Curated playlist
Grand Officers of the Legion of Honour
- Giuseppe VerdiComposer Giuseppe Verdi liked to claim peasant roots, but his father, an innkeeper, pushed for his schooling.
- William, Prince of WalesAt 9:03 pm on the 21st of June 1982, William Arthur Philip Louis was born at St Mary's Hospital in London. He was the first direct heir to the British throne to be born in a hospital. Today he is William, Prince of Wales, heir apparent to…
- Gioachino RossiniRossini wrote his last opera in his thirties, then never wrote another for 40 years.
- Joseph-Louis LagrangeAt seventeen, mathematician Joseph-Louis Lagrange read a paper by Edmond Halley and was seized by mathematics.
- Le CorbusierLe Corbusier built a pavilion around a tree poking through its roof. Furious organizers put up a fence to hide it.
- Auguste RodinSculptor Auguste Rodin was accused of cheating with a cast of a living man. A committee of sculptors cleared him.
- Auguste de MarmontA French marshal's name became a French verb meaning to betray. Marmont's 1814 deal with the Allies led to "raguser."
- Louis-Guillaume OttoA diplomat's 1799 letter holds the earliest recorded use of "Industrial Revolution" in French.
- Desmond TutuDesmond Tutu, the South African Anglican archbishop who spent decades confronting apartheid, asked to be laid to rest in a plain pine coffin. It was the cheapest one available, chosen to avoid any ostentatious display. He died of cancer on…
- Charles-Pierre AugereauAt Castiglione in 1796, Augereau held off the main Austrian army with 11,000 men. It gave Bonaparte time to win.
- Walter Bedell SmithWalter Bedell Smith signed Italy's armistice under an olive tree in Sicily. It was September 3, 1943.
- Pierre-Simon LaplaceJupiter and Saturn seemed to be drifting off course until Laplace solved it. Newton, Euler and Lagrange had all failed.
- Jean-Léon GérômeJean-Léon Gérôme taught more than 2,000 students, including Mary Cassatt and Thomas Eakins.