Avicenna
Avicenna was born in Afshana, a village near Bukhara (in present-day Uzbekistan), the capital of the Samanids, a Persian dynasty in Central Asia and Greater Khorasan. His mother, named Sitāra, was from Bukhara; his father, Abdullāh, was a respected Ismaili scholar from Balkh, an important town of the Samanid Empire, in what is today Balkh Province, Afghanistan. His father worked in the government of Samanid in the village Kharmasain, a Sunni regional power. After five years, his younger brother, Mahmoud, was born. Avicenna first began to learn the Quran and literature in such a way that when he was ten years old he had essentially learned all of them.
Laurence Waddell
Waddell had actively travelled around British controlled India in search for Kapilavastu, the Buddha's supposed birthplace. Cunningham had previously identified Kapilavastu as the village of Bhuila in India which Waddell and other orientalists concluded to be incorrect. They were searching for the birthplace by taking into account the topographical and geographical hints left by the ancient chinese travellers, Fa Hien and Hiuen Tsiang. Waddell was first to point out the importance of the discovery of Asoka's pillar in Nigliva in 1893 and estimate Buddha's birthplace as Lumbini. He subsequently corresponded with Government of India and arranged for the exploration of the area.It was also Waddell who was appointed to conduct the exploration to recover the inscriptions, etc.; but at the last moment, when due to adverse circumstances prevented him from proceeding, and Mr. Führer was sent to carry out the exploration arranged by him, he found the Lumbini grove, etc., with their inscriptions at the very spots pointed out by him.