Adolf Hitler dies age 56
Hitler commits suicide in his Berlin bunker as his imminent defeat approaches. He consumes a cyanide capsule, then shoots himself with a pistol. He records a last testament for the world.
Above all I enjoin the leaders of the nation and their followers to scrupulous observance of the laws of race, and to merciless resistance to the universal poisoner of all peoples, international Jewry.
Omar al-Bashir born
Omar Hassan Ahmed al-Bashir is born to a farming family, and receives his primary education in Hoshe Bannaga, Sudan. He belongs to Al-Bedairyya Al-Dahmashyya, a Bedouin tribe belonging to the larger ja’alin coalition. He completes his secondary education in Khartoum.
George Harrison born in Liverpool, England
George Harrison is born in Liverpool, England to Harold Hargreaves Harrison and Louise Harrison. His father works as a bus conductor while his mother is a shop assistant. He has an elder sister and two elder brothers. He goes to Dovedale Primary School.
My earliest recollection is of sitting on a pot at the top of the stairs having a poop – shouting finished.
Janis Joplin born in Port Arthur, Texas
Janis Lyn Joplin is born in St. Mary’s Hospital in Port Arthur, Texas to a middle-class family. She is the first child of Seth Ward and Dorothy Joplin. Her father works as an engineer at a refinery, while her mother is a Sunday school teacher. She is a pretty, bright, and artistic little girl. In high school, she has shown signs of rebellion against the racial, sexual, and religious conservatism in her place; longing to leave her hometown.
I was a misfit. I read, I painted, I didn’t hate niggers.
Nikola Tesla dies age 86
Tesla dies quietly and alone of coronary thrombosis at age 86. He is found dead in his bed by the maid.
Kent McCord born in Los Angeles
Kent McCord is born Kent Franklin McWhirter to Bert and Laura McWhirter. McWhirter begins working at the age of 10 in his father’s gas station. At the age of 12 he works at the Brackett Field Airport.
I longed to fly. I was paid in flying lessons and, by the time I was 13, I’d logged 100 hours at the controls.
Jacob Zuma born in Nkandla, South Aftica
Jacob Gedleyihlekisa Zuma is born to Gcinamazwi Zuma and Nobhekisisa Bessie in Nkandla, KwaZulu-Natal Province, South Africa. His father dies at the end of World War II, after which his mother takes up employment as a domestic worker in Durban. Owing to his deprived childhood, he does not receive any formal schooling. He spends his childhood moving between Zululand and the suburbs of Durban, and by age 15 takes on odd jobs to supplement his mother’s income.
Stephen Hawking born in Oxford, England
Stephen William Hawking is born in Oxford, England to research biologist Dr. Frank Hawking and Isobel Hawking. He has two younger sisters, Philippa and Mary, and an adopted brother, Edward. In 1950, Hawking’s family moves to St. Albans, Hertfordshire, where he attends St. Albans High School for Girls, which allowed boys up to the age of 10, before attending St. Albans School. On his early schooling:
At school, I was never more than about halfway up the class. It was a very bright class. My classwork was very untidy, and my handwriting was the despair of my teachers. But my classmates gave me the nickname Einstein, so presumably they saw signs of something better. When I was twelve, one of my friends bet another friend a bag of sweets that I would never come to anything. I don’t know if this bet was ever settled, and if so, which way it was decided…
Becomes Sonia Shankman Orthogenic School director
Bettelheim is asked by Tyler, his protector and his mentor, to report on the Sonia Shankman Orthogenic School, which treats mentally retarded children. Bettelheim does not submit his report; he is reluctant to tell his mentor that he thinks the school is such a dump that it should be burned down. However, Tyler persists and offers Bettelheim the position of director of school Director.
Fred West born in Much Marcle, England
Frederick Walter Stephen West is born into a poor family of farm workers in Bickerton Cottage, Much Marcle, Herefordshire, to Walter Stephen West and Daisy Hannah Hill. He is the 2nd child for the couple. At school, West shows an aptitude for woodwork and artwork, but does not excel academically.
Bernie Sanders born in Brooklyn, NY
Bernie Sanders is born in Brooklyn, New York to Eli Sanders and Dorothy Glassberg. His father is a Jewish immigrant from Poland, who works most of his life as a paint salesman.
Growing up without lots of money. I didn’t have to have a book to tell me how a family gets by when there is not a lot of money. I saw unfairness. That was the major inspiration in my politics.
Hayao Miyazaki born in Tokyo
Hayao Miyazaki is born in Tokyo, Japan to Kastuji Miyazaki (an aeronautical engineer) and Dola Miyazaki. He has three brothers, Arata, Shirou, and Yutaka, and is the second oldest child. The family moves from Tokyo to Utsunomiya City, to get closer to the Miyazaki Airplanes factory in Kanuma City, as well as to avoid the ongoing American bombing of Tokyo.
I spent a lot of time just imagining things. I was a physically weak child, but read a lot. I always wanted to be a strong hero.
Julian Bond born in Nashville, TN
Bond is born at Hubbard Hospital in Nashville, Tennessee. He is the son of Horace and Julia Bond. Julia is a former librarian at Clark Atlanta University. The family resides on campus at Fort Valley State College, where Horace is president. The Bond’s house is a frequent stop for scholars and activists and celebrities passing by. He has two siblings, James and Jane Margaret.
Lee Harvey Oswald born in New Orleans
Oswald is born to Robert Oswald and Marguerite Oswald in New Orleans, Louisiana. Robert Oswald dies two months prior to Oswald’s birth and Oswald’s mother raises him alone. Although considered an intelligent boy, Oswald’s behavior at school is poor.
This 13 year old well built boy has superior mental resources and functions only slightly below his capacity level in spite of chronic truancy from school which brought him into Youth House.
Sigmund Freud dies age 83
Freud commits assisted suicide in his home during a Nazi air raid. He has been planning to do this for some time and has been waiting until he could no longer carry on. An overdoes of Morphine is administered by his physician Schur.
My dear Schur, you remember our first talk. You promised to help me when I could no longer carry on. It is only torture now, and it has no longer any sense.
Leaves Italy to escape Fascism
Erwitt’s family moves to the United States to get away both from fascist regime and Fascist racial laws that exclude all Jews from attending schools. His family leaves just two days before the outbreak of World War II.
Actually we left on September 1 and war was declared on the third. It was the last boat to leave.
Flees Nazis to England
Korbelova flees to England with her family after the Nazis occupy Czechoslovakia. Though Albright long believed they had fled for political reasons, she learned as an adult that her family was Jewish and that three of her grandparents had died in Nazi concentration camps.
And I think as a lot of people now know, and I didn’t know, but I was of Jewish background, so there is a pretty good chance that I might have died in a concentration camp if my parents had not been brave enough to bring us out of that. My parents had in fact made very clear to me that the suffering of other people, under great evil, was something that could not be tolerated.
I have always thought of myself as a Czechoslovak Catholic. My parents were of the generation who thought they were the children of a free Czechoslovakia, the only democracy in central Europe. This was their pride [and] that is what I grew up with.
Jamaica Inn
Hitchcock directs this movie about a young woman who discovers that there are criminal using her uncle’s inn as part of a scheme to wreck ships for profit. Maureen O’Hara, Robert Newton, and Charles Laughton star. On actor Charles Laughton:
When we started the picture, he asked me to show him only in close shots because he hadn’t yet figured out the manner of his walk. Ten days later he came in and said, “I’ve found it.” It turned out that his step had been inspired by the beat of a little German waltz.
The Lady Vanishes
Hitchcock directs this mystery film which also has touches of surrealism. A young woman traveling by train makes the acquaintance of a nice older lady who then vanishes without a trace. As the mystery deepens, and the other passengers continue to doubt her story, the young woman begins to question her own grasp of reality. Margaret Lockwood, Michael Redgrave, and Paul Lukas star. Director and Hitchcock scholar, Francois Truffaut:
Since I know it [The Lady Vanishes]by heart, I tell myself each time that I’m going to ignore the plot (and study the technique and effect). But each time, I become so absorbed by the characters and the story that I’ve yet to figure out the mechanics of the film.”
Rudolf Nureyev born on trans-Siberian railway
Rudolf Nureyev is born on board a train on the trans-Siberian railway, near Lake Baikal. Although his official birth date is March 17, 1938 it was probably in fact two or three days earlier. He is the youngest of four children and the only boy, born to a Tartar family of peasant stock. His father Hamet, is a political education officer in the Red Army, advancing to the rank of major while his mother, Farida, accompanies her husband with the family. Nureyev attends the Leningrad Ballet school, then joins the Kirov Ballet.
I had no early memories of my father earlier than his return from military service in 1946. This helps explain the lack of rapport between my father and I which was, made worse because by then I had already fixed on what my father thought the unmanly career of dancing.