One example is the queen of Judea Shlomtzion, better known as Salome Alexandra. She managed to keep the Pharisees and Sadducees from getting at each others' throats, by giving the larger Pharisees positions of religious power without taking the Sadducees out of their positions of general privilege. This kept that issue from tearing Judea apart.

However, she was both overshadowed by a later ruler, and had her remembrance lessened by the fate of her dynasty. First, her successors couldn't quite get their act together and keep Judea from erupting into civil war, which eventually led to the region falling into Roman domination, and eventually becoming part of the empire. Second, one of her successors, Herod, is really well-known. He built lots of things (most notably he renovated the Temple) and he was crazy and killed lots of people. So everyone remembers him, but no one remembers his most significant non-crazy predecessor.

She was definitely a great historical person, but also one who's been massively eclipsed by events after her lifetime.

I wish to introduce one of the lesser known Marshals of the Napoleonic Wars, Marshal Jacques MacDonald. MacDonald was the son of Neil MacEachen, whom changed his name to MacDonald upon the failure of the 1745 Jacobite Revolt. His father moved to France as a result of the failed revolt and married a French woman in North Eastern France. Born on the Seventeenth of November, 1765, MacDonald didn't have a distinguished life until the French Revolution, serving in the French army during their invasion of the Netherlands, with Napoleon during the famous Italian Campaign, and in Switzerland during the 1800 campaign. With success in Germany, he was made an ambassador to Denmark but upon returning to France four years later, he was put aside because he was associated with General Moreau, a commander that had a falling out with Napoleon and fled to America.

For a long time, he was unemployed until he was sent to advise the Viceroy of Italy, Eugene de Beauharnais. There he helped teach Eugene, supplemented by letters from Napoleon on leadership and command, and was there to help during the 1809 campaign where he helped save the day during the Battle of Wagram where he is famous for his "monstrous column" that broke the Austrian center.

However, this attack was poorly supported. He was angry at Napoleon for not properly supporting his attack, which is also where the famous Lasalle lost his life. Most of his memoirs were devoted to making himself look better than he did, this attack is seen as a decisive move but if it was risky, it was because he blamed Napoleon.

He continued with Napoleon in Russia and in Germany but looked bad when the Allies pushed MacDonald out of Leipzig during the terrible Battle of Nations. He regained his position but the damage was done and the French pulled out because it wasn't possible to hold the Allies. One of the last generals to leave Leipzig, he had to swim across the rivers that held the French rear (this is where Prince Pointanowski died from enemy musket fire).

He continued to serve in the French army and well when under Napoleon but often was either pushed by superior numbers or happenstance (in Italy after Napoleon left Italy, Moreau had left MacDonald out to dry, forcing MacDonald to fight three days against Russian troops but had to pull back due to the lack of support).

After the fall of Napoleon, he stayed loyal to the Bourbon government and didn't participate in the Hundred Days. After he retired, he wrote memoirs that would be heavily biased toward himself, trying to make himself look better for his own children rather than be honest and truthful in history.

In my readings of the Marshals, there isn't as much love for MacDonald. He is always portrayed as the unlucky individual whom was always rained on. He was unlucky to be facing fierce Russians in Italy, he had the wrong friend in France, at Leipzig he ended up being stopped by Klenau (a more competent Austrian commander). Sure, every once and a while the best do face failure, even Napoleon lost a battle, but MacDonald seemed to be the Charlie Brown of the Napoleonic Wars.

How about Alejandro Malaspina and José Bustamante y Guerra? They are best (not) known for a five year expedition from 1789 to 1794 that was modeled after the famous explorers James Cook and Conte de La Pérouse. The voyage was supposed to last three years, following in the footsteps of Cook, but its course changed several times because of the Spain’s precarious political situation during the late 18th century.

Despite these challenges, the expedition received two brand new corvettes that were among the nicest ships in the Spanish navy at the time. The expedition also had nearly unlimited funds at their disposal and access to all historical and church archives, government and court records, and navigational information in any Spanish territory by order of the king of Spain. Over the course of their journey, they collected huge amounts of political, scientific, and navigational information. When it was all said and done, the expedition actually lasted for more than five years. They sailed across the Atlantic to the Río de la Plata and around the tip of South America to Chile. From there, their vessels sailed to Peru, Ecuador, Panama, Mexico, the Pacific Northwest, Alaska, the Philippines, China, New Zealand, and Australia before being recalled to Spain in 1794. Like Cook, they had originally planned to circumnavigate the globe, but the navy needed the ships to be outfitted for an impending war with Britain, so they turned back across the Pacific to Buenos Aires.

Once they returned to Spain, Malaspina, attempting to use his influence with the upper echelon of the navy and with friendly ministers, got himself embroiled in a conspiracy to replace the unpopular Manuel Godoy as chief minister. Completely underestimating Godoy’s power and the danger of espousing Enlightenment thought in the aftermath of the French Revolution, he was arrested for treason and spent ten years in prison for slandering the names of the ministers. José Bustamante y Guerra had to completely cut himself off from the expedition that he had co-captained. As a result, most of the expedition’s work was confiscated. Virtually all of the information went unpublished, lost, and forgotten, and a definitive account of the voyage was never published. Malaspina’s fall prevented him from becoming a household name like Cook and, perhaps more importantly, denied Spain the prestige that other explorers brought home as a result of their exploration and scientific endeavors. To this day, many still think of Spain as a backward, dogmatic empire...