Robert Orville Anderson (1917 - 2007)

Robert Orville Anderson was born in Chicago on April 13, 1917, to the Swedish immigrants Hugo A. Anderson and Hilda Nelson. His father was a prominent banker who, Anderson often said, was the first banker in the U.S. “who loaned money on oil in the ground.”  Robert attended the Laboratory Elementary and High Schools of […]

Harold Ackroyd (1877 - 1917)

Harold Ackroyd was born on 18 July 1877 in Southport Lancashire the youngest son of Edward Ackroyd who ran a textile and tailoring business. Edward inherited a sizable fortune from his mother`s family in 1878 and became Chairman of the Southport and Cheshire Lines Extension Railway, a change in fortune which made a private education […]

Creighton Williams Abrams (1914 - 1974)

Creighton Williams Abrams Jr. graduated from West Point in 1936 (he stood 185th out of 276 in the class) and served with the 1st Cavalry Division from 1936 to 1940, being promoted to first lieutenant in 1939 and temporary captain in 1940.  Abrams became an armor officer early in the development of that branch and […]

John Joseph Abercrombie (1798 - 1877)

Abercrombie was born and baptized in Baltimore, Maryland, although some accounts suggest he was a native of Tennessee. The son of John Joseph Abercrombie, Sr. and Sarah DeNormandie, their family was living in Nashville, Tennessee when the younger John entered the United States Military Academy in 1818. Graduating 37th of 40 from the United States […]

William H. Abendroth (1895 - 1970)

William Henry Abendroth, Jr., nicknamed Harry, was the son of a career soldier who served in the American Indian Wars and the Spanish-American War before retiring as a First Sergeant and becoming an instructor in military studies at the University of Idaho. The younger Abendroth was born in Fort Meade, South Dakota, on December 24, […]

Walter Abel (1898 - 1987)

Walter Abel (June 6, 1898 – March 26, 1987) was an American stage and film character actor. Known as a prolific and very dependable character actor, Abel appeared in over 200 films, beginning in the silent film era. Often portraying characters of “responsibility,” (the minister keeping morale up in a war zone in “So Proudly […]

Joseph Carter Abbott (1825 - 1881)

Abbott was born in Concord, New Hampshire, and graduated from Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, in 1846, having studied there and under private auspices. He studied law at Concord, and was admitted to the bar in 1852. From 1852 to 1857, Abbott was the owner and editor of the Daily American newspaper, in Manchester, New […]

Sir James Abbott (1807 - 1896)

He joined the Bengal Artillery at the age of sixteen. He made a name for himself in the northwest frontier region of India in the middle part of the 19th century. In 1839, he undertook a mission to the Khanate of Khiva as part of the Great Game, the contest for influence in Central Asia […]

Ira Coray Abbott (1824 - 1908)

He served during the Civil War first as Lieutenant Colonel, then Colonel and commander of the 1st Michigan Volunteer Infantry regiment. He was wounded in the face at the December 1862 Battle of Fredericksburg, and at the Battle of Gettysburg, his regiment was part of Colonel William S. Tilton’s brigade that fought against attacking Confederates […]

Henry Livemore Abbott (1842 - 1864)

Henry Livermore Abbott, the third of eleven children, was born in Lowell, Massachusetts on January 21, 1842, the son of Josiah Gardner Abbott, a successful lawyer and judge. In 1876, Josiah Gardner Abbott was elected to the United States House of Representatives. He was a prominent member of the Democratic Party. Henry’s mother, Caroline, was […]

Anderson Ruffin Abbott (1837 - 1913)

Abbott was born in Toronto as the son of Wilson Ruffin Abbott and Ellen (Toyer) Abbott. The Abbotts were a prominent black family in Toronto who had left Alabama as free people of color after their store had been ransacked. After living a short time in New York, they relocated to Upper Canada in 1835 […]

Henry Larcom Abbott (1831 - 1927)

Henry Larcom Abbot was born in Beverly, Massachusetts. Abbot attended West Point and graduated second in his class (which included Jeb Stuart and G. W. Custis Lee) with a degree in military engineering in 1854. Initially he had wanted to join the Artillery, but shortly after graduation, a classmate convinced him to choose the Engineers. […]

Harold Robert Aaron (1921 - 1980)

United States Army General. He graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York in 1943, and was assigned as a 2nd Lieutenant and company commander in the European Theatre during World War II. After the war he served in a number of various posts in Europe and the Pacific, rising in […]

Barbaro (2003 - 2007)

Barbaro (April 29, 2003 – January 29, 2007) was an American thoroughbred racehorse who decisively won the 2006 Kentucky Derby, but shattered his leg two weeks later in the 2006 Preakness Stakes, ending his racing career and eventually leading to his death. On May 20, 2006, Barbaro ran in the Preakness Stakes as a heavy […]

Assault (1943 - 1971)

Foaled at King Ranch in Texas, Assault was sired by Bold Venture, who had won the Kentucky Derby and Preakness Stakes. His dam was the unraced Igual, by Horse of the Year Equipoise. Assault’s third dam was Masda, who was a full sister to Man o’ War. His full-brother was Air Lift.  Described as being […]

Arkle (1957 - 1970)

Arkle (19 April 1957 – 31 May 1970) was a famous Irish Thoroughbred racehorse. A bay gelding by Archive out of Bright Cherry, he was the grandson of the unbeaten (in 14 races) flat racehorse and prepotent sire Nearco. Arkle was bred at Ballymacoll Stud, County Meath, by Mrs Mary Alison Baker of Malahow House, […]

Alydar (1975 - 1990)

Trained by John M. Veitch (who also trained Alydar’s half-sister, Eclipse Award winning Our Mims) and ridden by jockey Jorge Velásquez, in 1978 Alydar dueled with Affirmed in all three legs of the Triple Crown he lost to his arch-rival by a combined total of less than two lengths. The 1978 Belmont Stakes, the third […]

Affirmed (1975 - 2001)

Affirmed was a chestnut horse bred in Florida by Louis E. Wolfson’s Harbor View Farm. The derivation of the name “Affirmed” has been the subject of speculation, in part because the conviction of Wolfson, for securities law violations had been affirmed on appeal in 1969 resulting in his imprisonment. He was sired by the Harbor […]

Dr. Ernst F.W. Alexanderson (1878 - 1975)

Alexanderson was born at Uppsala, Sweden, and educated at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm and the Technische Hochschule (Technical University) in Berlin, Germany. He emigrated to the U.S. in 1902 and spent much of his life working for the General Electric company. Alexanderson designed the Alexanderson alternator, an early longwave radio transmitter, one […]

George Biddell Airy (1801 - 1892)

Airy was born at Alnwick, one of a long line of Airys who traced their descent back to a family of the same name residing at Kentmere, in Westmorland, in the 14th century. The branch to which he belonged, having suffered in the English Civil War, moved to Lincolnshire and became farmers. Airy was educated […]

David Hayes Agnew (1818 - 1892)

David Hayes Agnew He was born on November 24, 1818 in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. He graduated from the medical department of the University of Pennsylvania in 1838, and a few years later set up in practice at Philadelphia and became a lecturer at the Philadelphia School of Anatomy. He married Margaret Irwin in 1841. He […]

Louis Agassiz (1807 - 1873)

Louis Agassiz was born in Môtier (now part of Haut-Vully) in the canton of Fribourg, Switzerland. Educated first at home, then spending four years of secondary school in Bienne, he completed his elementary studies in Lausanne. Having adopted medicine as his profession, he studied successively at the universities of Zürich, Heidelberg and Munich; while there […]

Elizabeth Cary Agassiz (1822 - 1907)

Elizabeth Cary Agassiz Elizabeth Cary was born in 1822 into a Boston Brahmin family of New England Ancestry. She was born on December 5, 1822 in Boston, Massachusetts at the house of her grandfather, Colonel Perkins, on Pearl Street. She was born to Mary Ann Cushing Perkins Cary and Thomas Graves Cary (who was a […]

Charles Adler Jr. (1899 - 1980)

Charles Adler, Jr. (June 20, 1899 – October 23, 1980) was an American inventor. An engineer, he invented a number of safety signals, some of which are still in common usage.  Charles Adler, Jr. was a lifelong resident of Baltimore, Maryland. At age 14, he formally started his career as an inventor when he received […]

Thomas Addison (1793 - 1860)

Thomas Addison was born in April 1793, but his exact birthdate is not known. He was born in Longbenton, near Newcastle upon Tyne, the son of Sarah and Joseph Addison, a grocer and flour dealer in Long Benton. He attended the local Thomas rutter school and then went to the Royal Free Grammar School in […]

Joy Adamson (1910 - 1980)

Adamson was born to Victor and Traute Gessner in Troppau, Silesia, Austria-Hungary (now Opava, Czech Republic), the second of three girls. Her parents divorced when she was 10, and she went to live with her grandmother. In her autobiography The Searching Spirit, Adamson wrote about her grandmother, saying, “It is to her I owe anything […]

John Couch Adams (1819 - 1892)

John Couch Adams Adams was born at Lidcot, a farm at Laneast, near Launceston, Cornwall, the eldest of seven children. His parents were Thomas Adams (1788–1859), a poor tenant farmer, and his wife, Tabitha Knill Grylls (1796–1866). The family were devout Wesleyans who enjoyed music and among John’s brothers, Thomas became a missionary, George a […]

Rudolph Ackermann (1764 - 1834)

He attended the Latin school in Stollberg, but his wish to study at the university was made impossible by lack of financial means, and he therefore became a saddler like his father.  He worked as a saddler and coach-builder in different German cities, then moved to Paris, and then London, where in 1795 he established […]

Dr Franz Carl Achard (1753 - 1821)

Achard was born in Berlin, the son of preacher Max Guillaume Achard, descendant of Huguenot refugees and his wife Marguerite Elisabeth (Rouppert). He studied physics and chemistry in Berlin. He became interested in sugar refining through his stepfather. At the age of 20, Achard entered the “Circle of Friends of Natural Sciences” and met Andreas […]

Robert Abplanalp (1922 - 2003)

Robert Henry “Bob” Abplanalp, KHS (April 4, 1922 – August 30, 2003) was an American inventor and engineer who invented the modern form of the aerosol valve, the founder of Precision Valve Corporation and a political activist.  Born to Swiss immigrant parents in the Bronx, New York, Abplanalp graduated from Fordham Preparatory School in 1939 […]