Colin Turnbull

Colin Turnbull, English-American anthropologist and author (died 1994)

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Born: November 23, 1924
Died: July 28, 1994
Zodiac sign: Sagittarius
Birth year: 1924

About Colin Turnbull

Colin Macmillan Turnbull (23 November 1924 – 28 July 1994) was a British-American anthropologist who came to public attention with the popular books The Forest People (on the Mbuti Pygmies of Zaire) and The Mountain People (on the Ik people of Uganda), and one of the most significant influences on the postwar development of ethnomusicology. In 1951, after his graduation from Banaras, Turnbull traveled to the Belgian Congo (present-day Democratic Republic of the Congo) with Newton Beal, a schoolteacher from Ohio he met in India. An "odd job" Turnbull picked up while in Africa at this time was working for the Hollywood producer Sam Spiegel.

Biography source: Wikipedia. The profile adds birthday-specific historical context from the Celebs Birthday Today editorial database.

The world when Colin Turnbull was born

Colin Turnbull was born in 1924. The year snapshot below places that birthday in its cultural and historical setting: the music and films people were following, the headlines shaping public life, and the everyday prices families encountered.

Culture in 1924

#1 song"It Had to Be You" – Isham Jones
Top movieThe Thief of Bagdad (Douglas Fairbanks)
Best-selling bookSo Big – Edna Ferber

Headlines and milestones

Major sports momentFirst Winter Olympics held in Chamonix, France
Top headlineCalvin Coolidge elected president in a landslide
Technology milestoneIBM founded
Defining fadMah-jongg craze sweeps America
Notable inventionSpiral-bound notebook
World population1.95 billion

United States snapshot

U.S. leaderCalvin Coolidge
Sports championWashington Senators (World Series)
U.S. population114.1M

1924 versus 2026

These figures put everyday life in Colin Turnbull's birth year beside the site's latest United States snapshot.

Measure	1924	2026
Gas	$0.21	$3.45/gal
Average home	$5,800	$435,000
Average income	$3,520	$67,500
Movie ticket	$0.25	$11.95
Postage stamp	$0.02	$0.73
Population	114.1M	341 million

Sources and editorial standards

This profile combines a biographical source with structured birthday and historical context. Sources recorded for this profile: Wikipedia, Library of Congress, Wikidata. See our editorial policy for sourcing, corrections, and review standards.

Read the source biography on Wikipedia. Wikipedia text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.