Ferenc Puskás (1927–2006): the legendary footballer of the 20th century. He played for Real Madrid from 1958 to 1966 and returned to Hungary in 1991.
Ágoston Haraszthy, the Hungarian-born “father of California wine culture”, established the famous Buena Vista Winery in Sonoma, California, in the 19th century.
Harry Houdini (Budapest, 1874 – Detroit, 1926): the greatest magician on earth.
Count Sámuel Teleki (1845–1916): Hungarian explorer, the first European to reach Lake Rudolf (today Lake Turkana) in Kenya, and the first to attempt to climb Kilimanjaro.
Zsa Zsa Gábor (1917–2016): born in Budapest, she settled in the United States and from the 1950s worked in Hollywood as an actress in many films. She married nine times.
Dennis Gabor (Dénes Gábor; Budapest, 1900 – London, 1979): the Hungarian physicist received the Nobel Prize in 1971 “for his invention and development of the holographic method”.
László József Bíró (1899–1985): a journalist who invented the ballpoint pen in 1938. His pen could write for a year without refilling, a great advance in the era of the fountain pen, which needed regular refills. From 1940 he worked in Argentina, and he died in Buenos Aires.
Paprika is not just a spice: Albert Szent-Györgyi received the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1937 for his discoveries in connection with the biological combustion processes, with special reference to vitamin C and the catalysis of fumaric acid, which he made while examining Hungarian paprika.
Some outstanding photographers of the 20th century, Robert Capa, André Kertész and László Moholy-Nagy, also came from Hungary.