Curated playlist
1913 births
- Benjamin BrittenAfter fire destroyed his concert hall in 1969, Benjamin Britten had it rebuilt within a year.
- Richard NixonRichard Nixon was the only U.S. president to resign. He left office on the 9th of August, 1974, over Watergate.
- Vivien LeighWhen Vivien Leigh died in 1967, every central London theater went dark for an hour.
- Dr. HepcatIn 1948, Austin station KVET hired Dr. Hepcat as Texas's first black disc jockey. He chose the name himself.
- Albert CamusAlbert Camus thanked his old schoolteacher right after his mother when he won the Nobel Prize.
- Ralph EllisonA 1967 fire destroyed more than 300 pages of Ralph Ellison's second novel. He never finished it.
- Robert R. GilruthWhen Kennedy promised a Moon landing, Robert Gilruth was aghast.
- William Barrett (philosopher)William Barrett started college at City College of New York at fifteen. He later wrote philosophy for general readers.
- Willy BrandtWilly Brandt, later West Germany's chancellor, fled Nazi Germany under a false name. He made it legal in 1948.
- Jacobo ÁrbenzGuatemala's president Jacobo Árbenz gave up 1,700 acres of his own land under his land reform.
- Rosa ParksRosa Parks was forty-two years old on the evening she stayed in her seat on a Montgomery, Alabama bus, and she spent decades insisting that weariness had nothing to do with it. She rejected the picture of herself as old or physically worn…
- Alexey IvakhnenkoAlexey Ivakhnenko found that the noisier the data, the simpler the best model must be.
- Sergey MikhalkovSergey Mikhalkov wrote a friendly giant policeman for children, then anthems for two countries.
- Leônidas (footballer, born 1913)On the 13th of November 1948, Leônidas da Silva scored a bicycle kick for São Paulo in an 8-0 rout of Juventus. A camera caught the play and the goal. That photograph is regarded as the most famous picture of him. Leônidas was a Brazilian…
- Vince LombardiVince Lombardi, the football coach, once dreamed of becoming a priest. He attended Mass every day of his adult life.
- Paul ErdősPaul Erdős, the Hungarian mathematician born in 1913, spent most of his adult life living out of a suitcase. Time magazine called him "The Oddball's Oddball". His biographer Paul Hoffman went further and described him as "probably the most…