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 […]

Dwight Eisenhower (1890 - 1969)

Dwight Eisenhower 34th United States President, United States General of the Army. One of seven sons of a poor Kansas family, he discovered he could receive an education for free if he was accepted at the United States Military Academy at West Point. He passed the 1911 entry exam and graduated in the top half […]

Richard Nixon (1913 - 1994)

Richard Nixon 37th US President. A member of the Republican party, he served in that capacity from 1969 until August 1974, and is remembered as the only US President to resign in office to date, which occurred during the middle of his second term, amid the infamous Watergate scandal. Born into a Methodist family, his […]

Gerald Ford (1913 - 2006)

Gerald Ford Born as Leslie Lynch King, Jr. in Omaha, Nebraska, his mother divorced his father the following year and moved to Grand Rapids, Michigan where she remarried to Gerald R. Ford. The young boy’s name was then changed to Gerald R. Ford, Jr. Graduated from the University of Michigan and Yale Law School. Served […]

Ronald Reagan (1911 - 2004)

Ronald Reagan 40th United States President, Actor. Considered by many historians and political scientists as the one individual who most helped end the Cold War between the Western world and the Soviet Union and its allies (although this event occurred ten months after he left office). Born in the small town of Tampico, Illinois, he […]

Doc Holliday (1851 - 1887)

Doc Holliday A gunfighter and professional gambler, he is remembered for his friendship with Wyatt Earp and his involvement in the notorious Gunfight at the O.K. Corral in Tombstone, Arizona that resulted in the killing of three members of the Cochise County Cowboys, a loosely associated group of outlaw cowboys in Pima and Cochise County […]

Ted Kennedy (1932 - 2009)

Ted Kennedy A member of the prominent Kennedy and Fitzgerald families, he attended Harvard University before being expelled for cheating on an exam. After serving in the United States Army from 1951 to 1953, he was readmitted to Harvard, graduating in 1956. He then studied at The Hague’s International Law School, and received his law […]

Richie Havens (1941 - 2013)

Richie Havens Havens will best be remembered as the artist who opened the Woodstock music festival with a three hour set. At an early age, he began organizing his neighborhood friends into street corner doo-wop groups and was performing with The McCrea Gospel Singers at 16. At age 20, he moved to Greenwich Village where […]

Big Pun (1971 - 2000)

Rios was born on November 10, 1971 in The Bronx, New York City, United States, to parents of Puerto Rican descent. He grew up in the South Bronx neighborhood of the city. At the age of five, Rios broke his leg while playing in a park, which would later lead to a large settlement from […]

Alec Guinness (1914 - 2000)

Guinness was born at 155 Lauderdale Mansions South, Lauderdale Road, Maida Vale, London as Alec Guinness de Cuffe. His mother’s maiden name was Agnes Cuff. She was born 8 December 1890 to Edward Cuff and Mary Ann Benfield. On Guinness’s birth certificate, the space for the mother’s name shows Agnes de Cuffe. The space for […]

Chris Burden (1946 - 2015)

Burden, the son of an engineer and a biologist, was born in Boston in 1946 and grew up in Cambridge, Massachusetts, France and Italy. He studied for his B.A. in visual arts, physics and architecture at Pomona College and received his MFA at the University of California, Irvine – where his teachers included Robert Irwin […]

Elizabeth Wilson (1921 - 2015)

Wilson was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan, the daughter of Marie Ethel (née Welter) and insurance agent Henry Dunning Wilson. Her maternal grandfather was a wealthy German immigrant, and Wilson was raised in a large mansion. She attended the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York City, then studied with Sanford Meisner at the […]

Edward III of England (1312 - 1377)

Edward was born at Windsor Castle on 13 November 1312, and was often referred to as Edward of Windsor in his early years. The reign of his father, Edward II, was a particularly problematic period of English history. One source of contention was the king’s inactivity, and repeated failure, in the ongoing war with Scotland. […]