Antonio Gramsci (Italian pronunciation: [anˈtɔːnjo ˈɡramʃi]) (January 22, 1891 – April 27, 1937) was an Italian writer, politician, political theorist, and linguist. He was a founding member and onetime leader of the Communist Party of Italy and was imprisoned by Benito Mussolini's Fascist regime.

Gramsci was one of the most important Marxist thinkers in the 20th century. His writings are heavily concerned with the analysis of culture and political leadership and he is notable as a highly original thinker within modern European thought. He is renowned for his concept of cultural hegemony as a means of maintaining the state in a capitalist society.

Gramsci was born in Ales, on the island of Sardinia. He was the fourth of seven sons of Francesco Gramsci (1860–1937), a low-level official from Gaeta, and his wife, Giuseppina Marcias (1861–1932). Gramsci's father was of Arbëreshë, Albanian descent, while his mother belonged to a local landowning family. The senior Gramsci's financial difficulties and troubles with the police forced the family to move about through several villages in Sardinia until they finally settled in Ghilarza.

Riccardo Cucciolla (5 September 1924 – 17 September 1999) was an Italian film actor. He appeared in 60 films between 1953 and 1999. He won the Best Actor Award at the 1971 Cannes Film Festival for the film Sacco e Vanzetti.

He was born in Puglia, Italy and died in Rome, Italy.

Olavo Luiz Pimentel de Carvalho (Campinas, April 29, 1947) is a Brazilian journalist,, and essayist on several issues like the history of astrology and mysticism; the history of revolutionary mentality; and philosophical anthropology, known for his conservative political stances, and for being a vehement critic of leftist.

Now living in the United States in the state of Virginia, he is an international correspondent and writes a weekly column for the Brazilian newspaper Diário do Comércio. He also teaches philosophy on a free course to over 1000 students online. Carvalho has previously written for several other magazines and newspapers, such as Bravo!, Primeira Leitura, O Globo, Época and Zero Hora, and taught philosophy to a smaller circle of students, while still living in Brazil. He also translated to Portuguese works of important philosophers of the 20th century, such as the Romanian Constantin Noica, the Spanish Xavier Zubiri, the French René Guénon, the German-American Eric Voegelin and Leo Strauss. He has commented and developed researches and theories on the works of Aristotle. He has also delivered lectures on his own work and on the work of several of those philosophers mentioned above.

Eric John Ernest Hobsbawm, CH, FBA, FRSL (born 9 June 1917) is a British Marxist historian, public intellectual, and author. His best known works include the trilogy about the long 19th century: The Age of Revolution: Europe 1789-1848, The Age of Capital: 1848-1875 and The Age of Empire: 1875-1914; and an edited volume which introduced the influential idea of 'invented traditions'.

Hobsbawm was born in 1917 in Alexandria, Egypt, to Leopold Percy Obstbaum and Nelly Grün, both Jewish, and he grew up in Vienna, Austria and Berlin, Germany. A clerical error at birth altered his surname from Obstbaum to Hobsbawm. Although the family lived in German-speaking countries, his parents spoke to him and his younger sister Nancy in English.

His father died in 1929, and he started working as an au pair and English tutor. He became an orphan at age 14 upon the death of his mother. Subsequently, he and Nancy were adopted by his maternal aunt, Gretl, and paternal uncle, Sidney, who married and had a son named Peter. Hobsbawm was a schoolboy in Berlin when Hitler came to power in 1933; that year the family moved to London where he attended St Marylebone Grammar School.

Paulino Iglesias Posse (October 18, 1850 – December 9, 1925), better known as Pablo Iglesias, was a Spanish socialist and labour leader. He is regarded as the father of Spanish socialism; having founded the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE) in 1879 and the Spanish General Workers' Union (UGT) in 1888.

Iglesias was born to humble parents who called him Paulino. He attended school between the ages of six and nine, when his father, a municipal laborer, died. Pablo, his younger brother, and their mother put their possessions in a small covered cart and walked with it to live in Madrid. Pablo's mother survived there by begging, and both boys entered the Hospicio of San Fernando. They completed primary schooling there, and Pablo learned printing. Aged twelve he left the Hospicio to work and to help support his mother. He worked as a printer, gradually improving his wages. While he was rendered unemployed by a strike, his brother died of tuberculosis.

He attended evening classes and learned French. This let him read classic works of French political science, translate the works of French socialists and participate successfully in international congresses. Protected by the 1869 Constitution, the Spanish section of the International Workers Association (AIT) organized a series of conferences in Madrid. Iglesias attended, and in 1870, was invited to enter the printers section. The appearance of Solidarity, newspaper of the International, started him on the intense journalistic career that occupied the rest of his life.