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. […]

Don Knotts (1924 - 2006)

Don Knotts Born Jesse Donald Knotts in Morgantown, West Virginia, he is best known for his roles as ‘Deputy Barney Fife’ in the 1960s television series the “Andy Griffith Show,” and as landlord ‘Ralph Furley’ from the late 1970s television situation comedy series “Three’s Company.” He began his career as a ventriloquist and comedian in […]

Dorian Leigh (1917 - 2008)

Dorian Leigh Parker was born in San Antonio, Texas, to George and Elizabeth Parker. Her parents married when they were around 17 or 18 years old and Elizabeth promptly gave birth to three daughters in quick succession: Dorian (1917–2008), Florian (Cissie) (1918–2010), and Georgiabell. Thirteen years after the birth of her last daughter, Elizabeth thought […]

George Furth (1932 - 2008)

Furth was born George Schweinfurth in Chicago, Illinois, the son of Evelyn (née Tuerk) and George Schweinfurth. He received a Bachelor of Science in Speech at Northwestern University in 1954 and received his master’s degree from Columbia University.  A life member of the Actors Studio, Furth made his Broadway debut as an actor in the […]

Robert Prosky (1930 - 2008)

Prosky, a Polish American, was born Robert Joseph Porzuczek in the Manayunk neighborhood of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to Joseph and Helen Porzuczek. His father was a grocer and butcher. He was raised in a working-class neighborhood and studied at the American Theatre Wing, later graduating from Temple University. He performed at Old Academy Players, a small […]

Gary Gilmore (1940 - 1977)

Gilmore was born in McCamey, Texas, on December 4, 1940, the second of four sons to Frank and Bessie Gilmore. Frank Gilmore Sr. (1890–1962), an alcoholic con man, had numerous wives and families, none of whom he supported. He married Bessie (née Brown) (1914 – June 1980), a Mormon outcast from Provo, Utah, in Sacramento, […]

Tommy Lynn Sells (1964 - 2014)

Sells and his twin sister, Tammy Jean, contracted meningitis[citation needed] when they were 18 months old; Tammy died from the illness. Shortly thereafter, Sells was sent to live with his aunt, Bonnie Woodall, in Holcomb, Missouri, where he lived until he was five years old. When Sells was eight, he began spending time with a […]

Charles Starkweather (1938 - 1959)

Starkweather was born in Lincoln, Nebraska, the third of seven children born to Guy and Helen Starkweather. The Starkweathers were a respectable family with well-behaved children of working class background. The family was poor, but they always had the basics. Guy Starkweather was by all accounts a mild-mannered man; he was a carpenter who was […]

Ted Knight (1923 - 1986)

Ted Knight Born to a Polish American family in Terryville, Connecticut. Some sources list his real name as Tadeus Wladyslaw Konopka, however, his gravestone reads, Theodore C. Konopka. He dropped out of high school to join the military during World War II. He received five battle stars during his Army service in World War II. […]

Eartha Kitt (1927 - 2008)

Eartha Kitt Kitt was active in numerous social causes in the 1950s and 1960s. In 1966, she established the Kittsville Youth Foundation, a chartered and non-profit organization for underprivileged youth in the Watts area of Los Angeles. She was also involved with a group of youth in the area of Anacostia in Washington, D.C., who […]

Bruno Hauptmann (1899 - 1936)

Hauptmann was born Richard Hauptmann in Kamenz, near Dresden in what was then the German Empire, the youngest of five children. (The name “Bruno,” used sometimes by prosecutors in the Lindbergh kidnapping trial was not used by family or friends.) He had three brothers and a sister. At age 11, he joined the Boy Scouts […]

Charles Arthur Floyd (1904 - 1934)

Charles Arthur Floyd was born in Bartow County, Georgia in 1904. His family moved to Oklahoma in 1911, and he grew up there. As a youth, he spent considerable time in nearby Kansas, Arkansas and Missouri.  Floyd was first arrested at age 18 after he stole $3.50 in coins from a local post office. Three […]

Mabel King (1932 - 1999)

Mabel King      She started acting in the early seventies, her first movie appearance being Don’t Play Us Cheap in 1973 as a house guest. Estelle Rolle also appeared in the movie. She also played Evillene, the evil witch of the west, in both the movie and broadway versions of Diana Ross’ The Wiz. She […]