Curated playlist
Honorary Knights Commander of the Order of the British Empire
- Steven SpielbergSteven Spielberg walked into Universal Studios without a pass, and the guard waved him in.
- Jorge Luis BorgesJorge Luis Borges directed Argentina's National Library while completely blind.
- Bob IgerBob Iger began on television sets earning $150 a week and later ran Disney twice.
- BonoBono, the lead singer of U2, took his name from the sign of a hearing aid shop in Dublin. The shop was called Bonavox, and it stood just off O'Connell Street, the city's principal thoroughfare. The word comes from the Latin for good voice.…
- Bill GatesBill Gates and Paul Allen wrote software for a computer they did not have. Their Altair demo worked the first time.
- Eric SchmidtEric Schmidt ran Google while taking a base salary of just $1 a year. That pay lasted from 2004 through 2010.
- John WilliamsSteven Spielberg laughed at John Williams's two-note Jaws theme, thinking it was a joke.
- George S. PattonA reporter once heard George S. Patton say that winning in combat took "blood and brains." The reporter began calling him "blood and guts," and the nickname followed Patton for the rest of his life. Soldiers under his command sometimes…
- Alan GreenspanIn October 2008, Alan Greenspan told Congress his faith in free markets had a flaw.
- James WatsonJames Watson put his name to a scientific paper that fills just two pages of the journal Nature, pages 737 and 738 of volume 171. Watson, an American molecular biologist, wrote it with Francis Crick in 1953. Its subject was DNA, and its…
- Kevin SpaceyLate in the 1995 thriller Se7en, Kevin Spacey walks into the story as the serial killer John Doe, and most of the audience had no idea he was coming. His name was missing from the opening credits. It was missing from the film's…
- Ravi ShankarRavi Shankar was horrified when Jimi Hendrix set his guitar on fire. The sitar master saw instruments as part of God.
- Walter Bedell SmithWalter Bedell Smith signed Italy's armistice under an olive tree in Sicily. It was September 3, 1943.
- PeléAt 17, Pelé passed out on the field after scoring twice in the 1958 World Cup final. His teammate Garrincha revived him.
- Lewis MumfordLewis Mumford argued the clock, not the steam engine, drove the Industrial Revolution. He never finished college.