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Curated category

Grand Cross of the Legion of Honour

  • Giuseppe VerdiGiuseppe Verdi was an intensely private man who liked to claim he had risen from illiterate peasants. The truth was tidier and less romantic.
  • Queen VictoriaQueen Victoria was born at 4:15 am on the 24th of May 1819 at Kensington Palace, the only child of a duke who would die before she turned one.
  • David Lloyd GeorgeDavid Lloyd George stood before a crowd in Birmingham in 1901 and had to be smuggled out disguised as a policeman when his life was threatened by a mob.
  • Dwight D. EisenhowerDwight David Eisenhower drafted a message he hoped no one would ever read. On the eve of the D-Day landings on the 6th of June 1944, he wrote a short…
  • Francis II, Holy Roman EmperorOn the 6th of August 1806, a Habsburg monarch signed away a thousand years of European tradition. Francis II declared the bond tying him to the states of the…
  • 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…
  • Józef PiłsudskiJózef Piłsudski was 40 degrees below zero on the first night of his imprisonment in Siberia. That single night nearly killed him, and the health problems it…
  • Napoleon IIINapoleon III was born in the Tuileries Palace in Paris on the night of the 19th-the 20th of April 1808 - the first Bonaparte prince born after the…
  • Marc ChagallMarc Chagall spent nearly a century alive on earth, and almost every one of those years was spent either fleeing something or painting it.
  • Charles de GaulleCharles de Gaulle was born on the 22nd of November 1890 in Lille, the third of five children in a devoutly Catholic, conservative, and monarchist household.
  • Maximilian I of MexicoMaximilian I of Mexico stood before a Republican firing squad on the Cerro de las Campanas on the 19th of June 1867 and handed each of his executioners a…
  • Alexander III of RussiaAlexander III of Russia was born on the 10th of March 1845 at the Winter Palace in Saint Petersburg, the second son of the future Alexander II.
  • Konrad AdenauerKonrad Adenauer was elected the first chancellor of West Germany on the 15th of September 1949 by what observers called a majority of one vote, his own.
  • Alexander I of RussiaAlexander I of Russia was born at 10:45 on the 23rd of December 1777 in Saint Petersburg, held at the baptismal font by Catherine the Great herself and…
  • MongkutMongkut, King of Siam, predicted the path of a total solar eclipse down to the degree and the minute of arc, at a latitude of 11 degrees 39' north and a…
  • Louis PasteurOn the 6th of July 1885, Louis Pasteur faced a choice that could have ended in his prosecution. A 9-year-old boy named Joseph Meister had been badly mauled…
  • Douglas MacArthurDouglas MacArthur was born on the 26th of January 1880 at Little Rock Barracks in Arkansas, the son of a Union Army captain who had earned the Medal of Honor…
  • Claude Lévi-StraussClaude Lévi-Strauss died on the 30th of October 2009, at the age of 100, and for four days the world did not know. When French President Nicolas Sarkozy…
  • Vladimir PutinVladimir Putin was born on the 7th of October 1952 in Leningrad, a city shaped by some of the most catastrophic violence of the 20th century.
  • Boris YeltsinBoris Yeltsin climbed atop a tank outside the Russian parliament on a sweltering August day in 1991 and delivered a speech that would echo across the…
  • Jérôme BonaparteJérôme Bonaparte was born in Ajaccio, Corsica on the 15th of November 1784. He was the eighth and last surviving child of Carlo Buonaparte and Letizia…
  • Joseph BonaparteJoseph Bonaparte arrived in the United States in the summer of 1815, hiding aboard a merchant vessel called the Commerce under the false name M. Bouchard.
  • Alexander II of RussiaAlexander II of Russia was born on the 29th of April 1818, and by the time he died he had freed more than 23 million people from bondage, sold an entire…
  • Wojciech JaruzelskiWojciech Jaruzelski was born on the 6th of July 1923 in Kurów, into a family of Polish gentry, the seventh of eight children.
  • Charles XIV JohnCharles XIV John of Sweden was born Jean-Baptiste Jules Bernadotte on the 26th of January 1763 in Pau, a small city in the southwestern province of Béarn.
  • Napoleon IINapoleon II was Emperor of the French for exactly two days. He never sat on the throne. He never held a scepter. He never gave an order that anyone was bound…
  • Otto von HabsburgOtto von Habsburg was born on the 20th of November 1912 at Villa Wartholz in Reichenau an der Rax, at a moment when Austria-Hungary still stood as one of the…
  • Louis Philippe ILouis Philippe I stepped onto the throne of France in August 1830 having already lived more lives than most kings ever get.
  • Archduke Charles, Duke of TeschenArchduke Charles of Austria was the man Arthur Wellesley named the greatest general of his time. That verdict carries real weight, coming from a commander…
  • Victor DuruyJean Victor Duruy entered the world on the 10th of September 1811 in Paris. His father worked as a factory worker and expected his son to follow that trade.
  • Alexandre Colonna-WalewskiAlexandre Colonna-Walewski was born on the 4th of May 1810 during a thunderstorm, and according to family lore, the lightning was taken as a sign that his…
  • Michel NeyMichel Ney stood before a firing squad in Paris on the 7th of December 1815 and refused to wear a blindfold. His reason was simple and devastating: he had…
  • Louis de BroglieLouis de Broglie was born on the 15th of August 1892 in Dieppe, France, into a noble family that had sent soldiers and statesmen to French courts for…
  • Michael Andreas Barclay de TollyMichael Andreas Barclay de Tolly led the largest Russian army to face Napoleon in 1812, and his countrymen called him a coward and a traitor.