No way.
Actually, Anne Frank apparently did hope her diary would be read some day, and she had ambitions to be some kind of journalist, which is why her father was moved to publish it.
That it would be the phenomenon it was, and she would become famous after her death was something I don’t think she ever imagined, though.
I wonder what she would have said if she’d been able to write one more entry after experiencing a camp first hand. “Fuck what I said before. Some people are just evil”?
From an overseas perspective, Anna Frank is really the only one who would be known to more than the tiniest handful of people here.
The first person to come to mind is Terri Schiavo. And judging by her diagnosis (persistent vegetative state), she never even knew how famous she’d become all over the world.
She’s one of maybe four people mentioned in this thread so far that I’ve actually heard of and probably the one who has the most significant legacy.
Yes. I found most of the others interesting but I knew practically nothing about them. I’d expect the average person to have heard of Ann Frank, but the rest, not so much. It’s been interesting reading about them though.
Anna Frank is famous for writing a book. Yes, the circumstances may have been unusual to say the least, but her fame is no less “accidental” than any other writer. Don’t diminish her talent.
Look at it this way: if her diary had been poorly-written, how famous would she have gotten?
But she didn’t write a book intended for publication:quite the opposite, it was her diary. No one is questioning her talent, just her intent.
About Jessica McClure, I remember those days and hours she was trapped. On the last day, Friday, I was working in a place with no radio or outside contact except for a phone. I was kind of anxious so I called the TV station to see if Jessica was out yet. The lady on the phone was nice, and checked for me saying that no, she wasn’t rescued yet. And then she told me it was nice to get a call from someone who cared about the kid, because a number of women had called to complain about TV updates interruppting their soap operas. To hell with a child in danger I guess.
So what? She’s famous for creating a work of art. Whether she had originally intended for other people to see it is immaterial.
Don’t think she had much writing talent to be honest and yes, I agree she falls into the “accidentally famous category”
One person who certainly had little talent and is now famous is Cecilia Giménez
I tend to agree with the rather odd conclusion that her qualification does seem to hinge on whether she was a talented writer whose fame was amplified by circumstance, or whether she was a mediocre writer whose fame was entirely attributable to circumstance.
I think the OP might need to specify whether a contender’s name must be know in order to qualify. If not, then TianAnMen tank guy might be a contender if Anne Frank were disqualified. Tank guy’s fame is attributable to his actions, but surely he had no way of knowing that he would be the one who happened to be in the right place at the right time to become such an iconic symbol.
There are other people such as the Vietnam War’s “napalm girl” Phan Thi Kim Phuc who fall into a similar category, but I think tank guy is the most famous, known by (by now) around a billion Chinese if we’re going by global numbers.
except most Chinese don’t evenknow about the event.
mc
I’m aware of the Chinese government’s efforts to censor this, which is why I said around a billion (ok, an exaggeration, given the large rural population) Chinese know about it by now. The only evidence that article presents about knowledge of the image in China is the attempt to censor it; and anecdotal data from a foreign journalist showing the photo to a few BeiDa students in 2005 - students who, if they had seen a banned picture, would know that admitting to having seen it could get them in serious trouble. Given the power of the internet by 2017, I’d like to see some much more convincing evidence before I believe that the majority of Chinese people have not seen this image.
No offense, but you really need to step away from the computer and join real life for a while.
Molly Brown. She was rich, but largely unknown.
In the medical world, there some people known for diseases and conditions they had. Typhoid Mary has been mentioned. Joseph Merrick (the Elephant Man), Phineas Gage (victim whose personality dramatically changed after a brain injury), Henrietta Lacks (cancer patient and progenitor of the HeLa cell line), Gaëtan Dugas (formerly believed to be “patient zero” of the AIDS epidemic). I wouldn’t include Lou Gehrig because he was already famous.
ETA: I see now that ioioio already mentioned Henrietta Lacks.
In the iconic image category, we also have the National Geographic “Afghan Girl with Green Eyes”. Few people know her name is Sharbat Gula, but her face is of course very famous.
That’s a good call, if the OP’s conditions are met without the actual name being known. Or am I biased from being old enough to have seen the movie when it came out?