Curated playlist
1980 deaths
- Alfred HitchcockAt age five, Alfred Hitchcock was sent to a police station with a note and locked in a cell.
- John LennonJohn Lennon was ordered to leave the United States in 1973. His anti-war activities had alarmed President Nixon.
- Mohammad Reza PahlaviOn his first day at a Swiss boarding school, Iran's crown prince got beaten up.
- Jean-Paul SartreJean-Paul Sartre asked to be dropped as a Nobel nominee, then won anyway. His 1964 letter went unread.
- Alexei KosyginHenry Kissinger once mistook Alexei Kosygin for the real leader of the Soviet Union.
- Jean PiagetMarking intelligence tests in Paris, Jean Piaget noticed that young children's errors followed patterns.
- Wilbur Kitchener JordanWilbur Kitchener Jordan, who published as W. K. Jordan, lived from 1902 to 1980 and became one of the leading American historians of Britain in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. His career turned on a question that still feels…
- Bert KaempfertBert Kaempfert signed the Beatles in 1961 to back singer Tony Sheridan. It became their first released recordings.
- James Dallas Egbert IIIA Michigan State student vanished in 1979, and a Dungeons & Dragons theory made national news.
- Josip Broz TitoTito once wrote to Stalin: stop sending assassins to murder me. He said five had already been caught.
- Karl DönitzKarl Dönitz, a submarine commander, ended up as Germany's president. Hitler named him successor.
- Walter Kaufmann (philosopher)At eleven, Walter Kaufmann converted from Lutheranism to Judaism. He later learned all four grandparents were Jewish.
- Erich FrommErich Fromm argued that falling in love is not love at all. His 1956 book The Art of Loving became a bestseller.
- Vladimir VysotskyVladimir Vysotsky's death in 1980 drew tens of thousands into Moscow's streets. Officials had barely acknowledged him.