Curated playlist
English Quakers
- Abraham Darby IIAbraham Darby II showed that coke pig iron could be turned into wrought iron.
- Abraham Darby IIIAbraham Darby III inherited his family's iron business at thirteen. He later built the first cast-iron bridge.
- Judi DenchJudi Dench won an Oscar for a role that lasted about eight minutes. She played Queen Elizabeth I in Shakespeare in Love.
- Abraham Darby IIn January 1709, Abraham Darby lit a Coalbrookdale furnace and smelted iron with coke.
- Ben KingsleyBen Kingsley turned down an offer to become a pop star in 1966. He auditioned for the Royal Shakespeare Company instead.
- Damon AlbarnDamon Albarn was due to speak at a rally in Hyde Park in February 2003. A million people had taken to the streets of London to protest the coming war in Iraq. He never gave the speech, because he was too emotional. Afterwards he explained…
- Edward Burnett TylorTuberculosis sent a brass factory owner's son abroad in 1855 and changed the course of anthropology.
- Donald SwannDonald Swann set J. R. R. Tolkien's poems to music, and Tolkien joined the recording.
- Benjamin HuntsmanSheffield cutlers refused to buy Benjamin Huntsman's steel, so he sold it all to France.
- William PennWilliam Penn has stood above Philadelphia since 1894, when a bronze statue of him by Alexander Milne Calder was set on top of City Hall. At the time, City Hall was the tallest building in the city. Urban designer Edmund Bacon liked to say…
- Joseph ListerJoseph Lister was born on the 5th of April 1827, and he would later be called the father of modern surgery. Yet the surgeons of his youth spoke fondly of what they called the good old surgical stink. They wore operating gowns crusted with…