Neil Diamond

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January 3, 1881 — Anna McNeill Whistler dies

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Known to history as “Whistler’s Mother”, after the painting she was the subject of, Anna Matilda (née McNeill) Whistler was 76 when she died. It had been nearly ten years since she sat for her son James, becoming the subject of his eponymous and best-known painting – which was actually titled “Arrangement in Grey & Black No.1” by her son.

Ironically, for such a quintessentially American painting, it was painted while she and her son were both living in England. Anna Whistler later died, still in England, and was buried in Hastings Cemetery.

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September 2, 1910 — Henri Rousseau dies

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A painter of the Post-Impressionist school, whose work was largely in the Naive or Primitivist manners, Henri Julien Félix Rousseau was born in 1944. A self-taught painter, his works were not respected during his lifetime – indeed, they were often derided for what was seen as a ‘childish’ style.

However, after his death, he became noted as an influence on many of the painters who followed him, notably the Surrealist school and Pablo Picasso, and his work was re-evaluated and its merit seen (too late to do Rousseau any good). His influence continues undimmed even today – one of his paintings was recently the inspiration for certain elements of the animated film ‘Madagascar’.

Henri Rousseau
By Dornac – Bridgeman, Public Domain, Link

As mentioned in:

Done Too Soon — Neil Diamond

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1916 — Sholem Aleichem dies

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Best known for his tales of Teyve the Dairyman, Sholem Aleichem was a Jewish writer born in Russia in 1859. His real name was Solomon Naumovich Rabinovich – Sholem Aleichem was a pen name he used, a play on the Yiddish expression “Shalom aleichem” (which means ‘peace be with you’). His stories of Teyve are best known in English by the title of their musical adaptation “Fiddler on the Roof”, which came to pass after he emigrated to New York City in 1905.

Aleichem died of a combination of tuberculosis and diabetes, still working on his latest novel “Motl, Peysi the Cantor’s Son”. He was 57 years old, and despite having been in America only a decade or so, his funeral was one of the largest in New York history, with over 100,000 mourners in attendance, and his will was read into the Congressional Record and published in the New York Times.

SholemAleichem.jpg
By Unknown author – <a rel=”nofollow” class=”external free” href=”http://www.nrg.co.il/online/11/ART2/508/779.html”>http://www.nrg.co.il/online/11/ART2/508/779.html</a>, Public Domain, Link

As mentioned in:

Done Too Soon — Neil Diamond

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August 2, 1922 — Alexander Graham Bell dies

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Alexander Graham Bell, best known as the inventor of the telephone, was 75 when he died, and still refused to have a telephone in his laboratory. He regarded his most famous – and most transformative – invention as a nuisance and a distraction from his serious work. The telephone itself had arisen out of Bell’s true interests in acoustics, which grew out of his work as a teacher for the deaf: he had wanted to invent a device that would make it possible for the deaf to hear, the fact that he may well have stolen the idea from Elisha Gray notwithstanding.

The telephone is merely his best known invention – Bell held the patent for that, but also for 17 other inventions (some of them held in common with other, but most in his own right). Bell’s death was the result of complications arising from his diabetes. He left behind a legacy that has, over the course of less than 150 years and with many followers building on his work, transformed the world beyond recognition. One wonders what he’d think of the iPhone.

Alexander Graham Bell.jpg
By Moffett Studio – Library and Archives Canada / C-017335, Public Domain, Link

As mentioned in:

Done Too Soon — Neil Diamond

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August 13, 1946 — H. G. Wells dies

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The man who basically invented the modern science fiction novel (Jules Verne himself insisted that this was the case), one of the earliest people to worry about what we now call ‘peak oil’ and a designer of wargames in his idler moments, Herbert George Wells is one of the people who created the Twentieth Century. His death, at the age of eighty, was not especially marked by a British establishment that found his views on politics and religion an embarassment.

Wells was the writer of, among others, The Invisible Man, The Time Machine and The War of the Worlds. His work as a writer of science fiction, as an historian and as a journalist, is among the most influential in human history – among other things, he is the inventor of almost every basic modern science fiction device except for alternate universes.

Photograph by George Charles Beresford, 1920
By George Charles Beresford – one or more third parties have made copyright claims against Wikimedia Commons in relation to the work from which this is sourced or a purely mechanical reproduction thereof. This may be due to recognition of the “sweat of the brow” doctrine, allowing works to be eligible for protection through skill and labour, and not purely by originality as is the case in the United States (where this website is hosted). These claims may or may not be valid in all jurisdictions.
As such, use of this image in the jurisdiction of the claimant or other countries may be regarded as copyright infringement. Please see Commons:When to use the PD-Art tag for more information., Public Domain, Link

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Done Too Soon — Neil Diamond

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January 4, 1960 — Albert Camus dies

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Albert Camus was not an existentialist. He’d have been the first one to tell you that. He was mates with quite a few members of that tribe, but he never considered himself one of their number. Nevertheless, his works – especially “The Stranger”,”The Plague” and “The Myth of Sisyphus” – are often considered to parts of the existentialist canon (insofar as such a thing can be considered to exist).

Camus was only 46 when he died, in an unfortunate car accident that also claimed the life of his publisher, Michel Gallimard, who was driving the car at the time. His death was a great loss to the development of philosophy in the twentieth century.

Albert Camus, gagnant de prix Nobel, portrait en buste, posé au bureau, faisant face à gauche, cigarette de tabagisme.jpg
By Photograph by United Press International – This image is available from the United States Library of Congress‘s Prints and Photographs division
under the digital ID cph.3c08028.
This tag does not indicate the copyright status of the attached work. A normal copyright tag is still required. See Commons:Licensing for more information., Public Domain, Link

As mentioned in:

Done Too Soon — Neil Diamond

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February 28, 1967 — Henry Luce dies

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Henry Luce was an American magazine publisher, who rose to be a magnate in his industry and was called, with very little hyperbole, “the most influential private citizen in the America of his day”. Luce was a staunch patriot who predicted that the United States would achieve world hegemony. It was he who coined the phrase “the American Century” (by which he meant the 20th century) in 1941.

He launched and closely supervised a stable of magazines that transformed both journalism and the reading habits of millions of Americans. Including his radio projects and newsreels, Luce’s corporation was the first truly multimedia endeavour.

Among his stable were such iconic magazines as Fortune (which reported on national and international business); Life (a picture magazine of politics, culture, and society); Time (which summarized and commented on the week’s news and famously selected an annual ‘person of the year’); and Sports Illustrated (which explored the world of sports and famously published an annual ‘swimsuit edition’).

Henry Luce 1954.jpg
By New York World-Telegram and the Sun staff photographer: Stanziola, Phil, photographer. – Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division. New York World-Telegram and the Sun Newspaper Photograph Collection. http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/cph.3c24600, Public Domain, Link

As mentioned in:

Done Too Soon — Neil Diamond

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September 2, 1969 — Hồ Chí Minh dies

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The first President of Vietnam, who died on the 24th anniversary of his accession to that role, Ho Chi Minh is best known in the west as the leader of North Vietnam during the early parts of the Vietnam War. In particular, he was responsible for the move away from traditional military engagements towards the guerilla tactics that eventually (as he predicted) wore the US down.

Ho Chi Minh was 79 years old when he died, and had lived through French, Japanese and then French occupation again in his life. He was a staunch communist, abandoning his birth name of Nguyễn Sinh Cung in token of his ideals, and a firm believer in an independent Vietnam.

After his death, his body was embalmed, and has been on display in a mausoleum in Ba Dinh Square in Hanoi ever since, even though his will requested that he be cremated.

Ho Chi Minh 1946.jpg
By Unknown –
This file has been extracted from another file: Ho Chi Minh 1946 and signature.jpg
, Public Domain, Link

As mentioned in:

Done Too Soon — Neil Diamond

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February 18, 1973 – Picasso draws his last known work, “Couple”

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In his last years, Picasso’s productivity dropped off from the manic peaks of his youth. To be fair, he was in his nineties by then, and in all his decades, had created more than 50,000 works of art ranging from sculptures to sketches, in addition the paintings he was most famous for. He had certainly earned a quiet retirement, and he seemed for the most part content with his lot, if disappointed by his exile from his native Spain.

His last sketch, entitled “Couple” shows that although he may have slowed down with age, he has lost none of his skill or talent. His last painting had been created some years earlier, but showed a similar spirit. Picasso would die only a little later in that same year, during a dinner party with some friends. His last words were “Drink to me, drink to my health, you know I can’t drink any more.”