Curated playlist
20th-century deaths from tuberculosis
- George OrwellGeorge Orwell did not exist on any birth certificate. The man behind the name was Eric Arthur Blair, born on the 25th of June 1903 in Motihari, in the Bengal Presidency of British India. He chose his pen name late, in a letter to his agent…
- Vivien LeighVivien Leigh died on the night of the 7th of July 1967, alone on the floor of her Eaton Square flat in London. Her companion John Merivale had left her, as usual, to perform in a play. When he returned just before midnight and found her…
- Harilal GandhiHarilal Mohandas Gandhi was born on the 23rd of August 1888. His father left for England shortly after his birth to pursue higher studies. Harilal stayed behind in India with his mother Kasturba. He joined the Indian independence movement…
- Anton ChekhovAnton Chekhov was born on the feast day of St. Anthony the Great in Taganrog, a commercial port city on the Sea of Azov, and he died on the 15th of July 1904 at the age of forty-four -- the same disease that had killed his brother claiming…
- Lev VygotskyLev Vygotsky died on the 11th of June 1934, at the age of 37, leaving behind a final notebook entry that read: "This is the final thing I have done in psychology - and I will like Moses, die at the summit, having glimpsed the promised land…
- Franz KafkaFranz Kafka asked a friend to burn everything he had ever written. The friend was Max Brod, his literary executor, and the instruction was explicit: every diary, manuscript, letter, and sketch was to be burned unread. Brod refused. He told…
- Erwin SchrödingerErwin Schrödinger was born on the 12th of August 1887 in Vienna, and by the time he died on the 4th of January 1961, he had left behind an equation that altered how humanity understands the fabric of reality. He had also coined a phrase -…
- Thomas AllinsonThomas Richard Allinson walked from Edinburgh to London in 1891, covering the distance in fifteen consecutive days at an average of 28.5 miles per day. He arrived in London on Saturday, the 12th of September. He was not a wanderer or an…
- Muhammad Ali JinnahMuhammad Ali Jinnah was born on the 25th of December 1876 in a rented apartment on the second floor of Wazir Mansion near Karachi, and he died on the 11th of September 1948 as the founder and first governor-general of Pakistan. In between…
- El LissitzkyEl Lissitzky spent his final months of 1941 ill in Moscow, his tuberculosis now in its gravest stage. Yet he kept working. One of his last pieces was a propaganda poster calling on the Soviet people to build more tanks for the fight…