Curated playlist
1883 births
- Benito MussoliniBenito Mussolini was named after a Mexican president. His socialist father chose the name to honor Benito Juárez.
- Clement AttleeClement Attlee told the King, "I've won the election," and the King replied that he already knew.
- Franz KafkaFranz Kafka asked his friend Max Brod to burn everything he had written. Brod refused.
- Archibald Wavell, 1st Earl WavellArchibald Wavell beat Italy's army in Libya, then Winston Churchill replaced him in June 1941.
- Joseph SchumpeterJoseph Schumpeter did not coin "creative destruction", the phrase he made famous. He borrowed it from Werner Sombart.
- Karl JaspersKarl Jaspers hid in Heidelberg through the Nazi years because his wife was Jewish.
- Andrey VyshinskyIn 1917, Andrey Vyshinsky signed an order to arrest Lenin. He later became Stalin's feared state prosecutor.
- Vinayak Damodar SavarkarVinayak Savarkar jumped from a ship's window at Marseille and swam to shore.
- H. J. RoseH. J. Rose's A Handbook of Greek Mythology, first published in 1928, became a standard student reference.
- José Ortega y GassetJosé Ortega y Gasset answered Descartes with "I live therefore I think." He put lived experience before abstract reason.
- John Maynard KeynesAt Bretton Woods in 1944, Keynes proposed a world currency called the bancor, and the United States rejected it.