Curated category
American atheists
- Orson WellesOrson Welles was born on the 6th of May 1915, in Kenosha, Wisconsin, and died on the 10th of October 1985. In between those dates, he directed what is…
- Quentin TarantinoQuentin Tarantino was born on the 27th of March 1963, in Knoxville, Tennessee, to a mother who let him watch R-rated films as a child and a father he never…
- H. P. LovecraftH. P. Lovecraft died on the 15th of March 1937 in Providence, Rhode Island, virtually unknown to the reading public. He was 46 years old, hospitalized with…
- Katharine HepburnKatharine Hepburn won four Academy Awards for Best Actress, a record no one else has matched. She wore trousers before women commonly did.
- Marilyn MonroeMarilyn Monroe was born Norma Jeane Mortenson on the 1st of June 1926, in the Boyle Heights neighborhood of Los Angeles, at a city hospital.
- Kurt VonnegutKurt Vonnegut survived the firebombing of Dresden by hiding in a meat locker three stories underground, surrounded by hanging cadavers.
- Jack NicholsonJack Nicholson improvised a single line for a 1980 horror film, and it outlived almost everything else he ever filmed. "Here's Johnny!" was not in Stanley…
- Clint EastwoodClinton Eastwood Jr. entered the world at Saint Francis Memorial Hospital in San Francisco on the 31st of May, 1930, weighing 11 pounds 6 ounces.
- Leon FestingerLeon Festinger spent months living a lie among people who believed the world would end on the 21st of December 1954. A suburban housewife named Dorothy…
- Jack LondonJack London was born on the 12th of January, 1876, in a San Francisco neighborhood that would later burn to the ground in the earthquake of 1906.
- Bruce LeeBruce Lee was born in San Francisco on the 27th of November, 1940, during the hour of the Dragon, in the year of the Dragon.
- Rudolf CarnapRudolf Carnap was born on the 18th of May 1891 in Ronsdorf, in what is now the city of Wuppertal, Germany. At the age of 14, he taught himself Esperanto and…
- Steve DitkoSteve Ditko drew the first costume for Spider-Man because he worried the character's face looked too young. Covering it entirely, he reasoned, would add…
- ND StevensonNate Diana Stevenson was born Noelle Diana Stevenson on the 31st of December 1991, in Columbia, South Carolina. He grew up as the third of five siblings in a…
- Marvin MinskyMarvin Minsky once described intelligence as the possible product of the interaction of non-intelligent parts. That idea alone reshaped how scientists and…
- Frank ZappaFrank Vincent Zappa was born on the 21st of December, 1940, in Baltimore, Maryland, into a household where Italian was spoken by his grandparents and gas…
- Eugene WignerEugene Paul Wigner once quipped that he never expected to see his name in the newspapers "without doing something wicked" - yet in 1963, the Nobel Committee…
- Maxwell AndersonMaxwell Anderson died on the 28th of February 1959, two days after a stroke, and was cremated. Half his ashes were scattered by the sea near his home in…
- Claude ShannonClaude Elwood Shannon was born on the 30th of April 1916, in a hospital in Petoskey, Michigan, and by the time he died on the 24th of February 2001, he had…
- Isaac AsimovIsaac Asimov wrote or edited more than 500 books, and on top of that he sent an estimated 90,000 letters and postcards. He once said the only thing about…
- Herbert A. SimonHerbert Alexander Simon was born on the 15th of June 1916 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, the son of an electrical engineer who had crossed the Atlantic from…
- Yann LeCunYann LeCun was born on the 8th of July 1960 in Soisy-sous-Montmorency, a suburb of Paris, and his surname carries the fingerprints of a culture older than…
- George SorosGeorge Soros was born György Schwartz on the 12th of August 1930 in Budapest, into a prosperous Jewish family that would spend the next decade and a half…
- Ambrose BierceAmbrose Bierce closed his last known letter with a single sentence: "As to me, I leave here tomorrow for an unknown destination." He wrote those words in…
- George GamowGeorgiy Antonovich Gamow was born in Odessa, Russian Empire, now Odesa, Ukraine. His father taught Russian language and literature while his mother taught…
- Joss WhedonJoss Whedon grew up on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in a household where Shakespeare was vacation reading and silence was a punishment for children who…
- B. F. SkinnerB. F. Skinner died on the 18th of August 1990 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, just ten days after receiving a lifetime achievement award from the American…
- Amos TverskyAmos Nathan Tversky was born on the 16th of March 1937 in Haifa, British Palestine, and by the time he died in 1996, he had helped overturn one of the most…
- Erich FrommErich Fromm was born on the 23rd of March 1900 in Frankfurt am Main, the only child of Rosa and Naphtali Fromm, and he would spend the next eight decades…
- John RomeroJohn Romero was born six weeks premature on the 28th of October, 1967, in Colorado Springs, Colorado, into a family that had driven west in a 1948 Chrysler…
- John McCarthy (computer scientist)John McCarthy coined the term "artificial intelligence" in the summer of 1956, and spent the rest of his life trying to build exactly what that phrase…
- Robert EttingerRobert Chester Wilson Ettinger was shot in Germany during World War II, left for dead in the field, and spent several years recovering in a Michigan hospital.
- Judea PearlJudea Pearl entered the world on the 4th of September 1936 in Tel Aviv. This city sat within the British Mandate for Palestine at that time.
- Richard B. SpencerRichard Bertrand Spencer was born on the 11th of May 1978 in Boston, Massachusetts. He grew up in Preston Hollow, Dallas, Texas, as the son of…
- Richard LesterRichard Lester Liebman arrived at the University of Pennsylvania at the age of 15, already a graduate of a Quaker school in Philadelphia, studying clinical…
- Linus PaulingLinus Carl Pauling stands alone in the history of Nobel Prizes. He is the only person ever to have been awarded two unshared Nobel Prizes, one for Chemistry…