Declaration of Interdependence
When In the course of human events, it becomes increasingly necessary to recognize the fundamental qualities that connect us, then we must reevaluate the truths we hold to be self-evident:
That all humans are created equal and all are connected.
That we share the pursuits of life, liberty, happiness, food, water, shelter, safety, education, justice, and hopes for a better future.
That our collective knowledge, economy, technology, and environment are fundamentally interdependent.
That what will propel us forward as a species is our curiosity, our ability to forgive, our ability to appreciate, our courage, and our desire to connect...
That these things we share will ultimately help us evolve to our fullest common potential.
And whereas we should take our problems seriously, we should never take ourselves too seriously.
Because another thing that connects us is our ability to laugh and our attempt to learn from our mistakes.
So that we can learn from the past, understand our place in the world, and use our collective knowledge to create a better future.
We can make the future whatever we want it to be.
So perhaps it's time that we, as a species, who love to laugh, ask questions, and connect...do something radical and true.
For centuries, we have declared independence.
Perhaps it's now time that we, as humans, declare our interdependence!
| YEAR | PORTRAITS | INFLUENTIAL AS A... |
| 1773 | Samuel Adams | leader of the first Tea Party |
| 1774 | George III | king of Great Britain & Ireland |
| 1775 | Paul Revere | revolutionary silversmith |
| 1776 | Adam Smith | economist and philosopher |
| 1776 | Thomas Jefferson | author of Declaration of Independence |
| 1779 | Samuel Johnson | author and biographer |
| 1781 | Immanuel Kant | philosopher |
| 1781 | Marquis de Lafayette | military officer |
| 1781 | William Herschel | astronomer |
| 1783 | Leonhard Euler | mathematician |
| 1785 | James Watt | scientist and inventor |
| 1786 | Robert Burns | poet |
| 1787 | Alexander Hamilton | first US treasurer |
| 1787 | James Madison | author of US constitution |
| 1788 | Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart | composer |
| 1789 | William Blake | artist and poet |
| 1789 | Antoine Lavoisier | father of modern chemistry |
| 1789 | George Washington & Liberty | first US President |
| 1790 | Benjamin Franklin | scientist and statesman |
| 1791 | John Jay | first US chief justice |
| 1791 | Thomas Paine | political philosopher |
| 1792 | Georges Danton | revolutionary leader |
| 1793 | Louis XVI & Marie Antoinette | king and queen of France |
| 1794 | Maximilien Robespierre | revolutionary leader |
| 1795 | Francisco de Goya | painter |
| 1796 | Catherine the Great | empress of Russia |
| 1797 | John & Abigail Adams | first US vice president |
| 1800 | Napoleon Bonaparte | general and emperor of France |
| 1801 | Carl Friedrich Gauss | mathematician and scientist |
| 1804 | Samuel Taylor Coleridge | poet |
| 1805 | Meriwether Lewis & William Clark & Sacajawea | explorers |
| 1806 | Johann Wolfgang von Goethe | author of Faust |
| 1807 | William Wordsworth | poet |
| 1807 | Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel | philosopher |
| 1813 | Jane Austen | novelist |
| 1815 | Charles Maurice de Talleyrand | first prime minister of France |
| 1818 | Lord Byron | poet |
| 1818 | Mary Shelley | author of Frankenstein |
| 1820 | Percy Bysshe Shelley | poet |
| 1821 | Michael Faraday | scientist |
| 1824 | Ludwig van Beethoven | composer |
| 1828 | Andrew Jackson | general and US president |
| 1830 | Thomas Cole | painter |
| 1830 | Frederic Chopin | composer |
| 1836 | Samuel F. B. Morse | inventor & painter |
| 1836 | Ralph Waldo Emerson | philosopher |
| 1836 | David Crockett | king of the wild frontier |
| 1837 | Queen Victoria | queen of the United Kingdom |
| 1843 | Soren Kierkegaard | philosopher |
| 1844 | Gustave Courbet | painter |
| 1845 | Frederick Douglass | abolitionist |
| 1845 | Edgar Allan Poe | poet of The Raven |
| 1847 | Anne & Emily & Charlotte Bronte | novelists |
| 1847 | Emily Dickinson | poet |
| 1848 | Karl Marx | economist |
| 1848 | Victor Hugo | author of Les Miserables |
| 1849 | Harriet Tubman | underground railroad abolitionist |
| 1851 | Herman Melville | author of Moby Dick |
| 1851 | Napoleon III | last emperor of France |
| 1852 | Harriet Beecher Stowe | author of Uncle Tom's Cabin |
| 1854 | Henry David Thoreau | naturalist and journalist |
| 1854 | Bernhard Riemann | mathematician |
| 1854 | Florence Nightingale | nursing pioneer |
| 1855 | Walt Whitman | poet |
| 1855 | Susan B. Anthony | women's rights advocate |
| 1856 | Lewis Carroll | author of Alice in Wonderland |
| 1856 | Richard Francis Burton | explorer |
| 1857 | Gustave Flaubert | author of Madam Bovary |
| 1858 | Charles Dickens | author of David Copperfield |
| 1859 | John Stuart Mill | political philosopher |
| 1859 | John Brown | abolitionist |
| 1859 | Evangelis Zappas | initiated international olympics |
| 1860 | Gregor Mendel | biologist |
| 1861 | Jefferson Davis | president of the CSA |
| 1861 | Mathew Brady | photographed US civil war |
| 1862 | Ulysses S. Grant | general and US president |
| 1863 | Robert E. Lee | confederate general |
| 1863 | Baha'u'llah | founder of Baha'i faith |
| 1864 | Abraham Lincoln | US president |
| 1864 | Louis Pasteur | microbiologist and chemist |
| 1867 | Tokugawa Yoshinobu | last shogun of Japan |
| 1868 | Emile Zola | realist novelist |
| 1869 | Leo Tolstoy | author of War and Peace |
| 1870 | Cornelius Vanderbilt | shipping & railroad magnate |
| 1871 | Otto von Bismarck | first German chancellor |
| 1871 | Richard Wagner | composer of operas |
| 1872 | John Muir | naturalist and conservationist |
| 1873 | Clara Barton | pioneer of American Red Cross |
| 1873 | James Clerk Maxwell | physicist |
| 1874 | Edouard Manet | impressionist painter |
| 1874 | Georg Cantor | father of modern mathematics |
| 1875 | John D. Rockefeller | oil tycoon |
| 1875 | Alexander Graham Bell | inventor |
| 1875 | Buffalo Bill Cody | wild west legend and showman |
| 1876 | Jesse James | legendary wild west outlaw |
| 1876 | Stephane Mallarme | impressionist poet |
| 1876 | George Armstrong Custer | soldier with a last stand |
| 1877 | Eadweard Muybridge | pioneer motion photographer |
| 1878 | Benjamin Disraeli | novelist and prime minister |
| 1878 | Sarah Bernhardt | actress |
| 1878 | Andrew Carnegie | industrialist |
| 1879 | Thomas Edison | inventor |
| 1881 | P. T. Barnum | showman |
| 1881 | Wyatt Earp | wild west lawman |
| 1882 | John L. Sullivan | heavyweight boxer |
| 1882 | Paul Cezanne | painter |
| 1884 | William Ewart Gladstone | prime minister |
| 1884 | Mark Twain | author of Huckleberry Finn |
| 1885 | Friedrich Nietzsche | philosopher |
| 1885 | Georges Seurat | pointilist painter |
| 1885 | Johannes Brahms | composer |
| 1886 | Claude Monet | impressionist painter |
| 1887 | Geronimo | Chiricahua Apache leader |
| 1887 | Arthur Conan Doyle | author of Sherlock Holmes |
| 1888 | Vincent van Gogh | expressionist painter |
| 1888 | George Eastman | invented film roll & box camera |
| 1889 | Anton Chekhov | playwright |
| 1890 | Henrik Ibsen | playwright |
| 1890 | J.P. Morgan | banker |
| 1892 | Franz Boas | anthropologist |
| 1892 | Gustav Mahler | composer |
| 1893 | Oscar Wilde | playwright |
| 1893 | Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky | composer |
| 1894 | Nikola Tesla | inventor |
| 1895 | Alfred Nobel | chemist engineer inventor |
| 1896 | Auguste & Louis Lumiere | pioneer filmmakers |
| 1898 | Marie Curie | physicist & chemist |
| 1901 | Theodore Roosevelt | U.S. President and environmentalist |
| 1903 | The Wright Brothers | visionary aviators |
| 1906 | Pablo Picasso | artist |
| 1907 | Leo Baekeland | plastics pioneer |
| 1913 | Emmeline Pankhurst | suffragist |
| 1914 | Coco Chanel | designer |
| 1914 | Igor Stravinsky | classical musician |
| 1915 | Charles Merrill | advocate of the small investor |
| 1915 | Charlie Chaplin | comic genius |
| 1915 | Willis Carrier | inventor of air-conditioning |
| 1916 | Margaret Sanger | birth-control crusader |
| 1918 | James Joyce | novelist |
| 1919 | Henry Ford | founder of Ford Motor Company |
| 1920 | Helen Keller | champion of the disabled |
| 1920 | Vladimir Ilyich Lenin | founder of the Soviet Union |
| 1921 | Albert Einstein | physicist |
| 1921 | Sigmund Freud | psychoanalyst |
| 1922 | David Sarnoff | father of broadcasting |
| 1923 | T.S. Eliot | poet |
| 1924 | Robert Goddard | rocket scientist |
| 1925 | Edwin Hubble | astronomer |
| 1927 | Charles Lindbergh | transatlantic aviator |
| 1928 | Alexander Fleming | bacteriologist |
| 1928 | Amadeo Giannini | architect of nationwide banking |
| 1930 | Louis B. Mayer | Hollywood mogul |
| 1931 | Kurt Godel | mathematician |
| 1931 | The Leakey Family | anthropologists |
| 1933 | Franklin Delano Roosevelt | U.S. President of New Deal |
| 1933 | Juan Trippe | aviation entrepreneur |
| 1933 | Le Corbusier | architect |
| 1936 | John Maynard Keynes | economist |
| 1936 | Lucky Luciano | criminal mastermind |
| 1936 | Martha Graham | dancer and choreographer |
| 1936 | Sam Walton | Wal-Mart dynamo |
| 1936 | Stephen Bechtel | construction magnate |
| 1937 | Adolf Hitler | German dictator |
| 1937 | Walt Disney | animator and multimediast |
| 1938 | Bill Wilson | founder Alcoholics Anonymous |
| 1939 | Alan Turing | computer scientist |
| 1939 | Philo Farnsworth | inventor of electronic television |
| 1941 | Winston Churchill | British Prime Minister |
| 1942 | Anne Frank | diarist and Holocaust victim |
| 1942 | Enrico Fermi | atomic physicist |
| 1944 | Rachel Carson | environmentalist |
| 1944 | The American G.I. | a soldier for freedom |
| 1945 | Mohandas Gandhi | father of modern India |
| 1945 | Walter Reuther | labor leader |
| 1946 | Ho Chi Minh | first President of North Vietnam |
| 1947 | Ludwig Wittgenstein | philosopher |
| 1948 | Eleanor Roosevelt | U.S. First Lady |
| 1951 | Lucille Ball | TV star |
| 1952 | William Levitt | creator of suburbia |
| 1953 | Edmund Hillary & Tenzing Norgay | conquerors of Mount Everest |
| 1953 | James Watson & Francis Crick | molecular biologists |
| 1953 | Louis Armstrong | jazz musician |
| 1953 | Marlon Brando | actor |
| 1954 | Jackie Robinson | baseball player |
| 1954 | Leo Burnett | advertising genius |
| 1954 | Ray Kroc | hamburger meister |
| 1955 | Frank Sinatra | singer |
| 1955 | Rosa Parks | civil rights torchbearer |
| 1956 | Jonas Salk | virologist |
| 1956 | Thomas Watson Jr. | IBM president |
| 1958 | Pele | soccer star |
| 1959 | David Ben-Gurion | Israel's first Prime Minister |
| 1959 | Rodgers & Hammerstein | Broadway showmen |
| 1960 | Che Guevara | guerrilla leader |
| 1960 | The Kennedys | dynasty |
| 1962 | Jean Piaget | child psychologist |
| 1962 | Marilyn Monroe | actress |
| 1963 | Bob Dylan | folk musician |
| 1964 | Martin Luther King Jr. | civil rights leader |
| 1964 | Muhammad Ali | heavyweight boxing champion |
| 1964 | The Beatles | rock musicians |
| 1966 | Akio Morita | co-founder of Sony |
| 1966 | Billy Graham | evangelist |
| 1966 | Estee Lauder | cosmetics tycoon |
| 1967 | Mao Zedong | leader of communist China |
| 1968 | Aretha Franklin | soul musician |
| 1969 | Pete Rozelle | football-league commissioner |
| 1973 | Bruce Lee | actor and martial-arts star |
| 1975 | Andrei Sakharov | Soviet dissident |
| 1975 | William Shockley | solid-state physicist |
| 1978 | Harvey Milk | gay-rights leader |
| 1981 | Ayatullah R. Khomeini | leader of Iran's revolution |
| 1981 | Margaret Thatcher | British Prime Minister |
| 1981 | Ronald Reagan | U.S. President |
| 1982 | Bill Gates | co-founder of Microsoft |
| 1983 | Lech Walesa | Polish union organizer |
| 1986 | Mother Teresa | missionary nun |
| 1987 | Bart Simpson | cartoon character |
| 1987 | Diana Spencer | Princess of Wales |
| 1987 | Mikhail Gorbachev | Soviet reformer |
| 1987 | Oprah Winfrey | TV talk-show host |
| 1989 | Jim Henson | creator of the Muppets |
| 1989 | Tank Man | Tiananmen Square rebel |
| 1989 | Tim Berners-Lee | Internet designer |
| 1993 | Nelson Mandela | South African President |
| 1993 | Pope John Paul II | religious leader |
| 1999 | Steven Spielberg | moviemaker |
| 2000 | Al Gore | US vice president and environmentalist |
| 2001 | Osama Bin Laden | Al-Qaeda terrorist leader |
| 2002 | Jeff Bezos | Amazon founder |
| 2003 | Saddam Hussein | Iraqi leader |
| 2004 | George W. Bush | US president |
| 2005 | Bono | musician and philanthropist |
| 2006 | Steve Jobs | Apple founder |
| 2007 | Vladamir Putin | Russian leader |
| 2008 | Barack Obama | US president |
| 2009 | Ben Bernanke | economist |
| 2010 | Mark Zuckerberg | creator of Facebook |
| 2011 | Larry Page | Google co-founder |
| 2012 | Tiffany Shlain | filmmaker founded the Webbys |
Who's on your list?