- Queen Elizabeth II
Elizabeth II (Elizabeth Alexandra Mary Windsor; born 21 April 1926) is Queen of sixteen sovereign states, holding each crown and title equally. However, she is more directly involved with the United Kingdom, where the Royal Family resides, and the Monarchy is historically indigenous. Apart from the United Kingdom, Elizabeth II is also Queen of Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Jamaica, Barbados, the Bahamas, Grenada, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, Tuvalu, Saint Lucia, … - Fidel Castro
Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz (born August 13, 1926) is the current President of Cuba. He led the revolution overthrowing dictator Fulgencio Batista in 1959 and shortly after was sworn in as the Prime Minister of Cuba. Castro became First Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba in 1965, and led the transformation of Cuba into a one-party socialist republic. In 1976 he became president of the Council of State as well as of the Council of Ministers. - Benazir Bhutto
She was elected co-chairwoman of the Pakistan People's Party (PPP) along with her mother, and when free elections were finally held in 1988, she herself became Prime Minister. At 35, she was one of the youngest chief executives in the world, and the first woman to serve as prime minister in an Islamic country. - Hamid Karzai
Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai 's days may be numbered . I wrote the 25 Must-Know Facts about Afghanistan . How about 19 must know facts about their possible ex-president Hamid Karzai . - Silvio Berlusconi
(born September 29, 1936) is an Italian politician, entrepreneur, and media proprietor. He is the leader of the Forza Italia political movement, a centre-right party he founded in 1993 in Rome. Berlusconi has twice held office as prime minister of Italy, most recently from 2001 to 2006. Berlusconi is the founder and main shareholder of Fininvest, among the ten largest Italian privately-owned companies, operating in media and finance including three national TV channels. - Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf
Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf (1938- ) is president of Liberia and the first elected female president of any African nation. After Johnson-Sirleaf obtained her master's degree in public administration from Harvard University, she worked in financial management for the Liberian government, eventually ascending to the post of finance minister in the Liberian Cabinet in the 1970s. - Augusto Pinochet
"' The junta members originally planned for the presidency to rotate among the commanders-in-chief of the four military branches. However, Pinochet soon consolidated his control, first retaining sole chairmanship of the military junta, and then proclaiming himself "Supreme Chief of the Nation" (de facto provisional president) on June 27, 1974. He officially changed his title to "President" on December 17. In 1980, by the way of another national referendum, Chile got a new Constitution, … - Sani Abacha
General Sani Abacha (Kano, 20 September 1943 - Abuja, 8 June 1998) was a Nigerian military leader and politician. He was the "de facto" President of Nigeria from 1993 to 1998. - Hosni Mubarak
Muhammad Hosni Said Mubarak, Arabic: محمد حسنى سيد مبارك Muḥammad Ḥusnī Mubārak, commonly known as Hosni Mubarak, Arabic: حسنى مبارك Ḥusnī Mubārak (born May 4, 1928) has been the president of Egypt since October 14, 1981. Mubarak was appointed vice-president of the Republic of Egypt after moving up the ranks of the Egyptian Air Force. - Charles de Gaulle
Charles André Joseph Marie de Gaulle (November 22, 1890 – November 9, 1970), in France commonly referred to as "Général de Gaulle", was a French military leader and statesman. Prior to World War II, he was primarily known as an armoured warfare tactician and an advocate of the concentrated use of armoured and aviation forces. - Mwai Kibaki
Mwai Kibaki (born November 15, 1931) is the President of Kenya. Kibaki was previously Vice President (1978 - 1988), and has held several other cabinet positions, including Minister for Finance (1978 - 1981), Minister for Home Affairs (1982 - 1988) and Minister for Health (1988 - 1991). He was baptised Emilio Stanley by Italian missionaries in his youth but he rarely uses this name. - Evo Morales
Juan Evo Morales Ayma (born October 26, 1959 in Orinoca, Oruro), popularly known as Evo, is the President of Bolivia, and has been declared to be the country's first indigenous head of state since the Spanish Conquest over 470 years ago. This claim has created controversy, however, due to the number of mestizo presidents who came before him. - Khieu Samphan
Khieu Samphan (born July 27 1931) was the president of the state presidium of Democratic Kampuchea (Cambodia) from 1976 until 1979. As such, he served as the country's head of state and was one of the most powerful officials in the Khmer Rouge movement, though Pol Pot was the group's true political leader and held the most extensive power. He is of Chinese-Khmer ancestry. A prominent member of the circle of leftist Khmer intellectuals studying in Paris in the 1950s, … - Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo
Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo , President of the Philippines - Benito Mussolini
Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini (July 29, 1883 - April 28, 1945) was the prime minister and dictator of Italy from 1922 until 1943, when he was overthrown. He established a fascist regime that valued socialism, nationalism, militarism and anti-communism combined with strict censorship and state propaganda. Mussolini became a close ally of German dictator Adolf Hitler, whom he influenced. Mussolini entered World War II in June 1940 on the side of Nazi Germany. - Deng Xiaoping
Deng Xiaoping (August 22, 1904 - February 19, 1997) was a prominent Chinese politician and reformist, and the late leader of the Communist Party of China (CCP). Deng never held office as the head of state or the head of government, but served as the "de facto" leader of the People's Republic of China from the 1978 to the early 1990s. He pioneered "Socialism with Chinese characteristics" and Chinese economic reform, also known as the "socialist market economy", … - Bhumibol Adulyadej
Bhumibol Adulyadej (born December 5, 1927), is the current King of Thailand. Officially styled "the Great" (Thai: มหาราช, "Maharaja"), he is also known as Rama IX, His name, Bhumibol Adulyadej, means "Strength of the Land, Incomparable Power". Having reigned since June 9, 1946, he is the world's longest-serving current head of state and the longest-serving monarch in Thai history. - Francisco Franco
General Francisco Paulino Hermenegildo Teódulo Franco Bahamonde (4 December 1892-20 November 1975), commonly abbreviated to Francisco Franco or Francisco Franco Bahamonde, and also known as "Caudillo" or "Generalísimo", was the leader and later formal head of state of Spain from October 1936, and of all of Spain from 1939 until his death in 1975. Franco led a successful military career and reached the rank of General. - Ibrahim Babangida
General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida (born August 17 1941), popularly known as IBB, was the military ruler of Nigeria from August 1985 until his departure from office under heavy popular pressure in 1993, after his annulment of elections held that year which were widely held to have been the freest and fairest in Nigeria's post-independence history. - Mary Robinson
Mary Robinson was the first female President of Ireland, serving from 1990 to 1997, and the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, from 1997 to 2002. She first rose to prominence as an academic, barrister, campaigner and member of the Irish senate (1969–1989). She defeated "Fianna Fáil's" Brian Lenihan and Fine Gael's Austin Currie in the 1990 presidential election becoming, as an Independent candidate nominated by the Labour Party, … - Bertie Ahern
Bertie Ahern , Prime Minister - Yakubu Gowon
General Yakubu "Jack" Dan-Yumma Gowon (born October 19, 1934) was the head of state (Head of the Federal Military Government) of Nigeria from 1966 to 1975. He took power after one military coup d'etat and was overthrown in another. During his rule, the Nigerian government successfully prevented Biafran secession, and he subsequently followed a magnanimous "no victor, … - Oliver Cromwell
Oliver Cromwell was an English military and political leader best known for his involvement in making England into a republican Commonwealth and for the brutal war exercised in his conquest of Ireland. He was born in Huntingdon, seventy miles north of London, into the ranks of the middle gentry, and remained relatively obscure for his first forty years, … - Muhammadu Buhari
Muhammadu Buhari (born December 17, 1942) was the military ruler of Nigeria (December 31,1983 - August 27, 1985) and an unsuccessful candidate for president in the April 19, 2003 presidential election. His ethnic background is Fulani and his faith is Islam; his family is from Katsina State. - Omar Bongo
El Hadj Omar Bongo Ondimba became President of Gabon in 1967. He was just 31 and the world's youngest president at the time. Following the February 2005 death of Togolese president Gnassingbé Eyadéma, he became Africa's longest serving ruler, and remains in office today. He is the world's fifth longest serving ruler. - Mary McAleese
Mary McAleese , President of Ireland - Gough Whitlam
Edward Gough Whitlam, AC, QC (born 11 July 1916), known as Gough Whitlam (pronounced "Goff"), is an Australian former politician and 21st Prime Minister of Australia. After initially falling short of gaining enough seats to win government at the 1969 election, Whitlam led the Labor Party in to government at the 1972 election after 23 years of conservative government in Australia. - Fela Kuti
Fela Anikulapo Kuti (born Olufela Olusegun Oludotun Ransome-Kuti, October 15 1938 - August 2 1997), or simply Fela, was a Nigerian multi-instrumentalist musician and composer, pioneer of Afrobeat music, human rights activist, and political maverick. - Eduard Shevardnadze
Eduard Amvrosevich Shevardnadze, Russian: served as the President of Georgia from 1995 until he resigned on 23 November 2003 in the Rose Revolution. Prior to his presidency, he served under Mikhail Gorbachev as the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Soviet Union from 1985 to 1990. Shevardnadze's political skills earned him the nickname "Tetri Melia" ("White Fox"), while his former American negotiating partners, … - Saparmurat Niyazov
Saparmyrat Ataýewiç Nyýazow, meaning "Leader of Turkmens", referred to his position as the founder and president of the Association of Turkmens of the World. Foreign media criticized him as one of the world's most authoritarian and repressive dictators, highlighting his reputation of imposing his personal eccentricities upon the country. He was also known for an all-pervasive cult of personality which, in many ways, rivaled that of Joseph Stalin. - Abdulsalami Abubakar
General Abdulsalami Abubakar (born June 13, 1942) became Nigeria's eighth military Head of State in 1998, after Ironsi, Gowon, Murtala, Obasanjo, Buhari, Babangida and Abacha, since the country's independence from Britain in 1960. He was born in Minna, Niger State in Northern Nigeria. Abubakar had his earlier education at the Native Authority Primary School in Minna. Between 1957 and 1962, he attended the Provincial Secondary School, Bida. - Kim Yong-Nam
Kim Yongnam (born February 4, 1928) is a top North Korean official. Although he is not "de jure" head of state of North Korea (as no such office exists), in his capacity as Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme People's Assembly, he has the role of accepting the credentials of ambassadors, conducting foreign relations and signing treaties, making him the "de facto" head of state. He has held this office since September 5, 1998. - Tarja Halonen
Tarja Kaarina Halonen (born December 24, 1943, in Helsinki, Finland) is the President of Finland. She began her first term of office in 2000 and was re-elected on January 29, 2006. Her current term expires in 2012. She is the eleventh President of Finland and the first woman to hold the office. She married her long time cohabitator, Dr. Pentti Arajärvi, after she was elected President for the first term. - Tenzin Gyatso
Tenzin Gyatso (born 6 July 1935) is the fourteenth and current Dalai Lama. As such, he is often referred to in Western media simply as the Dalai Lama, without any qualifiers. The fifth of sixteen children of a farming family in the Tibetan province of Amdo, he was proclaimed the "tulku" (rebirth) of the thirteenth Dalai Lama at the age of two. On 17 November 1950, at the age of fifteen, … - Shinzo Abe
; born September 21 1954is the current Prime Minister of Japan, elected by a special session of the National Diet on September 26 2006. He is Japan's youngest post-World War II prime minister and the first born after the war. Abe was born into a political family, and studied political science in Japan, and had studied in the United States. He worked in the private sector until 1982 when he began work in several government jobs. - Ruhollah Khomeini
Grand Ayatollah Seyyed Ruhollah Mustafavi Khomeini (Persian: روح الله موسوی خمینی "Rūollāh Mūsavī Khomeynī" (September 21 1902 – June 3 1989) was a Shi`i Muslim cleric, philosopher and "marja" (religious authority), and the political leader of the 1979 Iranian Revolution which saw the overthrow of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the last Shah of Iran. - Megawati Sukarnoputri
Diah Permata Megawati Setiawati Soekarnoputri (born January 23, 1947), was President of Indonesia from July 2001 to October 20, 2004. She was the country's first female President, and the first Indonesian leader born after independence. On September 20 she lost her campaign for re-election in the 2004 Indonesian presidential election. She is the daughter of Indonesia's first president, Sukarno. - Shehu Shagari
Alhaji Shehu Usman Aliyu Shagari, "Turakin Sakkwato" (born May 25, 1925) was the President of Nigeria's ill-fated Second Republic (1979 - 1983), after the handover of power by General Olusegun Obasanjo's caretaker government. Shagari is a northerner of Fulani extraction and holds the title of "Turakin Sakkwato" in the Sokoto Caliphate. He was a schoolteacher for a brief period before entering politics in 1954, … - Yahya Jammeh
Yahya (Abdul-Aziz Jemus Junkung) Jammeh (born May 25, 1965) is the President of The Gambia. As chairman of the Armed Forces Provisional Ruling Council, he took control of the country in a military coup in July 1994, and was elected as president two years later, in September 1996, in widely criticized elections. He founded the Alliance for Patriotic Reorientation and Construction as his political party. - Chandrika Kumaratunga
Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga (born 29 June 1945) was the fifth President (and fourth to hold the office as Executive president) of Sri Lanka (12 November 1994 - 19 November 2005). She was the leader of the Sri Lanka Freedom Party until end of 2005. She was Sri Lanka's first female president. Her father, Solomon Bandaranaike, was a government minister at the time of her birth and later became Prime Minister. He was assassinated in 1959, when Chandrika was fourteen.
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