Curated playlist
1895 births
- Milton WaldmanMilton Waldman was an American author and publisher, and he is remembered chiefly for a book he did not publish. The book was not an ordinary one. J. R. R. Tolkien wanted a single publisher to take his vast legendarium and The Lord of the…
- George VIGeorge VI, known to his family as Bertie, wrote an anguished line in his diary about the day before his brother gave up the crown. He had gone to London to tell his mother, Queen Mary, what had happened. His entry read: "When I told her…
- Phillip FormanJudge Phillip Forman swore in Albert Einstein as an American citizen in 1940. He later did the same for Kurt Godel.
- Buster KeatonBuster Keaton's deadpan face began when he stopped laughing in his father's vaudeville act.
- Edmund WilsonCritic Edmund Wilson mailed strangers a postcard listing over two dozen things he would not do.
- Mikhail BakhtinMikhail Bakhtin once tore up his own book prospectus to roll cigarettes.
- Sergei YeseninPoet Sergei Yesenin wrote his farewell poem in his own blood. He was found dead in a Leningrad hotel room at thirty.
- T. D. KendrickT. D. Kendrick's own daughter did not know he was her father. He was a British Museum archaeologist.
- Walter Bedell SmithWalter Bedell Smith signed Italy's armistice under an olive tree in Sicily. It was September 3, 1943.
- George HalasGeorge Halas skipped the SS Eastland in 1915 because he was running late. The ship capsized, killing 844 passengers.
- Paul HindemithJoseph Goebbels publicly called composer Paul Hindemith an "atonal noisemaker" in December 1934.
- Lewis MumfordLewis Mumford argued the clock, not the steam engine, drove the Industrial Revolution. He never finished college.
- Richard SorgeRichard Sorge arrived in Japan as a Nazi journalist while spying for Moscow. German diplomats trusted him for years.