The Park-Bench Immigrant Behind Journalism's Top Prize

Joseph Pulitzer was born in Hungary. As a teenager he tried to join several European armies, including Austrian, British and French forces, but was turned away because of his poor eyesight. He then crossed the Atlantic and reached the United States in September 1864, during the American Civil War.

In New York he enlisted in the Union army on his own account, keeping the enlistment bounty rather than handing it over to an agent. He served briefly in a cavalry unit and was honourably discharged when the war ended in 1865.

The peace left him with almost nothing. According to Mental Floss, he was nearly penniless in New York and slept on park benches before setting off for St. Louis. At East St. Louis he lacked the money to cross the Mississippi, so he shovelled coal on a ferry in return for passage. In St. Louis he took whatever work he could find: waiting tables, tending mules, and digging graves during the cholera epidemic of 1866.

His break came through a chess game. A match he commented on at a St. Louis library led to a job as a reporter at the German-language Westliche Post, where he later became a part-owner. From there he moved into politics, serving in the Missouri legislature and later as a congressman from New York.

He went on to own the New York World and became one of the most influential newspaper publishers in the country. He died in 1911 aboard his yacht in Charleston Harbor at the age of 64, and the prizes that bear his name were created from his bequest.