Curated playlist
1985 deaths
- Orson WellesOrson Welles burned ten reels of his own Don Quixote film. He felt the 1969 Moon landings made its ending obsolete.
- Roger SessionsComposer Roger Sessions won a Pulitzer Prize for a whole career, then another for one concerto.
- Marc ChagallMarc Chagall fled Europe in 1941 on a ship carrying 119 refugee children. He taught them drawing.
- Konstantin ChernenkoSoviet leader Konstantin Chernenko's obituary ran on page two. Page one celebrated his successor, Gorbachev.
- Evgeny LifshitzEvgeny Lifshitz was only the second person to pass Lev Landau's Theoretical Minimum exam. Just 43 people ever did.
- Maurice PodoloffMaurice Podoloff suspended 32 players for life over a point-shaving scandal. He was the NBA's first commissioner.
- Paul CastellanoPaul Castellano, head of the Gambino crime family of New York City, was shot dead outside Sparks Steak House in Manhattan at around 5:26 pm on Monday, the 16th of December 1985. He had run the family since 1976. By any measure, he was one…
- Philip LarkinPhilip Larkin turned down the job of Poet Laureate in 1984. He felt he had long since stopped being a poet.
- Yul BrynnerA few days after Yul Brynner died, a thirty-second warning from him appeared on all the major American television networks and in other countries. The Russian and American actor looked straight into the camera. He said: "Now that I'm gone,…
- Samantha SmithA ten-year-old from Maine wrote to the Soviet leader and got an answer. She then visited Moscow as his guest.
- G. Wilson KnightG. Wilson Knight directed and acted in Shakespeare's tragedies to test his own ideas.
- John G. TrumpJohn G. Trump died in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on the 21st of February 1985, six days before a White House ceremony in his honor. His son John Jr. accepted the National Medal of Science on his behalf. President Ronald Reagan had awarded…