Lynn Anderson (1947 - 2015)

Lynn Anderson Anderson was born September 26th, 1947, in Grand Forks, North Dakota, to songwriters Casey and Liz Anderson, the latter of whom was a recording artist and writer, penning Merle Haggard’s “I Am a Lonesome Fugitive” and “(My Friends Are Gonna Be) Strangers.” Raised in Fair Oaks, California, Anderson frequently entered horse shows as […]

Enid Blyton (1897 - 1968)

Enid Mary Blyton (11 August 1897 – 28 November 1968) was an English children’s writer whose books have been among the world’s best-sellers since the 1930s, selling more than 600 million copies. Blyton’s books are still enormously popular, and have been translated into almost 90 languages; her first book, Child Whispers, a 24-page collection of […]

Édith Piaf (1915 - 1963)

Piaf’s mother abandoned her at birth, and she lived for a short time with her maternal grandmother, Emma (Aïcha). When her father enlisted with the French Army in 1916 to fight in World War I, he took her to his mother, who ran a brothel in Normandy. There, prostitutes helped look after Piaf. The bordello […]

Emily Brontë (1818 - 1848)

Emily Brontë was born on 30 July 1818 in the village of Thornton, West Riding of Yorkshire, in Northern England, to Maria Branwell and an Irish father, Patrick Brontë. She was the younger sister of Charlotte Brontë and the fifth of six children, though the two oldest girls, Maria and Elizabeth, died in childhood. In […]

Roddy Piper (1954 - 2015)

As best as we can tell, Roderick George Toombs was born. Rumor has it that it happened in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada-allegedly in a war time house on Victoria Avenue. For those not acquainted with Saskatoon, it’s one of the coldest places on earth, reaching 100 below with windchill. That may explain why Roddy hit the […]

Gunnar Myrdal (1898 - 1987)

Myrdal was born on 6 December 1898 in Gustafs, Sweden, to Karl Adolf Pettersson (1876–1934), a railroad employee, and his wife Anna Sofia Karlsson (1878–1965). He took the name Myrdal in 1914 after his ancestors farm Myr in Dalarna.  There is a possibly apocryphal story about an interaction between him and Gustav Cassel, where Cassel […]

Luis Barragán (1902 - 1988)

Barragán was born in Guadalajara in Jalisco, Mexico. Educated as an engineer, he graduated from the Escuela Libre de Ingenieros in Guadalajara in 1923.  After graduation, he travelled through Spain and France. While in France he became aware of the writings of Ferdinand Bac, a German-French writer, designer and artist who Barragán cited throughout his […]

Pappy Boyington (1912 - 1988)

Gregory Boyington was born on December 4, 1912 in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. Sometimes he is erroneously quoted as being born in 1906. He grew up in the logging town of St. Maries, Idaho and in Tacoma, Washington, where he was a wrestler at Lincoln High School. He took his first flight when he was six […]

Billy Carter (1937 - 1988)

Born in Plains, Georgia, Carter attended Emory University in Atlanta but did not complete a degree. He served four years in the United States Marine Corps, then returned to Plains to work with his brother in the family business of growing peanuts. In 1955, he married Sybil Spires (born 1938), also of Plains. They were […]

Chet Baker (1929 - 1988)

Baker was born and raised in a musical household in Yale, Oklahoma; his father, Chesney Baker, Sr., was a professional guitar player, and his mother, Vera (née Moser) was a talented pianist who worked in a perfume factory. His maternal grandmother, Randi Moser, was Norwegian. Baker began his musical career singing in a church choir. […]

Louise Nevelson (1899 - 1988)

Louise Nevelson was born Leah Berliawsky in 1899 in Perislav, Poltava Governorate, Russian Empire, to Minna Sadie and Isaac Berliawsky, a contractor and lumber merchant. Even though the family lived comfortably, Nevelson’s relatives had begun to leave the Russian Empire for America in the 1880s. The Berliawskys had to stay behind, as Isaac, the youngest […]

John Houseman (1902 - 1988)

Houseman produced numerous Broadway productions, including Heartbreak House, Three Sisters, The Beggar’s Opera and several Shakespearean plays, including a famous “Blackshirt” Julius Caesar directed by Orson Welles in 1937. He also directed Lute Song, The Country Girl and Don Juan in Hell, among others.  Houseman himself worked as a speculator in the international grain markets, […]

Christina Onassis (1950 - 1988)

Christina Onassis, the only daughter of the Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis and his first wife, Athina Livanos, was born in New York City at LeRoy Sanitarium. Her maternal grandfather was Stavros G. Livanos, founder of the Livanos shipping empire. Onassis had an older brother, Alexander. She and Alexander were raised and educated in France, […]

Irving Berlin (1888 - 1989)

Irving Berlin (born Israel Isidore Baline, May 11, 1888 – September 22, 1989) was a Russian-born Jewish-American composer and lyricist. Widely considered one of the greatest songwriters in American history, his music forms a great part of the Great American Songbook. He published his first song, “Marie from Sunny Italy”, in 1907, receiving 37 cents […]

Diana Vreeland (1903 - 1989)

She was born as Diana Dalziel in Paris, France, at 5, avenue du Bois-de-Boulogne (Avenue Foch since World War I). Vreeland was the eldest daughter of American socialite mother Emily Key Hoffman (1876–1928) and British father Frederick Young Dalziel (1868–1960). Hoffman was a descendant of George Washington’s brother as well as a cousin of Francis […]

William Schuman (1910 - 1992)

Schuman was born into a Jewish family in Manhattan, New York City, son of Samuel and Rachel Schuman. He was named after the 27th U.S. president, William Howard Taft, though his family preferred to call him Bill. Schuman played the violin and banjo as a child, but his overwhelming passion was baseball. He attended Temple […]

George Murphy (1902 - 1992)

He was born in New Haven, Connecticut, of Irish Catholic extraction, the son of Michael Charles “Mike” Murphy, athletic trainer and coach, and the former Nora Long. He was educated at Peddie School, Trinity-Pawling School, and Yale University in his native New Haven. He worked as a tool maker for the Ford Motor Company, as […]

Alex Haley (1921 - 1992)

Alex Haley was born in Ithaca, New York, on August 11, 1921, and was the oldest of three brothers and a sister. Haley lived with his family in Henning, Tennessee, before returning to Ithaca with his family when he was five years old. Haley’s father was Simon Haley, a professor of agriculture at Alabama A&M […]

Hal Roach (1892 - 1992)

Hal Roach was born in Elmira, New York, the grandson of Irish immigrants. A presentation by the great American humorist Mark Twain impressed Roach as a young grade school student.  After an adventurous youth that took him to Alaska, Hal Roach arrived in Hollywood, California in 1912 and began working as an extra in silent […]

Jo Ann Robinson (1912 - 1992)

Born near Culloden, Georgia, she was the youngest of twelve children. She attended Fort Valley State College and then became a public school teacher in Macon, where she was married to Wilbur Robinson for a short time. Five years later, she went to Atlanta, where she earned an M.A. in English at Atlanta University. After […]

Heinrich Eberbach (1895 - 1992)

During late 1914 Eberbach fought in France as a corporal, and by February 1915 he was promoted to Lieutenant. During 1915 he was wounded twice in France, lost his nose due to a French bullet (a rubber replacement was made) and was captured by the French. In December 1916 he was exchanged for a French […]

Bernice Gera (1931 - 1992)

Bernice Shiner Gera (June 15, 1931 – September 23, 1992) was the first female umpire in professional baseball.  Born in Ernest, Pennsylvania, Gera loved baseball as a child, but never considered a career in baseball until she was already in her mid thirties, married, and working as a secretary. According to a Time Magazine article, […]

Nancy Walker (1922 - 1992)

Walker was born in 1922 as Anna Myrtle Swoyer in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the elder of two daughters of vaudevillian Dewey Barto (né Stewart Steven Swoyer; 1896–1973) and Myrtle (née Lawler; died January 2, 1931). Walker and her father both stood 4’11” (1.50 m). Anna’s younger sister, Betty Lou (born August 17, 1930), also had a […]

Bobbi Kristina Brown (1993 - 2015)

Bobbi Kristina Brown Bobbi Kristina Brown, 22, the only daughter of singers Whitney Houston and Bobby Brown, died Sunday, nearly six months after she was found unresponsive in a bathtub of her home, her family said. Brown has been unresponsive in hospitals and hospice care since she was found in a bathtub of her Roswell, […]

Red Grange (1903 - 1991)

“Red” Grange was born on June 13, 1903 in Forksville, a village of about 200 people in an area of Pennsylvania lumber camps. His father was the foreman of three lumber camps. For a number of years, the Grange family lived with relatives until they could finally afford a home of their own in Wheaton, […]

Edwin Land (1909 - 1991)

Edwin Land was born in Bridgeport, Connecticut, to Matha (Goldfaden) and Harry Land, owner of a scrap metal yard. Land’s parents were of Eastern European Jewish descent. Land attended the Norwich Free Academy at Norwich, Connecticut, a semi-private high school, and graduated in the class of 1927. The library there was posthumously named for him, […]

Bob Welch (1945 - 2012)

Bob Welch was a key member of the pop group Fleetwood Mac in the early 1970s before scoring several minor hits as a solo performer, died June 7 at his home in Nashville. He was 65. According to police, he died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. He left a suicide note. Mr. Welch was a […]

Ray Bradbury (1920 - 2012)

Ray Bradbury was an American science fiction writer whose works were translated in more than 40 languages and sold millions of copies around the world. Although he created a world of new technical and intellectual ideas, he never obtained a driver’s license and had never driven a car. He was born Ray Douglas Bradbury on […]

Robin Gibb (1949 - 2012)

Robin Gibb Robin Gibb, one-third of the Bee Gees, died Sunday after a long battle with cancer, his spokesperson has confirmed via a statement. Gibb was 62 years old. “The family of Robin Gibb, of the Bee Gees, announce with great sadness that Robin passed away today following his long battle with cancer and intestinal surgery,” […]

Margaret Suckley (1891 - 1991)

Suckley was born December 20, 1891, at Wilderstein, the family home of Robert Bowne Suckley and Elizabeth Philips Montgomery in the Hudson Valley. She was the fourth of seven children, and a sixth cousin of Franklin D. Roosevelt. Generally called “Daisy” by those close to her, Suckley grew up at Wilderstein, where she was a […]