Paul Bern (1889 - 1932)

Paul Bern was born Paul Levy in Wandsbek, which was then a town in the Prussian province of Schleswig-Holstein (now a district of the city of Hamburg). He was one of six children of Julius and Henriette (née Hirsch) Levy, a Jewish couple. Julius worked as a clerk for a shipping company before opening a […]

Irving Thalberg (1899 - 1936)

Irving Grant Thalberg (May 30, 1899 – September 14, 1936) was an American film producer during the early years of motion pictures. He was called “The Boy Wonder” for his youth and his extraordinary ability to select the right scripts, choose the right actors, gather the best production staff and make hundreds of very profitable […]

Hal LeSueur (1901 - 1963)

Hal LeSueur was born in San Antonio, Texas, the second child of Thomas E. LeSueur (1868-1938)) and Anna Bell Johnson (1884-1958)). His older sister was Daisy LeSueur (ƒ 1902), and his younger sister was Lucille Fay LeSueur, later the Oscar-winning film star Joan Crawford. After Thomas LeSueur had abandoned the family, Anna wed businessman Henry […]

Phillip Terry (1909 - 1993)

Phillip Terry was born Frederick Henry Kormann in San Francisco, California, the only child of German Americans, Frederick Andrew Kormann (1883–1948) and Ida Ruth Voll (1883–1954). He attended grade school in Glendale, California. His father was a chemical engineer in the oil fields who moved often. To ensure he receive a stable education, his parents sent […]

Alfred Steele (1900 - 1959)

Alfred Steele (April 24, 1900 – April 19, 1959) was an American soft drink businessman. He graduated from Northwestern University in 1923, where he played football, and became an ad executive. He first worked for The Coca-Cola Company, as vice president of marketing. He later became the CEO of the Pepsi-Cola Company in 1949. Under his […]

Gary Speed (1969 - 2011)

Gary Speed, MBE (8 September 1969 – 27 November 2011) was a Welsh professional footballer and manager. As a player, he is best known for his spell between 1988 and 1996 at Leeds United where he won the English Football League First Division Championship in 1992, and also for his spell between 1998 and 2004 at […]

Conrad Schumann (1942 - 1998)

Born in Zschochau, Saxony during the middle of World War II, Conrad Schumann enlisted in the East German Bereitschaftspolizei (state police) following his 18th birthday. After three months’ training in Dresden, he was posted to a non-commissioned officers’ college in Potsdam, after which he volunteered for service in Berlin. On 15 August 1961, the 19-year-old Schumann […]

Lindsay Tuckett (1919 - 2016)

Lindsay Tuckett (6 February 1919 – 5 September 2016) was a South African cricketer who played in nine Tests from 1947 to 1949. He was born in Durban, Natal. The son of one Test player, Len Tuckett, and the nephew of another, Joe Cox, Lindsay Tuckett was just a month past his 16th birthday when he […]

Michael Ibru (1930 - 2016)

Michael Ibru was born to the family of Peter Ibru, a missionary worker, who also worked at the Igbobi Orthapaedic Hospital, Lagos. After secondary school, he joined the United African Company, as a management trainee. In 1956, a few years after joining U.A.C, he dropped out of the company and started a partnership, which he […]

Bob Dailey (1953 - 2016)

The league’s tallest player until the arrival of Willie Huber in 1978, Bob Dailey was a tremendous combination of size and skill on the blueline. He was selected ninth overall by the Vancouver Canucks in the 1973 NHL Amateur Draft from the Toronto Marlboros, where he had won the Memorial Cup as a junior. He […]

Clifford Curry (1936 - 2016)

Clifford Curry (November 3, 1936 – September 6, 2016) was an American beach music and R&B singer. Curry was born on November 3, 1936 in Chicago, Illinois. Clifford Curry’s career began in high school and he was a member of several groups, including The Echoes, The Five Pennies (for whom he wrote a 1956 release, “Mr. Moon”), […]

Robert Schommer (1946 - 2001)

Robert A. Schommer (December 9, 1946 – December 12, 2001) was an American observational astronomer. He was a professor at Rutgers University and later a project scientist for the U.S. office of the Gemini Observatory Project at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (CTIO) in Chile. He was known for his wide range of research interests, […]

Roy Raymond (1947 - 1993)

Roy Larson Raymond (April 15, 1947 – August 26, 1993) was an American businessman who founded the Victoria’s Secret lingerie retail store. Raymond was an alumnus of Tufts University and Stanford Graduate School of Business. Roy Raymond worked for the Vicks company in their marketing department. On June 12, 1977, he opened the first Victoria’s Secret store at […]

Jamey Rodemeyer (1997 - 2011)

Jamey Rodemeyer (March 21, 1997 – September 18, 2011) was a bisexual teenager, known for his activism against homophobia and his videos on YouTube to help victims of homophobic bullying. His suicide was attributed to constant bullying, and led to the proposal of new cyberbullying legislation. Jamey Rodemeyer lived with his parents, Tim and Tracy Rodemeyer, […]

Charles Rocket (1949 - 2005)

Charles Rocket appeared from time to time with his friend Dan Gosch as superheroes “Captain Packard” and his faithful sidekick “Lobo”. In an RISD yearbook, the dynamic duo appeared in a photo at the Rhode Island State House with then-Governor Frank Licht.[citation needed] Rocket made several short films and fronted his band, the Fabulous Motels, […]

Dale Roberts (1986 - 2010)

Dale Roberts was born in Horden, County Durham. His mother was Isabella. He played for Cleveland Juniors Football Club and attended Easington Comprehensive School with fellow academy footballer Adam Johnson. He was with the Sunderland and Middlesbrough football academies, joining the latter in 2003 as a scholar and was part of Boro’s FA Youth Cup […]

Ruan Lingyu (1910 - 1935)

Ruan Lingyu was born to a working class family in Shanghai. Her father died when she was young, and her mother brought her up working as a housemaid. In 1926, to help make ends meet, Ruan signed up for the prominent Mingxing Film Company. She made her first film at the age of 16. The film, […]

Michael Ruppert (1951 - 2014)

Michael Ruppert (February 3, 1951 – April 13, 2014) was an American investigative journalist best known as the editor of the newsletter From The Wilderness (1999-2006) and author of the 2004 book Crossing The Rubicon: The Decline of the American Empire at the End of the Age of Oil. After graduating with honours in Political Science […]

Liam Rector (1949 - 2007)

Liam Rector (November 21, 1949 – August 15, 2007) was an American poet, essayist and educator. He had administered literary programs at the Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP), the National Endowment for the Arts, the Academy of American Poets, and the Folger Shakespeare Library. He was also the director, most recently, of the […]

Cesare Pavese (1908 - 1950)

Cesare Pavese was born in Santo Stefano Belbo, in the province of Cuneo. It was the village where his father was born and where the family returned for the summer holidays each year. He started infant classes in Santo Stefano Belbo, but the rest of his education was in schools in Turin. His most important […]

Jan Potocki (1761 - 1815)

Jan Potocki (Polish pronunciation: [ˈjan pɔˈtɔt͡skʲi]; 8 March 1761 – 23 December 1815) was a Polish nobleman, Polish Army Captain of Engineers, ethnologist, Egyptologist, linguist, traveler, adventurer and popular author of the Enlightenment period, whose life and exploits made him a legendary figure in his homeland. Outside Poland he is known chiefly for his novel, […]

Phoebe Prince (1994 - 2010)

Phoebe Prince was born on 24 November 1994 in Bedford, England, United Kingdom, and moved to the seaside community of Fanore in County Clare, Ireland, when she was two. Prince attended Villiers Secondary School, a private school in County Limerick. She immigrated to the U.S. in the autumn of 2009 with her mother and four […]

Robert Enke (1977 - 2009)

Robert Enke was born on 24 August 1977 in Jena, where he grew up in a flat in the district of Lobeda. He was the youngest of three children born to Dirk Enke, a sports psychologist, and Gisela Enke. He began playing football from an early age, initially playing as a striker, before making the […]

Michael Dorris (1945 - 1997)

Michael Dorris was born in Louisville, Kentucky to Jim and Mary Besy (Burkhardt) Dorris. His father died before Dorris was born (reportedly by suicide during WWII), and Dorris was raised as an only child by his mother, who became a secretary for the Democratic Party. It has been reported that two maternal relatives also help […]

Thomas Disch (1940 - 2008)

Thomas Disch entered the field of science fiction at a turning point, as the pulp adventure stories of its older style began to be challenged by a more serious, adult, and often darker style. This movement, called New Wave, tried to show that the ideas and themes of science fiction could be developed beyond the […]

Jeanine Deckers (1933 - 1985)

While in the convent, Jeanine Deckers wrote, sang and performed her own songs, which were so well received by her fellow nuns and visitors that her religious superiors encouraged her to record an album, which visitors and retreatants at the convent would be able to purchase. In 1961, the album was recorded in Brussels at Philips; […]

Penelope Delta (1874 - 1941)

Penelope Delta moved to Frankfurt, Germany in 1906, when her husband went to run the offices of the Khoremis-Benakis cotton business there, and her first novel Gia tin Patrida (For the Sake of the Fatherland) was published in 1909. The novel is set in Byzantine times, and Delta started corresponding with the historian Gustave Schlumberger, […]

Brad Delp (1951 - 2007)

Brad Delp was born in Peabody, Massachusetts on June 12, 1951 to French-Canadian immigrants, and raised in Danvers, Massachusetts. In 1969, guitarist Barry Goudreau introduced Delp to Tom Scholz, who was looking for a singer to complete some demo recordings. Eventually Scholz formed the short-lived band Mother’s Milk (1973–74), including Delp and Goudreau. After producing a […]

Ryan Halligan (1989 - 2003)

Ryan Halligan was born on December 18, 1989 in Poughkeepsie, New York, the son of John P. and Kelly Halligan. His family moved to Essex Junction, Vermont, where Halligan attended Hiawatha Elementary School and, later, Albert D. Lawton Middle School. He was described by his father as a “gentle, very sensitive soul,” who experienced some developmental […]

Paul Gruchow (1947 - 2004)

Paul Gruchow (May 23, 1947 – February 22, 2004) was an American author, editor, and conservationist from Montevideo, Minnesota. A student of poet John Berryman, he is well known for his strong support of rural communities, as expressed in his first book, “Journal of a Prairie Year” published by University of Minnesota Press. His essays […]