William Hogarth (1697)

Hogarth was a British painter and engraver who began his career as an apprentice to a silversmith at the age of 15. At 22, he opened his own engraving and printing shop. His first successes were satirical engravings that attacked contemporary taste and questioned the art establishment. His efforts to protect artists against art piracy were instrumental in the passage of Britain’s first copyright act in 1735. What 20th century composer wrote an opera inspired by Hogarth’s Rake’s Progress? Discuss

Source: The Free Dictionary

Hedy Lamarr (1913)

Lamarr was an Austrian-American actress known primarily for her beauty and her successful film career—including her role as Delilah in Cecil B. DeMille’s Samson and Delilah. However, she also co-invented an early form of spread spectrum encoding—intended to make radio-guided torpedoes harder to detect or jam—in the 1940s with her neighbor, composer George Antheil. They patented the technology in 1942, but it did not come into use until later. Who introduced Lamarr to military technology? Discuss

Source: The Free Dictionary

Margaret Mitchell (1900)

After working as a journalist, Mitchell spent 10 years writing her only novel: Gone with the Wind, a romantic, panoramic portrait of the American Civil War and Reconstruction periods from the white Southern point of view. The book, which earned Mitchell the Pulitzer Prize, is one of the most popular novels in the history of American publishing, and its film adaptation was also extraordinarily successful. Whose stories gave Mitchell insight into the Civil War-era South? Discuss

Source: The Free Dictionary

Marie Curie (1867)

Marie Curie was a Polish-born French physical chemist. She married fellow physicist Pierre Curie in 1895, and together they discovered the elements radium and polonium—which Marie named after her native Poland. They also distinguished alpha, beta, and gamma radiation. For their work on radioactivity—a term she coined—the Curies shared the 1903 Nobel Prize for Physics with Henri Becquerel. This made Marie the first woman to receive a Nobel Prize. In 1911, she became the first person to win what? Discuss

Source: The Free Dictionary

John Philip Sousa (1854)

Known as “The March King,” Sousa was an American bandmaster who composed more than 130 military marches, including “The Stars and Stripes Forever” and “Semper Fidelis”—the official march of the US Marines. In 1868, when Sousa was 13, his father enlisted him in the Marine Corps as an apprentice in the Marine Band, which he later led from 1880 until 1892, at which point he formed his own band and toured to great acclaim. In the 1890s, Sousa developed a type of bass tuba now known as what? Discuss

Source: The Free Dictionary

Roy Rogers (1911)

A former fruit picker and cowboy, the guitar-strumming Rogers—born Leonard Franklin Slye—began his musical career in the 1930s as a radio performer. He later founded the Sons of the Pioneers, a singing trio that began appearing in movies in 1935, and soon succeeded Gene Autry as America’s favorite singing cowboy in movies of the mid-1940s. Rogers appeared in dozens of B movies with his wife, Dale Evans, and his famous horse, Trigger. What was the theme song of their television program? Discuss

Source: The Free Dictionary

Will Rogers (1879)

Rogers was an American humorist and actor. A cowboy in his youth, Rogers traveled the world before returning to the US to perform in vaudeville and Wild West shows as a rider and trick roper. The “cowboy philosopher’s” homespun wit and salty commentary on current political and social events soon earned him a following through movies, books, radio, and a syndicated newspaper column. A champion of airplane travel, Rogers made several long plane trips, but died in a crash with what famous aviator? Discuss

Source: The Free Dictionary

Vincenzo Bellini (1801)

Bellini was an Italian composer who was born into a musical family and began composing in his childhood. He wrote his first opera at age 24 and went on to complete nine more before his death at age 33. His most celebrated works, which rely strongly on beautiful vocal melody and include the operas Norma and La Sonnambula—Italian for “The Sleepwalker”—greatly influenced the work of Giuseppe Verdi. According to legend, what musical feat could Bellini perform at just 18 months of age? Discuss

Source: The Free Dictionary

Joseph Radetzky von Radetz (1766)

Radetzky was an Austrian army officer. After fighting with distinction against the French in the Napoleonic Wars, he became chief of staff and attempted to modernize the Austrian army. As commander in chief of the Austrian army in northern Italy in 1848—in his eighties at the time—he suppressed a revolt in the Austrian-ruled provinces of Lombardy and Venetia, where he later served as governor-general. His status as a national hero inspired what famous composer to name a march in his honor? Discuss

Source: The Free Dictionary

Stephen Crane (1871)

Often classified as the first modern American writer, Crane was among the first to introduce realism into American literature. He achieved international fame with his masterwork, The Red Badge of Courage, which depicts the psychological turmoil of a young Civil War soldier. While traveling as a war correspondent, Crane survived a shipwreck and ended up adrift in a dinghy. This ordeal inspired him to write the acclaimed story “The Open Boat.” What took his life when he was just 28? Discuss

Source: The Free Dictionary