Dina Merrill (1923 - 2017)

On advice from her half-sister’s (then) husband, she adopted the stage name Dina Merrill, borrowing from Charles E. Merrill, a famous stockbroker like her father. Dina Merrill made her debut on the stage in the play The Mermaid Singing in 1945. During the late 1950s and 1960s, Merrill was believed to have intentionally been marketed […]

Kay Aldridge (1917 - 1995)

Katharine Gratten Aldridge was born on July 9, 1917 in Tallahassee, Florida. Her father was a surveyor and her mother was an artist and writer. Following her father’s death when she was two years old, her mother moved the family to Lyells, Virginia, where she and her four siblings were raised with the help of […]

Anthony Young (1966 - 2017)

Anthony Young attended Furr High School in Houston, Texas, and the University of Houston, where he played college baseball and college football for the Houston Cougars. The New York Mets selected Young in the 38th round of the 1987 Major League Baseball draft. He worked his way up through their minor league system, making his […]

Elsa Martinelli (1935 - 2017)

Born Elisa Tia in Grosseto, Tuscany, she moved to Rome with her family and in 1953 was discovered by Roberto Capucci who introduced her to the world of fashion. Elsa Martinelli became a model and began playing small roles in films. She appeared in Claude Autant-Lara’s Le Rouge et le Noir (1954), but her first […]

Nelsan Ellis (1977 - 2017)

In 2007, Nelsan Ellis was cast as Lafayette Reynolds in the pilot for True Blood, as a short order cook at Merlotte’s, a drug dealer, a member of Jason Stackhouse’s road crew, and Tara Thornton’s cousin. The pilot was shot in the early summer of 2007 and was officially ordered to series in August. Production […]

Jules Verne (1828 - 1905)

Jules Gabriel Verne (/dʒuːlz/ /vɜːrn/; French: [ʒyl vɛʁn]; 8 February 1828 – 24 March 1905) was a French novelist, poet, and playwright. Jules Verne was born to bourgeois parents in the seaport of Nantes, where he was trained to follow in his father’s footsteps as a lawyer, but quit the profession early in life to […]

John Kipling (1897 - 1915)

John Kipling was 16 when the First World War broke out in August 1914. His father, a keen imperialist and patriot, was soon writing propaganda on behalf of the British government. Rudyard sought to get his son a commission, but John was rejected by the Royal Navy due to severe short-sightedness. He was also initially […]

Rudyard Kipling (1865 - 1936)

Joseph Rudyard Kipling (/ˈrʌdjərd ˈkɪplɪŋ/ RUD-yərd KIP-ling (rhotic); 30 December 1865 – 18 January 1936) was an English journalist, short-story writer, poet, and novelist. Rudyard Kipling’s works of fiction include The Jungle Book (1894), Kim (1901), and many short stories, including “The Man Who Would Be King” (1888). His poems include “Mandalay” (1890), “Gunga Din” […]

Edith Nesbit (1858 - 1924)

Edith Nesbit was born in 1858 at 38 Lower Kennington Lane in Kennington, Surrey (now part of Greater London), the daughter of an agricultural chemist, John Collis Nesbit, who died in March 1862, before her fourth birthday. Her sister Mary’s ill health meant that the family travelled around for some years, living variously in Brighton, […]

Kenneth Grahame (1859 - 1932)

Kenneth Grahame wanted to attend Oxford University, but was not allowed to do so by his guardian on grounds of cost. Instead he was sent to work at the Bank of England in 1879, and rose through the ranks until retiring as its Secretary in 1908 due to ill health, which may have been precipitated […]

Norman Hunter (1899 - 1995)

Norman George Lorimer Hunter (23 November 1899 – 23 February 1995) was a British children’s author, creator of Professor Branestawm. Norman Hunter was born in Sydenham, England, on 23 November 1899. He attended Beckenham County School for Boys (later known as Beckenham and Penge Grammar School and then Langley Park School for Boys). He left […]

Willis Hall (1929 - 2005)

Born in Hunslet, Leeds, Willis Hall was the only son and elder child of Walter Hall, an engineer’s fitter, and his wife, Gladys (née Gibbon). He attended local council schools as well as Cockburn High School. After graduation, Hall worked in a variety of positions including factory worker, trawler hand, and amusement park attendant. Upon […]

Babette Cole (1950 - 2017)

Babette Cole (Jersey, 10 September 1950 – 15 January 2017) was an English children’s writer and illustrator. Babette Cole was born on Jersey in the Channel Islands. She attended the Canterbury College of Art (now the University for the Creative Arts) and received first-class BA Honours. She worked on such children’s programmes as Bagpuss (working […]

Barbara Mertz (1927 - 2013)

Barbara Mertz was born on September 29, 1927, in Canton, Illinois. She was graduated from the University of Chicago with a bachelor’s degree in 1947, a master’s degree in 1950, and a PhD in Egyptology in 1952, having studied with John A. Wilson. She authored two books on ancient Egypt (both of which have been […]

Jane Aiken Hodge (1917 - 2009)

Jane Aiken Hodge (December 4, 1917 – June 17, 2009) was an American-born British writer. Born near Cambridge, Massachusetts, the second child of Pulitzer prize-winning poet Conrad Aiken and his first wife, the writer Jessie McDonald. Jane Hodge was 3 years old when her family moved to Great Britain, settling in Rye, East Sussex where […]

Joan Aiken (1924 - 2004)

Joan Aiken produced more than a hundred books, including more than a dozen collections of fantasy stories, plays and poems, and modern and historical novels for adults and children. She was a lifelong fan of ghost stories, particularly those of M. R. James, Fitz James O’Brien and Nugent Barker. Some of her books focus on […]

Helen Cresswell (1934 - 2005)

Helen Cresswell had great “popular impact” because she “diversified into writing for television, in 1960, with a script for what was then called Jack Playhouse, bringing simple storytelling to BBC children’s TV.” She tried writing for adults but succeeded with the child audience. Her first book was published in 1960, Sonya-by-the-Shore, and the Jumbo Spencer […]

Peggy Fortnum (1919 - 2016)

Margaret Emily Noel Fortnum (23 December 1919 – 28 March 2016) as pen name Peggy Fortnum was an English illustrator best known for illustrating children’s literature series Paddington Bear. Peggy Fortnum was born in England on 23 December 1919, at Harrow, Middlesex. She briefly attended Tunbridge Wells School of Art in 1939, before she enlisted […]

Michael Bond (1926 - 2017)

Michael Bond began writing in 1945 while stationed with the army in Cairo, and sold his first short story to the magazine London Opinion. He was paid seven guineas, and thought he “wouldn’t mind being a writer”. In 1958, after producing several plays and short stories and while working as a BBC television cameraman (where […]

Dave Semenko (1957 - 2017)

Dave Semenko played junior hockey for the Brandon Wheat Kings. He was originally selected 25th overall in 1977 by the Minnesota North Stars of the National Hockey League and the Houston Aeros of the World Hockey Association. The Aeros traded Semenko to the Oilers just before their 1977–78 season. He spent his first two professional […]

Darrall Imhoff (1938 - 2017)

Darrall Imhoff was the most highly publicized draft pick of the NBA that same year. The New York Knicks, picking third overall, made him their first pick, a move which generated much excitement for the team. The Knicks had two all-stars already, Richie Guerin and Willie Naulls, and looked for Imhoff to complete a potential […]

Skip Homeier (1930 - 2017)

Skip Homeier changed his first name from Skippy to Skip when he became 18. He attended the University of California, Los Angeles. Although Homeier worked frequently throughout his childhood and adolescence, playing wayward youths with no chance of redemption, he did not become a major star; but he did make a transition from child actor […]

Gene Conley (1930 - 2017)

In the middle of his first season of professional baseball, Gene Conley agreed to sign with the Wilkes-Barre Barons of the struggling American Basketball League. On April 26, 1952, the Boston Celtics selected Conley with the 90th pick of the NBA draft. Playing 39 games as a rookie in the 1952-53 NBA season, Conley averaged […]

Michele Besso (1873 - 1955)

Michele Angelo Besso (Riesbach, 25 May 1873 – Geneva, 15 March 1955) was a Swiss/Italian engineer. Michele Besso was born in Riesbach of Italian Jewish (Sephardi) descent. He was a close friend of Albert Einstein during his years at the Federal Polytechnic Institute in Zurich, today the ETH Zurich, and then at the patent office […]

Marcel Grossmann (1878 - 1936)

In 1900 Marcel Grossmann graduated from the Federal Polytechnic School (ETH) and became an assistant to the geometer Wilhelm Fiedler. He continued to do research on non-Euclidean geometry and taught in high schools for the next seven years. In 1902, he earned his doctorate from the ETH with the thesis On the Metrical Properties of […]

Evelyn Einstein (1941 - 2011)

Evelyn Einstein was born in Chicago; after her birth she was adopted by Hans Albert Einstein. She obtained a Master’s degree in Medieval literature at University of California, Berkeley. She was married to Grover Krantz for 13 years from 1964 to about 1977. She then worked briefly as an animal control officer, as a cult […]

Mileva Marić (1875 - 1948)

On December 19, 1875, Mileva Marić was born into a wealthy family in Titel in the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy (today Serbia) as the eldest of three children of Miloš Marić (1846–1922) and Marija Ružić–Marić (1847–1935). Shortly after her birth, her father ended his military career and took a job at the court in Ruma and later […]

Wilhelm Röntgen (1845 - 1923)

In 1874 Wilhelm Röntgen became a lecturer at the University of Strassburg. In 1875, he became a professor at the Academy of Agriculture at Hohenheim, Württemberg. He returned to Strassburg as a professor of physics in 1876, and in 1879, he was appointed to the chair of physics at the University of Giessen. In 1888, […]

Dennis Gabor (1900 - 1979)

Dennis Gabor was born as Günszberg Dénes, into a Jewish family in Budapest, Hungary. In 1918, his family converted to Lutheranism. Dennis was the first-born son of Günszberg Bernát and Jakobovits Adél. Despite having a religious background, religion played a minor role in his later life and he considered himself agnostic. In 1902, the family […]

Philipp Lenard (1862 - 1947)

As a physicist, Philipp Lenard’s major contributions were in the study of cathode rays, which he began in 1888. Prior to his work, cathode rays were produced in primitive, partially evacuated glass tubes that had metallic electrodes in them, across which a high voltage could be placed. Cathode rays were difficult to study using this […]