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Chief Joseph
(Native American Indian Chief)
3 March 1840 – 21 September 1904 (Aged 64)
Born in Wallowa Valley, Oregon. Died in Colville Reservation, Washington.
Chief Joseph was educated in a Christian mission school and became the leader of a band of Nez Percé, a Native American tribe, indigenous to the Wallowa Valley in northeastern Oregon.
They were one of the most powerful and friendliest tribes along the Pacific.
However, after being faced with resettlement, Joseph led his tribe in an effort to escape to Canada.
Chief Joseph led his followers to cover almost 1,700 miles from Oregon to Montana while being pursued by thousands of troops.
However, they were finally surrounded by Montana’s Bear Paw Mountains, less than 40 miles from the Canadian border. The tribe was sent to a barren reservation in Indian Territory, now Oklahoma, where many died.
In 1885, Joseph and his tribe were allowed to go to a reservation in Washington. In 1903, Chief Joseph traveled to Washington, D.C., where he pleaded with President Theodore Roosevelt for his people to be able to return to their ancestral home.
His request was never granted. He died the next year, according to his doctor, from “of a broken heart”.
He was renowned for his principled resistance, his humane treatment of prisoners, and his concern for women, children, and the elderly.
Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdi
(Artist/Sculptor)
2 April 1834 – 4 October 1904 (Aged 70)
Born in Colmar, France. Died in Paris, France.
Bartholdi is best known for designing New York City’s Statue of Liberty to mark the Franco-American alliance of 1778.
The idea for it began in 1865 when he and several others conceived an idea for a monument as a gift to the United States from the people of France.
Bartholdi died of tuberculosis at the age of 70.
Anton Chekhov
(Author/Playwright)
29 January 1860 – 15 July 1904 (Aged 44)
Born in Taganrog, Russia. Died in Badenweiler, Germany.
Chekhov is considered to be among the greatest short story writers in history and was a leading playwright of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
At the age of 44, Chekhov died having been suffering from tuberculosis.
Raden Ajeng Kartini
(Journalist/Activist)
21 April 1879 – 17 September 1904 (Aged 25)
Born in Mayong, Java, Indonesia. Died in Rembang Regency, Indonesia.
Kartini was an Indonesian national heroine.
She became a pioneer for the education of girls and Indonesian women’s rights, encouraging empowerment and enlightenment for young women.
She opened the first Indonesian primary school for native girls, irrespective of social standing, in 1903.
