Curated category
1939 births
- Michiyo YasudaMichiyo Yasuda spent five decades making colours think. Her work appears in some of the most beloved animated films ever made, from Nausicaä of the Valley of…
- Ian McKellenIan McKellen was nine years old when his main Christmas present arrived: a fold-away wood and bakelite Victorian theatre from Pollocks Toy Theatres, complete…
- Marvin GayeOn the 1st of April 1984, in a house in the Western Heights area of West Adams in Los Angeles, Marvin Gaye was shot twice by his own father.
- Retha WarnickeRetha Warnicke believes that Anne Boleyn was not born in 1501, as most historians long assumed, but in the summer of 1507.
- Robert HilburnRobert Hilburn was born Charles Robert Nelms on the 25th of September 1939, in Natchitoches, Louisiana. He would go on to spend more than thirty years as the…
- Lambert SchmithausenLambert Schmithausen was born on the 17th of November 1939 in Cologne, Germany, and went on to become one of the most methodical voices in Buddhist…
- Joris BorghoutsJoris Frans Borghouts titled his 1971 doctoral dissertation The magical texts of Papyrus Leiden I 348, earning his degree at Leiden University.
- Francis Ford CoppolaFrancis Ford Coppola illegally hired a grave robber to supply real human corpses as props, and oversaw the ritualistic killing of a water buffalo.
- Phil SpectorPhil Spector's father chose three words for his own gravestone: "To Know Him Was To Love Him." His son Harvey, nine years old when Benjamin Spector died by…
- John F. MarszalekJohn F. Marszalek has spent a career doing what most historians only dream of: getting close enough to a great figure that his own name becomes inseparable…
- Michael MoorcockMichael Moorcock was born on the 18th of December 1939 in Mitcham, Surrey, and before he ever entered primary school he had already read Edgar Rice…
- Stanislav PetrovStanislav Yevgrafovich Petrov was alone at a command console when the Soviet Union's most sensitive nuclear early-warning system told him the world was about…
- Fritjof CapraFritjof Capra was born on the 1st of February 1939 in Vienna, Austria. He pursued his doctoral studies at the University of Vienna and earned a PhD in…
- Jimmie NicolJames George Nicol stood on a rostrum at the KB Hallen in Copenhagen on the 4th of June 1964. He wore a suit altered to fit his frame and sported a moptop…
- Joel WhitburnJoel Carver Whitburn was born on the 29th of November 1939 in Wauwatosa, Wisconsin, and by the time he died on the 14th of June 2022, he had done something…