“Globally famous” in the sense of “visually recognized in more than one continent”.
I can go back perhaps to Sarah Bernhardt and Nelly Melba (I suppose) … and perhaps Enrico Caruso a little later. But we need not limit it to singers. Perhaps Harry Houdini could be considered?
Celebrity, as we understand it today, is pretty much a 20th-century invention, correct? Maybe late-19th century at best? Relying on types of media that did not exist in, say, 1800 – such as photography, radio, wide-spread press?
Benjamin Franklin was certainly visually recognizable. When he was in Paris a sizable industry sprang up putting his likeness onto hundreds of items that were wildly popular faddish collectibles. He was also well known in London. He wore a coonskin cap before Davy Crockett and probably institutionalized its popularity.
Daniel Boone became an international celebrity in his 50’s (around the 1780’s) when a very imaginative biography of him was published in the U.S. and Europe. Much of the common image of Boone, including the coonskin cap, which he never wore, come from this biography and subsequent works based on it. For the rest of his life, people would come to visit the famous frontiersman, and there are a number of stories from other 18th and early 19th century historical figures about how they got to meet Boone.
This map shows Spanish and Portuguese global settlement from 1580-1640, with colonies or bases on 5 of 7 continents. Given that the English finally got around to settling Australia in 1788 (slackers), the preconditions of being “globally famous” actually came rather late.
So I’m going to say Jesus. If you need somebody living at the time, Napoleon. Or Robespierre. Of course, they were much more than celebrities, but they were known world-wide, especially Napoleon.
I’m assuming that the definition of fame for this question means something apart from either being powerful or having a religious following.
I have no examples, but I suspect sportsmen (including gladiators) in ancient Rome achieved considerable personal fame.
Diogenes the Cynic was famous enough in his day for Alexander the Great to reportedly have swung out of his way to visit him in his kennel.
I did read in a Michael Palin book that the first two men who stormed Tyre in the Second Crusade were famous throughout Europe. Bit hazy on the details, but Palin compared them to Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin in terms of their notoriety.
Many famous explorers through-out the 1800s held lectures describing their adventures, which attracted big crowds.
IMHO, if you are talking truly big “G” Globally famous, it would almost by necessity mean someone fairly recent, such that his/her image, likeness or voice could be recognized throughout multiples of cultures.
I can think of no one else that better sums that up than Cassius Clay/Mohamed Ali.
And I might have misspelled his name too, since I don’t really follow boxing. But that speaks more for his recognition. People that don’t even follow the sport know and recognize Ali.
She was who I came in to mention. Barnum was her manager during her first USA tour and he was the father of major promotional campaigning in the U.S… She was a rock star of her time, largely because she had to be if Barnum was to make a cent on her tour (he’d pretty much mortgaged everything he had to pay her huge fee and entourage- and he did make back his money and quite a bit more).
Speaking of Barnum:
Chang & Eng Bunker were internationally famous. (I have some porcelain figures of them from their 1830s German tour [mass produced inexpensive low quality souvenirs made to sell at their exhibitions]).
General Tom Thumb was also. When he married receptions were given for him at the White House (during the height of the Civil War) and in Europe and he had private audiences with presidents, Brigham Young, European royalty, and one of the popes (can’t remember which).
To be a truly global celebrity, one would have to have lived in the modern era. Before the 20th century, only a tiny percentage of the population had the opportunity to see or hear even the most famous actors and singers perform. That changed with the advent of movies and recorded music.
To be a “global” celebrity, I think you’d have to pass this test: if I went up to a random stranger in Paris, Cairo, Rio de Janeiro, Beijing, Mumbai, Chicago, or Lagos and did a bad imitation of you, or drew a bad caricature of you, would that stranger instantly know who I meant?
Using that test, among the few “global” stars I can think of are:
Charlie Chaplin
Humphrey Bogart
John Wayne
Elvis Presley
Pele
Muhammad Ali
