Curated playlist
1989 deaths
- Keef CowboyKeef Cowboy teased a friend who joined the Army by singing hip, hop, hip, hop. He is credited with the term hip hop.
- William Mann (critic)How did a critic raised on Bach and Mozart end up defending the Beatles? William Mann did it at The Times.
- Bette DavisBette Davis's tombstone reads, "She did it the hard way." A director suggested the epitaph after All About Eve.
- Ferdinand MarcosFerdinand Marcos was convicted of murder as a law student, then rose to president.
- Leon FestingerPsychologist Leon Festinger joined a doomsday group to see what believers do when the prophecy fails.
- Ruhollah KhomeiniAt Ruhollah Khomeini's 1989 funeral, the body fell out of the coffin. Grieving crowds in Tehran forced a second funeral.
- Lucille BallLucille Ball's real-life pregnancy became an I Love Lucy episode, and CBS banned the word "pregnant."
- Salvador DalíSalvador Dalí was born nine months after his older brother, also named Salvador, died.
- Laurence OlivierLaurence Olivier's 1948 film Hamlet was the first non-American film to win Best Picture.
- Valentin GlushkoValentin Petrovich Glushko was born on the 2nd of September 1908 in Odesa, and by the age of fourteen he was thinking about flight. Novels by Jules Verne had pulled him toward aeronautics. In 1923 he wrote a letter to Konstantin…
- Ted BundyIn June 1974, Ted Bundy walked into the middle of an active Seattle police investigation to collect evidence he had left behind. Bundy would murder dozens of young women and girls in 1974-1975 and 1978. On the night of the 11th of June…
- Samuel BeckettSamuel Beckett once drove a young André the Giant to school. The future wrestler was a boy in rural France then.
- C. L. R. JamesC. L. R. James sent a book on Moby-Dick to every U.S. senator. He wrote it while detained on Ellis Island in 1953.
- Kalu RinpocheIn France, Tibetan teacher Kalu Rinpoche opened a retreat center for Western students.
- King TubbyKing Tubby was a Jamaican radio repairman who turned a mixing desk into an instrument.
- HirohitoEmperor Hirohito's first radio broadcast announced Japan's defeat.
- John HicksEconomist John Hicks called his own famous diagram a classroom gadget. He made the IS-LM model in 1937.
- Osamu TezukaOsamu Tezuka was a licensed physician who never practiced medicine. He is the manga artist behind Astro Boy.
- Andrei SakharovAndrei Sakharov built the Soviet Union's most devastating weapon, then spent his life trying to limit its damage.
- Ronald SymeA 1939 book argued that Rome's first emperor, Augustus, ruled as a cunning autocrat.
- A. J. AyerA. J. Ayer once told Mike Tyson to talk like a rational man. The philosopher stepped in at a 1987 party.
- Sjafruddin PrawiranegaraSjafruddin Prawiranegara led Indonesia's republic from the jungle after Dutch forces captured its leaders.