1) Cadmus - Inventor of the Phonecian Alphabet according to Herodotus which eventually developed into Greek, Latin, Hebrew, Arabic, Indian languages and their successor languages.

2) Genghis Khan - Damn near unified Asia, allowed massive transfers of knowledge and goods. Columbus was looking for his empire.

3) Jesus/Muhammad/Sidhartha...pick one

4) Pericles - key figure in Athenian Golden Age of Democracy

5)  Alexander the Great

6) Columbus

7) Marx & Engels

8) Washington/Jefferson/ USA founding fathers

9) Julius & Octavian

10) Whoever wrote the religious texts of Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism.

Close but no cigar:

Freud, Nietzsche, Hitler, Stalin, Lenin, Kublai Khan, Charlamagne, Napoleon, Lincoln, Ghandi, Mansa Musa, Sun Tzu, Guru Nanak, Jung, FDR, Teddy Roosevelet, Eisenhower, Hannibal, Smith, Churchill, Mao, Deng Xiaoping, Suleiman, Hamurabi, Einstein, Galileo, Elizabeth I, Catherine the Great, and a few others...

before I commence the arguing, is this your list?

Pericles did not invent democracy.

Also put in Leif Ericson at 6.

Yeah, off the top of my head. Certainly the most interesting figures in the history of the world to me.

Hmm, I may end up ignoring parts of Asia because I don't know much of their history.

1) Julius Caesar - While he didn't create the empire like people below him he did make it larger and less fractured by destroying the republic and conquering Gaul. What he did basically set Western Europe up to become the West.

2) Jesus/Muhammed/Buddha - Putting them all in at once, though Jesus was perhaps more influential than the other two.

3) Einstein/Newton - Basically created modern physics. Newton's work on calculus was also good.

4) Alexander/Genghis/Napoleon - All created short lived empires which drops them a bit.

5) Hitler - Did terrible stuff but undoubtably one of the most significant people in recent history.

6) Da Vinci - Most influential artist of all time and also a great inventor

7) Gallieleo/Darwin - Both did scientific works which challenged the prevailing view, rank among the great scientists.

8) Gauss - The prince of mathematicians.

Ehh, not accurate as a list - but they are all great people.

All the changes in Europe followed Columbus not Ericson. The Chinese and others were in the Americas before Columbus too.

:/

It is supposedly true - there were massive fleets built in the years following the end of the foreign Yuan Dynasty to prevent China's shores which sailed to lands thousands of miles away before the fleets were decomissioned. There are records of giraffes from Africa routinely appearing at public gatherings in China during the period as a kind of tourist trap.

@ rath

All prophets were great. just because you are exposed to a certain religion doesn't make it more influential (or it's messenger). That's like an American saying Football is the best sport in the world.

@Thesource

well off the top of your head would explain why you failed to know that a person did not write the Quran.

For each religion, you'll find people who claim that the books are written by god or angels or whatever and you are welcome to believe that but I've read significant portions of the big five and they sound pretty human to me.