Henry Cowell (1897 - 1965)

Born in rural Menlo Park, California, to two bohemian writers—his father was an Irish immigrant and his mother, a former schoolteacher, had relocated from Iowa—Cowell demonstrated precocious musical talent and began playing the violin at the age of five. After his parents’ divorce in 1903, he was raised by his mother, Clarissa Dixon, author of […]

William Bonin (1947 - 1996)

Bonin was born in Connecticut in January 1947, the second of three brothers. His father was a compulsive gambler and alcoholic, Bonin’s mother, Alice, was also an alcoholic, who frequently left Bonin and his brothers in the care of their grandfather, a convicted child molester. Bonin and his brothers were neglected as children, and were […]

Annie Besant (1847 - 1933)

Annie Besant (1 October 1847 – 20 September 1933) was a prominent British socialist, theosophist, women’s rights activist, writer and orator and supporter of Irish and Indian self-rule.  In 1867, Annie at age 20, married Frank Besant, a clergyman, and they had two children, but Annie’s increasingly anti-religious views led to a legal separation in […]

Helen Keller (1880 - 1968)

Helen Adams Keller was born on June 27, 1880, in Tuscumbia, Alabama. Her family lived on a homestead, Ivy Green, that Helen’s grandfather had built decades earlier. She had two younger siblings, Mildred Campbell and Phillip Brooks Keller, two older half-brothers from her father’s prior marriage, James and William Simpson Keller.  Her father, Arthur H. […]

Helena Rubinstein (1872 - 1965)

Rubinstein was the eldest of eight daughters born to a Jewish couple, Augusta – Gitte (Gitel) Shaindel Rubinstein née Silberfeld and Horace – Naftoli Hertz Rubinstein; who was a shopkeeper in Kraków.  Rubinstein emigrated from Poland to Australia in 1902, with no money and little English. Her stylish clothes and milky complexion did not pass […]

Tony Curtis (1925 - 2010)

Tony Curtis The star’s career all but collapsed in 1962, however, when he divorced Janet Leigh after having an affair with 17-year-old German actress Christine Kaufmann. By then, he and Leigh had two children: Kelly Lee and Jamie Lee Curtis. Curtis and Kaufmann married in 1963 and divorced in 1967. Shortly thereafter, in 1968, the […]

Hank Greenberg (1911 - 1986)

Hank Greenberg Just nine years after Babe Ruth’s record setting sixty home run season and long before Ford Frick would attach an asterisk to Roger Maris, Hammerin’ Hank Greenberg came within three home runs of breaking the Babe’s record in 1938. Despite Greenberg’s career being significantly shortened by military service he stands out as one […]

Carl Smith (1927 - 2010)

Carl Smith Country Musician. He was raised listening to music of the Grand Ole Opry, influenced by Roy Acuff (also a native of Maynardville, Tennessee) and Bill Monroe. While a teenager, he gained recognition as a guitarist, bass player and singer at WROL Radio in Knoxville before graduation from high school. Following a stint in […]

Bob Crane (1928 - 1978)

Bob Crane Robert Edward Crane was born in Waterbury, Connecticut on July 13th, 1928. By his early teens, he was demonstrating musical talent and had set his sights on becoming a drummer, and fantasizing about being the next Buddy Rich. At age sixteen, he began drumming for the Connecticut Symphony Orchestra, but was let go […]

Jane Russell (1921 - 2011)

Jane Russell Russell had three husbands: Bob Waterfield, (a UCLA All American, Cleveland Rams quarterback, Los Angeles Rams quarterback, Los Angeles Rams head coach, and Pro Football Hall of Fame member (married on April 24, 1943, then divorced in July 1968)); actor Roger Barrett, (married on August 25, 1968, until his death of a heart […]

Bobby Helms (1933 - 1997)

Bobby Helms Born in Bloomington, Indiana into a musical family, Helms began performing as a duo with his brother, Freddie, before going on to a successful solo career in country music. In 1956, Helms made his way to Nashville, Tennessee, where he signed a recording contract with Decca Records. The following year was filled with […]

Jerry Giesler (1886 - 1962)

Jerry Giesler Giesler garnered attention in the 1920s by defending a woman involved in the infamous “Love in the Loft Case”, but became truly famous by defending theater mogul Alexander Pantages. Errol Flynn relied on him to win acquittal on charges of statutory rape. Other famous clients included actor Robert Mitchum, and director Busby Berkeley. […]

Rosa Luxemburg (1871 - 1919)

Luxemburg was born to a Jewish family in Zamość on 5 March 1871, in Russian-controlled Congress Poland. She was the fifth child of timber trader Eliasz Luxemburg and Line Löwenstein. The family moved to Warsaw in 1873. After being bedridden with a hip ailment at the age of five, she was left with a permanent […]

Emily Murphy (1868 - 1933)

Emily Murphy was born in Cookstown, Ontario, the third child of Isaac and Emily Ferguson. Isaac Ferguson was a successful businessman and property owner. As a child, Murphy frequently joined her two older brothers Thomas and Gowan in their adventures; their father encouraged this behaviour and often had his sons and daughters share responsibilities equally. […]

Marie Curie (1867 - 1934)

Maria Skłodowska was born in Warsaw, in the Russian partition of Poland, on 7 November 1867, as the fifth and youngest child of well-known teachers Bronisława, née Boguska, and Władysław Skłodowski. Maria’s older siblings were Zofia (born 1862), Józef (1863), Bronisława (1865) and Helena (1866).  On both the paternal and maternal sides, the family had […]

Emmeline Pankhurst (1858 - 1928)

Emmeline Pankhurst (born Goulden; 15 July 1858 – 14 June 1928) was a British political activist and leader of the British suffragette movement who helped women win the right to vote. In 1999 Time named Pankhurst as one of the 100 Most Important People of the 20th Century, stating: “she shaped an idea of women […]

Florence Nightingale (1820 - 1910)

Florence Nightingale was born on 12 May 1820 into a rich, upper-class, well-connected British family at the Villa Colombaia, in Florence, Italy, and was named after the city of her birth. Florence’s older sister Frances Parthenope had similarly been named after her place of birth, Parthenopolis, a Greek settlement now part of the city of […]

Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815 - 1902)

Elizabeth Cady Stanton, the eighth of 11 children, was born in Johnstown, New York, to Daniel Cady and Margaret Livingston Cady. Five of her siblings died in early childhood or infancy. A sixth sibling, her elder brother Eleazar, died at age 20 just prior to his graduation from Union College in Schenectady, New York. Only […]

Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811 - 1896)

Harriet Elisabeth Beecher was born in Litchfield, Connecticut, on June 14, 1811. She was the seventh of 13 children, born to outspoken religious leader Lyman Beecher and Roxana (Foote), a deeply religious woman who died when Stowe was only five years old. Roxana’s grandfather was General Andrew Ward of the Revolutionary War. Her notable siblings […]

Margaret Fuller (1810 - 1850)

Sarah Margaret Fuller was born May 23, 1810, in Cambridgeport, Massachusetts, the first child of Timothy Fuller and Margaret Crane Fuller. She was named after her paternal grandmother and her mother; by the age of nine, however, she dropped “Sarah” and insisted on being called “Margaret”. The Margaret Fuller House, in which she was born, […]

Billy Wilder (1906 - 2002)

Billy Wilder From the late 1930s to the early 1960s, Billy Wilder dominated Hollywood’s Golden Age. With over fifty films and six Academy Awards to his credit, he is one of Hollywood’s all-time greatest directors, producers and screenwriters. His films range from stark melodrama, like DOUBLE INDEMNITY (1944), THE LOST WEEKEND (1945) and SUNSET BOULEVARD […]

Donald Wesley Reno (1927 - 1984)

Donald Wesley Reno Bluegrass Musician. He was playing for the local radio station by the time he turned 12, by 14 he was working with the Morris Brothers who introduced Don to a type of bluegrass music termed “mountain music,” that was quickly gaining popularity. Bill Monroe was impressed by Reno and asked him to […]

Jane Austen (1775 - 1817)

Austen’s parents, George Austen (1731–1805), and his wife Cassandra (1739–1827), were members of substantial gentry families. George was descended from a family of woollen manufacturers, which had risen through the professions to the lower ranks of the landed gentry. Cassandra was a member of the prominent Leigh family. They married on 26 April 1764 at […]

Mary Wollstonecraft (1759 - 1797)

Wollstonecraft was born on 27 April 1759 in Spitalfields, London. She was the second of the seven children of Edward John Wollstonecraft and Elizabeth Dixon. Although her family had a comfortable income when she was a child, her father gradually squandered it on speculative projects. Consequently, the family became financially unstable and they were frequently […]

Catherine the Great (1729 - 1796)

Catherine the Great Yekaterina Alexeevna or Catherine II, also known as Catherine the Great (Russian: Екатерина II Великая, Yekaterina II Velikaya; 2 May 1729 – 17 November 1796), was the most renowned and the longest-ruling female leader of Russia, reigning from 9 July 1762 until her death in 1796 at the age of 67. Her […]

Burton Abbott (1928 - 1957)

Burton W. Abbott (February 8, 1928 – March 15, 1957) was a University of California at Berkeley accounting student living in Alameda, California, who was tried for the rape and murder of 14-year-old Stephanie Bryan in November 1955. Although the evidence against him was entirely circumstantial, he was convicted and sentenced to death in California’s […]

Eldridge Cleaver (1935 - 1998)

Born in Wabbaseka, Arkansas, as a child Cleaver moved with his family to Phoenix and then to Los Angeles. He was the son of Leroy Cleaver and Thelma Hattie Robinson. He had 4 siblings: Wilhelima Marie, Helen Grace, James Weldon, and Theophilus Henry. In 1967, he married Kathleen Neal Cleaver; they divorced in 1987. They […]

Neal Cassady (1926 - 1968)

Cassady was born to Maude Jean (Scheuer) and Neal Marshall Cassady in Salt Lake City, Utah. His mother died when he was ten, and he was raised by his alcoholic father in Denver, Colorado. Cassady spent much of his youth either living on the streets of skid row with his father or in reform school. […]

Edward Bunker (1933 - 2005)

Bunker was born “on New Year’s Eve, 1933” into a troubled family in Los Angeles. His mother, Sarah (née Johnston), was a chorus girl from Vancouver, and his father, Edward N. Bunker, a stage hand. His parents lived in a constant state of alcohol-fueled argument. His first clear memories were of his parents screaming at […]

Junior Samples (1926 - 1983)

Junior Samples A sixth grade dropout, Samples was a stock car racing driver and carpenter by trade who went on the radio at the age of 40 and told a story about catching the largest fish ever seen in his hometown. The story was a humorous tall tale, and the recording of this radio story […]