A rare shot of a young Winston Churchill, 1895

A rare shot of a 21 years old Winston Churchill, 1895

Winston Churchill in the uniform of the Fourth Queen’s Own Hussars, 21 years old, February 1895. When Winston Churchill entered the Royal Military College (Sandhurst) few could foresee that he would become one of Great Britain’s greatest war leaders. He tried three times before passing the entrance exam; he applied to be trained for the cavalry rather than the infantry because the required grade was lower and he was not required to learn mathematics, which he disliked. At Sandhurst Churchill had a new start.

“I was no longer handicapped by past neglect of Latin, French or Mathematics. We had now to learn fresh things and we all started equal. Tactics, Fortification, Topography (map-making), Military Law and Military Fortification, formed the whole curriculum. In addition were Drill, Gymnastics and Riding.”

 

Churchill found his work at Sandhurst exciting. He drew contoured maps of the hills in the area, designed paper plans for the advanced guards and rear guards, and even thought up simple tactical schemes. He learned how to blow up masonry bridges and make substitute bridges out of wood.

Winston Churchill graduated from Sandhurst with honors, eighth out of a class of 150 in December 1894, and although he could now have transferred to an infantry regiment as his father had wished, chose to remain with the cavalry and was commissioned as a Cornet (Second Lieutenant) in the 4th Queen’s Own Hussars on 20 February 1895. These two photo were taken after he was commissioned as a Cornet.

Winston Churchill in the uniform of the Fourth Queen’s Own Hussars, February 1895.

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Interesting stuff:
 

• Churchill’s pay as a second-lieutenant in the 4th Hussars was £300 annually. However, he believed that he needed at least a further £500 (equivalent to £55,000 in 2012 terms) to support a style of life equal to that of other officers of the regiment. His mother provided an allowance of £400 per year, but this was repeatedly overspent.

Albert Einstein’s matriculation certificate, aged 17, 1896

Albert Einstein’s matriculation certificate, aged 17, 1896. It’s a myth that Einstein was bad at math.

This puts to rest that urban legend that Einstein was a “bad student”, although he received a three in French. He did, apparently, receive straight sixes in algebra, geometry, physics, and – history! Young Einstein knew what was important, it seems. Perhaps the legend is founded in the fact that the Swiss school system has a 6 as best grade, and 1 as poorest, while the German is the other way round. In his certificate of qualification for university matriculation the lessons which he was less interested in can easily be detected. But the average grade in his certificate was a 5, i.e. the grade “good”!

In 1895, at the age of sixteen, Einstein sat the entrance examinations for the Swiss Federal Polytechnic in Zürich (later the Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule ETH). He obtained the best results in the mathematical and natural science subjects, but in the linguistic and historical subjects his achievements were unsatisfactory. His overall result was rated as insufficient. On the advice of the Principal of the Polytechnic, he attended the Aargau Cantonal School in Aarau, Switzerland, in 1895–96 to complete his secondary schooling.

In September 1896, he passed the Swiss Matura with mostly good grades, including a top grade of 6 in physics and mathematical subjects, on a scale of 1-6, and, though only seventeen, enrolled in the four-year mathematics and physics teaching diploma program at the Zürich Polytechnic. The Swiss A-levels are called “Matur”; it corresponds to the German “Abitur”. Furthermore it has to be noticed that the assessment scale for school performance (school grades) in Germany and in Switzerland differs from each other, i.e. the grade 1 (excellent) in Germany equals grade 6 in Switzerland; the grade 2 (good) equals grade 5, etc.

In 1935, a rabbi in Princeton showed him a clipping of the Ripley’s column with the headline “Greatest living mathematician failed in mathematics.” Einstein laughed. “I never failed in mathematics,” he replied, correctly. “Before I was fifteen I had mastered differential and integral calculus.” In primary school, he was at the top of his class and “far above the school requirements” in math. By age 12, his sister recalled, “he already had a predilection for solving complicated problems in applied arithmetic,” and he decided to see if he could jump ahead by learning geometry and algebra on his own. His parents bought him the textbooks in advance so that he could master them over summer vacation. Not only did he learn the proofs in the books, he also tackled the new theories by trying to prove them on his own. He even came up on his own with a way to prove the Pythagorean theory.

The matriculation certificate translated in English: 

The Council of Education of the Canton of Aargau hereby certifies:

Mr. Albert Einstein of Ulm, born 14 March 1879, attended the Cantonal School of Aargau, namely, the IIIrd and IVth class of the Commercial School.

On taking the written and oral exam of maturity on 18, 19 and 21 September, and on 30 September 1896, he received the following grades:

1. German language and literature: 5

  2. French language and literature: 3  

3. English language and literature: —  

4. Italian language and literature: 5  

5. History: 6  

6. Geography: 4  

7. Algebra: 6  

8. Geometry (planimetry, trigonometry, stereometry and analytical 

geometry): 6  

9. Descriptive geometry: 6  

10. Physics: 6  

11. Chemistry: 5  

12. Natural history: 5  

13. In drawing: 4  

14. In technical drawing: 4

Based thereon he is issued the certificate of maturity.

Aarau, 3 October 1896.

(The President / The Secretary)

 

Actress Marlene Dietrich kisses a soldier returning home from war, 1945

It seems that the guy on the left holding her up is enjoying the view.

This photo shows Marlene Dietrich passionately kissing a GI as he arrives home from World War II. It seems that the guy on the left holding her up is enjoying the view. It was first published in Life Magazine with the caption: “While soldiers hold her up by her famous legs, Marlene Dietrich is kissed by a home-coming GI”. Photo taken by Irving Haberman.

The ship was the Monticello, a converted cruise liner. Her original name was SS Conte Grande and was built in 1927 in Trieste, Italy. During World War II, she was acquired by the United States and was used as an American troopship—renamed USS Monticello (AP-61) in 1942. At the time the photo was taken it was transporting parts of the 2nd infantry division home.

Marlene Dietrich (1951).

The 2nd division soldiers had entered the war in Normandy on D-Day. They fought across Europe into Czechoslovakia. They arrived in New York (when this photo was taken) on July 20, 1945. The war was not over for them. They were on their way to Camp Swift in Texas for training. They were supposed to be a part of the invasion of Japan.

Marlene Dietrich has a curious story. She was a German actress and singer. Her cinematography life started in Germany and later in Hollywood where she became very famous. Dietrich was known to have strong political convictions and the mind to speak them.

In interviews, Dietrich stated that she had been approached by representatives of the Nazi Party to return to Germany but had turned them down flat.

Dietrich, a staunch anti-Nazi, became an American citizen in 1939. In December 1941, the U.S. entered World War II, and Dietrich became one of the first celebrities to raise war bonds. She toured the US from January 1942 to September 1943 (appearing before 250,000 troops on the Pacific Coast leg of her tour alone) and was reported to have sold more war bonds than any other star. At the end of the war she was awarded the highest American civil medal: the Medal of freedom.

Napoleon Bonaparte's Death mask: 1821

His face is fairly handsome and pretty symmetrical.

Death mask of Napoleon, taken a day and a half after he died on the island of St. Helena at age 51. His eyes are closed, lips slightly parted, and his shaven head is tilted backward, resting on a pillow garnished with a tassel at each corner. Napoleon’s original death mask was created on May 7, 1821. Surrounding his deathbed were doctors from France and the UK.

During the time of Napoleon Bonaparte, it was customary to cast a death mask of a great leader who had recently died. A mixture of wax or plaster was carefully placed over Napoleon’s face and removed after the form had hardened. From this impression, subsequent copies would be cast. 

Contrary to some accounts of Napoleon’s death, it was not Dr. Antommarchi who made the original mask or so-called “parent mold”; it was the surgeon Francis Burton of Britain’s Sixty-Sixth Regiment at St. Helena.

Napoleon was a charismatic and stylish leader in his day. His face is fairly handsome and pretty symmetrical. Painters like Jacques-Louis David said they were “struck by Bonaparte’s classical features” but he rarely sat for portraits, which is why many of the most famous images of Napoleon weren’t accurate studies of his visage. Most portraits artists had to base their work on extrapolations from other paintings or busts, rather than the man himself. He didn’t seem to care, though, as long as the right message was there in the commissioned art.

This death mask is what he actually looked like at the time of death because it’s a direct mold of his face 2 days after he died. Napoleon died of stomach cancer so he would’ve lost weight but beyond that, this death mask is way more representative of what he looked like versus what a painting would represent him as. The artists were well known at the time for embellishing in a positive manner how very powerful and rich people looked in paintings.

  
Interesting fact: 

• Napoleon wasn’t as short as he was made out to be in history books. Historians suggest he was 5’6″ to 5’7″ (1.68 m) whereas the average height of a Frenchman was 5’6″ at the time.