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Harold Lillis ‘Bing’ Crosby |
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That was a great game of golf, fellers. |
1904-1977 |
Bing Crosby sank his last put in the game of golf that he had been playing at the La Moraleja golf course near Madrid, in Spain and then turned to the spectators and said “That was a great game of golf, fellers”. He then turned around to walk to the clubhouse and collapsed. He was carried inside and a physician tried to resuscitate him but to no avail.
His last words are also quoted as, “It was a great game.” |
Singer and movie star |
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Harry Houdini |
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I am tired of fighting, Dash (his brother). I guess this thing is going to get me. |
(1874-1926) |
Houdini was a famous escapologist who had many methods of freeing himself from chains and restraints. Some of his methods remain secret even today. He was an authority on the mechanism of different kinds of locks and could open any lock. Having begun his career as circus acrobat, he was extremely agile. One of his secrets was an ability to expand his muscles to such an abnormal degree that when he relaxed them, the chains that were bound tightly before would become comparatively loose. Houdini claimed publicly that a blow in the abdomen could not injure him. But, he died from peritonitis after a blow ruptured his appendix. The blow was a surprise one delivered by a college student who did not know that a href="#/9048-Harry Houdini/" target="_parent">Houdini first had to steel himself for the blow. |
escapologist. |
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Hart Crane |
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Goodbye, everybody! |
1899-1932 |
Harold Hart Crane was an American poet known for his finely crafted verse. Crane pursued a poetic career despite his father’s attempts to dissuade him from it. He was filled with a passion to write and lived in New York City. He was associated with many important literary figures of the time but his heavy drinking and chronic instability frustrated any attempts at lasting friendship. He won critical acclaim but suffered form depression and experienced a profound sense of failure. Hart Crane committed suicide in 1932, at the age of 33, by jumping from the deck of a steamship sailing back to New York from Mexico, bidding his fellow passengers farewell. He was returning from a Guggenheim fellowship in Mexico. |
poet |
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Heinrich Heine |
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Write ... write...pencil...paper. |
1797-1856 |
Heinrich Heine was a German poet who became a radical political journalist in Paris where he lived for the final years of his life. He was bedridden because of disorders of his spine from 1845 till his death. He faced his death very calmly and a little while before he died he told his visitor, “God will forgive me. It's his profession.” It seems that he died wanting to leave an additional message. |
German poet |
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Henrik Ibsen |
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On the contrary. |
(1828-1906) |
What 18-year-old James Joyce wrote about Ibsen, writing an article on the Norwegian playwright who changed the 10th century perspective of what drama can accomplish, sums up all that has been said about him. He wrote: ".... (He) has provoked more discussion and criticism than that of any other living man. He has been upheld as a religious reformer, a social reformer, a Semitic lover of righteousness, and as a great dramatist. He has been rigorously denounced as a meddlesome intruder, a defective artist, an incomprehensible mystic, and, in the eloquent words of a certain English critic, a ‘muck-ferreting dog.’ Through the perplexities of such diverse criticism, the great genius of the man is day by day coming out as a hero comes out amid the earthly trials. Ibsen demonstrates better than anybody else, the power that literature has, to describe honestly and to comment meaningfully on the problems of human nature and modern society. Ibsen suffered from a stroke in 1900 and was confined to bed for the rest of his life. He heard his nurse say to a visitor that he was looking better. “On the contrary”, he cut in just before he died. |
Norwegian dramatist. |
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Henry Beecher Ward |
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Now comes the mystery. |
1813-1887 |
One of the most influential of American clergymen in the 1800s, Henry Ward Beecher was the brother of Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of Uncle Tom's Cabin. He was popular for his down-to-earth sermons and his outspoken moral earnestness. He was a national figure and his popularity lasted throughout his life. It survived his acceptance of Darwinism, his eventual rejection of the divinity of Christ and even a sensational adultery trial that ended in a hung jury. |
American Congregationalist preacher |
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Henry Van Dynke |
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Some people are so afraid to die that they never begin to live. |
(1852-1933) |
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Letters |
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Herbert George Wells |
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Go away. I'm alright. |
(1866-1946) |
English novelist, journalist, sociologist, and historian, H. G. Wells was one of the most influential writers of his time. Along with Jules Verne, he is credited with the invention of science fiction. Some of his best-known novels, The Time Machine, The Invisible Man and The War of the Worlds are read and enjoyed by readers even today. His one volume history of the world is taken to be the best compiled by any single author. |
English writer and social theorist. |
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Husayn ibn mansur al hallaj |
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My life is in my death, and my death is in my life. |
(858-922) |
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Diwan |
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