# Notable people who lived into your lifetime

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/notable-people-who-lived-into-your-lifetime/654492>\
**Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\
**Created:** [April 1, 2013, 3:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/notable-people-who-lived-into-your-lifetime/654492 "2013-04-01T03:17:28Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 14\
**Page:** 2

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**Author:** ![astorian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ad7895/32.png) [@astorian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astorian)\
**Post date:** [April 1, 2013, 6:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/notable-people-who-lived-into-your-lifetime/654492/21 "2013-04-01T18:56:07Z")

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I was born in 1961, and didn’t have any real idea of what was happening in the world until, say, 1966.

Between 1961 and 1965, the following notable people died:  
Ernest Hemingway  
Dag Hammarskjöld  
William Faulkner  
Robert Frost  
John F. Kennedy  
Herbert Hoover  
Winston Churchill

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**Author:** ![tdn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/94ad74/32.png) [@tdn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tdn)\
**Post date:** [April 1, 2013, 7:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/notable-people-who-lived-into-your-lifetime/654492/22 "2013-04-01T19:02:15Z")

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> [@cochrane](#):
>
> I also remember Margaret Hamilton making Maxwell House commercials as Cora, the storekeeper.

Yes, of course.

I’m pretty sure I was aware of Helen Keller by the time she died.

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**Author:** ![Loach](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/loach/32/350_2.png) [@Loach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Loach)\
**Post date:** [April 1, 2013, 7:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/notable-people-who-lived-into-your-lifetime/654492/23 "2013-04-01T19:09:11Z")

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I turned 1 in 1968. The events of that year made my parents fear for my future. So off the top of my head, MLK and RFK.

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**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\
**Post date:** [April 1, 2013, 8:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/notable-people-who-lived-into-your-lifetime/654492/24 "2013-04-01T20:11:41Z")

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It still astonishes me that Mark Twain’s second daughter, Clara Clemens, died as recently as 1962, well within my lifetime. She broke out of Twain’s controlling atmosphere\* to marry concert pianist Ossip Gabrilowirsch. After his death in 1936 she married another Russian musician, Jacques Samossoud.

Twain’s grand-daughter, Nina Clemens Gabrilowirsch, died just four years later in 1966. She was only 56 (!), and very little is written about her life. I’ve seen pictures of her judging “Tom Sawyer Loookalike contests” and the like, but she stayed pretty much out of the spotlight. She reportedly had a drinking problem. apparently she never married (though there wrre rumors), and she died without children, making her the last direct descendant of Twain.

\*Much as I love Twain’s writing, I’d have hated to have been his child. He was a control freak and prone to violent temper tantrums.

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**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\
**Post date:** [April 1, 2013, 8:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/notable-people-who-lived-into-your-lifetime/654492/25 "2013-04-01T20:42:30Z")

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An SMBC [comic](http://www.smbc-comics.com/comics/20130321.gif) that some people may find disturbingly relevant.

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**Author:** ![Fear\_Itself](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fear_itself/32/19637_2.png) [@Fear\_Itself](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fear_Itself)\
**Post date:** [April 1, 2013, 9:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/notable-people-who-lived-into-your-lifetime/654492/26 "2013-04-01T21:05:46Z")

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The most surprising was Laura Ingalls Wilder, who was born in 1867 and died in 1957, when I was 3 years old.

Others of note:

Henri Matisse  
Enrico Fermi  
Machine Gun Kelly  
Charlie Parker  
Albert Einstein  
Cy Young  
Humphrey Bogart  
Oliver Hardy  
W.C. Handy  
Frank Lloyd Wright  
Ernest Hemingway  
Ty Cobb

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**Author:** ![the\_diego](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/7bcc69/32.png) [@the\_diego](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/the_diego)\
**Post date:** [April 2, 2013, 12:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/notable-people-who-lived-into-your-lifetime/654492/27 "2013-04-02T00:21:40Z")

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Churchill, Macarthur, Kennedy, Lindbergh, Tolkien, Rand, Brando, R. Harris, Sinatra, Tracy, Astaire, Kelly, Dempsey, Lennon, Presley, B. Russel (flrt.)

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**Author:** ![Baker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/bb73d2/32.png) [@Baker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baker)\
**Post date:** [April 2, 2013, 12:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/notable-people-who-lived-into-your-lifetime/654492/28 "2013-04-02T00:37:18Z")

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I didn’t hear of, or learn who Margaret Sanger was, until I was an adult and was watching an episode of Steve Allen’s “Meeting of Minds”, in which Sanger was one of the guests. (Played by Jayne Meadows of course)

She died in 1966 when I was not quite twelve. Few women have had such an influence on women’s rights and women’s health, as Margaret Sanger did. Many women owe their lives and health to her, as she championed the fight for safe, easy, and inexpensive birth control. The term “birth control” itself was her invention.

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**Author:** ![Angel\_of\_the\_Lord](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/angel_of_the_lord/32/2949_2.png) [@Angel\_of\_the\_Lord](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Angel_of_the_Lord)\
**Post date:** [April 2, 2013, 12:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/notable-people-who-lived-into-your-lifetime/654492/29 "2013-04-02T00:40:54Z")

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Kurt Cobain’s the big one. I was almost eleven when he died, but I had no musical exposure. I didn’t really know who he was, and didn’t get into Nirvana until about five years after he’d died.

Also, Raymond Carver. He died when I was five, and he’s my favorite short story writer. I also started reading Andre Dubus about a year after he died.

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**Author:** ![suranyi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e36b37/32.png) [@suranyi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/suranyi)\
**Post date:** [April 2, 2013, 12:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/notable-people-who-lived-into-your-lifetime/654492/30 "2013-04-02T00:49:43Z")

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John F. Kennedy died when I was one year old.

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**Author:** ![SpoilerVirgin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/4491bb/32.png) [@SpoilerVirgin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SpoilerVirgin)\
**Post date:** [April 2, 2013, 12:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/notable-people-who-lived-into-your-lifetime/654492/31 "2013-04-02T00:55:21Z")

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My heroine Helen Keller died when I was 5. I’m still amazed that I could conceivably have met her.

And as I first learned here on the Dope, John Tyler still has two living grandsons, so we are all alive at the same time as grandchildren of the 10th president.

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**Author:** ![Battle\_Pope](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/4bbf92/32.png) [@Battle\_Pope](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Battle_Pope)\
**Post date:** [April 2, 2013, 1:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/notable-people-who-lived-into-your-lifetime/654492/32 "2013-04-02T01:51:58Z")

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Born in early 1972. My list:

J Edgar Hoover  
Igor Sikorsky  
Lon Chaney Jr  
John R R Tolkien  
Duke Ellington  
Wernher von Braun  
Agatha Christie

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**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\
**Post date:** [April 2, 2013, 3:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/notable-people-who-lived-into-your-lifetime/654492/33 "2013-04-02T03:17:59Z")

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> [@SpoilerVirgin](#):
>
> And as I first learned here on the Dope, John Tyler still has two living grandsons, so we are all alive at the same time as grandchildren of the 10th president.

It’s amazing when you consider that Tyler was born when George Washington was President and his grandchildren are alive when Barack Obama is President.

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**Author:** ![etv78](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/d78d45/32.png) [@etv78](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/etv78)\
**Post date:** [April 2, 2013, 5:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/notable-people-who-lived-into-your-lifetime/654492/34 "2013-04-02T05:31:44Z")

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More interesting when you realize Tyler was a slaveholder, who repudiated the Union shortly before his death.

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