Curated playlist
1990 deaths
- Roald DahlRoald Dahl was born on the 13th of September 1916 at Villa Marie, Fairwater Road, in Llandaff, Cardiff, the son of Norwegian immigrant parents who gave him Norwegian as his first language. By the time he died in 1990, his books had sold…
- Jim HensonJim Henson made his first Kermit the Frog from a halved table tennis ball and fabric cut from an old coat that belonged to his mother. A scrap of denim from a pair of jeans formed the sleeve for the puppeteer's arm. From those humble parts…
- Aaron CoplandAaron Copland grew up above a Brooklyn shop at 628 Washington Avenue, in a family of Lithuanian Jewish immigrants who had traveled through Scotland just to afford the boat fare to America. His father had no interest in music. His mother…
- Medard BossMedard Boss was born on the 4th of October 1903 in St. Gallen, Switzerland, and he spent his career asking a question that most psychiatrists of his era considered already settled: what is a human being? The answer Freud had given, the…
- Oldřich NejedlýOn the 11th of June 1990, Oldřich Nejedlý died at the age of 80, just as that year's World Cup kicked off in Italy. Italy had also hosted the World Cup back in 1934, a tournament that made Nejedlý's name in the first place. What actually…
- Arthur Samuel (computer scientist)Arthur Lee Samuel coined the term "machine learning" in 1959, and the computers of his era had almost no memory to spare. Working at IBM in Poughkeepsie, New York, Samuel faced a problem that would define the rest of the century: how do…
- Samuel C. PhillipsSamuel C. Phillips was a general who flew fighters over occupied Europe, helped design the missiles that defined the Cold War, and then ran the program that put Americans on the Moon. Not bad for the son of an electrician from…
- B. F. SkinnerB. F. Skinner died on the 18th of August 1990 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, just ten days after receiving a lifetime achievement award from the American Psychological Association and delivering what amounted to a final lecture on his life's…
- Louis AlthusserLouis Althusser was born on the 16th of October 1918 in Birmendreïs, a town near Algiers in French Algeria, and he died on the 22nd of October 1990 in a psychiatric institution. Between those two dates lies one of the most turbulent…
- Robert Holmes à CourtRobert Holmes à Court built Australia's first billion-dollar private fortune starting from virtually nothing, and he did it in less than two decades. By the time the stock markets of the world collapsed in October 1987, his diversified…
- Ronald Evans (astronaut)Ronald Ellwin Evans Jr. is the last human being to orbit the Moon alone. On the 14th of December 1972, while his crewmates Gene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt descended to the lunar surface at Taurus-Littrow valley, Evans circled silently…
- John Stewart BellJohn Stewart Bell was born in Belfast on the 28th of July 1928, into a working-class family where neither his parents nor any of his three older siblings had finished high school. By the age of 11, he had already decided he wanted to be a…
- Lev YashinLev Yashin won the Ballon d'Or in 1963 as a goalkeeper. That sentence alone deserves a pause. In the entire history of that award, given annually to the finest footballer in Europe, not one keeper before him had claimed it. Not one keeper…
- Donald A. WollheimOn the 22nd of October 1936, a group from New York met with a group from Philadelphia in Philadelphia. This gathering became known as the first American science fiction convention. Donald A. Wollheim organized this event when he was just…
- Armand HammerArmand Hammer died in Los Angeles in December 1990, aged 92, and was buried directly across the street from the headquarters of Occidental Petroleum - the company he had run for 33 years. That proximity was fitting. Hammer spent his life…
- Lewis MumfordLewis Mumford was born on the 19th of October 1895 in Flushing, Queens, and spent the next nine decades becoming one of the most wide-ranging thinkers America ever produced. He never finished a college degree. Tuberculosis interrupted his…
- Prince Naruhiko HigashikuniPrince Naruhiko Higashikuni held the office of Japanese prime minister for exactly 54 days. He took power on the 17th of August 1945, two days after Emperor Showa announced Japan's surrender, and resigned on the 9th of October of the same…
- Larry O'BrienLarry O'Brien was riding in the motorcade in Dallas on the 22nd of November 1963 when gunshots rang out. He watched President John F. Kennedy die. Then he accompanied the coffin and Jackie Kennedy back to Air Force One at Love Field. And…
- Viktor TsoiViktor Tsoi died on the 15th of August 1990, at 12:28 in the afternoon, on a highway in Latvia. His dark blue Moskvitch-2141 crossed into oncoming traffic at a speed of at least 100 km/h and collided with an Ikarus 250 bus. The…