December 1, 2025
Wolfgang Beltracchi [bel-trah-kee] (b. 1951) is a German former art forger and visual artist who has admitted to forging hundreds of paintings in an international art scam netting millions of euros. Beltracchi, together with his wife Helene, sold forgeries of alleged works by famous artists, including Max Ernst, Heinrich Campendonk, Fernand Léger, and Kees van Dongen. Though he was found guilty for forging 14 works of art that sold for a combined $45m (£28.6m), he claims to have faked ‘about 50’ artists. The total estimated profits Beltracchi made from his forgeries surpasses $100m.
In 2011, after a 40-day trial, Beltracchi was found guilty and sentenced to six years in a German prison. His wife, Helene, was given a four-year sentence, and both were ordered to pay millions in restitution. Beltracchi was freed in 2015, having served just over three years in prison. He is today a successful artist who sells his paintings and sculptures to international collectors without the protection of art makers and the international art market.
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September 18, 2025
John Gall (1925-2014) was an American author, scholar, and pediatrician. Gall is known for his 1975 book ‘General Systemantics’ (republished two years later as ‘Systemantics: How Systems Work and Especially How They Fail’).
Gall’s Law is derived from Systemantics and states: ‘A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked. A complex system designed from scratch never works and cannot be patched up to make it work. You have to start over with a working simple system.’
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March 21, 2024
Catturd (b. 1964) is the online identity of right-wing American Twitter shitposter and Internet troll Phillip Buchanan. The account is known for its scatological humor, as well as spreading conspiracy theories and disinformation. Buchanan lives in Wewahitchka, Florida, on a ‘ranch in the middle of nowhere.’
He is thrice-divorced. He married his first wife, whom he met at a gym when she was 19 and he was in his early twenties, in 1986. The marriage was annulled in 1988. By 1991, Buchanan had married and divorced another woman. His third marriage happened a few years later, while he was working at a post office. They parted in 1998 and divorced in 2002. Buchanan claims to have served in the US Army. In the 90s, he filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy, and later fronted a band in Tallahassee, Florida.
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January 2, 2023
Tobias Schneebaum (1922 – 2005) was an American artist, anthropologist, and AIDS activist. He is best known for his experiences living and traveling among the Harakmbut people of Peru, and the Asmat people of Papua, Indonesia.
Schneebaum was born into a family of Jewish emigres from Poland in New York City. Schneebaum’s father Jacob (known as Yankle) emigrated to America from Poland just before World War I, in which he served in order to get U.S. citizenship. His mother, Riftcha, emigrated in 1913. He was born as Toivele Schneebaum on Manhattan’s Lower East Side and grew up in Brooklyn. A school official later changed this to Theodore Schneebaum, by which he was known by friends and family throughout his childhood. (He later changed his name legally to Tobias.)
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July 25, 2022
Brewster Kahle [keyl] (b. 1960) is an American digital librarian, a computer engineer, Internet entrepreneur, and advocate of universal access to all knowledge. Kahle founded the Internet Archive and Alexa Internet. In 2012 he was inducted into the Internet Hall of Fame.
Kahle and his wife, Mary Austin, run the Kahle/Austin Foundation. The Foundation supports the Free Software Foundation for its GNU project, among other projects.
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June 28, 2021
Ever Meulen [myoo-lin] (born Eddy Vermeulen in 1946) is a Belgian illustrator, cartoonist, caricaturist and comic strip artist. His pseudonym is based on his name E. Vermeulen.
Vermeulen studied graphic arts at the Sint-Lucas School of Architecture in Ghent and Brussels. He debuted in 1970, working for the magazine ‘Humo,’ where he drew both comics (‘Balthazar de Groene Steenvreter’ (‘Balthasar the Green Stone Eater’) and ‘Piet Peuk’ (‘Pete Stub’)), as well as cover illustrations, caricatures and illustrations to articles. When ‘Humo’ published books or CDs, Meulen often provided the cover illustration.
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May 16, 2021
Larry LeGaspi (1950 – 2001) was an American fashion designer best known for creating signature designs worn by Labelle, Kiss, Grace Jones, George Clinton and Funkadelic, Divine, and other notables in the 1970s and 1980s.
Legaspi was born in Lakewood Township, New Jersey, and attended the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City. He subsequently opened his own studio and boutique, Moonstone, where he sold his Art Deco-inspired futuristic styles in a space decorated with a moon and stars motif.
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March 8, 2021
Hazel Scott (1920 – 1981) was a Trinidadian-born jazz and classical pianist, singer, and actor. She was a critically acclaimed performing artist and an outspoken critic of racial discrimination and segregation. She used her influence to improve the representation of Black Americans in film.
Born in Port of Spain, Scott moved to New York City with her mother at the age of four. Scott was a child musical prodigy, receiving scholarships to study at the Juilliard School when she was eight. In her teens, she performed in a jazz band. She also performed on the radio.
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February 8, 2021
Neil Cicierega [sis-uh-ree-guh] (b. 1986) is an American comedian, actor, filmmaker, singer, musician, songwriter, puppeteer, artist, and animator.
He is best known as the creator of a genre of Flash animation he termed ‘Animutation,’ the ‘Harry Potter’ puppet parody series ‘Potter Puppet Pals,’ and several music albums under the name Lemon Demon. He also released a series of mashup albums under his own name that have since gained a cult following.
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January 29, 2021
Wassily Kandinsky [kan-din-skee] (1866 – 1944) was a Russian painter, printmaker and art theorist. He was a major figure in modern art and painted some of the first modern abstract works. His art changed several times during his life. It was fauvist, abstract, expressionist and constructivist in turn.
He was interested in geometry in art and philosophy. The creative aspect of the form is expressed by a descending series of circles, triangles and squares. Kandinsky’s creation of abstract work followed a long period of development and maturation of intense thought based on his artistic experiences. He called this devotion to inner beauty, fervor of spirit, and spiritual desire inner necessity.
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January 18, 2021
Joan Quigley (1927 – 2014), of San Francisco, was an astrologer best known for her astrological advice to the Reagan White House in the 1980s. Quigley was born in Kansas City, Missouri.
She was called on by First Lady Nancy Reagan in 1981 after John Hinckley’s attempted assassination of the president, and stayed on as the White House astrologer in secret until being outed in 1988 by ousted former chief of staff Donald Regan.
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August 13, 2020
Robert Beck, born Robert Lee Maupin, (1918 – 1992), better known as Iceberg Slim, was an American pimp who subsequently became an influential author among a primarily African-American readership.
Scottish author Irvine Welsh said ‘Iceberg Slim did for the pimp what Jean Genet did for the homosexual and thief and William Burroughs did for the junkie: he articulated the thoughts and feelings of someone who had been there. The big difference is that they were white.’
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