Curated playlist
Burials at sea
- Jiang ZeminJiang Zemin once recited the Gettysburg Address in English to student protesters. He later led China from 1989 to 2002.
- J. Robert OppenheimerJ. Robert Oppenheimer gripped a post to steady himself as the first nuclear bomb went off.
- Francis CrickFrancis Crick was editing a manuscript on his death bed. He co-deciphered the DNA double helix in 1953.
- Alan ShepardAn inner ear disease grounded astronaut Alan Shepard for years before he walked on the Moon.
- Neil ArmstrongNeil Armstrong's astronaut application came about a week late, until a colleague slipped it into the pile.
- Francis DrakeFrancis Drake climbed a tree in Panama and became the first Englishman to see the Pacific.
- Wally SchirraAstronaut Wally Schirra refused Mission Control's request to wear helmets.
- Zhou EnlaiZhou Enlai ran Communist spies in Shanghai while the secret police hunted him. He never used public transportation.
- Osama bin LadenOsama bin Laden, the founder of al-Qaeda, left behind a letter that was released only after his death. It urged Americans to work with the Obama administration to prevent climate change and to "save humanity" from the greenhouse gas…
- Zheng HeZheng He, captured as a boy by Ming armies, led seven treasure voyages between 1405 and 1433.
- Lady MountbattenEdwina Cynthia Annette Mountbatten died in her sleep on the 21st of February 1960, aged 58, while on an inspection tour in Jesselton, North Borneo. She was not at a palace or a country estate. She was on the road, working for the St John…
- Rudolf HessRudolf Hess spent the last two decades of his life as the only prisoner in Spandau, a Berlin prison with 600 cells. The Allied powers kept the whole building in service for him alone, at an estimated cost of DM 800,000 a year. Hess had…
- Hideki TojoHideki Tojo shot himself in the chest as American soldiers surrounded his house.
- Abu Bakr al-BaghdadiAbu Bakr al-Baghdadi left so faint an impression on Ahmed al-Dabash that al-Dabash dismissed him as insignificant. Al-Dabash led the Islamic Army of Iraq and fought the allied invasion in 2003. He said he had known the insurgency's leaders…