Public Figures & Cultural Luminaries

Resistance & Human Rights

George Washington Carver

United States

c. 1864 – 1943 (79 years old)

American agricultural scientist and inventor who developed crop-rotation techniques and hundreds of peanut, sweet potato, and soybean products to restore depleted Southern soils and empower impoverished farmers.

Tuskegee (Alabama), United States

2 Full Record →

Matangini Hazra

মাতঙ্গিনী হাজরা

India

1870 – 1942 (71 years old)

Affectionately known as 'Gandhi Buri' (Old Lady Gandhi), 72-year-old freedom fighter who was shot dead holding the Indian flag aloft during the Quit India Movement.

Tamluk, India

2 Full Record →

Philosophy & Thought

Edith Stein

Edith Stein (Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross)

German Empire

1891 – 1942 (50 years old)

German-Jewish philosopher and phenomenologist who was Edmund Husserl's assistant, authored On the Problem of Empathy, converted to Catholicism, and was murdered at Auschwitz-Birkenau.

Oswiecim, Poland

2 Full Record →

Humanitarian & Peace

5

🕯️ 1,890

Janusz Korczak

Henryk Goldszmit

Russia

22 July 1878 – c. 7 August 1942 (64 years old)

Janusz Korczak (pen name of Henryk Goldszmit) was a Polish-Jewish pediatrician, pioneering educator, and beloved children's author who established an egalitarian democratic children's republic at Dom Sierot orphanage in Warsaw. When the Nazis liquidated the Warsaw Ghetto in August 1942, Korczak steadfastly refused multiple offers of personal escape, choosing instead to march hand-in-hand with his 192 orphans into the gas chambers of Treblinka.

Treblinka / Warsaw, Poland

5 Full Record →

Literature & Poetry

Akiko Yosano

与謝野晶子 (Yosano Shoyo)

Meiji Japan

1878 – 1942 (63 years old)

Groundbreaking Japanese poet, feminist, and social reformer (1878–1942) whose daring 1901 poetry collection 'Midaregami' (Tangled Hair) revolutionized modern tanka verse, and whose anti-war poem 'Thou Shalt Not Die' challenged militarism.

Fuchu (Tokyo), Japan

2 Full Record →

3

Hector Guimard

Hector Germain Guimard

France

1867 – 1942 (75 years old)

French architect and industrial designer celebrated as the premier exponent of French Art Nouveau, world-famous for his sinuous cast-iron Paris Métro station entrances.

New York City, United States

3 Full Record →

Sciences & Discovery

William Henry Bragg

United Kingdom

1862 – 1942 (79 years old)

British physicist and mineralogist who co-invented X-ray crystallography with his son Lawrence Bragg, winning the 1915 Nobel Prize in Physics for deciphering crystal lattice structures.

Wigton (Cumbria), United Kingdom

2 Full Record →

Sports & Athletics

Jose Raul Capablanca

José Raúl Capablanca y Graupera

Cuba

1888 – 1942 (53 years old)

Third World Chess Champion hailed as the 'Chess Machine' for his effortless intuition, infallible endgame technique, and eight-year undefeated tournament streak.

Havana, Cuba

2 Full Record →

1,791

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Grant Wood

Grant DeVolson Wood

United States

1891 – 1942 (50 years old)

American Regionalist painter renowned for his iconic masterpiece American Gothic and stylized Midwestern landscapes.

Anamosa, Iowa, United States

1,791 Full Record →

Sports & Athletics

7

🕯️ 2,380

Dorando Pietri

Italy

16 October 1885 – 7 February 1942 (56 years old)

Dorando Pietri was an Italian marathon runner whose dramatic, agonizing collapse and disqualification yards from the finish line at the 1908 London Olympic Games became the most celebrated moment of drama in early Olympic history. Disqualified after being assisted over the line by compassionate officials, he was presented with a special silver gilded cup by Queen Alexandra, becoming a worldwide folk hero.

Sanremo, Liguria, Italy

7 Full Record →

3

El Lissitzky

Lazar Markovich Lissitzky

Russian Empire

1890 – 1941 (51 years old)

Russian avant-garde designer, architect, and typographer whose 'Proun' compositions and revolutionary graphic designs bridged Suprematism, Constructivism, and European modernism.

Moscow, Soviet Union

3 Full Record →

Resistance & Human Rights

Amrita Sher-Gil

अमृता शेरगिल

Austria-Hungary

1913 – 1941 (28 years old)

Pioneering Indian-Hungarian painter celebrated as the 'Indian Frida Kahlo', whose sensuous, melancholic oil portraits of rural Indian women revolutionized modern South Asian painting.

Lahore, Pakistan

2 Full Record →

Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya

Зоя Анатольевна Космодемьянская

Russia

1923 – 1941 (18 years old)

Eighteen-year-old Soviet partisan whose unbreakable defiance under Nazi torture made her the first female Hero of the Soviet Union during World War II.

Moscow, Russia

2 Full Record →

3

Robert Delaunay

France

1885 – 1941 (56 years old)

French modern painter who co-founded Orphism with Sonia Delaunay, celebrated for his vibrant circular color disks, kaleidoscopic Eiffel Towers, and pioneering abstraction.

Montpellier, France

3 Full Record →

Literature & Poetry

5

Marina Tsvetaeva

Марина Ивановна Цветаева

Russian Empire

1892 – 1941 (48 years old)

Russian Silver Age lyric poet of incandescent emotional intensity, tragic passion, and rhythmic virtuosity in Poem of the End and Mileposts.

Yelabuga, Russia

5 Full Record →

Sciences & Discovery

3,644

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Paul Sabatier

France

1854 – 1941 (86 years old)

French chemist who discovered catalytic hydrogenation of organic compounds with finely divided nickel, winning the 1912 Nobel Prize.

Toulouse, Haute-Garonne, France

3,644 Full Record →

Humanitarian & Peace

6