Happy Public Domain Day! Today millions of works – everything made by people that died in 1942* and not previously public – enter the public domain in most of the world.**
See the Public Domain Review, which compiled this “class of 13” collection of some of the best known authors and artists, and the related celebrations by hyperallergic, crackajack.
For a more US-centric view, with a heavy dose of “what were we thinking when we set up current copyright law?” activism, see the Public Domain Day summary by Duke’s insightful Center for the Public Domain. They also track the Alternate Universe Public Domain list for the simple alternate universe in which copyright laws remained as they were in 1976. This is a harder thing to visualize each year, since in this alternate universe so many other things (anything published between 1923 and 1955) would already also be free.
* in most countries
** but not in the US. The ‘Sonny Bono’ CTE Act created a backlog that will all enter the public domain in 2019.