- LONDON (AP) _ A British Broadcasting Corp. readers poll has chosen playwright
William Shakespeare as Britain's personality of the Millennium, the organization
said Friday.
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- Britain's World War II leader Winston
Churchill was second, with England's earliest typographer, William Caxton,
in third place.
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- The poll was organized by Radio 4's ``Today''
news program.
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- Listeners voted by telephone on their
choice to find a short list of six. Initial nominees included Elizabeth
I and Henry VIII as well as some light-hearted entries such as Rolling
Stone Mick Jagger and the puppet Miss Piggy from the Muppets.
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- Listeners then were asked to determine
the final placings of the six. ``Even though many thousands of listeners
voted for other nominees, I think most people would agree that Shakespeare
should be there or thereabouts,'' said ``Today'' editor Rod Liddle. Shakespeare
polled 11,717 votes, Winston Churchill 10,957, and Caxton 7,109, Liddle
said.
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- Biologist Charles Darwin, whose 19th
century theory of evolution by natural selection changed mankind's view
of nature, was fourth with 6,337 votes.
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- Physicist Isaac Newton, who in the 17th
century developed the modern world's understanding of mathematics and physics,
was fifth with 4,664 votes.
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- Albert Einstein said that Newton's book,
``The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy'' was ``perhaps the
greatest intellectual stride that it has ever been granted to any man to
make.''
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- Oliver Cromwell, leader of the victorious
English Parliamentary forces who defeated and beheaded Charles I in England's
17th century civil war, was sixth with 4,653 votes.
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