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Curated category

1899 births

  • Alfred HitchcockAlfred Hitchcock was born on the 13th of August 1899 above a greengrocer's shop at 517 High Road in Leytonstone, Essex. By the time he died in 1980, his…
  • Humphrey BogartHumphrey Bogart kept a small gold whistle, part of a charm bracelet he had given Lauren Bacall before they married. Engraved on it were the words, "If you…
  • Ernest HemingwayErnest Hemingway was born on the 21st of July 1899, in Oak Park, Illinois, into a family where his mother kept his hair long and dressed him in frilly…
  • Duke EllingtonDuke Ellington wrote his first composition in the summer of 1914, working as a soda jerk at the Poodle Dog Cafe in Washington, D.C.
  • Jorge Luis BorgesJorge Luis Borges once described his blindness as a gift wrapped in cruel irony. In a poem he wrote that God, with splendid irony, granted him books and…
  • Irving ThalbergIrving Thalberg was twenty years old when Carl Laemmle, the founder of Universal Pictures, told him to take charge of the entire Los Angeles studio.
  • Friedrich HayekFriedrich Hayek wrote on the 26th of October 1929, three days before the Wall Street crash, that there was no reason to expect a sudden collapse of the New…
  • Lavrentiy BeriaLavrentiy Beria stood over Stalin's paralysed body on the 2nd of March 1953, dismissed the frantic aide who pleaded for a doctor, and walked out of the dacha…
  • Vladimir NabokovVladimir Nabokov arrived in the United States in May 1940 aboard the SS Champlain, a Russian exile who spoke three languages and had already written nine…
  • Lev KuleshovLev Kuleshov placed the same footage of an actor named Ivan Mozzhukhin next to a bowl of soup, then a coffin, then a woman reclining on a couch.
  • Wilfrid IsraelWilfrid Berthold Israel was born on the 11th of July 1899 into a wealthy Anglo-German Jewish family. He attended the Mommsen-Gymnasium in…
  • Bruce CattonBruce Catton grew up in Benzonia, Michigan, listening to old men describe what it felt like to march into battle. He was born on the 9th of October, 1899…
  • D. P. Roy ChoudhuryDevi Prasad Roy Choudhury entered the world on the 15th of June 1899 at Tejhat in Rangpur. This region belonged to undivided Bengal within British India…