Ida Straus (1849 - 1912)

Rosalie Ida Blun was born in 1849 in Worms, Germany to Nathan Blun (1815–1879) and his wife Wilhelmine “Mindel” (née Freudenberg; 1814–1868). She was the fifth of seven children including Amanda (1839–1907), Elias Nathan (1842–1878), Louis (1843–1927), Augusta Carolina (1845–1905), Moritz (1850–1858) and Abraham Blun (1853–1881). She emigrated to the United States with her family. In […]

Jesse Straus (1872 - 1936)

Jesse Straus was born Manhattan. He graduated from Harvard College in 1893. He and his brothers Percy and Herbert, both also Harvard graduates, donated funds that built Straus Hall in Harvard Yard. After college Jesse Straus was made to gain outside business experience before joining the family business. He worked as a clerk at the Manufacturers […]

Rodolfo Torre Cantú (1964 - 2010)

Rodolfo Torre Cantú was born in Ciudad Victoria, Tamaulipas, the fourth of five children of Ana María Cantú and Dr. Egidio Torre López, a distinguished public servant and PRI activist. He was married to Laura Graciela de la Garza Montoto, with whom he had three children: Laura, Rodolfo, and Paulina. Torre studied exclusively in institutions in […]

Édgar Morales Pérez (1973 - 2012)

Édgar Morales Pérez was born into an entrepreneur family, and studied at Civil Engineering at the Instituto Tecnológico de Matehuala. Upon graduation, he began working for Constructions Tribasa, a construction company that allowed him to participate in several infrastructure projects in Mexico and Guatemala. He then created his own construction company and began offering services […]

Eduardo Castro Luque (1963 - 2012)

Eduardo Castro Luque was born on 12 December 1963 in the Mexican northern city of Ciudad Obregón, Sonora. He was married to Rossana Coboj and had one boy named Eduardo. He held a bachelor’s degree in Business administration from the Sonora Institute of Technology. The 48-year-old politician had never held a political office before he was […]

María Salazar (1976 - 2012)

María Salazar was born in 1976 in Tiquicheo, a small town in the state of Michoacán, Mexico. She attended the Universidad Michoacana de San Nicolás de Hidalgo in Morelia and earned a PhD in medicine. She began her political career by joining the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), and from 2008 to 2011, she served as the […]

Randall Jarrell (1914 - 1965)

Randall Jarrell went on to teach at the University of Texas at Austin from 1939 to 1942, where he began to publish criticism and where he met his first wife, Mackie Langham. In 1942 he left the university to join the United States Army Air Forces. According to his obituary, he “[started] as a flying […]

Norman Shumway (1923 - 2006)

Norman Shumway was born in Kalamazoo, Michigan. He attended the University of Michigan for one year as an undergraduate until he was drafted by the Army in 1943, which sent him to John Tarleton Agricultural College in Stephenville, Texas for engineering training. He then underwent Army Specialized Training, which included nine months of pre-medical training […]

James Dickey (1923 - 1997)

James Dickey was born to lawyer Eugene Dickey and Maibelle Swift in Atlanta, Georgia, where he attended North Fulton High School in Atlanta’s Buckhead neighborhood. In 1942 he enrolled at Clemson Agricultural College of South Carolina and played on the football team as a tailback. After one semester, he left school to enlist in the […]

Robert Warren (1905 - 1989)

While still an undergraduate at Vanderbilt University, Robert Warren became associated with the group of poets there known as the Fugitives, and somewhat later, during the early 1930s, Warren and some of the same writers formed a group known as the Southern Agrarians. He contributed “The Briar Patch” to the Agrarian manifesto I’ll Take My […]

Frank Norris (1870 - 1902)

Frank Norris’s work often includes depictions of suffering caused by corrupt and greedy turn-of-the-century corporate monopolies. In The Octopus: A California Story, the Pacific and Southwest Railroad is implicated in the suffering and deaths of a number of ranchers in Southern California. At the end of the novel, after a bloody shootout between farmers and […]

Ida Tarbell (1857 - 1944)

Ida Tarbell began her career as a teacher at Poland Union Seminary in Poland, Ohio. She taught classes in geology, botany, geometry and trigonometry as well as languages, Greek, Latin, French and German. After two years, she realized teaching was too much for her and that she enjoyed writing more. As a suffragist, Tarbell had […]

Emma Goldman (1869 - 1940)

Emma Goldman (June 27 [O.S. June 15], 1869 – May 14, 1940) was an anarchist known for her political activism, writing, and speeches. She played a pivotal role in the development of anarchist political philosophy in North America and Europe in the first half of the 20th century. Born in Kovno, Russian Empire (present-day Kaunas, Lithuania) […]

John Scopes (1900 - 1970)

John Scopes was born in 1900 on a farm in Paducah, Kentucky where he was reared before moving to Danville, Illinois as a teenager. In 1917 he moved to Salem, Illinois where he was a member of the class of 1919 at Salem High School. He attended the University of Illinois for a short time […]

Charles Lindbergh (1902 - 1974)

Charles Augustus Lindbergh (February 4, 1902 – August 26, 1974), nicknamed Slim, Lucky Lindy, and The Lone Eagle, was an American aviator, author, inventor, military officer, explorer, and social activist. In 1927, at the age of 25, Charles Lindbergh emerged from virtual obscurity as a U.S. Air Mail pilot to instantaneous world fame as the […]

Mick Mannock (1887 - 1918)

Edward Corringham “Mick” Mannock VC, DSO & Two Bars, MC & Bar (24 May 1887 – 26 July 1918) was a British flying ace in the Royal Flying Corps and in the Royal Air Force during the First World War. Mannock was a pioneer of fighter aircraft tactics in aerial warfare. At his death he […]

George Richey (1935 - 2010)

George Richey (November 30, 1935 – July 31, 2010), born George Baker Richardson, was an American songwriter and record producer. He was born in Arkansas, but raised in Malden, Missouri. Richey was married to country legend singer/songwriter Tammy Wynette from 1978 until her death in 1998. They had no children. He married Dallas Cowboys cheerleader turned […]

David Houston (1935 - 1993)

David Houston was born in Bossier City in northwestern Louisiana. He was a descendant of Sam Houston, the first president of the Republic of Texas and Confederate General Robert E. Lee. His godfather was 1920s pop singer Gene Austin, no relation to Stephen F. Austin, another founder of Texas. Like Austin, Houston lived briefly as […]

Max Barnes (1936 - 2004)

Max Duane Barnes (July 24, 1936 – January 11, 2004) was a country music singer and songwriter. As a songwriter, Barnes composed many familiar songs of the 1980s and 1990s, receiving 42 songwriter awards in his career. Artists like George Jones (“Who’s Gonna Fill Their Shoes”), Waylon Jennings (“Drinkin’ and Dreamin’”), Conway Twitty (“Red Neckin’ Love […]

Billy Sherrill (1936 - 2015)

Billy Sherrill In 1962, Billy Sherrill moved to Nashville, where he was initially hired by Sam Phillips to manage the Nashville studios of Sun Records. When Sun sold its Nashville studio the following year, Sherrill moved to Epic Records, as an in-house producer. Given his limited exposure to country music up to that point, his […]

Curly Putman (1930 - 2016)

Claude “Curly” Putman, Jr. (November 20, 1930 – October 30, 2016) was an American songwriter, based in Nashville. Born in Princeton, Jackson County, Alabama, his biggest success was “Green, Green Grass of Home” (1964, sung by Porter Wagoner), which was covered by Roger Miller, Elvis Presley, Kenny Rogers, Don Williams, Burl Ives, Johnny Darrell, Gram […]

Paul Huff (1918 - 1994)

Paul Huff joined the Army from his birth city of Cleveland, Tennessee in June 1941, and by February 8, 1944 was serving as a Corporal in the 509th Parachute Infantry Battalion. On that day, near Carano, Italy, Huff led a reconnaissance patrol while under heavy fire from German forces. For his actions during the patrol, […]

Desmond Doss (1919 - 2006)

Desmond Doss was born in Lynchburg, Virginia, son of William Thomas Doss, a carpenter, and Bertha E. (Oliver) Doss. Enlisting voluntarily in April 1942, Doss refused to kill an enemy soldier or carry a weapon (pistol) into combat because of his personal beliefs as a Seventh-day Adventist. He consequently became a medic, and while serving in […]

George Benedict (1826 - 1907)

George Benedict was born on 10 December 1826 in Burlington, Vermont. He entered the University of Vermont and graduated with honors in 1847, receiving the degree of Master of Arts in 1850. While a student he became a member of the Sigma Phi Society as well as the Phi Beta Kappa honor society. He was […]

Chester Bender (1914 - 1996)

Chester Bender was born in Burnsville, West Virginia and later moved with his parents John I. Bender and Inez Harbert Bender, to Plant City, Florida in 1925. In 1936, he became the first Florida resident to graduate from the United States Coast Guard Academy in New London, Connecticut. During his time at the Academy, he […]

James Bell (1856 - 1919)

James Bell was born to John Wilson and Sarah Margaret Venable (Allen) Bell in Shelbyville, Kentucky. His mother died when he was young. Thereafter, two most important women in his life were the black woman who looked after him as a child and the white woman who became his step mother. During the Civil War, Shelby […]

Julie Bovasso (1930 - 1991)

Julie Bovasso was born in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, New York, the daughter of Angela Mary (Padovani) and Bernard Michael Bovasso, a teamster. She was of Italian descent. She attended The High School of Music & Art in Manhattan. Bovasso appeared in many films, including Saturday Night Fever (1977) as John Travolta’s mother, and repeated the role in […]

Conrad Hall (1926 - 2003)

Born in Papeete, Tahiti, French Polynesia, Conrad Hall was the son of writer James Norman Hall and Sarah (Lala) Winchester Hall, who was part-Polynesian. Hall attended the University of Southern California, intending to study journalism, but drifted instead to the university’s cinema school, from which he graduated in 1949. He worked on documentaries, in television […]

Sven Nykvist (1922 - 2006)

Sven Nykvist was born in Moheda, Kronobergs län, Sweden. His parents were Lutheran missionaries who spent most of their lives in the Belgian Congo, so Nykvist was raised by relatives in Sweden and saw his parents rarely. His father was a keen amateur photographer of African wildlife, whose activities may have sparked Nykvist’s interest in […]

Haskell Wexler (1922 - 2015)

Haskell Wexler was born to a Jewish family in Chicago in 1922. His parents were Simon and Lottie Wexler, whose children included Jerrold, Joyce (Isaacs) and Yale. He attended the progressive Francis Parker School, where he was best friends with Barney Rosset. After a year of college at the University of California, Berkeley and a tour […]