Curated playlist
1949 births
- François-Xavier DillmannFrançois-Xavier Dillmann was born on the 27th of November 1949, and he has spent his career doing something very few scholars attempt: mastering the language, religion, and runic inscriptions of medieval Scandinavia from a distinctly…
- Kentarō HanedaFans knew Kentarō Haneda by the nickname Haneken, a name that spread across the communities he worked for. He died of liver cancer on the 2nd of June 2007, at the age of 58. His composing career stretched from the late 1970s through the…
- Meryl StreepMeryl Streep walked into a casting meeting with Dino De Laurentiis in 1976, hoping to audition for his King Kong remake. De Laurentiis looked at her and said, in Italian, to his son: "This is so ugly. Why did you bring me this?" What he…
- Elizabeth WarrenElizabeth Warren once described her childhood family as teetering "on the ragged edge of the middle class" and "kind of hanging on at the edges by our fingernails." Born Elizabeth Ann Herring in Oklahoma City on the 22nd of June 1949, she…
- Tim DysonTim Dyson's 2018 book traces India's population from the earliest modern humans to the present day. Published by Oxford University Press, "A Population History of India" spans human settlement on the subcontinent across many thousands of…
- Nicholas CraftsNicholas Francis Robert Crafts entered the world on the 9th of March 1949 in Nottingham, England. He attended Brunts Grammar School in Mansfield before moving to Trinity College Cambridge. The young student graduated with a Bachelor of…
- Marcus JunkelmannMarcus Junkelmann grew up inside a palace. Born on the 2nd of October 1949 in Munich, he spent his formative years at Lustheim Palace in Schleißheim, where his family had taken up residence. His father, Erich Junkelmann, was an art…
- Gil Scott-HeronGil Scott-Heron was born on the 1st of April, 1949, in Chicago, and by the time he died on the 27th of May, 2011, he had changed American music in ways that are still being counted. He is remembered as a poet, a singer, a novelist, and a…
- John Madden (director)John Philip Madden, born on the 8th of April 1949 in Portsmouth, Hampshire, walked onto one of the most competitive nights in Hollywood history and came away with the biggest prize in film. The year was 1999. The ceremony was the 71st…
- Artis GilmoreArtis Gilmore stood 7 feet 2 inches tall and played 670 consecutive professional basketball games without missing a single one. Born on the 21st of September, 1949, in Chipley, Florida, Gilmore grew up as one of 10 children in a family…
- John Guy (historian)John Alexander Guy was born on the 16th of January 1949 in Warragul, Victoria, Australia, and went on to become one of Britain's most celebrated historians of the Tudor period. His journey began at the other end of the world, in a country…
- Lawrence KasdanLawrence Kasdan was late for a movie in 1963, and that lateness changed everything. His brother, Mark, took him to see David Lean's Lawrence of Arabia, and when they arrived a few minutes late, Mark insisted they wait six hours for the…
- David W. BlightDavid William Blight was born on the 21st of March 1949, in Flint, Michigan, where his family lived in a mobile home park. That beginning gives no hint of the archives he would eventually command or the biographies he would write. Personal…
- Simon CallowSimon Callow was born on the 15th of June 1949 in Streatham, South London, and his path into acting began not in a classroom or a casting office, but with a fan letter. A teenage Callow wrote to Laurence Olivier, then the artistic director…
- Arsène WengerArsène Wenger was born on the 22nd of October 1949 in Strasbourg, in the Alsace region of France, the youngest of three children. His father Alphonse had been conscripted by force into the German Army, sent to fight on the Eastern Front at…
- Teófilo CubillasTeófilo Cubillas was born on the 8th of March 1949, in Peru, and by the time he was 20 years old, Pelé himself had declared him his successor. That is not a small thing. Pelé, still active and at the height of his powers after winning the…
- Gregg PopovichGregg Popovich was born on the 28th of January 1949 in East Chicago, Indiana, the son of a Serbian father and a Croatian mother. Decades later, a group of scientists would name a plant gene after him. The gene, discovered in columbine…
- Alla PugachevaAlla Pugacheva sold more than 250 million records over the course of her career. That number places her not in a regional category but in a conversation with the biggest-selling artists the world has ever produced. Yet outside the former…
- Moto HagioMoto Hagio was born on the 12th of May 1949 in Ōmuta, Fukuoka, the second of four siblings, to a father who worked the docks and a mother who kept the home. Her parents moved the family repeatedly between Ōmuta and Suita in Osaka…
- Shigeru MatsuzakiShigeru Matsuzaki is a Japanese singer and actor whose voice reached places he never expected. A catchy tune recorded for a Glico almond commercial in 1987 became something of a phenomenon in Thailand, with local singers lining up to cover…