2011 Top Ten of Polemic for People

Mongelli case

Michele Mongelli is a man from Turin, Italy, who was arrested on 27 March 2009 for allegedly sexually abusing his daughter over 25 years. His son Giuseppe was also arrested on the allegation of abusing his sister and his own four daughters. Because of the similarities, this case has been compared to the Fritzl case in Austria and the Sheffield incest case in Britain

The Gospel of Wealth

"Wealth", more commonly known as "The Gospel of Wealth", is an article written by Andrew Carnegie in June of 1889 that describes the responsibility of philanthropy by the new upper class of self-made rich. The article was published in the North American Review, an opinion magazine for America's establishment. It was later published as "The Gospel of Wealth" in the Pall Mall Gazette

Hugo Leichtentritt

Hugo Leichtentritt was a German-Jewish musicologist and composer who spent much of his life in the USA. His pupils include composers Leroy Robertson and Erich Walter Sternberg

Nachman Syrkin

Nachman Syrkin was a political theorist, founder of Labor Zionism and a prolific writer in the Hebrew, Yiddish, Russian, German and English languages

Kirakos Gandzaketsi

Kirakos Gandzaketsi was an Armenian historian of the 13th century and author of the History of Armenia, a summary of events from the 4th to the 12th century and a detailed description of the events of his own days. The work concentrates primarily on the history of Medieval Armenia and events occurring in the Caucasus and Near East. The work serves as a primary source for the study of the Mongol invasions and even contains the first recorded word list of the Mongolian language. The work has been translated

Granville Woods

Granville Tailer Woods was an American inventor who held more than 50 patents in the U.S. He was the first African American mechanical and electrical engineer after the Civil War. Self-taught, he concentrated most of his work on trains and streetcars. One of his notable inventions was a device he called the Synchronous Multiplex Railway Telegraph, a variation of induction telegraph which relied on ambient static electricity from existing telegraph lines to send messages between train stations and moving

Dustin Dollin

Dustin Dollin is an Australian professional skateboarder who is one of the original team riders for Baker

Ciro Mancuso

Ciro Wayne Mancuso was a Nevada-based drug dealer convicted of running a $140-million marijuana smuggling operation for more than a decade. In cooperation with a foreign exchange student from Thailand, Mancuso built one of the largest domestic drug cartels in U.S. history

Richard Gurley Drew

Richard Gurley Drew was an American inventor who worked for Johnson and Johnson, Permacel Co., and 3M in St. Paul, Minnesota, where he invented masking tape and cellophane tape

Rebecca Lee Crumpler

Rebecca Lee Crumpler, born Rebecca Davis,, was an American physician, nurse and author. After studying at the New England Female Medical College, in 1864 she became the first African-American woman to become a doctor of medicine in the United States. Crumpler was one of the first female physician authors in the nineteenth century. In 1883, she published A Book of Medical Discourses. The book has two parts that cover the prevention and cure of infantile bowel complaints, and the life and growth of human