Curated playlist
1963 deaths
- John F. KennedyJohn F. Kennedy spent hours in the water towing a burned crewman after a destroyer cut his boat in half.
- C. S. LewisC. S. Lewis died the same afternoon President Kennedy was shot. His death was almost swallowed by the news from Dallas.
- Aldous HuxleyAldous Huxley died the same day as John F. Kennedy, and almost nobody noticed. C. S. Lewis died that afternoon too.
- Jean CocteauJean Cocteau recorded his 1929 recovery from opium in a diary of drawings and withdrawal notes.
- Thích Quảng ĐứcThích Quảng Đức was a Vietnamese Mahayana Buddhist monk, and on the 10th of June 1963 American correspondents in Saigon received a strange message. Something important, it said, would happen the next morning on the road outside the…
- W. E. B. Du BoisW. E. B. Du Bois died in Ghana the day before the March on Washington. He was 95 and had renounced his U.S. citizenship.
- Pope John XXIIIPope John XXIII, born Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli, left Venice for the conclave of 1958 carrying a return train ticket. He never used it. On the 28th of October 1958, at the age of 76, he was elected pope. The cardinals who chose him seemed…
- William BeveridgeWilliam Beveridge lost his seat in 1945, yet the new government built his welfare plan.
- Adolphe MenjouAdolphe Menjou, an engineer from Pittsburgh, became Hollywood's ideal of Parisian elegance.
- Paul HindemithJoseph Goebbels publicly called composer Paul Hindemith an "atonal noisemaker" in December 1934.