Ezra Taft Benson (1899 - 1994)

Born on a farm in Whitney, Idaho, Benson was the oldest of eleven children. He was the great-grandson of Ezra T. Benson, who was appointed by Brigham Young a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles in 1846. Benson began his academic career at Utah State Agricultural College (USAC), where he first met his […]

Gloria Stuart (1910 - 2010)

Gloria Stuart Gloria Stuart had an interesting, and long spanning acting career which ran nearly 80 years. She would accumulate an Oscar nomination, Golden Globe nomination, a Saturn award, and received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Screen Actors Guild. Stuart received her big break when she was able to sign with Universal Studios. She […]

Teena Marie (1956 - 2010)

Teena Marie Teena Marie was an American singer-songwriter nicknamed Lady Tee, considered an R&B legend who proclaimed herself as the “Ivory Queen of Soul” because she was one of the first successful white performers of that genre of music. She had many classic hits including a duet with her mentor Rick James called “Fire and […]

Elizabeth Taylor (1932 - 2011)

Elizabeth Taylor Elizabeth Taylor was an acting legend from the golden age of Hollywood. AFI listed her as seventh on the “Female Legends List”. Her acting career lasted over sixty years, starting at the age of ten and ending at the age of 71. Elizabeth Taylor was born in London, England. The daughter of Americans […]

Dieter Grau (1913 - 2014)

Dieter Grau (April 24, 1913 – December 17, 2014) was a rocket scientist and member of the “von Braun rocket group”, at Peenemünde (1939–1945) working on the V-2 rockets in World War II. He was among the scientists who surrendered to the United States and traveled there, providing rocketry expertise via Operation Paperclip, which took […]

Fitzhugh Fulton (1925 - 2015)

Born in Blakely, Georgia, Fulton attended Auburn University, the University of Oklahoma, and is a graduate of Golden Gate University.  Fulton flew 225 trips to Berlin in C-54’s during the Berlin Airlift. He also flew 55 combat mission in the Douglas B-26 Invader over North Korea. He received a Distinguished Flying Cross and five Air […]

Ernest Sternglass (1923 - 2015)

Both of his parents were physicians. When Ernest was fourteen, the Sternglass family left Germany in 1938 to avoid the fascist regime. He completed high school at the age of sixteen, then entered Cornell, registering for an engineering program.  Financial difficulties encountered by his family forced him to leave school for a year. By the […]

Clarice Taylor (1917 - 2011)

Clarice Taylor Actress. Fondly remembered for her role as Bill Cosby’s mother Anna Huxtable in the popular TV series “The Cosby Show” (1985 to 1992), for which she received an Emmy Award nomination in 1986. Born in Buckingham, Virginia, the daughter of a post office worker, she herself worked for the post office after attending […]

Bruce Edwards Ivins (1946 - 2008)

Bruce Edwards Ivins (April 22, 1946 – July 29, 2008) was an American microbiologist, vaccinologist, senior biodefense researcher at the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID), Fort Detrick, Maryland, and the key suspect in the 2001 anthrax attacks.  On Tuesday, July 29, 2008, he died of an overdose of Tylenol with […]

Malcolm Casadaban (1949 - 2009)

Malcolm Casadaban (12 August 1949 – 13 September 2009) was Associate Professor of Molecular Genetics and Cell Biology and of Microbiology at the University of Chicago. Casadaban died following an accidental laboratory exposure to an attenuated strain of Yersinia pestis, a bacterium that causes the plague.  According to a CDC report on the incident, the […]

Shirley Temple (1928 - 2014)

Shirley Temple Actress, United States Diplomat. She is considered an icon of American cinema, she is arguably the most successful child film star in motion picture history. She started taking dancing lessons at the age of three, and had her first experience in motion pictures when she was chosen to appear in a series of […]

George Carlin (1937 - 2008)

George Carlin Comedian. A provocative and influential standup performer, he is best known for his “Seven Dirty Words” routine which led to the 1978 United States Supreme Court case “F.C.C. v. Pacifica Foundation” that established the American government’s right to regulate profanity on the public airwaves. The decision also propelled his career forward. In general, […]

Richard Pryor (1940 - 2005)

Richard Pryor Comedian. He is best remembered for his comedy routines that mixed profanity with social insight on racism in the United States, which were considered startling and radical when he first introduced it. Born in Peoria, Illinois, he would claim that he grew up in his grandmother’s brothel. Dropping out of high school, he […]

Ray Combs (1956 - 1996)

Ray Combs Ray Combs, the 40-year-old former host of TV’s “The New Family Feud” game show, committed suicide, dying Sunday at Glendale Adventist Hospital a day after he had been admitted for an unrelated head injury, authorities said. Neither hospital officials nor Glendale police, who are investigating along with the county coroner’s office, would say […]

John Ritter (1948 - 2003)

John Ritter Actor. A figure in television and motion pictures, he is fondly remembered for his role in the television comedy series “Three’s Company” and “8 Simple Rules for Dating my Daughter.” He received an Emmy and a Golden Globe award for his work on “Three’s Company.” The youngest son of movie and television singing […]

Ed McMahon (1923 - 2009)

Ed McMahon Television Personality. Born Edward Leo Peter McMahon, Jr. He was raised in Lowell, Massachusetts, and as a teenager worked as a bingo caller in Maine. He joined the Marines for World War II, serving as a fighter pilot, flight instructor and test pilot. After the war he attended Catholic University to study speech […]

Soupy Sales (1926 - 2009)

Soupy Sales Born Milton Supman, Soupy Sales was an early children’s television show icon whose trademark was a cream pie to the face. With his two puppets White Fang, the meanest dog in the United States, and Black Tooth, the nicest dog in the United States, he used his skill of rubber faced improvisational style […]

B.B. King (1925 - 2015)

B.B. King B.B. King spread joy to millions by giving them the blues. The iconic musician, along with his ever-present guitar Lucille, spent nearly 70 years thrilling audiences and spreading the music he learned as a poverty-stricken youth in the Mississippi Delta all over the world. King, 89, died in Las Vegas, his attorney announced […]

James Garfield (0183 - 1881)

James Garfield American Civil War Major General, US Congressman, and US President. A member of the Republican Party, he served as the 20th US President for only 200 days, from March until September 1881. He was the 3rd US President to die in office and the 2nd one who was assassinated, following Abraham Lincoln. Born […]

Ulysses S Grant (1822 - 1885)

Ulysses S Grant 18th United States President, Civil War Union Lieutenant General. He was born in Point Pleasant, Ohio. His birth name was  Hiram Ulysses Grant. At seventeen, he entered the United States Military Academy at West Point. After graduation, his first assignment was service in a border war with Mexico. After eleven years he resigned […]

Grover Cleveland (1837 - 1908)

Grover Cleveland 22nd and 24th United States President, New York Governor. A Democrat, he was first elected President in 1884, defeated in 1888, and reelected in 1892, becoming the only United States President to serve two non-consecutive terms. One of nine children of a Presbyterian minister, he was raised in upstate New York, becoming a […]

Theodore Roosevelt (1858 - 1919)

Theodore Roosevelt 26th President of the United States, 25th Vice President of the United States, 33rd Governor of the State of New York, Spanish American War Congressional Medal of Honor Recipient, Nobel Peace Prize Recipient. His father Theodore Roosevelt, Sr. was a merchant. Theodore Jr. was born into a family which taught him to respect […]

Woodrow Wilson (1856 - 1924)

Woodrow Wilson 28th US President, 34th New Jersey Governor, Nobel Peace Prize Winner. He is best remembered for keeping America neutral at the start of World War I, but reluctantly entering the war in 1917, joining the Allied Powers, primarily Britain and France, to defeat the Central Powers led by Germany, Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman […]

Herbert Hoover (1874 - 1964)

Herbert Hoover 31st US President. He was the scapegoat President blamed for the Great Depression and all that was wrong with America. Herbert Hoover had the misfortune to inherit an economy and a faulty banking system which collapsed before it could be reformed. His detractors wove and promoted a myth labeling Hoover as heartless, inept […]

Harry Truman (1884 - 1972)

Harry Truman 33rd United States President. He was the third vice president under Franklin Roosevelt and was in office but two months when the Presidency was thrust upon him by the death of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. He faced unprecedented and defining challenges. The war in Europe was nearly over and President Truman wanted a quick […]

Heriberto Lazcano Lazcano (1974 - 2012)

Lazcano was born to a poor family on Christmas Day, December 1974, in Apan, Hidalgo, Mexico. He enlisted in the Mexican Army as an infantry soldier at age 17 and was later enrolled in the Grupo Aeromóvil de Fuerzas Especiales (GAFE), an elite special forces team dedicated to combating Mexico’s drug-trafficking organizations. His first military […]

Ignacio Coronel Villarreal (1954 - 2010)

Ignacio Coronel was responsible for moving multi-ton quantities of cocaine via fishing vessels from Colombia to Mexico and on to the United States state of Texas and Arizona during the early 2000s. His influence and operations penetrated throughout the United States, Mexico, and several other European, Central American, and South American countries. In Mexico, he […]

Antonio Cárdenas Guillén (1962 - 2010)

Antonio Ezequiel Cárdenas Guillén was born on 5 March 1962 in El Mezquital ranch in the border city of Matamoros, Tamaulipas, Mexico. As a teenager, Antonio Ezequiel and his brother Osiel earned their living by washing cars at the headquarters of the Federal Judicial Police in their hometown. By the late 1980s, Cárdenas Guillén started […]

Nazario Moreno González (1970 - 2014)

Moreno González was born in the ranchería of Guanajuatillo in Apatzingán, Michoacán, Mexico at around 5:00 a.m. on 8 March 1970. There are few details of Moreno González’s upbringing, but religion may have played an important role in his early life. His parents had 13 children (including Moreno González). His father Manuel Moreno was reportedly […]

Arturo Beltrán Leyva (1961 - 2009)

The Beltrán-Leyva Cartel was founded and named after the brothers Arturo, Alfredo, Alberto, Carlos and Héctor Beltrán Leyva after they separated from the Sinaloa cartel, which is led by Joaquín Guzmán Loera a.k.a. “El Chapo”.  Arturo Beltrán Leyva and his four brothers worked as underbosses and security chiefs for the Sinaloa cartel leaders. The breakaway […]