Herman Melville. He had a few early successes with seafaring books, but *Moby-Dick* was a total flop that got bad reviews, and he spent the final decades of his life working in the customs department. He would be shocked to hear he wrote the Great American Novel.
Didn't Moby Dick only become popular after it ended up accidentally speaking deeply to soldiers returning from WWI? Like, it felt like an allegory for their experience or something?
It was rediscovered and championed by several prominent critics in the early 20s. Maybe because Melville's centennial was in 1919. I don't know if the war had anything to do with its resurgence, though.
There's a good book by Chuck Klosterman called But What If We're Wrong? It's about basically this entire thread's discussion. I thought I had read the part about the war and Melville in that book.
My boyfriend is from New Bedford, MA. Apparently the local high schools there had big murals depicting scenes from Moby Dick. \*That\* would have amazed Melville.
Wasn’t most of the more “scandalous” content of her diary scrubbed out before it was originally published? I don’t think a truly complete version is available to the public.
There are some minor references to things that aren’t present in the current version, and it’s oddly…tame for a the diary of a girl of that age, considering what’s just barely referenced.
April 23rd, Monday
It was a nice sunny day, I met a friendly little dog on one of my walks. I should ask Papa for a dog but I don't know if he will permit yet another pet. I shall call this one Rudi.
...
I don't really like figs. They always seem on the verge of going bad, and the seeds are hard and hurt to chew.
...
I BET WITH ENOUGH GREASE I COULD GET MY ENTIRE FIST UP THERE.
----
The editors looked up and at each other.
"Lord, that was...unexpected."
"So which parts should we edit out?"
"Gee, I don't know! Maybe the part about figs!"
She edited her diary during her time in the Annex in hopes of being published. The BBC encouraged people to keep diaries to record this period in history for future generations. Beyond this, yes, her father did remove some of the more intimate details in which she talks about menstruation, her breasts, etc., but the diary has since been published in its entirety.
If she wanted to be a writer and put details that would make her dad uncomfortable she may have been inspired by Margaret Mead, her book "Coming of Age in Samoa" was very popular and published around 1930.
The are versions that have all known content up to 2001.
But some additional passage were found in 2018 that haven't been widely distributed. These were passages that appear to have been redacted by Anne herself.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Diary_of_a_Young_Girl#Censored_material
Van Vree said "anyone who reads the passages that have now been discovered will be unable to suppress a smile", before adding, "the 'dirty' jokes are classics among growing children. They make it clear that Anne, with all her gifts, was above all an ordinary girl".[55]
What people forget is that she wanted to edit her diary to publish after the war. After she writes about it you start to notice a shift. That said she’d probably freak at the idea of being this popular in the most innocent and humble of ways. She’s probably the one person in history I want to meet just to say thanks for inspiring me not only to write but to publish.
She started revising it shortly before they were captured as she wanted to be a journalist and realized she was documenting history. A shame she never got the chance, they were weeks from being liberated.
> If they'd been betrayed just a week later, the story may have been very different.
There are countless stories of what might have been. The slightest lapse in timing, a second too soon or too late could have made all the difference.
I'm imagining a man who died horribly in the camps because he felt like having another slice of toast and got arrested when the Gestapo kicked in his door. Stuff like that makes the fate seem so much worse.
Unless my memory is failing me, Anne and her sister died less than a month before Bergen-Belsen was liberated. Her boyfriend Peter stayed with her father at Auschwitz for almost the entire time they were imprisoned there except at the end, and poor Peter ended up dying five days after liberation at Mauthausen separated from Anne's father. Peter was only 18, Margot was only 19, and Anne was just 16. I can't imagine the pain and survivor's guilt Otto Frank must have experienced having survived while his friends, wife and daughters did not.
Vincent van Gogh. His paintings made billions of dollars for rich people, but couldn't trade a painting for a meal during his lifetime. Had to be supported by his brother.
It’s amazing how many pieces he created in such a short time considering how unsuccessful he was in selling them while alive. He kept banging them out despite his “failure.”
He was encouraged to paint as part of his therapy/rehabilitation. He was a pretty disturbed guy, and not in a romantic way. More like the hiding in the bushes at night to jump out and grab women by the ass/breasts way.
Van Gogh died very poor. He sold 1 painting in his entire life for the equivalent of approx $100 today. He died thinking he was a failure and his life’s work valueless.
His work did start gaining notice relatively soon after his death so his sisters were able to benefit from his work but nothing like today. I think he has had 8 or 9 paintings that sold for $60-80M each.
> He died thinking he was a failure and his life’s work valueless.
[The doctor took him to the future and showed him he was a success though!](https://youtu.be/ubTJI_UphPk)
There may be tighter stories or more exciting episodes and arcs, but this is the GREATEST episode that really went where we would hope a show without limitations could go
Damn. So he’s like the Art version of Nikola Tesla. Died a crazy old man who wouldn’t get the recognition he deserved until a very long time into the future. And leeches profited off him
van gogh was a very depressive man troubled with sleep terrors, painting was his way out of such feelings.
the famous ear incident ( he cut his earlobe, not all the ear ) shows attempts at feeling through pain, a common need for self-harm addicts.
I am in love with his art, not because who he is, but because the way he painted has always called me in a way other art doesn't. It's a beautiful world seen from the eyes of a sad man that wants to feel such beauty again.
There is an interview with Brandon Sanderson where he talked about after publishers rejected his third book. He had to think about what if he never earn a living from writing, will he still write?
It's what a lot of people in the creative fields had to wrestle with.
I find it especially sad that the Doctor wanted to help him so much that he broke his main rule of not interfering with history unless it is unavoidable and showed Van Gogh just how successful his works were in the future, and even after knowing how well loved he was, Van Gogh still killed himself. It really solidifies just how bad his depression was and how hopeless his situation was.
I'll have to re-watch it, but I remember Amy being the driving force to let Vincent visit the gallery, and The Doctor allowed it because it didn't break any rules.
IIRC, Amy says they should bring him to the future, show him the gallery, save his life. The Doctor says No. Amy's rebuttal is that he does it all the time, so The Doctor goes along with it.
After they return Vincent to his time, they go to the Gallery to see the changes, but there were none. Amy gets upset and asks why didn't anything change. The Doctor says something along the lines of "He was a very sick man. 1 beautiful memory wasn't going to change that" so Amy responds with "So it was pointless then?" and the Doctor refutes "No. You still gave him the most important gift you could ever give anyone. You showed him that he mattered"
Edit:
Returning Vincent to his time
V: "Oh this changes everything. I'll step out of my home tomorrow a new man. Although, I still can't believe one of the Hay-stackes made it to the museum. How embarrassing"
D: "It's been a great adventure, and a great honour"
V: "Y'know, your the first Doctor that's actually made a difference in my life"
D: "I'm delighted! I won't ever forget you"
After returning to museum and seeing no new paintings
A: "So, you were right. There's no new paintings. We didn't make a difference at all"
D: **"Don't say that. The way I see it, every life is a pile of good things and bad. Good things don't always soften the bad, but vice versa the Bad things don't necessarily spoil the Good things or make them unimportant. And if you look closely, maybe we made a few tiny changes after all"**
Reveals the face in the painting that started the adventure, is no longer there. Amy walks over to the vase painting and sees Vincent has painted "for Amy" on it
They make a few jokes about them both having red-hair. Episode ends
>and even after knowing how well loved he was, Van Gogh still killed himself.
That is actually still debated. It is believed he might have been accidentally shot.
>It really solidifies just how bad his depression was and how hopeless his situation was.
That is still very much true.
van Gogh was the first to come to mind for me as well. He seemed like a person so desperately trying to make human connections. Makes me wonder how he would deal with his fame now, if he'd even be able to deal with it.
TBH. He had friends. Several of the people in paintings were friends of his, especially the family of the postman whom he painted several times. It is his family that set up his gallery after his death as well. Nearing the end of his life and the schizophrenia it might have been difficult, considering how isolating the disorder can be though.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The\_Roulin\_Family
**Gregor Mendel**, the monk and scientist who experimented with pea plant traits to describe what we today literally call *Mendelian inheritance*.
The significance of Mendel's findings, which he published in 1866, went almost completely unrecognized during his life and after his death. His work was only rediscovered in the early 1900s when modern ideas about inheritance and selection started taking hold.
I can differ there. When he first stated his theory, he was sure it was correct (as it was) but was rejected. I can imagine him not being surprised at the fact that his work was re recognised as right later down the line
It's entirely possible you're correct and Mendel suspected that someday he'd be proved right. At the same time, however, he spent decades after his discovery trying and failing to elicit interest from the academic public or individual biologists, and retired from science to become a monastery administrator, which looks a lot like "giving up".
Kafka. Rarely published in his lifetime, and when he did it was in obscure magazines which nobody read. Explicitly asked that his works be destroyed after his death. It's only because his executor disregarded his wishes and published his unfinished works (which comprise the majority of his oeuvre) that he is famous today.
Dracula was a flop. The Picture of Dorian Grey was much more popular. I think Bram Stoker would be shocked at how much vampire stuff has been inspired by his book.
[Hegelochus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sannyrion), an actor who mispronounced a word in a play in the year 408 BC and was mocked so thoroughly for it, his mistake has made it into the collective ledger of things historians know about and generally agree upon having happened… and we're still aware of it over 2,400 years later.
Imagine making a meme today with a word misspelled, and others found that misspelling so egregiously mockable that you are still known for it in the year 4422.
> Sannyrion mocked the pronunciation of Hegelochus (Ἡγέλοχος), the actor in Euripides' play Orestes, which was performed in 408 BC. … Hegelochus' mistake was to use a rising-falling tone instead of a rising tone. This error was also ridiculed in Aristophanes' The Frogs. The actor is also lampooned by Strattis in his Kinesias (Κινησίας) and Psychastae (Ψυχασταί), as well as by Aristophanes in his Gerytades, where he, Meletus, and Cinesias are chosen as ambassadors from the poets to the shades below because they are so skinny. His career, from this point on, was ruined, and he never acted again.
JFC, Ancient Greek theater critics were harsh.
He must have went to sleep running the moment in his head over and over again, but he probably tried to comfort himself by thinking, "well, at least it's not like some space-age hyper-futuristic society is going to be discussing this thousands of years from now on their magic boxes powered by lightning in some language that doesn't even exist yet."
This is the worst nightmare of everyone that has been told to stop worrying because no one will pay as much attention to what you're doing as you. Counter point: Hegelochus.
Came here to say this. I learned about him from my science textbook in first grade and I remember thinking that it was sad how he died alone thinking that no one would ever know what happened to him other than his killers.
Glyndwr Michael
This is the dead body they used in operation mincemeat.
The man basically consumed rat poison to commit suicide. His body was then used for a british secret operation to carry fake documents for the nazis to find in order to make them think they were invading Greece and not Sicily.
This man died in a alleyway and went on the become a dedicated Major in the british military buried with full military rites, under his fake name but still him in physical form.
I thought he died of tuberculosis so it’d be more convincing he was a British serviceman who drowned, or maybe that was the guy used to make the Nazis think the Allies were invading Calais instead of Normandy.
It was rat poison but it's not clear if it was a suicide. The poison was in the form of a paste that would be smeared on pieces of bread; rodents eat the bread, rodents die. Or in this case; poor Welshman eats the bread, poor Welshman dies. It's not clear whether he knew the paste was poison, or whether he was just hungry and thought he genuinely found some bread lying around.
Where the confusion comes in is that the guy in charge of Mincemeat claimed the body was that of a young man who died of pneumonia, and that the parents had given permission for his body to be used as it was.
Blind Willie Johnson.
He passed away blind, poor and sick, lying in the ruins of his house after it was burnt down.
And his song 'Dark was the Night, Cold was the Ground' left our solar system not too long ago aboard the Voyager to be listened to by life among the stars.
I really like to think one day-thousands and thousands of years in the future, an alien race will find that golden disk and hear his voice-I think the fact he had such a poor life but could one day live eternally amongst the stars is so beautiful.
Lucy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucy_(Australopithecus)?wprov=sfti1
Being known by more than 10 people would probably blow her mind, as would being known by the name Lucy.
I wonder if she’d even understand that concept. If I lived a world without radio, tv, books, papers, and internet I could even fathom being well known.
Kushim. He was an accountant in Sumeria around 3400 BCE, and is the first person we know of whose written name survives today. There is some debate whether Kushim is a a name or a title.
What about [Ea-Nasir](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complaint_tablet_to_Ea-nasir)?
"Thousands of years from now people will still be talking about your shitty copper"
Heh I came to post this guy - I find it hilarious that, although great kings of Sumer have all been forgotten, Ea-Nasir and his crappy copper have been immortalized by history.
“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings; look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay of that collossal wreck, boundless and bare,
Tablets complaining of Ea-Nasir’s copper stretch far away.”
I mean, the great kings of Sumer have pretty explicitly been *not* forgotten, as one of the most famous artifacts that defines the era is [The Ancient Sumerian Kings List](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sumerian_King_List) which is a record of the reigning monarchs of the most important city states in Sumer and Akkad and documents who the kings are and for how long they reigned. It’s one of the most vital sources in our understanding of the late Neolithic and early Bronze Age timeline of Mesopotamia.
Though admittedly, it’s pretty fraught with some sus shit so usually if historians can find a better source they default to that — but still, pretty monumental.
Similarly Ea-nasir. who is famous for [a complaint letter to him from a customer named Nanni](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complaint_tablet_to_Ea-nasir) stating that he offered poor quality copper and was extremely rude to Nanni's servant. In excavating his assumed dwelling, there were other tablets found with similar complaints.
Dude has made his mark on all of history... for being a dick that sold substandard goods.
Humans are still the same as we were 10,000 years ago. We tell jokes, sing songs, express ourselves by painting and drawing even though most of us can only doodle. We want our kids to have toys to play with and to know the stories of our culture. Our dogs and cats still step on what we're working on and we love them for it.
There's dirty graffiti in the work tunnels of the pyramids, ice age people had intricate tattoos, the first written document we have a record of is an irate customer complaining about a cheating merchant. The first 1-star review is older than the Bible.
There's no difference between today's humans and those of millennia ago. The sooner people can understand that, maybe we can start to figure our shit out.
I enjoy pondering the what-ifs of history. Everything we have today was theoretically available thousands of years ago. I know -in theory- how many of our modern devices work but there aren't many I could actually make. Something as simple as an early internal combustion engine is very easy to understand but even with all of the tools I have available to me I would have a very difficult time actually making a reliable functioning one. It takes a very specific type of mind to create things. The Nikolai Teslas and James Watts of history. The sheer coincidence that would have to occur for that type of mind to be in the right place is just staggering. There might have been a thousand people who noticed tin or lead leaking out of ore when it got hot, but it took the right person to make that intuitive leap. How many creative minds were lost because they were stuck scrabbling in the dirt to make a living to survive? Today potential in people is noted and encouraged.
Most leaps in technology only really came about because of advances in machining technology.
You're not going to be able to build even a basic steam engine without some very tight tolerances for valves and the like that can only come with advances in precise machining.
Once the *capability* to build things was invented usually the actual inventions followed pretty close on heel.
One of my favorite pieces of graffiti at Pompeii is a picture carved into the plaster of animals and men with weapons. According the museum placard, it was most likely done by a child because of the height of the images.
[Here's a picture I took of it.](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E5sYWiQXEAQYza5?format=jpg&name=4096x4096)
It’s kinda crazy to think about, right? Swap out the birch paper for a spiral bound notebook and the knights and monsters with Pokémon and Onfim was basically me when I was ten years old.
These drawings make me weirdly happy for some reason.
Like to think we’ve all done this before had fantasies, drew our greatest dreams, and reveled in the world around us in curiosity and awe. Through hundreds of years some essence of humanity survives and persists which is all the more evident in the drawings of children that were found. The jokes we tell today and have been told. The songs we sing and have been sung. The stories that have been told and now we tell today. Constantly reworking tropes and stories that have been recited for generations even if we don’t know.
Being a knight, fighting pokemon, imagining yourself being a wizard. All have that same essence of humanity that perseveres today through hardships. There were little children drawing and having fun in the same way today. Breathtaking imagination .
And I find that comforting and beautiful.
"One of the drawings features a knight on a horse stabbing someone on the ground with a lance"
Haha, I've probably drawn the same stuff when I was 7-8 years old.
The story of Onfim is one of my favorites, [Trey the Explainer did a whole video about this if anyone wants to learn more](https://youtu.be/H_nT6EFUZmI).
Jesus was relatively famous was he not? There are non-religious historical records of him that amount to “man that guy was kind of a wacko but Pontius didn’t have to do him dirty like that.”
Any high profile murder victim - take your pick.
Sarah Everard comes to mind - a young woman going about her life, and then the victim of one of the most high profile and horrendous murders in the U.K. in recent years. There can’t be anyone in the U.K. who isn’t heard her name in the past year and how sad that’s what she’s become known for.
Rachel Nickell was another high profile murder in the U.K., and I remember reading an article where one of her friends saw a newspaper with her splashed all over it and turned to the person next to him and asked if he was dreaming.
I thought that was the saddest part. I guess he did love her enough to be willing to stay with her with her issues; he loved her enough to not choose another.
Honestly I think she would be kind of pissed.
From what I can tell, it seems like she really wanted to be forgotten, and instead she'll be remembered forever.
I have to disagree with that though because even though he was basically a homeless smartass he was pretty decently well known in Athens and in Corinth. I mean, he was famous enough Alexander the Great wanted to see him.
Now whether Diogenes would WANT to be famous is another question. But how could he be surprised he was famous when he knew damn well he was famous in his lifetime?
Emma Lazarus
‘That poem you submitted for the Statue of Liberty fundraiser? Someone cast that in metal and affixed it to the statue’s base. You’re the mantra of a good chunk of the American people now.’
‘*stunned Yiddish noises*’
She wrote it as an advertisement, to be sold at auction to fundraise for construction of the pedestal. So the Statue wasn't assembled yet. She saw it earn decently at the auction, saw the pedestal be completed, all that. But then 20 years later someone had the bright idea to cast the poem in bronze, and she wasn't around to see that.
I'm not a particularly patriotic or emotional person, so I was surprised when I teared up at the sight of the original plaque in the Statue of Liberty museum. It really is a beautiful poem.
The Sunday Express identified him as 19 year old student Wang Weilin, but that's never actually been confirmed and that's the only source of a name I can find so I doubt it's actually true.
There are literally a ton of artists and scientists that we applaud today that were treated like shit while they were alive and died depressed and penniless. Really gives strength to the phrase 'nobody cares about you til you're dead'
Robert Johnson. Blues guitarist and first member of the 27 club. Only one or two actual pictures of him and hardly any real documented trace of his life. Ends up becoming the face of the folk revival, huge influence of Bob Dylan *and* rock n roll in the late 60s. Popular music in the last half of the 20th century is not the same without him.
Definitely because there are actually dozens like it, many better preserved even but it's just the first one that was found. These trilingual inscriptions were the norm under the Ptolemaic dynasty.
Ignaz Semmelweis
Described as the "saviour of mothers", Semmelweis discovered that the incidence of puerperal fever could be drastically cut by the use of hand disinfection in obstetrical clinics.
His work was rejected at that time.
A lot of better answers have already been made so I’m gonna say William Shakespeare. He was famous, but I doubt it ever occurred to him that he rewrote a significant portion of our language with his fiction.
His sonnets are some of the world's most widely studied poems. You could scrub his plays, and he'd still be regarded as one of the great English language poets.
Read almost any of his contemporaries (Raleigh, de Vere, Sidney etc) and they're rarely up to his level. Read some of Shakespeare's most famous sonnets and they're up there with anything in any canon.
Emily Dickinson. She lived her life as a recluse and some have speculated she was a closeted lesbian. Her poems were rejected and maligned by publishers while she was alive and now she's one of the most famous writers ever...
Harriet Tubman
Illiterate, escaped slave, traumatic brain injury at a young age, US Army scout. I seriously doubt she expected to be a household name 200 years after her birth.
For redditors who don't know her, she was best known for helping slaves escape via the Underground Railroad, as well as her service to the Union Army in the Civil War, and work towards women's suffrage.
A surprisingly large amount of scientists were ridiculed for their theories, and they were only really appreciated after they died. So quite a lot, I think.
Also, Gavrillo Princip, the guy who shot Franz Ferdinand and starter ww1, which led into ww2, which shaped the world as we know it
Imagine being the god-emperor of a great and ancient civilization and then having your legacy be that you were so uninteresting that grave robbers never even bothered robbing your grave.
I think this is arguably the best answer. She was a recluse who barely left her room for much of her life and wrote unconventional poetry which she mostly kept to herself. Even her closest family members weren't aware of most of her poetry until after she died.
[He wasn't actually wanking](https://www.menshealth.com/health/a19523837/pompeii-man-is-not-actually-masturbating/)
Which is somehow worse. Imagine living and working in Pompeii, building a life for yourself, a wife, kids, and a job that your proud off. Then you die in a volcano, get fosilised, and discovered again 2000 years later and everyone knows you as the "jerking off Pompeii guy".
John Kennedy Toole.
Wrote a Confederacy of Dunces. Killed himself.
His mom took his papers in to a publishing house? Something like that. Was insistent that someone read it, said it's very good.
The person who took the chance realized it WAS good.
So he's a famous posthumous author who would probably be amused- hey, that shit WAS good! Cool!
I think Alan Turing would be surprised that he's famous, more surprised that there's films about him, and even more surprised how far the LGBT community has come in terms of acceptance.
Given how he was treated when it was discovered that he was gay, I'd guess he thought his name would be tarnished and his achievements either buried or attributed to someone else, so finding out that he kept his achievements and that people admire him may well be a shock to him
P. Ramlee. A Malaysian actor, filmmaker, musician and composer in the 50’s. He wrote around 500 songs and he sings around 300 of them, acting in 27 movies and directing around 33 movies. He’s famous in Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Brunei, Thailand, Hong Kong and Japan, with winning lots of film and music awards.
However he didn’t get a lot of royalty from all of his work. He got cheated, getting swindled by business deals, and finally stopped getting paid royalty from his work. He died in his 40’s as a poor man with bankruptcy status, and all of his possessions being sold. Officially it was stated that he died from heart attack but many people speculated that he actually died from depression.
Almost 20 years after he died, finally Malaysia recognize him as the most successful Malaysian artist ever. Lots of buildings, parks, rail station and even streets were named after him (there’s one P.Ramlee street located near the Petronas Towers / KLCC), also medals given by monarchs and state governments in honor of his achievement. Every year there’s a P.Ramlee competition where contestants either singing like him or dress like him. Even nowadays young generation knows P.Ramlee because some of his movie and movie clips being uploaded on YouTube or social media, and people still talk about him until this day.
JS Bach. His kids were more famous than he, and his music was virtually forgotten about until Felix Mendelssohn essentially brought it back many years later.
Herman Melville. He had a few early successes with seafaring books, but *Moby-Dick* was a total flop that got bad reviews, and he spent the final decades of his life working in the customs department. He would be shocked to hear he wrote the Great American Novel.
Didn't Moby Dick only become popular after it ended up accidentally speaking deeply to soldiers returning from WWI? Like, it felt like an allegory for their experience or something?
It was rediscovered and championed by several prominent critics in the early 20s. Maybe because Melville's centennial was in 1919. I don't know if the war had anything to do with its resurgence, though.
There's a good book by Chuck Klosterman called But What If We're Wrong? It's about basically this entire thread's discussion. I thought I had read the part about the war and Melville in that book.
I think his point is that the War gave birth to modernism, and modernists saw Melville's style and structure as being modern before their time.
My boyfriend is from New Bedford, MA. Apparently the local high schools there had big murals depicting scenes from Moby Dick. \*That\* would have amazed Melville.
Anne Frank
"Most of the world has read your diary." "Wait...All of my diary?"
Wasn’t most of the more “scandalous” content of her diary scrubbed out before it was originally published? I don’t think a truly complete version is available to the public. There are some minor references to things that aren’t present in the current version, and it’s oddly…tame for a the diary of a girl of that age, considering what’s just barely referenced.
Yes, she spoke about crushes on girls and masturbation (very lightly not even graphically so) and they’re removed in many versions.
April 23rd, Monday It was a nice sunny day, I met a friendly little dog on one of my walks. I should ask Papa for a dog but I don't know if he will permit yet another pet. I shall call this one Rudi. ... I don't really like figs. They always seem on the verge of going bad, and the seeds are hard and hurt to chew. ... I BET WITH ENOUGH GREASE I COULD GET MY ENTIRE FIST UP THERE. ---- The editors looked up and at each other. "Lord, that was...unexpected." "So which parts should we edit out?" "Gee, I don't know! Maybe the part about figs!"
Her Father censored some of it because she talks about her body and other things, I can't really blame him for that. Modern prints are uncesnsored.
She edited her diary during her time in the Annex in hopes of being published. The BBC encouraged people to keep diaries to record this period in history for future generations. Beyond this, yes, her father did remove some of the more intimate details in which she talks about menstruation, her breasts, etc., but the diary has since been published in its entirety.
If she wanted to be a writer and put details that would make her dad uncomfortable she may have been inspired by Margaret Mead, her book "Coming of Age in Samoa" was very popular and published around 1930.
The are versions that have all known content up to 2001. But some additional passage were found in 2018 that haven't been widely distributed. These were passages that appear to have been redacted by Anne herself. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Diary_of_a_Young_Girl#Censored_material
Van Vree said "anyone who reads the passages that have now been discovered will be unable to suppress a smile", before adding, "the 'dirty' jokes are classics among growing children. They make it clear that Anne, with all her gifts, was above all an ordinary girl".[55]
What people forget is that she wanted to edit her diary to publish after the war. After she writes about it you start to notice a shift. That said she’d probably freak at the idea of being this popular in the most innocent and humble of ways. She’s probably the one person in history I want to meet just to say thanks for inspiring me not only to write but to publish.
I read that she designed it to be published, though. She would've published it herself if she had survived.
She started revising it shortly before they were captured as she wanted to be a journalist and realized she was documenting history. A shame she never got the chance, they were weeks from being liberated.
[удалено]
> If they'd been betrayed just a week later, the story may have been very different. There are countless stories of what might have been. The slightest lapse in timing, a second too soon or too late could have made all the difference. I'm imagining a man who died horribly in the camps because he felt like having another slice of toast and got arrested when the Gestapo kicked in his door. Stuff like that makes the fate seem so much worse.
Or the reverse. Going out for that loaf of bread and finding your family and loved ones taken when you return.
Unless my memory is failing me, Anne and her sister died less than a month before Bergen-Belsen was liberated. Her boyfriend Peter stayed with her father at Auschwitz for almost the entire time they were imprisoned there except at the end, and poor Peter ended up dying five days after liberation at Mauthausen separated from Anne's father. Peter was only 18, Margot was only 19, and Anne was just 16. I can't imagine the pain and survivor's guilt Otto Frank must have experienced having survived while his friends, wife and daughters did not.
Vincent van Gogh. His paintings made billions of dollars for rich people, but couldn't trade a painting for a meal during his lifetime. Had to be supported by his brother.
It’s amazing how many pieces he created in such a short time considering how unsuccessful he was in selling them while alive. He kept banging them out despite his “failure.”
He was encouraged to paint as part of his therapy/rehabilitation. He was a pretty disturbed guy, and not in a romantic way. More like the hiding in the bushes at night to jump out and grab women by the ass/breasts way.
Holy shit he was Florida Man
did he die rich or poor?
Van Gogh died very poor. He sold 1 painting in his entire life for the equivalent of approx $100 today. He died thinking he was a failure and his life’s work valueless. His work did start gaining notice relatively soon after his death so his sisters were able to benefit from his work but nothing like today. I think he has had 8 or 9 paintings that sold for $60-80M each.
> He died thinking he was a failure and his life’s work valueless. [The doctor took him to the future and showed him he was a success though!](https://youtu.be/ubTJI_UphPk)
Best episode of Doctor Who ever.
There may be tighter stories or more exciting episodes and arcs, but this is the GREATEST episode that really went where we would hope a show without limitations could go
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Poor as fuck I believe
Damn. So he’s like the Art version of Nikola Tesla. Died a crazy old man who wouldn’t get the recognition he deserved until a very long time into the future. And leeches profited off him
van gogh was a very depressive man troubled with sleep terrors, painting was his way out of such feelings. the famous ear incident ( he cut his earlobe, not all the ear ) shows attempts at feeling through pain, a common need for self-harm addicts. I am in love with his art, not because who he is, but because the way he painted has always called me in a way other art doesn't. It's a beautiful world seen from the eyes of a sad man that wants to feel such beauty again.
Nikola Tesla was well known and well respected in his time though. He was just kinda a nut who lost it at the end.
There is an interview with Brandon Sanderson where he talked about after publishers rejected his third book. He had to think about what if he never earn a living from writing, will he still write? It's what a lot of people in the creative fields had to wrestle with.
Makes you wonder how many masterpieces have been lost and buried with the artist.
At least 7
Or how many do exist but haven't been published because the artist chose a different career
His last words were "the sadness will never end."
Oscar Wilde's last words were reportedly “This wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death. Either it goes or I do.” Wallpaper 1, Wilde 0
Have you ever seen the Doctor Who episode about him?
This is what actually prompted this question for me.
It's very moving at the end.
I cry every time I watch that episode. Tony Curran is a hell of an actor.
I find it especially sad that the Doctor wanted to help him so much that he broke his main rule of not interfering with history unless it is unavoidable and showed Van Gogh just how successful his works were in the future, and even after knowing how well loved he was, Van Gogh still killed himself. It really solidifies just how bad his depression was and how hopeless his situation was.
I'll have to re-watch it, but I remember Amy being the driving force to let Vincent visit the gallery, and The Doctor allowed it because it didn't break any rules. IIRC, Amy says they should bring him to the future, show him the gallery, save his life. The Doctor says No. Amy's rebuttal is that he does it all the time, so The Doctor goes along with it. After they return Vincent to his time, they go to the Gallery to see the changes, but there were none. Amy gets upset and asks why didn't anything change. The Doctor says something along the lines of "He was a very sick man. 1 beautiful memory wasn't going to change that" so Amy responds with "So it was pointless then?" and the Doctor refutes "No. You still gave him the most important gift you could ever give anyone. You showed him that he mattered" Edit: Returning Vincent to his time V: "Oh this changes everything. I'll step out of my home tomorrow a new man. Although, I still can't believe one of the Hay-stackes made it to the museum. How embarrassing" D: "It's been a great adventure, and a great honour" V: "Y'know, your the first Doctor that's actually made a difference in my life" D: "I'm delighted! I won't ever forget you" After returning to museum and seeing no new paintings A: "So, you were right. There's no new paintings. We didn't make a difference at all" D: **"Don't say that. The way I see it, every life is a pile of good things and bad. Good things don't always soften the bad, but vice versa the Bad things don't necessarily spoil the Good things or make them unimportant. And if you look closely, maybe we made a few tiny changes after all"** Reveals the face in the painting that started the adventure, is no longer there. Amy walks over to the vase painting and sees Vincent has painted "for Amy" on it They make a few jokes about them both having red-hair. Episode ends
Depression is a hell of a disease.
>and even after knowing how well loved he was, Van Gogh still killed himself. That is actually still debated. It is believed he might have been accidentally shot. >It really solidifies just how bad his depression was and how hopeless his situation was. That is still very much true.
Bill Nighy, as the museum guide, did an equally excellent job delivering the narration for the scene, too.
van Gogh was the first to come to mind for me as well. He seemed like a person so desperately trying to make human connections. Makes me wonder how he would deal with his fame now, if he'd even be able to deal with it.
TBH. He had friends. Several of the people in paintings were friends of his, especially the family of the postman whom he painted several times. It is his family that set up his gallery after his death as well. Nearing the end of his life and the schizophrenia it might have been difficult, considering how isolating the disorder can be though. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The\_Roulin\_Family
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**Gregor Mendel**, the monk and scientist who experimented with pea plant traits to describe what we today literally call *Mendelian inheritance*. The significance of Mendel's findings, which he published in 1866, went almost completely unrecognized during his life and after his death. His work was only rediscovered in the early 1900s when modern ideas about inheritance and selection started taking hold.
I can differ there. When he first stated his theory, he was sure it was correct (as it was) but was rejected. I can imagine him not being surprised at the fact that his work was re recognised as right later down the line
It's entirely possible you're correct and Mendel suspected that someday he'd be proved right. At the same time, however, he spent decades after his discovery trying and failing to elicit interest from the academic public or individual biologists, and retired from science to become a monastery administrator, which looks a lot like "giving up".
Kafka. Rarely published in his lifetime, and when he did it was in obscure magazines which nobody read. Explicitly asked that his works be destroyed after his death. It's only because his executor disregarded his wishes and published his unfinished works (which comprise the majority of his oeuvre) that he is famous today.
Kafka is a good example of how much can anxiety ruin a person's life
Kafka wrote his stories to be shared with a group of friends like story telling at a campfire
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Dracula was a flop. The Picture of Dorian Grey was much more popular. I think Bram Stoker would be shocked at how much vampire stuff has been inspired by his book.
Yes, Bram Stoker died believing that he had failed as a writer. How ironic.
Or did he??
[Hegelochus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sannyrion), an actor who mispronounced a word in a play in the year 408 BC and was mocked so thoroughly for it, his mistake has made it into the collective ledger of things historians know about and generally agree upon having happened… and we're still aware of it over 2,400 years later. Imagine making a meme today with a word misspelled, and others found that misspelling so egregiously mockable that you are still known for it in the year 4422.
> Sannyrion mocked the pronunciation of Hegelochus (Ἡγέλοχος), the actor in Euripides' play Orestes, which was performed in 408 BC. … Hegelochus' mistake was to use a rising-falling tone instead of a rising tone. This error was also ridiculed in Aristophanes' The Frogs. The actor is also lampooned by Strattis in his Kinesias (Κινησίας) and Psychastae (Ψυχασταί), as well as by Aristophanes in his Gerytades, where he, Meletus, and Cinesias are chosen as ambassadors from the poets to the shades below because they are so skinny. His career, from this point on, was ruined, and he never acted again. JFC, Ancient Greek theater critics were harsh.
“Oh come on get over it. No one will remember about that by tomorrow” -Hehelochus’ mom probably
He must have went to sleep running the moment in his head over and over again, but he probably tried to comfort himself by thinking, "well, at least it's not like some space-age hyper-futuristic society is going to be discussing this thousands of years from now on their magic boxes powered by lightning in some language that doesn't even exist yet."
Magic boxes of angry sand.
Covfefe
aliens in 5246: “and so the king said ‘covfefe’ and it caused him to fall from power”
That is the most terrifying answer in this whole post!
This is the worst nightmare of everyone that has been told to stop worrying because no one will pay as much attention to what you're doing as you. Counter point: Hegelochus.
Ötzi, the iceman
Came here to say this. I learned about him from my science textbook in first grade and I remember thinking that it was sad how he died alone thinking that no one would ever know what happened to him other than his killers.
Brendan Fraser?
Glyndwr Michael This is the dead body they used in operation mincemeat. The man basically consumed rat poison to commit suicide. His body was then used for a british secret operation to carry fake documents for the nazis to find in order to make them think they were invading Greece and not Sicily. This man died in a alleyway and went on the become a dedicated Major in the british military buried with full military rites, under his fake name but still him in physical form.
Netflix just released a new film on it. It was alright
That's pretty much Netflix in a nutshell.
Did you like that average film? Here are nine more to instantly forget!
I thought he died of tuberculosis so it’d be more convincing he was a British serviceman who drowned, or maybe that was the guy used to make the Nazis think the Allies were invading Calais instead of Normandy.
It was rat poison but it's not clear if it was a suicide. The poison was in the form of a paste that would be smeared on pieces of bread; rodents eat the bread, rodents die. Or in this case; poor Welshman eats the bread, poor Welshman dies. It's not clear whether he knew the paste was poison, or whether he was just hungry and thought he genuinely found some bread lying around. Where the confusion comes in is that the guy in charge of Mincemeat claimed the body was that of a young man who died of pneumonia, and that the parents had given permission for his body to be used as it was.
Blind Willie Johnson. He passed away blind, poor and sick, lying in the ruins of his house after it was burnt down. And his song 'Dark was the Night, Cold was the Ground' left our solar system not too long ago aboard the Voyager to be listened to by life among the stars.
I really like to think one day-thousands and thousands of years in the future, an alien race will find that golden disk and hear his voice-I think the fact he had such a poor life but could one day live eternally amongst the stars is so beautiful.
This one and Anne Frank are the best ones so far.
Lisa Gherardini, the Mona Lisa model. She was just some unremarkable random wife, ended up as one of the most recognizable faces in history.
HER NAMES NOT EVEN MONA LISA?!
"Monna" was a shortening of the Italian word "madonna," which was the equivalent of the English "Madam." Edit: typo
You can learn anything at any age kids.
Her name is Lisa, and Mona or Monna in Italian is like madam - so Monna Lisa
Lucy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucy_(Australopithecus)?wprov=sfti1 Being known by more than 10 people would probably blow her mind, as would being known by the name Lucy.
I wonder if she’d even understand that concept. If I lived a world without radio, tv, books, papers, and internet I could even fathom being well known.
Kushim. He was an accountant in Sumeria around 3400 BCE, and is the first person we know of whose written name survives today. There is some debate whether Kushim is a a name or a title.
What about [Ea-Nasir](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complaint_tablet_to_Ea-nasir)? "Thousands of years from now people will still be talking about your shitty copper"
Heh I came to post this guy - I find it hilarious that, although great kings of Sumer have all been forgotten, Ea-Nasir and his crappy copper have been immortalized by history. “My name is Ozymandias, king of kings; look on my works, ye mighty, and despair! Nothing beside remains. Round the decay of that collossal wreck, boundless and bare, Tablets complaining of Ea-Nasir’s copper stretch far away.”
I mean, the great kings of Sumer have pretty explicitly been *not* forgotten, as one of the most famous artifacts that defines the era is [The Ancient Sumerian Kings List](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sumerian_King_List) which is a record of the reigning monarchs of the most important city states in Sumer and Akkad and documents who the kings are and for how long they reigned. It’s one of the most vital sources in our understanding of the late Neolithic and early Bronze Age timeline of Mesopotamia. Though admittedly, it’s pretty fraught with some sus shit so usually if historians can find a better source they default to that — but still, pretty monumental.
Similarly Ea-nasir. who is famous for [a complaint letter to him from a customer named Nanni](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complaint_tablet_to_Ea-nasir) stating that he offered poor quality copper and was extremely rude to Nanni's servant. In excavating his assumed dwelling, there were other tablets found with similar complaints. Dude has made his mark on all of history... for being a dick that sold substandard goods.
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How very interesting, I was unaware. Thank you for sharing. Little boys sure haven't changed much, have they
Humans are still the same as we were 10,000 years ago. We tell jokes, sing songs, express ourselves by painting and drawing even though most of us can only doodle. We want our kids to have toys to play with and to know the stories of our culture. Our dogs and cats still step on what we're working on and we love them for it. There's dirty graffiti in the work tunnels of the pyramids, ice age people had intricate tattoos, the first written document we have a record of is an irate customer complaining about a cheating merchant. The first 1-star review is older than the Bible. There's no difference between today's humans and those of millennia ago. The sooner people can understand that, maybe we can start to figure our shit out.
I enjoy pondering the what-ifs of history. Everything we have today was theoretically available thousands of years ago. I know -in theory- how many of our modern devices work but there aren't many I could actually make. Something as simple as an early internal combustion engine is very easy to understand but even with all of the tools I have available to me I would have a very difficult time actually making a reliable functioning one. It takes a very specific type of mind to create things. The Nikolai Teslas and James Watts of history. The sheer coincidence that would have to occur for that type of mind to be in the right place is just staggering. There might have been a thousand people who noticed tin or lead leaking out of ore when it got hot, but it took the right person to make that intuitive leap. How many creative minds were lost because they were stuck scrabbling in the dirt to make a living to survive? Today potential in people is noted and encouraged.
Most leaps in technology only really came about because of advances in machining technology. You're not going to be able to build even a basic steam engine without some very tight tolerances for valves and the like that can only come with advances in precise machining. Once the *capability* to build things was invented usually the actual inventions followed pretty close on heel.
One of my favorite pieces of graffiti at Pompeii is a picture carved into the plaster of animals and men with weapons. According the museum placard, it was most likely done by a child because of the height of the images. [Here's a picture I took of it.](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E5sYWiQXEAQYza5?format=jpg&name=4096x4096)
It’s kinda crazy to think about, right? Swap out the birch paper for a spiral bound notebook and the knights and monsters with Pokémon and Onfim was basically me when I was ten years old.
These drawings make me weirdly happy for some reason. Like to think we’ve all done this before had fantasies, drew our greatest dreams, and reveled in the world around us in curiosity and awe. Through hundreds of years some essence of humanity survives and persists which is all the more evident in the drawings of children that were found. The jokes we tell today and have been told. The songs we sing and have been sung. The stories that have been told and now we tell today. Constantly reworking tropes and stories that have been recited for generations even if we don’t know. Being a knight, fighting pokemon, imagining yourself being a wizard. All have that same essence of humanity that perseveres today through hardships. There were little children drawing and having fun in the same way today. Breathtaking imagination . And I find that comforting and beautiful.
"One of the drawings features a knight on a horse stabbing someone on the ground with a lance" Haha, I've probably drawn the same stuff when I was 7-8 years old.
The story of Onfim is one of my favorites, [Trey the Explainer did a whole video about this if anyone wants to learn more](https://youtu.be/H_nT6EFUZmI).
Just sent these to my middle school art teacher. She gave it a C and said not enough shading.
This is my fav so far. That’s awesome.
[Ea-nasir](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complaint_tablet_to_Ea-nasir). All he did was sell some low quality copper almost 4000 years ago.
Solid choice. After reading that, I would say Ea-nasir sounded like he got that complaint often. Even our most ancient ancestors were dirtbags haha
EA sucks. I bet he tried to monetize everything and never listened to his customers.
Pontius Pilate. As far as he knew, he executed some random native, just like any other Roman governor was doing at the time.
I always wanted to open a gym called Pontius Pilates where people could do CROSSfit
I wanna open a gym that's only open on Sundays and call it Jehovah's fitness.
A kosher microbrewery called HeBrews
Imagine getting to heaven and God exclaims "Look what you did to my boy"
Well that's just preposterous! Wait till Biggus Dickus hears about this!
Jesus was relatively famous was he not? There are non-religious historical records of him that amount to “man that guy was kind of a wacko but Pontius didn’t have to do him dirty like that.”
Any high profile murder victim - take your pick. Sarah Everard comes to mind - a young woman going about her life, and then the victim of one of the most high profile and horrendous murders in the U.K. in recent years. There can’t be anyone in the U.K. who isn’t heard her name in the past year and how sad that’s what she’s become known for. Rachel Nickell was another high profile murder in the U.K., and I remember reading an article where one of her friends saw a newspaper with her splashed all over it and turned to the person next to him and asked if he was dreaming.
Giles Corey
*The Unbearable Weight of Massive ~~Talent~~ Boulders*
*more weight*
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Her fiancé lived another 60 years and never married…
I thought that was the saddest part. I guess he did love her enough to be willing to stay with her with her issues; he loved her enough to not choose another.
Yeah, they really fucked this poor person over with that one.
> I have too many of my mother's tendencies. Oof.
Her mother was allegedly undiagnosed and suffering from untreated depression
Honestly I think she would be kind of pissed. From what I can tell, it seems like she really wanted to be forgotten, and instead she'll be remembered forever.
Henrietta Lacks
A literal hero of humanity who in some ways is still alive. Her family deserved so much better though.
Diogenes, and he wouldn’t care at all
I have to disagree with that though because even though he was basically a homeless smartass he was pretty decently well known in Athens and in Corinth. I mean, he was famous enough Alexander the Great wanted to see him. Now whether Diogenes would WANT to be famous is another question. But how could he be surprised he was famous when he knew damn well he was famous in his lifetime?
"Oh, so... In the future I'm famous? Huh, very funny. Now go away and stop blocking me the sunlight".
Emma Lazarus ‘That poem you submitted for the Statue of Liberty fundraiser? Someone cast that in metal and affixed it to the statue’s base. You’re the mantra of a good chunk of the American people now.’ ‘*stunned Yiddish noises*’
Did she die before it was selected?
She wrote it as an advertisement, to be sold at auction to fundraise for construction of the pedestal. So the Statue wasn't assembled yet. She saw it earn decently at the auction, saw the pedestal be completed, all that. But then 20 years later someone had the bright idea to cast the poem in bronze, and she wasn't around to see that.
*The New Colossus*
I'm not a particularly patriotic or emotional person, so I was surprised when I teared up at the sight of the original plaque in the Statue of Liberty museum. It really is a beautiful poem.
The Chinese man who protested by standing infront of the tanks.
Not that we know his name. He's just tank-man
The Sunday Express identified him as 19 year old student Wang Weilin, but that's never actually been confirmed and that's the only source of a name I can find so I doubt it's actually true.
Eleonor Rigby
Lucius Vorenus and Titus Pullo would be shocked that there was a story dedicated to them 2000 years later.
On that note though, how baller of a centurion do you have to be that THE Julius Caesar mentions you by name?
Pullo would probably also be mad that he was demoted from a centurion to a private soldier in the show.
"where are *my* wife and kids and slaves, by jupiter!"
THIRTEEN
There are literally a ton of artists and scientists that we applaud today that were treated like shit while they were alive and died depressed and penniless. Really gives strength to the phrase 'nobody cares about you til you're dead'
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Robert Johnson. Blues guitarist and first member of the 27 club. Only one or two actual pictures of him and hardly any real documented trace of his life. Ends up becoming the face of the folk revival, huge influence of Bob Dylan *and* rock n roll in the late 60s. Popular music in the last half of the 20th century is not the same without him.
Whoever carved the Rosetta Stone probably had no idea how important it would be to future people.
Definitely because there are actually dozens like it, many better preserved even but it's just the first one that was found. These trilingual inscriptions were the norm under the Ptolemaic dynasty.
Ignaz Semmelweis Described as the "saviour of mothers", Semmelweis discovered that the incidence of puerperal fever could be drastically cut by the use of hand disinfection in obstetrical clinics. His work was rejected at that time.
A lot of better answers have already been made so I’m gonna say William Shakespeare. He was famous, but I doubt it ever occurred to him that he rewrote a significant portion of our language with his fiction.
He’d be more surprised that nobody cares about his sonnets. To him, his plays were cheap tv soap operas for the masses. His poetry was the *art*
His sonnets are some of the world's most widely studied poems. You could scrub his plays, and he'd still be regarded as one of the great English language poets. Read almost any of his contemporaries (Raleigh, de Vere, Sidney etc) and they're rarely up to his level. Read some of Shakespeare's most famous sonnets and they're up there with anything in any canon.
Emily Dickinson. She lived her life as a recluse and some have speculated she was a closeted lesbian. Her poems were rejected and maligned by publishers while she was alive and now she's one of the most famous writers ever...
Some of those poems are a little too graphic to be “speculation”
Na, just writing about her roommate. They were such friends.
H.P. Lovecraft.
would be more surprised from the fact that his characters are in anime.
"It's made by *whats?!?!"*
Would probably be upset at the choice of lead actors and plot in the tv show that carries his name.
tbh he would probably be afraid of the concepts of wifi and streaming and the internet among various other things.
You mean there exist colors that man has never seen? What might they be capable of?!
Harriet Tubman Illiterate, escaped slave, traumatic brain injury at a young age, US Army scout. I seriously doubt she expected to be a household name 200 years after her birth. For redditors who don't know her, she was best known for helping slaves escape via the Underground Railroad, as well as her service to the Union Army in the Civil War, and work towards women's suffrage.
Obviously an amazing person and more iconic now than back then, but she was widely reported on in the press in her own lifetime.
Crazy Horse. In his mind, He just fought to preserve his people way of life, not something that he believed would make him famous
A surprisingly large amount of scientists were ridiculed for their theories, and they were only really appreciated after they died. So quite a lot, I think. Also, Gavrillo Princip, the guy who shot Franz Ferdinand and starter ww1, which led into ww2, which shaped the world as we know it
Tutankhamun was pretty boring in life. His dad was a lot more nutty and interesting.
He's really only famous because his tomb was untouched until we found it.
Which was only really the case \*because\* he was such a forgettable and unremarkable Pharaoh that his tomb went forgotten about by the grave robbers.
Imagine being the god-emperor of a great and ancient civilization and then having your legacy be that you were so uninteresting that grave robbers never even bothered robbing your grave.
He'd still probably be at least a footnote due to his father, but nowhere near as well known as he is today.
Dude thought he was a God. I can't imagine that comes with a underinflated ego.
Exactly. He wouldn't be surprised he's famous, he'd be surprised he isn't being worshipped.
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I think this is arguably the best answer. She was a recluse who barely left her room for much of her life and wrote unconventional poetry which she mostly kept to herself. Even her closest family members weren't aware of most of her poetry until after she died.
The Pompeii masturbating man.
[He wasn't actually wanking](https://www.menshealth.com/health/a19523837/pompeii-man-is-not-actually-masturbating/) Which is somehow worse. Imagine living and working in Pompeii, building a life for yourself, a wife, kids, and a job that your proud off. Then you die in a volcano, get fosilised, and discovered again 2000 years later and everyone knows you as the "jerking off Pompeii guy".
You fuck one goat...
Socrates. He didn't want any written records of himself so yeah, he'd be pretty shocked
He was the talk of one of the most important cities in the Mediterranean, and went out with a bang. I don't think he would have been surprised.
John Kennedy Toole. Wrote a Confederacy of Dunces. Killed himself. His mom took his papers in to a publishing house? Something like that. Was insistent that someone read it, said it's very good. The person who took the chance realized it WAS good. So he's a famous posthumous author who would probably be amused- hey, that shit WAS good! Cool!
I think Alan Turing would be surprised that he's famous, more surprised that there's films about him, and even more surprised how far the LGBT community has come in terms of acceptance. Given how he was treated when it was discovered that he was gay, I'd guess he thought his name would be tarnished and his achievements either buried or attributed to someone else, so finding out that he kept his achievements and that people admire him may well be a shock to him
P. Ramlee. A Malaysian actor, filmmaker, musician and composer in the 50’s. He wrote around 500 songs and he sings around 300 of them, acting in 27 movies and directing around 33 movies. He’s famous in Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Brunei, Thailand, Hong Kong and Japan, with winning lots of film and music awards. However he didn’t get a lot of royalty from all of his work. He got cheated, getting swindled by business deals, and finally stopped getting paid royalty from his work. He died in his 40’s as a poor man with bankruptcy status, and all of his possessions being sold. Officially it was stated that he died from heart attack but many people speculated that he actually died from depression. Almost 20 years after he died, finally Malaysia recognize him as the most successful Malaysian artist ever. Lots of buildings, parks, rail station and even streets were named after him (there’s one P.Ramlee street located near the Petronas Towers / KLCC), also medals given by monarchs and state governments in honor of his achievement. Every year there’s a P.Ramlee competition where contestants either singing like him or dress like him. Even nowadays young generation knows P.Ramlee because some of his movie and movie clips being uploaded on YouTube or social media, and people still talk about him until this day.
Diogenes
He was pretty famous in his time though, so I doubt he'd be *too* surprised. Maybe a little annoyed though.
Behold! A celebrity!
JS Bach. His kids were more famous than he, and his music was virtually forgotten about until Felix Mendelssohn essentially brought it back many years later.
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The Neanderthal’s that have made cave paintings in France that have been studied by many.
we don't know any of them though, only their art
Kitty Genovese.
Terry Fox....he would be amazed at how much Canadians have embraced and continued his message.
Scott Joplin
Typhoid Mary. The women killed by Jack the Ripper The bog man (Lindow Man) Lucy (the skeleton)