Phillis Wheatley (1753 - 1784)

Although the date and place of her birth are not documented, scholars believe that Phillis Wheatley was born in 1753 in West Africa, most likely in present-day Gambia or Senegal. Wheatley was brought to British-ruled Boston, Massachusetts on July 11, 1761, on a slave ship called The Phillis. It was owned by Timothy Fitch and […]

William Wordsworth (1770 - 1850)

The second of five children born to John Wordsworth and Ann Cookson, William Wordsworth was born on 7 April 1770 in Wordsworth House in Cockermouth, Cumberland, part of the scenic region in northwestern England known as the Lake District. His sister, the poet and diarist Dorothy Wordsworth, to whom he was close all his life, […]

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 - 1882)

Ralph Waldo Emerson (May 25, 1803 – April 27, 1882) was an American essayist, lecturer, and poet, who led the Transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century. He was seen as a champion of individualism and a prescient critic of the countervailing pressures of society, and he disseminated his thoughts through dozens of published essays and […]

Sylvia Plath (1932 - 1963)

Plath was born on October 27, 1932, in the Massachusetts Memorial Hospital, in Boston’s Jamaica Plain neighborhood. Her mother, Aurelia Schober Plath (1906–1994), was a first-generation American of Austrian descent, and her father, Otto Plath (1885–1940), was from Grabow, Germany. Plath’s father was an entomologist and was a professor of biology at Boston University; he […]

William Blake (1757 - 1827)

William Blake (28 November 1757 – 12 August 1827) was an English painter, poet and printmaker. Largely unrecognised during his lifetime, Blake is now considered a seminal figure in the history of the poetry and visual arts of the Romantic Age. His prophetic poetry has been said to form “what is in proportion to its […]

Andrae Crouch (1942 - 2015)

Andrae Crouch Andraé Crouch, a gospel musician who bridged the worlds of church and mainstream music for more than 50 years, died Thursday afternoon. The 72-year-old singer, songwriter and choir director had been hospitalized since Saturday at Northridge Hospital Medical Center in the Los Angeles area after suffering a heart attack. Crouch, sometimes called “the […]

Anita Ekberg (1931 - 2015)

Anita Ekberg Born Kerstin Anita Marianne Ekberg, she will be best remembered for her performance in the film “La Dolce Vita” (1960) by Federico Fellini. During her career she starred in over 70 films including “Abbott and Costello Go to Mars” by Charles Lamont (1953), “Blood Alley” by William A. Wellman, “Artists and Models” co-starring […]

Oscar Wilde (1854 - 1900)

Oscar Fingal O’Flahertie Wills Wilde (16 October 1854 – 30 November 1900) was an Irish writer and poet. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of London’s most popular playwrights in the early 1890s. Today he is remembered for his epigrams, his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, his plays, as […]

Delmira Agustini (1886 - 1914)

Born in Montevideo, the daughter of Italian immigrants, Agustini was a precocious child. In addition to beginning to write poetry when she was 10 years old, she studied French, music and painting.  She wrote for the magazine La Alborada (The Dawn). She formed part of the Generation of 1900, along with Julio Herrera y Reissig, […]

Pablo Neruda (1904 - 1973)

Pablo Neruda (/nəˈruːdə/; Spanish: [ˈpaβ̞lo̞ ne̞ˈɾuð̞a]) was the pen name and, later, legal name of the Chilean poet-diplomat and politician Neftali Ricardo Reyes Basoalto (July 12, 1904 – September 23, 1973). He derived his pen name from the Czech poet Jan Neruda. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1971.  Neruda became known as […]

Walt Whitman (1819 - 1892)

Walter “Walt” Whitman (/ˈhwɪtmən/; May 31, 1819 – March 26, 1892) was an American poet, essayist and journalist. A humanist, he was a part of the transition between transcendentalism and realism, incorporating both views in his works. Whitman is among the most influential poets in the American canon, often called the father of free verse. […]

Robert Frost (1874 - 1963)

Robert Frost Robert Frost was born in San Francisco, California, to journalist William Prescott Frost, Jr., and Isabelle Moodie. His mother was of Scottish descent, and his father descended from Nicholas Frost of Tiverton, Devon, England, who had sailed to New Hampshire in 1634 on the Wolfrana.  Frost’s father was a teacher and later an […]

Harry Reasoner (1923 - 1991)

Reasoner was born at First Street North in Dakota City, Iowa on April 17, 1923; He and his older sister Esther were children of Eunice (Nicholl) and Harry Ray Reasoner, who married in 1911. Reasoner was taught to read by his parents before entering school, gaining a strong vocabulary from his mother.  Reasoner attended West […]

Chet Huntley (1911 - 1974)

Huntley was born in Cardwell, Montana, the only son and oldest of four children born to Percy Adams Huntley and Blanche Wadine (née Tatham) Huntley. His father was a telegraph operator for the Northern Pacific Railway, and young Chet was born in Cardwell depot’s living quarters. Owing to the railroad’s seniority system, wherein employees with […]

Roger Grimsby (1928 - 1995)

Roger Grimsby was an orphan who was born in Butte, Montana and raised in Duluth, Minnesota, by a Lutheran minister. After graduating from Denfeld High School in 1946, he attended St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota, before studying history at Columbia University in New York. Grimsby was a U.S. Army veteran who was stationed in […]

Julie London (1926 - 2000)

Julie London Popular Actress and Singer. She had roles in movies including “Jungle Woman” (1944), “The Red House” (1947), with Edward G. Robinson, Task Force” (1949) with Gary Cooper, “The Fat Man” (1950) and “A Question of Adultery’ (1958). London was married to Jack Webb from “Dragnet” for 5 years. She was then married to […]

Dave Garroway (1913 - 1982)

Born in Schenectady, New York, Garroway was 14 and had moved with his family thirteen times before settling in St. Louis, Missouri, where he attended University City High School and Washington University in St. Louis, from which he earned a degree in abnormal psychology. Before going into broadcasting, Garroway worked as a Harvard University lab […]

Hal Fishman (1931 - 2007)

A Brooklyn, New York native, Fishman received a bachelor’s degree from Cornell University where he worked at the campus radio station. He also received a master’s degree in political science from UCLA in 1956. Planning for a career in academia, he worked as an assistant political science professor at California State University, Los Angeles for […]

Carole Lombard (1908 - 1942)

Carole Lombard was an American film actress. She was particularly noted for her highly neurotic, energetic and often off-beat roles in the screwball comedies of the 1930s. She was the highest-paid star in Hollywood in the late 1930s. Lombard was born into a wealthy family in Fort Wayne, Indiana, on October 6, 1908. She attended […]

Douglas Edwards (1917 - 1990)

A native of Oklahoma, Edwards grew up in Birmingham, Alabama. Edwards joined CBS Radio in 1942, eventually becoming anchor for the regular evening newscast The World Today as well as World News Today on Sunday afternoons. Edwards came to CBS after stints as a newscaster and announcer at WSB in Atlanta, Georgia and WXYZ in […]

Audry Lindley (1918 - 1997)

Audry Lindley She is best remembered for her role as the landlady ‘Helen Roper’ on the ABC television sitcom “Three’s Company,” which aired from March 1977 to September 1984, and it’s spinoff, “The Ropers,” which ran for only one year. Born Audra Marie Lindley, her father was actor Bert Lindley who appeared in films from […]

John Daly (1914 - 1991)

The second of two brothers, Daly was born in Johannesburg, South Africa, where his American father worked as a geologist. After his father died of tropical fever, Daly’s mother moved the family to Boston, Massachusetts, in the United States. Daly was an alumnus of Tilton School in Tilton, New Hampshire; he later served on its […]

John Chancellor (1927 - 1996)

Chancellor attended the University of Illinois Navy Pier campus (precursor to UIC) which specified completing the last two years of instruction at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1949. Originally a reporter for the Chicago Sun-Times, he first started his career in national television news as a correspondent on NBC’s evening newscast, the Huntley-Brinkley […]

David Brinkley (1920 - 2003)

Brinkley was born in Wilmington, North Carolina, the youngest of five children born to William Graham Brinkley and Mary MacDonald (née West) Brinkley. He began writing for a local newspaper, the Wilmington Morning Star, while still attending New Hanover High School. He attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Emory University, and Vanderbilt […]

Ed Bradley (1941 - 2006)

Bradley was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. His parents divorced when he was 2, after which he was raised by his mother, Gladys, who worked two jobs to make ends meet. Bradley, who was referred to with the childhood name of “Butch Bradley,” was able to see his father, who was in the vending machine business […]

David J. Bloom (1963 - 2003)

David Bloom was born in Edina, Minnesota, and was an avid ice hockey player and state champion in high school debating in the National Forensic League. Bloom attended Pitzer College in Claremont, California, from 1981 to 1985 where he was a national debate champion. He majored in political science.  Bloom was survived by his wife, […]

Bill Beutel (1930 - 2006)

Beutel graduated from Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire after a stint in the Army and studied law at the University of Michigan Law School, though he left Michigan without obtaining his law degree. While Beutel was in law school, he wrote Edward R. Murrow a letter saying, “I very much wanted to be a […]

Leslie Carter (1986 - 2012)

Leslie Carter was born in Tampa, Florida, the third of six children of Jane Elizabeth (née Spaulding) and Robert Gene Carter (born September 23, 1952). She was born at the Garden Villa Retirement Home, where the Carter family were living and working at the time. She was the older sister of Aaron Carter and his […]

Jeanne Bice (1939 - 2011)

Bice was born on July 20, 1939, in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, where she was also raised. She later moved to the nearby town of Ripon, Wisconsin as an adult. Bice and her husband, Arlow “Butch” Bice Jr., had a son and a daughter, Tim and Lee. She opened her first store, a women’s apparel […]

Brendan Behan (1923 - 1964)

Brendan Francis Aidan Behan (christened Francis Behan) (/ˈbiːən/ bee-ən; Irish: Breandán Ó Beacháin; 9 February 1923 – 20 March 1964) was an Irish poet, short story writer, novelist, and playwright who wrote in both English and Irish. He was also an Irish republican and a volunteer in the Irish Republican Army. Born in Dublin into […]