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Charles Lacretelle: eye-witnessing the guillotining of Marie-Antoinette on Oct 16
Countess Marie Walewska (née Laczynska): Napoléon’s next on Dec 16 - click here
Osama bin Laden: choosing September 11 for a reason on May 21
William Lamb, 2nd Viscount Melbourne (born March 15 1779; died November 24 1848): has a city named after him on Nov 3 (served as British Prime Minister from July to November 1834, when the king sacked him - the last PM to be sacked by the monarch - and again from 1835 to 1841; pretty ghastly man who supported slavery, voted against the 1832 Reform Act, and sent the Tolpuddle Martyrs to Botany Bay for daring to protest against farm-workers’ wages being slashed; you can see why his wife went off with a rather differently-minded lover – she was Lady Caroline of Lord Byron fame
Simon Langham (born 1310; died July 22 1376), the only Abbot of Westminster to become a Cardinal - probably a reward for supporting the Pope against John Wycliffe on May 4 - bio here; some archives record him as Simon de Langham, which ties his birthplace with his cardinalship in Avignon, where his Pope was living in exile, and where he himself died
Stephen Langton: Archbishop of Canterbury (born circa 1150; died July 9 1228): a key figure in the imposition of Magna Carta on June 15 - try here, though I suspect it will be blue-corner propaganda; otherwise here
Elie Lascaux (born July 5 1888; died October 28 1968): in the Picasso-Max Jacob meet-up group on August 19
Leander - no known surname, the boyfriend of Hero, which you would think should have been Heroine as she was a girl. Mentioned on May 3 because it was he who Byron was imitating when he swam the Hellespont, somewhat unheroically it must be said. The tale here; Kit Marlowe’s version here, Leigh Hunt’s here
Frank Raymond (F.R) Leavis (born July 14 1895; died April 14 1978), whose last tutee was Howard Jacobson, whose last tutee was me; obit here; among the giants of Lit Crit on July 11
Several Lebruns, some of them related
Heath Andrew Ledger amongst the “Method” actors on Nov 17
Robert E Lee (born January 1807; died October 12 1870): is he a GER? E for Edward on April 9; JB for John Brown on Dec 2
Friedrich Wilhelm Ludwig Leichhardt: the other model, alongside Johann Voss, who is below, for Patrick White’s novel; born October 23 1813; died - no one knows for certain where or when, but somewhere around April 3 1848, in the wilds of northern Australia. He is on Feb 8 but not as one of the pseudonyms.
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (born July 1 1646; died November 14 1716): optimistic about Pierre Bayle (and probably pessimistic about Voltaire, but that isn’t on the page) on November 18; but this needs to be understood in the context of Nihilism v The Zero Positive, and why he is right about “optimism” (sadly, given human nature and the 3rd-rateness of God if there even is one, this almost certainly is “the best of all possible worlds” - he wrote that in “Théodicée”, in 1710); bio here, philosophy here; he also invented Calculus and Binary numbers, created the first calculating machine that could add, subtract, multiply and divide, and formulated the theory of monads, inter alia (here)
Mitch Leigh: aiming for the inaccessible star with Joe Darion on Nov 22; Darion wrote the lyrics, Leigh set them to music: click here; Jacques Brel’s take on the story, “L'Homme de La Mancha”, premièred in Brussels in October 1968 – click here
Gaspar de Lemos, captain of the supply ship in Pedro Álvares Cabral's fleet that “discovered” Brazil; he was sent back to Portugal with the news of their discovery, and was credited by the Viscount of Santarém as having discovered the Fernando de Noronha archipelago in the Atlantic Ocean. See Jan 1 and here
Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1729-1781): try here, but look at the Mahler Foundation page as well (if only for the pictures): influenced by Spinoza on Feb 21
Meyer Levin (born October 7 1905; died July 9 1981): authored the first Broadway version of the Anne Frank diaries on June 12; but there is a very sad tale about this, of rejected scripts, law-suits, all sorts, for which click here; and the reason why Levin got involved in the first place, and quite so emotionally involved forever after, here
Benjamin Levy (birthdate unknown, died 1705), established the first post-Expulsion cememtery in Britain on Sept 30 - archive material here and here; and see the Jewish London section of P’s London.
John Lewis of Richmond can be found, acting utterly heroically, on May 16; he is on the Index, while Princess Amelia has been beaten out of bounds to the GER page; the other minor players in the drama who are mentioned are Lords Brooke and Palmerston, Lord Chief Justice Mansfield, a man named Symonds and a Deputy Ranger named Shaw, plus Martha Gray and Thomas Shepheard; Gilbert Wakefield is quoted and T. Stewart, a pupil of Sir Joshua Reynolds, did the portrait (which can be seen here and here; but they have no more bio than I can find, which is none at all)
George Henry Lewes (born April 18 1817; died November 30 1878): unable to divorce his wife, so living openly with Mary Anne Evans on July 1 – bio here
G. Gordon Liddy, as in “not to be confused with...” on Sept 8, where he can be found bungling Watergate - the full bio and story here
Bernard Lichtenberg (born December 3 1875; died in Dachau on November 5 1943): the Provost of Berlin's St. Hedwig Cathedral, he was foolish enough to declare publicly that he would include Jews in his daily prayers. In 1941! In Berlin! Predict the outcome and then go to July 14 (and then be surprised, first, by the lateness of his deathdate, and second, given the available materials and locations, the failure to Guy Faux him on that date: click here). Listed among the Righteous Gentiles by Yad Va Shem on 7 July 2004, having already been blessed by his fellow Pole Pope John Paul II on June 23 1996 (here)
Seymour B. Liebman (1907-1986): the text referred to on Dec 8 is available at Jstor, here
Peter Lik: Among the Illustrious Illustrators on Feb 20
Johannes Lippershey (sometimes Hans Lippershey, sometimes Johannes Lippersein ; born circa 1570 ; died Setember 29 1619): invented the telescope on March 29
Claude Joseph Rouget de Lisle (born May 10 1760; died 26 June 1836): wrote the French national anthem on his birthday; though the tale told here is surprising about him, and revealing about the words of the song.
Isabelle Allende Llona: better known without that last-name on Sept 11; her website here
Henry Brougham Loch (born 23 May 1827; Died: 20 June 1900): building empire in China on Jan 11 - bio here
John Locke (29 August 1632 – 28 October 1704): born Aug 29; mentioned on Jan 18, but unfortunately both of those entries are tabula rasa - bio here
Thomas Lord (born November 23 1755; died January 13 1832), as in the cricket ground on May 11: click here
Guillaume de Lorris (born circa 1200; died circa 1238): left “Le Romance de la Rose” unfinished on Jan 13; text and bio here and here; see Jean de Meung, below
Ferdinand Löwe (born February 19 1865; died January 6 1925): conducting Bruckner’s 9th on Feb 11
Robert Lowell’s ancestors are less mentioned than wondered on Feb 9: cousin Amy is the reason he is on the page; to fill out the list rather more precisely: poet James Russell Lowell (born February 22 1819; died August 12 1891 – click here); Civil War colonel Charles Russell Lowell (born January 2 1835; died October 20 1864 – click here); astronomer Percival Lowell (born March 13 1855; died November 12 1916), the man who calculated the existence of Pluto and predicted canals on Mars (click here); and somewhat reluctantly given the link, Harvard president Abbott Lawrence Lowell (born 13 December 1856; died January 6 1943 – click here; Abbot was Amy and Percival Lowell’s brother and frankly belongs on the GER page
Richard Lower (born circa 1631; died January 17 1691): performed the first (recorded) successful blood transfusion in England on Nov 14, but this doesn't really count among the scientific achievements, as his patients were dogs, not people. The first on a human being took place in France the following year, the surgeon then Jean Baptiste Denis – click here for both their stories.
Edward Edgar (Eddie) Lowery (born October 14 1902; died May 4 1984): winning the 1913 US Open Golf Championship on May 7 (yes, “winning”; do you honestly think the player can do it without the input of the caddy?); as to what happened to him afterwards – click here
Laurence Stephen (L.S.) Lowry (born November 1 1887; died February 23 1976): nowhere near the volcano on July 28; compared with Grandma Moses on Dec 13 - his website here
Solomon Abramovich Lozovsky: born March 16 1878; not one of the Jewish poets, but murdered anyway, on Aug 12 - use the link under his name on the blog-page for his bio
George Walton Lucas: used adult ideas to make movies for children on March 26
Tacankpe Luta ("Red Tomahawk"): assassinated on Dec 15 - his wesbiste here
George Lyttelton (born January 17 1709; died August 22 1773): another of the illustrious who graced the Montagu salon on Oct 2 (he was also the brother-in-law of William Pitt – click here for his bio)
You can find David Prashker at:
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