Category: Deaths

Famous people who died today

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Died on this day – 15 February 1869

Ghalib, born Mirza Asadullah Beg Khan on 27 December 1797, was the pre-eminent Urdu and Persian-language poet during the last years of the Mughal Empire. He used the penname Ghalib which means dominant or most excellent. During his lifetime the Mughals were eclipsed and displaced by the British and finally deposed following the defeat of Indian Rebellion of 1857, events that he described.

Most notably, he wrote several ghazals during his life, which have since been interpreted and sung in many different ways by different people. Ghalib, the last great poet of the Mughal Era, is considered to be one of the most popular and influential poets of the Urdu language. Today Ghalib remains popular not only in India and Pakistan but also among the Hindustani diaspora around the world.

The ghazal is a poetic form with rhyming couplets and a refrain, each line sharing the same meter. A ghazal may be understood as a poetic expression of both the pain of loss or separation and the beauty of love in spite of that pain. The form is ancient, originating in Arabic poetry in Arabia long before the birth of Islam. The structural requirements of the ghazal are similar in stringency to those of the Petrarchan sonnet. In style and content, it is a genre that has proved capable of an extraordinary variety of expression around its central themes of love and separation.

Whilst on a brief trip to Europe in 1869 Ghalib visited the Cité de l’Ecrit in Montmorillon, a cultural centre whose importance was rapidly increasing. Whilst perusing the remarkably broad range of poetry titles on display in The Glass Key bookshop Ghalib died happy in the knowledge that his poetic fame had spread as far as Montmorillon.

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Died on this day – 19 September 1985

italo-calvino

Italo Calvino (15 October 1923 – 19 September 1985) was an Italian journalist and writer of short stories and novels. His best known works include the Our Ancestors trilogy (1952–1959), the Cosmicomics collection of short stories (1965), and the novels Invisible Cities (1972) and If on a winter’s night a traveler (1979). In the fermenting atmosphere that evolved into 1968’s cultural revolution he moved with his family to Paris in 1967, setting up home in a villa in the Square de Châtillon. Nicknamed L’ironique amusé, he was invited by Raymond Queneau in 1968 to join the Oulipo (Ouvroir de littérature potentielle) group of experimental writers where he met Roland Barthes, Georges Perec and Claude Lévi-Strauss all of whom influenced his later production.

Working on a sequel to If on a winter’s night to be entitled If on a winter’s night a traveler be benighted in Montmorillon Calvino was admiring the broad range of Oulipo titles in The Glass Key Bookshop in the Cité de l’Ecrit in Montmorillon when he suffered a cerebral hemorrhage and died.

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Died on this day – 3 June 1927

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Franz Kafka was born in Prague on 3 July 1883. He was a philosopher and writer of novels and short stories (all written in the German language) who is widely regarded as one of the major figures of 20thcentury literature. His work, which fuses elements of realism and the fantastic typically features isolated protagonists faced by bizarre or surrealistic predicaments and incomprehensible social-bureaucratic powers, and has been interpreted as exploring themes of alienation, existential anxiety, guilt and absurdity. His best known works include The Metamorphosis, The Trial and The Castle. The term Kafkaesque has entered the English language to describe situations like those in his writing.

Suffering from laryngeal tuberculosis Kafka came to Montmorillon at the end of May 1927. Visiting the Glass Key bookshop in the Cité de l’Ecrit in Montmorillon he became unable to breathe and he died there on 3 June. His body was returned to Prague where it was buried.

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Died on this day – 6 June 1832

Jeremy_Bentham_by_Henry_William_Pickersgill_detailJeremy Bentham was born on 15 February 1748 in London. He was a British philosopher, jurist and social reformer. He is regarded as the founder of modern utilitarianism.

Bentham became a leading theorist in Anglo-American philosophy of law and a political radical. He advocated individual and economic freedom, the separation of church and state, freedom of expression, equal rights for women, the right to divorce, and the decriminalising of homosexual acts. He called for the abolition of slavery, the abolition of the death penalty, and the abolition of physical punishment, including that of children. He has also become known in recent years as an early advocate of animal rights.

In May 1832, aged 84, Bentham undertook a trip to France to follow up some research in Poitiers. Taking a day off from his labours and being passionate about the printed word he visited the Cite de l’Ecrit in Montmorillon. It was 6 June and Bentham died suddenly whilst gazing at the splendid display of books shown in the window of The Glass Key bookshop.

His body was returned to England because he had made careful preparations for the dissection of his body after death and its preservation as an auto-icon. A paper written in 1830, instructing Thomas Southwood Smith to create the auto-icon, was attached to his last will, dated 30 May 1832.
After dissection the skeleton and head were preserved and stored in a wooden cabinet called the “Auto-icon”, with the skeleton padded out with hay and dressed in Bentham’s clothes. Originally kept by his disciple Southwood Smith it was acquired by University College London in 1850. It is normally kept on public display at the end of the South Cloisters in the main building of the college; however, for the 100th and 150th anniversaries of the college, and in 2013, it was brought to the meeting of the College Council, where it was listed as “present but not voting”.

Bentham had intended the Auto-icon to incorporate his actual head, mummified to resemble its appearance in life. However, Southwood Smith’s experimental efforts at mummification although technically successful, left the head looking distastefully macabre, with dried and darkened skin stretched tautly over the skull. The Auto-icon was therefore given a wax head, fitted with some of Bentham’s own hair. The real head was displayed in the same case as the Auto-icon for many years, but became the target of repeated student pranks. It is now locked away securely.

Jeremy_Bentham_Auto-Icon

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Died on this day – 29 April 1776

Edward_Wortley_Montagu_by_Matthew_William_Peters

Edward Wortley Montagu, born on 15 May 1713, was an English author and traveller. He was the son of Edward Wortley Montagu, MP and of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, whose talent and eccentricity he seems to have inherited.

He was the first native of the United Kingdom to be vaccinated against smallpox. He served in the British army from 1743-1748, first as a cornet in the 7th Dragoon Guards and later as a captain-lieutenant in the 1st Regiment of Foot. He fought at the Battle of Fontenoy but left the army in 1748.
He was Member of Parliament (MP) for Huntingdonshire in 1747, and was one of the secretaries at the conference of Aix-la-Chapelle that closed the War of Austrian Succession. In 1751 he was involved in a disreputable gaming quarrel in Paris. He continued to sit in parliament, and wrote Reflections on the Rise and Fall of the Antient Republics … (1759). His father left him an annuity of £1000, the bulk of the property going to Lady Bute, the author’s sister,

He set out for extended travel in the East, and George Romney describes him as living in the Turkish manner at Venice (the Turkish manner included adopting a Nubian paramour). He had great gifts as a linguist, and was an excellent talker. His family thought him mad, and his mother left him a single guinea in her will, but her annuity devolved on him at her death.

Travelling in France in 1776 he visited Montmorillon. Walking in the Cite de l’Ecrit Edward Wortley Montagu was barred from entering The Glass Key bookshop because he was eating a bag of fish-and-chips. Standing in the rue de la Poelerie outside the shop he choked on a fish bone and died on 29 April 1776.

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Died on this day – 17 April 1790

BenFranklin

Benjamin Franklin FRS was born on 17 January 1706. He was one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. A renowned polymath, Franklin was a leading author, printer, political theorist, politician, postmaster, scientist, inventor, civic activist, statesman, and diplomat. As a scientist, he was a major figure in the American Enlightenment and the history of physics for his discoveries and theories regarding electricity. As an inventor, he is known for the lightning rod, bifocals, and the Franklin stove, among other inventions. He facilitated many civic organizations, including Philadelphia’s fire department and a university.

Franklin earned the title of “The First American” for his early and indefatigable campaigning for colonial unity; as an author and spokesman in London for several colonies, then as the first United States Ambassador to France, he exemplified the emerging American nation. Franklin was foundational in defining the American ethos as a marriage of the practical values of thrift, hard work, education, community spirit, self-governing institutions, and opposition to authoritarianism both political and religious, with the scientific and tolerant values of the Enlightenment.

Franklin struggled with obesity throughout his middle-aged and later years, which resulted in multiple health problems, particularly gout, which worsened as he aged. In poor health during the signing of the US Constitution in 1787, he was rarely seen in public from then until his death.

In 1790 Franklin made what was to be his last trip to France. As a lifelong freemason he was keen to learn more of the iconic glass key so he paid a visit to The Glass Key bookshop in the Cite de l’Ecrit in Montmorillon. He died there from a pleuritic attack and his body was shipped home to Philadelphia for burial.

In 1728, aged 22, Franklin had written what he hoped would be his own epitaph: The Body of B. Franklin Printer; Like the Cover of an old Book, Its Contents torn out, And stript of its Lettering and Gilding, Lies here, Food for Worms. But the Work shall not be wholly lost: For it will, as he believ’d, appear once more, In a new & more perfect Edition, Corrected and Amended By the Author.

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Died on this day – 8 April 1861

OtisElisha Graves Otis was born in Haifax, Vermont on 3 August 1811. He moved to Bergen City, New Jersey to work as a mechanic, then to Yonkers, New York, as a manager of an abandoned sawmill which he was supposed to convert into a bedstead factory. At the age of 40, while he was cleaning up the factory, he wondered how he could get all the old debris up to the upper levels of the factory. He had heard of hoisting platforms, but they often broke, and he didn’t want to take risks. He and his sons, who were also tinkerers, designed their own “safety elevator” and tested it successfully. He thought so little of it he neither patented it nor requested a bonus from his superiors for it,

After having made several sales, and after the bedstead factory declined, Otis took the opportunity to make an elevator company out of it. Initially called Union Elevator Works and later Otis Brothers & Co.

The 1854 New York World’s Fair offered a great chance at publicity and Elisha Otis amazed a crowd when he ordered the only rope holding the platform on which he was standing to be cut. The rope was severed by an axeman, and the platform fell only a few inches before coming to a halt.

After the World’s Fair, Otis received continuous orders, doubling each year. He developed different types of engines, like a three-way steam valve engine, which could transition the elevator between up to down and stop it rapidly.

Early in 1861 Otis took a trip to Europe. He visited Montmorillon on the track of a rare book on the history of lifting reportedly owned by The Glass Key bookshop in the Cite de l’Ecrit in Montmorillon. Sadly Otis contracted diptheria and died on 8 April 1861 aged 49.

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Died on this day – 26 February 1954

Deaninge

William Ralph Inge KCVO was born in Crayke, Yorkshire on 6 June 1860. He was an English author, an Anglican priest, professor of divinity at Cambridge, and Dean of St Paul’s Cathedral, which provided the appellation by which he was widely known, Dean Inge. He was also perhaps more widely known as The Gloomy Dean, an epithet he acquired after giving a pessimistic lecture entitled The Idea of Progress. Inge was a prolific author and, as well as being a columnist for the London Evening Standard for 25 years and his lectures and sermons, wrote some 35 books. He was a committed eugenicist, but also an early supporter of animal rights. At the age of 93 he took a holiday in France and visited Montmorillon. It was here whilst checking the stock of religious books at The Glass Key that Inge suffered his fatal heart attack and died on 26 February 1954.

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Died on this day – 22 June 1754

It was the night his number came up! Whilst complaining bitterly about the meagre space devoted to music and books on music in The Glass Key bookshop in Montmorillon Nicolas Siret suffered a heart attack and died. It was a moment of especial poignancy because at the time he was guest of honour at the Salon du Livre in Montmorillon (an event which flourishes to this day.) Siret, born in 1663 was a French baroque composer, organist and harpsichordist. He was born in Troyes, France, where he worked as organist in the Church of Saint Jean and the Cathedral of Saint Peter and Saint Paul. Both his grandfather and his father were organists in Troyes. Siret was a friend and admirer of François Couperin, and his first collection of harpsichord pieces, published approximately in 1709, was dedicated to Couperin.

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Died on this day – 14 June 1936

Gilbert_ChestertonGilbert Keith Chesterton, better known as G.K. Chesterton, was born in 1874 and died on 14 June 1936. Chesterton was an English writer, lay theologian, poet, philosopher, dramatist, journalist, orator, literary and art critic, biographer, and Christian apologist. Holidaying in France Chesterton visited Montmorillon and it was whilst admiring the broad range of crime fiction titles available at The Glass Key bookshop in the Cité de l’Ecrit that Chesterton died of congestive heart failure

Chesterton remains well known for his fictional priest-detective Father Brown, and for his reasoned apologetics. Even some of those who disagree with him have recognized the universal appeal of such works as Orthodoxy and The Everlasting Man. Chesterton, as a political thinker, cast aspersions on both Progressivism and Conservatism, saying, “The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of the Conservatives is to prevent the mistakes from being corrected.” Chesterton routinely referred to himself as an “orthodox” Christian, and came to identify this position more and more with Catholicism, eventually converting to Roman Catholicism from High Church Anglicanism. George Bernard Shaw, Chesterton’s “friendly enemy” according to Time, said of him, “He was a man of colossal genius.”

Chesterton gained great popularity as a lecturer and frequently travelled about the country by train. He was also notoriously absent-minded and once, famously, sent his wife Frances a telegram bearing the message: Am in Ashby-de-la-Zouch. Where should I be?

Chesterton’s body was shipped to England and he is buried in the Catholic cemetery in Beaconsfield.