#6 Adolf Hitler, the postcard painter.

The eight-year-old Hitler took singing lessons, sang in the church choir, and even considered becoming a priest. Then as a teenager, he worked as a casual labourer and eventually as a painter, selling watercolours. The Academy of Fine Arts Vienna rejected him twice, in 1907 and 1908, because of his "unfitness for painting". The director recommended that Hitler study architecture, but he lacked the academic credentials. Then he worked as a struggling painter in Vienna, copying scenes from postcards and selling his paintings to merchants and tourists. After the second refusal from the Academy of Arts, Hitler gradually ran out of money. By 1909, he sought refuge in a homeless shelter, and by the beginning of 1910 had settled permanently into a house for poor working men. It was in Vienna that Hitler first became an active anti-Semite.

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