Sid Vicious (1957 - 1979)

Sid Vicious Sid Vicious, born John Simon Ritchie, later named John Beverley (10 May 1957 – 2 February 1979), was an English bass guitarist and vocalist, most famous as a member of the influential punk group the Sex Pistols, and notorious for the murder of Nancy Spungen. Vicious joined the Sex Pistols in early 1977, […]

Princess Diana (1961 - 1997)

Princess Diana Diana, Princess of Wales (Diana Frances; née Spencer; 1 July 1961 – 31 August 1997), was the first wife of Charles, Prince of Wales, who is the eldest child and heir apparent of Queen Elizabeth II. Diana was born into an aristocratic British family with royal ancestry as The Honourable Diana Frances Spencer. […]

Martin Luther King Jr (1929 - 1968)

Martin Luther King Jr Martin Luther King, Jr. (January 15, 1929 – April 4, 1968) was an American pastor, activist, humanitarian, and leader in the African-American Civil Rights Movement. He is best known for his role in the advancement of civil rights using nonviolent civil disobedience based on his Christian beliefs. He was born Michael […]

Robert Johnson (1911 - 1938)

Robert Johnson Robert Leroy Johnson (May 8, 1911 – August 16, 1938) was an American singer-songwriter and musician. His landmark recordings in 1936 and 1937 display a combination of singing, guitar skills, and songwriting talent that has influenced later generations of musicians. Johnson’s shadowy, poorly documented life and death at age 27 have given rise […]

John Coltrane (1926 - 1967)

John Coltrane John William Coltrane, also known as “Trane” (September 23, 1926 – July 17, 1967), was an American jazz saxophonist and composer. Working in the bebop and hard bop idioms early in his career, Coltrane helped pioneer the use of modes in jazz and was later at the forefront of free jazz. He organized […]

Charlie Parker (1920 - 1955)

Charlie Parker Charles Parker, Jr. (August 29, 1920 – March 12, 1955), also known as “Yardbird” and “Bird”, was an American jazz saxophonist and composer. Parker was a highly influential jazz soloist and a leading figure in the development of bebop, a form of jazz characterized by fast tempos, virtuosic technique and improvisation. Parker introduced […]

George McGovern (1922 - 2012)

George McGovern George Stanley McGovern (July 19, 1922 – October 21, 2012) was an American historian, author, U.S. Representative, U.S. Senator, and the Democratic Party presidential nominee in the 1972 presidential election.  McGovern grew up in Mitchell, South Dakota, where he was a renowned debater. He volunteered for the U.S. Army Air Forces upon the […]

Keith Moon (1978 - 1978)

Keith Moon Keith John Moon (23 August 1946 – 7 September 1978) He was noted for his unique drumming style and his eccentric, often self-destructive behaviour. In 2011, Moon was voted the second-greatest drummer in history by a Rolling Stone readers’ poll. His drumming continues to be praised by critics and musicians. Moon grew up in […]

Bruce Lee (1940 - 1973)

Bruce Lee Bruce Lee (Chinese: 李小龍; born Lee Jun-fan, Chinese: 李振藩; November 27, 1940 – July 20, 1973) was a Hong Kong American martial artist, Hong Kong action film actor, martial arts instructor, philosopher, filmmaker, and the founder of Jeet Kune Do. Lee was the son of Cantonese opera star Lee Hoi-Chuen. He is widely […]

Jim Croce (1943 - 1973)

Jim Croce  James Joseph “Jim” Croce (/ˈkroʊtʃi/; January 10, 1943 – September 20, 1973) was an American singer-songwriter. Between 1966 and 1973, Croce released five studio albums and 11 singles. His singles “Bad, Bad Leroy Brown” and “Time in a Bottle” were both number one hits on the US Billboard Hot 100 chart. Early life […]

Stanford Ovshinsky (1922 - 2012)

Stanford Robert Ovshinsky (November 24, 1922 – October 17, 2012) was a prolific American inventor and scientist who had been granted well over 400 patents over fifty years, mostly in the areas of energy and information. Many of his inventions have had wide ranging applications. Among the most prominent are: an environmentally friendly nickel-metal hydride […]

Norodom Sihanouk (1922 - 2012)

Norodom Sihanouk was the King of Cambodia from 1941 to 1955 and again from 1993 to 2005. He was the effective ruler of Cambodia from 1953 to 1970. After his second abdication in 2004, he was known as “The King-Father of Cambodia” (Khmer: Preahmâhaviraksat), a position in which he retained many of his former responsibilities […]

Arlen Specter (1930 - 2012)

Arlen Specter (February 12, 1930 – October 14, 2012) was a United States Senator from Pennsylvania. Specter was a Democrat from 1951 to 1965, then a Republican from 1965 until 2009, when he switched back to the Democratic Party. First elected in 1980, he represented his state for 30 years in the Senate. Specter was […]

Andy Gibb (1958 - 1988)

Andy Gibb Andrew Roy “Andy” Gibb (5 March 1958 – 10 March 1988) was an English singer, musician, performer and teen idol who was the younger brother of Barry, Robin and Maurice Gibb. Andy came to international prominence in the late 1970s with three singles that reached #1 in the United States: “I Just Want […]

Janis Joplin (1943 - 1970)

Janis Joplin Born in Port Arthur, Texas, her father was a cannery worker and her mother a registrar for a business college. Graduating from Thomas Jefferson High School, she was a member of the Glee Club and the Future Teachers of America. She attended Lamar State College and the University of Texas, where a fraternity […]

Brian Jones (1942 - 1969)

Brian Jones Lewis Brian Hopkins Jones (28 February 1942 – 3 July 1969) was the founder and original bandleader of the Rolling Stones. Jones was a multi-instrumentalist, with his main instruments being the guitar, harmonica and keyboards. His innovative use of traditional or folk instruments, such as the sitar and marimba, was integral to the […]

Eddie Cochran (1938 - 1960)

Eddie Cochran Edward Raymond ‘Eddie’ Cochran (October 3, 1938 – April 17, 1960) was an American musician. Cochran’s rockabilly songs, such as “C’mon Everybody”, “Somethin’ Else”, and “Summertime Blues”, captured teenage frustration and desire in the late 1950s and early 1960s. He experimented with multitrack recording and overdubbing even on his earliest singles, and was […]

Alex Karras (1935 - 2012)

Karras was born in Gary, Indiana, the son of Dr. George Karras, a Greek immigrant (from Chios) who graduated from the University of Chicago and got his medical degree in Canada. There, George Karras met and married a Canadian woman, Alex’s mother, Emmeline (née Wilson), a registered nurse. George Karras opened a medical practice in […]

Eric Hobsbawm (1917 - 2012)

Eric John Ernest Hobsbawm, CH, FBA, FRSL (/ˈhɒbz.bɔːm/; 9 June 1917 – 1 October 2012) was a British Marxist historian of the rise of industrial capitalism, socialism, and nationalism. His best-known works include his trilogy about what he called the “long 19th century” (The Age of Revolution: Europe 1789–1848, The Age of Capital: 1848–1875 and […]

Barbara Ann Scott (1928 - 2012)

Scott was the youngest of three children born to Canadian Army Colonel Clyde Rutherford Scott and Mary (née Purves) of Sandy Hill, Ottawa. She began skating at the age of seven with the Minto Skating Club, coached by Otto Gold and Sheldon Galbraith. At age nine, Scott switched from regular schooling to tutoring 2 1/2 […]

Barry Commoner (1917 - 2012)

Commoner was born in Brooklyn, New York, on May 28, 1917, the son of Jewish immigrants from Russia. He received his bachelor’s degree in zoology from Columbia University in 1937 and his master’s and doctoral degrees from Harvard University in 1938 and 1941, respectively.  After serving as a lieutenant in the United States Navy during […]

Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Sr. (1926 - 2012)

He was born on February 5, 1926, in New York City to Jewish parents Arthur Hays Sulzberger and Iphigene Bertha Ochs (daughter of Adolph Ochs, the former publisher and owner of The New York Times and the Chattanooga Times). Sulzberger graduated from the Loomis Institute and then enlisted into the United States Marine Corps during […]

John R. Silber (1926 - 2012)

Silber was born in San Antonio, Texas, the second son of Paul George Silber, an immigrant architect from Germany, and Jewell (née Joslin) Silber, a Texas-born elementary school teacher. Both of his parents were Presbyterians. As an adult, he learned that his father’s side of the family was Jewish and that his aunt had been […]

Andy Williams (1927 - 2012)

Andy Williams Williams was born in Wall Lake, Iowa, the son of Jay Emerson and Florence (née Finley) Williams. Williams attended Western Hills High School in Cincinnati, Ohio; he finished high school at University High School, in West Los Angeles, because of his family’s move to California. He had three older brothers—Bob, Don, and Dick […]

Steve Sabol (1942 - 2012)

As president of the most honored filmmaker in sports, Sabol continued to be the artistic vision behind the studio that revolutionized the way America watches football. Sabol and his father, Ed, who was elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame on February 5, 2011, were honored in 2003 with the Lifetime Achievement Emmy from […]

J. Christopher Stevens (1960 - 2012)

Stevens was born on April 18, 1960 in Grass Valley, California, the eldest of three siblings born to Jan S. Stevens, a California Assistant Attorney General, and his wife Mary J. Stevens née Floris. from a West Coast of the United States family of French, Swedish and Chinook ancestry. Stevens was raised in Northern California […]

Hal David (1921 - 2012)

David was born in New York City, a son of Austrian Jewish immigrants Lina (née Goldberg) and Gedalier David, who owned a delicatessen in Brooklyn, and younger brother of American lyricist and songwriter Mack David. He is credited with popular music lyrics, beginning in the 1940s with material written for bandleader Sammy Kaye and for […]

Steve Van Buren (1920 - 2012)

Van Buren was born in La Ceiba, Honduras but, after he was orphaned as a boy, he was sent to live with relatives in New Orleans. From Warren Easton High School in New Orleans, he received an athletic scholarship to Louisiana State University, where he led the nation in points (110) and touchdowns (16) as […]

Dom Mintoff (1916 - 2012)

Mintoff was born in Bormla. He attended a seminary before enrolling at the University of Malta. He graduated with a Bachelor of Science and, later, as an architect and civil engineer (1937). That same year he received a Rhodes Scholarship and pursued his studies at Hertford College, Oxford, where he received a Masters in Science […]

Phyllis Diller (1917 - 2012)

Diller was born Phyllis Ada Driver in Lima, Ohio on July 17, 1917, the only child of Perry Marcus Driver (June 13, 1862 – August 12, 1948), an insurance agent, and Frances Ada (née Romshe; January 12, 1881 – January 26, 1949). She had German and Irish ancestry (the surname “Driver” had been changed from […]