Curated playlist
1941 deaths
- Virginia WoolfVirginia Woolf's father let her read whatever she liked in his vast library.
- James JoyceJames Joyce's novel Ulysses was banned for obscenity in the UK and US, yet copies were smuggled.
- Wilhelm IIWilhelm II, the last German Emperor, spent much of his adult life holding a pair of white gloves in his left hand. The gloves made that arm look longer than it was. He reigned from 1888 to 1918 over a country that had become Europe's…
- Rabindranath TagoreAt sixteen, Rabindranath Tagore fooled experts with poems he called lost classics.
- Alfonso XIIIAlfonso XIII was carried on a silver tray to Spain's prime minister, already a king.
- Arthur EvansArthur Evans dug into a Cretan hill in March 1900 and found a palace with over a thousand rooms.
- James George FrazerJames George Frazer wrote about world cultures without ever doing fieldwork. He relied on mailed questionnaires.
- Rudolf HilferdingRudolf Hilferding refused to escape Vichy France because he had no identity papers and would not leave illegally.
- Walther NernstChemist Walther Nernst also invented an electric piano. He built it in 1930 with Bechstein and Siemens.
- Freeman Freeman-Thomas, 1st Marquess of WillingdonLord Willingdon quit a Bombay yacht club after it refused his Indian friends.
- Dmitry MerezhkovskyDmitry Merezhkovsky's ruined reputation rests on a 1941 radio speech his biographer believes Nazis fabricated.
- El LissitzkyEl Lissitzky made a tank poster while dying of tuberculosis in 1941. The artist urged Soviet people to build more tanks.