Curated playlist
1937 births
- Jack NicholsonJack Nicholson improvised one line in the 1980 horror film The Shining, and it was not in the script.
- Colin PowellOn the 5th of February 2003, Colin Powell addressed the United Nations Security Council. He told the council: "there can be no doubt that Saddam Hussein has biological weapons and the capability to rapidly produce more, many more." The…
- Robert Lucas Jr.Robert Lucas's divorce deal gave his ex-wife half of any Nobel Prize awarded before October 31, 1995.
- Anthony HopkinsAnthony Hopkins once delivered a seven-page courtroom speech in a single take on the set of Steven Spielberg's Amistad. The crew was astonished. Spielberg was so overawed that he could not bring himself to call the actor Tony, and he…
- Dustin HoffmanWhen Dustin Hoffman told his family he wanted to be an actor, his Aunt Pearl had a ready answer. "You can't be an actor. You are not good-looking enough." Hoffman was born in Los Angeles in 1937, and her prediction aged badly. He went on…
- Hunter S. ThompsonHunter S. Thompson's Gonzo style began as a Kentucky Derby deadline scramble. He mailed pages ripped from his notebook.
- Thomas PynchonThomas Pynchon told his agent in April 1964 that he had four novels in progress at once. If they came out on paper anything like they looked inside his head, he wrote, the result would be "the literary event of the millennium." The writer…
- Jane FondaJane Fonda sat on a North Vietnamese anti-aircraft gun during a 1972 visit to Hanoi, and a photograph of that moment outraged a large number of Americans. It earned her a nickname that has followed her for decades: Hanoi Jane. For many…
- Saddam HusseinSaddam Hussein ended his time as a fugitive in a hole in the ground near a farmhouse in Ad-Dawr, close to his birthplace of Tikrit. American forces found him there on the 13th of December 2003. When he appeared on video, he wore a full…
- Morgan FreemanIn January 2010, Morgan Freeman became the voice that opened the CBS Evening News, replacing Walter Cronkite in that spot. The network said it wanted consistency across the introductions to its regular news broadcasts and special reports.…
- Bill CosbyBill Cosby holds the record for the most Grammy Awards for Best Comedy Album, with seven wins. To a vast television audience, he was also Cliff Huxtable, the father at the center of The Cosby Show. That role earned him a reputation as…
- Jasper GriffinAn Oxford classicist coined a word that chemists now use. Jasper Griffin's word "agostic" was adopted by Malcolm Green.
- Oswyn MurrayWhen his former student became prime minister in 2018, Oswyn Murray sent him a formal Roman breakup.
- Ridley ScottRidley Scott once ranked 31st out of 31 in his school class. He later kept that report on his office wall.
- Jonathan HalesJonathan Hales finished the Attack of the Clones script less than a week before filming began.
- Tom StoppardTom Stoppard arrived in England knowing not a word of Czech. He fled Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia as a child.
- Richard GombrichRichard Gombrich, a British Indologist born on the 17th of July 1937, did something unusual as a student for a future scholar of ancient India. While still an undergraduate, he helped edit a volume of papers by the philosopher Karl Popper,…
- Roger ZelaznyA story by Roger Zelazny traveled to Mars in 2008. "A Rose for Ecclesiastes" rode on a DVD aboard the Phoenix lander.
- Amos TverskyAmos Tversky ran toward a live explosive to save a frozen soldier. The shrapnel stayed in his body for life.
- Richard MarquandRichard Marquand got the Return of the Jedi job after George Lucas admired Eye of the Needle.
- Robert Holmes à CourtRobert Holmes à Court often made money from takeover bids that failed.
- Ratan TataRatan Tata spent three days standing outside the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel while an armed operation played out inside. The attack came in November 2008, carried out by terrorists from the Pakistan-based group Lashkar-e-Taiba. Many lives were…
- Anatoly KhazanovAnatoly Khazanov argued under Soviet censorship that nomads were never self-sufficient.
- Valentina TereshkovaValentina Tereshkova, a former textile worker, orbited Earth 48 times in 1963. She was 26 and skydived as a hobby.
- Billy Dee WilliamsBilly Dee Williams became an actor only to pay for paints. He had wanted to be a painter.
- Eric ChristiansenHistorian Eric Christiansen won his Oxford fellowship with a thesis on modern Spain.