Balto (1919 - 1933)

In January 1925 doctors realized that a potentially deadly diphtheria epidemic was poised to sweep through Nome’s young people. The only serum that could stop the outbreak was in Anchorage, Alaska, approximately 1,000 miles (1609 km) away. The engine of the only aircraft that could quickly deliver the medicine was frozen and would not start. […]

Wheely Willy (1991 - 2009)

Willy was found abandoned in a cardboard box with spinal injuries and a cut throat. Taken in by a veterinary hospital and treated, Willy stayed there for a year unadopted. Learning that the dog would be euthanised if not adopted, pet groomer Deborah Turner decided to bring him home.  Initially, the two pound (one kilogram) […]

Gua (1930 - 1933)

Gua was a chimpanzee raised as though she were a human child by scientists Luella and Winthrop Kellogg alongside their infant son Donald. Gua was the first chimpanzee to be used in a cross-rearing study in the US.  Gua was born on November 15, 1930 in Havana, Cuba. She was given, along with her mother, […]

Oliver (1958 - 2012)

Oliver was acquired as a young animal (around 2 years old) in 1960 by trainers Frank and Janet Berger. Supposedly, the chimpanzee had been caught in the Congo. Some physical and behavioral evidence led the Bergers to believe Oliver was a creature other than a chimpanzee, perhaps a human-chimp hybrid: Oliver possessed a flatter face […]

Heidi (1970 - 2011)

Heidi was given to Leipzig by Denmark’s Odense Zoo in May 2010, although she was originally raised in a wild animal sanctuary in the U.S. state of North Carolina after being found as an orphan. It is speculated by zoo officials that Heidi’s most notable attribute – her crossed eyes – may have been caused […]

Nancy Kulp (1921 - 1991)

Nancy Kulp Tall and prim, she appeared in a series of spinster-like roles on television, including the original “The Bob Cummings Show” as bird-watcher Pamela Livingstone from 1955 to 1959, and “The Brian Keith Show” as the wealthy widow Mrs. Gruber in 1973-74. She once was called TV’s homeliest girl, possessing, one reviewer said, “The […]

Amelia Dyer (1837 - 1896)

Unlike many of her generation, Dyer was not the product of grinding poverty. She was born the youngest of five (with three brothers, Thomas, James and William, and a sister, Ann) in the small village of Pyle Marsh, just east of Bristol (now part of Bristol’s urban sprawl known as Pile Marsh), the daughter of […]

Mary Ann Cotton (1832 - 1873)

Mary Ann Robson was born on 31 October 1832 at Low Moorsley (now part of Houghton-le-Spring in the City of Sunderland) and baptised at St Mary’s, West Rainton on 11 November.  When Mary Ann was eight, her parents moved the family to the County Durham village of Murton, where she went to a new school […]

Ronnie Biggs (1929 - 2013)

Biggs was born in Stockwell, Lambeth, London, on 8 August 1929. As a child during the Second World War, he was evacuated to Flitwick, Bedfordshire, and then Cornwall.  In 1947, at age 18, Biggs joined the RAF but was dishonorably discharged on charges of desertion two years later after breaking into a local chemist shop. […]

Don Knotts (1924 - 2006)

Don Knotts Born Jesse Donald Knotts in Morgantown, West Virginia, he is best known for his roles as ‘Deputy Barney Fife’ in the 1960s television series the “Andy Griffith Show,” and as landlord ‘Ralph Furley’ from the late 1970s television situation comedy series “Three’s Company.” He began his career as a ventriloquist and comedian in […]

Dorian Leigh (1917 - 2008)

Dorian Leigh Parker was born in San Antonio, Texas, to George and Elizabeth Parker. Her parents married when they were around 17 or 18 years old and Elizabeth promptly gave birth to three daughters in quick succession: Dorian (1917–2008), Florian (Cissie) (1918–2010), and Georgiabell. Thirteen years after the birth of her last daughter, Elizabeth thought […]

George Furth (1932 - 2008)

Furth was born George Schweinfurth in Chicago, Illinois, the son of Evelyn (née Tuerk) and George Schweinfurth. He received a Bachelor of Science in Speech at Northwestern University in 1954 and received his master’s degree from Columbia University.  A life member of the Actors Studio, Furth made his Broadway debut as an actor in the […]

Robert Prosky (1930 - 2008)

Prosky, a Polish American, was born Robert Joseph Porzuczek in the Manayunk neighborhood of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to Joseph and Helen Porzuczek. His father was a grocer and butcher. He was raised in a working-class neighborhood and studied at the American Theatre Wing, later graduating from Temple University. He performed at Old Academy Players, a small […]

Gary Gilmore (1940 - 1977)

Gilmore was born in McCamey, Texas, on December 4, 1940, the second of four sons to Frank and Bessie Gilmore. Frank Gilmore Sr. (1890–1962), an alcoholic con man, had numerous wives and families, none of whom he supported. He married Bessie (née Brown) (1914 – June 1980), a Mormon outcast from Provo, Utah, in Sacramento, […]

Tommy Lynn Sells (1964 - 2014)

Sells and his twin sister, Tammy Jean, contracted meningitis[citation needed] when they were 18 months old; Tammy died from the illness. Shortly thereafter, Sells was sent to live with his aunt, Bonnie Woodall, in Holcomb, Missouri, where he lived until he was five years old. When Sells was eight, he began spending time with a […]

Charles Starkweather (1938 - 1959)

Starkweather was born in Lincoln, Nebraska, the third of seven children born to Guy and Helen Starkweather. The Starkweathers were a respectable family with well-behaved children of working class background. The family was poor, but they always had the basics. Guy Starkweather was by all accounts a mild-mannered man; he was a carpenter who was […]

Ted Knight (1923 - 1986)

Ted Knight Born to a Polish American family in Terryville, Connecticut. Some sources list his real name as Tadeus Wladyslaw Konopka, however, his gravestone reads, Theodore C. Konopka. He dropped out of high school to join the military during World War II. He received five battle stars during his Army service in World War II. […]

Eartha Kitt (1927 - 2008)

Eartha Kitt Kitt was active in numerous social causes in the 1950s and 1960s. In 1966, she established the Kittsville Youth Foundation, a chartered and non-profit organization for underprivileged youth in the Watts area of Los Angeles. She was also involved with a group of youth in the area of Anacostia in Washington, D.C., who […]

Bruno Hauptmann (1899 - 1936)

Hauptmann was born Richard Hauptmann in Kamenz, near Dresden in what was then the German Empire, the youngest of five children. (The name “Bruno,” used sometimes by prosecutors in the Lindbergh kidnapping trial was not used by family or friends.) He had three brothers and a sister. At age 11, he joined the Boy Scouts […]

Charles Arthur Floyd (1904 - 1934)

Charles Arthur Floyd was born in Bartow County, Georgia in 1904. His family moved to Oklahoma in 1911, and he grew up there. As a youth, he spent considerable time in nearby Kansas, Arkansas and Missouri.  Floyd was first arrested at age 18 after he stole $3.50 in coins from a local post office. Three […]

Mabel King (1932 - 1999)

Mabel King      She started acting in the early seventies, her first movie appearance being Don’t Play Us Cheap in 1973 as a house guest. Estelle Rolle also appeared in the movie. She also played Evillene, the evil witch of the west, in both the movie and broadway versions of Diana Ross’ The Wiz. She […]

Estelle Getty (1923 - 2008)

Getty was born Estelle Scher in New York City, the daughter of Sarah and Charles Scher, Polish immigrants of the Jewish faith. They worked in the glass business. She had a sister, Roz, and a brother, David. Getty got her start in the Yiddish theater and also as a comedian in the Catskills borscht belt […]

Brad Renfro (1982 - 2008)

Renfro was born in Knoxville, Tennessee. He was the son of Angela Denise Olsen (née McCrory) and Mark Renfro, who was a factory worker. He was raised from the age of five by his paternal grandmother, Joanne (Barron) Renfro, a church secretary.  When he was ten, Renfro was discovered by Mali Finn, a casting director […]

Ron Silver (1946 - 2009)

Silver was born in New York City, the son of May (née Zimelman), a substitute teacher, and Irving Roy Silver, a clothing sales executive. Silver was raised Jewish on the Lower East Side of Manhattan and attended Stuyvesant High School.  Silver went on to graduate from SUNY at Buffalo, with a Bachelor of Arts in […]

Wendy Richard (1943 - 2009)

Richard, an only child, was born in Middlesbrough in 1943. Her parents, Henry and Beatrice Reay (née Cutter) Emerton, were publicans and ran the Corporation Hotel in the town. Emerton and Cutter married in Paddington in 1939. While Richard was a baby, her family moved to Bournemouth. They later moved to the Isle of Wight […]

Collin Paxton (1935 - 2009)

She was born in Cincinnati and moved with her family to Highlands, North Carolina, as a baby. She made her professional debut in Chicago as part of the improvisational group, The Compass Players, which included Mike Nichols, Elaine May, and Shelley Berman. Playing opposite Richard Basehart, Kevin McCarthy and William Hansen, Wilcox won the Clarence […]

Karl Malden (1912 - 2009)

Karl Malden, the eldest of three sons, was born Mladen Sekulovich in Chicago, Illinois on March 22, 1912, he was born on his mother’s 20th birthday and was raised in Gary, Indiana. His Bosnian Serb father, Petar Sekulović (1886–1975), worked in the steel mills and as a milkman, and his mother, Minnie (née Sebera) Sekulovich […]

Spike Jones (1911 - 1965)

Spike Jones Lindley Armstrong Jones was a musical genius. In the wild and woolly days before multi-track recording, MTV, and certainly digital entertainment content, Spike Jones put together a top-flight musical organization that the world has not seen the likes of since. Known as the City Slickers, the emphasis was on comedy, primarily doing dead-on […]

Jennifer Jones (1919 - 2009)

Jennifer Jones Best known for her performance in “A Song for Bernadette,” for which she won the Academy Award in 1944. She was born Phyllis Lee Isley, the only child of Phillip and Flora Mae Isley, owners and stars of a theatrical stock company. Her family traveled the country performing plays under a tent. Phyllis […]

Davy Jones (1945 - 2012)

Davy Jones Davy Jones, whose charming grin and British accent won the hearts of millions of fans on the 1960s television series “The Monkees,” died Wednesday, according to the Martin County, Florida, sheriff’s office. He was 66. A witness told authorities he was with Jones in Indiantown, Florida, when Jones “began to complain of not […]