11 March 1952 – 11 May 2001 #TowelDay was started 20 years ago (25 May 2001) to commemorate Adams’ death and honor his work, particularly The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Adams is buried in Highgate East, his headstone a simple gray tablet with a jaunty placard labeled 42 for those in-the-know to appreciate. Fans […]
June 27, 1869 (Russia) – May 14, 1940* (Toronto) Dubbed “Red Emma” by the press and called “the most dangerous woman in America,” by J. Edgar Hoover, Emma Goldman was a tireless radical activist whose influence is felt to this day. Emma Goldman was born in Kaunas, Russian Empire (which is now Lithuania) to Jewish […]
Jean-Louis André Théodore Géricault 26 September 1791 – 26 January 1824 Géricault was an influential artist who was one of the pioneers of the Romantic movement and is considered the first major painter of French Romanticism. Romanticism is a vast artistic movement that touched every corner of art and design throughout the early 1800s and […]
Cecelia Tang 1930 – 2013 Cyril Chung Ying Tang 1930 – 2018 This isn’t exactly a mausoleum, but I’m not sure what else you would call it except for incredibly tranquil and beautiful. Mr. Tang died in 2018 and I believe that this must have just been finished as the landscaping isn’t completed yet. It […]
Elizabeth “Bessie” Coleman 26 January 1892 (Atlanta, Texas) – 30 April 1926 (Jacksonville, Florida) Also known as “Queen Bess” Today is the 95th anniversary of Bessie Coleman’s death. Coleman was a trailblazing aviator who was the first Black woman and first Native-American to hold a pilot’s license and the first Black person and first Native-American […]
Steve John, “King of the Gypsies*” 1861 (Serbia) – 26 February 1926 (Detroit) I really expected to learn nothing about this mausoleum, all bricked up and with such a simple name, but a clue in the form of a note on the findagrave.com record pointing out the cross on top of the mausoleum read “King […]
July 22, 1804, Paris, France — December 26, 1893, Houilles Schœlcher was the the son of a porcelain manufacturer (Marc Schœlcher, also listed on this headstone) whose political and social awakening took place while on a trip for the family business which took him throughout North America. It was on this trip that he first […]
22 March 1923 – 22 September 2007 I visited Père Lachaise in March of 2008 which was just a few months after M. Marceau had passed away. His headstone was not yet ready, but his grave was covered in flowers and other mementos left by mourners. (In regards to the note in the photo with […]
15 March 1909 – 4 March 1987 “Heroine in the Struggle” Born in New Orleans to a stalwart and vocal union man, Woods performed her first protest at the age of ten when she refused to sing the national anthem after she realized she and her siblings were forbidden to play in the park they […]
1 March 1810 – 17 October 1849 My favorite headstone in Pere Lachaise is Chopin’s. I was there while someone was working on touching up the details on the memorial, painting the engraved words so they would be sharp and readable (you can see both the worker and the work they had completed so far […]