Curated playlist
World Constitutional Convention call signatories
- TanzaniaTanzania's name was invented in a newspaper contest. Mohammed Iqbal Dar won by blending Tanganyika and Zanzibar.
- Martin Luther King Jr.Martin Luther King Jr. died at the age of 39, yet his autopsy showed the heart of a 60 year old, according to his biographer Taylor Branch. Branch attributed the damage to stress. The causes were many. King was jailed repeatedly, attacked…
- Clement AttleeClement Attlee told the King, "I've won the election," and the King replied that he already knew.
- SenegalSenegal is named for a river, not the ocean it faces. Where the river's name came from is still debated.
- Sierra LeoneSierra Leone is named for a line of mountains that Portuguese sailors saw from the water in 1462. The explorer Pedro de Sintra mapped that stretch of the West African coast and called the heights Serra Leoa, which means lioness mountains.…
- PakistanPakistan's name began as an acronym in a 1933 student pamphlet. Choudhry Rahmat Ali published it in Now or Never.
- Max BornMax Born won his 1954 Nobel Prize for work he finished nearly three decades earlier.
- Stuart Hall (cultural theorist)Stuart Hall's Oxford plan to study the poem Piers Plowman ended when J. R. R. Tolkien objected.
- William BeveridgeWilliam Beveridge lost his seat in 1945, yet the new government built his welfare plan.
- Linus PaulingLinus Pauling left high school without a diploma. He later won two unshared Nobel Prizes, a first in history.