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Rabindranath Tagore was a Bengali poet, Brahmo philosopher, visual artist, playwright, composer, and novelist whose avant-garde works reshaped Bengali literature and music in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. A celebrated cultural icon of Bengal, he became Asia's first Nobel laureate when he won the 1913 Nobel Prize in Literature. His home schooling, life in Shelidah, and extensive travels made Tagore an iconoclastic pragmatist; however, growing disillusionment with the British Raj caused the internationalist Tagore to back the Indian Independence Movement and befriend Mahatma Gandhi. Despite the loss of virtually his entire works included Gitanjali and Ghare-Baire, while his verse, short stories, and novels — many defined by rhythmic lyricism, colloquial language, meditative naturalism, and philosophical contemplation — received worldwide acclaim. (read more...)
Emir Mohammed Alim Khan (1880–1944) was the last emir of the Manghit dynasty, the last ruling dynasty of the Emirate of Bukhara in Central Asia. He reigned from January 3, 1911 to August 30, 1920, and was a direct descendant of Genghis Khan, the first Great Khan. (read more...)
Photo credit: Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii (1911) Source: Library of Congress
- ... that former Regimental Sergeant Major Harry Lapwood was known as having the loudest voice in the New Zealand House of Representatives?
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- ... that Edith Killgore Kirkpatrick published a short book of favorite songs titled Louisiana Let's Sing in honor of her husband Claude's unsuccessful candidacy for Governor of Louisiana in 1963?
- ... that canal engineer Hugh Henshall was both pupil of and brother-in-law to James Brindley, the famous canal architect of the Industrial Revolution?
- ... that it took Peter Steinfeld six and a half weeks to write the opening eleven pages of his first screenplay, Drowning Mona?
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See also: Biographies of living persons • Manual of Style (biographies)
"History is the present. That's why every generation writes it anew. But what most people think of as history is its end product, myth."
Interviewed by George Plimpton in The Paris Review, Winter 1986
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Births
- 1890 - Karel Čapek, Czech writer (d. 1938)
- 1904 - George Balanchine, Russian dancer/choreographer (d. 1983)
- 1908 - Simone de Beauvoir, French author (d. 1986)
- 1911 - Gypsy Rose Lee, burlesque performer (d. 1970)
- 1913 - Richard Nixon, 37th President of the United States (d. 1994)(pictured)
- 1935 - Bob Denver, American actor (d. 2005)
- 1944 - Jimmy Page, British musician and producer (Led Zeppelin)
- 1967 - Dave Matthews, South African singer and musician
Deaths
- 1923 - Katherine Mansfield, New Zealand writer (b. 1888)
- 1939 - Johnny Gruelle, American cartoonist, children's book writer and creator of Raggedy Ann (b. 1880)
- 1995 - Peter Cook, British actor, satirist, writer, and comedian (b. 1937)
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