You may nominate up to five noteworthy leaders, be they heads of state, heads of government, or the equivalent (presidents, prime ministers, potentates, popes, emperors, empresses, kings, queens, generalissimos, one-party-state chairmen, etc.), describing each in no more than three words. Define “greatest” as you see fit; for myself, I will favor those who, IMHO, played a constructive role in national and/or international affairs. A person is still eligible if he or she was a leader from before the era of nation-states, as such.
To avoid contemporary political disputes, your nominees must have been either out of office or dead at least ten years.
Nominations will close at noon EST a week from today, Weds. May 19. After the deadline, I’ll arrange the nominees alphabetically, and we’ll vote them out much as we did in the U.S. President and Greatest American elimination games.
My nominees:
Henry V of England: Legendary warrior-king.
Elizabeth I of England: Shrewd, determined queen.
George Washington: First U.S. president.
Abraham Lincoln: Won Civil War.
Nelson Mandela: Overcame imprisonment, triumphed.
I’m earlier to this thread than I was to the Greatest American nomination stage, so my nominees would be near the top of my actual list:
Winston Churchill – British wartime inspiration
Louis XIV – France’s “Sun King”
Anwar El Sadat – Egyptian warrior, peacemaker
Thomas Masaryk – Czechoslovakia’s founding president
Elizabeth I – England’s “Virgin Queen”
Gorbachev - Cool birthmark
Deng Xiaoping - Made modern China.
Alexander the Great - Dude could conquer
Muhammad - United Arabia
Qin Shi Huang - Made China
Also, FWIW, I dislike the three word limit, half the fun of these threads is arguing for your choices. No fun if you have to do so in Haiku form.
(The three-word description of Solon is a bit questionable, as is his historicity, but I figured what the hey. Also, I was tempted to write “nice eyebrows” for Ataturk.)
Alfred the Great - scholar, warrior, statesman
Isabella I of Castille - unified & developed Spain
Cyrus the Great - great, benevolent conqueror
Attila the Hun - humble, fearsome conqueror
Tamerlane the Great - clever, liberal conqueror
I find it hard to summarize a person’s life in three words. So I’m just putting down names, dates, and locations.
Asoka - 3rd century BC India
Frederick II - 18th century Prussia
Charles de Gaulle - 20th century France
Pitt the Elder - 18th century Britain
Lech Walesa - 20th century Poland
eta: I see one of my original choices was already nominated.
Can’t believe I duplicated one of your choices! I must have been more tired than I thought when I posted just before hitting the hay.
Ataturk and Nehru were two of the others I considered, but as they’ve both been nominated, I’ll go with someone I believe at least deserves a bid, even if he’s got no chance of making the Final Four:
Oliver Cromwell- England a republic
Thomas Jefferson- Declaration of Independence
Fidel Castro- communist Cuba
Simon Bolivar- independent Latin America
Ramesses II - Egypt’s greatest pharaoh