Curated playlist
Military personnel from New York City
- Humphrey BogartHumphrey Bogart's ashes were buried with a small gold whistle from a bracelet he gave Lauren Bacall.
- Herman MelvilleHerman Melville's death notice misspelled his great novel as "Mobie Dick."
- Theodore RooseveltTheodore Roosevelt was shot in the chest, then gave a 90-minute speech. It happened in Milwaukee in October 1912.
- Colin PowellOn the 5th of February 2003, Colin Powell addressed the United Nations Security Council. He told the council: "there can be no doubt that Saddam Hussein has biological weapons and the capability to rapidly produce more, many more." The…
- William WylerDirector William Wyler once made Henry Fonda do forty takes of one scene. His only note was the word again.
- John WilliamsSteven Spielberg laughed at John Williams's two-note Jaws theme, thinking it was a joke.
- Jack KirbyJack Kirby was drafted in 1943 and became a scout who drew reconnaissance maps in towns.
- Ralph EllisonA 1967 fire destroyed more than 300 pages of Ralph Ellison's second novel. He never finished it.
- Robert MuellerRobert Mueller was the sixth director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The Senate confirmed him on the 2nd of August 2001, by a vote of 98-0. Not one senator opposed him. That kind of agreement was no accident of timing. Four…
- Julius and Ethel RosenbergJulius and Ethel Rosenberg open Sylvia Plath's 1963 novel The Bell Jar, in a single sultry sentence. The line reads: "It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs..." The couple were a married pair from New…
- Henry HillIn 1955, an eleven-year-old boy named Henry Hill crossed the street from his Brooklyn home and wandered into a dispatch cabstand, hoping for a part-time job after school. The men who gathered there were local mobsters, and Hill had admired…
- Isaac AsimovIsaac Asimov coined the word "robotics" in a 1941 story, thinking it was just a natural term.
- E. L. DoctorowE. L. Doctorow won the National Book Critics Circle Award three times. He mixed real and invented people.
- Joseph Francis SheaJoe Shea's 1962 analysis steered NASA toward its Moon landing plan. He had joined the agency only months earlier.
- Albert AnastasiaAlbert Anastasia was born Umberto Anastasio in Calabria, Italy, and died in a barber's chair in Manhattan on the 25th of October 1957. Along the way he collected the nicknames The Earthquake and The One-Man Army. Few figures in American…
- Red AuerbachBoston restaurants once banned cigar smoking for everyone except Red Auerbach.
- Grace HopperGrace Hopper hung a clock on her office wall that ran counterclockwise. She wanted code in plain English.
- Sammy GravanoSammy Gravano, known to the world as Sammy the Bull, once faced up to 20 years in prison and received a sentence that amounted to less than one year. In 1994 a federal judge gave him five years, but he had already served four. The judge…