Curated category
1884 births
- Louis B. MayerLouis B. Mayer was the son of a Yiddish-speaking scrap metal dealer from a Ukrainian village, and he died the highest-paid man in the United States for nine…
- Harry S. TrumanHarry S. Truman became the 33rd president of the United States not by winning an election, but by walking into a room where Eleanor Roosevelt told him her…
- Édouard DaladierÉdouard Daladier landed at Le Bourget Airfield on the 30th of September 1938 to a crowd of cheering Parisians. They waved and shouted, relieved that the man…
- Sulaiman NadviSulaiman Nadvi was born on the 22nd of November 1884 in Desna, a village in what is now Nalanda District, Bihar, and he died on the same date in 1953…
- Bronisław MalinowskiBronisław Malinowski arrived in the Trobriand Islands in 1915 having already made one embarrassing mistake. On his first field trip, lodged with a local…
- Rudolf BultmannRudolf Bultmann once told his students that it did not matter what happened throughout Jesus's life. To Bultmann, only that Jesus existed, preached, and died…
- Stanley Unwin (publisher)Stanley Unwin purchased a controlling interest in George Allen and Sons on the 1st of January 1914. This transaction transformed his career from an employee…
- George SartonGeorge Sarton buried his life's work in a garden in Belgium. It was August 1914, and German soldiers were advancing on Ghent.
- Hideki TojoHideki Tojo was awakened at 5:00 a.m. on the 8th of December 1941 and told that Japanese planes had struck the American naval base at Pearl Harbor.
- Otto RankOn his deathbed in New York City on the 31st of October 1939, Otto Rank reportedly said a single word: "Komisch." It means "funny" or "strange." A kidney…
- İsmet İnönüİsmet İnönü stood inside a railroad car near Adana in January 1943, face to face with Winston Churchill. Turkey had spent years balancing between the Allies…
- Jakob LaubJakob Johann Laub was born on the 7th of February 1884 in Rzeszów, a city then part of Austria-Hungary, and he died on the 22nd of April 1962 in Fribourg.
- Yevgeny ZamyatinYevgeny Zamyatin spent his final years in Paris dying in poverty, his name unmentioned in any Soviet newspaper, his most famous novel banned in his own…
- A. MerrittA. Merritt earned $100,000 a year by the end of his life, but the work he is remembered for was never his day job. Abraham Grace Merritt, born on the 20th of…
- Peter DebyePeter Debye was born in Maastricht in the Netherlands on the 24th of March 1884, and by the time he died on the 2nd of November 1966, his name had been…