Curated playlist
1915 births
- Frank SinatraFrank Sinatra was dropped by his record label in 1952. A movie role then brought him back to the top.
- Orson WellesOrson Welles burned ten reels of his own Don Quixote film. He felt the 1969 Moon landings made its ending obsolete.
- Billie HolidayBillie Holiday died with seventy cents in the bank. She earned $250,000 in the three years before her 1947 arrest.
- Saul BellowSaul Bellow learned he had entered the U.S. illegally as a child when he tried to enlist. He became a citizen in 1941.
- Arthur MillerArthur Miller wrote Death of a Salesman in less than six weeks. He finished the first act in less than a day.
- Paul SamuelsonPaul Samuelson said he was born as an economist at age sixteen. It happened in a 1932 Chicago lecture on Malthus.
- Evgeny LifshitzEvgeny Lifshitz was only the second person to pass Lev Landau's Theoretical Minimum exam. Just 43 people ever did.
- Paul CastellanoPaul Castellano, head of the Gambino crime family of New York City, was shot dead outside Sparks Steak House in Manhattan at around 5:26 pm on Monday, the 16th of December 1985. He had run the family since 1976. By any measure, he was one…
- Peter BergmannPeter Bergmann's mother wrote to Einstein in 1933 asking him to take her son as a student.
- Harrison StormsAfter the Apollo 1 fire, NASA demanded that North American remove Harrison Storms. His boss chose to reassign him.
- Jerome WiesnerJerome Wiesner, Kennedy's science advisor, told Wernher von Braun "No, that's no good" in front of the press.
- Roland BarthesRoland Barthes was walking home through the streets of Paris on the 25th of February 1980 when the driver of a laundry van knocked him down. A month later, on the 26th of March, he died from the pulmonary complications that followed. He…
- Anna SchwartzA Federal Reserve official told Anna Schwartz, "Regarding the Great Depression, you're right."
- Leigh BrackettLeigh Brackett's last draft of a Star Wars sequel was thrown out. She still received a screenplay credit.
- Abba EbanAbba Eban changed his first name to the Hebrew word for "Father."
- Alan WattsAlan Watts resigned as an Episcopal priest in August 1950. He later became a leading voice of Zen in America.
- Georgy SviridovMillions of Soviet viewers heard Georgy Sviridov's music every evening without knowing his name.