Curated playlist
1953 deaths
- Joseph StalinJoseph Stalin signed his articles "K. Stalin", an alias drawn from the Russian word for steel, translated as "Man of Steel." The man who chose it was born Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili, into poverty in the small Georgian city of Gori.…
- Dylan ThomasDylan Thomas walked into his 39th birthday party in New York on the 27th of October 1953 and left after an hour, feeling too ill to stay. Within two weeks he was dead, and the world was already arguing about what had killed him. Was it the…
- Eugene O'NeillEugene O'Neill died the same way he was born: in a hotel room. As he whispered his last words at the Sheraton Hotel in Boston on the 27th of November 1953, he said, "I knew it. I knew it. Born in a hotel room and died in a hotel room." It…
- Hank WilliamsHank Williams was dead in the back seat of a car before anyone in the front realized it. On New Year's Day 1953, a college student named Charles Carr pulled into a gas station in Oak Hill, West Virginia, and discovered that rigor mortis…
- Carol II of RomaniaCarol II of Romania left his country on the 6th of September 1940 with a train loaded with 30 truckloads of his personal fortune. As the train passed through Timisoara station, the Iron Guard opened fire in a failed attempt to kill him.…
- Lavrentiy BeriaLavrentiy Beria stood over Stalin's paralysed body on the 2nd of March 1953, dismissed the frantic aide who pleaded for a doctor, and walked out of the dacha at Kuntsevo ordering everyone not to panic. Twelve hours would pass before anyone…
- Sulaiman NadviSulaiman Nadvi was born on the 22nd of November 1884 in Desna, a village in what is now Nalanda District, Bihar, and he died on the same date in 1953, exactly sixty-nine years later, in Karachi. That symmetry is one of the stranger…
- Sergei ProkofievSergei Prokofiev died on the 5th of March 1953 , the same day as Joseph Stalin. His coffin had to be carried by hand through the back streets of Moscow, away from the vast crowds mourning the dictator. About 30 people attended his funeral.…
- Edwin HubbleEdwin Hubble grew up in Marshfield, Missouri, known more for his athletic prowess than his intellect, a boy who won seven first places and a third in a single high school track meet in 1906. He earned good grades in every subject except…
- Jim ThorpeJim Thorpe walked past a high jump pit one day at Carlisle Indian Industrial School, still wearing his street clothes, and leaped 5 feet 9 inches , clearing the school record without a single warmup. That impromptu jump in 1907 was a…
- Ivan BuninIvan Alekseyevich Bunin became the first Russian writer to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. The Swedish Academy gave it to him in 1933, while he was living as an exile in France. On the 10th of November that year, Paris newspapers ran…