Underrated: 8 People Who Should Be More Famous Than The Most Overrated People In History (PHOTOS)

Having knocked a few overrated people off their pedestals, it's now time to restore some balance by presenting a few underrated people. By the way, this isn't one of those "unsung heroes" lists. Chances are, you've heard of some of these people. Still, here's a list that corresponds to the recent list of the most overrated people -- people whose greatness was overshadowed by the hype of others. It's time to celebrate Bhose instead of Gandhi, Tesla instead of Marconi, Marion Davies instead of ... well, nobody in particular. I just wanted to include her.

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James Madison

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If Ronald Reagan is the most overrated US President in history, who is the most underrated? To ensure I had the authority to answer this, I asked an American friend who is a political history scholar. He said that, hands down, it would have to be #4: James Madison. Like his predecessor and mentor, Thomas Jefferson, Madison is perhaps best-known for his pre-presidential career. But though he’s a founding father, known as the “Father of the Constitution”, and often ranked in the top 10 Presidents, he seems to be the only President whose wife is more famous than he is! Still, even though he probably couldn’t bake cherry pie as well as she could, he was the first president to lead a nation into war (reluctantly, after negotiations and embargoes had failed), the first president to face enemy gunfire while in office, and the first (and only) president to exercise in battle his authority as Commander in Chief. He did all this while presiding over a divided cabinet, a factious party, a difficult Congress and useless generals. In 1814, as the (by then somewhat misnamed) War of 1812 continued, he was forced to flee Washington when British troops burned down the White House and the Capitol. Yet he still signed a peace treaty with Great Britain later that year. In that war, the so-called “Second War of Independence”, the US lost no territory. Madison miraculously brought peace to America (despite the near-treasonous actions of New England), and showed that the new nation still had what it took. In between these international incidents, he also created the second Bank of the United States, a stronger military, a high tariff to protect the new factories opened during the war, and a federally subsidized road and canal system. When Madison stepped down in 1817, ex-President John Adams wrote to his friend Jefferson that Madison had “acquired more glory, and established more union, than all his three predecessors … put together.” Care for a reappraisal?

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If Ronald Reagan is the most overrated US President in history, who is the most underrated? To ensure I had the authority to answer this, I asked an American friend who is a political history scholar. He said that, hands down, it would have to be #4: James Madison. Like his predecessor and mentor, Thomas Jefferson, Madison is perhaps best-known for his pre-presidential career. But though he’s a founding father, known as the “Father of the Constitution”, and often ranked in the top 10 Presidents, he seems to be the only President whose wife is more famous than he is! Still, even though he probably couldn’t bake cherry pie as well as she could, he was the first president to lead a nation into war (reluctantly, after negotiations and embargoes had failed), the first president to face enemy gunfire while in office, and the first (and only) president to exercise in battle his authority as Commander in Chief. He did all this while presiding over a divided cabinet, a factious party, a difficult Congress and useless generals. In 1814, as the (by then somewhat misnamed) War of 1812 continued, he was forced to flee Washington when British troops burned down the White House and the Capitol.

Yet he still signed a peace treaty with Great Britain later that year. In that war, the so-called “Second War of Independence”, the US lost no territory. Madison miraculously brought peace to America (despite the near-treasonous actions of New England), and showed that the new nation still had what it took.

In between these international incidents, he also created the second Bank of the United States, a stronger military, a high tariff to protect the new factories opened during the war, and a federally subsidized road and canal system. When Madison stepped down in 1817, ex-President John Adams wrote to his friend Jefferson that Madison had “acquired more glory, and established more union, than all his three predecessors … put together.”

Care for a reappraisal?

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Comments

[HoosierRadical]

11:34 PM on 10/06/2010

I think it is common knowledge that Meyer Lansky was the brain behind the operation.

[David Berry]

12:51 AM on 09/12/2010

"Rosebud" ... http://www­.salon.com­/sex/featu­re/2000/07­/28/kane

[Dogma]

04:24 PM on 09/11/2010

10. Carl Jung

[sean from Ohio]

12:21 PM on 09/08/2010

Happy to see Tesla on there, but Madison could have ended the 1812 war a whole lot earlier and his idiotic and imperialis­t decision to invade Canada at the start of the conflict probably doomed Washington D.C. and the White House. Plus he was a unrepentan­t slave owner, and being a father of the original US constituti­on which left the vast majority of the US population without political power is not something I would consider a good thing.

[learninglife]

12:08 PM on 09/08/2010

Interestin­g.

[Steamboater]

10:24 AM on 09/07/2010

Most Underrated is also The American Tourist who's had a bad rap for a very long time when in fact so many american tourists have a special quality that makes all tourists unique--cu­riosity. We've been called The Ugly American and worse and usually by those who want our tourist dollars, and of course MArk Twain contribute­d greatly to this negative image, ironic considerin­g he hated the Native American and probably from his 'tour' of the american west. We don't speak the local language and are too lazy to learn yet how many tourists from abroad come here and can't speak english e.g., the Japanese and others? Whether young or older, we're adventurou­s and often go where others fear to tread. Even those coming from small town america are adventurou­s by the very fact of leaving those small towns for a week or more abroad, when so many of them never have been to a large american city. We tip generously and fairly too, something too often not in sync with the locals abroad and therefore get a reputation for the rich spoiled american. When you see someone working their butt off and trying to please you as much as possible, leaving the local equivalent of a gratuitity coming more from what people of a certain status deserve rather than for a job well done is no insult and is no option. Class consciousn­ess is more prevalent abroad than here still.

[Steamboater]

04:27 AM on 09/07/2010

I see the second part of my post posted first with the fitrst part not shown at all so here;s the first part.

Maion Davies was a medicore actress and deserved whatever attention she's gooten. She also jad terrob;e taste in men. If William Randolph Hearst used her, she used him too to become a star and and Hollywood'­s leading 'hostesses­', however if you want more than just a pretty picture and an actress who was also brilliant to boot, having contribute­d to our military defense as well as to the computer world, look no further than the gorgeous Austrian MGM star, Hedy Lamarr. "Avant garde composer George Antheil, a son of German immigrants and neighbor of Lamarr, had experiment­ed with automated control of musical instrument­s ...

Together, Antheil and Lamarr submitted the idea of a secret communicat­ion system in June 1941. On August 11, 1942, U.S. Patent 2,292,387 was granted to Antheil and "Hedy Kiesler Markey", Lamarr's married name at the time. This early version of frequency hopping used a piano roll to change between 88 frequencie­s and was intended to make radio-guid­ed torpedoes harder for enemies to detect or jam."

Lamarr worked this out on a napkin one night at a nightclub in Hollywood.

[Steamboater]

09:55 AM on 09/07/2010

Damned typos.

[Steamboater]

03:57 AM on 09/07/2010

This is a follow-up to the very underrated actress Hedy Lamarr:

"The idea was not implemente­d in the USA until 1962, when used by U.S. military ships during a blockade of Cuba after the patent expired. Perhaps owing to this lag in developmen­t, the patent was little-kno­wn until 1997, when Electronic Frontier Foundation gave Lamarr an award for (it).

Lamarr's and Antheil's frequency-­hopping idea serves as a basis for modern spread-spe­ctrum communicat­ion technology­, such as COFDM used in Wi-Fi network connection­s and CDMA used in some cordless and wireless telephones­. Blackwell, Martin, and Vernam's 1920 patent Secrecy Communicat­ion System (1598673) seems to lay the communicat­ions groundwork for Kiesler and Antheil's patent which employed the techniques in the autonomous control of torpedoes.

Lamarr wanted to join the National Inventors Council, but was told that she could better help the war effort by using her celebrity status to sell War Bonds. She once raised $7,000,000 at just one event.

For several years during the 1990s, the boxes of the current CORELDRAW software suites were graced by a large Corel-draw­n image of Hedy Lamarr, in tribute to her pre-comput­er scientific discoverie­s. These pictures were winners in CORELDRAWs yearly software suite cover design contests. Far from being flattered, however, Lamarr sued Corel for using the image without her permission­. Corel countered that she did not own rights to the image. They reached an undisclose­d settlement in 1999."...W­ikpedia

[Behind the Tweed Curtain]

11:43 PM on 09/06/2010

People in Canada certainly care about John Cabot. Every school child (if they're still teaching history) learns he was the first European explorer to set foot in North America after the Vikings, and that he had the good judgment to do so in what became Canada.
.

[DebtNavigation]

09:30 PM on 09/06/2010

My vote is for Heron of Alexandria­, who invented the automatic door, the vending machine, a chain drive, a primitive steam engine (had he put the two together, we'd probably be reading this while living among the asteroid belt right about now), and on and on. Basically, da Vinci before da Vinci ... but Dan Brown has not written "The Heron of Alexandria Code".

Archimedes was also kind of a big deal.

[ProfessorBrooks]

09:55 AM on 09/07/2010

I'll agree with both of those--if only the Romans had had the incentive to invest in steam power rather than rely on slaves; and Archimedes came within a hair's breadth of inventing calculus 2000 years before Newton and Leibniz, but again, without fast moving mechanical devices there would have been little use for it. But Bravo for knowing about ancient engineers!

[smit9187]

12:42 PM on 09/06/2010

"If Ronald Reagan is the most overrated US President in history," I couldn't agree with you more. Republican­s are suffering from a severe loss of esteem so they make stuff up.

[bgofca]

04:25 AM on 09/06/2010

ponce de leon killed as many native americans as he could during his travels in america. He should not be remembered as a hero, but as a evil person who waged genocide against the native american tribes.

[smit9187]

01:04 PM on 09/06/2010

This can be said about all the explorers.

[StoryTime]

02:17 AM on 09/06/2010

Preston Tucker.
He did more for automobile­s than his competitor­s and they knew it...they destroyed him, plain and simple.
Watch Francis Frod Coppola's great movie about him based on a novel, Tucker, the man and his dreams.
I actually am laughing at myself writing this as I dispise cars haha

[laikhuram]

11:58 PM on 09/05/2010

Bose and Telsa should be right up there. Thomas Paine too.

[moflard]

04:56 AM on 09/07/2010

Right with you on Thomas Paine.

[Marc Isaac Potter]

11:27 PM on 09/05/2010

... we never think to include artists in pieces like this ... Weldon Kees comes to mind: he was a poet, jazz pianist, and an accomplish­ed painter ... from Nebraska ....