking with Newton, well as my grandmother would have said, that's just crazy talk. Franklin deserves much credit for sparkling intelligence, entrepreneurship, wisdom, good values, and such. But one of the top three geniuses in the history of the world, with Newton probably at position 1, 2, or at worst 3, he was not.

(Always amusing to argue out these things, isn't it?)

Post 9

Monday, December 3, 2007 - 8:58pm

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I suppose we'd also have to add Jefferson to the list, although he has always seemed much more a Frenchman to me than any of the other founding fathers. I would argue that America is nothing more than Avalon without the Continental vices - more British than Britain, a free country in essence, a republic by grand if glorious historical accident. Franklin and Washington had to be pushed quite hard to break with the mother country. Like William Penn, each would have been famous even had the American Revolution never taken place.

As for Newton, if one looks at the benefit to mankind, his personality defects are inconsequent.

But Franklin has been a favorite of mine since I was an elementary school kid visiting his printing shop and the Franklin Institute. Note that these institutions are not found in that pretentious capital of puritanism and patricianism on the Charles. You note that Franklin was born in Boston but he chose to live in Pennsylvania. I have heard it repeated that at the time of the Revolution, Philadelphia was the second largest city in the British Empire. Whatever its size, and subsequent squalor, it was certainly then the freest city on the Earth.

Ted Keer