/their-last-words

A collection of people's last words, both famous and obscure

Primary LanguageJavaScript

Their Last Words

A collection of people's last words. It includes people both famous and obscure.

Contribute

Making a contribution is very easy:

  • Fork the repo.
  • Add a JSON file with the person's last words and brief biography. See specs below.
  • Check other pull requests to make sure you aren't submitting duplicates.
  • Make a pull request.

Specs

File Name

Each person's last words are stored in a JSON file inside collection/. Name the JSON file like this:

collection/{lastname-firstname}.json:

If the person has a middle name, then name the file like this: {lastname-firstname-middlename}.json:

File Structure

Use this structure for the JSON file.

{
	"lastName": "",
	"firstName": "", // If person has a middle name, include it here
	"lastWords": "",
	"translation": "", // If last words are in a non-English language, include English translation
	"biography": "", // One-sentence biography
	"born": "", // YYYY-MM-DD or YYYY. If date is unknown, omit this.
	"died": "", // YYYY-MM-DD or YYYT. See note above.
	"note": "" // Circumstance of person's last words, if known
}

If the person's last words were in English, translation can be omitted from the file.

Note: Please remove comments from your JSON files. JSON doesn't allow comments. The comments in the template above are for illustrative purposes only.

Example

collections/mozart-wolfgang-amadeus.json

{
	"lastName": "Mozart",
	"firstName": "Wolfgang Amadeus",
	"lastWords": "Der Geschmack des Todes ist auf meiner Zunge, ich fühle etwas, das nicht von dieser Welt ist.",
	"translation": "The taste of death is upon my lips … I feel something, that is not of this earth.",
	"biography": "Austrian composer",
	"born": "1756-01-27",
	"died": "1791-12-05",
	"note": "Spoken on his deathbed to his sister-in-law"
}

Edge Cases

Some people are known not by their given names, but by their stage names, nicknames, etc. Let's use their popular names.

One example: Everyone knows Norma Jeane Mortenson as Marilyn Monroe. So, her JSON file should be monroe-marilyn.json and not mortenson-norma-jeane.json. Inside the file, we should have "Marilyn" as "firstName" and "Monroe" as "lastName".

Another example: Most people know Pope John Paul II. Few know Karol Józef Wojtyła. So, his JSON file should be pope-john-paul-ii.json and not wojtyła-karol-józef.json. Inside the file, let's use Pope John Paul II as lastName and omit firstNamefor now.