History is larded with shady characters that caused unspeakable suffering and countless deaths out of sheer personal ambition and thirst for power. Having to call them Your Majesty, mein Führer, Mr President or the like didn’t ever wash the blood off their hands and never will. Fortunately though next to them are recorded also many good rulers, scientists, artists, philanthropists or just normal decent people like you and me that in some way managed to stand out from the crowd, which evens the scales to some extent and suggests that maybe the humankind isn’t all that bad after all. Meet many of them here.