Curated playlist
1901 births
- Louis ArmstrongLouis Armstrong fired a blank from his stepfather's gun and spent the night in juvenile court.
- Clark GableA Warner Bros. executive once rejected Clark Gable because his ears were too big. He said Gable looked like an ape.
- Langston HughesLangston Hughes's ashes rest beneath the floor of a Harlem research center.
- Enrico FermiEnrico Fermi won a Nobel Prize partly for new elements that were really fission products.
- Walt DisneyIn 1928, Walt Disney lost his hit cartoon rabbit Oswald to Universal. Only Ub Iwerks stayed, and Mickey Mouse followed.
- Alfred CobbanAlfred Cobban used a 1954 London lecture to call a famous view of the French Revolution a myth.
- Werner HeisenbergA spy once carried a pistol to a Werner Heisenberg lecture, ready to shoot him. Moe Berg did not fire.
- C. L. R. JamesC. L. R. James sent a book on Moby-Dick to every U.S. senator. He wrote it while detained on Ellis Island in 1953.
- Arthur Samuel (computer scientist)Arthur Samuel's checkers program moved IBM's stock up 15 points in a single night. He coined "machine learning" in 1959.
- HirohitoEmperor Hirohito's first radio broadcast announced Japan's defeat.
- Robert BressonRobert Bresson made only thirteen feature films, yet seven made a 2012 Sight and Sound list. No other director had more.
- Jacques LacanIn 1963, psychoanalysts stripped Jacques Lacan of the right to train new analysts.
- SukarnoYouth leaders took Sukarno from his house by force to make him declare independence.
- Lady MountbattenEdwina Cynthia Annette Mountbatten died in her sleep on the 21st of February 1960, aged 58, while on an inspection tour in Jesselton, North Borneo. She was not at a palace or a country estate. She was on the road, working for the St John…
- Linus PaulingLinus Pauling left high school without a diploma. He later won two unshared Nobel Prizes, a first in history.