Curated playlist
2003 deaths
- Katharine HepburnKatharine Hepburn bought out her own studio contract after theater owners called her box office poison.
- Elia KazanIn 1952, Elia Kazan gave a congressional committee the names of eight former colleagues.
- Ian MacDonaldIan MacDonald, the English music critic, was born Ian MacCormick and wrote under a name that was not quite his own. Behind the pseudonym stood a man who studied at Cambridge, edited for a music weekly, wrote song lyrics, and even played…
- Johnny CashJohnny Cash never served a prison sentence. He was jailed seven times, one night each.
- Helmut RahnHelmut Rahn scored the winning goal in the 1954 World Cup final with his weaker left foot.
- Edward TellerEdward Teller stood and watched the Trinity test while nearly everyone else lay face-down.
- Fred RogersFred Rogers weighed 143 pounds for most of his adult life, and he treated the number as a private message. In a 1998 Esquire profile, he told the writer Tom Junod, "the number 143 means 'I love you.' It takes one letter to say 'I' and four…
- Franco ModiglianiEconomist Franco Modigliani won a student prize from Mussolini himself. Later he fled Italy and won a Nobel Prize.
- Annemarie SchimmelAnnemarie Schimmel earned a doctorate at 19 in Nazi-era Germany. Examiners rated her thesis magna cum laude.
- Geoffrey KirkGeoffrey Kirk commanded a small fishing boat in the Aegean before he became a Homer scholar.
- Daniel Patrick MoynihanDaniel Patrick Moynihan once shined shoes in Penn Station, which now has a train hall named for him.
- Kalpana ChawlaKalpana Chawla was born in 1962 in Karnal, a city in Haryana, India, and in 1997 she was circling the Earth aboard Space Shuttle Columbia. She became an astronaut and aerospace engineer, and she was the first woman of Indian origin to fly…