Last week’s heroes data mob is over, and I’m just about to announce the next one. I thought I’d take a moment to highlight a few of the heroes that were datamobbed.

krsalis’s hero is José Rival, “a Filipino polymath, nationalist and the most prominent advocate for reforms in the Philippines during the Spanish colonial era.” He was executed by a firing squad in 1896.

zenkat nominated Nelson Mandela, and added a number of quotations:

“I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.”

Danny’s hero is Benjamin Franklin who, it seems, had sixteen siblings, two of them called Joseph. He invented the lightning rod and bifocal glasses.

Some other heroes from last week’s data mob:

• Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama
• H. L. Mencken
• Mary Wollstonecraft
• Vaclav Havel