Rudyard Kipling

popular name: Franz Kafka

date_of_death: June 3, 1924

age: 40

cause_of_death: Laryngeal tuberculosis and starvation

claim_to_fame: Writers and Poets

best_know_for: Franz Kafka was a German-speaking Bohemian writer born on July 3, 1883, in Prague, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire (now the Czech Republic). He is widely regarded as one of the most influential literary figures of the 20th century. Kafka was born into a middle-class Jewish family and had a complicated relationship with his domineering father, which deeply influenced his writing. He studied law at the University of Prague and worked for much of his life in insurance, writing in his spare time. Kafka’s works often explore themes of alienation, absurdity, and the oppressive power of bureaucracy, with his most famous stories including The Metamorphosis, The Trial, and The Castle. His distinctive style blends realism with surreal, nightmarish scenarios, reflecting a sense of existential dread. Despite writing prolifically, Kafka published only a few works during his lifetime and instructed his friend Max Brod to destroy his manuscripts after his death. Brod ignored these wishes and instead edited and published much of Kafka’s work, securing his posthumous reputation. Upon his passing, the grave of Franz Kafka can be found at New Jewish Cemetery in Prague, Czechoslovakia.

popular name: Albert Camus

date_of_death: January 4, 1960

age: 46

cause_of_death: Automobile accident

claim_to_fame: Writers and Poets

best_know_for: Albert Camus was a French philosopher, author, dramatist, journalist, and political activist. He was the recipient of the 1957 Nobel Prize in Literature at the age of 44, the second-youngest recipient in history. Some of his best known works include The Stranger, The Plague, The Myth of Sisyphus, The Fall, and The Rebel.The dominant philosophical contribution of Camus’s work is absurdism. While he is often associated with existentialism, he rejected the label, expressing surprise that he would be viewed as a philosophical ally of Sartre. Elements of absurdism and existentialism are present in Camus’s most celebrated writing especially in The Myth of Sisyphus (1942). The protagonists of The Stranger and The Plague must also confront the absurdity of social and cultural orthodoxies, with dire results. Camus died on January 4, 1960 at the age of 46, in a car accident near Sens, in Le Grand Fossard in the small town of Villeblevin. He had spent the New Year's holiday of 1960 at his house in Lourmarin, Vaucluse with his family, and his publisher Michel Gallimard, along with Gallimard's wife, Janine, and daughter. Camus's wife and children went back to Paris by train but Camus decided to return in Gallimard's luxurious Facel Vega FV2. The car crashed into a plane tree on a long straight stretch of the Route nationale 5. Camus, who was in the passenger seat, died instantly. Gallimard died a few days later, although his wife and daughter were unharmed.

popular name: Victor Noir

date_of_death: January 11, 1870

age: 21

cause_of_death: Homicide - gunshot wounds

claim_to_fame: Writers and Poets

best_know_for: Victor Noir was the nom de plume of a budding journalist killed at 21 years old by Prince Pierre Bonaparte. The prince was a relative of the reigning monarch, Emperor Napoleon III, the same Napoleon who censured the press and forced writers like Victor Hugo into exile. The little noble shot Victor six times when Noir and another witness went to pick up the prince and drive him to a duel. The prince was quickly tried and acquitted, paying only a pittance in damages for taking another man's life. More than a hundred thousand outraged people crowded for the funeral on a cold January day in 1870. It was a catalyst for anti-royal fervor. Later that same year, after a crushing defeat at a battle in the Franco-Prussian war they imprisoned the last Napoleon.