Jim Croce (1943 - 1973)

Jim Croce  James Joseph “Jim” Croce (/ˈkroʊtʃi/; January 10, 1943 – September 20, 1973) was an American singer-songwriter. Between 1966 and 1973, Croce released five studio albums and 11 singles. His singles “Bad, Bad Leroy Brown” and “Time in a Bottle” were both number one hits on the US Billboard Hot 100 chart. Early life […]

Stanford Ovshinsky (1922 - 2012)

Stanford Robert Ovshinsky (November 24, 1922 – October 17, 2012) was a prolific American inventor and scientist who had been granted well over 400 patents over fifty years, mostly in the areas of energy and information. Many of his inventions have had wide ranging applications. Among the most prominent are: an environmentally friendly nickel-metal hydride […]

Norodom Sihanouk (1922 - 2012)

Norodom Sihanouk was the King of Cambodia from 1941 to 1955 and again from 1993 to 2005. He was the effective ruler of Cambodia from 1953 to 1970. After his second abdication in 2004, he was known as “The King-Father of Cambodia” (Khmer: Preahmâhaviraksat), a position in which he retained many of his former responsibilities […]

Arlen Specter (1930 - 2012)

Arlen Specter (February 12, 1930 – October 14, 2012) was a United States Senator from Pennsylvania. Specter was a Democrat from 1951 to 1965, then a Republican from 1965 until 2009, when he switched back to the Democratic Party. First elected in 1980, he represented his state for 30 years in the Senate. Specter was […]

Andy Gibb (1958 - 1988)

Andy Gibb Andrew Roy “Andy” Gibb (5 March 1958 – 10 March 1988) was an English singer, musician, performer and teen idol who was the younger brother of Barry, Robin and Maurice Gibb. Andy came to international prominence in the late 1970s with three singles that reached #1 in the United States: “I Just Want […]

Janis Joplin (1943 - 1970)

Janis Joplin Born in Port Arthur, Texas, her father was a cannery worker and her mother a registrar for a business college. Graduating from Thomas Jefferson High School, she was a member of the Glee Club and the Future Teachers of America. She attended Lamar State College and the University of Texas, where a fraternity […]

Brian Jones (1942 - 1969)

Brian Jones Lewis Brian Hopkins Jones (28 February 1942 – 3 July 1969) was the founder and original bandleader of the Rolling Stones. Jones was a multi-instrumentalist, with his main instruments being the guitar, harmonica and keyboards. His innovative use of traditional or folk instruments, such as the sitar and marimba, was integral to the […]

Eddie Cochran (1938 - 1960)

Eddie Cochran Edward Raymond ‘Eddie’ Cochran (October 3, 1938 – April 17, 1960) was an American musician. Cochran’s rockabilly songs, such as “C’mon Everybody”, “Somethin’ Else”, and “Summertime Blues”, captured teenage frustration and desire in the late 1950s and early 1960s. He experimented with multitrack recording and overdubbing even on his earliest singles, and was […]

Alex Karras (1935 - 2012)

Karras was born in Gary, Indiana, the son of Dr. George Karras, a Greek immigrant (from Chios) who graduated from the University of Chicago and got his medical degree in Canada. There, George Karras met and married a Canadian woman, Alex’s mother, Emmeline (née Wilson), a registered nurse. George Karras opened a medical practice in […]

Eric Hobsbawm (1917 - 2012)

Eric John Ernest Hobsbawm, CH, FBA, FRSL (/ˈhɒbz.bɔːm/; 9 June 1917 – 1 October 2012) was a British Marxist historian of the rise of industrial capitalism, socialism, and nationalism. His best-known works include his trilogy about what he called the “long 19th century” (The Age of Revolution: Europe 1789–1848, The Age of Capital: 1848–1875 and […]

Barbara Ann Scott (1928 - 2012)

Scott was the youngest of three children born to Canadian Army Colonel Clyde Rutherford Scott and Mary (née Purves) of Sandy Hill, Ottawa. She began skating at the age of seven with the Minto Skating Club, coached by Otto Gold and Sheldon Galbraith. At age nine, Scott switched from regular schooling to tutoring 2 1/2 […]

Barry Commoner (1917 - 2012)

Commoner was born in Brooklyn, New York, on May 28, 1917, the son of Jewish immigrants from Russia. He received his bachelor’s degree in zoology from Columbia University in 1937 and his master’s and doctoral degrees from Harvard University in 1938 and 1941, respectively.  After serving as a lieutenant in the United States Navy during […]

Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Sr. (1926 - 2012)

He was born on February 5, 1926, in New York City to Jewish parents Arthur Hays Sulzberger and Iphigene Bertha Ochs (daughter of Adolph Ochs, the former publisher and owner of The New York Times and the Chattanooga Times). Sulzberger graduated from the Loomis Institute and then enlisted into the United States Marine Corps during […]

John R. Silber (1926 - 2012)

Silber was born in San Antonio, Texas, the second son of Paul George Silber, an immigrant architect from Germany, and Jewell (née Joslin) Silber, a Texas-born elementary school teacher. Both of his parents were Presbyterians. As an adult, he learned that his father’s side of the family was Jewish and that his aunt had been […]

Andy Williams (1927 - 2012)

Andy Williams Williams was born in Wall Lake, Iowa, the son of Jay Emerson and Florence (née Finley) Williams. Williams attended Western Hills High School in Cincinnati, Ohio; he finished high school at University High School, in West Los Angeles, because of his family’s move to California. He had three older brothers—Bob, Don, and Dick […]

Steve Sabol (1942 - 2012)

As president of the most honored filmmaker in sports, Sabol continued to be the artistic vision behind the studio that revolutionized the way America watches football. Sabol and his father, Ed, who was elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame on February 5, 2011, were honored in 2003 with the Lifetime Achievement Emmy from […]

J. Christopher Stevens (1960 - 2012)

Stevens was born on April 18, 1960 in Grass Valley, California, the eldest of three siblings born to Jan S. Stevens, a California Assistant Attorney General, and his wife Mary J. Stevens née Floris. from a West Coast of the United States family of French, Swedish and Chinook ancestry. Stevens was raised in Northern California […]

Hal David (1921 - 2012)

David was born in New York City, a son of Austrian Jewish immigrants Lina (née Goldberg) and Gedalier David, who owned a delicatessen in Brooklyn, and younger brother of American lyricist and songwriter Mack David. He is credited with popular music lyrics, beginning in the 1940s with material written for bandleader Sammy Kaye and for […]

Steve Van Buren (1920 - 2012)

Van Buren was born in La Ceiba, Honduras but, after he was orphaned as a boy, he was sent to live with relatives in New Orleans. From Warren Easton High School in New Orleans, he received an athletic scholarship to Louisiana State University, where he led the nation in points (110) and touchdowns (16) as […]

Dom Mintoff (1916 - 2012)

Mintoff was born in Bormla. He attended a seminary before enrolling at the University of Malta. He graduated with a Bachelor of Science and, later, as an architect and civil engineer (1937). That same year he received a Rhodes Scholarship and pursued his studies at Hertford College, Oxford, where he received a Masters in Science […]

Phyllis Diller (1917 - 2012)

Diller was born Phyllis Ada Driver in Lima, Ohio on July 17, 1917, the only child of Perry Marcus Driver (June 13, 1862 – August 12, 1948), an insurance agent, and Frances Ada (née Romshe; January 12, 1881 – January 26, 1949). She had German and Irish ancestry (the surname “Driver” had been changed from […]

Meles Zenawi (1955 - 2012)

Meles was born in Adwa, Tigray, in northern Ethiopia, to an Ethiopian father Zenawi Asres from Adwa and Alemash Guebreluel from Adi Quala, Eritrea. He was the third of six children in the family. His first name at birth was “Legesse” (thus Legesse Zenawi, Ge’ez: ለገሰ ዜናዊ legesse zēnāwī). However, he eventually became better known […]

Susan Tyrrell (1945 - 2012)

Susan Tyrrell Susan Tyrrell (born Susan Jillian Creamer; March 18, 1945 – June 16, 2012), was an American actress who appeared in dozens of film, stage and television productions over a forty-year career. Her performance as Oma in John Huston’s Fat City (1972) earned her a nomination for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. […]

Doris Singleton (1919 - 2012)

Doris Singleton Dorthea “Doris” Singleton (September 28, 1919 – June 26, 2012) Early life and career Singleton, born in New York City, trained as a classical ballerina, dancing for three seasons in the mid-1930s with the newly formed “Ballet Theatre”, later to become the American Ballet Theatre. She began her career in show business as […]

Susanne Lothar (1960 - 2012)

Susanne Lothar Susanne Lothar (15 November 1960 – 21 July 2012) was a German film, television and stage actress. Early life and education Susanne Lothar was born on 15 November 1960 in Hamburg, Germany. She was the daughter of actors Hanns Lothar and Ingrid Andree, who divorced in 1965, the year before her father’s death. […]

William Windom (1923 - 2012)

Windom was born on September 28, 1923, in New York City. He was the son of Isobel Wells (née Peckham) and Paul Windom, an architect. He was the great-grandson of the United States Secretary of the Treasury of the same name. He served in the United States Army in the European Theater of Operations in […]

Martine Franck (1938 - 2012)

Franck was born in Antwerp to a Belgian banker and his British wife, and after her birth the family moved almost immediately to London. A year later, her father joined the British army, and the rest of the family was evacuated to the United States, spending the remainder of the Second World War in Long […]

John Pesky (1919 - 2012)

Pesky was born in Portland, Oregon, the son of Croat immigrants Jakov and Marija (Bajama) Paveskovich. (Major League Baseball has his date of birth as September 27, 1919, an adjustment made by Pesky in 1939 to meet baseball scouting age limits for tryouts.)  Pesky played for Lincoln High School, and spent several years playing for […]

Helen Gurley Brown (1922 - 2012)

Brown was born Helen Marie Gurley in Green Forest, Arkansas, the daughter of Cleo Fred (Sisco) and Ira Marvin Gurley. Her mother was born in Alpena, Arkansas, and died in 1980. Her father was once appointed Commissioner of the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission. The family moved to Little Rock, Arkansas after Ira won election […]

Anna Piaggi (1932 - 2012)

Anna Maria Piaggi (22 March 1931 – 7 August 2012) was an Italian fashion writer and style icon.  Piaggi was born in Milan on 22 March 1931. She worked as a translator for an Italian publishing company Mondadori, then wrote for fashion magazines such as the Italian edition of Vogue and, in the 1980s, the […]