Vilmos Zsigmond (1930 - 2016)

Vilmos Zsigmond was born in Szeged, Hungary, the son of Bozena (née Illichman), an administrator, and Vilmos Zsigmond, a celebrated soccer player and coach. He studied cinema at the Academy of Drama and Film in Budapest. He received an MA in cinematography. He worked for five years in a Budapest feature film studio becoming “director […]

Simone Schaller (1912 - 2016)

Simone Schaller was born in Manchester, Connecticut, to a Swiss father and an Italian mother. Her family left Connecticut when Simone was seven and moved to Monrovia, California, because of her father’s asthma. She had one brother, born in Manchester, and two sisters, one born in Manchester and the other in California. Her father, originally […]

Patricia Scott (1929 - 2016)

Patricia Scott [“Pat”] (July 14, 1929 – October 19, 2016) was a pitcher who played in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League for parts of four seasons spanning 1948-1953. Listed at 5 ft 7 in (1.70 m), 155 lb., she batted and threw right-handed. A solid finesse pitcher, Patricia Scott had one of the best overhand […]

Tommy Bartlett (1914 - 1998)

Born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Tommy Bartlett began his career in entertainment by becoming a broadcaster at radio station WISN at the young age of 13. After moving to Chicago, Illinois, he became a staff announcer at the CBS-owned WBBM radio station. He continued here until the outbreak of World War II, when he learned to […]

Arthur Shawcross (1945 - 2008)

Arthur Shawcross was born in Kittery, Maine, the first of four children of Arthur Roy Shawcross and Elizabeth (née Yerakes) Shawcross. His family moved to Watertown in New York State when he was young. While several later tests showed Shawcross’ intelligence to be sub-normal or even “borderline retarded”, he received As and Bs in his […]

Paul Reid (1957 - 2013)

At Captain D’s on Lebanon Road in Donelson, Tennessee, on the morning of February 16, 1997, Paul Reid entered the store before opening, under the guise of applying for a job. Once inside, he forced employee Sarah Jackson, 16, and the manager, Steve Hampton, 25, into the restaurant’s cooler. Reid forced the two to lie […]

David Parker Ray (1939 - 2002)

During his childhood, David Parker Ray lived with his grandfather. However, he still saw his father and was physically abused by him. At Mountainair High School, in Mountainair, New Mexico, he was also bullied by his peers for his shyness around girls, and he started abusing alcohol and other drugs as a teenager. As a […]

Thetus Sims (1852 - 1939)

Thetus Sims was born on April 25, 1852 near Waynesboro, Tennessee in Wayne County son of George Washington and Sarah Jane Whitson Sims. He attended a private school at Martin Mills and moved with his parents to Savannah, Tennessee in Hardin County in 1862 during the Civil War. Thetus Sims attended Savannah (Tennessee) College and graduated […]

James Taylor (1880 - 1939)

James Willis Taylor (August 28, 1880 – November 14, 1939) was a U.S. Representative from Tennessee. James Taylor was born near Lead Mine Bend in Union County, Tennessee, Taylor was the son of James W. and Sarah Elizabeth (Rogers) Taylor. He attended the public schools, Holbrook Normal College, Fountain City, Tennessee, and the American Temperance University, […]

Guy Carawan (1927 - 2015)

Guy Carawan was born in California in 1927, to Southern parents. His mother, from Charleston, South Carolina, was the resident poet at Winthrop College (now Winthrop University) in Rock Hill, South Carolina, and his father, a veteran of World War I from North Carolina, worked as an asbestos contractor. He earned a bachelor’s degree in […]

Zilphia Horton (1910 - 1956)

Zilphia Horton (April 14, 1910 – April 11, 1956) was an American musician, community organizer, educator, Civil Rights activist, and folklorist. She is best known for her work with her husband Myles Horton at the Highlander Folk School where she is generally credited with turning such songs as “We Shall Overcome”, “Keep Your Eyes on […]

Myles Horton (1905 - 1990)

A poor white man from Savannah in West Tennessee, Horton’s social and political views were strongly influenced by theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, under whom he studied at the Union Theological Seminary in New York City. Along with educator Don West and Methodist minister James A. Dombrowski of New Orleans, Horton founded the Highlander Folk School (now […]

Carl Hatch (1889 - 1963)

Carl Atwood Hatch (November 27, 1889 – September 15, 1963) was a Democratic Party politician from New Mexico who represented New Mexico in the United States Senate from 1933 until 1949, and was later a United States federal judge. Hatch was born in Kirwin, Kansas, and attended public schools in Kansas and Oklahoma. In 1912 he […]

Oren Harris (1903 - 1997)

Born in Belton in Hempstead County near Hope, Arkansas, Oren Harris attended public schools in Prescott in Nevada County. In 1929, he graduated from Henderson State College in Arkadelphia, Arkansas. Thereafter in 1930, he completed law school at Cumberland University in Lebanon, Tennessee. He was admitted to the bar in 1930 and commenced practice in […]

Cale Rice (1872 - 1943)

Cale Rice (December 7, 1872 – January 24, 1943) was an American poet and dramatist. He was born in Dixon, Kentucky, to Laban Marchbanks Rice, a Confederate veteran and tobacco merchant, and his wife Martha Lacy. He was a younger brother of Laban Lacy Rice, a noted educator. Cale Rice grew up in Evansville, Indiana, and […]

George E. Allen (1896 - 1973)

George E. Allen was born in Booneville, Mississippi. He earned a law degree at Cumberland University in Tennessee. Allen was the head football coach for Cumberland College Bulldogs in Lebanon, Tennessee, for one game in 1916. Cumberland University suffered the greatest loss in the history of college football to Georgia Tech by a score of 222 […]

Thomas Fugate (1899 - 1980)

Thomas Fugate was born on April 10, 1899, on a farm near Tazewell, in Claiborne County, Tennessee. He attended public schools before pursuing higher education at the University of Tennessee and Lincoln Memorial University. In 1918, he married Lillian Rowlett, a union that produced five children. Soon after, Fugate moved his family to Ewing, Virginia, […]

Robert Shulman (1954 - 2006)

Robert Shulman (March 28, 1954 – April 13, 2006) was an American serial killer. Shulman, a postal worker from Hicksville, New York on Long Island, was convicted of murdering five prostitutes between 1991 and 1996, the year when he was arrested. Looking for the murder site, a detective canvassing hotels heard about a man driving a […]

Paul Stephani (1944 - 1998)

Paul Stephani’s crimes began after dark, on New Year’s Eve 1980. He viciously beat Karen Potack with a tire iron and raped her, while she was walking home from a New Year’s party in Prescott, Wisconsin. Potack had been beaten so badly that her throat looked as if it had been slit open with a […]

Maury Travis (1965 - 2002)

Maury Travis (October 25, 1965 – June 10, 2002) was an American serial killer who committed suicide in a St. Louis county jail, after being arrested for murder. Travis was named in a Federal criminal complaint for the murders of two women. At the time of the murders, Travis was a waiter and on parole […]

Christopher Wilder (1945 - 1984)

Christopher Wilder was born on March 13, 1945, in Sydney, Australia, the son of an American naval officer and an Australian national. He nearly died at birth, but recovered, and almost drowned in a swimming pool at the age of two. In 1962 or 1963, he pleaded guilty to a gang-rape at a beach in […]

Liliuokalani (1838 - 1917)

Liliuokalani (Hawaiian pronunciation: [liliˌʔuokəˈlɐni]; born Lydia Lili‘u Loloku Walania Wewehi Kamaka‘eha (September 2, 1838 – November 11, 1917) was a composer of Hawaiian music, author and the last reigning monarch of the Kingdom of Hawaii. She reigned from January 29, 1891 until the overthrow of the Kingdom of Hawaii on January 17, 1893. She was born […]

John Hay (1838 - 1905)

John Milton Hay (October 8, 1838 – July 1, 1905) was an American statesman and official whose career in government stretched over almost half a century. Beginning as a private secretary and assistant to Abraham Lincoln, Hay’s highest office was United States Secretary of State under Presidents William McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt. Hay was also […]

Helen Whitney (1875 - 1944)

Helen Whitney was the daughter of Clara Louise Stone, and her husband, John Milton Hay, who served as the United States Ambassador to Great Britain and United States Secretary of State. Helen Hay was a poet and an author of books for children. A number of her poems were published in Harper’s Magazine. One of her […]

Betsey Whitney (1908 - 1998)

Betsey Whitney was the middle daughter of prominent neurosurgeon Dr. Harvey Williams Cushing and Katharine Stone Crowell, who hailed from a socially prominent Cleveland family. Dr. Cushing was descended from Matthew Cushing, an early settler of Hingham, Massachusetts. Dr. Cushing served as professor of surgery at Johns Hopkins, Harvard and Yale Universities, and the family […]

Liz Tippett (1906 - 1988)

Mary Elizabeth Whitney Person Tippett (born Mary Elizabeth Altemus) (18 June 1906 – 30 October 1988) was a wealthy American socialite and philanthropist who was a champion horsewoman and for more than fifty years, a prominent owner/breeder of Thoroughbred racehorses. Born in Wynnewood, Pennsylvania, Liz Tippett was the daughter of Elizabeth Dobson and her husband Lemuel […]

Joan Payson (1903 - 1975)

Joan Payson was born in New York City, the daughter of Payne Whitney and Helen Julia Hay. Her brother was John Hay Whitney. She inherited a trust fund from her grandfather, William C. Whitney and on her father’s death in 1927, she received a large part of the family fortune. She attended Miss Chapin’s School, […]

Kenji Goto (1967 - 2015)

Kenji Goto was born on 23 October 1967 in the city of Sendai, Miyagi Prefecture, Japan. After graduating from Hosei University in Tokyo in 1991, he worked for a media production company before establishing Independent Press in 1996. He also worked with U.N. organizations including UNICEF and the U.N. Refugee Agency. Reporting from war-torn countries around […]

David Haines (1970 - 2014)

David Haines was born in East Yorkshire, moving to Perth, Scotland, as a child and prior to his capture resided in Sisak, Croatia, as a father of two. Haines had been an aircraft engineer in the Royal Air Force before turning to work in humanitarian aid in 1999. He helped victims of conflict in the […]

Margaret Hassan (1945 - 2004)

Margaret Hassan was born Margaret Fitzsimons in Dalkey, County Dublin, Ireland, to parents Peter and Mary Fitzsimons. However, soon after the end of World War II her family moved to London, England, where she spent most of her early life and where her younger siblings were born. At the age of twenty seven, she married […]