Curated playlist
2016 deaths
- Michiyo YasudaMichiyo Yasuda took her first animation job to avoid work as a bank teller. She stayed for more than half a century.
- David BowieDavid Bowie died two days after releasing his final album. He planned Blackstar as a parting gift while privately dying.
- Antonin ScaliaAntonin Scalia won confirmation to the United States Supreme Court on the 17th of September 1986 by a vote of 98-0. Not one senator voted no. Later, Joe Biden, a committee member who became a president, said he regretted not opposing…
- Prince (musician)Prince once changed his name to an unpronounceable symbol to protest his record label.
- George MichaelGeorge Michael refused to appear in his own music videos, so five supermodels lip-synced in his place.
- Fidel CastroFidel Castro's yacht carried eighty-one men toward Cuba, but only nineteen safely reached the mountains.
- Muhammad AliMuhammad Ali refused three times to step forward for his Army induction in 1967. He lost his boxing title that same day.
- Allan WilliamsAllan Williams drove the Beatles to Hamburg in a Morris J2 van in August 1960. He was a Liverpool coffee-bar owner.
- Carrie FisherCarrie Fisher once asked to be reported as drowned in moonlight, strangled by her own bra.
- Alan RickmanAlan Rickman almost turned down Die Hard. He took the villain role of Hans Gruber anyway.
- Marvin MinskyIn 1951, Marvin Minsky built the first randomly wired neural network learning machine. He called it SNARC.
- Edgar MitchellApollo 14 astronaut Edgar Mitchell had a spiritual awakening on his way home from the Moon.
- George MartinGeorge Martin called the Beatles' audition recording a "lousy tape" before he signed them.
- Tony BarrowTony Barrow, the English press officer who worked with the Beatles from 1962 to 1968, coined the phrase "the Fab Four". He first used it in an early press release. Barrow did not start out as a famous insider. He began as a part-time…
- Silvio GazzanigaSilvio Gazzaniga began sculpting the World Cup trophy before FIFA had agreed to anything.
- Hilary PutnamHilary Putnam invented a leading theory of the mind, then spent years taking it apart.
- Imre PozsgayOn January 28, 1989, Communist official Imre Pozsgay called Hungary's 1956 revolution a popular uprising.
- Lou PearlmanIn June 2007, a tourist couple from Germany noticed a man staying at a hotel in Nusa Dua, on the Indonesian island of Bali. Their sighting ended a search that had stretched across several continents. On the 14th of June 2007, the man was…
- Yves BonnefoyYves Bonnefoy refused to call himself a poet. He said he was a critic or a historian.
- Eric ChristiansenHistorian Eric Christiansen won his Oxford fellowship with a thesis on modern Spain.