Curated playlist
1969 deaths
- Ramdas GandhiRamdas Gandhi was born on the 4th of May 1897 in the British Colony of Natal, the third son of Mahatma Gandhi and Kasturba Gandhi. He grew up in the shadow of one of the most consequential figures in modern history. Yet his life was not…
- Jack KerouacJack Kerouac learned English at age six and spoke with a marked accent into his late teens, because the language of his Lowell, Massachusetts home was French. His parents, Leo and Gabrielle, were French Canadians, and around the house the…
- Judy GarlandJudy Garland was born Frances Ethel Gumm on the 10th of June 1922, in Grand Rapids, Minnesota, to a family that lived and breathed performance. Her parents were vaudevillians who ran a movie theater. Her first appearance on any stage came…
- Dwight D. EisenhowerDwight David Eisenhower drafted a message he hoped no one would ever read. On the eve of the D-Day landings on the 6th of June 1944, he wrote a short statement taking full personal responsibility if the assault on Normandy failed. 'If any…
- Joseph Kasa-VubuJoseph Kasa-Vubu took his name from a poison test. His father, a prosperous farmer in the village of Kuma-Dizi in the Bas-Congo, had built his house at the edge of town and traded independently with merchants in Cabinda. That independence…
- Warren Sturgis McCullochWarren Sturgis McCulloch spent the spring of 1947 building a machine meant to help blind people read. It converted printed letters into tones, designed so the tone for each letter stayed the same no matter what angle the letter was viewed…
- Harry Emerson FosdickHarry Emerson Fosdick arrived in Buffalo, New York on the 24th of May 1878. He grew up in a household that valued education and religious conviction. Fosdick attended Colgate University where he joined the Delta Upsilon fraternity before…
- Walter PittsWalter Pitts was born in Detroit, Michigan, on the 23rd of April 1923, and he died at age 46, leaving behind a body of work that still defines how scientists think about the brain as a computing device. He never earned a doctorate. He…
- Kliment VoroshilovKliment Voroshilov put on his military uniform one winter morning in 1969, fully decorated with his medals, called a car, and drove himself to the hospital. He had refused, the night before, to let his family call an ambulance. That quiet…
- Karl JaspersKarl Jaspers died on the 26th of February 1969 -- his wife Gertrud's 90th birthday. That detail is small, but it says something. The two of them had survived the Nazi years together, hiding in Heidelberg while friends quietly kept them…
- John Maffey, 1st Baron RugbyJohn Loader Maffey arrived in Dublin on the 14th of September 1939, just two weeks after Britain declared war on Germany. His mission was diplomatic but carried no title anyone could agree on. Ireland was neutral, officially separate from…
- Otto SternOtto Stern, born on the 17th of February 1888 in Sohrau, in the German province of Silesia, became one of the most influential experimental physicists of the twentieth century. He earned the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1943, yet his path to…
- George CœdèsGeorge Cœdès was born in Paris on the 10th of August 1886, and by the time he died on the 2nd of October 1969, he had done something few scholars manage: he had restored a lost kingdom to the map of history. His family had roots near…