Who Are the Most Influential People In History

1. Genghis Khan

what is it like 1 in 7 people can trace their ancestry back to him

2. Christopher Columbus

Charles C Mann (au. 1492) has a great metaphor for columbus's impact on the america's. THe disease that wiped out the native populations would be the equivalent of NYC's total population being reduced to the capacity of yankee stadium in less than a decade.

3. Cleopatra

4. Alexander The Great

5. Billie Eilish

6. Oppenheimer

7. Zeno of Citium

Father of stoicism. Has any philosophy been studied longer? This also removes seneca, marcus aureileis and all those guys from my list.

8. Whoever invented gun powder. I know the first known formula is in Tang dynasty texts from the 800s

9. Same for whoever invented/accidentally discovered the wheel

10. Nikola Tesla

Weird one cause most of his inventions got surpressed and not commercialized so his impact shouldve been even greater. Fascinating what he invented that we still havent beat that just never got used because free energy couldn't be commercialized (it was thought).