Curated playlist
Aphorists
- Mark TwainMark Twain predicted he would die with Halley's Comet, and he did. He died the day after it passed closest to the Sun.
- George OrwellGeorge Orwell was a pen name, chosen from a shortlist in 1932. He was born Eric Arthur Blair in British India.
- Oscar WildeOscar Wilde was convicted at the height of his fame, with two plays running in London's West End.
- Friedrich NietzscheFriedrich Nietzsche's sister edited his writings to fit her own ultranationalist views.
- Abraham LincolnAbraham Lincoln is the only U.S. president to hold a patent. In 1849 he patented a way to lift riverboats.
- Theodore RooseveltTheodore Roosevelt was shot in the chest, then gave a 90-minute speech. It happened in Milwaukee in October 1912.
- AristotleOnly around a third of Aristotle's original writings survive, and none was meant to be published.
- Jorge Luis BorgesJorge Luis Borges directed Argentina's National Library while completely blind.
- René DescartesRené Descartes had three dreams in a heated room in 1619. He believed they revealed a new philosophy to him.
- Victor HugoVictor Hugo asked for a pauper's funeral and got the largest in French history.
- Franz KafkaFranz Kafka asked his friend Max Brod to burn everything he had written. Brod refused.
- Mikhail BakuninKarl Marx had the anarchist Mikhail Bakunin expelled from the First International in 1872.
- ConfuciusTold his stables had burned, Confucius asked only, "Was anyone hurt?" He did not ask about the horses.
- Georg SimmelMax Weber and Edmund Husserl backed Georg Simmel, yet he got no full professor's chair until age 56.
- Ambrose BierceAmbrose Bierce's last known letter said he was leaving for an unknown destination. He then vanished at age 71.
- Sun TzuDid Sun Tzu, the reputed author of The Art of War, even exist? Scholars have doubted it since the 12th century.
- Blaise PascalBlaise Pascal rediscovered geometry on a tile floor as a boy. His father had tried to keep math from him.