Curated category
Former Roman Catholics
- Pablo PicassoPablo Picasso once stood in his occupied-Paris apartment as a German officer noticed a photograph of his painting Guernica.
- Henry VIIIHenry VIII once dressed all in yellow, with a white feather in his bonnet, the day after he learned that Catherine of Aragon had died.
- Kevin SmithKevin Patrick Smith was born on the 2nd of August 1970, in Red Bank, New Jersey. He grew up in the nearby clamming town of Highlands as the son of Grace and…
- Martin HeideggerMartin Heidegger was born on the 26th of September 1889 in rural Meßkirch, Baden, the son of a village church sexton. He died in his sleep in Freiburg on the…
- Heinrich HimmlerHeinrich Himmler was reluctant to open his mouth. A British doctor in Lüneburg leaned in to examine it on the 23rd of May 1945, and the prisoner jerked his…
- Jack NicholsonJack Nicholson improvised a single line for a 1980 horror film, and it outlived almost everything else he ever filmed. "Here's Johnny!" was not in Stanley…
- Roger EbertRoger Ebert typed his last blog post two days before he died on the 4th of April 2013, signing off with words that could have come from any of his 46 years…
- Adolf HitlerAdolf Hitler was born on the 20th of April 1889 in Braunau am Inn, a town in Austria-Hungary near the German border. He died by suicide on the 30th of April…
- HergéGeorges Prosper Remi signed the first 500 copies of Tintin in the Land of the Soviets using the signature of his own fictional creation.
- Victor HugoVictor Hugo died on the 22nd of May 1885, at 50 Avenue Victor Hugo in Paris. He was 83 years old, and he died of pneumonia.
- Arthur Conan DoyleArthur Conan Doyle arrived in Portsmouth in June 1882 with less than ten pounds to his name and no patients waiting for him.
- Michel FoucaultMichel Foucault was born on the 15th of October 1926 in Poitiers, France, into a family where a surgeon father expected his son to follow in his footsteps.
- Guillermo del ToroGuillermo del Toro was born on the 9th of October 1964 in Guadalajara, Jalisco, and grew up in a house his father once described as "an enchanted castle."…
- Sean CombsSean Combs was born on the 4th of November 1969, in Harlem, New York City, and by the time he reached his mid-twenties he had reshaped American popular music…
- Béla BartókBéla Bartók died in a New York City hospital on the 26th of September 1945, and only ten people attended his funeral. For a man later ranked among Hungary's…
- François MitterrandFrançois Maurice Adrien Marie Mitterrand arrived in this world on the 26th of October 1916 in the small Charente town of Jarnac, and he died in Paris on the…
- Marie CurieMarie Curie carried test tubes of radioactive isotopes loose in her pocket and stored them in her desk drawer, charmed by the faint light they gave off in…
- 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…
- Martin LutherMartin Luther stood before the Diet of Worms on the 17th of April 1521, a German priest summoned to answer for his own books. The Emperor Charles V presided.
- Simone de BeauvoirSimone de Beauvoir did not consider herself a philosopher, and at the time of her death in 1986 the world did not call her one either.
- George R. R. MartinGeorge Raymond Richard Martin was born on the 20th of September, 1948, in Bayonne, New Jersey, the son of a longshoreman.
- Andy SerkisAndrew Clement Serkis arrived in the world on the 20th of April 1964 within the quiet suburb of Ruislip Manor. His childhood unfolded across two distinct…
- Timothy LearyTimothy Francis Leary was arrested 36 times between the 1960s and 1970s, a record that tells you something about how seriously the American establishment…
- Hilary MantelHilary Mantel stood at the podium at the Guildhall in London in 2009 and told the audience she was "happily flying through the air." She had just won the…
- Roger ZelaznyRoger Joseph Zelazny was born in Euclid, Ohio on the 13th of May 1937. He grew up as the only child of a Polish immigrant father and an Irish-American mother.
- St. Vincent (musician)Anne Erin Clark arrived in Tulsa, Oklahoma on the 28th of September 1982. Her parents divorced when she was three years old.
- Efraín Ríos MonttEfraín Ríos Montt died of a heart attack at his home in Guatemala City on the 1st of April 2018, at the age of 91, without ever completing a criminal trial.
- Kareem Abdul-JabbarOn the road against Utah on the 5th of April 1984, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar caught a pass from Magic Johnson and rose into his skyhook from 15 feet.
- Miguel de UnamunoMiguel de Unamuno died on the 31st of December 1936, the last day of the last year of his life, under house arrest in Salamanca.