On this day in 41 AD, Roman Emperor Caligula was assassinated, the result of a conspiracy by officers of the Praetorian Guard, senators, and courtiers, in the cryptoporticus (underground corridor) beneath the imperial palaces on the Palatine Hill, at the age of 28. Born Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus Germanicus in Antium (modern Anzio and Nettuno) on 31 August 12 AD. Caligula was a member of the house of rulers conventionally known as the Julio-Claudian dynasty. Caligula’s father Germanicus, the nephew and adopted son of Emperor Tiberius, was a very successful general and one of Rome’s most beloved public figures. The young Gaius earned the nickname Caligula (meaning “little soldier’s boot”, the diminutive form of caliga, hob-nailed military boot) from his father’s soldiers while accompanying him during his campaigns in Germania. When Germanicus died at Antioch in AD 19, his wife Agrippina the Elder returned to Rome with her six children where she became entangled in a bitter feud with Tiberius. The conflict eventually led to the destruction of her family, with Caligula as the sole male survivor. Untouched by the deadly intrigues, Caligula accepted the invitation to join the emperor on the island of Capri in AD 31, to where Tiberius, himself, had withdrawn five years earlier. With the death of Tiberius in AD 37, Caligula succeeded his great uncle and adoptive grandfather as Emperor. There are few surviving sources about the reign of Emperor Caligula, although he is described as a noble and moderate ruler during the first six months of his reign. After this, the sources focus upon his cruelty, sadism, extravagance, and sexual perversity, presenting him as an insane tyrant. While the reliability of these sources is questionable, it is known that during his brief reign, Caligula worked to increase the unconstrained personal power of the emperor, as opposed to countervailing powers within the principate. He directed much of his attention to ambitious construction projects and luxurious dwellings for himself; he initiated the construction of two aqueducts in Rome: the Aqua Claudia and the Anio Novus. During his reign, the Empire annexed the Kingdom of Mauretania as a province. 
The Final Footprint – Caligula’s Germanic guard, stricken with grief and rage, responded with a rampaging attack on the assassins, conspirators, innocent senators and bystanders alike. The Senate attempted to use Caligula’s death as an opportunity to restore the Republic. The military remained loyal to the office of the emperor. The grieving Roman people assembled and demanded that Caligula’s murderers be brought to justice. Uncomfortable with lingering imperial support, the assassins sought out and stabbed Caligula’s wife, Caesonia, and killed their young daughter, Julia Drusilla, by smashing her head against a wall. They were unable to reach Caligula’s uncle, Claudius, who was spirited out of the city, after being found by a soldier hiding behind a palace curtain, to the nearby Praetorian camp. Claudius became emperor after procuring the support of the Praetorian guard and ordered the execution of known conspirators involved in the death of Caligula. Caligula’s body was placed under turf until it was burned and entombed by his sisters. He was entombed within the Mausoleum of Augustus; in 410 during the Sack of Rome the tomb’s ashes were scattered. The biographical film Caligula was released in 1979. It stars Malcolm McDowell, Teresa Ann Savoy, Helen Mirren, Peter O’Toole and John Gielgud. It is the only feature film produced by the men’s magazine Penthouse. Producer Bob Guccione, the magazine’s founder, intended to produce an explicit adult film within a feature film narrative, which had high production values. He intended to cast Penthouse Pets as extras in unsimulated sexual scenes filmed during post-production by Guccione and Giancarlo Lui. Guccione hired Gore Vidal to draft the film’s script and Tinto Brass to direct the film. Brass extensively altered Vidal’s original screenplay, leading Vidal to disavow the film. The final screenplay focuses on the idea that “absolute power corrupts absolutely”. Brass and Guccione disagreed over Guccione’s use of unsimulated sexual content, which Brass refused to film. Because the producers did not allow Brass to edit the film, changed its tone and style significantly without consulting the director and added hardcore sex scenes not filmed by Brass, he also disavowed the film. The film’s release was controversial; it was met with legal issues and controversies over its violent and sexual content. Although reviews were overwhelmingly negative, Caligula is considered to be a cult classic and its political content was considered to have significant merit. In 1984, a new version of the film titled I, Caligula was distributed, adding new scenes and removing the more violent and sexually explicit ones. Other notable final footprints at the Mausoleum of Augustus include;
- Marcus Claudius Marcellus (who was the first to be buried there, in 23 BC),
- Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa in 12 BC,
- Nero Claudius Drusus in 9 BC,
- Octavia Minor (the sister of Augustus) in 9 or 11 BC,
- Gaius Caesar and Lucius Caesar, grandsons and heirs of Augustus.
After the death of Augustus, the mausoleum hosted the ashes of:
- Germanicus,
- Drusus Julius Caesar (son of Tiberius),
- Livia (wife of Augustus),
- Agrippina the Elder,
- Julia Livilla (daughter of Germanicus),
- Nero Julius Caesar,
- Drusus Caesar (son of Germanicus),
- Tiberius,
- Antonia Minor (mother of Claudius),
- Julia Drusilla (daughter of Caligula),
- Claudius,
- Britannicus (son of Claudius),
- Nerva
On this day in 1920, painter and sculptor Amedeo Modigliani died of tubercular meningitis at the Hôpital de la Charité in Paris at the age of 35. Born Amadeo Clemente Modigliani on 12 July 1884 in Livorno, Italy. Modigliani worked mainly in France and is known for portraits and nudes in a modern style characterized by elongation of faces and figures, that were not received well during his lifetime, but later found acceptance. Modigliani spent his youth in Italy, where he studied the art of antiquity and the Renaissance, until he moved to Paris in 1906. Modigliani’s oeuvre includes mainly paintings and drawings. From 1909 to 1914 he devoted himself mainly to sculpture. His main subject was portraits and full figures of humans, both in the images and in the sculptures. In the spring of 1917, the Russian sculptor Chana Orloff introduced him to a beautiful 19-year-old art student named Jeanne Hébuterne who had posed for Tsuguharu Foujita. Modigliani ended his relationship with the English poet and art critic Beatrice Hastings and a short time later Hebuterne and Modigliani moved together into a studio on the Rue de la Grande Chaumière. Jeanne began to pose for him and appears in several of his paintings. She became a principal subject for Modigliani’s art. 
The Final Footprint – There was an enormous funeral, attended by many from the artistic communities in Montmartre and Montparnasse. When Modigliani died, twenty-one-year-old Hébuterne was eight months pregnant with their second child. A day later, Hébuterne was taken to her parents’ home. There, inconsolable, she threw herself out of a fifth-floor window, a day after Modigliani’s death, killing herself and her unborn child. Modigliani was interred in Père Lachaise Cemetery. Hébuterne was buried at the Cimetière de Bagneux near Paris, and it was not until 1930 that her embittered family allowed her body to be moved to rest beside Modigliani. A single tombstone honors them both. His epitaph reads: “Struck down by Death at the moment of glory”. Hers reads: “Devoted companion to the extreme sacrifice”. Two films have been made about Modigliani: Les Amants de Montparnasse (1958), directed by Jacques Becker and starring Gérard Philipe as Modigliani; and Modigliani (2004), directed by Mick Davis and starring Andy García as Modigliani. Other notable Final Footprints at Père Lachaise include; Guillaume Apollinaire, Honoré de Balzac, Georges Bizet, Jean-Dominique Bauby, Maria Callas, Chopin, Colette, Auguste Comte, Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, Max Ernst, Molière, Jim Morrison, Édith Piaf, Camille Pissarro, Marcel Proust, Sully Prudhomme, Gioachino Rossini, Georges-Pierre Seurat, Simone Signoret, Gertrude Stein, Dorothea Tanning, Alice B. Toklas, Oscar Wilde, and Richard Wright.
For more on Modigliani, visit Artsy’s Amedeo Modigliani page.
Gallery of works
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Portrait of Maude Abrantes, 1907
Paul Guillaume, Novo Pilota, 1915
Bride and Groom, 1915
Jacques and Berthe Lipchitz, 1916
Portrait of Beatrice Hastings, 1916
Female nude; Iris Tree, c. 1916
Portrait of Moise Kisling, 1915
Madame Kisling, 1917
Nude Sitting on a Divan (“La Belle Romaine”), 1917
Jeanne Hébuterne, 1918
Dedie Hayden, 1918, Centre Georges Pompidou
Self-portrait, 1919, oil on canvas, Museum of Contemporary Art, São Paulo, Brazil
Gypsy Woman with Baby, 1919, National Gallery of Art
The little peasant, 1918, Tate Modern, London
Portrait of a Young Woman, 1918, New Orleans Museum of Art
Buste de femme, unknown, before 1919, Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes (Buenos Aires)
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On this day in 1965, British Army veteran, politician, statesman, author, historian, The Right Honourable Sir Winston Churchill, Knight of the Garter, Order of Merit, Companion of Honour, Territorial Decoration, Her Majesty’s Most Honourable Privy Council, Deputy Lieutenant, Fellow of the Royal Society, died at his home in Hyde Park, London, England at the age of 90. Born Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill on 30 November 1874 in Blenheim Palace, Woodstock, Oxfordshire, England into the Spencer family a British noble family descended in the male line from Henry Spencer (died c. 1478), male-line ancestor of the Earls of Sunderland, the later Dukes of Marlborough, and the Earls Spencer. Churchill was a grandson of the 7th Duke of Marlborough. Diana, Princess of Wales was a member of the Spencer family as a daughter of the 8th Earl Spencer. As of this date, he is the only British prime minister to have received the Nobel Prize in Literature and he was the first person to be made an honorary citizen of the United States. Beginning in 1932, Churchill took the lead in warning about the danger of German rearmament. On the outbreak of WWII, he was again appointed First Lord of the Admiralty. Following the resignation of Neville Chamberlain on 10 May 1940, Churchill became Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. His steadfast refusal to consider defeat, surrender or a compromise peace, helped inspire British resistance, especially during the difficult early days of the War when Britain stood alone in its active opposition to Hitler. Churchill was particularly noted for his speeches and radio broadcasts, which helped inspire the British people and the embattled Allied forces. His first speech as prime minister was the famous “I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat”. Two other equally famous quotes were given just before the Battle of Britain. One included the words:
… we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.
The other:
Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves, that if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, ‘This was their finest hour’.
At the height of the Battle of Britain, his bracing survey of the situation included the memorable line “Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few”, which engendered the enduring nickname The Few for the RAF fighter pilots who won it. One of his most memorable war speeches came on 10 November 1942 at the Lord Mayor’s Luncheon at Mansion House in London, in response to the Allied victory at the Second Battle of El Alamein. Churchill stated:
This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.
He led Britain as Prime Minister until victory had been secured over Nazi Germany. In my opinion, one of the great wartime leaders. Churchill was married to Clementine Ogilvy Spencer-Churchill, Baroness Spencer-Churchill. I have spoken to some British citizens who said if not for Churchill they would be speaking German. 
The Final Footprint – Churchill is entombed in a double depth marble crypt with his wife in the Spencer-Churchill family estate in St. Martin Churchyard, Bladon, Oxfordshire, England. The crypt is inscribed with their names and birth and death dates. By decree of the Queen, his body lay in state for three days and a state funeral service was held at St Paul’s Cathedral. As his lead-lined coffin passed down the River Thames from Tower Pier to Festival Pier on the Havengore, dockers lowered their crane jibs in a salute. The Royal Artillery fired a 19-gun salute (as head of government), and the RAF staged a fly-by of sixteen English Electric Lightning fighters. The coffin was then taken to Waterloo Station where it was loaded onto a specially prepared and painted carriage as part of the funeral train for its rail journey to Bladon. The funeral train of Pullman coaches carrying his family was hauled by Bulleid Pacific steam locomotive No. 34051 “Winston Churchill”. Along the route, thousands stood in silence to pay their last respects. Later in 1965 a memorial to Churchill, cut by the engraver Reynolds Stone, was placed in Westminster Abbey. A bronze statue of Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt was installed on New Bond Street in London and a bronze statue of Churchill was installed in Parliament Square in London. Churchill died on the same day, 70 years after his father Lord Randolph Churchill died. The popular cigar size, Churchill is named after Churchill. I have enjoyed many a good Churchill and look forward to many more.
#RIP #OTD in 1975 actor, boxer, comedian and musician, one of the Three Stooges, Larry Fine died at the Motion Picture Country House in Woodland Hills, California, aged 75. Entombed nest to his wife and son in Glendale’s Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in the Freedom Mausoleum
#RIP #OTD in 1983 film director (Camille, The Philadelphia Story, Gaslight, Adam’s Rib, A Star Is Born, My Fair Lady) George Cukor died of a heart attack in Los Angeles, aged 83. Garden of Memory, Forest Lawn Memorial Park (Glendale), California
#RIP #OTD in 2006, actor (Pale Rider, At Close Range, Reservoir Dogs, True Romance, The Funeral) Chris Penn was found dead (heart attack) in his Santa Monica apartment at the age of 40. Holy Cross Cemetery in Culver City, California
#RIP #OTD in 2016, ballerina and one of the “Five Moons” or Native prima ballerinas of Oklahoma, member of the Shawnee Tribe, Yvonne Chouteau died in Oklahoma City aged 86. Fairlawn cemetery, Oklahoma City
#RIP #OTD in 2018, horror fiction author (Off Season, Offspring, The Girl Next Door, Red, The Crossings), Jack Ketchum (Dallas William Mayr) died of pancreatic cancer in New York City at the age of 71
#RIP #OTD in 2024, Kiowa novelist (House Made of Dawn), short story writer, essayist, and poet, Kiowa name Tsoai-talee (Rock-Tree Boy), N. Scott Momaday died at his home in Santa Fe aged 89. Cremated
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On this day in 1803, Irish brewer, entrepreneur, philanthropist and the founder of the Guinness brewery business, Arthur Guinness died in Dublin at the approximate age of 78. Born into the Irish Protestant Guinness family in 1724 or 1725 in 
On this day in 1944, painter Edvard Munch died in his house at Ekely near Oslo, about a month after his 80th birthday. Born in a farmhouse in the village of Ådalsbruk in Løten on 12 December 1863. Munch’s intensely evocative treatment of psychological themes built upon some of the main tenets of late 19th-century Symbolism and greatly influenced German Expressionism in the early 20th century. Perhaps best known for The Scream (1893). 
On this day in 1989 prominent Spanish Catalan surrealist painter, Salvador Dali died while his favorite record of Tristan and Isolde played, of heart failure at Figueres, Spain at the age of 84. Born Salvador Domingo Felipe Jacinto Dalí i Domènech on 11 May 1904, in the town of Figueres, in the Empordà region, close to the French border in Catalonia. Dalí was a skilled draftsman, perhaps best known for the striking and bizarre images in his surrealist work. His painterly skills are often attributed to the influence of Renaissance masters. Perhaps his best-known work, The Persistence of Memory, was completed in August 1931. Dalí’s expansive artistic repertoire included film, sculpture, and photography, in collaboration with a range of artists in a variety of media. Dalí attributed his “love of everything that is gilded and excessive, my passion for luxury and my love of oriental clothes” to an “Arab lineage”, claiming that his ancestors were descended from the Moors. Dalí was highly imaginative, and also enjoyed indulging in unusual and grandiose behavior. Dalí married Elena Ivanovna Diakonova “Gala”.
On this day in 2005, U.S. Navy veteran, television host, comedian, Emmy winner, American icon, Johnny Carson, died at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center of respiratory failure arising from emphysema, in Los Angeles, California at the age of 79. Born John William Carson on 23 October 1925 in Corning, Iowa. NBC invited him to replace Jack Paar as host of The Tonight Show, who would leave in March 1962. Carson declined the offer, but NBC asked him again after Bob Newhart, Jackie Gleason, and Joey Bishop also refused. Carson accepted in March and on 1 October 1962, The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson premiered. His announcer and sidekick was Ed McMahon throughout the program. McMahon’s opening line, “Heeeere’s Johnny” became a hallmark. Carson’s trademark was a phantom golf swing at the end of his monologues, aimed stage left where Doc Severinsen and the Tonight Show Band were located. Paul Anka wrote the theme song (“Johnny’s Theme”), a reworking of his “Toot Sweet”. In May 1972, the show moved from New York to Burbank, California. Carson often joked about “beautiful downtown Burbank”. Carson played several continuing characters on sketches during the show, including; Art Fern the “Tea Time Movie” announcer, Carnac the Magnificent and Floyd R. Turbo American. Carson retired from show business on 22 May 1992, when he stepped down as host of The Tonight Show. His farewell was a major media event, and stretched over several nights. It was often emotional for Carson, his colleagues, and the audiences, particularly the farewell statement he delivered on his 4,531st and final Tonight Show:
How ironic: Johnson and the Kennedys, inextricably linked in life. And linked in death.
On this day in 1995, American philanthropist, the wife of Joseph P. Kennedy, and the mother of nine children, among them United States President John F. Kennedy, United States Senator Robert F. Kennedy, and United States Senator Edward Moore “Ted” Kennedy, Countess (title granted by Pope Pius XII), Rose Kennedy died from complications from pneumonia at the age of 104 in Hyannis, Massachusetts. Born Rose Elizabeth Fitzgerald on 22 July 1890 in the North End neighborhood of Boston. 
The Final Footprint
On this day in 2010, actress and singer Jean Simmons died 
Simmons was married and divorced twice. She married Stewart Granger in Tucson, Arizona on 20 December 1950. In 1956, Granger and she became U.S. citizens. The couple divorced in 1960. On 1 November 1960, Simmons married director Richard Brooks. Simmons and Brooks divorced in 1980. Simmons moved to the East Coast of the US in the late 1970s, briefly owning a home in New Milford, Connecticut. Later, she returned to California, settling in Santa Monica, California, where she lived until her death.
The Final Footprint
And on this day in 2021 “Hammer” or “Hammerin’ Hank“, professional baseball right fielder who played 23 seasons in Major League Baseball (MLB), from 1954 through 1976, Hank Aaron died in his sleep in his Atlanta residence at the age of 86. Born Henry Louis Aaron in Mobile, Alabama on 5 February 1934.
On this day in 1793, King of France and Navarre from 1774 until 1791, then King of the French from 1791 to 1792, Louis XVI, was executed by guillotine at the age of 37 at the Place de la Révolution, now known as the Place de la Concorde in Paris. Born Louis Auguste de France, Duc de Berry on 23 August 1754 in the Palace of Versailles. Louis-Auguste was the third son of Louis, the Dauphin of France, and thus the grandson of Louis XV of France. His brothers and father predeceased Louis XV, thus Louis-Auguste became the new Dauphin. On 16 May 1770, at the age of fifteen, Louis-Auguste married the fourteen-year-old Habsburg Archduchess Maria Antonia (better known by the French form of her name, Marie Antoinette), his second cousin once removed and the youngest daughter of the Holy Roman Emperor Francis I and his wife, the formidable Empress Maria Theresa. Louis XV died on 10 May 1774 and Louis-Auguste Dauphin was crowned king on 11 June 1775 at the age of 20. Suspended and arrested as part of the insurrection of the 10th of August in 1792 during the French Revolution, he was tried by the National Convention and found guilty of high treason, the only king of France ever to be executed. Although Louis XVI was beloved at first, his indecisiveness and conservatism led some elements of the people of France to eventually view him as a symbol of the perceived tyranny of the Ancien Régime and gave him the nickname Oncle Louis (“Uncle Louis”). Louis was also nicknamed Louis le Dernier (Louis the Last), a derisive use of the traditional nicknaming of French kings.
On this day in 1950, novelist, essayist, journalist and critic George Orwell died from a 
The Final Footprint 
On this day in 1998, actor, director and producer Jack Lord died of congestive heart failure at his home in Honolulu, at age 77. Born John Joseph Patrick Ryan on December 30, 1920 in Brooklyn. Perhaps best known for his starring role as Steve McGarrett in the CBS television program Hawaii Five-O, which ran from 1968 to 1980. Lord was the first actor to play the character Felix Leiter in the James Bond film series, introduced in the first Bond film, Dr. No.
On this day in 2002, jazz and popular music singer, songwriter, composer, and actress Peggy Lee died of complications from diabetes and a heart attack in Bel Air, Los Angeles, at the age of 81. Born Norma Deloris Egstrom on May 26, 1920 in Jamestown, North Dakota. Her career spanned six decades. From her beginning as a vocalist on local radio to singing with Benny Goodman‘s big band, she forged a sophisticated persona, evolving into a multi-faceted artist and performer. During her career, she wrote music for films, acted, and recorded conceptual record albums that combined poetry and music. Lee was nominated for twelve Grammy Awards, winning Best Contemporary Vocal Performance for her 1969 hit “Is That All There Is?” In 1995 she was given the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.
On this day in 1984, competition swimmer and actor Johnny Weissmuller died from pulmonary edema in Acapulco at the age of 79. Born 2 June 1904 in Szabadfalva (Freidorf), Austro-Hungarian Empire (today part of Timișoara (Temeschwar), Romania). Perhaps best known for playing Edgar Rice Burroughs‘s Tarzan in films of the 1930s and 1940s and for having one of the best competitive swimming records of the 20th century.
The Final Footprint
On this day in 1993, Oscar, Tony, Grammy and Emmy-winner, actress, humanitarian, Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient, Audrey Hepburn died at her home in Tolochenaz, Vaud, Switzerland at the age of 63 from appendiceal cancer. 
The Final Footprint
On this day in 2012, singer, songwriter Etta James died from leukemia five days before her 74th birthday, at Riverside Community Hospital in Riverside, California. Born Jamesetta Hawkins on 25 January 1938, in Los Angeles. Her style spanned a variety of music genres including blues, R&B, soul, rock and roll, jazz and gospel. Starting her career in 1954, she gained fame with hits such as “The Wallflower”, “At Last”, “Tell Mama”, “Something’s Got a Hold on Me”, and “I’d Rather Go Blind” for which she wrote the lyrics. James is regarded as having bridged the gap between rhythm and blues and rock and roll, and was the winner of six Grammys and 17 Blues Music Awards. She was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1993, the Blues Hall of Fame in 2001, and the Grammy Hall of Fame in both 1999 and 2008. James was married to Artis Mills. 
On this day in 1997, U.S. Army and U.S Air Force veteran, poet, novelist, eighteenth Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress, James Dickey, died in Columbia, South Carolina at the age of 73. Born James Lafayette Dickey on 2 February 1923 in Atlanta, Georgia. He attended Clemson and later graduated from Vanderbilt. Dickey taught at Rice University and The University of South Carolina. Perhaps best known for his novel Deliverance (1970). The film version was released in 1972 starring Burt Reynolds, Jon Voight and Ned Beatty and was nominated for an Academy Award. Both the book and the movie are unforgettable. I highly recommend both.
On this day in 1998, singer, songwriter, musician, the King of Rockabilly, Carl Perkins died at the age of 65 at Jackson-Madison County Hospital in Jackson, Tennessee from throat cancer after suffering several strokes. Born Carl Lee Perkins on 9 April 1932 in Tiptonville, Tennessee. Perkins, who recorded most notably at Sun Records Studio in Memphis, Tennessee, beginning in 1954, is perhaps best known for his song is “Blue Suede Shoes”. Charlie Daniels said, “Carl Perkins’ songs personified the rockabilly era, and Carl Perkins’ sound personifies the rockabilly sound more so than anybody involved in it, because he never changed.” Paul McCartney claimed that “if there were no Carl Perkins, there would be no Beatles.” Perkins was inducted into the Rock and Roll, the Rockabilly, and the Nashville Songwriters Halls of Fame; and was a Grammy Hall of Fame Award recipient.
On this day in 1936, poet, writer, Nobel Prized recipient, Rudyard Kipling, died in Middlesex Hospital, London, England at the age of 70 of a perforated duodenal ulcer. Born Joseph Rudyard Kipling on 30 December 1865 in Bombay, British India. He was named after Rudyard Lake in Rudyard, Staffordshire, England where his parents met. Kipling is best known for his works of fiction, including The Jungle Book (1894), Kim (1901), many short stories including “The Man Who Would Be King” (1888); and his poems, including Mandalay (1890), Gunga Din (1890), and If— (1910). The Jungle Book is one of my favorite books from childhood. Memorizing If is a rite of passage for the children of one of my friends. Kipling was married to Carrie Balestier. On marriage, he wrote that marriage principally taught “the tougher virtues—such as humility, restraint, order, and forethought“. Partly in response to the tragic death of his only son, John in 1915 in the Battle of Loos, Kipling joined Sir Fabian Ware’s Imperial War Graves Commission (now the Commonwealth War Graves Commission), the group responsible for the garden-like British war graves that can be found to this day dotted along the former Western Front and all the other locations around the world where troops of the British Empire lie buried. His most significant contribution to the project was his selection of the biblical phrase “Their Name Liveth For Evermore” (Sirach 44.14, KJV) found on the Stones of Remembrance in larger war graves and his suggestion of the phrase “Known unto God” for the gravestones of unidentified servicemen. Kipling chose the inscription “The Glorious Dead” on the Cenotaph, Whitehall, London.
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On this day in 1863 painter Horace Vernet died in Paris at the age of 73. Born Émile Jean-Horace Vernet on 30 June 1789 in the Louvre in Paris. Vernet’s father Carle Vernet and grandfather Claude Joseph Vernet were painters.
The Final Footprint
On this day in 1933, artist and designer Louis Comfort Tiffany died in New York City at the age of 84. Born on 18 February 1848 in New York City, the son of Charles Lewis Tiffany, founder of Tiffany and Company; and Harriet Olivia Avery Young. Tiffany worked in the decorative arts and is best known for his work in stained glass. He is the American artist most associated with the Art Nouveau and Aesthetic movements. Tiffany was affiliated with a prestigious collaborative of designers known as the Associated Artists. Tiffany designed stained glass windows and lamps, glass mosaics, blown glass, ceramics, jewelry, enamels and metalwork. Tiffany married twice: Mary Woodbridge Goddard (1872 – 1884 her death) and Louise Wakeman Knox (1886 – 1904 her death).
The Final Footprint – Tiffany is interred in Green-Wood Cemetery, Brooklyn. Other notable final footprints at Green-Wood include; Albert Anastasia, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Leonard Bernstein, Lorenzo da Ponte, and Charles Ebbes.
On this day in 1996, U.S. Congresswoman, Texas Senator, Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient, Barbara Jordan, died in Austin, Texas. Born Barbara Charline Jordan on 21 February 1936 in Houston, Texas. She was the first African-American elected to the Texas Senate after reconstruction and the first Southern black woman ever elected to the U.S. House of Representatives. Jordan was mentioned as a possible running mate to Jimmy Carter in 1976. That year, she became the first African-American woman to deliver the keynote address at the Democratic National Convention. Jordan retired from politics in 1979 and became an adjunct professor teaching ethics at the University of Texas at Austin Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs.
The Final Footprint – Jordan is interred in the Texas State Cemetery in Austin becoming the first African-American woman interred there. Her grave is marked by a large granite upright column monument and a full ledger granite marker. At the top of the column the word, PATRIOT, is engraved and the ledger is engraved in part; WE THE PEOPLE SALUTE YOU. Upon her death, Jordan lay in state at the LBJ Library on the campus of The University of Texas at Austin. The main terminal at Austin-Bergstrom International Airport is named after her. On April 24, 2009, a Barbara Jordan statue was unveiled at the University of Texas at Austin. Other notable final footprints at Texas State Cemetery include; Stephen F. Austin, John B. Connally, Nellie Connally, J. Frank Dobie, Tom Landry (cenotaph), James A. Michener (cenotaph), Ann Richards, Edwin “Bud” Shrake, Big Foot Wallace, and Walter Prescott Webb.
On this day in 1942, Academy Award nominated actress, Carole Lombard, died on Mount Potosi near Las Vegas, Nevada at the age of 33. Born Jane Alice Peters on 6 October 1908 in Fort Wayne, Indiana. She is particularly noted for her roles in the screwball comedies of the 1930s. Lombard is listed as one of the American Film Institute’s greatest stars of all time and was the highest-paid star in Hollywood in the late 1930s. Graham Greene praised the “heartbreaking and nostalgic melodies” of her faster-than-thought delivery: “Platinum blonde, with a heart-shaped face, delicate, impish features and a figure made to be swathed in silver lamé, Lombard wriggled expressively through such classics of hysteria as Twentieth Century and My Man Godfrey.” Lombard was married twice; William Powell (1931 – 1933 divorce) and Clark Gable (1939 – 1942 her death). Lombard and Gable eloped in Kingman, Arizona on the 29 March 1939. The couple, both lovers of the outdoors, bought a 20-acre ranch in Encino, California, where they kept barnyard animals and enjoyed hunting trips. Lombard and 21 others, including her mother, were killed when TWA Flight 3 crashed on returning to California from a war bond rally in Indiana. 
On this day in 2009, visual artist Andrew Wyeth died in his sleep in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, after a brief illness, at the age of 91. Born Andrew Newell Wyeth on July 12, 1917 in Chadds Ford.
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On this day in 1947, The Black Dahlia, Elizabeth Short‘s body was found in the Leimert Park district of Los Angeles, the victim of a gruesome and much-publicized murder, at the age of 22. Born Elizabeth Short on 29 July 1924 in Boston, Massachusetts. Short acquired the nickname posthumously by newspapers in the habit of nicknaming crimes they found particularly colorful. Short’s unsolved murder has been the source of widespread speculation, leading to many suspects, along with several books and film adaptations of the story. 
On this day in 1983, major organized crime figure, the “Mob’s Accountant”, Meyer Lansky died of lung cancer at the age of 80 in Miami Beach. Born Meyer Suchowlansky in Grodno (then in Russian Empire, now in Belarus) on 4 July 1902. Along with his associate Charles “Lucky” Luciano, Lansky was instrumental in the development of the “National Crime Syndicate” in the United States. For decades he was thought to be one of the most powerful individuals in the country. Lansky developed a gambling empire which stretched across the seas. He was said to own points in casinos in Las Vegas, Cuba, The Bahamas and London. Although a member of the Jewish Mob, Lansky undoubtedly had strong influence with the Italian Mafia and played a large role in the consolidation of the criminal underworld (although the full extent of this role has been the subject of some debate, as he himself denied many of the accusations against him). Despite all the reports, the U.S. Justice Department never found Lansky guilty of anything more serious than illegal gambling. 
On this day in 2018, musician, singer and songwriter Dolores O’Riordan died as a result of accidental drowning in a bathtub due to sedation by alcohol intoxication at the London Hilton on Park Lane hotel in Mayfair, London, at the age of 46. Born Dolores Mary Eileen O’Riordan on 6 September 1971 in Ballybricken, County Limerick, Ireland. She was the vocalist for rock band The Cranberries from 1990 until their break-up in 2003, later reuniting with her band in 2009, which she led until her death in 2018.
The Final Footprint
On this day in 2019, 
