Curated playlist
1984 deaths
- Marvin GayeMotown boss Berry Gordy refused to release Marvin Gaye's What's Going On.
- Richard BurtonRichard Burton, the Welsh actor born Richard Walter Jenkins Jr., once received a cable from Laurence Olivier. Olivier was shocked by Burton's affair with Elizabeth Taylor, and his message was blunt. It read: “Make up your mind, dear heart.…
- Indira GandhiParty bosses chose Indira Gandhi as prime minister because they thought she was weak.
- Michel FoucaultMichel Foucault's surgeon father expected him to become a surgeon too. He became a leading thinker on power instead.
- François TruffautIn 1958 François Truffaut was the only French critic not invited to Cannes. A year later, Cannes gave him Best Director.
- Chuck Cooper (basketball)The Celtics owner ignored other teams and drafted Chuck Cooper anyway. He was the first African American drafted.
- Yuri AndropovYuri Andropov saw officers strung up from Budapest lampposts. Historian Christopher Andrew says it haunted him.
- Paul DiracPaul Dirac's 1928 equation predicted antimatter, and the positron appeared in 1932.
- George LowAfter three astronauts died in the Apollo 1 fire, George Low took charge of fixing the spacecraft.
- Ray KrocRay Kroc took the public address microphone in San Diego on the 9th of April 1974 and criticized his own baseball team. The Padres were about to lose their season opener to the Houston Astros, 9-5, and 39,083 fans were watching. Kroc told…
- Lionel RobbinsLionel Robbins refused to sign John Maynard Keynes's Depression-era draft. They later reconciled.
- Ed GeinEd Gein was a quiet handyman from Plainfield, Wisconsin, and the last receipt Bernice Worden ever wrote was for him. It was a sales slip for a gallon of antifreeze, written on the morning of the 16th of November 1957. By that evening, the…
- Åke OhlmarksTolkien wrote a guide to names because of a Swedish translator. Åke Ohlmarks had altered The Lord of the Rings.
- Hans SpeidelHans Speidel took the call ordering Paris destroyed and passed it on to no one. Hitler's order came on August 26, 1944.