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Antonin Dvorak was a son of butcher, but he did not follow his father's trade. While assisting his father part-time, he studied music, and graduated from the Prague Organ School in 1859. He also was an accomplished violinist and violist, and joined the Bohemian Theatre Orchestra, which was under the baton of Bedrich Smetana in 1860s. For financial reasons he quit the orchestra and focused on composing and teaching. He fell in love with one of his students, but she married another guy. Her sister was available, so Dvorak married the sister, Anna, in 1873, and they had nine children.

Dvorak's early compositions were influenced by Richard Wagner and Johannes Brahms, and with their promotion his music became performed in European capitals and received international acclaim. His performances in 1880s of Slavonic Dances, the Sixth Symphony and the Stabat Mater were a success in England, and Dvorak received an honorary doctorate from Cambridge. He made a successful concert tour in Russia in 1890, and became a professor at the Prauge Conservatory. In 1892 he received an invitation to America from Jeaunnette Thurber, the founder of he National Conservatory of Music in New York City. Dvorak was the Director of the National Conservatory in New York for three years (1892-95), where he also taught composition and carried on his cross-cultural studies.

Dvorak broadened his experiences through studying the music of the Native Americans and African Americans, many of whom became his students and friends. Dvorak was inspired by the originality of indigenous American music and culture, as well as by the spirituals and by the singing of his African American students. Dvorac incorporated his new ideas, blended with his Bohemian roots, into his well-known Symphony No.9 in E minor "From the New World". He worked on this symphony for most of the spring and summer of 1893, and made it's glorious premiere in Carnegie Hall in December, 1893. In America he also wrote the remarkable Cello Concerto and two string quartets, including the Quartet in F ("The American"). Dvorak was doing very well in New York financially, but his heart was in Prague and he left America for his Czech Motherland. He had a big family with his wife and nine children in Prague. He became the Director of the Prague Conservatory in 1901 and kept the position until his death in 1904.

Prince Albert Edward Wettin Saxe-Coburg-Gotha was born on November 9, 1841 to Queen Victoria and Prince Albert of Great Britain. He was the second child and first son which meant that he would become King after his mother died. As he grew up he was compared unfavorably to his father and then his very bright older sister, Vicky. His childhood was unsubstantial. He went to school and periodically went on vacation to Osborne House, or Balmoral. When he was about 20 years old he was sent to Scotland to undergo a sort of boot camp for the army. While he was there he had his first taste of sex when his friends put Nelly Clifton in his bed. He was very discreet about the affair but his father's friends found out about it and told him. Prince Albert, who was sick, made the journey to Oxford where Bertie, as he was called, was at University. Albert told his son that he should forget about it because the consequences for that type of lifestyle would be too great. Albert returned to London and shortly afterward died. Victoria blamed Bertie for the rest of her life. It was also around this time that Bertie got married. His choice of a wife was very important because she would someday be the Queen. He met Alexandra, a Danish Princess, on what was essentially a blind date. Queen Victoria knew that he would not accept anybody that the family would pick out for him so she had Alexandra meet him at a designated site in Germany. On March 10, 1863 they were married and eventually had six children together. Even though he was the Prince of Wales his mother did not involve him in matters of state. Because of this he had no demands on his time and did what he liked. What he liked was drinking, having sex, and having fun with his friends. During the almost 40 years between the time he married and the time he became King, Bertie allegedly fathered several children besides the ones with his wife. In January 1901 his mother died, making him King Edward VII. He only reigned for a short time before many years of drinking and overeating led him to die at the age of 68 in 1910.

Pierre-Auguste Renior was born on February 25, 1841, in Limoges, France. His father was a tailor and his mother was a dressmaker. In 1845 his family moved to Paris and settled near the Louvre Museum. There young Renoir had his first experience with art.

From age 13 he became an apprentice painter in a porcelain factory, where he painted for five years. At age 19 he took drawing lessons from Charles Gleyre, and in 1862 he attended the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, a classical school of fine arts in Paris. There he met Claude Monet, Alfred Sisley, and Frederic Bazille, the future founders of Impressionism. During the 1860's Renoir was still painting in the academic tradition, and his portrait of his mistress, Lise Trehot, was traditional enough to be accepted at the 1867 Salon. In 1869 Renoir moved in with 'Claude Monet' and Frederic Bazille. Under their influence he updated his technique and color scheme. He started using little brush-strokes and vibrant pure colors while painting mainly outdoors, 'en plein aire'.

In 1874 Renoir took part in the first exhibition of the 'Society of independent artists' in the Paris studio of photographer Nadar. Monet's painting 'Impression, soleil levant' (Impression, Sunrise 1872) was untitled until the first show in 1874. A title was needed in a hurry for the catalogue. Monet suggested "Impression" as a simple title for his painting. The catalogue editor, Renoir's brother Edouard, added an explanatory 'Sunrise', thus making "Impression: soleil levant" the official title for Monet's work. From the painting's title, art critic Louis Leroy coined the term "Impressionism", which he intended to be derogatory. Monet's title came under criticism which seized upon the first word. Renoir with Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro, Alfred Sisley, were joined by Edgar Degas, and Georges Seurat, and continued to exhibit together despite the financial failure of the first show.

Impressionists slowly gained recognition after 1880, when public begun to recognize the value of their works. In 1881 Renoir traveled to Algeria, then to Spain, and later to Italy to see masterpieces of Titian and Raphael in Florence and Rome. In 1882 Renoir met composer Richard Wagner at his home in Sicily, and painted his portrait. In 1883 he had his first one-man exhibition at the Paris gallery of Paul Durand-Ruel, who became his art dealer. He received commissions to paint portraits of prominent Parisians, and also made several group portraits of his friends, models, writers, and fellow artists, such as the 'Luncheon of the Boating Party' (1881). In 1887, being already famous, Renoir donated several paintings to Queen Victoria on her Golden Jubilee. At that time he worked on a big composition 'Les baigneuses' (The Bathers), for which he made a series of nude female studies representing feminine grace with masterful depiction of the soft forms and tender texture of skin. His lively, joyful paintings brought him fame and steady success.

In 1880 Renoir met Aline Chairgot. She became his model and a painting assistant. In 1885, their first son, Pierre Renoir, was born. They married in 1890, and spent much time in Essoyes, the childhood home of his wife. In 1894, while living in Montmartre in Paris, they had their second son, named Jean Renoir, who later became a famous filmmaker. His third son, Claude Renoir, was born in 1901. Family life was beneficial to Renoir's work. He became as interested in painting people as he was in painting landscapes. By the age of 50 Renoir became wealthy and famous, but his health declined. During the 1890s he developed rheumatoid arthritis and had to move to a warmer climate in the South of France. In 1907 he bought a farm at Cagnes-sur-Mer. There Renoir expanded the garden into a beautifully landscaped park and continued painting landscapes and nudes.

Renoir suffered from complications of arthritis and was wheelchair-bound during the last 20 years of his life. He also suffered from cataracts, which affected his vision so that his later paintings had a general reddish tone and softer lines. He continued to paint with a brush on a stick strapped to his arm, because he lost mobility in his fingers and in his right shoulder due to ankylosis. Renoir did not give up art, he even started making sculptures with an assistant. He died at his house in Cagnes on December 3, 1919, and was laid to rest at the Cagnes-sur-Mer church cemetery.

In 1962 his son Jean Renoir wrote 'Renoir My Father', the definitive biography of August Renoir. The value of his art has been going up. In 1990, a smaller version of Renoir's painting 'Bal au moulin de la Galette' (1876), was sold at an auction for $78,000,000.

Wilfrid Laurier was born on 20 November 1841 in St. Lin, Québec, Canada. He was married to Zoe Lafontaine. He died on 17 February 1919 in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.

Iginio Ugo Tarchetti was born on 29 June 1841 in San Salvatore Monferrato, Piedmont, Italy. Iginio Ugo was a writer, known for Passion of Love (1981), Fosca (1981) and La Lettera U (Manoscritto d'un Pazzo) (2021). Iginio Ugo died on 25 February 1869 in Milan, Lombardy, Italy.

Karl Formes was born on 3 July 1841 in London, England, UK. He was an actor, known for Old Heidelberg (1915), Ghosts (1915) and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1921). He died on 18 November 1939 in Los Angeles, California, USA.

James Gordon Bennett Jr. was born on 10 May 1841 in New York City, New York, USA. He was an actor, known for The Great International Automobile Race for the Gordon-Bennett Trophy (1904), A Terrific Race (1903) and Start of the Gordon-Bennet Cup Race (1903). He was married to Maud Potter (Baroness de Reuter). He died on 14 May 1918 in Beaulieu-sur-Mer, Alpes-Maritimes, France.

Georges Benjamin Clemenceau (28 September 1841 - 24 November 1929) was a French statesman who served as Prime Minister of France from 1906 to 1909 and again from 1917 until 1920. A key figure of the Independent Radicals, he was a strong advocate of separation of church and state, amnesty of the Communards exiled to New Caledonia, as well as opposition to colonization. Clemenceau, a physician turned journalist, played a central role in the politics of the Third Republic, most notably successfully leading France through the end of the First World War.

Welsh explorer and travel writer Henry Morton Stanley was born John Rowlands (he may have been illegitimate). His father died when he was 2; his mother, a butcher's daughter, went into service in London and then married, and did not want him. Stanley's paternal grandfather, a prosperous farmer, refused to care for him. For a while his mother's brothers boarded him out, then they stopped paying for him and he was taken, at 6, to the workhouse at St. Asaph, where he remained until 1856, when he was 15. The schoolmaster there was a savage brute, afterward adjudged insane, and the boy's life was one long series of torture, in the midst of which somehow he gained an elementary education. At last he beat his tormentor, and ran away.

For a while, a cousin at Brynford employed him as a pupil teacher in a National School, and after school he studied languages and mathematics. For several years, he went from one town and one poor and unwelcoming relative after another, working odd jobs. In 1859 he went to sea as a cabin boy, without pay, on a boat going to New Orleans. A kind-hearted cotton broker, Henry Stanley, picked him up, starving, on the street, cared for him and adopted him. The boy took his benefactor's name. The next year Stanley sent him to his farm in Arkansas, to take charge of the store there. Then he died suddenly, without having made any provision for his adopted son. Young Stanley found himself stranded, and the Civil War had begun. Though his sympathies were with the Union, he enlisted as a Confederate, was taken prisoner at Shiloh, and was released from Camp Douglas, Chicago, by re-enlisting on the other side (a very discreditable, though fairly common at the time, action, which he never entirely lived down). His turncoat tactics proved unnecessary; he contracted dysentery, was discharged from the army and, sick and penniless, worked his way from Harper's Ferry, Virginia, back to Wales. Once more his relatives threw him out, and he became a sailor.

In 1864 he enlisted in the United States Navy as a ship's writer. With this experience he became a wandering news correspondent in the western United States. He made and saved money, and in 1866 was able to travel to Asia Minor (modern-day Turkey) with a friend. The next year a Missouri newspaper sent him to report on General Winfield Hancock's Indian expedition. In 1868 he joined the staff of the New York Herald, which sent him to Abyssinia (modern-day Ethiopia) to report on the war there. The rest of Stanley's life belongs to Africa, where he felt he had a "mission". In 1869 James Gordon Bennett Jr., the publisher of the New York Herald, decided to send a reporter to Africa in search for David Livingstone, who was last heard of six years previously. On November 24, 1871, Stanley reached Ujiji (on the shores of Lake Tanganyika) and found Livingstone, weak from illness and barely alive. Despite his condition, Livingstone refused to return to England with Stanley, and died 17 months later.

For the Herald he also covered the Ashanti War in 1873. He made three more African explorations, in Equatorial Africa from 1874 to 1877, in the Congo (for King Leopold II of Belgium) from 1878 to 1884 and in the Sudan from 1885 to 1888. In 15 years, without an army, as a private civilian, he added about 2,000,000 square miles for the British Empire, and he cannot be held responsible for the horrendous atrocities later committed by the Belgians during their ownership and exploitation of the Congo Free State. The controversies arising from the Livingstone expedition gradually died down, though they (and his quick and harsh temper) retarded any bestowal of honors on him. In the 1890s he made a lecture tour in the United States and Australasia. He abandoned his American citizenship, was re-naturalized in England and from 1895-1900 was a member of Parliament. In 1897 he made his last journey, to South Africa, just before the Boer War. He was finally knighted in 1899. He suffered a stroke four years later, and died the following spring.

British writer, novelist and ornithologist William Henry Hudson was born in 1841 in Argentina. His parents were English, though born in the New England area of the US (his grandfather came to the US from Exeter, England, on the Mayflower). His father eventually moved the family to Argentina, where William was born, to raise sheep. Young William roamed the pampas--as the Argentine plains were called--becoming an expert on the plant and animal life of the area. At 15 years old he took part in a cattle drive that was caught in a severe blizzard and he contracted rheumatic fever, which adversely affected his health for the rest of his life. While recovering from the illness, he read "The Origin of Species" by Charles Darwin (V), which made a lasting impression on him.

After his parents' death he began to travel extensively, but in 1869 he moved to England and settled there. In 1876 he married a much older woman, and they lived on the edge of poverty, even though they had income from two boarding houses, until his wife inherited a house in the Bayswater section of London, where Hudson spent the rest of his days.

His early novels were influenced by his life on the South American plains, being mainly romances in that exotic setting, but were not particularly successful at the time. He is probably best known for his 1904 novel "Green Mansions" (filmed in 1959 as Green Mansions (1959)). Although not as successful as many of his contemporaries, such as Joseph Conrad and Ford Madox Ford, Hudson became close friends with them. He soon began writing books with ornithological themes, and began to gain recognition. Several of his books helped to bring about the "back-to-nature" movement, such as "Afoot in England" (1909), "A Shepherd's Life" (1910) and "A Friend in Richmond Park" (1922).

Hudson died in London, England, after a bout with heart disease, in 1922.

Kristofer Janson was born on 5 May 1841 in Bergen, Norway. He was a writer, known for The Parson's Widow (1920), Liv (1934) and Gypsy Anne (1920). He died on 17 November 1917 in Copenhagen, Denmark.

J. Hastings Batson was born on 8 November 1841 in Clerkenwell, London, England, UK. He was an actor, known for She (1916), A Pit-boy's Romance (1917) and The Little Damozel (1916). He died on 18 April 1921 in Isleworth, Middlesex, England, UK.

Jean Mounet-Sully was born on 27 February 1841 in Bergerac, Dordogne, France. He was an actor, known for Hamlet, Prince of Denmark (1910), Oedipus Rex (1913) and Britannicus (1908). He died on 1 March 1916 in Paris, France.

Richard Croker was born on 23 November 1841 in Clonakilty, County Cork, Ireland. He died on 29 April 1922.

Eliza Orzeszkowa was born on 6 June 1841 in Milkowszczyzna, Poland, Russian Empire [now Milkaushchina, Belarus]. She was a writer, known for Nad Niemnem (1939), Cham (1931) and Nad Niemnem (1987). She was married to Stanislaw Nahorski and Piotr Orzeszko. She died on 18 May 1910 in Grodno, Grodnenskaya guberniya, Russian Empire [now in Hrodzienskaja voblasc, Belarus].

King Nicholas of Montenegro was born on 7 October 1841 in Njegos, Montenegro. He was married to Milena Vukotic. He died on 2 March 1921 in Antibes, Alpes-Maritimes, France.

Charles J. Guiteau was born on 8 September 1841 in Freeport, Illinois, USA. He died on 30 June 1882 in Washington, District of Columbia, USA.

Julius Stinde was born on 28 August 1841 in Kirchnüchel, Schleswig-Holstein, Germany. He was a writer, known for Familie Buchholz (1944), Neigungsehe (1944) and Die Buchholzens (1974). He died on 8 August 1905 in Olsberg, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany.

Campos Sales was born on 15 February 1841 in Campinas, São Paulo, Empire of Brazil. He died on 28 June 1913 in Santos, São Paulo, Brazil.

Clement Scott was born on 6 October 1841 in London, England, UK. Clement was a writer, known for Father Goose (1964), Poppies (1914) and Hawaiian Eye (1959). Clement was married to Georgina Isabella Busson du Maurier and Constance Margarite Brandon. Clement died on 25 June 1904 in London, England, UK.

Teddy Royce was born on 11 August 1841 in Eversholt, Bedfordshire, England, UK. He was an actor, known for Tansy (1921). He died on 24 January 1926 in Clapham Park, London, England, UK.

Armand Fallières was born on 6 November 1841 in Mézin, Lot-et-Garonne, France. He died on 22 June 1931 in Lannes, Lot-et-Garonne, France.

Ede Ujházi was born on 28 January 1841 in Debrecen, Hungary. He was an actor, known for Gazdag ember kabátja (1912). He died on 14 November 1915 in Budapest, Hungary.

Lavinia Warren was born on 31 October 1841 in Middleboro, Massachusetts, USA. She was an actress, known for The Lilliputians' Courtship (1915), Mutual Weekly, No. 45 (1915) and Pathé News, No. 89 (1915). She was married to Count Primo Magri and Tom Thumb. She died on 25 November 1919.

One of the greatest theatrical performers of the time Benoit Constant Coquelin born in Boulogne-sur-Mer, Pas-de-Calais, France in 1841. Made his professional stage debut at 19 as the comic valet in Moliere's 'Le Depit amoureux' at the Comedie-Francaise in 1860, his first great success was as Figaro in 'The Barber of Saville'. Four years after joining the comedie-Francaise, Coquelin became one of the elite societaires and during the next 22 years he starred in 44 new plays, including 'Gringoire' (1867), 'Tabarin' (1871), 'Forestier' (1871), 'L'Etrangere' (1876), Jean Dacier' (1877) 'Les Rantzau' (1884), he toured Europe and America with 'Les Precieuses ridicules', wrote several books including 'Art and the Actor'. In 1895 he joined the Renaissance Theatre in Paris where he had successes in Edmond Rostand's play 'Cyrano de Bergerac' in 1897 and in 1898 at the Lyceum Theatre in London. In 1900 he toured America with the lengendary theatre star Sarah Bernhardt appearing at the Broadway's Garden Theatre in a production of 'Cyrano de Bergerac' his most famous role, he starred in his only film which was the duel scene from 'Cyrano de Bergerac' with sound recording on phonograph cylinder directed by Clement Maurice at the Phono-Cinema- Theatre studio in 1900, the film is thought to be the first ever made with both colour and sound. On their return to France he appeared in 'L'Aiglon' at the Theatre Sarah Bernhardt. He was rehearsing for the starring role in Rostand's 'Chantecler' when he died suddenly in Paris age 68 in 1909.