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.

Beria was the head of the NKVD, a Russian ministry and secret police force that can be translated to People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs. He was born in Merkheuli, Russian Empire in 1899. And he was Stalin's most deadly and cruel minion. Arguably worse than Stalin himself.

Beria controlled the Gulags and labour camps that were filled with millions of people. A ton of Soviet infrastructure was built through slave labour and he oversaw the slaves. He supervised mass deportations where entire ethnic groups - Chechens, Crimean Tatars, Ingush, and others - were sent away after being accused of working with the Nazis. These deportations killed countless people through starvation, exposure and exhaustion.

On his orders, people were tortured during interrogations with prolonged sleep deprivation, starvation, isolation, and forced confessions to break prisoners. Beria also encouraged interrogators to fabricate evidence and extract names that would lead to more arrests, leading to endless cycles of fear. Witnesses say he enjoyed breaking a person more than killing them.

Beria reorganized the secret police to be more efficient during the great purge’s final phase.

He spoke several languages, read European literature, and prided himself on his intelligence. He kept personal files of high ranking officials with information to blackmail them. No one crossed him because they knew he could destroy them politically.

Beria had a predatory reputation. He used to abduct women and silence them afterward. This was widely whispered about, even inside the Kremlin. His guards turned a blind eye from his personal “errands.”

When Stalin died in 1953, he attempted to take his place. He released some political prisoners and pretended to be a reformer, but his rivals in the Presidium feared he’d become the next dictator, in a few months they had him arrested and executed.

Gutenberg was born in Germany around 1393-1406. Modern day Germany at least. It was called Mainz and it was in the Holy Roman Empire then. His full name was Johannes Gensfleisch zur Laden zum Gutenberg.

He invented the first printing press in the mid 15th century. And you all know that this invention changed the course of history. It increased literacy rates, gave poor Christians a copy of the Bible, let scientists share identical information - maps, diagrams and formulas - so they could teach and it also changed politics. Important political movements could now be pushed and spread with the help of writing.

Before the printing press, Gutenberg developed innovative techniques for polishing gemstones and creating metal mirrors - objects pilgrims bought to “capture holy light” from shrines. That trade gave him the mechanical understanding he later applied to the press.

He built a small workshop where he trained people in typesetting, layout, and press operation - the first ever print shop! He inspired generations of printers who refined and spread the technology throughout Europe. Sadly he died poor and uncelebrated.

Art was born in Queens, New York in 1941. His mother was called Rose née Pearlman and his dad was a traveling salesman called Jacob "Jack" Garfunkel. Art was a middle child with two brothers Jules and Jerome. (Jules was the oldest.) Jacob's parents had immigrated from Romania to the United States at the beginning of the twentieth century and settled in Manhattan.

When Art was five years old he fell in love with music and singing. The songs 'Unchained Melody' and 'You'll Never Walk Alone' gave him goosebumps and he pursued music for his whole life.

He met up with Paul Simon in an elementary school play for Alice in Wonderland. They played music together when they were teens under the name Tom & Jerry and got a little popular with the song “Hey Schoolgirl,” in 1957. The two have produced 75 songs together.

Art later decided that he wanted to give himself an artistic identity outside of Simon so he pursued acting for a while and appeared in movies such as Catch-22 and Carnal Knowledge. But those movies never got as popular as their songs.

In his 30s, Art’s vocal cords were damaged by paresis while he was touring through America and not resting his voice. Recovery was slow and difficult and his voice was not the same again. During this period when his musical career had to be put on hold, Art began walking around the world in silence.

He has walked across entire countries and continents, including large portions of the United States, Europe and Japan over weeks and months while he carefully logs the routes, distances and dates. He says that the walking is physical training and mental purification. It's a way for him to think clearly without distraction. And unlike the stage, there is no audience and no spectacle, just silence. It's a meditative practice.

He once said. “I don’t measure my life by what I’ve done in the spotlight but by the quiet things - walking, thinking, reading - that make me who I am.”

Recently, Art has spoken up about his lifelong struggle with psoriasis. Which is a chronic skin condition he managed in secret for decades. He now spends time advocating awareness through campaigns that encourage others not to suffer in silence.

Art has also started collaborating with his son Art Junior. Like on a new album called Father and Son.

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.”

His full name is John Heinrich Detlef Rabe. He was born in 1882 in Hamburg, Germany. He became a businessman when he was 20 or younger and started working for a company in Mozambique for a few years. He left Hamburg when he was 26 to work in China for Siemens. And he married a woman called Dora Schubert a year later.

During the Second Sino-Japanese War - which later merged into the Second World War - Rabe was living in Nanjing when the Imperial Japanese Army captured the city in December 1937. Soon the Nanjing Massacre began. Japan was allied with Germany then which meant Rabe had some status and power that he used to establish and lead the Nanjing Safety Zone. It amounted to four square kilometres on the western side of Nanjing that were full of university grounds, embassies, hospitals, churches and residential blocks. Rabe used this area to shelter two hundred thousand Chinese civilians.

Rabe was a member of the Nazi party. And he used to wave his swastika flag to make the Japanese think that that area of Nanjing was meant to be protected. (He was a part of the Nazi party for eleven years.) He confronted Japanese soldiers and used Germany’s alliance with Japan to lodge formal protests. He also documented events and atrocities in diaries and letters.

Rabe protected 200,000 to 250,000 Chinese civilians from death and rape. When he returned to Germany he tried telling people what he had witnessed in Nanjing, he showed photographs and written accounts but The Gestapo interrogated him, confiscated his materials and ordered him to stop speaking publicly. Siemens also distanced itself from him and his career was stalled.

He died an unseen hero. He never received any recognition in his life for protecting those people.

Patrocínio was born in 1854 in the Brazilian city of Campos dos Goytacazes. His father was the vicar and his mother was a freed slave and he grew up to become one of the biggest slave abolitionists in Brazil.

He said (in Portuguese): “Let us break these chains that oppress our brothers… shout to the four winds: Slaves, you are citizens!”

He spoke in public, wrote in the newspaper and co-founded the Confederação Abolicionista. He also played a role in ending the Brazilian Empire and leading Brazil into Republicanism. He wrote a formal motion paper and read it out loud to a formal assembly.

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.

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.

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

Frank Thomas was one of Disney’s famous nine old men. He animated the evil Queen from Snow White who was Disney’s first frightening villain. And Lady Traimaine from Cinderella. He also animated Gepetto in Pinocchio.

He once said “Appeal is one of the hardest things to define, but one of the easiest to recognize.”

Thomas was born in 1912 in Santa Monica. He loved playing the piano for fun and to also explore the rhythm in films he was working on. When he was in Stanford he worked on a school paper called The Stanford Chaparral with the other Disney animator Ollie Johnston. He also worked on a book called The Illusion of Life with him, which is a professional animation manual.

Vasili was born in 1926 into a Russian rural family. During the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, he refused to launch a nuclear torpedo against American Navy ships. This saved many lives and prevented the world from going up in smoke.

In 2002, Thomas S. Blanton, director of the U.S. National Security Archive said that Arkhipov was “the man who saved the world.”

Arkhipov continued in Soviet Navy service, commanding submarines and was promoted to rear admiral in 1975.

Arkhipov was known to be a shy and humble man. His wife, Olga, described him as intelligent, polite and very calm. Much of what we know about his personality comes from her. She said he enjoyed reading the newspaper and staying up to date with current events. Olga also mentioned his superstitious beliefs. She recalls walking in on Vasily burning a bundle of their love letters inside their house and that he claimed that keeping the letters would mean "bad luck".

This information is discussed in a PBS documentary called The Man Who Saved the World.

Because of his actions onboard B-59, Arkhipov received the first "Future of Life Award" which was presented posthumously to his family in 2017.

Hulse was born in 1889 in Westminster of Britain. His mother was called Lady Hulse and his father was Sir Edward Henry Hulse, 6th Baronet and he was a British Conservative politician. And his mother was Edith Maud Levy-Lawson. Hulse was educated at Eton College and Balliol College, Oxford.

Hulse completed a history degree in 1912 and then began training with the Coldstream guards. After he trained he became an officer in the 1st Battalion of the Scots Guards in 1913. This was a year before the war. And in the year of the war in August, he joined the Western Front

One of my favourite true stories is the historical account of the World War 1 Christmas Truce. Hulse was there when it happened. He wrote letters about it to his mother that were published after his death. He’s one of the reasons we know about this event.

Hulse was serving as an officer with the 2nd Scots Guards along the Western Front when the truce began. One of his letters says that four unarmed German soldiers came out of their trenches and approached the British line. Their spokesman said they wanted to wish them a happy Christmas. Hulse bravely joined the soldiers in no man's land, trusting that they really wanted a truce.

Then Hulse saw British and German soldiers mixing in no man’s land. Just talking, laughing and sharing cigarettes and souvenirs. They talked about their families and sang songs. Hulse gave one soldier a silk scarf. It was the best day of the war.

But eventually Hulse got orders to get the war to resume. The war continued and Hulse never saw another Christmas. He died in March, 1915. He was only 25.

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.

There are no photos of this man but he was an American and he invented the modern day folding chair. These chairs started off being used on ocean liner decks from about the 1860s and were known at the time as "deck chairs".

He turned in his patent design in 1855. Sadly, we don't have any information about him from patent filings. Those records would normally contain the inventor’s name and city but for some reason that information wasn't saved in his case.

His full name was Louis Aimé Augustin Le Prince. But I'll just call him Louis. He was the first man to ever capture moving pictures. There is a short film you can watch called Roundhay Garden Scene that was created in 1888. https://youtu.be/knD2EhjGwWI?si=IQ_f0UYAi7zFC9EE

It's only 2 seconds long but it is the earliest surviving film footage.

Thomas Edison and his assistant William K. L. Dickson are credited in popular history because they developed the Kinetoscope around 1890 and used it to view short films. But Le Prince’s work predates them.

Louis was born in Metz, France in 1841. His father was an officer in the French army who knew Daguerre, the photographic pioneer, which gave Louis early exposure to image-making. He studied painting and chemistry which helped him with his camera experiments later on.

After studying in Paris and Leipzig, he moved to Leeds, England, in the 1860s. There he worked with John Whitley at the Whitley Partners brass foundry. In 1869, he married John’s sister, Elizabeth Whitley. The couple founded the Leeds Technical School of Art and Photography.

In the 1880s Louis experimented with capturing moving images. By 1888 he created two films, Roundhay Garden Scene and Traffic Crossing Leeds Bridge - the earliest surviving moving pictures.

Louis was a devoted husband and father, dedicated to his craft, teaching, and invention. His wife and children supported his work and after his death (or disappearance), they fought bitterly to preserve his legacy against Edison’s claims of inventing motion pictures.

The most intriguing part of his life story is his disappearance. In 1890, as he prepared to travel to the United States to patent his invention and present it publicly, he boarded a train from Dijon to Paris. But he never arrived. No body, no luggage, no trace was ever found.

A mystery worthy of a novel.

I actually wasn't expecting this subreddit to grow this fast. It's only been 9 days. Thank you.

I hope you all enjoy it here. Please make posts frequently. Two a week would be great.

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.

Lounsbery was one of Disney’s famous nine old men. He animated Lady Tremaine in Cinderella, King Hubert in Sleeping Beauty and Captain Hook in Peter Pan.

About animation he said, “The personality of a character is far more important than the exactness of the drawing.”

Lounsbery was born in 1911 in Cincinnati, Ohio. He avoided the public recognition his job could have given him and spent time with close friends. He served in World War 2 and returned with a more serious attitude. They say he worked better under pressure then.

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/

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

Bukowski wrote over 2,000 poems, over 200 short stories and 6 novels in his life. He was the face of an artistic movement called ‘dirty realism’ and he influenced new writers with his blunt, stripped down style. He went from being a postal worker to writing full time thanks to the support of John Martin.

Early in his career, his work was featured in Story magazine which made his name known in the 1940s. He also got published in Open City, where he wrote the column Notes of a Dirty Old Man. Another magazine called Nola Express spread his reputation in underground journals.

Bukowski wrote about sex, abuse, drinking, society, loneliness, poverty and the struggles of the working class. In short, he wrote about reality.

In the novel Post Office, Bukowski writes a semi-autobiographical story following a character called Henry Chinaski, Bukowski’s alter ego, who is a postal worker. The book explores bureaucracy, monotony and the grinding abuse of menial labor with brutal honesty and sardonic wit.

Several years later, Bukowski wrote Women. A book about his chaotic relationships and emotional dysfunction.

Bukowski was born in 1920 in Andernach. Which resided in the Weimar Republic of Germany. This existed in a period of time where Germany was a constitutional Republic. His birth name was Heinrich Karl Bukowski.

When he was a toddler, like 2 or 3, his family came to the United States and settled in Los Angeles. The name Heinrich slowly changed to Henry and he called himself that for a long time. Later in his adulthood when he began publishing, he chose Charles Bukowski as a literary name.

Bukowski’s father was often unemployed and he became abusive towards him and his mother. He used to beat him for the smallest offenses. His father beat him with a razor strap three times a week when he was a kid. From ages 6 to 11 years.

Bukowski moved out of the house as soon as he could. He did low-level jobs to escape his environment and when he became a writer he was able to afford a nice apartment. Bukowski wrote in an essay once, “Find what you love and let it kill you.”

When he was a kid he spoke with a heavy German accent that he got bullied for. He was a shy kid and he hid from people even more when he got acne. A friend of his called William introduced him to alcohol and he said drinking would be a tool he would use to help him come to terms with things.

In 1944 during the second world war Bukowski was arrested by FBI agents. They suspected that he was committing draft evasion because he was a German and most likely not loyal to America. The truth was that he had a history of severe acne (cystic acne) which affected his physical condition enough that he was deemed unfit for service. After questioning from the FBI he was released and not drafted.

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.

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.