Topic: Biography (Page 13)
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π Solomon Shereshevsky
Solomon Veniaminovich Shereshevsky (Russian: Π‘ΠΎΠ»ΠΎΠΌΠΎΠ½ ΠΠ΅Π½ΠΈΠ°ΠΌΠΈΠ½ΠΎΠ²ΠΈΡ Π¨Π΅ΡΠ΅ΡΠ΅Π²ΡΠΊΠΈΠΉ; 1886 β 1 May 1958), also known simply as 'Π¨' ('Sh'), 'S.', or Luria's S, was a Soviet journalist and mnemonist active in the 1920s. He was the subject of Alexander Luria's case study The Mind of a Mnemonist (1968).
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- "Solomon Shereshevsky" | 2024-01-03 | 77 Upvotes 11 Comments
π Mark Hofmann
Mark William Hofmann (born December 7, 1954) is an American counterfeiter, forger, and convicted murderer. Widely regarded as one of the most accomplished forgers in history, Hofmann is especially noted for his creation of documents related to the history of the Latter Day Saint movement. When his schemes began to unravel, he constructed bombs to murder two people in Salt Lake City, Utah.
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- "Mark Hofmann" | 2018-10-09 | 65 Upvotes 22 Comments
π Fabrice Bellard
Fabrice Bellard (French pronunciation:Β β[fa.bΚis bΙ.laΚ]) is a computer programmer who created the FFmpeg and QEMU software projects. He has also developed a number of other programs, including the Tiny C Compiler.
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- "Fabrice Bellard" | 2010-09-12 | 73 Upvotes 13 Comments
π Sequoyah β Inventor of the Cherokee Script
Sequoyah (αααα― Ssiquoya, as he signed his name, or ααα― Se-quo-ya, as is often spelled in Cherokee; named in English George Gist or George Guess) (c.1770β1843), was a Native American polymath of the Cherokee Nation. In 1821 he completed his independent creation of a Cherokee syllabary, making reading and writing in Cherokee possible. This was one of the very few times in recorded history that a member of a pre-literate people created an original, effective writing system (another example being Shong Lue Yang). After seeing its worth, the people of the Cherokee Nation rapidly began to use his syllabary and officially adopted it in 1825. Their literacy rate quickly surpassed that of surrounding European-American settlers.
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- "Sequoyah β Inventor of the Cherokee Script" | 2019-12-08 | 68 Upvotes 16 Comments
π April 12, 1961: First man in space
Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarinβ (9 March 1934 β 27 March 1968) was a Soviet Air Forces pilot and cosmonaut who became the first human to journey into outer space, achieving a major milestone in the Space Race; his capsule Vostok 1 completed one orbit of Earth on 12 April 1961. Gagarin became an international celebrity and was awarded many medals and titles, including Hero of the Soviet Union, his nation's highest honour.
Born in the village of Klushino near Gzhatsk (a town later renamed after him), in his youth Gagarin was a foundryman at a steel plant in Lyubertsy. He later joined the Soviet Air Forces as a pilot and was stationed at the Luostari Air Base, near the Norwegian border, before his selection for the Soviet space programme with five other cosmonauts. Following his spaceflight, Gagarin became deputy training director of the Cosmonaut Training Centre, which was later named after him. He was also elected as a deputy of the Soviet of the Union in 1962 and then to the Soviet of Nationalities, respectively the lower and upper chambers of the Supreme Soviet.
Vostok 1 was Gagarin's only spaceflight but he served as the backup crew to the Soyuz 1 mission, which ended in a fatal crash, killing his friend and fellow cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov. Fearing for his life, Soviet officials permanently banned Gagarin from further spaceflights. After completing training at the Zhukovsky Air Force Engineering Academy on 17 February 1968, he was allowed to fly regular aircraft. Gagarin died five weeks later when the MiG-15 training jet he was piloting with his flight instructor Vladimir Seryogin crashed near the town of Kirzhach.
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- "April 12, 1961: First man in space" | 2010-04-13 | 45 Upvotes 11 Comments
- "12.04.1961 - First human in outer space." | 2009-04-13 | 19 Upvotes 8 Comments
π Adrian Schoolcraft: Police Officer Forcibly Committed for Reporting Corruption
Adrian Schoolcraft (born 1976) is a former New York City Police Department (NYPD) officer who secretly recorded police conversations from 2008 to 2009. He brought these tapes to NYPD investigators in October 2009 as evidence of corruption and wrongdoing within the department. The tapes were used as evidence of arrest quotas leading to police abuses such as wrongful arrests, and that emphasis on fighting crime sometimes resulted in under-reporting of crimes to artificially deflate CompStat numbers.
After voicing his concerns, Schoolcraft was repeatedly harassed by members of the NYPD and reassigned to a desk job. After he left work early one day, an ESU unit illegally entered his apartment, physically abducted him and forcibly admitted him to a psychiatric facility, where he was held against his will for six days. In 2010, he released the audio recordings to The Village Voice, leading to the reporting of a multi-part series titled The NYPD Tapes. The same year, Schoolcraft filed a lawsuit against Jamaica Hospital and the NYPD. In 2012 The Village Voice reported that a 2010 unpublished report of an internal NYPD investigation found the 81st precinct had evidence of quotas and underreporting. Both of Schoolcraft's claims were settled in 2015, with him receiving $600,000 for the NYPD portion of the lawsuit.
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- "Adrian Schoolcraft: Police Officer Forcibly Committed for Reporting Corruption" | 2023-03-11 | 66 Upvotes 12 Comments
π Cleo, the mathematician that tricked Stack Exchange
Cleo was the pseudonym of an anonymous mathematician active on the mathematics Stack Exchange from 2013 to 2015, who became known for providing precise answers to complex mathematical integration problems without showing any intermediate steps. Due to the extraordinary accuracy and speed of the provided solutions, mathematicians debated whether Cleo was an individual genius, a collective pseudonym, or even an early artificial intelligence system.
During the poster's active period, Cleo posted 39 answers to advanced mathematical questions, primarily focusing on complex integration problems that had stumped other users. Cleo's answers were characterized by being consistently correct while providing no explanation of methodology, often appearing within hours of the original posts. The account claimed to be limited in interaction due to an unspecified medical condition.
The mystery surrounding Cleo's identity and mathematical abilities generated significant interest in the mathematical community, with users attempting to analyze solution patterns and writing style for clues. Some compared Cleo to historical mathematical figures like Srinivasa Ramanujan, known for providing solutions without conventional proofs. In 2025, Cleo was revealed to be Vladimir Reshetnikov, a software developer originally from Uzbekistan.
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- "Cleo, the mathematician that tricked Stack Exchange" | 2025-05-20 | 69 Upvotes 9 Comments
π Agner Krarup Erlang
Agner Krarup Erlang (1 January 1878 β 3 February 1929) was a Danish mathematician, statistician and engineer, who invented the fields of traffic engineering and queueing theory.
By the time of his relatively early death at the age of 51, Erlang had created the field of telephone networks analysis. His early work in scrutinizing the use of local, exchange and trunk telephone line usage in a small community to understand the theoretical requirements of an efficient network led to the creation of the Erlang formula, which became a foundational element of modern telecommunication network studies.
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- "Agner Krarup Erlang" | 2019-12-03 | 69 Upvotes 8 Comments
π Master of the Playing Cards
The Master of the Playing Cards (German: Meister der Spielkarten) was the first major master in the history of printmaking. He was a German (or conceivably Swiss) engraver, and probably also a painter, active in southwestern Germany β probably in Alsace, from the 1430s to the 1450s, who has been called "the first personality in the history of engraving."
Various attempts to identify him have not been generally accepted, so he remains known only through his 106 engravings, which include the set of playing cards in five suits from which he takes his name. The majority of the set survives in unique impressions, most of which are in the Kupferstich-Kabinett in Dresden and the Bibliothèque nationale de France in Paris. A further 88 engravings are regarded as sufficiently close to his style to be by his pupils.
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- "Master of the Playing Cards" | 2024-02-17 | 69 Upvotes 8 Comments
π Walking Stewart
John "Walking" Stewart (19 February 1747 β 20 February 1822) was an English philosopher and traveller. Stewart developed a unique system of materialistic pantheism.
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- "Walking Stewart" | 2019-07-09 | 55 Upvotes 21 Comments