4. Pedro Zamora

The 90s were a decade that changed the world in many ways. During that decade, MTV issued its first season of The Real World, a reality television series that followed the lives of young, ordinary people.

Pedro Zamora was a participant of the show, and in the same time, one of the first openly gay men who had been battling AIDS to be portrayed in the popular media.

Apart from bringing international attention to the important issue, Zamora also personalized and humanized those who lived with AIDS, thus bringing down the taboo wall brick by brick.

He even got officially credited by then-President Bill Clinton. Zamora passed away in 1994.