Biography

Thursday, 4 December 2025

Did you know?

Frederic Chopin
As early as 1836, Chopin met the French writer Aurora Dudevant, known as George Sand, who was six years older.
The couple existed as a relationship only in gossip; George Sand herself claimed to be Chopin's seco ...
Napoleon Bonaparte
It is quite common to attribute the introduction of right-hand traffic to Napoleon.
Right-hand traffic was first introduced by Denmark in 1758. At first only in Copenhagen, and from 17 ...
Tadeusz Kosciuszko
He also met with Napoleon, whom he was skeptical about, not trusting him.
He was opposed to the idea of tying the Polish cause to him. Napoleon called Kosciuszko a "hero of the north."
Robert Oppenheimer
Years later, Oppenheimer was rehabilitated by President John F. Kennedy. He awarded him the Enrico Fermi Prize in 1963 for his contributions to the development of atomic energy.
After Kennedy's assassination, his successor, President Lyndon Johnson, presented Oppenheimer with t ...
Ludwig van Beethoven
In the fall of 1808, after turning down a position at the Royal Theater, Beethoven was offered a well-paid position as bandmaster at the court of Cassel by Napoleon's brother, Jerome Bonaparte, then king of Westphalia.
To persuade Beethoven to stay in Vienna, Archduke Rudolf and his other patrons agreed to pay him an ...
Charles Darwin
He suffered from seasickness.
However, this did not prevent him from conducting research on marine invertebrates, especially plankton - most of his zoological records dealt with marine invertebrates.
Volodymyr Zelenskyy
On February 24, 2022, Russian troops launched an invasion of Ukraine on the orders of Vladimir Putin.
In late October and early November 2021, Russia began to significantly increase the number of its tr ...
Peter the Great
Meanwhile, Peter married Eudoxia Lopukhina, who came from a wealthy boyar family.
She married Peter shortly before an attempt on his life, prepared by the Tsar's half-sister Sophia R ...
Jane Austen
Jane's father, George Austin, was an educated minister of the Anglican Church.
As a promising young man, he won an academic scholarship that enabled him to study at Oxford's St. J ...
Michelangelo
Two funerals of Michelangelo took place in Florence.
The first, on the day after the body was returned, in the Basilica of Santa Croce. The second funera ...