If you aren’t into the war types, I find the selection of Curie a bit strange. You could argue that the first real application of her work was the nuclear bomb.
Ya know, the one that blew up hundreds of thousands of Japanese.
Context is key here. Bolivar was struggling with a chaotic situation (which ultimately defeated him) lacking any traditions of the democracy he wanted to impose, unlike the nacient US - a fact he always regretted. Declaring himself “dictator” didn’t have the same connotations then as it does now - that was added by the “great” 20th century dictators and Bolivar’s South American descendants.
Arguably, Bolivar is a less ambiguous figure than George Washington: after all, the colonial evils he was struggling against were much, much worse, and unlike Washington, Bolivar opposed slavery.
I’d judge Bolivar’s committment to democracy as several orders of magnitude more sincere that Lenin’s. Certainly, he is mostly viewed by South Americans in a positive light. I’d have no troubles with a 2nd grade class learning of Bolivar as a South American historical military “good guy” - as “El Libertador”.
I won’t argue heavily against him (but I think the comparison to Rania is way off-base). His opposition to democracy in his region, however reluctant, makes him somewhat ambiguous IMO, but I can definitely see the point you’re making, and indeed if we’d discussed Bolivar in depth (I honestly don’t remember anyone bringing him up at all, certainly a mistake on our part), maybe we would’ve gone with him.
My sister decided when my nephew was born that she wasn’t going to let him have any toy guns, watch war stuff, etc. By age six he was completely into army things and wanted nothing more than an army-themed birthday party and presents.
If I had thought anyone else in my family would get the joke, I really wanted to get him a blue helmet for his birthday present.
