Search the name James Foley and you land not on a biography but on a disambiguation page listing twelve completely different people who share nothing but a name. This deep dive treats that single utilitarian web page as a compressed timeline of human valuation, revealing how the very definition of a notable life evolved across more than two centuries.

From 19th-century congressmen, lawyers, judges, and farmer-politicians whose official paper trails guaranteed their survival in the archives, the list branches out into cricketers, a football player, a Catholic bishop, a computer graphics pioneer, a film director, a children's illustrator, a diplomat, and a journalist, tracing how mass media and the internet democratized the historical record.

• Why early notability depended on holding public office and generating records
• How  ...