Curated playlist
1887 births
- Alvin HansenEconomist Alvin Hansen doubted Keynes at first, then embraced him. By December 1938 he was a full convert.
- Marcel DuchampIn 1917, Marcel Duchamp submitted a signed urinal to a New York show, and the committee turned it away.
- Le CorbusierLe Corbusier built a pavilion around a tree poking through its roof. Furious organizers put up a fence to hide it.
- Chiang Kai-shekWestern observers once called Chiang Kai-shek the Red General. In 1927 he purged thousands of suspected Communists.
- Marc ChagallMarc Chagall fled Europe in 1941 on a ship carrying 119 refugee children. He taught them drawing.
- Erwin SchrödingerErwin Schrödinger formulated his wave equation at a Swiss sanatorium in Arosa. He was ill with tuberculosis.
- Bernard MontgomeryBernard Law Montgomery lay in an open field at Méteren on the 13th of October 1914, shot through the right lung by a sniper. The village sits near the Belgian border at Bailleul. Montgomery was a young officer of the Royal Warwickshire…
- Sheila Kaye-SmithSheila Kaye-Smith slipped a joke about Cold Comfort Farm into her own 1939 novel.
- Mamoru ShigemitsuMamoru Shigemitsu signed Japan's surrender on a cane and an artificial leg. A Shanghai bomb took his leg in 1932.
- Lutz Graf Schwerin von KrosigkHitler's finance minister was among the first to say "Iron Curtain" on radio, on 2 May 1945.
- Nikolai VavilovBotanist Nikolai Vavilov set out to end famine but was arrested in 1940 and died in a Soviet prison.
- Marcus GarveyMarcus Garvey was declared Provisional President of Africa in August 1920, even though he had never set foot on the continent. The title came during a conference organized by his Harlem-based movement, while an estimated 25,000 people…
- Edwin MuirEdwin Muir moved from an Orkney farm to Glasgow at fourteen and called it a move from Eden to Hell.
- Pieter GeylDutch historian Pieter Geyl lectured on Napoleon in 1940 and was taken hostage within weeks.
- Padre PioPadre Pio, born Francesco Forgione, was an Italian Capuchin friar whose hands and feet bore wounds said to echo the crucifixion of Jesus. Such wounds are called stigmata, and his followers believed they lasted for half a century. A few…
- Prince Naruhiko HigashikuniA Japanese prince served as prime minister for just 54 days in 1945. No other imperial family member has led a cabinet.
- Jim ThorpeSomeone stole Jim Thorpe's shoes before the 1912 Olympic decathlon, and he won gold in mismatched replacements.
- Srinivasa RamanujanSrinivasa Ramanujan was ill in a hospital at Putney when G. H. Hardy came to visit him. Hardy had ridden there in taxi cab number 1729. He remarked that the number seemed rather dull, and he hoped it was not an unfavorable omen. Ramanujan…