Salvador Dali born in Figueres, Spain
Salvador Dali is born to Salvador Dali Cusi, a prominent notary, and Felipa Domenech Ferres. His mother often encourages his eccentric side. Dali’s artistic talent is obvious from a young age, and both of his parents support it. His mother dies when he is sixteen.
[My mother’s death] was the greatest blow I had experienced in my life. I worshipped her… I could not resign myself to the loss of a being on whom I counted to make invisible the unavoidable blemishes of my soul
Bruno Bettelheim born in Vienna
Bettelheim is born in Vienna of a non-religious middle-class Jewish family. As a child, Bettelheim is entrusted to a wet-nurse, but when he falls ill, his mother takes care of him. His childhood is happy at first, spent in a loving and numerous family (Bettelheim has fourteen aunts and uncles). At age four he contracts life-threatening dysentery. His is influenced by fairy tales:
The literature, which exerted a strong influence on me at the very beginning, were fairy tales, the first my mother told me, and I read itself. But I can not remember exactly whether these stories had a formative force for me. However, this must have been the case, because otherwise I would not have tried, aged over the years, to understand their psychological meaning for children. (…) How and in what way tales for me were at that time so important, I can not fathom today, but I’m pretty sure the reason being that they were telling me mainly from my mother
His father runs a wood factory, but loses a large part of its assets in the First World War, and has a stroke in 1918. He remembers his father as a weak, broken man who was no longer able to take responsibility for his family in times of change. The relationship between his mother and father deteriorates when she discovers that her husband has caught syphilis from a prostitute. His father becomes anxious and depressed, because he is suffering from many other diseases.
Menachem Mendel Schneerson born in Nikolaev, Russia
Menachem Mendel Schneerson is born in Nikolaev, Russia, to the famed kabbalist, talmudic scholar and Chasidic leader Rabbi Levi Yitchak and Rebbetzin Chana Schneerson, who aids her husband in his scholarly pursuits. Schneerson is educated in Chabad institutions throughout his life. He has two brothers. Mother:
In 1905 when there were pogroms in Russia, my children and I, together with other mothers and children, hid in a pharmacy. As is normal during chaotic times, the children cried a lot. The pharmacist was fearful that the noise would expose him for sheltering Jews, placing his own life in danger…My then three-year-old son would walk around the room and quiet all the children. This was a remarkable scene. We could not talk because voices could be heard outside, so he silently motioned to them and gestured with his hands to keep quiet, calming each child in a different manner.
Chaya Mushka Schneerson born in Babinovitch, Russia
Chaya Mushka (Moussia) Schneerson is born in Babinovitch near the city of Lubavitch, the second of three daughters born to the sixth Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Yoseph Yichak and the Rebbetzen Nechama Dina. She is schooled at home due to the mounting antisemitism and lack of Jewish education where she lived. While still a child she and her family had to flee for fear of being harmed to Rostov and then Leningrad. From a young age she aided her father and grandfather in disseminating Torah Judaism. Her Grandfather the fifth Rebbe of the dynasty sent a telegraph on the occasion of her birth stating:
Mazal tov on the birth of your daughter …if she has not yet been named, she should be called Chaya Mushka (the name of the wife of the Tzemach Tzede, the third Lubavitcher Rebbe).
Oscar Wilde dies at 46
Oscar Wilde dies of meningitis due to infection of his ear at the age of forty six. He is abandoned by most of his friends and family, and is in a cheap french hotel. His last words are reportedly:
This wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death. Either it goes or I do.
Golda Meir born in Kiev, Ukraine
Golda Meir is born in Kiev,Ukraine to Moshe and Bluma Mabovitch. When she is eight years old the family moves to Milwaukee Wisconsin, in an effort to escape pograms. Her father is a carpenter. Although she has several brothers and a sister who die in childhood, she has two surviving sisters she was very close to. She attends the Fourth Street Elementary School graduating as class valedictorian.
I identified most with my tenacious, intransigent relatives, especially my paternal grandfather, who was kidnapped at age thirteen into the Czar’s army but resisted conversion to Christianity and refused to eat traif (nonkosher food). Our family kept kosher, observed Jewish holidays, and shared traditional Sabbath meals with the extended family—all later lost in the Holocaust. I remember everyone sitting around the table singing Hebrew songs, yet I grew up in a not particularly religious household. I vividly recall my early childhood as a time of abject poverty and terrifying pogroms, and attribute my lifelong commitment to Jewish security to my memories of antisemitic violence and the experience of hiding from the Cossacks. I also remember my sister Sheyna, nine years my senior, risking her life to attend Labor Zionist meetings, and my sister Zipke, the baby, getting the lion’s share of our meager gruel. In 1903, my father left for America; three years later, he sent for us and settled us in a two-room flat in the poor Jewish section of Milwaukee. I was eight years old.
Levi Eshkol born in Oratov, Ukraine
Levi Eshkoll is born in Czarist Russia in the shtetl of Oratov, which is in modern day Ukraine. His mother, Dvora comes from a family of Hasidic Jews, while his father, Joseph Shkolnik, is from a “Lithuanian” background, which often opposes Hasidism. Joseph is a farmer and merchant. He trades all he produces and also owns a flour mill. Eshkoll is the second of nine children. He is educated at a traditional Jewish primary school but is refused acceptance to the public high school because of his religion. Instead he attends the Hebrew Gymnasium in Vilna. When his parents offer to support him in highschool he replies:
Only if I come empty-handed will these hands be ready to work.
Dorothy Parker born in Long Branch, New Jersey
Parker is born to Jacob and Eliza Rothchild. She grows up on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. She has an unhappy childhood. Both her mother and step-mother die when she is young. She attends a Catholic grammar school, then a finishing school in Morristown, NJ. Her formal education abruptly ends when she is 14.
All those writers who talk about their childhood! Gentle God, if I ever wrote about mine, you wouldn’t sit in the same room with me.
Becomes president of national suffrage association
Anthony becomes president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association. She campaigns in the West to make sure that territories where women had the right to vote are not blocked from admission to the Union.
Walt Whitman dies age 72
Whitman dies of tuberculosis. He is well cared for as he is dying, and has a nurse by the name of Warry with him when he dies. He doesn’t feel any pain anymore, and is ready to die.
Warry, shift.
Adolf Hitler born in Braunau am Inn, Austria
Hitler is born to Alois and Klara Hitler in Austria. He is their fourth child, however the only one who survives. Throughout his early days, young Hitler’s mother fears losing him as well and lavishes much care and affection on him. His father is busy working most of the time as a customs official and also spends a lot of time on his main hobby, keeping bees and dies when Hitler is thirteen. Hitler is lazy and is only able to focus on what interests him in school. He succeeds greatly in those interests but is otherwise a dreadful achiever.
He was never an ardent worker, was unable to get up in the morning, had difficulty in getting started and seemed to be suffering from a paralysis of the will.
Charlie Chaplin born in Walworth, United Kingdom
Charles Spencer Chaplin is born into a poor London family of music hall entertainers, Hannah Chaplin and Charles Chaplin Sr. Even as a child he finds success as a performer. His father dies at age ten, and in the same time frame his mother falls ill.
My childhood was sad, but now I remember it with nostalgia, like a dream.
David Ben-Gurion born in Plonsk, Poland
David Ben-Gurion (originally named David Gruen) is born in Plonsk, Russian (now part of Poland), to Avigdor Gruen, a lawyer, and Scheindel Gruen (nee Broitman). His mother dies when he is 11. He goes to school at a small Hebrew institution run by his father. Ben-Gurion is one of 11 children but only two brothers and two sisters survive. Shimon Peres:
Ben-Gurion’s father Avigdor, a lawyer, was among the first in Plonsk to set aside the more traditional Jewish garb in favor of the frock coat and winged collar that suited his profession. As a result, Ben-Gurion grew up in a fiercely socialist and Zionist home during a time when European nationalist movements were arbitrarily determining who did and did not fit their particular definition of citizenship.
Karl Marx dies age 64
Karl Marx dies in London of bronchitis, while sitting in his armchair. He is exiled from much of Europe, and greatly saddened by the recent loss of his daughter. He dies screaming at his maid, who asks him if he has any last words.
Last words are for fools who haven’t said enough!
Yoseph Yitchak Schneerson born in Lubavitch, Russia
Yoseph Yitchak Schneerson is born in the town of Lubavitch, Russia. His father is Rabbi Shalom Dov Ber the fifth Lubavitcher Rebbe also known as the Rebbe Rashab and his mother is the Rebbetzin Shterna Sarah. He is named for his grandfather. He is an only child. He goes to the local Jewish Day School and is further educated by his father. Grandfather at the bris:
Why are you crying? When you grow up you will become a Rebbe and give over clear Chassidic discourses.
On childhood:
There is no need for so-called early “personality development.” You don’t even have to work [to educate a child] by bribing the child with nuts and gifts. We might use persuasive means to get a child to learn [difficult concepts] or to pray, but to get a child to want to see God, you don’t have to do a thing. Every child, by his very nature, wants to see God.
Albert Einstein born in Württemberg, Germany
Einstein is born the son of Jewish electrical engineer, Hermann Einstein and Pauline Einstein. Contrary to popular belief, Einstein excels in maths and science in his early schooling, and his mother encourages a love of music. He is uncomfortable with the principle of absolute obedience and the military drills that dominate the school’s atmosphere, leading to him not enjoying his schooling. Despite stopping his musical endeavors at 17, it remained an important part of his life.
If I hadn’t of studied physics, I probably would have become a musician.
Winston Churchill born in Blenheim Palace, Woodstock, UK
Churchill is born to Lord and Lady Churchill. He grows up with social status, privilege, and a keen sense of heritage, but little money.
My nurse was my confidante. Mrs. Everest it was who looked after me and tended all my wants. It was to her that I poured out my many troubles…
Lincoln, Truth meet
Truth meets with President Lincoln. She writes:
He showed as much kindness and consideration to the colored persons as to the whites — if there was any difference, more.
Truth: I appreciate you, for you are the best president who has ever taken the seat.
Lincoln: I expect you have reference to my having emancipated the slaves in my proclamation.
Truth: I thank God that you were the instrument selected by him and the people to do it. I had never heard of you before you were president.Lincoln smilingly replied: I had heard of you many times before that.
Nikola Tesla born in Smiljan, Croatia
Tesla is born and christened by a Serbian Orthodox priest. His parents are Đuka and Milutin Tesla and he has five siblings. Upon the night of his birth there is heavy lightning and the midwife remarks that
He’ll be a child of the storm
To which his mother replies:
No, of light
Sigmund Freud born in Příbor, Czech Republic
Freud is born to a textiles dealer, Jacob Freud and his second wife, Amalia Nathansohn. Freud enjoys unconditional love from his mother, and scornful hate from his father.
When you were incontestably the favorite child of your mother, you keep during your lifetime this victor feeling, you keep feeling sure of success, which in reality seldom doesn’t fulfill.