The Epic Search for a Famous Ukrainian (or even a Half-Ukrainian)

If you wander through various lists of "Famous Ukrainians" gathered on the internet, a couple of facts will immediately become apparent.

1. You have never heard of any of these people.
2. Those people you have heard of (the brilliant Soviet-era composer Prokofiev...the witty, yet disturbed Gogol...the beautiful young actress Milla Jovovich...the former Prime Minister of Israel, Golda Meir) were born in Ukraine, but are not of Ukrainian descent and eventually emigrated elsewhere.

That said, there are a few Ukrainians (or, at least, semi-Ukrainians) that the average American may have encountered at some point in their life (a high standard, I am aware):

• If nothing else, Ukraine can lay claim to the world's tallest living man. Leonid Stadnyk is a whopping 2.59 meters tall and still growing. Here's some photo ops the Ukrainian president managed to snag with him. Speaking of which...
  
• Viktor Yushchenko, currently the President of Ukraine, became among the more famous Eastern European heads of state after his infamous poisoning, supposedly by the pro-Russia political opposition.
• The great Tchaikovsky was Ukrainian on his father's side.
• Ruslana, the winner of the 2004 Eurovision contest, has had a few hit songs popular across Europe. She was apparently also, briefly, a member of the Ukrainian parliament...
• For sports fans, it's worth noting that the third highest goalscorer in the history of the European football club is none other than Ukraine's Andriy Shevchenko, now playing for Chelsea.
  
• There are a number of famous actors whose parents or grandparents came from Ukraine, although they were not necessarily ethnically Ukrainian: Steven Spielberg, Dustin Hoffman, Jack Palance, Walter Matthau, Alex Trebek. Also of note: the Gershwin brothers.
  
• General Secretary of the Soviet Union Leonid Brezhnev was also born in the country, to a Russian father and a Ukrainian mother. Considering Brezhnev's infamously limited mental capacity, no country would probably care to claim him--although, in all fairness, he had some stellar eyebrows. (See above photograph for empirical evidence.)