Queen Mary I of England (1516 - 1558)

Mary was born on 18 February 1516 at the Palace of Placentia in Greenwich, London. She was the only child of King Henry VIII and his first wife, Catherine of Aragon, to survive infancy. Her mother had many miscarriages; before Mary’s birth, four previous pregnancies had resulted in a stillborn daughter and three short-lived or […]

Ferdinand Demara (1921 - 1982)

Demara, known locally as ‘Fred’, was born in Lawrence, Massachusetts, in 1921, at 40 Texas Avenue in the lower southwest Tower Hill Neighborhood. His father, Ferdinand Waldo Demara, Sr. was born in Rhode Island and worked in Lawrence’s old Theatre District as a motion picture operator. In those days, his father did financially well and […]

Harold Shipman (1946 - 2004)

Harold Frederick Shipman was born on the Bestwood council estate in Nottingham, England, the second of the four children of Vera and Harold Shipman, a lorry driver. His working class parents were devout Methodists. Shipman was particularly close to his mother, who died of lung cancer when he was 17. Her death came in a […]

Hedy Lamarr (1914 - 2000)

Lamarr was born Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler in 1914 in Vienna, Austria-Hungary, the only child of Gertrud “Trude” Kiesler (née Lichtwitz; 3 February 1894 – 27 February 1977) and Emil Kiesler (27 December 1880 – 14 February 1935). Her father was born in Lemberg and was a successful bank director. He died before the Holocaust, […]

Norma Shearer (1902 - 1983)

Shearer’s childhood was spent in Montreal and was one of privilege due to the success of her father’s construction business. However, the marriage between her parents was not a happy one. Andrew Shearer was prone to manic depression and “moved like a shadow or a ghost around the house,” while her mother Edith was attractive, […]

Myrna Loy (1905 - 1993)

Loy was born Myrna Adele Williams in Helena, Montana,  to Adelle Mae (née Johnson) and rancher David Franklin Williams, and raised in nearby Radersburg. Her paternal grandparents were natives of Wales, and her maternal grandparents were Swedish and Scottish. Her first name was derived from a whistle stop near Broken Bow, Nebraska, whose name her […]

Janet Gaynor (1906 - 1984)

Janet Gaynor Janet Gaynor was born Laura Augusta Gainor (some sources stated Gainer) in Germantown, Philadelphia. Nicknamed “Lolly” as a child, she was the youngest of two daughters born to Laura and Frank De Witt Gainor. Frank Gainor worked as a theatrical painter and paperhanger. When Gaynor was a toddler, her father began teaching her […]

Dorothy Lamour (1914 - 1996)

Born Mary Leta Dorothy Slaton in New Orleans, the daughter of Carmen Louise (née LaPorte) and John Watson Slaton, both of whom were waiters. Lamour was of French Louisianan, Spanish, and Irish descent. Her parents’ marriage lasted only a few years. Her mother married for the second time to Clarence Lambour, whose surname Dorothy later […]

Percy Sledge (1940 - 2015)

Percy Sledge The singer sky-rocketed to the top of both the Hot 100 and R&B charts with his dramatic, heartrending ballad “When a Man Loves a Woman” – his debut single and one of Rolling Stone’s Greatest Songs of All Time – in 1966. It spent 13 weeks on the Billboard pop chart, and was […]

Hattie McDaniel (1895 - 1952)

Hattie McDaniel was born June 10, 1895, in Wichita, Kansas, to former slaves. She was the youngest of 13 children. Her father, Henry McDaniel, fought in the Civil War with the 122nd USCT and her mother, Susan Holbert, was a singer of religious music. In 1900, the family moved to Colorado, living first in Fort […]

Fay Wray (1907 - 2004)

Wray was born on a ranch near Cardston in the province of Alberta, Canada, to two Mormons, Elvina Marguerite Jones, who was from Salt Lake City, and Joseph Heber Wray, who was from Kingston upon Hull, England. She was one of six children. Her family returned to the United States a few years after she […]

Thelma Ritter (1902 - 1969)

Ritter was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1902. After appearing in high school plays and stock companies, she trained as an actress at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. She established a stage career but took a hiatus to raise her two children by her husband, Joseph Moran, an actor turned advertising executive.  Ritter […]

Ann Miller (1923 - 2004)

Johnnie Lucille Collier was born in Chireno, Texas to Clara Emma (née Birdwell) and John Alfred Collier, a criminal lawyer who represented the Barrow Gang, Machine Gun Kelly, and Baby Face Nelson, among others.  Her maternal grandmother was Cherokee. Miller’s father insisted on the name Johnnie because he had wanted a boy, but she was […]

Milan Bogdan (1941 - 2015)

Milan Bogdan Faaantastic!Life offers few guarantees, and we should be thankful for the ones we get. The sun will always rise in the east, E will likely always equal MC2, and when you ask Milan Bogdan how he’s doing, he will invariably reply, “Faaan-tastic!” like a boisterous drummer tagging a big blues shuffle. With a […]

Thomas Midgley (1889 - 1944)

Midgley began working at General Motors in 1916. In December 1921, while working under the direction of Charles Kettering at Dayton Research Laboratories, a subsidiary of General Motors, Midgley discovered that the addition of Tetraethyllead to gasoline prevented “knocking” in internal combustion engines. The company named the substance “Ethyl”, avoiding all mention of lead in […]

Max Valier (1895 - 1930)

Valier was born in Bozen (Bolzano) in the County of Tyrol (now South Tyrol) and in 1913 enrolled to study Physics at the University of Innsbruck. He also trained as a machinist at a nearby factory. His studies were interrupted by the First World War, during which he served in the Austro-Hungarian army’s air corps […]

Judith Anderson (1897 - 1992)

Anderson was born Frances Margaret Anderson in 1897 in Adelaide, South Australia to Jessie Margaret (née Saltmarsh; 19 October 1862 – 24 November 1950) and James Anderson Anderson. She attended Norwood High School, and began acting in Australia before moving to New York in 1918. Anderson established herself as a dramatic actress of note, making […]

Ann Rutherford (1917 - 2012)

Rutherford was born in Vancouver, to John Rutherford, a former operatic tenor, and Lucille Mansfield, a silent film actress. While Rutherford was still a baby, the family moved to San Francisco. Soon afterwards, her parents separated and Lucille Mansfield moved to Los Angeles with Ann Rutherford and her sister Judith.  While roller skating home from […]

Kathryn Grayson (1922 - 2010)

She was born Zelma Kathryn Elisabeth Hedrick in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, the daughter of Charles E. Hedrick and Lillian Grayson Hedrick (1897–1955). Charles was a building contractor-realtor.  Lillian was of British descent and Charles was of German and Sicilian descent.  The Hedrick family later moved to St. Louis, Missouri, where she was discovered singing on […]

Kay Francis (1905 - 1968)

Francis was born Katharine Edwina Gibbs in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma in 1905. Her parents, Joseph Sprague Gibbs and his actress wife Katharine Clinton Francis, had been married in 1903; however, by the time their daughter was four, Joseph had left the family. Francis inherited her unusual height from her father, who stood 6′ 4″; she […]

Milton Hershey (1857 - 1945)

Milton S. Hershey was born on September 13, 1857, to Veronica “Fanny” Snavely and Henry Hershey. His family were members of Pennsylvania’s Mennonite community. His ancestors were Swiss and German and had settled in Pennsylvania in the early 1700s. He grew up speaking the Pennsylvania Dutch language. Like many rural young people of the time, […]

Lena Baker (1900 - 1945)

Baker was born June 8, 1900, to a poor black family of sharecroppers and raised near Cuthbert, Georgia. Her family moved to the county seat when she was a child. As a youth, she worked for a farmer named J.A. Cox, chopping cotton.  By the 1940s, Baker was the mother of three children and worked […]

Elizabeth Ann Duncan (1904 - 1962)

Elizabeth Ann Duncan was born about 1904. She was described as a drifter, said to have married 20 times and at one time operating a brothel in San Francisco. She had one child, Frank, and made him the center of her life.  At times distressed about her life, Elizabeth Duncan tried to commit suicide. During […]

Teresa Lewis (1969 - 2010)

Teresa Wilson grew up in poverty in Danville, Virginia, where her parents both worked in a textile mill. Teresa sang in a church during her youth. At 16, she dropped out of school and married a man she met at that church. The couple had one daughter, Christie Lynn Bean, but the marriage soon ended […]

Frances Newton (1965 - 2005)

Frances Elaine McLemore Newton (April 12, 1965 – September 14, 2005) was executed by lethal injection in the state of Texas for the April 7, 1987 murder of her husband, Adrian, 23, her son, Alton, 7, and daughter, Farrah, 21 months.  All three victims were shot with a .25 caliber pistol which belonged to a […]

Kimberly McCarthy (1961 - 2013)

McCarthy was born on May 11, 1961, in Greenville, Texas. She worked as an occupational therapist in a nursing home. She was briefly married to the founder of the New Black Panther Party, Aaron Michaels, with whom she had one son. During her adult life, she developed an addiction to crack cocaine. In 1990, she […]

Suzanne Basso (1954 - 2014)

Basso was born on May 15, 1954 to a family from Schenectady, New York. She was one of eight children born to Florence (née Garrow) and John Richard Burns. Florence was the elder sister of spree killer Robert Garrow. Of the three girls in the family, she was the youngest.  She married a Marine named […]

Zach Sobiech (1995 - 2013)

At age 14, Sobiech was diagnosed with osteosarcoma, a bone cancer which mostly strikes children. CBS reported that during his treatment he underwent 10 surgeries and 20 rounds of chemotherapy. He started writing music after his diagnosis.  In May 2012 his doctors informed him that he had up to a year to live. Sobiech recorded […]

Talia Castellano (1999 - 2013)

Talia Joy Castellano was born on August 18, 1999, in Orlando, Florida, and grew up in and around central Florida with her mother, Desiree Castellano, and in New York City with her father, Marc Winthrop. She had three siblings: Kaitlyn, Jackson Winthrop and Mattia Castellano.  When she was 7 years old, Talia Castellano began experiencing […]

Monty Oum (1981 - 2015)

Oum dropped out of high school and began putting together fan videos as early as 2002. In January 2007, he discovered some reverse engineering techniques online that allowed him to extract models from Halo 2 and, utilizing assets from Super Smash Bros. Melee, created the “ultimate showdown” between a SPARTAN (Halo) and Samus Aran (Metroid) […]