Curated playlist
1968 deaths
- Martin Luther King Jr.Martin Luther King Jr. died at the age of 39, yet his autopsy showed the heart of a 60 year old, according to his biographer Taylor Branch. Branch attributed the damage to stress. The causes were many. King was jailed repeatedly, attacked…
- John SteinbeckJohn Steinbeck once stole bacon from a produce market to survive. He later won the 1962 Nobel Prize in Literature.
- Robert F. KennedyRobert F. Kennedy won the California Democratic primary on the 5th of June 1968, and around midnight a gunman shot him. Kennedy died 25 hours later. The shooter was Sirhan Sirhan, a 24-year-old Palestinian who acted in retaliation for…
- Karl BarthKarl Barth mailed the Barmen Declaration to Adolf Hitler. The Swiss theologian wrote nearly all of it.
- T. S. AshtonEconomic historian T. S. Ashton turned down a knighthood in 1957. It stayed private until 2012.
- Marcel DuchampIn 1917, Marcel Duchamp submitted a signed urinal to a New York show, and the committee turned it away.
- Alfred CobbanAlfred Cobban used a 1954 London lecture to call a famous view of the French Revolution a myth.
- Upton SinclairUpton Sinclair aimed his novel The Jungle at the public's heart and hit its stomach instead. Meat sales fell by half.
- Muriel LesterMuriel Lester gave up university to live in poverty in London's East End. Japan knew her as "Mother of World Peace."
- Marshall HodgsonMarshall Hodgson coined "Islamicate" for culture tied to Muslim societies but not religious.
- Stanley Unwin (publisher)Publisher Stanley Unwin paid his ten-year-old son a shilling to review The Hobbit. The boy's verdict was favorable.
- George GamowGeorge Gamow added Hans Bethe's name to a physics paper as a prank. Bethe had not written a word of it.
- Bumpy JohnsonBumpy Johnson, a crime boss of Harlem in New York City, died shortly before 2 a.m. on the 7th of July 1968 at Wells Restaurant. A waitress had just set down his coffee, a chicken leg and a plate of hominy grits. Then he fell over,…
- Alexandre KojèveAlexandre Kojève wrote a 900-page manuscript for Stalin. Whether it ever reached Moscow remains unknown.
- Lev LandauPhysicist Lev Landau was jailed in 1938 over a leaflet comparing Stalinism to Nazism. A letter to Stalin freed him.
- Leopold InfeldPhysicist Leopold Infeld left Canada in 1950 after being accused of communist sympathies.
- Padre PioPadre Pio, born Francesco Forgione, was an Italian Capuchin friar whose hands and feet bore wounds said to echo the crucifixion of Jesus. Such wounds are called stigmata, and his followers believed they lasted for half a century. A few…
- Randolph ChurchillRandolph Churchill, the only son of Winston Churchill, announced in a 1932 newspaper article that he planned to "make an immense fortune and become Prime Minister". He was twenty-one years old. He achieved neither ambition. Over the…
- Yuri GagarinYuri Gagarin answered liftoff with one word: Poyekhali, or "Off we go."
- Erwin PanofskyIn 1934, Erwin Panofsky argued a famous Flemish painting was really a legal contract.
- Vittorio PozzoVittorio Pozzo is the only manager to win both the Olympics and the World Cup. His Italy won in 1934 and 1938.