I am learning for my finals, and while I was busy with the religious wars in 16th century Europe, this dude suddenly turned up and rushed away with my feelings, thoroughly destroying my ability to concentrate.
Meet Charles IX of France, who did little of note in short life except order the Massacre on St. Bartholomew’s Day (probably on insistence of the Queen Mother), which caused the estimated death of about 20,000 Huguenots.
But damn, does he pull off that beard..
Antonin Dvorak, 19th century Romantic composer…
Immensely talented and tasty.
This gorgeous man is Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar. He was an astrophysicist, born in what is now present-day Pakistan in 1910.
The Chandrasekhar limit is named after him, and it describes the maximum mass of a white dwarf star. He estimated this limit when he was just 19, on a voyage from British India to England while running calculations of observations done by prominent astronomers at the time. His findings were pretty much ignored by the British scientific community because that limit implied the natural formation of black holes and a prominent astrophysicist didn’t want to accept that black holes could exist - this pompous idiot derided Chandra’s findings and, thus, kept other astrophysicists from publicly declaring their support for his research on stellar evolution.
He was a well-liked professor of Theoretical Astrophysics at the University of Chicago later in his life and was eventually awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1983 for his work on the evolution of stars.
He died in 1995 at the age of 84 - it’s undisputed that he is one of the great minds of theoretical astrophysics, but I think we can also agree that in his earlier years he was also damn fine.
Oh, and NASA’s X-ray observatory is named the Chandra X-ray Observatory in honor of him, so that’s not like a big deal or anything either.
(Photo credit: http://chandra.harvard.edu/graphics/resources/illustrations/chandraYoungPose-72.jpg)
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Musical genius, fun personality, adorable face.
Love him to pieces.
I am absolutely in love with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Everything about him- his sense of humor, his overconfidence, his passion for life and music, and the music itself…. there is no way anyone cannot love this man.
Plus the fact that he’s really freakin’ adorable. ♥
Wilfred Owen, war poet and total babe.
Dániel Berzsenyi was a Hungarian poet who lived 1776 - 1836, and to whom I was introduced during my Hungarian Lit class. He was a bit of a rebel at school, had a hard time kowtowing to the discipline and rules, so he constantly interrupted and never really finished his studies.
However, he read a lot of books, and was especially influenced by Horace.
His father didn’t like his attitude towards school, so the two never got along well, which prompted Dániel to marry a farmer’s daughter, Zsuzsanna, and move with her to her farm to escape his father.
His existence was a constant conflict between his life as a common farm-owner with a boring wife who had to support himself, and his literary ambitions and desire to be a part of the literary world of Hungary.
He wrote epistles to some of the great literary figures of the time, including a poetess who was a relative of his wife. The poetess, Judit, was educated and intelligent, the polar opposite of what his wife represented. My professor says he may have had at least a major intellectual crush on her - he exalted her in his writing. They exchanged epistles, and apparently some of them have erotic undertones.
Anyway, his poetry is also cute, he references ancient poets and deities a lot, and is sentimental, if rather pessimistic. Recurring themes in his works is the passing of time, the transience of youth, the importance of being well-read and educated, carpe diem etc. And he had interesting facial hair.
The one and only handsome devil Earl of Fife, who marries Pss Louis of Wales. This portrait was photographed in the late 1880’s and my god what a looker. He is absolute perfection topped with a tall silk topper, which adds points to any gentlemen.
This handsome man is Hans Scholl, one of the founding members of the White Rose. They were a bunch of kick-ass students and teachers who resisted the Nazi movement with non-violence. He started it with his sister Sophie and a few other students. They put graffiti all over Munich and handed out leaflets declaring Germany should be free of Nazis. Sadly, the members were captured by the Nazis. Hans was executed February 22 1943 at the age of 24. Not only was he part of a resistance group, he was gorgeous as well.
