Curated playlist
Knights of Malta
- Frank SinatraFrancis Albert Sinatra weighed 13.5 pounds when he was born on the 12th of December 1915, in a tenement at 415 Monroe Street in Hoboken, New Jersey. The delivery required forceps, which scarred his left cheek and neck and left lifelong…
- Miles DavisMiles Dewey Davis III was born on the 26th of May 1926 in Alton, Illinois, to a family that owned a 200-acre estate in Arkansas with a profitable pig farm. He died on the 28th of September 1991 in Santa Monica, California, after a stroke,…
- Benito MussoliniBenito Mussolini was named after a Mexican president. His father, a blacksmith and a socialist, chose the name Benito for the liberal Mexican leader Benito Juárez. The middle names, Andrea and Amilcare, honored the Italian socialists…
- 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 8th of January 1996 having spent fourteen years as the most powerful man in…
- 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 gold coin. It was a gesture of courtly European dignity from a man who had crossed an…
- 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. He was 73 years old. Most assumed he would be a caretaker. Instead he held the office…
- Paul I of RussiaPaul I of Russia ruled the largest empire on earth from 1796 until his assassination in 1801, yet for most of his life he was known simply as the man his mother refused to trust. Catherine the Great kept her son at arm's length for…
- CaravaggioCaravaggio died on the 18th of July 1610 in Porto Ercole, near Grosseto in Tuscany, alone and on the run, with three paintings in his possession intended as gifts for a cardinal who might have saved him. He was thirty-six years old. He had…
- Ferdinand von Hompesch zu BolheimFerdinand von Hompesch zu Bolheim became the 71st Grand Master of the Knights of Malta in 1797, and within a year he had presided over one of the most humiliating surrenders in the Order's long history. A military force that had held Malta…
- 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 life would be stormy and even life-changing. He would later write of that moment…
- Vince LombardiVince Lombardi died at 7:12 in the morning on the 3rd of September 1970, in Washington, D.C., surrounded by his wife, his parents, both of his children, and six grandchildren. He was 57. At his funeral four days later at St. Patrick's…