July 5, 1969

1969Jenji Kohan, American screenwriter and producer^[†]

Jenji Leslie Kohan is an American television writer and producer. She is best known as the creator and showrunner of the Showtime comedy-drama series Weeds and the Netflix comedy-drama series Orange Is the New Black. She has received nine Emmy Award nominations, winning one as supervising producer of the comedy series Tracey Takes On....

1969John LeClair, American ice hockey player^[†]

John Clark LeClair is an American former professional ice hockey player. He played 16 seasons in the National Hockey League (NHL) with the Montreal Canadiens, Philadelphia Flyers, and Pittsburgh Penguins from 1991 to 2006. LeClair was a member of the Montreal Canadiens' Stanley Cup winning team in 1993, scoring two overtime game-winning goals in consecutive games during the Finals. With the Flyers, LeClair became the first American-born player to score 50 goals in three consecutive NHL seasons while playing on the Legion of Doom line with Eric Lindros and Mikael Renberg.

1969Wilhelm Backhaus, German pianist and educator (born 1884)^[†]

Wilhelm Backhaus was a German pianist and pedagogue. He was particularly well known for his interpretations of Mozart, Beethoven, Schumann, Chopin and Brahms. He was also much admired as a chamber musician.

1969Walter Gropius, German architect, designed the John F. Kennedy Federal Building and Werkbund Exhibition (born 1883)^[†]

Walter Adolph Georg Gropius was a German-born American architect and founder of the Bauhaus School, who is widely regarded as one of the pioneering masters of modernist architecture. He was a founder of Bauhaus in Weimar and taught there for several years, becoming known as a leading proponent of the International Style. Gropius emigrated from Germany to England in 1934 and from England to the United States in 1937, where he spent much of the rest of his life teaching at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. In the United States he worked on several projects with Marcel Breuer and with the firm The Architects Collaborative, of which he was a founding partner. In 1959, he won the AIA Gold Medal, one of the most prestigious awards in architecture.

1969Tom Mboya, Kenyan politician, 1st Kenyan Minister of Justice (born 1930)^[†]

Thomas Joseph Odhiambo Mboya was a Kenyan trade unionist, educator, Pan-Africanist, author, independence activist, and statesman. He was one of the founding fathers of the Republic of Kenya. He led the negotiations for independence at the Lancaster House Conferences and was instrumental in the formation of Kenya's independence party – the Kenya African National Union (KANU) – where he served as its first Secretary-General. He laid the foundation for Kenya's capitalist and mixed economy policies at the height of the Cold War and set up several of the country's key labour institutions. Mboya was Minister for Economic Planning and Development when he was assassinated.

1969Leo McCarey, American director, producer, and screenwriter (born 1898)^[†]

Thomas Leo McCarey was an American film director, screenwriter, and producer. He was involved in nearly 200 films, including the critically acclaimed Duck Soup, Make Way for Tomorrow, The Awful Truth, Going My Way, The Bells of St. Mary's, My Son John, and An Affair to Remember.