Rupert Brooke (1887) It was on this date, August 3, 1887, that the Edwardian British poet W.B. Yeats called "The most handsome man in England," Rupert Brooke was born in Rugby. He was educated at Rugby School (where his father was housemaster) and King's College, Cambridge, distinguishing himself as both student and athlete. He was […]

John Tyndall (1820) It was on this date, August 2, 1820, that British physicist John Tyndall was born in County Carlow, Ireland, to English Protestant parents. Tyndall left school at the age of 17, with a grounding in basic mathematics and worked for a time as a surveyor in the Irish Civil Service. Higher education […]

Herman Melville (1819) It was on this date, August 1, 1819, that the American novelist Herman Melville was born in New York, into a family of the Dutch Reformed church, the third of eight children. At age 7, scarlet fever left Melville somewhat visually impaired, and although his father died when he was 12, he […]

Marquis de Lamarck (1744) It was on this date, August 1, 1744, that French botanist, zoologist, and natural philosopher Jean Baptiste Pierre Antoine de Monet de Lamarck was born in Picardy. The Marquis de Lamarck studied for a time at a Jesuit college, but abandoned that institution when he became a Deist and, after some […]