Curated playlist
United States Navy personnel of World War II
- John F. KennedyJohn F. Kennedy spent hours in the water towing a burned crewman after a destroyer cut his boat in half.
- Richard NixonRichard Nixon was the only U.S. president to resign. He left office on the 9th of August, 1974, over Watergate.
- Arthur E. BrysonArthur E. Bryson and Henry J. Kelley developed an early version of backpropagation.
- Gerald FordGerald Ford is the only person in American history to serve as president without ever winning a national election for president or vice president. He held the office from 1974 to 1977. Both of the jobs that carried him there came to him by…
- Kirk DouglasKirk Douglas insisted on giving blacklisted writer Dalton Trumbo an on-screen credit for Spartacus.
- Robert F. KennedyRobert F. Kennedy won the California Democratic primary on the 5th of June 1968, and around midnight a gunman shot him. Kennedy died 25 hours later. The shooter was Sirhan Sirhan, a 24-year-old Palestinian who acted in retaliation for…
- Johnny CarsonUri Geller failed on Johnny Carson's show, and it made him famous. Carson had asked James Randi for help.
- John ColtraneA San Francisco congregation once worshipped John Coltrane as God incarnate.
- Lyndon B. JohnsonLyndon B. Johnson took the presidential oath from a woman, a first for any American president.
- Alan ShepardAn inner ear disease grounded astronaut Alan Shepard for years before he walked on the Moon.
- L. Ron HubbardL. Ron Hubbard, the American writer who founded Scientology, once told his wife exactly what he wanted from life. In a letter, he declared: "I have high hopes of smashing my name into history so violently that it will take a legendary form…
- William R. LucasMarshall director William R. Lucas retired in 1986 after a commission criticized his role in Challenger.
- Chuck Cooper (basketball)The Celtics owner ignored other teams and drafted Chuck Cooper anyway. He was the first African American drafted.
- Wally SchirraAstronaut Wally Schirra refused Mission Control's request to wear helmets.
- Paul NewmanAt the 1995 24 Hours of Daytona, Paul Newman was 70 years and eight days old, and his team won its class. That made him the oldest driver to date on a winning team in a major sanctioned race. Newman was best known as a film star, and he…
- Pete RozellePete Rozelle became NFL commissioner at 33 on the 23rd ballot. Owners who could not agree on anyone else picked him.
- Cesar ChavezCesar Chavez was born Cesario Estrada Chavez on the 31st of March 1927 and died on the 23rd of April 1993. Many Mexican Americans came to speak of him as a "folk saint." California farm owners saw something else entirely, a communist…
- Marvin MinskyIn 1951, Marvin Minsky built the first randomly wired neural network learning machine. He called it SNARC.
- James TobinJames Tobin proposed a tax on currency trading to throw sand in the wheels of speculation.
- L. Sprague de CampL. Sprague de Camp turned the word extraterrestrial into a noun. He also coined E.T. in a 1939 magazine article.
- James M. BuchananEconomist James M. Buchanan argued that politicians act from self-interest like everyone else.
- Joseph Francis SheaJoe Shea's 1962 analysis steered NASA toward its Moon landing plan. He had joined the agency only months earlier.
- George HalasGeorge Halas skipped the SS Eastland in 1915 because he was running late. The ship capsized, killing 844 passengers.
- Daniel Patrick MoynihanDaniel Patrick Moynihan once shined shoes in Penn Station, which now has a train hall named for him.
- Maxime FagetEngineer Max Faget decided a spacecraft returning from orbit should look nothing like an aircraft.
- Red AuerbachBoston restaurants once banned cigar smoking for everyone except Red Auerbach.