History classes tend to just skim along the top of major world events, but there's a wealth of stories buried underneath. And a bunch of people who made enormous contributions to the world and got little credit.
Sometimes they were swept aside by other headlines, some of them never sought the limelight, and sometimes others just plain took credit for what they did.
There are 26 amazing people in this list from Cracked, although longtime Neatorama readers may be familiar with some of them, because we love to look under the surface of history.