Carroll Cole (1938 - 1985)

Carroll Cole was born in Sioux City, Iowa, the second son of LaVerne and Vesta Cole. His younger sister was born in 1939 and soon afterwards, his family moved to California, where LaVerne found work in a shipyard. Not long after that, LaVern went to fight in World War II. While his father was away, […]

Arthur Gary Bishop (1952 - 1988)

Arthur Gary Bishop was born in Hinckley, Utah, the eldest of six brothers. Bishop was raised as a devout Mormon, and was an Eagle Scout and an honor student. When he was 19, Bishop served as a missionary in the Philippines.  Bishop was arrested for embezzlement in February 1978 and given a five-year suspended sentence, […]

Jake Bird (1901 - 1949)

Jake Bird (December 14, 1901 – July 15, 1949) was a convicted murderer and self-confessed serial killer who was tried and executed for the axe murders of Bertha Kludt (age 53) and her daughter Beverly June Kludt (17) in Tacoma, Washington on October 30, 1947. Bird may have killed as many as 46 people. The […]

Anna Marie Hahn (1906 - 1938)

Hahn was the youngest of 12 children. As a teenager she allegedly had an affair with a Viennese physician, though no records have been found of a Viennese doctor by the name she gave. They had a son named Oskar (also spelled “Oscar”). Her scandalized family sent her to America in 1929, while her son […]

Velma Barfield (1932 - 1984)

Velma Barfield was born in rural South Carolina, but grew up near Fayetteville, North Carolina. Her father reportedly was abusive and she resented her mother who did not intervene in the beatings. She escaped by marrying Thomas Burke in 1949. The couple had two children and were reportedly happy until Barfield had a hysterectomy and […]

Del Wood (1920 - 1989)

Del Wood A lifelong resident of Nashville, Del Wood is recognized as being the most successful female country solo instrumentalist. From 1953 until her death in 1989 she was a fixture at the Grand Ole Opry, playing rollicking piano instrumentals from the days of ragtime jazz. Her stage name was created by combining part of […]

Dixie Hall (1970 - 2015)

Dixie Hall Dixie Hall, bluegrass and country music songwriter and wife of Country Music Hall of Fame member Tom T. Hall, passed away on Jan. 16. “Miss Dixie,” as she was often known, was 80 years old. She had, in recent years, been diagnosed with a brain tumor and had other health troubles. Born Iris […]

Kevin Sharp (1970 - 2014)

Kevin Sharp Kevin Sharp was born in 1970 in Redding, California. When he was seven years old, his family moved to Weiser, Idaho to open a restaurant. Sharp performed in local musicals in high school, and stayed active in music after his family moved back to California in 1985. Starting in 1989, he began to […]

Vern Gosdin (1934 - 2009)

Vern Gosdin Country singer/songwriter Vern Gosdin, known as “The Voice” for his distinctive tone and heart-wrenching way with a lyric, died Monday night in Nashville following a recent stroke. He was 74. Born in Woodland, Alabama, Gosdin’s singing and writing style was influenced most by the Louvin Brothers. He came from a musical family, which […]

Foster Brooks (1912 - 2001)

Foster Brooks Brooks regularly appeared on The Dean Martin Show television program in the 1970s (for which he garnered an Emmy Award nomination in 1974) as well as many situation comedies, talk shows, and a few films. Although he had only one basic signature character, he exhibited such extraordinary timing and subtlety that he was […]

Ed Gein (1906 - 1984)

Edward Theodore Gein was born in La Crosse County, Wisconsin on August 27, 1906, the second of two boys of George Philip (August 4, 1873 – April 1, 1940) and Augusta Wilhelmine (née Lehrke) Gein (July 21, 1878 – December 29, 1945), the daughter of Prussian immigrants.[citation needed] Gein had an older brother, Henry George […]

Aileen Wuornos (1956 - 2002)

Wuornos was born Aileen Carol Pittman in Rochester, Michigan, on February 29, 1956. Her mother, Diane Wuornos (born 1939), was 14 years old when she married Aileen’s father, Leo Dale Pittman, on June 3, 1954. Less than two years later, and two months before Aileen was born, Diane filed for divorce. Aileen’s older brother Keith […]

Jeffrey Dahmer (1960 - 1994)

Serial Killer, having killed an estimated 16 men and boys.   Jeffrey Dahmer was born on May 21, 1960 in West Allis, Wisconsin, the first son of Joyce Annette (née Flint) and Lionel Herbert Dahmer. Dahmer’s mother worked as a teletype machine instructor, whereas his father was a student at Marquette University, working towards a degree […]

Jerry Reed (1937 - 2008)

Jerry Reed Musician, Songwriter, Actor. Born Jerry Reed Hubbard, he caught the eye of Chet Atkins and was signed by RCA records after a failed attempt with Capitol Records, a stint in the United States Army and another failed attempt with Columbia Records. His time with RCA under Chet Atkins nurtured his session playing skills, […]

Bob Wills (1905 - 1975)

Bob Wills American Western swing musician, songwriter, and bandleader. Considered by music authorities as the co-founder of Western swing,he was universally known as the King of Western Swing (after the death of Spade Cooley who used the moniker “King Of Western Swing” from 1942 to 1969.) Wills formed several bands and played radio stations around […]

Spade Cooley (1910 - 1969)

Spade Cooley One of the groups which played at the Venice Pier Ballroom in Venice, California, was led by Jimmy Wakely with Spade Cooley on fiddle. Several thousand dancers would turn out on Saturday night to swing and hop. “The hoards (sic) of people and jitterbuggers loved him.” When Wakely got a movie contract at […]

Joe Simon (1913 - 2011)

Joe Simon was born in 1913 as Hymie Simon and raised in Rochester, New York, the son of Harry Simon, who had emigrated from Leeds, England, in 1905, and Rose, whom Harry met in the United States. Harry Simon moved to Rochester, then a clothing-manufacturing center where his younger brother Isaac lived, and the couple […]

Christopher Hitchens (1949 - 2011)

Christopher Eric Hitchens (13 April 1949 – 15 December 2011) was a British American author, philosopher, polemicist, debater, and journalist. He contributed to New Statesman, The Nation, The Atlantic, The London Review of Books, The Times Literary Supplement and Vanity Fair. Hitchens was the author, co-author, editor and co-editor of over thirty books, including five […]

Vaclav Havel (1936 - 2011)

Vaclav Havel Václav Havel (Czech pronunciation: [ˈvaːt͡slav ˈɦavɛl] ( listen); 5 October 1936 – 18 December 2011) was a Czech writer, philosopher, dissident, and statesman. From 1989 to 1993, he served as the first democratically elected president of Czechoslovakia in 41 years. He then served as the first president of the Czech Republic (1993–2003) after […]

Sam Rivers (1923 - 2011)

Rivers was born in El Reno, Oklahoma. His father was a gospel musician who had sung with the Fisk Jubilee Singers and the Silverstone Quartet, exposing Rivers to music from an early age. Rivers was stationed in California in the 1940s during a stint in the Navy. Here he performed semi-regularly with blues singer Jimmy […]

Millie Kirkham (1923 - 2014)

Millie Kirkham Singer. Kirkham will best be remembered for her soaring soprano vocals which were heard on classic recordings by Elvis Presley, Roy Orbison, George Jones, Loretta Lynn, Perry Como, Rosemary Clooney, Jerry Lee Lewis and many others on a number of pop, country and rock ‘n’ roll recordings from the mid-1950s through the 1980s. […]

Ferlin Husky (1925 - 2011)

Ferlin Husky Country Musician, Actor. Born Ferlin Eugene Husky, he was raised on a Missouri farm and learned how to play the guitar from an uncle at the age of ten. Following service with the US Merchant Marines (he served as a troop ship gunner in the European Theater) during World War II, he worked […]

Dorothy Stratten (1960 - 1980)

Dorothy Stratten Stratten was born in a Salvation Army hospital in Vancouver, British Columbia, to Simon and Nelly Hoogstraten, who were Dutch immigrants. In 1961 her brother John Arthur was born. Her sister Louise Stratten followed in May 1968. In 1977 she was attending Centennial High School in Coquitlam when, while working part-time at a […]

Zig Ziglar (1926 - 2012)

Zig Ziglar was born in Coffee County in southeastern Alabama to John Silas Ziglar and Lila Wescott Ziglar. He was the tenth of twelve children.  In 1931, when Ziglar was five years old, his father took a management position at a Mississippi farm, and his family moved to Yazoo City, Mississippi, where he spent most […]

Dave Brubeck (1920 - 2012)

David Warren “Dave” Brubeck (December 6, 1920 – December 5, 2012) was an American jazz pianist and composer, considered to be one of the foremost exponents of cool jazz. He wrote a number of jazz standards, including “In Your Own Sweet Way” and “The Duke”. Brubeck’s style ranged from refined to bombastic, reflecting his mother’s […]

Jack Klugman (1922 - 2012)

Jack Klugman Klugman was born in Philadelphia, the son of Rose, a hat maker, and Max Klugman, a house painter. His parents were Russian Jewish immigrants, though the family name is German in origin. He attended Carnegie Institute of Technology, now Carnegie Mellon University, from which he graduated in 1948. While there his drama teacher […]

Charles Durning (1923 - 2012)

Durning was born in Highland Falls, New York, the ninth of ten children. His three brothers and sister, James (Roger) (1915–2000), Clifford (1916–1994), Frances (born 1919) and Gerald (born 1926), survived to adulthood but five sisters lost their lives to scarlet fever and smallpox as children. He was the son of Louise (née Leonard; 1894–1982), […]

Jean Harlow (1911 - 1937)

Jean Harlow Jean suffered from scarlet fever at the age 15 in 1926. This may have contributed to her untimely death from kidney disease on June 7, 1937 at the age of 26. Production for Harlow’s final film Saratoga, co-starring  Clark Gable, was scheduled to begin filming in March 1937. However, production was delayed when […]

Jayne Mansfield (1933 - 1967)

Jayne Mansfield In Biloxi, Mississippi, for an engagement at the Gus Stevens Supper Club, Mansfield stayed at the Cabana Courtyard Apartments near the club. After an evening appearance on June 28, 1967, Mansfield, her lover Sam Brody, their driver, Ronnie Harrison, with three of her children – Miklós, Zoltán and Mariska – set out in […]

Molly Glynn (1968 - 2014)

Molly Glynn (June 14, 1968 – September 6, 2014) was an American actress: She was a well-known Chicago stage actress, and also played several roles in film and television, including a recurring role on the television series Chicago Fire.  Glynn, the youngest of five children, grew up as part of a prominent family in Hartford, […]