Colonel Robert Gould Shaw- leader of the 54th Massachusetts Infantry during the Civil War. ♥

Franz Schubert, what a looker he was. dang. 

This Hellenistic hunk is Antinous, the Roman emperor Hadrian’s “special friend” from Bithynia. After he drowned in the Nile, Hadrian deified him, named cities after him, and commissioned innumerable images of him for shrines, sanctuaries, and even coins. Because of this, his face is one of the best preserved from the ancient world. 

I took this photo of an Antinous bust at the Vatican Museum this past October.

Gilberto Bosques Saldivar is known as the Mexican Schindler for aiding people during the Holocaust.

He was posted by Mexico to Marseilles, France in 1939 to serve as his government’s consul general. There, Bosques instructed the consulate personnel to help anyone who wished to flee to Mexico as the Nazi persecution gathered force. 

He rented two chateaux to house and protect European Jews and other refugees, including leaders of the resistance and Spanish Republicans, who were marked for deportation to concentration camps by the Nazis. 

In addition, in the port town of Marseilles he chartered ships to transport Jews and those threatened with persecution to African countries where they later moved on to Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, and other countries.  In two years time, under his auspices, as many as 40,000 visas were issued to those fleeing Nazi tyranny.

In 1943, the Gestapo forcibly took Bosques, his wife and three children and 40 consular staff members into custody, and held them for a year’s captivity in the German town of Bad Godesberg, near Bonn. 

Released by an agreement between Mexico and Germany, Bosques was able to return to his native country. His life is a shining example of human decency, moral courage and conviction, and his actions highlight the less well known initiatives of Latin Americans who helped to save Jews during the Holocaust.

source: http://archive.adl.org/main_Holocaust/Bosques_Saldivar.htm

Louis Cartier, the creative force of the second generation of Cartiers and his romantic interest was Jeanne Toussaint, someone so interesting and talented in her own right she became the director of fine jewelry for Cartier and ran the Paris location during WWII.  A man who loves a good strong woman is always beautiful.

Mirabeau Buonaparte Lamar, who looked just as badass as his name, also stated that “The cultivated mind is the guardian genius of democracy and, while guided and controlled by virtue, the noblest attribute of man. It is the only dictator that freemen acknowledge and the only security that freemen desire.”

Primo Levi was a beautiful human being. An Italian of Jewish extraction, he joined an anti-Nazi resistance group in 1943. This did not end well; Levi was captured and spent a very unhappy year in Auschwitz. Upon his return to Italy he would become a chemist by trade, but it was his destiny to be a writer. His works are now considered classics - perhaps even crown jewels - of both Holocaust literature and science writing.

All of this demands solemnity and sobriety, but…he was a cutie, wasn’t he? And apparently quite shy. Ti amo.  

Hedy Lamarr, not only is she considered the most beautiful woman in films but she was highly intelligent.  In 1942, Hedy and composer George Antheil patented what they called the “Secret Communication System.”  This is the early version of frequency hopping and would have allowed for radio control missile launching without enemies blocking the frequency.  An idea that would have save countless of lives wasn’t even implemented in the USA Navy until 1962 after the patent expired.  Even though the invention was brilliant because of the fact she was a beautiful famous woman no one took her and the invention serious.  Hedy and her invention wasn’t even recognized until 1997 by the Electronic Frontier Foundation.  Hedy’s idea has helped advance in technology in the military and cell phone industry. 

This lovely stern looking lad is José de San Martín, he freed Argentina and most of the southern part of South America (just like Simon Bolivar did for the northern part). 

D. H. Lawrence (aged 21 on the left)

famous english poet, born 1885 and died 1930

interestingly, his reputation when he died was “that of a pornographer who had wasted his considerable talents”. however, he’s now valued as a “visionary thinker and significant representative of modernism in english literature”.

but god, is he hot or what?