| E hene, 21.07.2008, 08:53 PM |
By Charles Starmer-Smith
Readers have named their most Mandela-like figures in our South Africa flights competition.
Mother Teresa garnered more votes than Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Sir Winston Churchill, Mahatma Gandhi ? even Jesus Christ.
Mother Teresa has beaten off strong competition to be awarded the mantle of the most inspirational figure of all time by Telegraph readers.
Last month, Telegraph Travel and South African Airways launched a campaign to find the world’s 90 most inspirational icons, in celebration of Nelson Mandela’s 90th birthday on July 18.
Readers were invited to vote for the people – living or dead – who have best demonstrated Mandela’s key characteristics: courage, dignity, humility, persistence, forgiveness and kindness.
You chose the Roman Catholic nun Mother Teresa, who was born in Albania, as your leading icon, ahead of Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Winston Churchill.
John Lennon, Bob Marley and Sir Elton John were your favourite icons from the world of music; you voted Muhammad Ali, Sir Steve Redgrave, Jesse Owens, Ellen MacArthur and Tiger Woods as your greatest sporting heroes.
In politics, the most popular figures were Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King and Churchill, while in science the most highly placed were Sir Alexander Fleming, Albert Einstein and Marie Curie.
Charles Darwin, Louis Pasteur and Isambard Kingdom Brunel all finished below names more familiar to the MTV generation: Jamie Oliver, Damien Hirst and Oprah Winfrey – she was in 31st position between the footballers Pele and Bobby Moore. Leading figures who narrowly missed out on the top 90 included David Livingstone, Beethoven and Yehudi Menuhin.
The inspirational 90
1 Mother Teresa
2 Archbishop Desmond Tutu
3 Sir Winston Churchill
4 Mahatma Gandhi
5 Sir Alexander Fleming
6 Muhammad Ali
7 Martin Luther King
8 John Lennon
9 Albert Einstein
10 Marie Curie
11 Sir Steve Redgrave
12 Jesse Owens
13 Dr Christiaan Barnard
14 Oscar Schindler
15 Bob Marley
16 The 14th Dalai Lama
17 Antonio Gaudi
18 Tim Berners-Lee
19 Aung San Suu Kyi
20 Diana, Princess of Wales
21 Audrey Hepburn
22 Sir Elton John
23 Myriam Makeba
24 Ellen MacArthur
25 Tiger Woods
26 Steve Biko
27 F W de Klerk
28 Maya Angelou
29 Bill & Melinda Gates
30 Pele
31 Oprah Winfrey
32 Bobby Moore
33 Albert Schweitzer
34 Emmeline Pankhurst
35 François Pienaar
36 Mikhail Gorbachev
37 Rosa Parks
38 Francis Crick
39 Sir Donald Bradman
40 Dame Kelly Holmes
41 Jamie Oliver
42 Bernard Kouchner
43 Virginia McKenna
44 Anita Roddick
45 Sigmund Freud
46 James Watson
47 Al Gore
48 Margaret Thatcher
49 Max Planck
50 Bob Geldof
51 John F Kennedy
52 Peter Benenson
53 Florence Nightingale
54 William Wilberforce
55 Bob Dylan
56 Elvis Presley
57 Damien Hirst
58 Pope John Paul II
59 Stephen Hawking
60 Jackie Robinson
61 Roger Federer
62 Jesus Christ
63 Leonardo da Vinci
64 Pablo Picasso
65 Charles Darwin
66 Sir David Attenborough
67 Sir Ian Botham
68 Sir Paul McCartney
69 Barack Obama
70 Jane Tomlinson
71 David Beckham
72 Franklin D Roosevelt
73 Gary Player
74 Helen Suzman
75 Lance Armstrong
76 Paul Simon
77 Sir Bobby Charlton
78 Terry Waite
79 Billy Graham
80 Bono
81 George Best
82 Isambard Kingdom Brunel
83 Louis Pasteur
84 Morgan Tsvangirai
85 Queen Elizabeth II
86 Rubén Dario
87 Sir Frank Whittle
88 Daniel Barenboim
89 Ian Douglas Smith
90 John Sentamu