Alanis Morissette is a Canadian-American singer-songwriter, guitarist, record producer and actress. She has won 16 Juno Awards and seven Grammy Awards, was nominated for two Golden Globe Awards. Morissette began her career in Canada, and as a teenager recorded two dance-pop albums, Alanis and Now Is the Time, under MCA Records Canada. Her first international album was the rock-influenced Jagged Little Pill, released in 1995. Jagged has sold more than 33 million units globally. Her followin...

Elon Musk is a South African-born, Canadian-American business magnate, inventor and investor. He is currently the CEO and CTO of SpaceX and CEO and Chief Product Architect of Tesla Motors. He was an early investor in SpaceX, PayPal, Inc.Tesla Motors, and Zip2, and is widely considered a co-founder of each. He has also envisioned a conceptual high-speed transportation system known as the Hyperloop.Tesla Motors was co-founded by Martin Eberhard, Marc Tarpenning, JB Straubel, Ian Wrig...

The Blessed Teresa of Calcutta, M.C., commonly known as Mother Teresa, was a Roman Catholic Religious Sister and missionary of Albanian origin who lived most of her life in India of which, since 1948, she was a citizen. A controversial figure both during her life and after her death, Mother Teresa was widely admired by many for her charitable works, but also widely criticised, particularly for her campaigns against contraception and for substandard conditions in the hospices for which she ...

Robert John Downey, Jr. is an American actor who made his screen debut at the age of five, appearing in his father Robert Downey, Sr.'s film Pound. He has appeared in roles associated with the Brat Pack, such as Less Than Zero and Weird Science. Other films he has starred in include Air America, Soapdish, and Natural Born Killers. He starred as Charlie Chaplin, the title character in the 1992 film Chaplin, earning him a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actor. Downey has starred in...

Al Pacino is an American film and stage actor and director. He is well known for playing mobsters, including Michael Corleone in The Godfather trilogy and Tony Montana in Scarface, and often appeared on the other side of the law—as a police officer, a detective and lawyer.Pacino won the Academy Award for Best Actor at the 65th Academy Awards in 1992 for his performance as Frank Slade in Scent of a Woman. Prior to his win he had received seven Oscar nominations, including one that s...

Johnny Depp is an American actor, film producer, and musician. He has won the Golden Globe Award and Screen Actors Guild award for Best Actor. He rose to prominence on the 1980s television series 21 Jump Street, becoming a teen idol.Depp has been nominated for major acting awards, including three nominations for Academy Award for Best Actor. Depp won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy for Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street and the S...

Rosa Parks was an African-American civil rights activist, whom the United States Congress called "the first lady of civil rights" and "the mother of the freedom movement". Her birthday, February 4, and the day she was arrested, December 1, have both become Rosa Parks Day, commemorated in the U.S. states of California and Ohio.On December 1, 1955, in Montgomery, Alabama, Parks refused to obey bus driver James F. Blake's order that she give up her seat in the colored section to a whi...

George Harrison was an English musician, singer and songwriter who achieved international fame as the lead guitarist of the Beatles. Although John Lennon and Paul McCartney were the band's primary songwriters, most of their albums included at least one Harrison composition, including "While My Guitar Gently Weeps", "Here Comes the Sun" and "Something", which became the Beatles' second-most-covered song. Harrison released several best-selling singles and albums as a solo perfor...

Céline Dion is a Canadian singer. Born into a large family from Charlemagne, Quebec, she emerged as a teen star in the French-speaking world after her manager and future husband René Angélil mortgaged his home to finance her first record. During the 1990s, with the help of Angélil, she achieved worldwide fame after signing with Epic Records and releasing several English albums along with additional French albums, becoming one of the most successful artists in pop music history.&n...

Pierre Trudeau was the 15th Prime Minister of Canada from April 20, 1968 to June 4, 1979, and again from March 3, 1980 to June 30, 1984. Trudeau began his political career as a lawyer, intellectual, and activist in Quebec politics. In the 1960s, he entered federal politics by joining the Liberal Party of Canada. He was appointed as Lester Pearson's Parliamentary Secretary, and later became his Minister of Justice. From his base in Montreal, Trudeau took control of the Liberal Party...

Tommy Douglas was a Scottish-born Canadian social-democratic politician and Baptist minister. He was elected to the Canadian House of Commons in 1935 as a member of the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF). He left federal politics to become the Saskatchewan CCF's leader and then the seventh Premier of Saskatchewan from 1944 to 1961. His government was the first democratic socialist government in North America, and it introduced the continent's first single-payer, universal health ca...

Mark Shuttleworthis a British-South African entrepreneur, and space tourist who became the first citizen of an independent African country to travel to space. Shuttleworth founded Canonical Ltd. and provides leadership for the Ubuntu operating system. He currently lives on the Isle of Man and holds dual citizenship of South Africa and the United Kingdom.Learn more about him in this informative biography!