Saddam Hussein (1937 - 2006)

Saddam Hussein Abd al-Majid al-Tikriti (Arabic: صدام حسين عبد المجيد التكريتي Ṣaddām Ḥusayn ʿAbd al-Maǧīd al-Tikrītī; 28 April 1937 – 30 December 2006) was the fifth President of Iraq, serving in this capacity from 16 July 1979 until 9 April 2003. A leading member of the revolutionary Arab Socialist Ba’ath Party, and later, the Baghdad-based […]

Jim Morrison (1943 - 1971)

Jim Morrison Born on December 8, 1943, in Melbourne, Florida, Jim Morrison was an American rock singer and songwriter. He studied film at UCLA, where he met the members of what would become the Doors. Known for his drinking and drug use and outrageous stage behavior, in 1971 Morrison left the Doors to write poetry […]

Amelia Earhart (1897 - 1937)

Amelia Earhart Amelia Mary Earhart (/ˈɛərhɑrt/; July 24, 1897 – disappeared July 2, 1937) was an American aviation pioneer and author. Earhart was the first female aviator to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean. She received the U.S. Distinguished Flying Cross for this record. She set many other records, wrote best-selling books about her flying […]

Gussie Moran (1923 - 2013)

Moran’s father (who died in 1960) was a sound technician and electrician at Universal Studios, and possibly because of his connections, Moran worked as an extra in a few movies of the 1940s; and her tennis groups occasionally enjoyed weekly Sunday soirees at Charlie Chaplin’s mansion. Their friendship was so close that Chaplin hosted a […]

Conrad Bain (1923 - 2013)

Conrad Bain was born in Lethbridge, Alberta, the son of Jean Agnes (née Young) and Stafford Harrison Bain, who was a wholesaler. He studied at the Banff School of Fine Arts before serving in the Canadian Army during World War II. He later studied in New York at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, graduating […]

Eugene C. Patterson (1923 - 2013)

Patterson was born in Valdosta, Georgia, to a bank cashier and a schoolteacher. After the bank at which his father worked was closed in the course of the Great Depression, the family moved to a small farm near Adel, Georgia. The house had no running water or electricity, and was heated only by the fireplace. […]

Seymour Hoffman (1967 - 2014)

Philip Seymour Hoffman (July 23, 1967 – February 2, 2014) was an American actor, director, and producer. He was prolific in both film and theater from the early 1990s until his death in 2014 at the age of 46, after which The New York Times declared him “perhaps the most ambitious and widely admired American […]

Neil Armstrong (1930 - 2012)

Neil Armstrong Neil Armstrong was born in Wapakoneta, Ohio, on August 5, 1930. After serving in the Korean War and then finishing college, he joined the organization that would become NASA. He joined the astronaut program in 1962 and was command pilot for his first mission, Gemini VIII, in 1966. He was spacecraft commander for […]

Richard Ben Cramer (1950 - 2013)

Cramer was born and raised in Rochester, New York. He graduated from Brighton High School in 1967. He wrote for Trapezoid, the school’s student newspaper, after he was cut from the baseball team. He earned a bachelor’s degree in the Liberal Arts in 1971 from Johns Hopkins University where he was also a writer and […]

Ada Louise Huxtable (1921 - 2013)

Huxtable was born and died in New York City, New York. Her father, the physician Michael Landman, was co-author (with his brother, Rabbi Isaac Landman) of the play A Man of Honor. Ada Louise Landman received an A. B. (magna cum laude) from Hunter College, CUNY in 1941.  In 1942, she married industrial designer L. […]

Gerda Lerner (1920 - 2013)

Lerner was born Gerda Hedwig Kronstein in Vienna, Austria, on April 30, 1920, the first child of Ilona (née Neumann) and Robert Kronstein, an affluent Jewish couple. Her father was a pharmacist, her mother an artist. Following the Anschluss, Kronstein joined the anti-Nazi resistance, and spent six weeks, including her eighteenth birthday, in an Austrian […]

Donald A. Glaser (1926 - 2013)

Born in Cleveland, Ohio, Glaser completed his Bachelor of Science degree in physics and mathematics from Case School of Applied Science in 1946. He completed his Ph.D. in physics from the California Institute of Technology in 1949. Glaser accepted a position as an instructor at the University of Michigan in 1949, and was promoted to […]

Dale Robertson (1923 - 2013)

DALE ROBERTSON Born in 1923 to Melvin and Vervel Robertson in Harrah in Oklahoma County near Oklahoma City in central Oklahoma, Robertson worked as a professional boxer briefly before enrolling in the Oklahoma Military Academy in Claremore. He also served in the military before his professional acting career began. He served in the United States […]

Van Cliburn (1934 - 2013)

Cliburn was born in Shreveport, Louisiana, the son of Rildia Bee (née O’Bryan) and Harvey Lavan Cliburn, Sr. At age three, he began taking piano lessons from his mother, who had studied under Arthur Friedheim, a pupil of Franz Liszt. When Cliburn was six, his father, who worked in the oil industry, moved the family […]

C. Everett Koop (1916 - 2013)

C. Everett Koop Koop was born in Brooklyn, New York, the only child of John Everett Koop (1883–1972), a banker and descendant of 17th-century Dutch settlers, and Helen (née Apel) Koop (1894–1970). In 1937, he earned his A.B. degree from Dartmouth College, where he was given the nickname “Chick” (occasionally used for his first name, […]

Wolfgang Sawallisch (1923 - 2013)

Sawallisch was born in Munich on August 26, 1923. At the age of five, he was already playing the piano and by the time he was ten, he had decided he wanted to become a concert pianist. As a child, he was greatly influenced by Richard Strauss and Hans Knappertsbusch.  At first, he studied composition […]

Jerry Buss (1933 - 2013)

Born in Salt Lake City, Buss was raised by his divorced mother, Jessie. When he was nine years old, he moved with his mother to Los Angeles; they moved to Kemmerer, Wyoming, three years later when she remarried. Buss earned a scholarship to the University of Wyoming, graduating with a B.S. degree in two and […]

Ronald Dworkin (1931 - 2013)

Ronald Dworkin was born in 1931 in Providence, Rhode Island, United States, the son of Madeline (Talamo) and David Dworkin. He studied at Harvard University and at Magdalen College, Oxford, where he was a Rhodes Scholar and a student of Sir Rupert Cross. After he completed his final year’s exams at Oxford, the examiners were […]

Chris Kyle (1974 - 2013)

Born in Odessa, Texas, the son of a Sunday school teacher and a deacon, Kyle’s father bought his son his first rifle at 8 years old, a bolt-action .30-06 Springfield rifle, and later a shotgun, with which they hunted pheasant, quail, and deer. After school, Kyle became a professional bronco rodeo rider and worked on […]

Edward Koch (1924 - 2013)

Koch was born in The Bronx borough of New York City, the son of Yetta (or Joyce, née Silpe) and Louis (Leib) Koch, immigrants from Uscieczko in Eastern Galicia. He came from a family of Conservative Jews who resided in Newark, New Jersey, where his father worked at a theater. As a child, he worked […]

Phil Ramone (1934 - 2013)

Ramone was born in South Africa and grew up in Brooklyn, New York, USA. As a child in South Africa, Ramone was a musical prodigy, beginning to play the violin at age three and performing for Princess Elizabeth at age ten. In the late 1940s he trained as a classical violinist at the Juilliard School, […]

Yvonne Brill (1924 - 2013)

Yvonne Brill was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Her parents were immigrants from Belgium. She attended the University of Manitoba, but was barred from studying engineering because of her gender, so she studied chemistry and mathematics.  Brill’s work in satellite propulsion systems resulted in a number of significant developments. She developed the concept for a new rocket […]

Joe Weider (1920 - 2013)

Weider was born in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, to Louis and Anna, Jewish immigrants from Poland. He published the first issue of Your Physique magazine in 1936 when he was 17 years old, and built a set of barbells out of car wheels and axles the same year out of the family garage on Coloniale street […]

Rise Stevens (1913 - 2013)

Stevens was born Risë Steenberg, on June 11, 1913, in New York City, the daughter of Sarah “Sadie” (née Mechanic) and Christian Steenberg, an advertising salesman. Her father was of Norwegian Lutheran descent and her mother was Jewish (of Polish and Russian descent). She had a younger brother, Lewis “Bud” Steenberg, who died in World […]

Harry Reems (1947 - 2013)

Reems was born Herbert Streicher. He attended the University of Pittsburgh for a year before briefly serving in the United States Marine Corps, from which he received an honorable discharge following hardship leave. He then elected to pursue an acting career, principally in off-Broadway theater.  Prior to appearing in Deep Throat, Herb Streicher was chosen […]

Bonnie Franklin (1944 - 2013)

Bonnie Franklin Franklin was born in Santa Monica, California, the daughter of Claire (née Hersch) and Samuel Benjamin Franklin, an investment banker. Her parents were both Jewish immigrants, her father from Russia and her mother from Romania.  Her family moved to Beverly Hills when she was thirteen years old, and she graduated from Beverly Hills […]

Mary Thom (1944 - 2013)

Thom was born in Akron, Ohio in 1944. Her father was an engineer. He worked in the steel industry. Her mother worked from home as a homemaker. Thom listened to jazz and enjoyed Shakespeare. She credits these two interests at triggering her interest in activism. She graduated from Bryn Mawr College in 1966. While there, […]

Deanna Durbin (1921 - 2013)

Edna Mae Durbin was born on December 4, 1921 at Grace Hospital in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, the daughter of James Allen Durbin and his wife Ada (née Read), who were originally from Manchester, England. In 1923, her family moved from Winnipeg to southern California, and her parents soon become United States citizens. At the age […]

Jeff Buckley (1966 - 1997)

Jeff Buckley Musician. Born in Anaheim, California, he was a singer, songwriter, guitarist, whom emerged in New York City’s avant-garde club scene in the 1990’s. Signed to Columbia Records, he released his first album “At Sin-é” (1993) followed by his full-band album, “Grace” (1994). With the success of the albums, he went on an extensive […]

Buddy Holly (1936 - 1959)

When Elvis Presley died, 25,000 people gathered outside Graceland in the sweltering Memphis heat. John Lennon’s murder drew millions of people to Central Park for a silent vigil. But when Buddy Holly’s plane went down in an Iowa cornfield at a little past 1 a.m. on Feb. 3, 1959, there was nobody waiting for him […]