Born on December 25, 1970

Michael Peto spent the 1930s documenting Europe's slide into fascism with a camera hidden under his coat—arrested twice, beaten once, photos smuggled out in loaves of bread. Born in Hungary as Miklós Petö, he fled to England in 1940 with nothing but negatives sewn into his jacket lining. His postwar work captured Churchill's last rallies, the Beatles' first TV appearance, and 10 Downing Street on the morning Macmillan resigned. But he never stopped printing those grainy 1936 Berlin street shots. Kept them in his darkroom until the end. "So people remember," he told his son, "what polite society looks like before it isn't."