Curated playlist
1954 deaths
- Henri MatisseHenri Matisse did not pick up a paintbrush until he was nineteen. He had been trained as a lawyer.
- Enrico FermiEnrico Fermi won a Nobel Prize partly for new elements that were really fission products.
- Dziga VertovThe term cinéma vérité was taken from Dziga Vertov's newsreel series Kino-Pravda, meaning "film truth".
- Henri FrankfortHenri Frankfort argued Egyptian civilization arose from an African base, not an Asian one.
- Alan TuringAlan Turing once chained his tea mug to a radiator pipe at Bletchley Park so it could not be stolen.
- Oliver Locker-LampsonIn 1933, British MP Oliver Locker-Lampson sheltered Albert Einstein from death threats.
- Frida KahloFrida Kahlo had her four-poster bed carried into her first Mexican solo show. She spent the opening party lying in it.
- Andrey VyshinskyIn 1917, Andrey Vyshinsky signed an order to arrest Lenin. He later became Stalin's feared state prosecutor.
- Alcide De GasperiAlcide De Gasperi cataloged books in the Vatican Library for fourteen years.
- Mariam SoulakiotisAbbess Mariam Soulakiotis led a convent in the pine-covered hills near Keratea, Greece, and on the night of the 4th of December 1950 more than eighty-five police officers closed in on it. They brought a deputy prosecutor, a judge and a…