The 100 Greatest Americans Of All-Time According To RWN

After putting together a list of the 40 greatest Americans of all-time last Friday in response to the awful list of the 100 greatest Americans compiled by readers at the The Discovery Channel, I felt compelled to finish the job.

So, I put together a 100 greatest Americans list for RWN. You’ll notice that it’s very thin on actors, singers, & athletes and that’s primarily because I don’t think what they do is terribly important when it’s compared to the accomplishments of the Founding Fathers, great military leaders, Presidents of note, titans of industry, and leading scientists.

So, here’s the revised, unranked list, broken out into 3 groups — the top 25, the next 25, and the bottom 50.

Top 25

John Adams
Alexander Graham Bell
Thomas Edison
Albert Einstein
Henry Ford
Ben Franklin
Ulysses S. Grant
Alexander Hamilton
Sam Houston
Andrew Jackson
Thomas Jefferson
Martin Luther King
Abe Lincoln
Douglas MacArthur
James Madison
James Monroe
Gouverneur Morris
Tom Paine
George S. Patton
Ronald Reagan
Teddy Roosevelt
Jonas Salk
William Tecumseh Sherman
George Washington
Orville And Wilbur Wright

Selections 25-50

Samuel Adams
Susan B. Anthony
Norman Borlaug
Andrew Carnegie
Willis Haviland Carrier
Vinton Cerf & Robet Kahn
Samuel Colt
Frederick Douglass
Dwight Eisenhower
Tommy Franks
Bill Gates
John Jay
John Hancock
Patrick Henry
Lewis & Clark
George Marshall
John Marshall
George Mason
Samuel Morse
Robert Oppenheimer
“Black Jack” Pershing
James Polk
Nikola Tesla
Harry Truman
Mark Twain

Selections 50-100

John Quincy Adams
Ethan Allen
Stephen Austin
Clara Barton
Stephen Bechtel
Omar Bradley
Werner Von Braun
John Moses Browning
Henry Clay
Davy Crockett
Stephen Decatur
Walt Disney
Dorothea Dix
Philo Farnsworth
Charles Grandison Finney
Robert Goddard
Billy Graham
Nathanael Greene
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Stonewall Jackson
John Paul Jones
Robert E. Lee
John F. Kennedy
Ray Kroc
Dwight L. Moody
J. Pierpont Morgan
James Naismith
Chester Nimitz
James Otis
Edgar Allan Poe
Elvis Presley
John Rockerfeller
Franklin Roosevelt
Jackie Robinson
Babe Ruth
Winfield Scott
B. F. Skinner
Elizabeth Stanton
Harriet Tubman
Sam Walton
Booker T. Washington
Anthony Wayne
John Wayne
James Watson
Thomas Watson
Daniel Webster
Eli Whitney
Woodrow Wilson
Cornelius Vanderbilt
Brigham Young

Furthermore, as an extra added bonus, if there are any bloggers out there who’d like to post their own lists, link back to this post, and then let me know about it in the comment section, via email, or via trackback, — I’ll link to your list. The blogs that have already done so (on Friday’s post), are listed below…

Betsy’s Page
Res et Rationes
Conservative Response
This Blog Is Full Of Crap
Don Singleton
Iowa Voice
Right Wing Nuthouse
Isaac Schrödinger
John In Carolina
Bookworm Room
Villainous Company
The Daily Blitz
The Nose On Your Face

*** Update #1 ***: James Watson was dropped down to the bottom 50 (I always seem to forget that his partner Francis Crick was a Brit), Ulysses S. Grant was moved up to the top 25 in his place, & Samuel Morse moved up to the 2nd group of 25 to replace Grant. Also, Robert Kennedy, who was accidentally included, was dropped, and Clara Barton was added to the list.

*** Update #2 ***: On 6/27/05, I decided to dump Steve Jobs and Charles Lindbergh and add Ethan Allen and James Otis to the 51-100 list.

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