Curated playlist
American expatriates in the United Kingdom
- John F. KennedyJohn Fitzgerald Kennedy was shot and killed in Dallas on the 22nd of November 1963, while riding in a presidential motorcade. He was 46 years old, and had served as the 35th president of the United States for less than three years. The man…
- Jimi HendrixJimi Hendrix died in London on the 18th of September 1970, at the age of 27, from barbiturate-related asphyxia. He was, by then, the world's highest-paid rock musician. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, which inducted his band in 1992, calls…
- MadonnaMadonna Louise Ciccone arrived in New York City in 1978 with thirty-five dollars in her pocket. It was the first time she had ever flown on a plane or ridden in a taxi. She would later call leaving college the bravest thing she had ever…
- Ernest HemingwayErnest Hemingway was born on the 21st of July 1899, in Oak Park, Illinois, into a family where his mother kept his hair long and dressed him in frilly clothes to match his older sister, aiming for the two to look like twins. That same…
- Jim HensonJim Henson made his first Kermit the Frog from a halved table tennis ball and fabric cut from an old coat that belonged to his mother. A scrap of denim from a pair of jeans formed the sleeve for the puppeteer's arm. From those humble parts…
- Linda McCartneyLinda McCartney was born Linda Louise Eastman in Manhattan on the 24th of September 1941, and by the time she died on the 17th of April 1998, she had been a photographer exhibited at the Victoria and Albert Museum, a keyboardist in one of…
- Frederick DouglassFrederick Douglass had no birth certificate, no record of his own age, and no settled name. He was born Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey into slavery on the Eastern Shore of the Chesapeake Bay in Talbot County, Maryland. He never knew…
- Gene VincentGene Vincent was born Vincent Eugene Craddock on the 11th of February 1935 in Norfolk, Virginia, and he died at 36, largely forgotten in his home country, while sitting with his father in Saugus, California. Between those two points lay a…
- Joseph HellerJoseph Heller was born on the 1st of May, 1923, in Coney Island, Brooklyn, to poor Jewish immigrant parents from Russia. By the time he died in December 1999, the title of his first novel had entered the English language itself. Not as a…
- Billy PrestonBilly Preston was the only artist to receive a co-performer credit on a Beatles recording after the band began recording as independent artists. The 1969 single "Get Back" bore the label "The Beatles with Billy Preston" not as a courtesy…
- Tommy RoeTommy Roe was still soldering wires at a General Electric plant in Atlanta when a phone call changed everything. His song "Sheila" had just reached number 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, and ABC-Paramount wanted him on tour. He was reluctant…
- 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 psychology rather than film. No one watching that prodigy walk across campus in the…