Curated playlist
2002 deaths
- Layne StaleyLayne Staley was nine years old when he wrote in his Dr. Seuss book, All About Me, that he wanted to be a singer. He got his wish. As the original lead vocalist of Alice in Chains, he helped carry Seattle's grunge movement to international…
- Princess Margaret, Countess of SnowdonOn the 21st of August 1955, the world waited for Princess Margaret, Countess of Snowdon. Three hundred journalists stood outside Balmoral that day, four times as many as would later trail Diana, Princess of Wales. It was Margaret's 25th…
- Thomas J. Kelly (aerospace engineer)Ice clogged a fuel line on the Moon lander while Neil Armstrong was already on the surface.
- Brigitte MassinWhich composers did musicologist Brigitte Massin write about most? Schubert, Mozart and Beethoven.
- Queen Elizabeth the Queen MotherAdolf Hitler is said to have called Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother "the most dangerous woman in Europe." The reason, according to the story, was her popularity, which he saw as a threat to German interests. She was born Elizabeth Angela…
- James TobinJames Tobin proposed a tax on currency trading to throw sand in the wheels of speculation.
- Martin EsslinMartin Esslin fled Vienna in 1938 and later named a whole theater movement.
- Joseph BonannoJoseph Bonanno, nicknamed Joe Bananas, headed a New York crime family from 1931 until 1968. He took command at just 26, which made him one of the youngest bosses any crime family has ever had. On the 21st of October 1964, the day before he…
- Peter BergmannPeter Bergmann's mother wrote to Einstein in 1933 asking him to take her son as a student.
- Alexander ProkhorovWhile studying ruby in 1957, physicist Alexander Prokhorov realized it could serve as a laser's active medium.
- John RawlsJohn Rawls, an American philosopher, wrote a book of roughly 600 pages that protesters held up in front of government officials at Tiananmen Square in 1989. It was a dense academic treatise called A Theory of Justice. More than 300,000…
- Astrid LindgrenIn 1976, Astrid Lindgren's tax rate hit 102 percent. She answered with a satirical story in a newspaper.
- Roy PorterHistorian Roy Porter died while cycling, five months into retirement. He planned to learn the saxophone.
- Abba EbanAbba Eban changed his first name to the Hebrew word for "Father."
- VaváVavá scored in two World Cup finals in a row, and no one else did it for sixty years.
- Timothy ReuterHistorian Timothy Reuter translated a German scholar's book on the medieval church into English.
- Aileen WuornosAileen Carol Wuornos was born on the 29th of February 1956, a leap day that comes around only once every four years. She became an American serial killer, and she was executed in 2002 after a long wait on Florida's death row. Her story has…
- John GottiJohn Gotti ran the Gambino crime family of New York City, and one of his fellow mobsters once delivered a harsh verdict on him. Anthony "Gaspipe" Casso, the former underboss of the Lucchese crime family, said: "what John Gotti did was the…