Curated playlist
1929 births
- Martin Luther King Jr.Martin Luther King Jr. died at the age of 39, yet his autopsy showed the heart of a 60 year old, according to his biographer Taylor Branch. Branch attributed the damage to stress. The causes were many. King was jailed repeatedly, attacked…
- James McDivittOn Gemini 4, James McDivitt had to force a jammed hatch latch back into place with his fingers.
- Raymond L. GarthoffRaymond Garthoff rejected the 1976 Team B claim that Soviet doctrine saw nuclear war as winnable.
- Jacqueline Kennedy OnassisJacqueline Kennedy Onassis appeared 27 times on the annual Gallup list of the ten most admired people of the second half of the twentieth century. Only Billy Graham and Queen Elizabeth II appeared more often. No American president matched…
- Audrey HepburnAudrey Hepburn gave underground concerts to raise money for the Dutch resistance. She was a teenager in occupied Arnhem.
- Djalma SantosDjalma Santos sat out the 1958 World Cup until the final, then made the All-Star Team. Brazil beat Sweden 5-2.
- Sándor KocsisSándor Kocsis scored 11 goals at the 1954 World Cup but missed in the final. Hungary lost 3-2 to West Germany.
- Hafizullah AminHafizullah Amin believed Soviet troops were there to protect him as they stormed his palace.
- Ursula K. Le GuinUrsula K. Le Guin was eleven years old when she mailed her first short story to Astounding Science Fiction. The magazine sent it back. She then submitted nothing else for ten years. Nearly sixty years of publishing lay ahead of her after…
- Imelda MarcosImelda Marcos sang to a loyal crowd from a palace balcony as her government collapsed. Hours later she fled to Hawaii.
- Thomas J. Kelly (aerospace engineer)Ice clogged a fuel line on the Moon lander while Neil Armstrong was already on the surface.
- Helmut RahnHelmut Rahn scored the winning goal in the 1954 World Cup final with his weaker left foot.
- Babrak KarmalBabrak Karmal led Afghanistan but could not order his own intelligence service.
- Anne FrankAnne Frank appears in exactly one piece of film, and it lasts about twenty seconds. The silent clip was shot on the 22nd of July 1941 and records a neighbour's wedding in Amsterdam. At the nine-second mark, a girl of 12 leans out of a…
- Gordon MooreMoore's law began as a ten-year forecast that Gordon Moore wrote for a magazine. He never meant it as a law.
- Richard F. Gordon Jr.Richard Gordon orbited the Moon 45 times on Apollo 12 but never walked on it.
- Peter BranscombePeter Branscombe first saw Vienna as a soldier, not a scholar. It shaped his next five decades of work.
- Grace KellyGrace Kelly appeared on the cover of Time on the 31st of January 1955, and the magazine already had a name for her. It called her the Girl in White Gloves. The label came from the prim, noticeable gloves she wore in public, and reporters…
- Hubert DreyfusIn 1964, the RAND Corporation hired philosopher Hubert Dreyfus to review artificial intelligence.
- Lev YashinLev Yashin is the only goalkeeper to win the Ballon d'Or. The Soviet keeper took the award in 1963.
- Edison DenisovEdison Denisov trained as a mathematician before he wrote a note of music. Shostakovich gave him composition lessons.
- Mohamed Al-FayedMohamed Al-Fayed was nineteen years old when he sold bottles of Coca-Cola on the streets of Alexandria. He had been born in Egypt on the 27th of January 1929. By the end of his life he owned the Hôtel Ritz Paris, the Harrods department…
- Whitey BulgerOn the 22nd of June 2011, agents in Santa Monica, California, used a ruse to lure an 81-year-old man out of his apartment. They arrested him without incident. He was James Joseph "Whitey" Bulger Jr., who had once led the Winter Hill Gang,…
- Joe GalloJoe Gallo was shot dead at Umbertos Clam House in New York's Little Italy. It happened at around 4:30 in the morning on the 7th of April 1972, his 43rd birthday. Gallo, nicknamed "Crazy Joe", was a captain in the Colombo crime family of…
- Jean BaudrillardJean Baudrillard wrote on an old typewriter and never at the computer. He insisted that a computer is not "merely a handier and more complex kind of typewriter", and he wanted what he called a "physical relation to writing". The habit…
- Barbara RemingtonTolkien said Barbara Remington's cover showed what looked like pumpkins in a tree.
- George SteinerGeorge Steiner was born Francis George Steiner on the 23rd of April 1929. He was a literary critic, essayist, philosopher, novelist and educator, and he is described as both French and American. Harriet Harvey-Wood, a former literature…
- Antonio CarbajalAntonio Carbajal played in five World Cups, and no footballer had done that before him.