Leon Trotsky (1879) It was on this date, November 7, 1879, that Russian revolutionist Leon Trotsky (Лев Троцкий) was born Lev Davidovich Bronstein (Лев Давидович Бронштейн) in Yanovka, Ukraine, the son of an illiterate but prosperous Jewish farmer. His parents sent young Lev to study in Odessa. He excelled there, read the writings of Karl […]

Albert Camus (1913) It was on this date, November 7, 1913, that French existentialist philosopher Albert Camus was born in Mondovi, Algeria. Camus studied philosophy with the idea of teaching it, but also discovered theater and journalism, working at those endeavors full time by 1938. In World War Two (1941) he joined the French Resistance […]

"Though he remains an agnostic," McCabe write of his personal relationship with Phillpotts, "in recent years he has become milder and more conservative."

J.B.S. Haldane (1892) It was on this date, November 5, 1892, that British biochemist and geneticist John Burdon Sanderson Haldane was born in Scotland. Educated at Eton and Oxford, J.B.S. Haldane was not only broadly knowledgeable in science, but he had a well developed social conscience. This led him to follow Marxism for a time […]

"The greatest question of our time is not communism vs. individualism, not Europe vs. America, not even East vs. West," wrote Durant, "it is whether men can bear to live without God."