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Curated category

Officers of the Legion of Honour

  • Bob DylanBob Dylan was born Robert Allen Zimmerman on the 24th of May, 1941, at St. Mary's Hospital in Duluth, Minnesota. His Hebrew name was Shabtai Zisl ben Avraham.
  • Steven SpielbergSteven Spielberg was born on the 18th of December 1946, in Cincinnati, Ohio, and by the time he was twelve years old, he had already staged and filmed a…
  • T. S. EliotT. S. Eliot wrote the opening of "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" when he was twenty-two years old. The lines compared an evening sky to "a patient…
  • David LynchDavid Lynch was born on the 20th of January 1946 at St. Patrick's Hospital in Missoula, Montana, the son of a USDA research scientist and an English-language…
  • Jules VerneJules Verne has been the second most-translated author in the world since 1979, ranking below Agatha Christie and above William Shakespeare.
  • Pierre-Auguste RenoirPierre-Auguste Renoir painted the portrait of the composer Richard Wagner in just thirty-five minutes. It was the 15th of January 1882, and Wagner received…
  • J. Robert OppenheimerJ. Robert Oppenheimer stood in a control bunker near Alamogordo, New Mexico, in the early morning hours of the 16th of July, 1945, holding a post to steady…
  • Victor HugoVictor Hugo died on the 22nd of May 1885, at 50 Avenue Victor Hugo in Paris. He was 83 years old, and he died of pneumonia.
  • Robert Falcon ScottRobert Falcon Scott reached the South Pole on the 17th of January 1912, only to find a tent already standing there, left by the Norwegian Roald Amundsen.
  • Francis Ford CoppolaFrancis Ford Coppola illegally hired a grave robber to supply real human corpses as props, and oversaw the ritualistic killing of a water buffalo.
  • Thomas EdisonThomas Edison kept his own deafness a mystery, inventing elaborate false stories about how he lost his hearing. He was completely deaf in one ear and barely…
  • Laurence OlivierLaurence Kerr Olivier was born on the 22nd of May 1907 in Dorking, Surrey, the youngest child of a nomadic Church of England clergyman who never quite found…
  • Joseph StiglitzJoseph Stiglitz grew up in Gary, Indiana, a steel town whose economic fortunes would later give shape to many of the questions he spent a career trying to…
  • Didier DeschampsDidier Deschamps was once called "the water-carrier" by a former teammate, and it was not a compliment. Eric Cantona, the flamboyant Manchester United star…
  • Gustave MoreauGustave Moreau left instructions that his death on the 18th of April 1898 was not to be announced in the press. His funeral was to be small and simple.
  • Zinedine ZidaneZinedine Zidane scored two goals in the 1998 World Cup Final, both headers, both from corners, in front of the entire world.
  • Just FontaineJust Fontaine scored thirteen goals at the 1958 FIFA World Cup. Not across a tournament run that stretched years or multiple competitions.
  • Georges DumézilGeorges Dumézil was born in Paris on the 4th of March 1898, the son of a highly educated general in the French Army. By the time he died in the same city on…
  • Valeri PolyakovValeri Polyakov stepped out of a Soyuz capsule on the 22nd of March 1995 and, refusing the offered chair just a few feet away, walked there himself.
  • François GérardFrançois Pascal Simon Gérard entered the world on the 4th of May 1770 in Rome. His father held a post within the house of the French ambassador there.
  • Louis ViscontiLouis Tullius Joachim Visconti was born in Rome on the 11th of February 1791, into a family so entwined with antiquity that the past was practically the…
  • Arsène WengerArsène Wenger was born on the 22nd of October 1949 in Strasbourg, in the Alsace region of France, the youngest of three children.
  • Michel PlatiniMichel Platini scored nine goals in five matches at the 1984 European Championship, a record that stood for 37 years. That tournament, played on home soil in…