QR Memorial

Memorial pages

Pages for people, events and places. Search by name, or narrow by kind and country.

229 pages

Artemisia Gentileschi

1593–1656

Tortured as a witness at her own rape trial; painted Judith with a butcher's accuracy

Naples, Campania — her burial place in the church of San Giovanni dei Fiorentini was lost when the church was demolished

Concepción Arenal

1820–1893

Attended university dressed as a man; became Spain's first prison inspector for women

Pereiró Cemetery, Vigo, Galicia

Primo Levi

1919–1987

A chemist who survived Auschwitz and spent forty years explaining it precisely

Monumental Cemetery of Turin, Piedmont

Maria Montessori

1870–1952

One of Italy's first women doctors; left medicine to watch how children learn

Catholic cemetery, Noordwijk aan Zee, Netherlands

Luís de Camões

1524–1580

Wrote Portugal's national epic and died poor; the bones in his tomb may not be his

Jerónimos Monastery, Belém, Lisbon

Rosalía de Castro

1837–1885

Published in Galician when Galician was a language you were mocked for writing in

Panteón de Galegos Ilustres, Convent of Santo Domingo de Bonaval, Santiago de Compostela

Joseph Bazalgette

1819–1891

Built London's sewers twice the size the numbers required, and ended cholera

St Mary's Church, Wimbledon, London

Oscar Wilde

1854–1900

Two years' hard labour for who he loved; he wrote about the prison afterwards

Père-Lachaise Cemetery, Paris

Michael Collins

1890–1922

Signed a treaty he expected would kill him, and it did within a year

Glasnevin Cemetery, Dublin

Mary Anning

1799–1847

Found the fossils that changed geology; could not join the society that used them

St Michael's churchyard, Lyme Regis, Dorset

Edith Cavell

1865–1915

Nursed both sides, helped 200 men escape, and said patriotism is not enough

Life's Green, Norwich Cathedral, Norfolk

Ernest Shackleton

1874–1922

Lost his ship and brought all twenty-seven men home alive

Grytviken cemetery, South Georgia

Karl Liebknecht

1871–1919

The only deputy to vote against war credits in 1914

Zentralfriedhof Friedrichsfelde, Berlin

Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel

1805–1847

Wrote over 460 works; her first collection appeared the year she died

Dreifaltigkeitsfriedhof I, Friedhöfe vor dem Halleschen Tor, Kreuzberg, Berlin

Rudolf Virchow

1821–1902

Founded cell pathology and argued that epidemics are a political problem of poverty

Alter St.-Matthäus-Kirchhof, Schöneberg, Berlin

Georg Elser

1903–1945

A carpenter who worked alone for a year and missed Hitler by thirteen minutes

Murdered at Dachau concentration camp; his body was burned and there is no grave. Memorial at the camp site, Bavaria

Emmy Noether

1882–1935

Lectured for years under another man's name because a woman could not hold the post

Cloisters of the M. Carey Thomas Library, Bryn Mawr College, Pennsylvania

Bertha von Suttner

1843–1914

Persuaded Nobel to fund a peace prize, and became the first woman to win it

Ashes interred at the main cemetery, Gotha, Thuringia

Halifax Explosion, 1917

1917

The largest man-made blast before the atomic bomb

Fort Needham Memorial Park, Halifax, Nova Scotia

Bergen-Belsen Memorial

1940–1945

Liberated by British troops who found 13,000 unburied dead

Bergen-Belsen Memorial, Lohheide, Lower Saxony

Battle of the Somme, 1916

1916

Nineteen thousand British soldiers killed on the first morning

Thiepval Memorial to the Missing, Somme, France

Haymarket Affair, Chicago, 1886

1886

A bomb, a trial without evidence, and the reason the world marks 1 May

Haymarket Martyrs' Monument, Forest Home Cemetery, Forest Park, Illinois