Curated playlist
1972 deaths
- Edward VIIIEdward VIII, King of the United Kingdom, ended his reign with a voice on the radio. On the night of the 11th of December 1936 he spoke to listeners around the world. He told them he had found it "impossible to carry the heavy burden of…
- Ezra PoundEzra Pound cut T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land by about half. Eliot called the edits proof of Pound's critical genius.
- Jørgen VogtJørgen Vogt was held in three camps under German occupation for nearly four years.
- Harry S. TrumanHarry Truman became president knowing nothing about the atomic bomb. He had been vice president for only 82 days.
- Edmund WilsonCritic Edmund Wilson mailed strangers a postcard listing over two dozen things he would not do.
- M. C. EscherM. C. Escher was 70 before the Netherlands held a retrospective of his work.
- H. F. M. PrescottH. F. M. Prescott wrote a novel about a Tudor uprising that has never gone out of print.
- Eugène MinkowskiPsychiatrist Eugène Minkowski paid for a thousand copies of his own book. No publisher would take it at first.
- James F. ByrnesJames F. Byrnes left school at 14 and later sat on the U.S. Supreme Court. He never earned a law degree.
- Igor SikorskyA mosquito in a fuel tank changed Igor Sikorsky's career. The crash-landing made him want an aircraft that could fly on.
- Joe GalloJoe Gallo was shot dead at Umbertos Clam House in New York's Little Italy. It happened at around 4:30 in the morning on the 7th of April 1972, his 43rd birthday. Gallo, nicknamed "Crazy Joe", was a captain in the Colombo crime family of…
- Padraic ColumPadraic Colum was born Patrick Columb in a County Longford workhouse, where his father held a job. That was the 8th of December 1881. He died on the 11th of January 1972, aged 90. By then he had published 61 books, not counting his plays.…
- Theodor BlankWest Germany secretly began rebuilding its army under an office with a harmless name. Theodor Blank led it.