VIDEO : Hugh Hefner: A Cultural Icon Who Helped Change The World

CNN has reported that Hugh Hefner lived long enough to see Playboy, the magazine he created, temporarily stop featuring nudity. But his impact on popular culture went well beyond "dirty" pictures and publications that had to be shipped in brown-paper wrappers. When the magazine launched in 1953 during the Eisenhower administration, Hefner's image of the "Playboy lifestyle" championed a more libertine view of sexuality that went against the puritanical elements of the times. But he also turned Playboy, as a publication and an ideal, into a forum for sexual freedom and progressive politics, advocating for civil rights and free speech.