Frank Hurley (1885 - 1962)

Frank Hurley was the third of five children to parents Edward and Margaret Hurley and was raised in Glebe, a suburb of Sydney, Australia. He ran away from home at the age of 13 to work on the Lithgow steel mill, returning home two years later to study at the local technical school and attend […]

Tom Crean (1877 - 1938)

Thomas “Tom” Crean (20 July 1877 – 27 July 1938), is an Irish seaman and Antarctic explorer from Annascaul in County Kerry. He was a member of three major expeditions to Antarctica during the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration, including Captain Scott’s 1911–13 Terra Nova Expedition. This saw the race to reach the South Pole […]

Kathleen Scott (1878 - 1947)

Born Edith Agnes Kathleen Bruce at Carlton in Lindrick, Bassetlaw, Nottinghamshire, she was the youngest of eleven children of Canon Lloyd Stuart Bruce (1829–1886) and Jane Skene (d. 1880). Kathleen Scott attended St George’s School, Edinburgh then the Slade School of Fine Art, London from 1900 to 1902. She then enrolled at the Académie Colarossi […]

Robert Falcon Scott (1868 - 1912)

Captain Robert Falcon Scott, CVO, RN (6 June 1868 – 29 March 1912) was a British Royal Navy officer and explorer who led two expeditions to the Antarctic regions: the Discovery Expedition, 1901–1904, and the ill-fated Terra Nova Expedition, 1910–1913. On the first expedition, he set a new southern record by marching to latitude 82°S […]

James Ritty (1836 - 1918)

James Jacob Ritty (29 October 1836 – 29 March 1918), saloonkeeper and inventor, opened his first saloon in Dayton, Ohio in 1871, billing himself as a “Dealer in Pure Whiskies, Fine Wines, and Cigars.” Some of Ritty’s employees would take the customers’ money and pocket it, rather than depositing the cash that was meant to […]

Sam Simon (1955 - 2015)

Samuel Michael “Sam” Simon (June 6, 1955 – March 8, 2015) was an American director, producer, writer, animal rights activist, boxing manager, tournament poker player, and philanthropist, most noted as co-developer of the television series The Simpsons. While at Stanford University, Simon worked as a newspaper cartoonist and after graduating became a storyboard artist at […]

John Shedd (1850 - 1926)

John Graves Shedd (July 20, 1850 – October 22, 1926) was the second president and chairman of the board of Marshall Field & Company. Born on a New Hampshire farm, John Shedd arrived in Chicago, Illinois in 1871 and began working as a stock clerk for Marshall Field. By 1901, he had worked his way […]

Andrea Lawrence (1932 - 2009)

Andrea Lawrence was born in Rutland County, Vermont, to an alpine skiing family that owned and operated the Pico Peak ski area. At age 14 she made the national team, and at age 15 competed in the 1948 Winter Olympics in St. Moritz, Switzerland, where she placed eighth in the slalom, and sixth at the […]

Billy Vessels (1931 - 2001)

Billy Vessels led the Oklahoma Sooners to the national championship in 1950, scoring 15 touchdowns. In 1952 he won the Heisman Trophy. Playing under the legendary Bud Wilkinson, he became the first of five Sooners, followed by Steve Owens (1969), Billy Sims (1978), Jason White (2003) and Sam Bradford (2008), to win the award. During […]

Johnny Lattner (1932 - 2016)

Johnny Lattner starred in both football and basketball at Fenwick High School where he graduated in 1950. Fenwick, along with other Chicago-area Catholic schools, was a breeding ground for Notre Dame and Big Ten football programs, and Lattner held offers from top college football programs across the country. He initially considered the University of Michigan […]

Donald Lash (1912 - 1994)

Donald Lash (August 15, 1912 – September 19, 1994) was an American long-distance runner who won 12 national titles from 1934 to 1940, including seven consecutive men’s national cross-country championships, and who set a world’s record for the two-mile run in 1936. Born in Bluffton, Indiana, Lash grew up in Auburn, Indiana, where he graduated […]

Lefty Gomez (1908 - 1989)

Lefty Gomez made his major league debut on April 29, 1930. He pitched in only 15 games and finished the season with a 2-5 win-loss record, a 5.55 earned run average (ERA). Coming into the 1931 season, Gomez had good pitching velocity, but the Yankees were concerned about the pitcher’s slender frame of 6 feet […]

Waite Hoyt (1899 - 1984)

Waite Hoyt was born in Brooklyn, New York to Addison and Louise Benedum Hoyt and attended Erasmus Hall High School. Despite being a Dodgers fan, he was signed to a professional contract by New York Giants manager John McGraw when he was but 15. Because of his extreme youth, he was immediately nicknamed “The Schoolboy […]

Jerry Hoyt (1970 - 1970)

Gerald F. Hoyt (January 29, 1929 – July 10, 1955) was American racing driver from Chicago, mainly competing in the National Championship. He died in 1955 after crashing in a Sprint car race at Oklahoma City. In the 1955 Indianapolis 500 Jerry Hoyt surprised many, including himself, by winning the pole (first starting position) in […]

Thorsten Sellin (1896 - 1994)

Johan Thorsten Sellin (26 October 1896 – 17 September 1994) was a Swedish American sociologist at the University of Pennsylvania, a penologist and one of the pioneers of scientific criminology. Thorsten Sellin was born in Örnsköldsvik in Västernorrland County, Sweden and came to Canada with his parents when he was 17 years old. He received […]

Edwin Sutherland (1883 - 1950)

Edwin Sutherland’s historical importance rests upon his having introduced (in a 27 December 1939 speech to the American Sociological Association, titled The White Collar Criminal) the concept of white-collar crime, a concept which violated existing prejudices that aristocrats can do no wrong (which was famously expressed in the ancient legal view that a king could […]

Travis Hirschi (1935 - 2017)

Travis Warner Hirschi (April 15, 1935 – January 2, 2017) was an American sociologist and an emeritus professor of sociology at the University of Arizona. He helped to develop the modern version of the social control theory of crime and later the self-control theory of crime. Travis Hirschi was born in Rockville, Utah. He attended […]

Jeremy Stone (1935 - 2017)

In 1963, Jeremy Stone began working on an arms control proposal for preventing anti-ballistic missile (ABM) systems. In 1964-1966 he was a research associate at the Harvard Center for International Affairs (CFIA) where he wrote two books: Containing the Arms Race: Some Specific Proposals (MIT Press, 1966) and Strategic Persuasion: Arms Control Through Dialogue (Columbia […]

Jewel Cobb (1924 - 2017)

Jewel Plummer was born in Chicago on January 17, 1924 as the only child of Frank V. Plummer, and Carriebel (Cole) Plummer. She was the great-granddaughter of a freed slave. Her grandfather was a pharmacist, her father Frank was a physician. Her mother Carriebel was a physical education teacher. Jewel Cobb enjoyed an upper-middle-class background […]

Tony Atkinson (1944 - 2017)

Tony Atkinson attended Cranbrook School. After considering studying mathematics, he graduated from the University of Cambridge in 1966 with a first-class degree before spending time at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He cited his interest in inequality as beginning from volunteering in a German hospital in the 1960s. He served as Warden of Nuffield College, Oxford, […]

Tom Pryce (1949 - 1977)

Thomas Maldwyn Pryce (11 June 1949 – 5 March 1977) was a British racing driver from Wales,[1][2] famous for winning the Brands Hatch Race of Champions, a non-championship Formula One race, in 1975 and for the circumstances surrounding his death. Pryce is the only Welsh driver to have won a Formula One race and is […]

Ronnie Peterson (1944 - 1978)

Bengt Ronnie Peterson (Swedish pronunciation: [ˈrɔni ˈpɛtɛˈʂon]; 14 February 1944 – 11 September 1978) was a Swedish racing driver. Known by the nickname ‘SuperSwede’, he was a two-time runner-up in the FIA Formula One World Drivers’ Championship. Ronnie Peterson began his motor racing career in kart racing, traditionally the discipline where the majority of race […]

Peter Revson (1939 - 1974)

Peter Revson began racing in 1960 while at the University of Hawaii. He previously attended both Columbia University and Cornell University, although he never graduated from college. Revson finished second in a local club event, driving a Plus Four Morgan. He proceeded in his racing career, becoming experienced in Formula cars, Trans-Am sedans, Can-Am Group […]

Ben Reitman (1879 - 1942)

Ben Reitman was born in Saint Paul, Minnesota, to poor Russian Jewish immigrants in 1879, and grew up in Chicago. At the age of ten, he became a hobo, but returned to Chicago and worked in the Polyclinic Laboratory as a “laboratory boy”. In 1900, he entered the College of Physicians and Surgeons in Chicago, […]

Wesley Ruggles (1889 - 1972)

Wesley Ruggles (June 11, 1889 – January 8, 1972) was an American film director. He was born in Los Angeles, younger brother of actor Charles Ruggles. He began his career in 1915 as an actor, appearing in a dozen or so silent films, on occasion with Charles Chaplin. In 1917, he turned his attention to directing, making […]

Gordon Jones (1911 - 1963)

Iowa-born GordonJones had been a student athlete and star football guard (“Bull” Jones) at University of California, Los Angeles, and had also played a few seasons of professional football. He started out playing small roles in Wesley Ruggles’ and Ernest B. Schoedsack’s The Monkey’s Paw (1933), his first credited role in Sam Wood’s Let ‘Em […]

Ron Ormond (1910 - 1981)

Ron Ormond was born Vittorio Di Naro, anglicised to Vic Narro. He took his surname from his friend the magician and hypnotist Ormond McGill. Ron Ormond married the vaudeville singer and dancer June Carr (1912–2006) six weeks after he met her when they were performing on stage in 1935. Ormond was performing as a magician […]

Hal Wallis (1898 - 1986)

Aaron Blum Wolowicz was born October 19, 1898 in Chicago, Illinois, the son of Eva (née Blum) and Jacob Wolowicz, Ashkenazi Jews from the Suwałki region of Poland who changed their surname to Wallis. His family moved in 1922 to Los Angeles, California, where he found work as part of the publicity department at Warner Bros. […]

Irving Rapper (1898 - 1999)

Irving Rapper (16 January 1898 – 20 December 1999) was an England-born American film director. Born in London, England, Rapper emigrated to the United States and became an actor and stage director on Broadway while studying at New York University. In 1936, he went to Hollywood, where he was hired by Warner Bros. as an assistant […]

Walter Lang (1896 - 1972)

Walter Lang was born in Tennessee. As a young man he went to New York City where he found clerical work at a film production company. The business piqued his artistic instincts and he began learning the various facets of filmmaking and eventually worked as an assistant director. However, Lang also had ambitions to be […]