Ruben Cantu (1966 - 1993)

Ruben Cantu grew up with his mother and father, until the age of 14, when the couple split up, with Ruben’s mother moving 20 miles (30 km) away, and Ruben and his father continuing to live in a trailer in a crime-ridden south San Antonio barrio. The neighborhood was home to a loose band of […]

Mitchell Guist (1964 - 2012)

Mitchell Guist was born in 1964 in Gonzales, Louisiana and lived with his brother, Glenn, for his entire life. Mitchell spent most of his early life with his parents until he was 18 and moved into his own home in the bayou with Glenn.  In 2011, Mitchell and Glenn became stars on the History Channel’s […]

Phil Harris (1956 - 2010)

Phil Harris Harris began fishing with his father at age eight and after high school began crab fishing. He initially worked on a crab boat unpaid until he proved his worth. By the time he was 21 he was one of the youngest captains of a crab fishing boat on the Bering Sea. He had […]

Joey Kovar (1983 - 2012)

Kovar was a native of Evergreen Park, Illinois, where he continued to reside after appearing on The Real World: Hollywood and other shows. He battled addiction to both drugs and alcohol before appearing in television.  Kovar, a former personal trainer, was discovered at age 24 by a talent scout on a Chicago street. In 2008, […]

Jack Lemmon (1925 - 2001)

Jack Lemmon One of the most consistently acclaimed actors in motion picture and television history, Jack Lemmon became the first man to win Academy Awards as both Best Supporting Actor for his role in “Mister Roberts” (1955) and Best Actor for “Save the Tiger” (1973). In between and after, Lemmon amassed an envious résumé of […]

Vivien Leigh (1913 - 1967)

Vivien Leigh After finishing her primary education she decided to pursue acting at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art when she was 18. For the next few years her career consisted of stage work and small film roles. In 1937 her first marriage with dissolved and she took up residence with actor Laurence Olivier. It […]

Peggy Lee (1920 - 2002)

Peggy Lee Singer, Songwriter and Actress. Best remembered for songs “Fever,” “Lover,” “Big Spender,” and a host of other songs. Born Norma Dolores Egstrom, her mother died when she was 4, and her father, a railroad station agent, remarried, but later abandoned the new family, leaving Peggy with her stepmother, who physically abused her. Peggy […]

Peter Lawford (1923 - 1984)

Peter Lawford He is probably best remembered as a member of the Hollywood’s “Rat Pack’ which included entertainers Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis, Jr, and Joey Bishop, who appeared together on stage and films, including the movies “Ocean’s 11” (1960) and “Sergeants 3” (1962). He is also remembered as the husband of Patricia Kennedy, […]

Stan Laurel (1890 - 1965)

Stan Laurel Comedian. He found his greatest success when paired with Oliver Hardy. Born Arthur Stanley Jefferson in Ulverston, England, the second of five children. His father, A. J. Jefferson managed a number of vaudeville theaters, and his mother was an actress. He lived with his grandparents until age six, then moved in with his […]

Lorraine Hansberry (1930 - 1965)

Lorraine Hansberry was the youngest of four children born to Carl Augustus Hansberry, a successful real-estate broker, and Nannie Louise (born Perry) a school teacher. In 1938, her father bought a house in the Washington Park Subdivision of the South Side of Chicago, incurring the wrath of their white neighbors. The latter’s legal efforts to […]

William F. Albright (1891 - 1971)

From the early twentieth century until his death, he was the dean of biblical archaeologists and the acknowledged founder of the Biblical archaeology movement. Most notably, coming from his own background in radical German historical criticism of the historicity of the Biblical accounts, Albright, through his seminal work in archaeology (and most notably his development […]

Charles Laughton (1899 - 1962)

Charles Laughton In 1927, Laughton began a relationship with Elsa Lanchester, at the time a cast mate in a stage play. The two were married in 1929, became US citizens in 1950, and remained together until Laughton’s death. Over the years, they appeared together in several films, including Rembrandt (1936), Tales of Manhattan (1942) and […]

Mario Lanza (1921 - 1959)

Mario Lanza First singer to earn Gold Records (over 1 million copies sold) in both classical and pop categories. Born Alfred Arnold Cocozza in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where he left high school early to work in his uncle’s grocery store, until he auditioned for a music scholarship in 1942. During World War II, he was drafted […]

Paul Kurtz (1925 - 2012)

Kurtz was born in Newark, New Jersey, into a Jewish family, the son of Sara Lasser and Martin Kurtz. Kurtz received his bachelor’s degree from New York University, and the Master’s degree and Doctor of Philosophy degree from Columbia University. Kurtz was left-wing in his youth, but has said that serving in the United States […]

Doug Engelbart (1925 - 2013)

Engelbart was born in Portland, Oregon on January 30, 1925, to Carl Louis Engelbart and Gladys Charlotte Amelia Munson Engelbart. His ancestors were of German, Swedish and Norwegian descent.  He was the middle of three children, with a sister Dorianne (3 years older), and a brother David (14 months younger). The family lived in Portland, […]

Brenda Frazier (1921 - 1982)

Frazier’s father, Frank Duff Frazier, came from a prosperous Boston family. Her mother, the former Brenda Germaine Henshaw Williams-Taylor, was the only daughter of Sir Frederick Williams-Taylor (a general manager of the Bank of Montreal who was knighted in 1910 and combined his middle name and birth surname into a new hyphenated surname) and his […]

Patricia Buckley (1926 - 2007)

Born in Vancouver, British Columbia, to a wealthy family, Patricia Taylor had tutors and attended Crofton House School. She was one of the three children of Austin Cotterell Taylor, a self-made industrialist, rich from lumber and mining. Her mother, Kathleen Elliott, daughter of the chief of police of Winnipeg, was a great beauty. Pat went […]

Babe Paley (1915 - 1978)

Born Barbara Cushing in Boston, Massachusetts, she was the daughter of world-renowned brain surgeon Dr. Harvey Cushing, who was professor of surgery at Johns Hopkins, Harvard and Yale universities, and Katharine Stone Crowell Cushing. Her older sisters both married into money and prestige: Minnie Cushing was the second wife of Vincent Astor, and Betsey Cushing […]

Eleanor Lambert (1903 - 2003)

Lambert was born in Crawfordsville, Indiana. She attended the John Herron School of Art and the Chicago Art Institute to study fashion. Lambart wanted to be a sculptor but went into advertising. She started at an advertising agency in Manhattan, dealing mostly with artists and art galleries.  She was married twice, firstly to Wills Conner, […]

Edie Sedgwick (1943 - 1971)

Sedgwick’s family was long established in Massachusetts history. Her seventh-great grandfather, English-born Robert Sedgwick, was the first Major General of the Massachusetts Bay Colony settling in Charlestown, Massachusetts in 1635. Sedgwick’s family later originated from Stockbridge, Massachusetts where her great-great-great grandfather Judge Theodore Sedgwick had settled after the American Revolution. Theodore married Pamela Dwight of […]

Caroline Astor (1830 - 1908)

Lina was born into New York City’s Dutch aristocracy, descendants of the city’s original settlers. Her father, Abraham Schermerhorn, and the extended Schermerhorn family were engaged in shipping. Lina’s mother was Helen White. At the time of her birth, her family lived at 1 Greenwich Street, near the Bowling Green, but the population growth and […]

Balto (1919 - 1933)

In January 1925 doctors realized that a potentially deadly diphtheria epidemic was poised to sweep through Nome’s young people. The only serum that could stop the outbreak was in Anchorage, Alaska, approximately 1,000 miles (1609 km) away. The engine of the only aircraft that could quickly deliver the medicine was frozen and would not start. […]

Wheely Willy (1991 - 2009)

Willy was found abandoned in a cardboard box with spinal injuries and a cut throat. Taken in by a veterinary hospital and treated, Willy stayed there for a year unadopted. Learning that the dog would be euthanised if not adopted, pet groomer Deborah Turner decided to bring him home.  Initially, the two pound (one kilogram) […]

Gua (1930 - 1933)

Gua was a chimpanzee raised as though she were a human child by scientists Luella and Winthrop Kellogg alongside their infant son Donald. Gua was the first chimpanzee to be used in a cross-rearing study in the US.  Gua was born on November 15, 1930 in Havana, Cuba. She was given, along with her mother, […]

Oliver (1958 - 2012)

Oliver was acquired as a young animal (around 2 years old) in 1960 by trainers Frank and Janet Berger. Supposedly, the chimpanzee had been caught in the Congo. Some physical and behavioral evidence led the Bergers to believe Oliver was a creature other than a chimpanzee, perhaps a human-chimp hybrid: Oliver possessed a flatter face […]

Heidi (1970 - 2011)

Heidi was given to Leipzig by Denmark’s Odense Zoo in May 2010, although she was originally raised in a wild animal sanctuary in the U.S. state of North Carolina after being found as an orphan. It is speculated by zoo officials that Heidi’s most notable attribute – her crossed eyes – may have been caused […]

Nancy Kulp (1921 - 1991)

Nancy Kulp Tall and prim, she appeared in a series of spinster-like roles on television, including the original “The Bob Cummings Show” as bird-watcher Pamela Livingstone from 1955 to 1959, and “The Brian Keith Show” as the wealthy widow Mrs. Gruber in 1973-74. She once was called TV’s homeliest girl, possessing, one reviewer said, “The […]

Amelia Dyer (1837 - 1896)

Unlike many of her generation, Dyer was not the product of grinding poverty. She was born the youngest of five (with three brothers, Thomas, James and William, and a sister, Ann) in the small village of Pyle Marsh, just east of Bristol (now part of Bristol’s urban sprawl known as Pile Marsh), the daughter of […]

Mary Ann Cotton (1832 - 1873)

Mary Ann Robson was born on 31 October 1832 at Low Moorsley (now part of Houghton-le-Spring in the City of Sunderland) and baptised at St Mary’s, West Rainton on 11 November.  When Mary Ann was eight, her parents moved the family to the County Durham village of Murton, where she went to a new school […]

Ronnie Biggs (1929 - 2013)

Biggs was born in Stockwell, Lambeth, London, on 8 August 1929. As a child during the Second World War, he was evacuated to Flitwick, Bedfordshire, and then Cornwall.  In 1947, at age 18, Biggs joined the RAF but was dishonorably discharged on charges of desertion two years later after breaking into a local chemist shop. […]