Curated playlist
1921 births
- Hans L. TrefousseHans Trefousse once argued for eleven hours to make a Nazi commander surrender in Leipzig.
- D. Brainerd HolmesD. Brainerd Holmes was hired in 1961 to lead NASA's crewed spaceflight program. He oversaw Mercury.
- SuhartoSuharto ruled Indonesia for 31 years, longer than any other president. He grew up poor, passed between relatives.
- Prince Philip, Duke of EdinburghPrince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, was born on a dining room table. The date was the 10th of June 1921, and the place was Mon Repos, a villa on the Greek island of Corfu. Before he turned two, he was carried out of Greece in a fruit box. He…
- Samuel C. PhillipsSamuel C. Phillips froze the Minuteman missile's design knowing its range was 1,000 miles short.
- Silvio GazzanigaSilvio Gazzaniga began sculpting the World Cup trophy before FIFA had agreed to anything.
- Geoffrey EltonGeoffrey Elton argued that Thomas Cromwell, more than Henry VIII, drove a revolution in English government.
- Walter Kaufmann (philosopher)At eleven, Walter Kaufmann converted from Lutheranism to Judaism. He later learned all four grandparents were Jewish.
- Andrei SakharovAndrei Sakharov built the Soviet Union's most devastating weapon, then spent his life trying to limit its damage.
- Raymond WilliamsA teenage visit to a Soviet pavilion in Paris led Raymond Williams to read Karl Marx.
- Yitzhak NavonYitzhak Navon, Israel's fifth president, was the first Sephardi Jew to hold the office. Nobody ran against him in 1978.
- John MoneyJohn Money was a New Zealand American psychologist and sexologist whose name is attached to a phrase he never coined. Many writers credit him with the term gender identity. He did not invent it. What he did invent, and what he advised for…
- Geoffrey KirkGeoffrey Kirk commanded a small fishing boat in the Aegean before he became a Homer scholar.
- Saul ZaentzSaul Zaentz won three Best Picture Oscars, a feat almost no one else in Hollywood has matched.
- Maxime FagetEngineer Max Faget decided a spacecraft returning from orbit should look nothing like an aircraft.