Curated category
1889 births
- Charlie ChaplinCharlie Chaplin was sent to a workhouse twice before the age of nine. By 14, he had taken his own mother to an infirmary, watched her return to a mental…
- Martin HeideggerMartin Heidegger was born on the 26th of September 1889 in rural Meßkirch, Baden, the son of a village church sexton. He died in his sleep in Freiburg on the…
- T. S. AshtonT. S. Ashton spent his life arguing that the Industrial Revolution was not a catastrophe but an achievement. Thomas Southcliffe Ashton was born on the 11th…
- Adolf HitlerAdolf Hitler was born on the 20th of April 1889 in Braunau am Inn, a town in Austria-Hungary near the German border. He died by suicide on the 30th of April…
- Jawaharlal NehruJawaharlal Nehru was sworn in as prime minister at the stroke of midnight on the 15th of August 1947, and he raised the Indian flag at the Red Fort in Delhi.
- Jean CocteauJean Cocteau called himself a poet, and only a poet, even after he had written novels, staged plays, drawn erotica, and directed films that critics still…
- Anna AkhmatovaAnna Akhmatova chose a Tatar surname for herself because her father refused to see any verses printed under his "respectable" name.
- Edwin HubbleEdwin Hubble grew up in Marshfield, Missouri, known more for his athletic prowess than his intellect, a boy who won seven first places and a third in a…
- Igor SikorskyIgor Sikorsky built a small rubber band-powered helicopter at age 12, long before the world had any reason to believe such machines could carry a person.
- Gabriel MarcelGabriel Honoré Marcel was born on the 7th of December 1889 in Paris, and by the time he died on the 8th of October 1973 he had written more than a dozen…
- Walter LippmannWalter Lippmann was born on the Upper East Side of New York City on the 23rd of September 1889, and by the time he died eighty-five years later, he had done…