Public Figures & Cultural Luminaries

Inukai Tsuyoshi

犬養毅

Edo Period Japan

1855 – 1932 (76 years old)

Prime Minister of Japan and 'God of Constitutional Politics' whose murder by military extremists in the May 15 Incident ended pre-war Japanese party democracy.

Tokyo, Japan

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Statesmanship & Statesmen

Julia Lathrop

Julia Clifford Lathrop

United States

1858 – 1932 (73 years old)

Pioneering American social reformer who created the world's first juvenile court system in Chicago in 1899 and became the first woman to head a United States federal government agency as Chief of the US Children's Bureau.

Rockford (Illinois), United States

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Aristide Briand

France

1862-03-28 – 1932-03-07 (69 years old)

Awarded the 1926 Nobel Peace Prize; pioneer of European reconciliation and the visionary proposal for a European federal union in 1929.

Paris, France

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Florence Kelley

United States

1859 – 1932 (72 years old)

Tireless American labor and consumer reformer who lived at Hull House, served as Illinois' first female Chief Factory Inspector, founded the National Consumers League, and co-founded the NAACP in 1909.

Philadelphia (Pennsylvania), United States

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Ferdinand Édouard Buisson

France

20 December 1841 – 16 February 1932 (90 years old)

Ferdinand Buisson was a French academic, philosopher, and social reformer who co-founded the League of Human Rights (Ligue des droits de l'homme) and served as Jules Ferry's Director of Primary Education, creating France's free, mandatory, secular public school system (laïcité). A passionate advocate of Franco-German pacifist reconciliation, he shared the 1927 Nobel Peace Prize with Ludwig Quidde.

Thieuloy-Saint-Antoine, Oise, France

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Julius Rosenwald

United States

1862 – 1932 (69 years old)

Président de Sears, Roebuck & Co. et philanthrope visionnaire, financeur avec Booker T. Washington de plus de 5 000 écoles pour les enfants afro-américains dans le Sud ségrégué.

Chicago, Illinois, United States

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Omar al-Mukhtar

عمر المختار

Libya

1858 – 1931 (73 years old)

Libyan Quranic teacher and legendary military strategist known as the 'Lion of the Desert', who led the armed Bedouin resistance against Italian colonial fascism for nearly twenty years.

Benghazi, Libya

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Arts & Music

Bix Beiderbecke

Leon Bismark Beiderbecke

United States

1903 – 1931 (28 years old)

Pioneering American jazz cornetist and composer whose pure tone, lyrical phrasing, and Debussy-inspired harmonies created an influential alternative to Louis Armstrong's hot jazz.

Queens, New York, United States

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Lars Olof Jonathan (Nathan) Söderblom

Lars Olof Jonathan Söderblom

Sweden

15 January 1866 – 12 July 1931 (65 years old)

Nathan Söderblom was a Swedish Lutheran theologian and Archbishop of Uppsala (Primate of the Church of Sweden) from 1914 to 1931. Widely revered as the father of the modern ecumenical movement, he convened the historic 1925 Universal Christian Conference on Life and Work in Stockholm, uniting divided churches across former WWI battlelines in common humanitarian action, receiving the 1930 Nobel Peace Prize.

Uppsala, Sweden

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Sciences & Discovery

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Kitasato Shibasaburo

北里柴三郎

Japan

1853 – 1931 (78 years old)

Pioneering Japanese physician and bacteriologist who co-discovered the bubonic plague pathogen and developed serum therapy against tetanus and diphtheria alongside Emil von Behring.

Tokyo, Japan

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Prempeh I

Kwaku Dua III Asamu (Prempeh I)

Ghana

1870 – 1931 (60 years old)

Asantehene (King) of the Ashanti Empire who rejected British protectorate ultimatums, endured twenty-eight years of colonial exile in Sierra Leone and Seychelles to protect the sacred Golden Stool, and returned in triumph to Kumasi in 1924.

Kumasi (Ashanti Region), Ghana

2 Full Record →

Sciences & Discovery

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Albert A. Michelson

Albert Abraham Michelson

Kingdom of Prussia (Poland)

1852 – 1931 (78 years old)

Master experimentalist whose Michelson-Morley interferometer experiment disproved the luminiferous aether.

Altadena, California, United States

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Literature & Poetry

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Gibran Khalil Gibran

جبران خليل جبران

Lebanon

6 January 1883 – 10 April 1931 (48 years old)

Lebanese-American mystic poet and artist whose prose-poetry masterwork The Prophet (1923)—translated into over one hundred languages—ranks as the third best-selling poet in history after Shakespeare and Laozi.

New York City, United States

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Ida B. Wells

Ida Bell Wells-Barnett

United States

16 July 1862 – 25 March 1931 (68 years old)

Courageous African American investigative journalist, educator, and early civil rights leader who exposed the epidemic of lynching in the American South and co-founded the NAACP.

Chicago, Illinois, United States

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Bhagat Singh

भगत सिंह

Pakistan

1907 – 1931 (23 years old)

Iconic socialist revolutionary whose intellectual writings, hunger strikes, and court statements transformed Indian anti-colonial consciousness.

Hussainiwala, India

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Military Leaders & Strategists

Chandrashekhar Azad

चंद्रशेखर आजाद

India

1906 – 1931 (24 years old)

Legendary commander-in-chief of the Hindustan Socialist Republican Association who vowed never to be taken alive by the British colonial police.

Prayagraj, India

3 Full Record →

Joseph Joffre (Marshal Joffre / Papa Joffre)

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