Answer:
I mean, if you want someone we should all be familiar with who lived during the middle ages. . . Marco Polo, duh.
Great thing about Marco Polo is probably every kid YOU know knows of Marco Polo, and every kid THEY know probably knows about Marco Polo. . .but perhaps less than 5% of them know what he was actually famous for beyond wandering about blindly in a pool yelling his name.
Mr. Polo is perhaps the first and most famous Europeans because of his 24-year long travel along the Silk Road, a fundamental, essential, and primary trading/cultural diffusion route for all the big names to use, like Egypt, Mesopotamia, Greece, Rome, Britain, Ancient China, India, etc.
Mr. Polo traveled further than anyone before him, trading and researching as he went along and detailing his adventures in writing.
