There are hundreds of millions of Facebook users nowadays, and for many of us it’s almost impossible to get through the day without visiting the site. But what if FB had existed in the past? Here are four figures from history who would have been interesting members of the social networking fraternity.

King Henry VIII

If Henry VIII had been a Facebook user, the chances are his profile would have been very interesting indeed. Married six times, it’s safe to assume the phrase “it’s complicated” would have appeared there many times. With six different wives and six different mothers-in-law, the unfriendly messages may have been flying across his homepage with great regularity.

Because of his constant mood swings and his hostile attitude towards the Catholic Church, his number of Facebook friends would have been constantly changing, and there are few people who would have remained on good terms with His Royal Highness from the start of his Facebook activity to the end.

Howard Hughes

Although well-known nowadays as nothing more than an obsessive recluse, Howard Hughes was a brilliant businessman and an innovative inventor. Over the years, he would have built up a huge following of friends on Facebook and a timeline that would have included a number of former occupations and workplaces.

However, in later life he started to shut himself away from the world, so his Facebook statuses would have appeared less and less frequently. His former lovers allegedly included Ava Gardner, Bette Davis and Rita Hayworth, so a look through his Facebook photos (assuming he didn’t remove them) may well have been worth a look.

William Shakespeare

Widely considered to be the greatest writer of all time, William Shakespeare would have made an interesting Facebook user. Updates to his status may have included a few too many forsooths and forfends, but they would always have been worth reading. They’d make a pleasant change from the usual banter about whether the Knicks won last night.

The only drawback about Shakespeare being on Facebook is that he might have been tempted to flood his timeline with ads for his plays – he was known as a clever self-publicist. And when April 23^rd comes around, be careful when you leave him a happy birthday message, because the great Bard is thought to have died on 52^nd birthday.

Al Capone

If you took a look through all the messages on Al Capone’s Facebook page, the chances are there would be no mention of the word Scarface, because he hated the nickname. Anyone who mentioned it would most likely have received a visit from one of the mobster’s henchmen within a day or two.

Given the rather nefarious nature of his business activities, Mr Capone would have revealed very little on his timeline. Where you and I might say “I’m on the subway train to Manhattan to spend a day in the office”, his certainly wouldn’t say “I’m running a truckload of illegal whisky into Chicago tonight”.

David Showell lives in the south of England and is a big fan of Facebook. When he’s not updating his status, he’s working for a USA car rental company.