Curated playlist
2007 deaths
- Tom MoldvayYavdlom is a fictional city in Mystara, a setting for the Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game. Read the name in reverse and it spells Moldvay. The city is an homage to Tom Moldvay, an American game designer and author who was born on the…
- Kentarō HanedaKentarō Haneda taught at a Tokyo music college and also scored console games. He was best known for the Wizardry ports.
- Kurt VonnegutKurt Vonnegut survived the bombing of Dresden by hiding in an underground meat locker.
- Ingmar BergmanAt nine, Ingmar Bergman traded his tin soldiers for a magic lantern. He soon staged Strindberg puppet plays.
- Michelangelo AntonioniAfter a stroke took his speech, Michelangelo Antonioni kept directing films. He made Beyond the Clouds in 1995.
- Wally SchirraAstronaut Wally Schirra refused Mission Control's request to wear helmets.
- Lady Bird JohnsonLady Bird Johnson was born Claudia Alta Taylor, and almost nobody ever called her that. While she was still an infant, her nursemaid, Alice Tittle, remarked that the baby was as pretty as a ladybird. The comment became a lifelong name. Her…
- Charles HarrelsonCharles Harrelson went to prison for the murder of federal judge John H. Wood Jr., who was shot dead on the 29th of May 1979 in the parking lot outside his townhouse in San Antonio, Texas. No federal judge in the 20th century had been…
- John A. GarratyHistorian John A. Garraty let his subject's grandson argue back in the footnotes.
- Boris YeltsinBoris Yeltsin climbed onto a tank in 1991 to defy a coup. Soldiers sent to crush the protest switched sides.
- Thomas Stoltz HarveyThomas Harvey removed Albert Einstein's brain during his autopsy in 1955. He kept it for decades.
- Benazir BhuttoBenazir Bhutto was sworn in as prime minister of Pakistan on the 2nd of December 1988, at the age of 35. No woman had ever been elected to lead a democratic government in a Muslim-majority country. Party workers were urged to address her…
- Luciano PavarottiLuciano Pavarotti hit nine high Cs at the Metropolitan Opera and took seventeen curtain calls.
- Seung-Hui ChoSeung-Hui Cho killed 32 people and wounded 17 others at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia, on the 16th of April 2007. It was the deadliest school shooting in United States history. At the time, it was also the deadliest mass shooting…
- Alexey IvakhnenkoAlexey Ivakhnenko found that the noisier the data, the simpler the best model must be.
- Frank CassPublisher Frank Cass bought the scripts of The Goon Show in 1972. His list was mostly history and social science.
- Jean BaudrillardJean Baudrillard wrote on an old typewriter and never at the computer. He insisted that a computer is not "merely a handier and more complex kind of typewriter", and he wanted what he called a "physical relation to writing". The habit…