Curated playlist
1928 births
- Jack ScarisbrickHistorian Jack Scarisbrick argued that most English people did not want the Reformation.
- Stanley KubrickAfter copycat crimes and death threats, Stanley Kubrick pulled A Clockwork Orange from release in the United Kingdom.
- Jim LovellJim Lovell flew to the Moon twice and never set foot on it. His second trip, Apollo 13, nearly ended in disaster.
- Andy WarholAndy Warhol was shot at his Factory studio in June 1968 by a writer who had appeared in his film.
- Daniel HeartzDaniel Heartz devoted a 1969 book to Pierre Attaingnant, a French Royal Printer of Music.
- Che GuevaraChe Guevara signed Cuba's paper money with just one word: "Che." He was then president of the National Bank.
- Philip K. DickPhilip K. Dick died four months before Blade Runner opened. He never saw the film that made his name famous.
- Charles David KeelingA chemist who nearly became a concert pianist created the Keeling Curve, a graph of rising carbon dioxide.
- Noam ChomskyNoam Chomsky wrote his first article at age 10, about the fall of Barcelona.
- Frank BormanA stranger's telegram told Apollo 8's Frank Borman, "You saved 1968." He commanded the first crew to orbit the Moon.
- Allen Lawrence PopeAllen Lawrence Pope was carrying about 30 incriminating documents when Indonesian forces took him prisoner in May 1958. One of them was his own flight log. The papers turned a covert operation into a diplomatic crisis, and they deepened…
- Czesława KwokaCzesława Kwoka's Auschwitz photo survives though camp policy required such images destroyed.
- Al AronowitzJournalist Al Aronowitz introduced Bob Dylan to the Beatles in a New York City hotel room on August 28, 1964.
- John Forbes Nash Jr.John Forbes Nash Jr., an American mathematician, once mailed letters to embassies in Washington, D.C., announcing that he was founding a government. He signed them John Nash, Emperor of Antarctica, a title he believed he was in line to…
- James WatsonJames Watson put his name to a scientific paper that fills just two pages of the journal Nature, pages 737 and 738 of volume 171. Watson, an American molecular biologist, wrote it with Francis Crick in 1953. Its subject was DNA, and its…
- Bo DiddleyBo Diddley ignored his orders on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1955. Asked for "Sixteen Tons", he played his own hit.
- Bob CousyBob Cousy broke his right hand falling out of a tree, and it helped make him ambidextrous.
- Dolph SchayesDolph Schayes played almost a full season with his right arm in a cast. He learned to shoot left-handed instead.
- Osamu TezukaOsamu Tezuka was a licensed physician who never practiced medicine. He is the manga artist behind Astro Boy.
- Fred RogersFred Rogers weighed 143 pounds for most of his adult life, and he treated the number as a private message. In a 1998 Esquire profile, he told the writer Tom Junod, "the number 143 means 'I love you.' It takes one letter to say 'I' and four…
- Joan KellyIn 1976, historian Joan Kelly asked: Did women have a Renaissance? Her answer was no.
- John Stewart BellJohn Bell died in 1990 without knowing he had reportedly been nominated for a Nobel Prize.
- James Earl RayJames Earl Ray escaped from the Missouri State Penitentiary on the 23rd of April 1967 by hiding in a truck that carried bread out of the prison bakery. Thirty-one years later, on that same date, he died. In the years between, he became the…
- Frank RosenblattA 1969 book led many to wrongly think Rosenblatt's learning machines were fatally limited.
- Earl LloydEarl Lloyd became the first Black player in an NBA game on Halloween night, 1950. He scored six points.
- Gregory ScarpaGregory Scarpa Sr. sometimes left the numbers 666, the biblical number of the beast, on his victims' pagers. His longtime girlfriend Linda Schiro later recalled the habit. Scarpa was called the Grim Reaper and the Mad Hatter. He was a…