Curated playlist
Members of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts
- Nikola TeslaNikola Tesla spent his last decades claiming he had built a death beam. He said it could stop an army 200 miles away.
- Leo TolstoyLeo Tolstoy spent his last hours on a train, preaching non-violence to strangers.
- Victor HugoVictor Hugo asked for a pauper's funeral and got the largest in French history.
- Antonín DvořákAntonín Dvořák wrote a string quartet in just three days. He did it on a 1893 holiday in Spillville, Iowa.
- Noam ChomskyNoam Chomsky wrote his first article at age 10, about the fall of Barcelona.
- Louis PasteurIn 1885, Louis Pasteur treated a boy mauled by a rabid dog despite holding no medical license.
- Jacob GrimmJacob Grimm and his brother expected their dictionary to take roughly ten years. It was finished in 1961.
- Aleksandr SolzhenitsynAleksandr Solzhenitsyn watched Moscow's victory fireworks from a prison cell. He was a decorated Red Army captain.
- Dmitri ShostakovichStalin walked out of Dmitri Shostakovich's opera in 1936, and the next day Pravda attacked it.
- Dmitri MendeleevDmitri Mendeleev missed a Nobel Prize in 1906 by a single vote. The Swedish academy chose Henri Moissan instead.
- Ilya RepinIlya Repin painted the composer Mussorgsky four days before he died. Repin then sold the portrait to pay for a monument.
- Theodor MommsenTheodor Mommsen insisted on checking every Latin inscription against the original stone.