Curated playlist
1969 deaths
- Ramdas GandhiRamdas Gandhi lit his father Mahatma Gandhi's funeral pyre. He had wanted the task, and it was granted to him.
- Jack KerouacJack Kerouac typed On the Road on a 120-foot roll of taped tracing paper. He finished the final draft in 20 days.
- Vito GenoveseOn the 2nd of June 1958, Vito Genovese sat before the McClellan Hearings of the United States Senate on organized crime, called there under subpoena. He answered nothing. Instead, he cited his Fifth Amendment rights under the Constitution…
- Judy GarlandMGM fired Judy Garland in 1950, and Bing Crosby invited her onto his radio show. The audience gave her an ovation.
- Dwight D. EisenhowerEisenhower wrote a note taking all blame if D-Day failed. He drafted it on the eve of the June 1944 landings.
- Joseph Kasa-VubuJoseph Kasa-Vubu got his name from a poison test his father survived. He became Congo's first president.
- Sharon TateSharon Tate was six months old when she won the Miss Tiny Tot of Dallas Pageant. Her parents had no show business ambitions for her, and the crown was meant to lead nowhere. Yet the American actress and model, who lived from 1943 to 1969,…
- Warren Sturgis McCullochA reading machine for blind people looked like part of the brain to one researcher. Warren McCulloch built it in 1947.
- Harry Emerson FosdickOn the 21st of May 1922, the American pastor Harry Emerson Fosdick preached in Manhattan's West Village. His sermon carried a title shaped like a challenge: Shall the Fundamentalists Win? The question did not stay in that pulpit. By 1924,…
- Princess Alice of BattenbergPrincess Alice of Battenberg, who after her marriage was known as Princess Andrew of Greece and Denmark, once faced a German general in occupied Athens. He asked whether there was anything he could do for her. She answered, "You can take…
- Theodor W. AdornoTheodor W. Adorno opened his first lecture of the summer semester in 1969 by inviting students to ask questions whenever they arose. A student wrote on the blackboard: "If Adorno is left in peace, capitalism will never cease." Three women…
- Walter PittsWalter Pitts, a homeless teenager, helped create the first mathematical model of a neural network.
- Kliment VoroshilovKliment Voroshilov once smashed a platter of food on Stalin's table. He blamed Stalin's purges for Winter War losses.
- Karl JaspersKarl Jaspers hid in Heidelberg through the Nazi years because his wife was Jewish.
- John Maffey, 1st Baron RugbyOne word, "in" versus "to", decided the title of Britain's man in Dublin in 1939.
- Otto SternOtto Stern and Walther Gerlach fired silver atoms through a magnetic field in 1922. The atoms landed in two bands.
- George CœdèsGeorge Cœdès brought the forgotten empire of Srivijaya back into history in 1918.
- Ho Chi MinhOn the 30th of April 1975, North Vietnamese tanks rolled into Saigon carrying a poster addressed to a man who had died years earlier. That man was Hồ Chí Minh, the revolutionary who founded North Vietnam. The poster carried the words of a…