Curated category
Grand Officers 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.
- Gioachino RossiniGioachino Rossini wrote his last opera while still in his thirties, then stopped composing operas for the remaining 40 years of his life.
- Joseph-Louis LagrangeJoseph-Louis Lagrange was born Giuseppe Lodovico Lagrangia in Turin on the 25th of January 1736, the firstborn of eleven children.
- Le CorbusierLe Corbusier insisted that "a house is a machine to live in," a maxim that would unsettle architects for a century. The man who wrote it was born…
- Auguste RodinAuguste Rodin was born into a working-class family in Paris on the 12th of November 1840, and he died 77 years later on the 17th of November 1917 -- just…
- Auguste de MarmontAuguste Frédéric Louis Viesse de Marmont was a man the French came to despise, not for losing battles, but for ending one.
- Louis-Guillaume OttoLouis-Guillaume Otto, comte de Mosloy, wrote a letter on the 6th of July 1799 that most historians have overlooked for centuries.
- Charles-Pierre AugereauCharles-Pierre-François Augereau was born on the 21st of October 1757 in Faubourg Saint-Marceau, Paris, the son of a fruit seller.
- Walter Bedell SmithWalter Bedell Smith was born in Indianapolis, Indiana, on the 5th of October 1895. He grew up as the elder of two sons to William Long Smith and Ida Francis…
- Pierre-Simon LaplacePierre-Simon Laplace stood before Napoleon Bonaparte in the early years of the nineteenth century and handed him a copy of his book on the universe.
- Jean-Léon GérômeJean-Léon Gérôme was born on the 11th of May 1824 in Vesoul, a small town in the Haute-Saône region of France, and by 1880 he had become arguably the most…