Curated playlist
20th-century American LGBTQ people
- Richard PoirierLiterary critic Richard Poirier signed a 1968 pledge to refuse federal taxes. It was a protest against the Vietnam War.
- Billie HolidayBillie Holiday died with seventy cents in the bank. She earned $250,000 in the three years before her 1947 arrest.
- Marlon BrandoMarlon Brando sold back his Godfather profit points for $100,000, a sum that cost him an estimated $11 million.
- Andy WarholAndy Warhol was shot at his Factory studio in June 1968 by a writer who had appeared in his film.
- Little RichardLittle Richard walked away from rock and roll to study theology. A fireball over Sydney in 1957 shook him.
- Charlie SheenCharlie Sheen was the highest-paid actor on television in 2010, earning US$1.8 million for every episode of the sitcom Two and a Half Men. He had been born Carlos Irwin Estévez, and he grew up in a household where acting was the family…
- Fergie (singer)Fergie, born Stacy Ann Ferguson, sang on a song that held the top spot on the Billboard Hot 100 for 14 straight weeks in 2009. That song, "I Gotta Feeling," stayed at number one longer than any other song that year. By then her records had…
- Charles MansonOn the first day of testimony in his 1970 murder trial, Charles Manson arrived with an X carved into his forehead.
- Queen LatifahQueen Latifah picked her name from a book of Arabic names at age eight. She added the title "Queen" herself.
- John CageJohn Cage once had a pianist play nothing for four minutes and thirty-three seconds. Audience noise became the music.
- Angelina JolieAngelina Jolie has appeared in films that grossed more than $6.9 billion worldwide, and Hollywood has named her its highest-paid actress several times. As a teenager, though, she took at-home courses on embalming because she hoped to…
- Dean CorllDean Corll was the man whose death a frightened caller reported to the Pasadena Police Department at 8:24 on the morning of the 8th of August 1973. The operator who answered was named Velma Lines. The caller was a teenager, and he blurted…
- Aaron CoplandComposer Aaron Copland planned one year of study in Paris with Nadia Boulanger but stayed three.
- Jim JonesJim Jones was an American preacher who founded the Peoples Temple. On the 18th of November 1978, 912 people died at his jungle commune in Jonestown, Guyana. Among them were 304 children. Jones called the event "revolutionary suicide," a…
- Jeffrey DahmerJeffrey Dahmer killed seventeen men and boys between 1978 and 1991. He became known as the Milwaukee Cannibal and the Milwaukee Monster. On the night of the 22nd of July 1991, police officers in a Milwaukee apartment pinned him to the…
- Janis JoplinIn the summer of 1962, the campus newspaper at the University of Texas at Austin printed a profile of a student named Janis Joplin. The issue was dated the 27th of July, and the headline read “She Dares to Be Different.” The writer noted…
- James Dallas Egbert IIIA Michigan State student vanished in 1979, and a Dungeons & Dragons theory made national news.
- Jennifer HigdonJennifer Higdon taught herself flute from an old method book. She later won the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for Music.
- Kevin SpaceyLate in the 1995 thriller Se7en, Kevin Spacey walks into the story as the serial killer John Doe, and most of the audience had no idea he was coming. His name was missing from the opening credits. It was missing from the film's…
- Scott BessentScott Bessent won Senate confirmation as United States secretary of the treasury on the 27th of January 2025, by a vote of 68-29. On that same day, a man carrying several Molotov cocktails and a knife, who intended to murder him, was…
- Anthony PerkinsAnthony Perkins was born on the 4th of April 1932 in Manhattan and died on the 12th of September 1992. When Fear Strikes Out reached theaters in 1957, The Hollywood Reporter wrote of his performance: "Every recent young star has been…
- Billy PrestonBilly Preston got his name on a Beatles single. The 1969 "Get Back" was credited to "The Beatles with Billy Preston."
- Albert FishAlbert Fish was caught because of a letter he mailed in November 1934 to the mother of a girl he had killed six years earlier. Mrs. Budd could not read, so her son read the pages aloud to her. The letter carried no signature. Police traced…
- Drew BarrymoreDrew Barrymore was seven years old when she hosted Saturday Night Live on the 20th of November 1982, and nobody has hosted at a younger age since. The American actress went on to build a career that ran from child stardom to her own…
- Billie Jean KingBillie Jean King beat 55-year-old Bobby Riggs in straight sets in 1973. He had claimed women's tennis was too weak.
- 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…