Curated playlist
Survivors of aviation accidents or incidents
- Ernest HemingwayErnest Hemingway, only 18, carried Italian soldiers to safety despite being seriously wounded by mortar fire.
- Kirk DouglasKirk Douglas insisted on giving blacklisted writer Dalton Trumbo an on-screen credit for Spartacus.
- Harrison FordHarrison Ford got Han Solo after reading lines for other actors' auditions. George Lucas slowly decided he wanted Ford.
- Nigel FarageNigel Farage told reporters on the 4th of July 2016 that he wanted his life back. The line echoed the slogan of the referendum campaign he had just won, in which he demanded his country back. He also promised that this resignation as…
- Ted KennedyEdward Moore Kennedy had just lost the fight for his party's presidential nomination. On the 12th of August 1980 he stepped to the podium at Madison Square Garden. His closing words stayed with the hall: "the work goes on, the cause…
- Juliane KoepckeJuliane Koepcke fell three thousand meters in her airplane seat and survived. Lightning hit her plane in 1971.
- Wright brothersThe Wright brothers' 1903 patent did not claim an airplane. It claimed a system for controlling one.
- Travis BarkerTravis Barker learned a 20-song setlist in 45 minutes. It was early 1998, he had no time to rehearse with the band, and he played every song flawlessly at the first show. The band was Blink-182, and he was only meant to be a stand-in.…
- Sally FieldSally Field is an American actress whose 1984 Academy Award speech has never stopped being quoted. At the podium she said, "And I can't deny the fact that you like me...right now...you like me!" People often remember it as "You like me,…
- Jeff BezosJeff Bezos read a single statistic in the spring of 1994. Web usage, it said, was growing at 2,300 percent a year. Within months he had walked away from a senior job on Wall Street to sell books over the internet. He warned many of his…
- Jimmy BuffettJimmy Buffett's first album, Down to Earth, sold just 324 copies after it appeared in August 1970. Decades later, he had sold over 20 million certified records worldwide. James William Buffett became a singer-songwriter, a bestselling…
- James GleickJames Gleick helped inspire Ian Malcolm, a character in Jurassic Park.
- Steve WozniakSteve Wozniak, nicknamed Woz, built his first computer in June 1971. A newspaper reporter destroyed it by stepping on the power supply cable. He had built the machine with his friend Bill Fernandez as a self-taught engineering project. It…