Kim Sun-il (1970 - 2004)

Kim Sun-il was fluent in Arabic, holding a graduate degree in that language from Seoul’s Hankuk University of Foreign Studies in February 2003. He also had degrees in English and theology, and had hoped to become a missionary in the Middle East. Kim arrived in Iraq on June 15, 2003, working for Gana General Trading Company, […]

Mattie Blaylock (1850 - 1888)

Mattie Blaylock was born Celia Ann Blaylock in Monroe Township, Johnson County, Iowa, near Fairfax, Iowa, to Henry Blaylock and Elizabeth “Betsy” Vance. She was their third child and second daughter. The family lived on a small farm that Henry had obtained in 1846. Henry and his wife were stern parents and adhered to the […]

Josephine Earp (1860 - 1944)

Josephine Earp (1860 – December 19, 1944) was the common-law wife of Wyatt Earp, a famed Old West lawman and gambler. She met Wyatt in 1881 in the frontier boom town of Tombstone, Arizona Territory, when she was living with Johnny Behan, sheriff of Cochise County, Arizona. Josephine was born in New York to a Prussian […]

Laurie Show (1975 - 1991)

The murder of Laurie Show occurred on December 20, 1991. Show was a 16-year-old sophomore student at Conestoga Valley High School. Show’s body was discovered in her Lancaster, Pennsylvania home on December 20, 1991 by her mother Hazel Show, with Show’s throat cut. Classmates Lisa Michelle Lambert, Tabitha Buck, and Lawrence “Butch” Yunkin were charged with […]

Diane Whipple (1968 - 2001)

Diane Whipple was born in Princeton, New Jersey. She grew up and attended high school in Manhasset, New York, on Long Island. She was raised primarily by her grandparents, and was a gifted athlete from a young age. She became a two-time All-American lacrosse player in high school, and later at Penn State. She was […]

Jill Dando (1961 - 1999)

Jill Dando was born at Ashcombe House Maternity Home in Weston-super-Mare, Somerset. She was the daughter of Jack Dando (February 1918 – February 2009), who died in Weston-super-Mare on his 91st birthday, and Winifred Mary Jean Dando (August 1928 – January 1986), who died of leukaemia aged 58. Her only sibling, brother Nigel (born 1952), […]

Jill Meagher (1983 - 2012)

Gillian “Jill” Meagher was born as Gillian McKeon on 30 October 1982 in Drogheda, County Louth, Ireland. She spent her early childhood in Termonfeckin village to the north of Drogheda. Jill Meagher first moved to Australia when she was aged 9 when her father, George McKeon, worked in Perth. She spent several years in Perth, in […]

Agustín Lara (1897 - 1970)

Agustín Lara was born in Tlacotalpan, Veracruz. Later, the Lara family had to move to Mexico City, establishing their house in the borough of Coyoacán. After their mother died, Agustín and his siblings lived in a hospice run by their aunt. It was there that he had his first contact with music. Lara’s first musical composition […]

Carlos Gardel (1890 - 1935)

Carlos Gardel was born to unmarried 25-year-old laundress Berthe Gardès, the baby registered under the name Charles Romuald Gardès in Toulouse, France, on 11 December 1890. The father of the baby boy was listed on his birth certificate as “unknown”; eleven days later Berthe Gardès signed a statement establishing the baby’s father as Paul Laserre, […]

Javier Solís (1931 - 1966)

Javier Solís, born Gabriel Siria Levario, was the first of three children of Francisco Siria Mora, a baker/butcher, and Juana Levario Plata, a trader. Juana had a stall at a public market and as her spouse had allegedly abandoned her, she had little time save for work. After a time, she decided to leave her […]

Gabriel Figueroa (1907 - 1997)

Gabriel Figueroa Mateos (April 24, 1907 – April 27, 1997) was a Mexican cinematographer who worked both in Mexican cinema and Hollywood.His mother died after giving birth to him. His father, unable to cope with the loss of his wife, left Gabriel and his brother Roberto to be cared for by their aunts. He studied […]

Joaquín Pardavé (1900 - 1955)

At age 18, Joaquin Pardavé followed in the footsteps of his parents. He began his acting career in the operetta Los sobrinos del capitán Grant, in the company of his uncle Carlos Pardavé, when he asked to meet an actor. Later he joined the company of Jose Campillo, where he met and teamed for 12 […]

Joaquín Cordero (1922 - 2013)

Joaquín Cordero (Spanish pronunciation: [xoakin kordero];(August 16, 1922 – February 19, 2013) was a Mexican actor of the cinema, theatre and telenovelas. Shortly after his birth, Cordero’s family moved to Mexico City, and in the following years he studied in a seminary and even considered becoming a priest, but eventually he decided to pursue a law […]

Cordell Hull (1871 - 1955)

Cordell Hull (October 2, 1871 – July 23, 1955) was an American politician from the U.S. state of Tennessee. He is known as the longest-serving Secretary of State, holding the position for 11 years (1933–1944) in the administration of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt during much of World War II. Hull received the Nobel Peace Prize […]

Norman Taurog (1899 - 1981)

Norman Taurog was born February 23, 1899 in Chicago, Illinois, to Arthur Jack Taurog and Anita (originally “Annie”) Taurog (née Goldsmith). His father’s naturalization records claim that Arthur was born in the Russian Empire in 1872 or 1873 and naturalized as a minor, while his mother was from New York. Later census records claimed that […]

David Selznick (1902 - 1965)

David Selznick was born David Selznick in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the son of Florence Anna (Sachs) and silent movie producer and distributor Lewis J. Selznick. His parents were Lithuanian Jewish immigrants and he had four siblings. Selznick added the “O” to distinguish himself from an uncle with the same name. He studied at Columbia University in New […]

Deems Taylor (1885 - 1966)

Deems Taylor was born in New York City to JoJo and Katherine Taylor. He attended New York University. Taylor married three times. His first wife was Jane Anderson. They married in 1910 and divorced in 1918. In 1921, he married Mary Kennedy, who was an actress and a writer. They had a daughter, Joan Kennedy Taylor, […]

Ford Beebe (1888 - 1978)

Ford Beebe (November 26, 1888 – November 26, 1978) was a screenwriter and director. He entered the film business as a writer around 1916 and over the next 60 years wrote and/or directed almost 200 films. He specialized in B-movies – mostly Westerns – and action serials, working on the “Buck Rogers” and “Flash Gordon” serials […]

Ernest Schoedsack (1893 - 1979)

Ernest B. Schoedsack was born in Council Bluffs, Iowa, on June 8, 1893. He ran away from home at age fourteen and worked with road gangs. He went to San Francisco, where he worked as a surveyor. He grew to be 6 ft 5 in (1.96 m), and his friends called him “Shorty.” Schoedsack began his […]

Beatrice Roberts (1905 - 1970)

Alice Beatrice Roberts (March 7, 1905 – July 24, 1970) was an American film actress. She was briefly married to the cartoonist and showman Robert L. Ripley. Beatrice Roberts was born on March 7, 1905 in New York City. She married Robert Ripley at age 14 on October 31, 1919, about the time he invented his […]

Robert Ripley (1890 - 1949)

In 1919 Robert Ripley married Beatrice Roberts. He made his first trip around the world in 1922, delineating a travel journal in installments. This ushered in a new topic for his cartoons: unusual and exotic foreign locales and cultures. Because he took the veracity of his work quite seriously, in 1923, Ripley hired a researcher […]

James Robertson (1742 - 1814)

James Robertson was born in Brunswick County, Virginia, of Scots-Irish and English descent. Around 1750, his father relocated to Wake County, North Carolina. He worked on his father’s farm and had limited formal education. In 1759, young Robertson accompanied explorer Daniel Boone on his third expedition to lands beyond the Allegheny Mountains. The party discovered the […]

Pavel Popovich (1930 - 2009)

Pavel Popovich was born in Uzyn, Kiev Oblast of Soviet Union (now Ukraine) to Roman Porfirievich Popovich (a fireman in a sugar factory) and Theodosia Kasyanovna Semyonov. He had two sisters (one older, one younger) and two brothers (both younger). During World War II, the Germans occupied Uzyn, and burned documents including Popovich’s birth certificate. After […]

Ralph Plaisted (1927 - 2008)

Ralph Plaisted (30 September 1927 – 8 September 2008) and his three companions, Walt Pederson, Gerry Pitzl and Jean-Luc Bombardier, are regarded by most polar authorities to be the first to succeed in a surface traverse across the ice to the North Pole on 19 April 1968, making the first confirmed surface conquest of the […]

Julius Payer (1841 - 1915)

Born Julius Payer, his father Franz Anton Rudolf Payer was a retired officer who died when Julius was only fourteen. Payer attended k.k. cadet school in Łobzów near Cracow (now Poland). Between 1857 and 1859 he studied at the Theresian Military Academy in Wiener Neustadt (near Vienna). In 1859 he served as a sub-lieutenant with […]

Knud Rasmussen (1879 - 1933)

Knud Rasmussen was born in Jakobshavn (now Ilulissat), Greenland, the son of a Danish missionary, the vicar Christian Rasmussen, and an Inuit- Danish mother, Lovise Rasmussen (née Fleischer). He had two siblings, including a brother, Peter Lim. Rasmussen spent his early years in Greenland among the Kalaallit (Inuit) where he learned from an early age […]

Wally Herbert (1934 - 2007)

Walter Herbert was born into an army family in England who emigrated to Egypt on assignment when he was three. They moved on to South Africa for nine years. He studied at the Royal School of Military Survey, then spent 18 months surveying in Egypt and Cyprus. He travelled back to England through Turkey and […]

Zebulon Pike (1779 - 1813)

Zebulon Pike was born during the Revolutionary War on January 5, 1779 near Lamberton, now called Lamington, in Somerset County, New Jersey. Pike would follow in the footsteps of his father, also named Zebulon, who had begun his own career in the military service of the United States beginning in 1775, at the outset of […]

Josephine Powell (1919 - 2007)

Josephine Powell was born in New York City. Powell attended Cornell University, where she earned a BA in 1941. She also attended the New York School for Social Work at Columbia University where she received her Master’s degree in 1945. After her graduation, Powell left the United States to start working for the International Refugee […]

Terry Ramsaye (1885 - 1954)

Terry Ramsaye (2 November 1885, Tonganoxie, Kansas – 19 August 1954, Norwalk, Connecticut) was a film historian and author of A Million and One Nights: A History of the Motion Picture [Through 1925] (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1926). Terry Ramsaye started his professional career as an engineer but switched to journalism when he joined the […]