Curated category
People of the Cold War
- John F. KennedyJohn Fitzgerald Kennedy was shot and killed in Dallas on the 22nd of November 1963, while riding in a presidential motorcade.
- Ronald ReaganRonald Wilson Reagan was born on the 6th of February 1911 in a rented apartment above a bakery in Tampico, Illinois, the younger son of a dreaming salesman…
- George H. W. BushGeorge Herbert Walker Bush carried a question with him for most of his adult life. Shot down over the Pacific in 1944, watching both crewmates die while he…
- Richard NixonRichard Nixon was the only president in American history to resign from the office he held. On the 9th of August, 1974, he stepped away from the presidency…
- Nikita KhrushchevNikita Khrushchev stood before a closed session of the 20th Party Congress on the 25th of February 1956, and in four hours dismantled the reputation of a man…
- Winston ChurchillWinston Churchill was born on the 30th of November 1874 inside Blenheim Palace, the ancestral home his family had held for generations in Oxfordshire.
- Joseph StalinJoseph Stalin signed his articles "K. Stalin", an alias drawn from the Russian word for steel, translated as "Man of Steel." The man who chose it was born…
- 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.
- Harold WilsonHarold Wilson was born on the 11th of March 1916 on Warneford Road, in the mill town of Huddersfield, to a family that already breathed politics.
- Mohammad Reza PahlaviMohammad Reza Pahlavi was born on the 26th of October 1919 in Tehran, the eldest son of a Brigadier-General who had not yet become king.
- Margaret ThatcherMargaret Hilda Thatcher arrived at 10 Downing Street on the 4th of May 1979 and kept a portrait of her Oxford chemistry tutor on the wall throughout her time…
- Pierre TrudeauPierre Trudeau walked into the 1968 Liberal leadership convention having been a card-carrying member of the party for barely three years.
- Pope John Paul IIPope John Paul II was born Karol Józef Wojtyła on the 18th of May 1920, in the small Polish town of Wadowice. By the time he died on the 2nd of April 2005…
- Che GuevaraErnesto "Che" Guevara de la Serna signed Cuba's paper currency with a single word: "Che." His long-time friend Ricardo Rojo said that the day he signed the…
- Dwight D. EisenhowerDwight David Eisenhower drafted a message he hoped no one would ever read. On the eve of the D-Day landings on the 6th of June 1944, he wrote a short…
- Ferdinand MarcosFerdinand Marcos arrived in Hawaii in February 1986 with 22 crates of cash valued at $717 million, 300 crates of jewelry, and a 12 by 4 foot box full of…
- Helmut KohlHelmut Josef Michael Kohl governed Germany for sixteen years, the longest chancellorship in the country's post-war history.
- Lyndon B. JohnsonLyndon Baines Johnson was sworn in as the 36th president of the United States aboard Air Force One, just hours after the assassination of John F.
- Mao ZedongMao Zedong was born to a peasant family in Shaoshan, a village in Hunan, on the 26th of December 1893, near the end of the Qing dynasty. His father beat him.
- Fidel CastroFidel Alejandro Castro Ruz delivered the longest speech ever heard before the United Nations General Assembly, speaking for four and a half hours in 1960.
- 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…
- François MitterrandFrançois Maurice Adrien Marie Mitterrand arrived in this world on the 26th of October 1916 in the small Charente town of Jarnac, and he died in Paris on the…
- Harry S. TrumanHarry S. Truman became the 33rd president of the United States not by winning an election, but by walking into a room where Eleanor Roosevelt told him her…
- Leonid BrezhnevLeonid Ilyich Brezhnev died on the 10th of November 1982, and within days, leaders from Cuba, Nicaragua, Mozambique, Afghanistan, and India had declared…
- Henry KissingerHenry Kissinger arrived in New York City on the 5th of September, 1938, a 15-year-old Jewish refugee who had fled Germany with his family just weeks before.
- Charles de GaulleCharles de Gaulle was born on the 22nd of November 1890 in Lille, the third of five children in a devoutly Catholic, conservative, and monarchist household.
- Clement AttleeClement Attlee walked into Buckingham Palace on the 26th of July 1945 to be appointed Prime Minister. King George VI stood waiting.
- Yuri AndropovYuri Andropov died on the 9th of February 1984 at 16:50, aged 69, after spending barely 15 months as the leader of the Soviet Union.
- Kim Il SungKim Il Sung arrived at the Korean port of Wonsan on the 19th of September 1945, stepping off a ship as a 33-year-old captain in the Soviet Red Army after 26…
- Konrad AdenauerKonrad Adenauer was elected the first chancellor of West Germany on the 15th of September 1949 by what observers called a majority of one vote, his own.
- Konstantin ChernenkoKonstantin Ustinovich Chernenko became the de jure leader of the Soviet Union on the 13th of February 1984, and by the time he died just over thirteen months…
- Francisco FrancoFrancisco Franco was shot in the abdomen in 1916, aged 23, during an assault on Moroccan positions at El Biutz, in the hills near Ceuta.
- Aleksandr SolzhenitsynOn the 9th of May 1945, all of Moscow erupted in fireworks and searchlights to mark Germany's surrender. Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn watched those…
- Mobutu Sese SekoMobutu Sese Seko was born Joseph-Désiré Mobutu on the 14th of October 1930 in Lisala, in the Belgian Congo. His father was a cook for a Belgian judge.
- Willy BrandtWilly Brandt was born Herbert Ernst Karl Frahm on the 18th of December 1913 in the Free City of Lübeck, the illegitimate son of a single mother who worked as…
- Claude ShannonClaude Elwood Shannon was born on the 30th of April 1916, in a hospital in Petoskey, Michigan, and by the time he died on the 24th of February 2001, he had…
- Josip Broz TitoJosip Broz, known to the world as Tito, once wrote a letter that read: "Stalin. Stop sending assassins to murder me. We have already caught five, one with a…
- Imre NagyImre Nagy was hanged in secret on the 16th of June 1958, and the Hungarian government waited until after he was dead to tell anyone.
- Wojciech JaruzelskiWojciech Jaruzelski was born on the 6th of July 1923 in Kurów, into a family of Polish gentry, the seventh of eight children.
- Andrei SakharovAndrei Sakharov was the man who built the Soviet Union's most devastating weapon and then spent the rest of his life trying to limit the damage it could do.
- Efraín Ríos MonttEfraín Ríos Montt died of a heart attack at his home in Guatemala City on the 1st of April 2018, at the age of 91, without ever completing a criminal trial.
- Urho KekkonenUrho Kaleva Kekkonen was born in a smoke sauna in a small cabin in Pielavesi, Finland, on the 3rd of September 1900. His father had built a chimney in the…
- Erich HoneckerErich Honecker stood at a podium in Saarland in September 1987 and spoke of a day when Germans would no longer be separated by borders.
- Samantha SmithSamantha Reed Smith was ten years old when she looked at the cover of Time magazine and asked a question that would change her life. It was November 1982.
- Bernard BaruchBernard Mannes Baruch entered the world on the 19th of August 1870 in Camden, South Carolina. He was born into a Jewish family where his father Simon worked…