Curated playlist
1941 births
- Bob DylanAt a 1966 Manchester concert, Bob Dylan told his band to play loud after a heckler called him Judas.
- Hayao MiyazakiHayao Miyazaki was told as a boy he would not live past 20. He went on to found Studio Ghibli in 1985.
- Paul SimonPaul Simon, the American singer-songwriter and guitarist, nearly gave one of his best-known songs the wrong name. While writing music for the film The Graduate, he toyed with calling a new song "Mrs. Roosevelt." Art Garfunkel passed the…
- George Clinton (funk musician)George Clinton says a flying metallic object once hit his car. The funk musician was riding with Bootsy Collins.
- Chas NewbyChas Newby was born Charles Newby on the 18th of June 1941. In December 1960 he played bass for the Beatles on a handful of nights. Then the job passed to someone else. How did a temporary player end up on stage with the band, and why did…
- Linda McCartneyLinda McCartney was the first woman to put a photograph on the cover of Rolling Stone.
- Fred WestFred West was at work in Stroud on the 24th of February 1994 when police arrived at his home, 25 Cromwell Street in Gloucester, with a search warrant. The officers were looking for one missing girl, the West family's eldest daughter,…
- Neil DiamondNeil Diamond, born on the 24th of January 1941, once stretched his food budget to just 35 cents a day. Decades later, the American singer-songwriter had sold more than 56.5 million records in the United States alone. That total places him…
- Yoshiyuki TominoMobile Suit Gundam was cut short in 1979 and still became one of anime's longest-running franchises.
- Neil AspinallNeil Aspinall quit accounting to drive the Beatles around in an old van. He paid £80 for it in 1961.
- Joan BaezJoan Baez was singing at a music festival called Bratislavská lýra in Communist Czechoslovakia in May 1989 when someone cut off her microphone. From the stage, she had just greeted members of Charter 77, a dissident human-rights group.…
- King TubbyKing Tubby was a Jamaican radio repairman who turned a mixing desk into an instrument.
- James HansenOn June 23, 1988, NASA scientist James Hansen told the U.S. Senate global warming had already been detected.
- Pete BestPete Best's Beatles bandmates could not fire him themselves, so they asked their manager to.
- Michael K. FrithMichael K. Frith designed Muppets, then used puppets to teach Afghan children about land mines.
- Flórián AlbertFlórián Albert won the 1967 Ballon d'Or without ever leaving his Budapest club, Ferencváros.
- Emmett TillEmmett Till was a boy from Chicago who was lynched in Mississippi in the summer of 1955. When his body came home, his mother, Mamie Till-Bradley, made a decision that would reach far beyond her family. Looking back, she said: "There was…
- Richard SpeckRichard Benjamin Speck entered a townhouse at 2319 East 100th Street in Chicago on the night of the 13th of July 1966. By the next morning, eight young women who lived there were dead. The building stood in the Jeffery Manor neighborhood…
- Kevin Crossley-HollandKevin Crossley-Holland failed his first Oxford exams, then found his lifelong passion. It was Anglo-Saxon literature.
- Slobodan MiloševićSlobodan Milošević died in a prison cell in The Hague while still on trial for war crimes.
- Frank McLynnFrank McLynn won a Classics scholarship to Oxford, then dropped Classics. He chose subjects he expected to neglect.
- John Lewis GaddisGeorge F. Kennan trusted historian John Lewis Gaddis with his papers, and the biography won a Pulitzer Prize.
- Charley RosenCharley Rosen went from Bronx schoolyards to coaching beside Phil Jackson. He also wrote more than two dozen books.