Historical Archives & Public Figures

Robert Browning

Great Britain

1812 – 1889 (77 years old)

Victorian poetic genius who mastered the dramatic monologue, plumbing psychological depths in 'My Last Duchess', Men and Women, and The Ring and the Book.

London, United Kingdom

36 Full Record →

Philosophy & Thought

6

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Muhammad Bayram V

محمد بيرم الخامس

Tunisia

1840 – 1889 (49 years old)

Visionary intellectual and reformist scholar of the Nahda movement who edited Tunisia's first official newspaper, directed the Sadiki endowments, and wrote the monumental geopolitical treatise Safwat al-I'tibar.

Cairo (Memorial in Tunis), Egypt

6 Full Record →

Sciences & Discovery

2,633

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James Prescott Joule

Great Britain

1818 – 1889 (70 years old)

English physicist and brewer whose precise measurements established the mechanical equivalent of heat and conservation of energy.

Sale, Greater Manchester, United Kingdom

2,633 Full Record →

Literature & Poetry

32

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Wilkie Collins

William Wilkie Collins

Great Britain

1824 – 1889 (65 years old)

Pioneering Victorian novelist and close collaborator of Charles Dickens who created the modern detective novel in The Moonstone and sensation fiction in The Woman in White.

London, United Kingdom

32 Full Record →

History

1

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Zahari Stoyanov

Захари Стоянов

Bulgaria

c. 1850 – 1889-09-14 (39 years old)

Shepherd-turned-revolutionary and statesman whose monumental memoir 'Memoirs of the Bulgarian Uprisings' provided the definitive, vivid first-hand chronicle of the 1876 April Uprising.

Ruse, Bulgaria

1 Full Record →

Literature & Poetry

8

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Auguste de Villiers de L'Isle-Adam

Jean-Marie-Mathias-Philippe-Auguste de Villiers de L'Isle-Adam

France

1838 – 1889 (50 years old)

Impoverished Breton nobleman and pioneer of French Symbolism whose 1886 science-fiction novel L'Ève future coined the term 'Android' and whose occult verse drama Axël contains the famous line: 'As for living, our servants will do that for us'.

Paris, France

8 Full Record →

Military

4

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Ras Gobana Dacche

Gobana Dacche

Ethiopia

1821-01-01 – 1889-07-02 (68 years old)

Formidable Oromo general and supreme cavalry commander whose military campaigns unified the southern and western territories into the modern Ethiopian state under Menelik II.

Debre Libanos, Ethiopia

4 Full Record →

Politics

2

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Gaseitsiwe I

Gaseitsiwe a Tshosa

Botswana

c. 1815 – 1889-07-01 (74 years old)

Paramount Kgosi of the Bangwaketse for 44 years who established the royal capital at Kanye and allied with neighboring chiefs to defeat Boer commando incursions at the 1852 Battle of Dimawe.

Kanye, Botswana

2 Full Record →

Resistance & Human Rights

33

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Lozen

United States

c. 1838 – 1889 (~51 years old)

Renowned Chihenne Chiricahua warrior, medicine woman, and spiritual leader hailed by her brother Victorio as 'strong as a man, braver than most, and a cunning strategist'.

Mount Vernon, United States

33 Full Record →

Literature & Poetry

29

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Gerard Manley Hopkins

Great Britain

1844 – 1889 (44 years old)

Visionary English Jesuit poet who revolutionized modern verse through sprung rhythm and concepts of inscape and instress in 'The Windhover' and 'Pied Beauty'.

Dublin, Ireland

29 Full Record →

Humanitarian & Peace

35

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Laura Dewey Lynn Bridgman

Laura Bridgman

United States

1829 – 1889 (59 years old)

Première personne sourde et aveugle à recevoir une éducation linguistique complète en anglais, cinquante ans avant Helen Keller.

Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States

35 Full Record →

Literature & Poetry

8

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Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly

Jules-Amédée Barbey d'Aurevilly

France

1808 – 1889 (80 years old)

Flamboyant Norman monarchist dandy, critic, and novelist known as 'Le Connétable des Lettres', whose 1874 short-story masterpiece Les Diaboliques explored dark erotic passions, sin, and Catholic mysticism.

Saint-Sauveur-le-Vicomte (Manche), France

8 Full Record →

Humanitarian & Peace

33

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Father Damien (Saint Damien of Molokai)

Jozef De Veuster

Belgium

3 January 1840 – 15 April 1889 (49 years old)

Father Damien was a Belgian Roman Catholic priest of the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary who volunteered to minister to the quarantined leper colony on the Hawaiian island of Molokai. Living among the outcast lepers for sixteen years, he built homes, hospitals, and churches, contracted Hansen's disease himself, and died a martyr of charity, canonized in 2009.

Leuven / Kalaupapa, Belgium

33 Full Record →

Monarchs, Kings & Royalty

42

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Yohannes IV

ዮሐንስ (Kassa Mercha)

Ethiopia

1837 – 1889 (51 years old)

Emperor of Ethiopia (1872–1889) who staunchly defended Ethiopian sovereignty against Egyptian expansionism, Italian colonial incursions, and Sudanese Mahdist invasions, dying heroically on the battlefield of Gallabat.

Tigray Region, Ethiopia

42 Full Record →

Literature & Poetry

8

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Max Waller

Maurice Warlomont

Belgium

1860 – 1889 (29 years old)

Brilliant young literary critic and polemicist who founded the seminal revue La Jeune Belgique in 1881, rallying a generation of Belgian authors under the banner of pure aestheticism ('Soyons nous-mêmes').

Brussels, Belgium

8 Full Record →

Science

2

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Ignacy Domeyko

Ігнат Дамейка

Belarus

1802-07-31 – 1889-01-23 (86 years old)

Belarusian-born geologist, mineralogist, and Philomath who became a National Hero of Chile, serving as Rector of the University of Chile and discovering dozens of new minerals.

Santiago, Chile

2 Full Record →

Arts & Music

35

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Alexandre Cabanel

France

1823 – 1889 (65 years old)

French academic master whose sensuous 'Birth of Venus' was personally purchased by Emperor Napoleon III in 1863, and whose 'The Fallen Angel' remains an icon of Romantic pathos.

Montpellier, France

35 Full Record →

Literature & Poetry

2

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Juan Montalvo

Juan María Montalvo Fiallos

Ecuador

1832-04-13 – 1889-01-17 (56 years old)

One of the greatest prose essayists in the Spanish language, hailed as the 'Cervantes of the Americas', whose fiery pamphlets 'La Dictadura Perpetua' relentlessly denounced tyranny, famously saying of García Moreno: 'My pen killed him.'

Ambato, Tungurahua, Ecuador

2 Full Record →

Public Figures & Cultural Luminaries