Ryan White (1971 - 1990)

Ryan White was born at St. Joseph Memorial Hospital in Kokomo, Indiana, to Jeanne Elaine Hale and Hubert Wayne White. He was circumcised and the bleeding would not stop. When he was three days old, doctors diagnosed him with severe hemophilia A, a hereditary blood coagulation disorder associated with the X chromosome, which causes even […]

Malcolm Forbes (1919 - 1990)

Forbes was born on August 19, 1919 in Brooklyn, New York, the son of Adelaide (Stevenson) and Scottish-born financial journalist and author B. C. Forbes. He graduated from the Lawrenceville School in 1937 and Princeton University. Forbes enlisted in the Army in 1942 and served as a machine gun sergeant in Europe. Forbes received a […]

Robert Schuller (1926 - 2015)

Robert Harold Schuller was born on September 16, 1926, near Alton, Iowa, the son of Jennie (née Beltman) and Anthony Schuller. He was the youngest of four children. All of his grandparents were Dutch immigrants, and he was raised on his parents’ farm nearby in a small-knit community of Dutch-Americans, without running water. As a […]

Oral Roberts (1918 - 2009)

Roberts was born in Pontotoc County, Oklahoma, the fifth and youngest child of the Reverend Ellis Melvin Roberts and Claudius Priscilla Roberts (née Irwin) (d. 1974). According to an interview on Larry King Live, Irwin was of Cherokee descent. Roberts was a card-carrying member of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma.  Roberts began life in poverty […]

John Joseph O’Connor (1920 - 2000)

O’Connor was born in Philadelphia, the fourth of five children of Thomas J. and Dorothy Magdalene (née Gomple) O’Connor (1886–1971), daughter of Gustave Gumpel, a kosher butcher and Jewish rabbi. In 2014, his sister Mary O’Connor Ward discovered through genealogical research that their mother was born Jewish and was baptized as a Roman Catholic at […]

Sun Myung Moon (1920 - 2012)

Sun Myung Moon was born Mun Yong-myeong on 25 February 1920, in modern-day North P’yŏng’an Province, North Korea, at a time when Korea was under Japanese rule. He was the younger of two sons in a farming family of eight children. Moon’s family rejected the Shinto faith pushed by the country’s Japanese rulers and followed […]

Rex Humbard (1919 - 2007)

Born in Little Rock, Arkansas, to Pentecostal evangelists, Rex Humbard was the first evangelist to have a weekly nationwide television program in the United States, running from 1952 to 1983, although his first television broadcast was in 1949. Humbard’s $4 million Cathedral of Tomorrow church in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, a suburb of nearby Akron, was […]

Gordon Hinckley (1910 - 2008)

A muiti-generational Latter-day Saint, Hinckley was born in Salt Lake City, Utah, to prominent LDS writer and educator Bryant S. Hinckley and Ada Bitner Hinckley. He graduated from LDS High School in 1928. He grew up on a residential farm in East Millcreek. His home library contained approximately a thousand volumes of literary, philosophical and […]

Jerry Falwell (1933 - 2007)

Jerry Falwell Falwell and twin brother Gene were born in the Fairview Heights region of Lynchburg, Virginia, the sons of Helen Virginia (Beasley) and Carey Hezekiah Falwell. His father was an entrepreneur and one-time bootlegger who was agnostic. His grandfather was a staunch atheist. Jerry Falwell married the former Macel Pate on April 12, 1958. […]

Ezra Taft Benson (1899 - 1994)

Born on a farm in Whitney, Idaho, Benson was the oldest of eleven children. He was the great-grandson of Ezra T. Benson, who was appointed by Brigham Young a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles in 1846. Benson began his academic career at Utah State Agricultural College (USAC), where he first met his […]

Gloria Stuart (1910 - 2010)

Gloria Stuart Gloria Stuart had an interesting, and long spanning acting career which ran nearly 80 years. She would accumulate an Oscar nomination, Golden Globe nomination, a Saturn award, and received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Screen Actors Guild. Stuart received her big break when she was able to sign with Universal Studios. She […]

Teena Marie (1956 - 2010)

Teena Marie Teena Marie was an American singer-songwriter nicknamed Lady Tee, considered an R&B legend who proclaimed herself as the “Ivory Queen of Soul” because she was one of the first successful white performers of that genre of music. She had many classic hits including a duet with her mentor Rick James called “Fire and […]

Elizabeth Taylor (1932 - 2011)

Elizabeth Taylor Elizabeth Taylor was an acting legend from the golden age of Hollywood. AFI listed her as seventh on the “Female Legends List”. Her acting career lasted over sixty years, starting at the age of ten and ending at the age of 71. Elizabeth Taylor was born in London, England. The daughter of Americans […]

Dieter Grau (1913 - 2014)

Dieter Grau (April 24, 1913 – December 17, 2014) was a rocket scientist and member of the “von Braun rocket group”, at Peenemünde (1939–1945) working on the V-2 rockets in World War II. He was among the scientists who surrendered to the United States and traveled there, providing rocketry expertise via Operation Paperclip, which took […]

Fitzhugh Fulton (1925 - 2015)

Born in Blakely, Georgia, Fulton attended Auburn University, the University of Oklahoma, and is a graduate of Golden Gate University.  Fulton flew 225 trips to Berlin in C-54’s during the Berlin Airlift. He also flew 55 combat mission in the Douglas B-26 Invader over North Korea. He received a Distinguished Flying Cross and five Air […]

Ernest Sternglass (1923 - 2015)

Both of his parents were physicians. When Ernest was fourteen, the Sternglass family left Germany in 1938 to avoid the fascist regime. He completed high school at the age of sixteen, then entered Cornell, registering for an engineering program.  Financial difficulties encountered by his family forced him to leave school for a year. By the […]

Clarice Taylor (1917 - 2011)

Clarice Taylor Actress. Fondly remembered for her role as Bill Cosby’s mother Anna Huxtable in the popular TV series “The Cosby Show” (1985 to 1992), for which she received an Emmy Award nomination in 1986. Born in Buckingham, Virginia, the daughter of a post office worker, she herself worked for the post office after attending […]

Bruce Edwards Ivins (1946 - 2008)

Bruce Edwards Ivins (April 22, 1946 – July 29, 2008) was an American microbiologist, vaccinologist, senior biodefense researcher at the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID), Fort Detrick, Maryland, and the key suspect in the 2001 anthrax attacks.  On Tuesday, July 29, 2008, he died of an overdose of Tylenol with […]

Malcolm Casadaban (1949 - 2009)

Malcolm Casadaban (12 August 1949 – 13 September 2009) was Associate Professor of Molecular Genetics and Cell Biology and of Microbiology at the University of Chicago. Casadaban died following an accidental laboratory exposure to an attenuated strain of Yersinia pestis, a bacterium that causes the plague.  According to a CDC report on the incident, the […]

Shirley Temple (1928 - 2014)

Shirley Temple Actress, United States Diplomat. She is considered an icon of American cinema, she is arguably the most successful child film star in motion picture history. She started taking dancing lessons at the age of three, and had her first experience in motion pictures when she was chosen to appear in a series of […]

George Carlin (1937 - 2008)

George Carlin Comedian. A provocative and influential standup performer, he is best known for his “Seven Dirty Words” routine which led to the 1978 United States Supreme Court case “F.C.C. v. Pacifica Foundation” that established the American government’s right to regulate profanity on the public airwaves. The decision also propelled his career forward. In general, […]

Richard Pryor (1940 - 2005)

Richard Pryor Comedian. He is best remembered for his comedy routines that mixed profanity with social insight on racism in the United States, which were considered startling and radical when he first introduced it. Born in Peoria, Illinois, he would claim that he grew up in his grandmother’s brothel. Dropping out of high school, he […]

Ray Combs (1956 - 1996)

Ray Combs Ray Combs, the 40-year-old former host of TV’s “The New Family Feud” game show, committed suicide, dying Sunday at Glendale Adventist Hospital a day after he had been admitted for an unrelated head injury, authorities said. Neither hospital officials nor Glendale police, who are investigating along with the county coroner’s office, would say […]

John Ritter (1948 - 2003)

John Ritter Actor. A figure in television and motion pictures, he is fondly remembered for his role in the television comedy series “Three’s Company” and “8 Simple Rules for Dating my Daughter.” He received an Emmy and a Golden Globe award for his work on “Three’s Company.” The youngest son of movie and television singing […]

Ed McMahon (1923 - 2009)

Ed McMahon Television Personality. Born Edward Leo Peter McMahon, Jr. He was raised in Lowell, Massachusetts, and as a teenager worked as a bingo caller in Maine. He joined the Marines for World War II, serving as a fighter pilot, flight instructor and test pilot. After the war he attended Catholic University to study speech […]

Soupy Sales (1926 - 2009)

Soupy Sales Born Milton Supman, Soupy Sales was an early children’s television show icon whose trademark was a cream pie to the face. With his two puppets White Fang, the meanest dog in the United States, and Black Tooth, the nicest dog in the United States, he used his skill of rubber faced improvisational style […]

B.B. King (1925 - 2015)

B.B. King B.B. King spread joy to millions by giving them the blues. The iconic musician, along with his ever-present guitar Lucille, spent nearly 70 years thrilling audiences and spreading the music he learned as a poverty-stricken youth in the Mississippi Delta all over the world. King, 89, died in Las Vegas, his attorney announced […]

James Garfield (0183 - 1881)

James Garfield American Civil War Major General, US Congressman, and US President. A member of the Republican Party, he served as the 20th US President for only 200 days, from March until September 1881. He was the 3rd US President to die in office and the 2nd one who was assassinated, following Abraham Lincoln. Born […]

Ulysses S Grant (1822 - 1885)

Ulysses S Grant 18th United States President, Civil War Union Lieutenant General. He was born in Point Pleasant, Ohio. His birth name was  Hiram Ulysses Grant. At seventeen, he entered the United States Military Academy at West Point. After graduation, his first assignment was service in a border war with Mexico. After eleven years he resigned […]

Grover Cleveland (1837 - 1908)

Grover Cleveland 22nd and 24th United States President, New York Governor. A Democrat, he was first elected President in 1884, defeated in 1888, and reelected in 1892, becoming the only United States President to serve two non-consecutive terms. One of nine children of a Presbyterian minister, he was raised in upstate New York, becoming a […]