Curated category
Grammy Award winners
- Keef CowboyRobert Keith Wiggins stood in a Bronx hallway on the 20th of September 1960. He would later become known as Keef Cowboy, but his name was just a sound to him…
- Bob DylanBob Dylan was born Robert Allen Zimmerman on the 24th of May, 1941, at St. Mary's Hospital in Duluth, Minnesota. His Hebrew name was Shabtai Zisl ben Avraham.
- ColdplayColdplay are a British rock band who, over roughly two decades, went from pressing 500 copies of a self-financed EP to becoming the first band in history to…
- Pink FloydPink Floyd are an English rock band formed in London in 1965, and by the time their final studio album arrived in 2014, they had sold more than 250 million…
- Frank SinatraFrancis Albert Sinatra weighed 13.5 pounds when he was born on the 12th of December 1915, in a tenement at 415 Monroe Street in Hoboken, New Jersey.
- John LennonAt approximately 5:00 p.m. on the 8th of December 1980, John Lennon autographed a copy of his new album for a man named Mark David Chapman outside his New…
- Martin ScorseseMartin Scorsese had asthma as a boy and could not play sports or join in games with the other children. So his parents and his older brother took him to the…
- Woody AllenWoody Allen has made 50 feature films. That single fact sits at the center of a career so long and so productive it resists easy summary.
- 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…
- Benjamin BrittenBenjamin Britten was born on the 22nd of November 1913 in the fishing port of Lowestoft, Suffolk, and that birth date is no accident: it fell on the feast…
- Lady GagaStefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta was born on the 28th of March, 1986, at Lenox Hill Hospital in Manhattan. She would grow up to sell an estimated 124…
- Taylor SwiftTaylor Alison Swift was born on the 13th of December 1989, in West Reading, Pennsylvania, named after the singer-songwriter James Taylor by parents who chose…
- MetallicaNear Dorarp, Sweden, at around sunrise on the 27th of September 1986, a tour bus skidded off the road and overturned several times.
- 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…
- Andrew Lloyd WebberAndrew Lloyd Webber walked into Her Majesty's Theatre on the 11th of February 2012 to mark a milestone that no Broadway show had ever reached: the 10,000th…
- Barack ObamaBarack Obama was born on the 4th of August 1961 at Kapiolani Medical Center for Women and Children in Honolulu, Hawaii, making him the only person to become…
- Kanye WestKanye Omari West was born on the 8th of June 1977, in Atlanta, Georgia, and by the time he was done reshaping American music, he had become one of the most…
- Steven SpielbergSteven Spielberg was born on the 18th of December 1946, in Cincinnati, Ohio, and by the time he was twelve years old, he had already staged and filmed a…
- Elton JohnElton John performed "Candle in the Wind 1997" live exactly once: on the 6th of September 1997, at the funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales, in Westminster…
- Young ThugJeffery Lamar Williams was born on the 16th of August 1991, in Atlanta, Georgia. He grew up in the Jonesboro South projects near Cleveland Avenue as the…
- Led ZeppelinLed Zeppelin sold somewhere between 200 and 300 million records, yet record executives at Atlantic Records signed them in November 1968 without ever having…
- Nirvana (band)Nirvana formed in Aberdeen, Washington, in 1987, and by January 1992 had displaced Michael Jackson's Dangerous from the top of the Billboard album charts.
- Prince (musician)Prince Rogers Nelson arrived at Mount Sinai Hospital in Minneapolis on the 7th of June, 1958, and for the next 57 years he operated at a pitch that most…
- Marvin GayeOn the 1st of April 1984, in a house in the Western Heights area of West Adams in Los Angeles, Marvin Gaye was shot twice by his own father.
- Bill ClintonBill Clinton was born William Jefferson Blythe III on the 19th of August 1946, in Hope, Arkansas, three months after his father died in an automobile…
- Jimmy CarterJimmy Carter was born on the 1st of October 1924, in the Wise Sanitarium in Plains, Georgia, where his mother worked as a registered nurse.
- Fleetwood MacFleetwood Mac were a British and American rock band whose name was itself a gambit. Peter Green, the guitarist who formed the group in London in 1967, chose…
- Igor StravinskyIgor Stravinsky once received a score back from his mentor in the mail, returned with a note reading: "Not delivered on account of death of addressee." That…
- John GielgudOn the evening of the 20th of October 1953, John Gielgud was arrested in Chelsea for cruising for sex in a public lavatory, an act that was then a crime in…
- Stephen ColbertStephen Colbert walked to the podium at the 2006 White House Correspondents' Association Dinner, stood a few yards from President George W.
- Rodgers and HammersteinRodgers and Hammerstein changed American theater so completely that historians began marking time by them - eras defined by what came before Oklahoma!
- AdeleAdele Laurie Blue Adkins was born on the 5th of May 1988 in Tottenham, London, and by the time she turned 23, she had already done something no solo artist…
- Duke EllingtonDuke Ellington wrote his first composition in the summer of 1914, working as a soda jerk at the Poodle Dog Cafe in Washington, D.C.
- 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…
- 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.
- Judy GarlandJudy Garland was born Frances Ethel Gumm on the 10th of June 1922, in Grand Rapids, Minnesota, to a family that lived and breathed performance.
- KornKorn walked into a recording studio in Huntington Beach in 1993 and started playing a riff that would stop strangers in their tracks.
- George MichaelGeorge Michael died on Christmas Day 2016, at his home in Goring-on-Thames, Oxfordshire. He was 53. His partner, Fadi Fawaz, found him in bed in the early…
- James BrownJames Brown was supposed to be named Joseph James Brown. A clerk reversed his first and middle names on his birth certificate, and the mistake stuck.
- The PoliceThe Police formed in London in 1977, and within six years they would play Shea Stadium to 70,000 people and hold the number one album position in the US for…
- Paul McCartneyPaul McCartney wrote his first song, "I Lost My Little Girl", on a £15 Framus Zenith acoustic guitar he had traded for a nickel-plated trumpet his father…
- Joni MitchellJoni Mitchell saved up to buy a single album at a bootleg price because she could not find it in Canada. The record was The Hottest New Group in Jazz by…
- Miles DavisMiles Dewey Davis III was born on the 26th of May 1926 in Alton, Illinois, to a family that owned a 200-acre estate in Arkansas with a profitable pig farm.
- Ed SheeranEd Sheeran was eleven years old when he heard Eric Clapton walk on stage at the Queen's Golden Jubilee concert in June 2002 and play the opening riff of…
- GorillazGorillaz are an English virtual band formed in 1998 by musician Damon Albarn and comic artist Jamie Hewlett. Their four members - 2-D, Murdoc Niccals…
- Amy WinehouseAmy Jade Winehouse died on the 23rd of July 2011, at her home in Camden Square, London. She was 27 years old. Her blood alcohol content was recorded at 0.416…
- Justin BieberJustin Drew Bieber was born on the 1st of March 1994 at St. Joseph's Hospital in London, Ontario, and he grew up in Stratford.
- Audrey HepburnAudrey Hepburn stood on a train platform in occupied Arnhem as a young girl, watching a boy in an oversized coat board a train bound for a concentration camp.
- Mikhail GorbachevMikhail Gorbachev was born on the 2nd of March 1931 in Privolnoye, a village in the North Caucasus, into a peasant family so poor his parents had married as…
- David FincherDavid Andrew Leo Fincher was born on the 28th of August 1962, in Denver, Colorado, and grew up to become one of the most recognizable directors working in…