Curated category
1971 deaths
- Louis ArmstrongLouis Armstrong borrowed his stepfather's gun without permission on the 31st of December 1912, fired a blank into the air, and spent the night at New Orleans…
- Nikita KhrushchevNikita Khrushchev stood before a closed session of the 20th Party Congress on the 25th of February 1956, and in four hours dismantled the reputation of a man…
- Igor StravinskyIgor Stravinsky once received a score back from his mentor in the mail, returned with a note reading: "Not delivered on account of death of addressee." That…
- Jim MorrisonJim Morrison was found dead in a Paris bathtub on the morning of Saturday, the 3rd of July, 1971. He was 27 years old. No doctor had been called.
- Gene VincentGene Vincent was born Vincent Eugene Craddock on the 11th of February 1935 in Norfolk, Virginia, and he died at 36, largely forgotten in his home country…
- Jacobo ÁrbenzJacobo Árbenz stood at a podium on the 15th of March 1951, promising to convert Guatemala from "a backward country with a predominantly feudal economy into a…
- Mátyás RákosiMátyás Rákosi ran Hungary's Communist state with a grip so total that, by the late 1940s, no meaningful opposition remained.
- Hermann HothHermann Hoth was sentenced to 15 years in prison in October 1948 for war crimes and crimes against humanity, yet just six years later he walked free on…
- Allan NevinsAllan Nevins grew up on a farm in Camp Point, Illinois, the son of a stern Presbyterian farmer of Scottish descent and a German-heritage mother named Emma.
- Philo FarnsworthPhilo Farnsworth spent much of his life as the most famous inventor nobody could name. On the 3rd of July 1957, he appeared on the CBS quiz show I've Got A…
- Frank RosenblattFrank Rosenblatt died on the 11th of July, 1971 - his 43rd birthday - in a boating accident on Chesapeake Bay. It was the same date he was born, in 1928, in…
- Hans KohnHans Kohn was born on the 15th of September 1891, in Prague, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, into a German-speaking Jewish family.