Curated playlist
1983 deaths
- Tennessee WilliamsTennessee Williams wanted to be sewn into a canvas sack and dropped into the sea.
- Joan MiróJoan Miró fled Paris in 1940 as German troops arrived. In exile he made twenty-three gouaches called Constellations.
- HergéHergé was arrested the day after Brussels was liberated in 1944. He had drawn Tintin for a Nazi-controlled paper.
- Meyer LanskyShortly after The Godfather Part II reached theaters in 1974, Meyer Lansky picked up the telephone and called the actor Lee Strasberg. Strasberg had played Hyman Roth, a gangster based on Lansky, and had earned an Oscar nomination for it.…
- Joan RobinsonEconomist Joan Robinson coined a word in 1933 that the Supreme Court used in 2019.
- Howard Hayes ScullardHistorian Howard Hayes Scullard wrote chapters that were published only after he died.
- Nikolai PodgornySoviet artists erased Nikolai Podgorny from a 1977 painting of the country's leaders. He had been its head of state.
- Larry McDonaldCongressman Larry McDonald died on a plane that three colleagues were meant to share.
- GarrinchaA doctor certified Garrincha as crippled, yet he won two World Cups. His legs curved in opposite directions.
- George HalasGeorge Halas skipped the SS Eastland in 1915 because he was running late. The ship capsized, killing 844 passengers.
- Roy DeMeoRoy DeMeo, a Brooklyn mobster in the Gambino crime family, was found dead on the 20th of January 1983. His body lay in the trunk of his own Cadillac Coupe DeVille, parked in the lot of the Varuna Boat Club in Sheepshead Bay. The corpse was…