People Who Changed The World

The number of people who changed the world number in the billions. This is because we all change the world in one way or another. There are particular individuals, however, that have done this in large scale recognizable ways. Here are just a few. 

1. Jesus. Jesus is a very popular yet very controversial figure. There is very little consensus on exactly who he was. One thing that most people agree on is the fact that he did change the world. Despite the diversity of beliefs and theologies surrounding this man, Jesus is widely known for demonstrating perfect love at the risk of persecution. He has been regarded as a great teacher since his execution in the first century A.D., even in the Himalayan region of the far east. 
2. John Lennon. John Lennon was the singer of the band called The Beatles. The band began in the fifties as a collection of straightlaced young men. The Vietnam war and the psychedelic wave of the 1960s and 1970s transformed John Lennon into a soothsayer of peace. John became a messenger of peace in the midst of a confused culture war in Europe and the United States before his assassination in 1981. 
3. Dorothy Day. Dorothy Day was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1897 before moving to Chicago in 1906. Her attraction to destitute neighborhoods and her witnessing of American journalists going to jail for opposing World War I inspired the founding of the Catholic Worker Movement. Her leaderless movement provided much needed services to poor people with an underlying message of compassion, revolution and peace.
4. Nicolaus Copernicus. Science and the human sense of truth are always evolving. Anomalies continually poke holes in the prevailing theories of the day, and the old guard visciously attacks any mention of them. Nicolaus Copernicus was an astronomer, born in 1473, who theorized that the Earth revolved around the sun. This was a revolutionary idea during the initial years of the Renaissance when Europe was still largely under the control of the Catholic world view. Copernicus' theory sparked a scientific revolution in Europe which completely changed the world and the way in which people looked at it. He certainly wasn't the last person to change the way humans see themselves, however. There are many more coming our way. 
5. Yogananda. Paramahansa Yogananda was an Indian Swami who spread the message of the universality of spirit. He maintained that the direct and pure experience of meditation is what unites the saints of all religions together in every age. Yogananda was born in India in 1893 before taking the swami order vows in 1915 and later moving to California to teach "simple living and high thinking." Yogananda is best known for his book, "Autobiography of a Yogi," and as the Founder of Self Realization Fellowship, a monastery in Southern California. Because of his enormous but subtle influence on western culture, one can say that he was one of many people who changed the world for the better.