Lillian Ngoyi (1911 - 1980)

Lillian Ngoyi joined the ANC Women’s League in 1952; she was at that stage a widow with two children and an elderly mother to support, and worked as a seamstress. A year later she was elected as President of the Women’s League. On 9 August 1956, Ngoyi led a women’s march along with Helen Joseph, […]

Helen Suzman (1917 - 2009)

Helen Suzman, a lifelong citizen of South Africa, was born Helen Gavronsky in 1917 to Samuel and Frieda Gavronsky, Jewish Lithuanian immigrants. Suzman matriculated in 1933 from Parktown Convent, Johannesburg. She studied as an economist and statistician at Witwatersrand University. At age 19, she married Dr Moses Suzman (died 1994), who was considerably older than […]

Ruth First (1925 - 1982)

Ruth First’s parents, Julius First and Matilda Levetan, immigrated to South Africa from Latvia as Jewish immigrants in 1906 and became founder members of the Communist Party of South Africa (CPSA), the forerunner of the South African Communist Party (SACP). Ruth First was born in 1925 and brought up in Johannesburg. She too joined the […]

Joe Slovo (1926 - 1995)

Joe Slovo was born in Obeliai, Lithuania to a Jewish family which emigrated to the Union of South Africa when he was eight. His father worked as a truck driver in Johannesburg. Although his family were religious, he became an atheist who retained respect for “the positive aspects of Jewish culture”. Slovo left school in […]

Carrie Neiman (1883 - 1953)

Carrie Neiman was born in Louisville, Kentucky to Jewish German immigrants Delia (Bloomfield) and Jacob Marcus. Jacob was a cotton broker, a fairly common occupation in the South. In 1895 the family moved to Hillsboro, Texas. Carrie did not receive a formal education but was educated at home in a European mileiu, reading German newspapers […]

Charles Nash (1864 - 1948)

Charles Nash was born to a poor farming family in Cortland, Illinois, on what is now Route 38 — Lincoln Highway. His mother was Anna E. “Annie” Cadwell (1829–1909) who married David L. Nash. Other Nash siblings included Mazovia (b. 1862), George C. (b. 1866) and Laura W. (b. 1868). After Charles’ parent’s separation, at age […]

Gerd Bucerius (1906 - 1995)

Gerd Bucerius (1906, Hamm, Westphalia – 1995) was a German politician and journalist, one of the founding members of Die Zeit. He is the namesake of the Bucerius Law School in Hamburg and of the Bucerius Kunst Forum, an art gallery. Gerd Bucerius was born in Westphalia, and studied law in Freiburg, Berlin, and Hamburg. Upon […]

John Morehead (1927 - 1866)

John Morehead (July 4, 1796 – August 27, 1866) was the 29th Governor of the U.S. state of North Carolina from 1841 to 1845. He is known as “the Father of Modern North Carolina.” Born in Pittsylvania County, Virginia, Morehead was the son of Obedience (Motley) and John Morehead. He moved to Rockingham County, North Carolina […]

Susanna Agnelli (1922 - 2009)

Born in Turin, Susanna Agnelli was the daughter of Edoardo Agnelli and Donna Virginia Bourbon del Monte, a daughter of the Prince di San Faustino and his Kentucky-born wife Jane Campbell. Her brother, Gianni Agnelli, was the head of Fiat until 1996; members of the Agnelli family are still the controlling shareholders of the company. In […]

Thomas Lipton (1848 - 1931)

Thomas Lipton was born in a tenement in Crown Street, Glasgow on 10 May 1848. His parents, Thomas Lipton senior and Frances Lipton (née Johnstone), were Ulster-Scots from County Fermanagh. The Liptons had been smallholders in Fermanagh for generations but, by the late 1840s, Thomas Lipton’s parents had been forced to leave Ireland due to […]

Louis Liggett (1875 - 1946)

Louis Kroh Liggett (April 4, 1875 – June 5, 1946) was an American drug store magnate who founded Rexall and was later chairman of United Drug Company. He was a member of the Republican National Committee for Massachusetts. Louis Liggett was born in Detroit, Michigan on April 4, 1875. His parents were John Templeton Liggett and […]

Arthur Letts (1862 - 1923)

Arthur Letts, Sr. was born in England. In 1882 he emigrated to Toronto, Ontario, Canada, and found employment in a large dry goods store. When the Red River Rebellion broke out in the Northwest of Canada, he volunteered. He was awarded a silver medal and clasp for distinguished service, and a grant of land by […]

Henry Leland (1843 - 1932)

Henry Leland was born to Leander and Zilpha, the youngest of 8, in Vermont in 1843. Sources differ on the town of his birth (Danville versus Barton); he grew up in Barton. He learned engineering and precision machining in the Brown & Sharpe plant at Providence, Rhode Island. He subsequently worked in the firearms industry, […]

Herman Lay (1909 - 1982)

Herman Lay was born in Charlotte, North Carolina on March 6, 1909. His father, Jesse N. Lay, worked for International Harvester, first as a bookkeeper in Charlotte and later as a commercial salesman in Columbia, South Carolina, where the family moved. By 1920, they moved to Greenville, South Carolina. In 1922 his mother died of […]

Joan Kroc (1928 - 2003)

Joan Kroc was born on August 27, 1928, in West St. Paul, Minnesota. Her father, Charles Smart Mansfield, was a store keeper, later a railroad telegraph operator and salesman. Her mother, Gladys Bonnebelle Mansfield was born April 5, 1906 in Luck, Wisconsin to Herman Conrad Peterson and his wife Emma Bonnebelle. Joan’s mother was an […]

Fred Turner (1933 - 2013)

Fred Turner grew up in Des Moines and Chicago, and graduated from Drake University in 1954. Fred Turner began his career at McDonald’s in 1956 as a grill operator, and quickly rose through the ranks. He was named Operations Vice President in 1958, when the firm had only 34 employees. In that role, he established strict […]

John Kluge (1914 - 2010)

John Kluge was born to a Presbyterian family in Chemnitz, Germany and emigrated to the United States in 1922. He earned his B.A. degree in economics from Columbia University in 1937. Prior to attending Columbia University, Kluge went to Wayne State University for two years. He was of Scots Irish, English and German heritage. During World […]

Solomon Juneau (1793 - 1856)

After landing at Fort Michilimackinac in 1816, Solomon Juneau worked as a clerk in the fur trade before becoming an agent for the American Fur Company in Milwaukee. Juneau settled an area east of the Milwaukee River called Juneautown (present day East Town) in 1818, which later joined with George H. Walker’s Walker’s Point and […]

Miss Elizabeth (1960 - 2003)

Miss Elizabeth Professional wrestling has been littered with many female valets and managers in its history. From Baby Doll to Missy Hyatt to Dark Journey to Sunshine…there have been many women who redefined the role of women in the business. It wasn’t just burly, unattractive women in front of the cameras anymore. In the WWF, […]

Dean Martin (1917 - 1995)

Dean Martin Born in Steubenville, Ohio, on June 7, 1917, to Italian immigrants, Dean Martin entered the nightclub circuit and landed a contract with MCA to sing in New York City. There he met Jerry Lewis and they started a long-running comedy partnership on radio, television and film. The team split in 1956, and Martin […]

Robert Vaughn (1932 - 2016)

Robert Vaughn Robert Vaughn, whose Napoleon Solo on NBC’s spy yarn The Man From U.N.C.L.E. set TV’s 1960s standard for suavity and crimebusting cool, died this morning after a brief battle with acute leukemia. He was 83. His manager Matthew Sullivan confirmed the news to Deadline. Vaughn’s lengthy list of credits includes everything from an uncredited role […]

Whitelaw Reid (1837 - 1912)

Whitelaw Reid was the longtime editor of the New York Tribune and a close friend of Horace Greeley. He was a leader of the Liberal Republican movement in 1872. During the war he wrote under the by-line “Agate”. A Republican, he had an illustrious career as a diplomat, serving as United States Ambassador to France from 1889 […]

Darius Mills (1825 - 1910)

Darius Mills was born in North Salem, New York, and his early career was as a bank clerk and retailer. He joined the California Gold Rush in December 1848, and founded a bank in Sacramento. He never invested in gold mining or silver mining directly, as he considered mining to be too speculative. He rather […]

James Iredell (1751 - 1799)

James Iredell was born in Lewes, England, the oldest of five surviving children of Francis Iredell, a Bristol merchant and his wife, the former Margaret MucCulloh of Ireland. The failure of his father’s business (and health) impelled James to immigrate to the Colonies in 1767 at the age of 17. Relatives assisted him in obtaining […]

William Paca (1740 - 1799)

William Paca was born in Abingdon, in what was then Baltimore County (Abingdon was later included in Harford County when that county was formed from Baltimore County in 1773), in the British colony of Maryland. He was the child of John Paca (c. 1712 – 1785), a wealthy planter in the area, and his wife […]

Thomas Johnson (1732 - 1819)

Thomas Johnson was born in Calvert County, Maryland, on November 4, 1732 to Thomas and Dorcas Sedgwick Johnson. His grandfather, also named Thomas, was a lawyer in London who had emigrated to Maryland sometime before 1700. He was the fourth of ten children, some of whom also had large families. His niece (daughter of his […]

John Fitzgerald (1863 - 1950)

John Fitzgerald was born in Boston to Irish businessman/politician Thomas Fitzgerald (1830–1913) of Bruff, County Limerick, and Rosanna Cox (1833–1923) of County Cavan. He was the fourth of twelve children. Both of his sisters, Ellen and Mary, and his eldest brother, Michael, died in infancy. Fitzgerald’s brother Joseph had severe brain damage from malaria and […]

Patricia Lawford (1924 - 2006)

Patricia Lawford was born in Brookline, Massachusetts, the sixth of nine children born to Rose (née Fitzgerald) and Joseph P. Kennedy, Sr.. She was considered the most sophisticated, yet also the most introverted, of her parents’ five daughters. Since childhood she had a fascination with travel and Hollywood. In time she would become a world […]

Eunice Shriver (1921 - 2009)

Born Eunice Mary Kennedy in Brookline, Massachusetts, she was the fifth of nine children of Joseph P. Kennedy, Sr., and Rose Fitzgerald. She was educated at the Convent of The Sacred Heart, Roehampton, London and at Manhattanville College in Upper Manhattan (the school later moved further North to Purchase, New York). After graduating from Stanford University […]

Rose Kennedy (1890 - 1995)

Rose Kennedy was born at 4 Garden Court in the North End neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts. She was the eldest of six children born to Boston Mayor John Francis “Honey Fitz” Fitzgerald (1863–1950) and Mary Josephine “Josie” Hannon (1865–1964). Her siblings were Mary, Thomas, John Jr., Eunice, and Frederick. As a young child, she lived in […]