Jerry Weintraub (1937 - 2015)

Jerry Weintraub Weintraub’s career as a promoter took a giant step in 1970 when after a lengthy courtship he persuaded Elvis Presley’s manager, Col. Tom Parker, to let him promote Presley concerts. It was at a time when Presley was beginning to do live shows after years of concentrating on movies. The relationship began with […]

Ken Stabler (1945 - 2015)

Ken Stabler Stabler first showed his professional chops in a 1972 playoff game best known for the Immaculate Reception. Mostly forgotten was that Stabler replaced starter Daryle Lamonica and led the Raiders to what seemed to be the winning touchdown in the fourth quarter — until Franco Harris’ spectacular catch and run won the game […]

Carole Landis (1919 - 1948)

Landis was born Frances Lillian Mary Ridste in Fairchild, Wisconsin. She was the youngest of five children (two of whom died in childhood) born to Clara (née Stentek), a Polish farmer’s daughter, and Norwegian-American Alfred Ridste, a “drifting railroad mechanic” who abandoned the family after Landis’ birth.  According to Landis’ biographer E.J. Felming, circumstantial evidence […]

Colette Marchand (1925 - 2015)

Colette Marchand Marchand was born in Paris, France, the daughter of Alice (née Lioret) and Roger Marchand. She began her career at the Paris Opera Ballet   She married Jacques Bazire, the musical director for the Roland Petit Ballet. She died on June 5, 2015, aged 90, and was survived by her sister, Yvonne (Marchand) Le […]

Laura Antonelli (1941 - 2015)

Laura Antonelli was born Laura Antonaz in Pola, Italy (present-day Pula, Croatia), former capital of Istria. She moved with her family first to Genoa and then to Venice, before they all eventually settled in Naples. She had a childhood interest in education, and as a teenager she became proficient at gymnastics. In an interview for […]

Diana Douglas (1923 - 2015)

Douglas was born Diana Love Dill in Devonshire, Bermuda on January 22, 1923. Her father Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Melville Dill (also the name of her great-grandfather, a mariner) was a former Member of the Colonial Parliament (MCP) (representing the Parish of Devonshire in the Parliament of Bermuda), Attorney General of Bermuda, and former Commanding Officer […]

Rod Taylor (1930 - 2015)

Taylor was born on 11 January 1930 in Lidcombe, a suburb of Sydney, the only child of William Sturt Taylor, a steel construction contractor and commercial artist, and Mona Taylor (née Thompson), a writer of more than a hundred short stories and children’s books. His middle name comes from his great-great grand uncle, Captain Charles […]

Julie Wilson (1924 - 2015)

Wilson was born in Omaha, Nebraska, the daughter of Emily (née Bennett), a hairdresser, and Russell Wilson, a coal salesman. She first found a musical outlet with local musical group “Hank’s Hepcats” in her teenage years and briefly attended Omaha University. She won the title of Miss Nebraska and would have competed in the Miss […]

Karel Soucek (1947 - 1985)

Karel Soucek (born April 19, 1947 in Czechoslovakia, died January 20, 1985 in Houston, Texas) was a Canadian professional stuntman who went over Niagara Falls in a barrel in 1984. He lived in Hamilton, Ontario.  Soucek prepared for his 1984 Niagara Falls stunt by researching previous attempts, by sending unmanned barrels over the falls to […]

Jim Fixx (1932 - 1984)

Born in New York City, Fixx was a graduate of Trinity School in New York and Oberlin College in Ohio. His father, Calvin Fixx, was an editor at Time who worked with Whittaker Chambers.  Fixx was a member of the high-IQ club, Mensa, and published three collections of puzzles: Games for the Super-Intelligent, More Games […]

James C. Donnell (1854 - 1927)

James C Donnell was born on April 20, 1854, in County Armagh, Ireland, to James Donnell and Elizabeth Doyle. At the age of two, Donnell and his family moved to the United States and settled in Waterford, Pennsylvania. At the age of eighteen, he began his career in the oil industry by hauling crude oil […]

J. R. D. Tata (1904 - 1993)

J. R. D. Tata was born on 29 July 1904 in Paris, France, the second child of Ratanji Dadabhoy Tata and his French wife, Suzanne “Sooni” Brière. His father was a first cousin of Jamsetji Tata, a pioneer industrialist in India. He had one elder sister Sylla, a younger sister Rodabeh and two younger brothers […]

John Beggs (1847 - 1925)

John Irvin Beggs was born in Philadelphia on September 17, 1847, the son of James and Mary Irvin Beggs. Both of his parents were of Scottish descent but had emigrated to the United States from Northern Ireland.  His early life was spent around Philadelphia. After his father died when he was seven years old, Beggs […]

Leon Hess (1914 - 1999)

Hess was born on March 14, 1914 to a Jewish family in Asbury Park, New Jersey. His parents were Ethel and Mores Hess, who was a kosher butcher who emigrated from Lithuania and – after arriving in the United States – worked as an oil delivery man in Asbury Park, New Jersey. Hess worked as […]

Lawrence Dale Bell (1894 - 1956)

Lawrence Dale “Larry” Bell (April 5, 1894 – October 20, 1956) was an American industrialist and founder of Bell Aircraft Corporation.  Bell was born in Mentone, Indiana and lived there until 1907, when his family moved to Santa Monica, California. He joined his older brother Grover and stunt pilot Lincoln Beachey as a mechanic in […]

Marcel Dassault (1892 - 1986)

Marcel Dassault was born was Marcel Bloch on January 22, 1892 in Paris. Both his parents were Jewish.  He was educated at the Lycée Condorcet in Paris. He graduated from the Breguet School and Supaéro.  Dassault invented a type of aircraft propeller used by the French army during World War I and founded the Société […]

Bob Rhoads (1879 - 1967)

Bob Rhoads In the midst of the 1908 pennant race, Sporting Life declared that “Robert S. Rhoades of Cleveland is one of the most dependable of modern pitchers. … His habits are good, his conduct exemplary, and in all ways is he a credit to his club and profession.”1 Embodied in this passage are two […]

Dusty Springfield (1939 - 1999)

Dusty Springfield Call me a crazy old physiognomist, but my theory is that you can always spot a lesbian by her big thrusting chin. Celebrity Eskimo Sandi Toksvig, Ellen DeGeneres, Jodie Foster, Clare Balding, Vita Sackville-West, God love them: there’s a touch of Desperate Dan in the jaw-bone area, no doubt the better to go […]

Kirk Kerkorian (1917 - 2015)

Kirk Kerkorian Billionaire Kirk Kerkorian, an eighth-grade dropout who built Las Vegas’ biggest hotels, tried to take over Chrysler and bought and sold MGM at a profit three times, has died. He was 98. He died Monday night in Beverly Hills. The reserved, unpretentious Kerkorian spent much of his life trying to stay out of […]

Dick Van Patten (1928 - 2015)

Dick Van Patten The round-faced actor who found lasting fame as the patriarch on TV’s “Eight is Enough,” has died. Van Patten’s rep confirmed the news of his death to FOX411. The actor died Tuesday in Santa Monica, California, of complications from diabetes. He was 86. Born in New York, the veteran entertainer began his […]

Chris Squire (1948 - 2015)

Chris Squire The co-founder and longtime bassist of prog rock icons Yes and the only member of the group to feature on every studio album, has passed away just over a month after revealing that he was suffering from a rare form of leukemia. Squire was 67. Current Yes keyboardist Geoff Downes first tweeted the news, “Utterly […]

Eli Lilly (1838 - 1898)

Eli Lilly (July 8, 1838 – June 6, 1898) was an American soldier, pharmaceutical chemist, industrialist, entrepreneur, and founder of the Eli Lilly and Company pharmaceutical corporation. Lilly enlisted in the Union Army during the American Civil War; he recruited a company of men to serve with him in an artillery battery, was later promoted […]

Eben Byers (1880 - 1932)

The son of industrialist Alexander Byers, Eben Byers was educated at St. Paul’s School and Yale College, where he earned a reputation as an athlete and ladies’ man. He was the U.S. Amateur golf champion of 1906, after finishing runner-up in 1902 and 1903. Byers eventually became the chairman of the Girard Iron Company, which […]

James Howard Marshall (1905 - 1995)

Born in Germantown, Pennsylvania, J. Howard Marshall II attended George School, a private high school in Newtown, Pennsylvania, and then studied liberal arts at Haverford College, both Quaker institutions, graduating in 1926. While at George School and Haverford he edited the school newspapers, captained the debate teams and was an All American soccer player and […]

Henry J. Heinz (1844 - 1919)

Founder Henry John Heinz began packing foodstuffs on a small scale at Sharpsburg, Pennsylvania, in 1869. There he founded Heinz Noble & Company with a friend, L. Clarence Noble, and began marketing horseradish. The company went bankrupt in 1875, but the following year Heinz founded another company, F & J Heinz, with his brother John […]

Elwood Haynes (1857 - 1925)

Elwood Haynes (October 14, 1857 – April 13, 1925) was an American inventor, metallurgist, automotive pioneer, entrepreneur and industrialist. He invented the metal alloys stellite and martensitic stainless steel and designed one of the earliest automobiles made in the United States. He is recognized for having created the earliest American design that was feasible for […]

George Dewey Hay (1895 - 1968)

George Dewey Hay Rightfully given credit as the founder of WSM’s Grand Ole Opry, George Dewey Hay was a remarkable visionary and colorful romantic who played a vital role in the commercializing and promotion of country music. Following service in the army, the Indiana native made his way to Memphis, where he worked as a […]

Dave Thomas (1932 - 2002)

Dave Thomas was born on July 2, 1932 in Atlantic City, New Jersey to a young unmarried woman he never knew. He was adopted at 6 weeks by Rex and Auleva Thomas,[2] and as an adult became a well-known advocate for adoption, founding the Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption. After his adoptive mother’s death when […]

Donald Beardslee (1943 - 2005)

Born in St. Louis, Missouri in 1943, Beardslee was the oldest of three children whose father died when he was 11. He was sent to a military school at age 15 and joined the U.S. Air Force at 19, where he served for four years as an aircraft mechanic. He and another airman were caught […]

Napoleon Beazley (1976 - 2002)

Napoleon Beazley (August 5, 1976 – May 28, 2002) was a convicted murderer executed by lethal injection by the State of Texas for the murder of 63-year-old Texas businessman John Luttig in 1994. Beazley shot Luttig in his garage on April 19, 1994 in order to steal his family’s Mercedes-Benz car. Beazley also shot at […]