Questions tagged [biography]
Questions related to the history of biographies, being detailed descriptions of a person's life and including more than mere basic facts - often exploring aspects of personality and formative events.
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What is the location of August Ferdinand Möbius' grave?
Where is August Ferdinand Möbius (17 November 1790 – 26 September 1868) buried?
He is a famous mathematician, he died in Leipzig, Germany.
I tried a search on findagrave website, but there is no entry ...
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Where is the grave of Johann Heinrich Lambert?
What is location of the grave of Johann Heinrich Lambert?
He was a Swiss-French mathematician, who lived between 1728-1777.
Wikipedia: Johann Heinrich Lambert
I tried a search on the Find a Grave ...
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What are the main primary sources for the life and times of Shah Ismail I?
The Encyclopaedia Iranica seems mostly to base its account on Khvandamir, Hasan Beg Rumlu and to a lesser extent Khonji. Which of these (or any other primary source) has the most extensive treatment ...
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Are there any surviving historical written records about Black individuals in Sub-Saharan African languages?
In the modern world there are many famous Black people. However which names can we name prior to 1500?
There were ethnically Hellenic thinkers and politicians based in North Africa as well as native ...
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Where can I read Andrés Segovía's original autobiographical manuscript?
I'm reading an autobiography of the celebrated guitarist, Andrés Segovía (worldcat). The book is listed in some places (such as Amazon) as "English/Spanish edition", but the text is only ...
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Where can I find biographical details on Bernardino (Dino) Barozzi?
I am studying some specific aristocratic merchants figures in Italian history and nobilty and I came across the figure of Bernardino (Dino) Barozzi. Dates of birth and death are 1863 and 1942. Any ...
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What biographical information do we know about author Frank Rudolph Young?
Frank Rudolph Young wrote several books about mental training and yoga, some with lurid titles such as "Secret Mental Powers: Miracle of Mind Magic" and "Yoga Secrets for Extraordinary ...
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Are there any important biographies of nobodies?
Biographies usually cover interesting people who said and did notable things. I'm curious about lives notable just for their contexts: the stories of unremarkable people in historically remarkable ...
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What were John Milton's daily reading habits?
In a college course on John Milton, I believe I remember the professor saying that Milton had an extremely rigorous daily reading schedule, something like one hour of Greek and two hours of Hebrew ...
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Did Emanuel Lasker write a book declaring that Germany had to win World War I if civilization were to be saved?
Emanuel Lasker, the second chess world champion, was a very interesting person. I read here that
During World War I, Lasker […] invested all of his money in
German war bonds. At the end of ...
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What does Carlyle mean by 'essence' in 'History is the essence of innumerable Biographies'?
I have read Carlyle's 1830 essay on history with its famous paragraph :
Before Philosophy can teach by Experience, the Philosophy has to be in readiness, the Experience must be gathered and ...
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When the national leader is a foreigner
In a question about leaders who rose quickly from "nothing" to supreme power, someone suggested Hitler, someone else Napoleon, then it was noticed that Hitler was a foreigner (Austrian who came into ...
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Accuracy of the Show "I Go On Singing"
I recently saw a show about the life of Paul Robeson called I Go On Singing. It was a good show, but it contained several assertions that made me wonder.
Tens of thousands of slaves escaped to ...
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Was Jawaharlal Nehru virtually a Buddhist?
At the end of this conversation (in the podcast version at 46'30") about Ashoka the Great scholar of Buddhism Richard Gombrich made this remark:
The Indian flag has [Ashoka's] wheel of the dharma ...
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Who were these two conspirators against Titus?
Suetonius has this to tell us in Chapter 9 of his biography of Titus:
When two men of patrician family were found guilty of aspiring to the
throne, he satisfied himself with warning them to ...
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Would Plutarch be considered a historian by modern standards?
I've been reading his "Parallel Lives" and it's clear part of the goal is to tell how some fundamental characters lived, so people can know their stories, but the other part is to set and reinforce a ...
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Is this character based on a real person?
In the 2014 historical novel Natchez Burning, by Greg Iles, chapter 29:
A black Mississippian who left his native state in the early 1950s to go to law school, Quentin Avery fought on the front ...
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Did Ben Franklin actually make any tofu?
It is well documented that Franklin was interested in tofu, which he called a sort of cheese made from beans, and he got a recipe for making it that he sent on to others. But no source that I have ...
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Why was A.K.Gastev purged in 1939?
Gastev was the chief Soviet proponent of Taylorism, aka scientific management:
In the Soviet Union, Taylorism was advocated by Aleksei Gastev and
nauchnaia organizatsia truda (the movement for the ...
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Did Pythagoras visit Judaea, Arabia, and/or India?
From Wikipedia's page on Pythagoras:
Diogenes Laertius reported that Pythagoras had undertaken extensive travels, and had visited not only Egypt, but Arabia, Phoenicia, Judaea, Babylon, and even ...
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Scientists who became major political leaders [closed]
What examples can you find of these? I want the list to include people who satisfy two criteria:
(a) Major political leader = king, president, prime-minister, very senior cabinet minister, mayor of ...
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