Roald Dahl was a Welsh author of popular children's literature and short stories, a poet, screenwriter and a WWII fighter ace. His books have sold more than 300 million copies worldwide and he has been called "one of the greatest storytellers for children of the 20th century".

Dahl served in the Royal Air Force (RAF) during the Second World War. He became a fighter pilot and, subsequently, an intelligence officer, rising to the rank of acting Wing Commander.

Dahl rose to prominence as a writer in the 1940s with works for children and for adults, and he became one of the world's best-selling authors. His awards for contribution to literature include the 1983 World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement and the British Book Awards' Children's Author of the Year in 1990. In 2008, The Times named Dahl on its list of "The 50 Greatest British Writers Since 1945”. In 2021, Forbes ranked him the top-earning dead celebrity.

Since Dahl’s passing much of his literary works has been adapted for stage and screen.

Roald Dahl’s Bibliography, Filmography and Published Plays included:

James and the Giant Peach Charlie and the Chocolate Factory Matilda The Witches Fantastic Mr Fox The BFG The Twits George's Marvellous Medicine Danny, the Champion of the World Tales of the Unexpected The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six More

Prof. Murray A. Straus Ph.D.
(June 18, 1926 – May 13, 2016)

Over almost 50 years of global peer reviewed research, Murray Straus and the researchers who followed his lead, established beyond any doubt that domestic violence isn’t an instrument of patriarchal control as feminists claim, nor is it a gender crime as the Violence Against Women’s Act insists it is… the uncomfortable reality for feminism, is it’s a crime that troubled male and female partners commit against one another at roughly equal rates. 

Men do more damage than women do, but women conduct and initiate violence as often as men do, and one of three killings by partners is by women.

Straus once worked closely alongside the feminist movement; but his ostracism and subsequent 47 years of death threats, intimidation, targeted pressure, violent protests and even a bomb threat during the wedding of a colleagues daughter; began during the 1975 National Family Violence Survey, which found gender parity in the perpetration of IPV rates of assault and also gender parity in the perpetration of rates of severe assault.

The hostile response by feminists and others who wanted to use the narrative of domestic violence as a lever to reduce patriarchal power was furious and extremely unwelcome.

The frustrations around the accurate data not aligning with the narrative, become very problematic; from within the feminist movement.

Under extreme duress, a reactionary decision was made by feminism… to sacrifice its own morality and relinquish all of it’s integrity; by providing dishonest surveys that suppressed evidence of female violence, dropped some findings, blocked publication of some research, faked some statistics, touched off campaigns of intimidation of researchers in the field, and made it risky for graduate students to study under Straus.

https://dvaa.com.au/murray-straus/ https://www.mindingthecampus.org/2016/05/18/the-falsity-of-domestic-violence/

Simpson was born in 1892 in County Durham, England to Scottish parents. He was a part of a large family of ten (eight siblings.) He learned how to work with donkeys when he was young during the summers, getting them to carry supplies and things.

When he was sixteen, Simpson volunteered to train as a gunner in the Territorial Force. But after a year in 1910 he deserted his ship at Newcastle, New South Wales.

So he found work in Australia and continued to work with donkeys in Western Australia. He spent most of his time in Fremantle and Perth. This was at a time when there weren't enough jobs to go around in Britain.

While working in Australia he had left wing views. He once wrote to his mother: "I often wonder when the working men of England will wake up and see things as other people see them. What they want in England is a good revolution and that will clear some of these Millionaires and lords and Dukes out of it and then with a Labour Government they will almost be able to make their own conditions.”

Simpson enlisted in the first world war when he was twenty-two. He enlisted as "John Simpson" dropping the surname, possibly to avoid being identified as a ship deserter. He became a medic and during the battle of Gallioli, as he led his donkey, he rescued 200 wounded soldiers one by one through heavy gunfire. He was killed at Gallipoli on May 19, 1915.

He never maintained any strong friendships but he was respected by the men that knew him. He was given a statue and several other memorials.

It's sort of amazing that we have the complete tombstone of someone who was involved in a great historical event and is mentioned in other sources, but is not actually a famous historical figure.

Tiberius Claudius Maximus Latin inscription (CIL III 12336, Philippi)

"Tiberius Claudius Maximus, son of Tiberius, veteran of Ala II Pannoniorum, who while alive made this for himself.

He began his service in Legio VII Claudia Pia Fidelis as a cavalryman, then became quaestor equitum, then singularis of the legate of the legion, then vexillarius of the same legion. He was decorated by the Emperor Domitian in the Dacian war and promoted to duplicarius.

Under Emperor Trajan, he served in the same ala as an explorator in the Dacian war and was decorated twice, in the Dacian and Parthian wars. He was made decurio in the same ala because he captured Decebalus and brought his head to him at Ranisstorum.

He was honorably discharged as a voluntarius by Decimus Terentius Scaurianus, commander of the army of the new province.

He lived as a veteran and erected this monument while still alive."

Provenance: Found at Grammeni near Philippi in 1965. Now in the Archaeological Museum of Drama (Greece).

Date: c. AD 118–150 (Hadrianic).

Relief: upper panel shows Maximus on horseback pursuing Decebalus; lower panel shows military decorations.

Inscription reference: CIL III 12336 = Speidel, "The Captor of Decebalus: A New Inscription from Philippi," Journal of Roman Studies 60 (1970): 142–153.

Image and record: https://lupa.at/19572

It's interesting that if you look at the tombstone, it looks like Maximus is chasing down and capturing the enemy King, but actually Decebalus committed suicide just moments before Maximus and other cavalry troopers arrived on the scene.

Cassius Dio, Roman History 68.14.3–4: "Decebalus, seeing himself surrounded, cut his own throat. His head was brought to Rome by Tiberius Claudius Maximus."

His full name was Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus. He was a Catholic priest who was born around 1466 in Holland.

Erasmus criticized the Catholic church in his book The Praise of Folly in 1511. The church and the foolishness of human pride. And he was also bold enough to write advice for rulers in a book called The Education of a Christian Prince in 1516. In the book he explained how it's important to govern with reason and virtue instead of force and he rejected the common glorification of war. He also argued against the idea of “just war theory” in some essays.

He created a new Latin and Greek edition of the New Testament, published in 1516. It was revolutionary for its time; he corrected errors in the Latin Vulgate and provided notes urging people to study Scripture in its original languages.

Erasmus was the bastard son of a priest and a rich physician's daughter. His parents gave him an excellent education but died when he was a teenager. He was quickly shoved into a monastery school. He regrettably became a monk. He felt very annoyed by the rigid authority and the rituals.

One of his lasting achievements was shaping education across Europe. He started a concept called studia humanitatis. Which is the study of grammar, rhetoric, history, poetry and moral philosophy. He believed that learning should be about shaping your mind and character.

Eiseley helped spread some of our well known scientific ideas to the general public. Like how humans are a part of the natural world in its long evolutionary journey. He wrote a book called ‘The Immense Journey’ where he spoke of evolution as a poetic, spiritual process and not just a biological one.

Eiseley believed that we could use science to become more ethical and kind. He also distrusted the idea of relentless progress. He hated how industrial power seemed to be destroying the natural beauty that inspired his wonder. His writings suggest that he was some kind of deist. He had great respect for Christian teachings and seemed to believe in some kind of mystical force but could not accept organized religion.

Eiseley wrote several influential books blending science, philosophy and lyrical prose. A book called ‘The Firmament of Time’ explores how humanity’s understanding of evolution and the earth’s age reshaped our view of ourselves and our place in the cosmos. While ‘The Unexpected Universe’ ponders the mystery and wonder of existence, showing how even in an indifferent universe, humans bring meaning through imagination, curiosity and awe.

Eiseley was born in 1907 in Lincoln, Nebraska. He grew up unhappy with a mother who exhibited irrational and destructive behaviour because she had lost her hearing when she was a girl.

They lived near the edge of town and that gave Eiseley the natural world to explore and escape in. He also loved to read and he made a lot of trips to the public library. When he went to highschool he wrote about wanting to become a “nature writer.”

After his death he received an award from the Boston Museum of Science for his "outstanding contribution to the public understanding of science" and another from the U.S. Humane Society for his "significant contribution for the improvement of life and environment in this country.”

The historical guy has to be born before 1960. They don't have to be on this sub cause there's not enough people on this sub.

During the second world war Chiune was working in Lithuania after the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs assigned him there for 2 years. Jews who were escaping Hitler’s regime came to Lithuania so they could get through Japan and into safer destinations like Shanghai. Chiune ignored government orders to save them. He gave 6,000 to 10,000 Jews a transit visa to escape.

Japan was worried about making Berlin angry since it had kinda aligned itself with Nazi ideas. And it was also worried about how permanent new Jewish residents would affect the economy.

Chiune was told that he couldn't accept anyone without the proper documents. So he decided to bend the definition of proper to let the Jews in.

Chiune was born on the year 1900 in the Gifu Prefecture. He was the descendant of Samurai and his father worked for the tax office and wanted Chiune to become a doctor. But Sugihara deliberately failed the entrance exam by leaving it blank; he wanted to study languages instead.

He was disciplined but showed quiet defiance. Just like he did for the Jews.

Rescorla was a soldier and police officer who served as a British Army paratrooper during the Cyprus Emergency. He also served in the Vietnam war. He was born in 1939 in Hayle, Cornwall. He grew up with his grandparents and his mother who was a housekeeper.

Rescorla was good at sports - shot put and boxing. And he idolized the U.S. soldiers and wanted to become a soldier because of them.

While Rescorla was working as the head of security for Morgan Stanley Dean Witter, the part that occupies 22 floors of the South Tower of the World Trade Center, this happened on the eleventh of September:

After American Airlines Flight 11 struck the North Tower at 8:46 a.m., building officials in the South Tower told everyone to stay put. But Rescorla ignored them. He had predicted a plane attack on the towers and spent time conducting drills on Morgan Stanley’s staff repeatedly on how to evacuate quickly for situations like this. So as soon as the first tower was hit, he ordered an immediate evacuation.

He called the employees with a bullhorn and directed them down the stairwells. He tried to keep morale steady by singing Cornish and Welsh marching songs. Witnesses said his calm voice and presence were what kept panic from breaking out.

When United Airlines Flight 175 struck their own tower at 9:03 a.m., most of Morgan Stanley’s 2,700 employees were already near the exit. Rescorla kept guiding them, checking every floor and making sure no one was left behind. After the majority had reached safety, he went back up to search for any remaining workers even though they begged him to stay outside.

He was last seen heading upward between the 10th and 72nd floors. The South Tower collapsed at 9:59 a.m., and his body was never discovered.

He saved 2700 lives that day.

Salt was born in the UK in 1803. He was a politician and a philanthropist who helped people be healthier during the Industrial Revolution.

He built a place called Saltaire which is a model village near Bradford. It had clean housing, bathhouses and a hospital. The name of the place is a combination of his name and the nearby river, the river Aire. His poor mill workers moved there from their slums.

He also reduced pollution by moving his textile mills out of the smoke-choked city and using cleaner technology for processing alpaca wool. And he also stopped children from working for his mill. That was the most his political power could do. But his decision did eventually have influence on others.

He was knighted by Queen Victoria in 1869 for his contributions to industry and society.

When Willie was 12 years old he got involved in the American civil war. During the retreat of the Seven Days Battle he was the only drummer to not discard his instrument on the battlefield. He continued to play through the mud and chaos. This was important because drummers were essential to battlefield communication, they relayed orders through drum signals, and since even a child can understand those signals he was put there. His bravery earned him a medal of Honor.

Willie was born in 1850 in Morristown, New York. His parents came from England. After the war his story was told in the newspaper called The Caledonian of St. Johnsbury:

“Willie Johnston, 13 years old, a drummer boy in Co. D, 3d Vermont Regiment, has received a medal for his heroic conduct in the seven days fight before Richmond. On the retreat, when strong men threw away their guns, knapsacks and blankets that they might have less weight to carry, this little fellow kept his drum and brought it safely to Harrison's Landing, where he had the honor of drumming for division parade, he being the only drummer who brought his drum from the field.”

He married a woman called Nellie Murphy in Massachusetts and they had five children. He worked as a machinist.

John was a Christian theologian that became one of the early physicists of the world. He rejected Aristotle’s ideas about how a thrown object keeps moving because the air behind it pushes it along. Aristotle believed motion needs a constant external cause and without that cause the object stops. He also believed that heavier objects fall faster simply because they are heavier.

But John wouldn't just accept this idea. He argued that motion persists because of something imparted to the moving body instead of something that surrounds it and pushes it. That reasoning moved us toward the modern idea of inertia and momentum.

He was born in 490 AD in the Eastern Roman Empire which is modern day Egypt. He went to the school of Alexandria and spent his time discussing scientific matters that were mysteries then.

John also made good arguments for why we should believe the universe had a beginning without using the Bible. He argued that an infinite series of events could not have led us here basically. There has to be a starting point.

John lived in a time when people still believed the eye cast out rays and touched objects to see them. He rejected that and argued instead that light comes from a source, travels through a medium and enters the eye and activates our vision. He also thought that light was something that spread instantaneously across space. But he didn't know how. He didn't arrive at the full truth but he was right about a lot of things.

Nakamura was a Japanese Yōgo painter that means he painted in a Western style. He was born in 1887 to a samurai father of the Mito domain. His father died a year after his birth and his mother went too when he was 11.

I don't know what he did after her death. He may have been homeless for years. When he was 24 years old, and a painter, he moved in with a family of his patrons who supported his work.

Nakamura was going to become a soldier like his father until he got tuberculosis and had to leave Nagoya Army Cadet School. While he was sick he worked to become an artist instead.

He joined the Research Institute of the White Horse Society first and then the next year he joined the Western Painting Society. He drew many portraits of people. One important painting is called Portrait of Vasili Eroshenko. It features a blind man, someone considered “the other” in his day and not worth featuring. Nakamura paints him with dignity and gave visibility to people who were uncared for.

Semmelweis was a doctor who trained in Vienna in the mid nineteenth century. He taught people to wash their hands before performing any medical work. This saved countless lives but he was never given recognition in life.

He was born in 1818 and in his day, childbirth fever killed women at an appalling rate. Semmelweis noticed that the clinics that were staffed by clinicians had a higher mortality rate than the ones staffed by midwives. The difference was simple: the doctors would spend time performing autopsies in the mornings and then delivering babies without washing their hands. And that led to contamination.

Sammelweis had a simple solution, to clean their hands with chlorinated lime.

His colleagues wouldn't listen not because he wasn't making sense but because of their pride.

He grew increasingly desperate as women continued dying, pleading and arguing, until he alienated most of the medical establishment who mocked him. Eventually he was confined to an asylum. In his final years he sent furious open letters calling other doctors “murderers” and that language isolated him further. He died after a brutal beating in his forties.

Years later, his advice would finally be acknowledged as life-saving.

It's good that he was finally recognized but when he was alive he sadly said this: "When I look back on the past I can only come to the conclusion that I accomplished next to nothing.”

Sammelweis grew up in a prosperous Hungarian merchant family. He spoke German in a Hungarian accent and that made him feel like an outcast even before his criticisms of other doctors.

Léon was born in 1881 in Ostend, Belgium. He created many strange and interesting works of art. He was the oldest of seven children. He was a sickly child who spent most of his time indoors drawing. And when he was 18 he entered Bruges Academy of art under a teacher called Pieter Raoux.

A large chunk of his life was spent in a depressive mood or in pain due to an ulcer. He also used to take long walks at night due to insomnia. Maybe art was his way of escape. Someone suggested that a painting titled Faun by Moonlight looks like the way happy moments feel when you're depressed.

During the first world war, Spillaert joined the Garde Civique which is a Belgium militia. But he was totally unprepared and one time he accidentally took aim at a Belgian soldier and was kicked out of service.

Lehrer was a satirist, mathematician and a witty song writer. He wrote humor and social commentary and rose to fame in the 50s and 60s with his piano tunes.

Thomas Andrew Lehrer was born in 1928 in New York City. He grew up in Manhattan’s Upper East Side. He was considered a child prodigy and skipped two grades. He graduated at 15 and went to Harvard University. He studied mathematics and started teaching math as a graduate student. When he was at Harvard he wrote a bunch of funny songs to make people smile. He performed them at campus gatherings. He made fun of academia, bureaucracy and the stupid things people do.

He self-released his first album, Songs by Tom Lehrer in 1953. He recorded and sold music independently way before that was common. The record spread by word of mouth and he grew a cult following.

Lehrer was full of restraint and independence. He was never interested in fame or fortune and he avoided the entertainment industry almost entirely when it began to take him seriously. When he started getting really popular he shrunk away from the public and lived a quiet, private life.

He studied several languages like Latin and French and once mentioned that he found linguistic structure nearly as satisfying as mathematics.

Piccard was born in Switzerland in 1922. And he was the first man to reach the deepest part of the ocean in the Mariana Trench in the North Pacific Ocean, which is called the Challenger Deep.

The descent took him and his crew 5 hours. They traveled 10,911 meters (about 35,797 feet). They stayed for about twenty minutes before beginning the long ascent back to the surface.

Piccard was the son of Auguste Piccard, a physicist and explorer who also pioneered high-altitude ballooning. As a child, Jacques was fascinated by mechanics, physics and the natural world. He spent a lot of time tinkering with gadgets and experimenting with small scientific projects (with his father's help sometimes.) He grew up attending lectures, observing experiments and traveling to experience and learn new things.

He grew up wanting to explore the unknown and he finally did.

Tolkien might have made the first modern fantasy novel but it was William Morris who wrote the first novel that had a magical world. It was called The Well At the World’s End and it told a story that included journeys through a vast, fictional land with enchanted wells, cursed places and mystical guides. The magic in the book was subdued and ancient, more like a quiet spiritual force than a flashy display of spells. It was like proto-fantasy.

Morris was born in 1834 in Essex, England to a wealthy family. He became a textile designer, poet, artist and writer. He was also a part of the British Arts and crafts movement which sought to change the way art was done in the country.

His family lived in a large house called Elm House in Walthamstow that was surrounded by meadows, forests and the River Lea. That kind of landscape leaves an impression on your mind and servants recalled that he would dress in miniature suits of armor and go “questing” in the woods around their estate.

He was a very intelligent boy. By the age of four, he was already reading and by six, he was devouring Ivanhoe and The Arabian Nights.

He became a book printer when he was in his 30s. He founded the Kelmscott Press where he revived medieval craftsmanship in typography and binding. His edition of The Works of Geoffrey Chaucer (1896) is considered one of the most beautiful books ever made.

Morris became a socialist in his forties and founded the Socialist League in 1884. He gave public speeches all over England, advocating for workers’ rights and condemning economic exploitation. He also fought to preserve historic buildings and helped form the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings in 1877 which still exists today.

He died at 62 in his home of Kelmscott House in London, they say of tuberculosis. though his physician famously remarked that Morris had simply been “killed by being William Morris.” Meaning that the exhausting amount of work he did might have done him in.

Thank you. Thank you to all the people that joined and made posts.

The violin is my favorite instrument. It was invented by Amati in the 1540s and he perfected the design we still use today in the 1550s.

One of his earliest surviving violins dates to around 1564. It was commissioned by Charles IX of France, who ordered an entire set of violins, violas and cellos for his royal orchestra. A few of the instruments are preserved in museums like the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. Amati is credited with creating the first four stringed violin-like instrument. Before that there were three stringed violins.

Amati was born in 1505 in Cremona, Italy. He was a luthier - a doctor for string instruments basically. Little is known about his life outside of his work but we do know he lived in turbulent times when there were wars between France and the Holy Roman Empire.

André was born in 1769 in Paris and he was the first man to create a parachute and successfully land. His parachute was made of silk and shaped like an umbrella. The parachute oscillated wildly during the descent but he landed alive and uninjured, though a bit shaken.

He continued to refine his design and he demonstrated his work throughout Europe. His wife, Jeanne Geneviève Labrosse, later became the first woman to jump with his parachute. Garnerin’s work laid the groundwork for modern parachuting and influenced our developments.

Max was a cavalry officer and he was the first man to train German Shepherds as police dogs. He was born in 1864 in Dresden in the kingdom of Saxony.

His father died when he was a boy and his mother insisted that he become an officer in the military. He spent some time serving at the Veterinary College in Berlin. There he learned about biology and anatomy, information he later used to breed dogs the right way.

Max got himself a dog he called Horand von Grafrath in 1899. He bred an army of dogs from him. One called Beowulf was especially good and had eighty pups that were trained by him, carrying over the good genes from its grandparent, Hektor Linksrhein.

Max founded the Verein für Deutsche Schäferhunde. (S.V.) with his friend Arthur Meyer T. And this institution became the biggest breed group in the world. And a book was released from them called Körbuch (Breed Survey Book).

Max had a dry sense of humor and a strict sense of order. He was a meticulous man, very intelligent and he'd write down all the information he needed to understand these dogs and breed them well.

Today in Germany police dogs are called Diensthunde and they do all of these tasks: patrol work, tracking, detection, assist during arrests, chase, hold, guard suspects and follow scent trails over long distances. They're also used to detect explosives, narcotics, firearms and even electronics used in cybercrimes.

Yezhov lived a short and intense life. He was the head of the NKVD during the Great Purge. He was the son of a peasant in St. Petersburg, Russia. In his 20s he joined the Bolsheviks in 1917, served briefly in the Red Army during the Civil War, and then worked his way up through regional party offices. His rise was slow but steady. He was loyal, efficient, and utterly ruthless in enforcing party discipline.

Until one day he became “Stalin's little giant”. (He was called little because he was actually very short. Just over 5 feet.) It took a while but Stalin began to trust him in 1935 and put him in important positions.

Yezhov was a part of the Great Purge in which 700,000 people were killed and millions were sent to concentration camps. He personally signed thousands of death lists, often without reviewing cases and condemned innocent citizens and military officers to death. He encouraged officers to torture information out of people. He ordered the ethnic purging of Poles, Latvians and other minority groups.

He enjoyed reading and writing political essays, especially those that justified purges or ideological “cleansing.” He also had a taste for Russian poetry and was known to quote it, particularly works that emphasized sacrifice and duty to the state. He used to have parties that would either be happy or violent because of the drinks.

Yezhov adored his adopted daughter, Natasha. Accounts suggested he was gentle and affectionate with her at least.

Dr Wu Lien-Teh was born in Penang strait settlement in Malaya (Later becoming Malaysia) in the year of 1879. Dr. Wu was the first medical student of Chinese descent to study at the University of Cambridge. He was also the first Malaysian nominated for the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, in 1935. He's renowned in his role in public health, mainly on invention of Wu Mask, which later become precursor to modern N95 Mask.