Curated playlist
1953 births
- Jon ParelesJon Pareles played the Harkness Tower carillon while still a Yale student. He also DJed and wrote for campus papers.
- Gary Taylor (scholar)Gary Taylor was the first in his family to finish high school. He went on to reshape how the world reads Shakespeare.
- Xi JinpingXi Jinping's father was imprisoned by the party he helped build. Xi later became China's most powerful leader since Mao.
- Kathleen Kennedy (producer)Assistant Kathleen Kennedy was supposed to take notes but set her pencil down to pitch ideas.
- Ken BurnsKen Burns was nearly nine when neighbors handed his family six twenty-dollar bills.
- Cyndi LauperCyndi Lauper wore almost a pound of necklaces to the Grammy Awards ceremony in 1985. The excess suited the woman wearing it. Lauper is an American singer, songwriter and actress, born on the 22nd of June 1953. She is known for eccentric…
- Rose WestIn October 1996, workers pulled down 25 Cromwell Street in Gloucester and destroyed every scrap of rubble so that nobody could keep a souvenir. The press had long called the three-storey house the House of Horrors. Rose West, born Rosemary…
- Hulk HoganHulk Hogan held the World Wrestling Federation championship for 1,474 days during his first reign. That is the third-longest run in the history of the title. The man under the bandana and the blond moustache was born Terry Gene Bollea.…
- Paul KrugmanPaul Krugman turned to economics because psychohistory was fiction. Asimov's novels inspired him.
- Pierce BrosnanPierce Brosnan once lost the part of James Bond because his television show was too popular to cancel. In 1986, NBC ended his detective series Remington Steele. Then the producers of the Bond films offered him the role of 007. News of the…
- Michaël Dudok de WitMichaël Dudok de Wit went from making airline and phone commercials to accepting an Oscar.
- George Dyson (science historian)From 1972 to 1975, George Dyson lived in a treehouse he built 30 meters above Burrard Inlet.
- Steve BannonSteve Bannon still earns money every time Seinfeld airs. His bank took a stake in five shows instead of a fee.
- Kaoru KurimotoKaoru Kurimoto won two major literary prizes in two years under two names. Both were the same woman.
- Stephen PaddockStephen Paddock spent the night of the 1st of October 2017 in a hotel room above a crowd of about 22,000 people. They had gathered for a country music festival on the Las Vegas Strip. By the end of that night, 60 of them were dead and…
- Johan de MeijJohan de Meij started his own publishing company the year his Tolkien symphony won a major prize.
- Wayne G. HammondWayne G. Hammond and his wife Christina Scull have won a Tolkien scholarship award five times.
- Hiroyuki NambaHiroyuki Namba scored Dallos in 1983, the first anime made straight for home video.
- David BerkowitzDavid Berkowitz was sitting in his parked car outside a Yonkers apartment building at about 10:00 on the night of the 10th of August 1977 when Detective John Falotico aimed a gun at him. A second detective, Sergeant William Gardella,…
- André WinkReviewers called André Wink's history of Islam in India monumental and seriously flawed.
- Victor Davis HansonAfter earning a Stanford PhD, Victor Davis Hanson went home and farmed. He grew orchards and vineyards for four years.
- Cornel WestYale punished Cornel West for a protest arrest by canceling his 1987 spring leave. He then commuted to Paris to teach.
- Byron PreissIn 1982, Byron Preiss hid twelve boxes in North American parks, each holding a key for a $1,000 jewel.
- Danny ElfmanDanny Elfman retired his rock band Oingo Boingo on Halloween night in 1995, after five sold-out concerts at the Universal Amphitheatre. The band had made him a name in Los Angeles new wave. Yet the career waiting for him afterward was…
- Stanley WilliamsStanley Tookie Williams III was seventeen when a juvenile review board asked what he planned to do once he was released. By his own account, he replied with "being the leader of the biggest gang in the world." He was a teenager with a…