Public Figures & Cultural Luminaries

Resistance & Human Rights

Jean-Édouard Vuillard

Édouard Vuillard

France

1868 – 1940 (71 years old)

French Nabis painter and master of 'Intimism' whose layered, wallpaper-patterned domestic interiors and portraits of Parisian literary salons created a cozy, psychological modernism.

Paris, France

3 Full Record →

12

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Marcus Garvey

Marcus Mosiah Garvey Jr.

Jamaica

17 August 1887 – 10 June 1940 (52 years old)

Charismatic Jamaican political activist and publisher who founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), pioneering mass Pan-African pride, Black economic sovereignty, and global anti-colonial self-reliance.

West Kensington, London, Great Britain

12 Full Record →

Resistance & Human Rights

Suleiman al-Barouni

سليمان الباروني

Libya

c. 1872 – 1940 (68 years old)

Prominent Amazigh Ibadi scholar, poet, and statesman from the Nafusa Mountains who led Libyan resistance against Italian colonialism and served as President of the Tripolitanian Republic.

Muscat, Oman

3 Full Record →

7

Statesmanship & Statesmen

Charles Freer Andrews

C. F. Andrews

United Kingdom

1871 – 1940 (69 years old)

Prêtre anglican et réformateur britannique surnommé Deenabandhu (« l'Ami des pauvres »), compagnon intime de Gandhi et de Rabindranath Tagore.

Kolkata, West Bengal, India

7 Full Record →

2

Michael Joseph Savage

Australia

1872 – 1940 (68 years old)

First Labour Prime Minister of New Zealand (1935–1940), universally revered as the 'Father of the Modern Welfare State' whose 1938 Social Security Act introduced the world's first universal, free healthcare and cradle-to-grave social security system.

Auckland, New Zealand

2 Full Record →

Sports & Athletics

4

Spyridon Louis

Σπυρίδων Λούης

Greece

1873 – 1940 (67 years old)

Greek water carrier who became an eternal national hero by winning the first modern Olympic Marathon at the 1896 Athens Games, reviving the ancient spirit of Greek athletics.

Marousi (Athens), Greece

4 Full Record →

Sports & Athletics

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Spiridon Louis

Σπυρίδων Λούης

Greece

12 January 1873 – 26 March 1940 (67 years old)

Spiridon Louis was an impoverished Greek water carrier who became an eternal national hero by winning the inaugural modern Olympic marathon at the 1896 Athens Olympic Games. Tracing the legendary 40-kilometer route of Pheidippides from the battlefield of Marathon into the Panathenaic Stadium, his victory ignited national euphoria and cemented the marathon as the ultimate crown jewel of the Olympic Games.

Marousi, Athens, Greece

7 Full Record →

5

Selma Lagerlöf

Selma Ottilia Lovisa Lagerlöf

Sweden

1858 – 1940 (81 years old)

First woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature (1909) and first female member of the Swedish Academy, famous for Gösta Berling's Saga and The Wonderful Adventures of Nils.

Sunne (Värmland), Sweden

5 Full Record →

5

Mikhail Bulgakov

Михаил Афанасьевич Булгаков

Russian Empire

1891 – 1940 (48 years old)

Master Soviet novelist and playwright whose satirical masterpiece The Master and Margarita brought Satan and a talking cat to 1930s Moscow.

Moscow, Russia

5 Full Record →

Arts & Music

6

Peter Behrens

Germany

1868 – 1940 (71 years old)

German architect and pioneer of corporate identity who designed the monumental AEG Turbine Factory and mentored Gropius, Mies van der Rohe, and Le Corbusier.

Berlin, Germany

6 Full Record →

5

Edward Stephen Harkness

Edward Harkness

United States

1874 – 1940 (66 years old)

Philanthrope américain d'une discrétion légendaire, donateur de plus de 130 millions de dollars, fondateur du Commonwealth Fund et du Pilgrim Trust.

Bronx, New York, United States

5 Full Record →

6

Isaac Babel

Исаак Эммануилович Бабель

Russian Empire

1894 – 1940 (45 years old)

Peerless Russian-Jewish master of the short story whose Red Cavalry and Odessa Tales brought vivid brutality and poetic lyricism to world literature.

Moscow, Russia

6 Full Record →

7

Henry Norman Bethune

Norman Bethune (白求恩)

Canada

1890 – 1939 (49 years old)

Chirurgien thoracique canadien visionnaire, créateur de la première unité mobile de transfusion sanguine en Espagne et héros médical en Chine.

Shijiazhuang, Hebei, China

7 Full Record →

Grace Abbott

United States

1878 – 1939 (60 years old)

Champion of immigrants' rights and child welfare who directed the Immigrants' Protective League, led the federal enforcement of the first federal child labor laws, and helped draft the historic Social Security Act of 1935.

Grand Island (Nebraska), United States

3 Full Record →

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William Butler Yeats

Ireland

13 June 1865 – 28 January 1939 (73 years old)

Supreme Irish lyric poet and 1923 Nobel laureate who spearheaded the Irish Literary Revival, co-founded the Abbey Theatre with Lady Gregory, and chronicled the turbulent birth of modern Ireland in Easter, 1916 and The Second Coming.

Menton (French Riviera), France

15 Full Record →

Sports & Athletics

Matthias Sindelar

Matthias Šindelář

Czech Republic

1903 – 1939 (35 years old)

Austrian football virtuoso known as 'Der Papierene' (The Paper Man), center-forward and captain of Hugo Meisl's 'Wunderteam' who defied the Nazi annexation of Austria.

Vienna, Austria

3 Full Record →

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