Curated category
2008 deaths
- Maharishi Mahesh YogiMaharishi Mahesh Yogi arrived in Hawaii in the spring of 1959 carrying nothing. The Honolulu Star Bulletin described him this way: "He has no money, he asks…
- John Archibald WheelerJohn Archibald Wheeler spent decades trying to describe a dying star in plain language, and the best he could manage was "gravitationally completely…
- SuhartoSuharto ruled Indonesia for 31 years, longer than any other president in the country's history. He was born on the 8th of June 1921 in a…
- Robert SeamansRobert Channing Seamans Jr. was born on the 30th of October 1918 in Salem, Massachusetts. He attended Lenox School in Lenox, Massachusetts before earning a…
- Arthur C. ClarkeIn February 1945, a young radar officer named Arthur C. Clarke sent a letter to the editor of Wireless World. He suggested that stations placed in…
- Alan T. NolanAlan T. Nolan entered the world on the 19th of January 1923 in Evansville, Indiana. His early years unfolded within a community that would later shape his…
- Aleksandr SolzhenitsynOn the 9th of May 1945, all of Moscow erupted in fireworks and searchlights to mark Germany's surrender. Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn watched those…
- Neil AspinallNeil Stanley Aspinall was born on the 13th of October 1941, in Prestatyn, North Wales, not because his family lived there, but because the air-raids on…
- Dražan JerkovićDražan Jerković was born in Šibenik on the 6th of August 1936, when the town still sat inside the Kingdom of Yugoslavia.
- Bo DiddleyBo Diddley stepped onto The Ed Sullivan Show on the 20th of November, 1955, and promptly ignored every instruction he had been given.
- Saeko HimuroSaeko Himuro was born on the 11th of January 1957 in Iwamizawa, Hokkaido Prefecture, and she would go on to become one of the most widely read authors under…
- Michael CrichtonMichael Crichton stood 6 feet 9 inches tall, and he spent much of his life feeling out of place because of it. That restlessness never left him.
- Peter BranscombePeter John Branscombe arrived in Vienna not as a scholar but as a soldier completing his military service, and whatever he found there changed the direction…
- Joseph WeizenbaumJoseph Weizenbaum built one of the most unsettling programs in the history of computing, and it unsettled him most of all.
- Oliver SelfridgeOliver Selfridge was born on the 10th of May 1926 into a family that already knew something about building things people would remember.
- Gary GygaxGary Gygax grew up close enough to Wrigley Field that he could hear the roar of the crowds from his bedroom window. That detail matters, because it tells you…
- Pauline BaynesPauline Baynes was born on the 9th of September 1922 at 67 Brunswick Place in Hove, East Sussex, and she would go on to draw the invented worlds that…