Curated playlist
1882 births
- Franklin D. RooseveltFranklin D. Roosevelt was paralyzed from the waist down, and he was careful never to be seen in his wheelchair.
- Virginia WoolfVirginia Woolf's father let her read whatever she liked in his vast library.
- James JoyceJames Joyce's novel Ulysses was banned for obscenity in the UK and US, yet copies were smuggled.
- Igor StravinskyIgor Stravinsky's ballet The Rite of Spring caused a near-riot at its 1913 Paris premiere.
- Sharda MehtaIn 1901, Sharda Mehta became one of the first two women with a university degree in what is now Gujarat.
- A. A. MilneA. A. Milne accused his old cricket teammate P. G. Wodehouse of near treason.
- Ion AntonescuHitler's ally Ion Antonescu at times refused to hand Romanian Jews to German death camps.
- Lynn ThorndikeHistorians still say "early modern" thanks to Lynn Thorndike, who first proposed it in 1926.
- Jean GiraudouxPlaywright Jean Giraudoux died in Paris in 1944, and some suspect poison. His death has never been fully explained.
- Arnold RothsteinArnold Rothstein, a New York gambler nicknamed The Brain, lay wounded in a hospital while police asked who had shot him. He refused to help. "You stick to your trade," he told the officers. "I'll stick to mine." Pressed again, he answered…
- Mohammad MosaddeghIran's popular prime minister Mohammad Mosaddegh was buried in his own living room. He died in 1967 under house arrest.
- Herbert Bayard SwopeHerbert Bayard Swope, an American editor and journalist, left behind a line that people still repeat. "I can't give you a sure-fire formula for success, but I can give you a formula for failure: try to please everybody all the time." The…
- Max BornMax Born won his 1954 Nobel Prize for work he finished nearly three decades earlier.
- James F. ByrnesJames F. Byrnes left school at 14 and later sat on the U.S. Supreme Court. He never earned a law degree.
- Arthur EddingtonArthur Eddington photographed stars during a 1919 eclipse to test Einstein's theory.
- Emmy NoetherEmmy Noether lectured at Göttingen under a man's name. Her classes were advertised as Hilbert's, with her as assistant.
- Nevile HendersonNevile Henderson wore a red carnation every day of his diplomatic career. Hitler privately despised him.
- Pavel FlorenskyA paper on relativity helped send priest Pavel Florensky to a Soviet labor camp.
- Charles PonziCharles Ponzi, born Carlo Pietro Giovanni Guglielmo Tebaldo Ponzi, once described his arrival in America to a reporter for The New York Times. "I landed in this country with $2.50 in cash and $1 million in hopes, and those hopes never left…