Businessmen and industrialists:
P.T. Barnum: World’s greatest showman
Andrew Carnegie: Industrialist, philanthropist
Walt Disney: Animator, entrepreneur, icon
Thomas Edison: Inventor, workaholic
Henry Ford: Inventor, industrialist, philanthropist
J.P. Morgan: Financial giant, tycoon
John D. Rockefeller: Billionaire, philanthropist
I feel like Tesla should get a negative mention in this category;)
Athletes:
Jesse Owens: Famed Olympic athlete
Jackie Robinson: Athlete, activist, inspiration
Babe Ruth: Legendary baseball icon
Jim Thorpe: Native American athlete
Babe Zaharias: Greatest female athlete
“other”:
Lewis and Clark (Meriwether and William, resp.): Louisiana Purchase explorers
Charles Lindbergh: Aviator, American hero
Edward R Murrow: Broadcaster
I suppose I should have filed Murrow with “show biz”.
Quick morning line odds:
Abraham Lincoln 7-2 favorite
Martin Luther King, Jr. 4-1
Albert Einstein 4-1
Thomas Jefferson 5-1
George Washington 5-1
Benjamin Franklin 8-1
Mark Twain 15-1
Susan B. Anthony 20-1
Thomas Edison 20-1
Franklin D. Roosevelt 50-1
Helen Keller 50-1
All others 4-1
I could be way off, or forgetting someone obvious who should be among the favorites.
I think you should open a new thread for balloting, btw, to avoid confusion. Still, here would be my “eliminate 10” list:
We have too many writers, please eliminate five:
Ambrose Bierce: Author, journalist, satirist, critic
James Branch Cabell: Author, marriage proponent
Robert Heinlein: Science fiction author
H.P. Lovecraft: Horror writer (Poe is more important)
Shel Silverstein: Author, humorist
Two who just don’t measure up:
Carl Sagan: Astronomer, science popularizer; Cosmos was big, but what did he contribute as a scientist?
Jim Henson: Beloved children’s programmer competing head-to-head with Walt Disney. Sorry, Jim.
Screw them:
Charles Lindbergh: Aviator, American hero, and Nazi sympathizer.
Richard Nixon: President, lawyer, author, crook.
Nikola Tesla: Inventor, engineer, crank, wasted vast amounts of other people’s money.
Jonas Salk is probably a 50-1 in his own right, maybe 20-1.
It’s ironic I didn’t include him, since I nominated him.
Will do, after more people have weighed in on how we should go about the first round of balloting.
never mind, didn’t read whole thread
Why the heck is Malcom X on the list? He was a bigot, fanatic, and hurt not helped racial relations.
Also I’m supporting the people who did actually did things rather than “cheerleaders” like celebrities or sports figures.
Are you saying that Jackie Robinson and Jesse Owens didn’t do things?
They did but it was people like Martin Luther King Jr. or President Eisenhower or Chief Justice Earl Warren that made the real difference.
Well, I am still more impressed by a Jackie Robinson, who had to go out every day and face bigots while still playing major-league level baseball, than by a Justice Warren who merely had to argue the facts of desegregation and sign a Supreme Court decision. YMMV.
With Elendil’s Heir’s Henry Clay this makes two names suggested after nominations were “closed.” These suggestions are obviously significant since no one would now bother mentioning anyone that wasn’t a serious Top Forty contender.
I also reviewed the list and independently came to the same conclusion: that Clay and U.S. Grant should have been included. Another I came up with was Alexander Graham Bell.
(While Feynmann was surely an amazing genius and colorful character, I might put Enrico Fermi, Edward Teller and Robert Oppenheimer ahead of him for historic importance. Bell and Fermi, by the way, appear on Michael Hart’s List of the 100 Most Influential Persons in History. Though I do not recommend them, I’ll mention that of eleven Americans on that list, two others missing from ours are Gregory Pincus and William T.G. Morton.)
Clay, Grant and Bell are all good suggestions, and I may include them. Herman Melville is another possibility, although we have a number of writers already. And several tycoons, but no labor leaders. Hmmm.
Anyway. Further thoughts on the initial list-winnowing voting procedure?
During his lifetime, Martin Luther King, Jr. consistently scored lower than Jackie Robinson when African Americans were asked to name the leaders they respected most.
Cite: Bradford Chambers, *Chronicles of Black Protest *(New York: New American Library, 1969).
Robinson had a massive impact beyond the baseball diamond, including his victory in a racist court martial that kept him out of action in World War II. Among other things, Robinson refused to move to the back of the bus–over a decade before anyone had heard of Rosa Parks.
I think we should do rounds of 10 until we get to the top 62. Then do smaller rounds
maybe 3 votes per until the top 20. As it stands now, there are 102 entries.
That would give us 4 rounds of ten + 14 rounds of three + 20 rounds of one, for a game that would run 38 rounds.
If we want a longer game we can switch the 10’s to 5’s and the 3’s to 2’s for:
8 rounds of five + 21 rounds of 2 + 20 rounds of one for a game that would run 49 rounds total.
I’d be fine with either of those, and would prefer either to the idea of holding back certain nominees to later rounds.
Cesar Chavez was a labor leader.
Right you are. I’d forgotten him.
Nobody nominated Ali? Huh. I’d have him in there ahead of Owens, certainly. Probably ahead of Thorpe as well were I not such a partisan.