November 15, 1959

1959Tibor Fischer, English author^[†]

Tibor Fischer is a British novelist and short-story writer. In 1993, he was selected by the literary magazine Granta as one of the 20 best young British writers, while his novel Under the Frog was featured on the Booker Prize shortlist.

1959Charles Thomson Rees Wilson, Scottish physicist and meteorologist, Nobel Prize laureate (born 1869)^[†]

Charles Thomson Rees Wilson was a Scottish meteorologist and particle physicist who shared the 1927 Nobel Prize in Physics with Arthur Compton for his invention of the cloud chamber.

1959Four members of the Clutter family are murdered near Holcomb, Kansas, by Perry Smith and Richard Hickock, a crime later detailed by Truman Capote in his 1966 non-fiction novel In Cold Blood.^[†]

In the early morning hours of November 15, 1959, four members of the Clutter family – Herb Clutter, his wife, Bonnie, and their teenage children Nancy and Kenyon – were murdered in their rural home just outside the small farming community of Holcomb, Kansas. Two ex-convicts, Perry Smith and Richard Hickock, were found guilty of the murders and sentenced to death. They were both executed on April 14, 1965. The murders were detailed by Truman Capote in his 1966 non-fiction novel In Cold Blood.