Public Figures & Cultural Luminaries

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

32 Full Record →

Politics

Pedro Aguirre Cerda

Chile

1879-02-06 – 1941-11-25 (62 years old)

Beloved Radical President of the Popular Front whose visionary motto 'Gobernar es educar' (To govern is to educate) built over 1,000 public schools and created CORFO to industrialize Chile.

Santiago, Chile

0 Full Record →

7

Émile Nelligan

Canada

1879 – 1941 (61 years old)

Tragic prodigy of French-Canadian symbolist poetry who wrote enduring masterpieces like Le Vaisseau d'or and Romance du vin before suffering a mental breakdown at age nineteen.

Montreal, Canada

7 Full Record →

Music

Miina Härma

Miina Hermann

Estonia

1864 – 1941 (77 years old)

Estonia's first celebrated female classical composer and virtuoso concert organist whose beloved choral songs, including 'Tuljak' and 'Ei saa mitte vaiki olla', remain perennial centerpieces of the National Song Festival.

Tartu, Estonia

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Science

Carrie Derick

Canada

14 January 1862 – 10 November 1941 (79 years old)

Pioneering Canadian botanist and geneticist who became the first female university professor in Canada at McGill University and championed women's civil rights.

Montreal, Canada

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Arts & Music

54

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

54 Full Record →

7

May Ziade

مي زيادة

Palestine

11 February 1886 – 17 October 1941 (55 years old)

Brilliant Lebanese-Palestinian literary pioneer whose Tuesday salon in Cairo brought together the leading male and female minds of the Arab world.

Cairo, Egypt

7 Full Record →

8

Hjalmar Söderberg

Hjalmar Emil Fredrik Söderberg

Sweden

1869-07-02 – 1941-10-14 (72 years old)

Master Swedish novelist and flâneur whose psychological masterpiece 'Doctor Glas' and tragic romance 'The Serious Game' are summits of fin-de-siècle Stockholm literature.

Copenhagen, Denmark

8 Full Record →

32

Marina Tsvetaeva

Марина Ивановна Цветаева

Russia

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

32 Full Record →

Military

Honoré d'Estienne d'Orves

Henri Louis Honoré d'Estienne d'Orves

France

1901 – 1941 (40 years old)

Noble French naval officer and devout Christian hero who joined General de Gaulle in London in 1940, set up the 'Nemrod' intelligence network in occupied Brittany, and was executed by firing squad at Mont-Valérien.

Verrières-le-Buisson (Essonne), France

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Sciences & Discovery

3,672

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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

3,672 Full Record →

Humanitarian & Peace

35

Statesmanship & Statesmen

Saint Maximilien-Marie Kolbe

Rajmund Kolbe

Poland

1894 – 1941 (47 years old)

Prêtre franciscain polonais, qui abrita 2 000 Juifs dans son monastère avant d'offrir volontairement sa vie pour sauver celle d'un père de famille condamné au bunker de la faim à Auschwitz.

Oświęcim, Poland

35 Full Record →

21

Talaat Harb

طلعت حرب

Egypt

November 25, 1867 – August 13, 1941 (73 years old)

Visionary Egyptian economic pioneer and industrial titan who founded Banque Misr in 1920, breaking the foreign banking monopoly and establishing dozens of cornerstone national enterprises including EgyptAir and Studio Misr.

Cairo, Egypt

21 Full Record →

37

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Rabindranath Tagore (Gurudev)

রবীন্দ্রনাথ ঠাকুর

India

7 May 1861 – 7 August 1941 (80 years old)

Towering polymath and spiritual voice of Asia who became the first non-European to win the Nobel Prize in Literature (1913) for Gitanjali, founded the open-air university Visva-Bharati at Santiniketan, and composed the national anthems of both India and Bangladesh.

Calcutta (Kolkata), India

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Arts & Music

35

Jelly Roll Morton

Ferdinand Joseph LaMothe

United States

1890 – 1941 (50 years old)

New Orleans pianist, composer, and bandleader who was the first true arranger and theorist of jazz, celebrated for his Red Hot Peppers recordings and Library of Congress oral history.

Los Angeles, United States

35 Full Record →

Politics

Jaan Tõnisson

Estonia

1868 – c. July 1941 (72 years old)

Unyielding champion of parliamentary democracy, editor of 'Postimees' for four decades, and Head of State who shaped Estonian civil society and ethical democratic principles, murdered by the NKVD in 1941.

Tallinn, Estonia

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Politics

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