Jim Hutton (1934 - 1979)

Jim Hutton was born in Binghamton, New York, the son of Helen and Thomas R. Hutton, an editor and managing editor of the Binghamton Press. Hutton’s parents divorced while he was an infant, and he never knew his father. Hutton was expelled from five high schools due to behavior problems but had excellent grades and […]

David Wayne (1914 - 1995)

David Wayne was born Wayne James McMeekan in Traverse City, Michigan, the son of Helen Matilda (née Mason) and John David McMeekan. His mother died when he was 4. He grew up in Bloomingdale, Michigan. When World War II began Wayne volunteered as an ambulance driver with the British Army in North Africa. When the […]

Nunnally Johnson (1897 - 1977)

Nunnally Hunter Johnson was born on December 5, 1897 in Columbus, Georgia. He was the first of two sons born to Johnny Pearl “Onnie” (née Patrick) and James Nunnally “Jim” Johnson. He and his younger brother, Cecil Patrick Johnson, were raised in Columbus, Georgia. His father was a journeyman mechanic, turned tinsmith and coppersmith, turned […]

Alexander Schmorell (1917 - 1943)

Alexander Schmorell’s father, a medical doctor, was German-born and raised in Russia. Schmorell’s mother was Russian, the daughter of a Russian Orthodox priest. Schmorell was baptised in the Russian Orthodox Church. His mother died of typhus during the Russian Civil War when he was two years old. In 1920 his widowed father married a German […]

Kurt Huber (1893 - 1943)

Kurt Huber was born in Chur, Switzerland, to German parents. He grew up in Stuttgart and later, after his father’s death, in Munich. He showed an aptitude for such subjects as music, philosophy and psychology. Huber became a professor of Psychology and Music in 1926 at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. Huber was appalled by […]

James J Braddock (1905 - 1974)

James J Braddock James J Braddock was born on June 7th, 1905, to Irish immigrant parents Joseph Braddock and Elizabeth O’Toole Braddock in a tiny apartment on West 48th Street in New York City. The Braddock family was growing and with five boys and two girls, Joseph and Elizabeth relocated across the Hudson River to […]

Christoph Probst (1919 - 1943)

Christoph Hermann Probst (born 6 November 1918, Murnau am Staffelsee – 22 February 1943, Munich) was a German student of medicine and member of the White Rose (Weiße Rose) resistance group. White Rose was the name of a resistance group in Munich in the time of the Third Reich. The group, founded in June 1942, consisted […]

Inge Scholl (1917 - 1998)

Inge Aicher-Scholl (11 August 1917 – 4 September 1998), born in present-day Crailsheim, Germany was the daughter of Robert Scholl, mayor of Forchtenberg, and elder sister of Hans and Sophie Scholl, who studied at the University of Munich in 1942, and were core members of the White Rose student resistance movement in Nazi Germany. Inge […]

Willi Graf (1918 - 1943)

Willi Graf (2 January 1918 in Kuchenheim near Euskirchen – 12 October 1943 in Munich) was a Roman Catholic member of the White Rose (Weiße Rose) resistance group in Nazi Germany. Willi Graf’s family moved to Saarbrücken in 1922, where his father ran a wine wholesaler, and was the manager of the Johannishof, the second largest […]

Sophie Scholl (1921 - 1943)

Sophie Scholl was brought up a Lutheran. She entered junior or grade school at the age of seven, learned easily, and had a carefree childhood. In 1930, the family moved to Ludwigsburg and then two years later to Ulm where her father had a business consulting office. In 1932, Scholl started attending a secondary school for […]

Hans Scholl (1918 - 1943)

Hans Scholl was born in Ingersheim (now a part of Crailsheim, Baden-Württemberg). In 1933 he joined the Hitler Youth, but quickly became disillusioned when he realised the true meaning behind the group. He was raised as a Lutheran, although he did at one point consider converting to Catholicism. After this, Hans Scholl studied in the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität […]

Edward Said (1935 - 2003)

Edward Wadie Said (Arabic pronunciation: [wædiːʕ sæʕiːd] Arabic: إدوارد وديع سعيد‎‎, Idwārd Wadīʿ Saʿīd; 1 November 1935 – 25 September 2003) was a professor of literature at Columbia University, a public intellectual, and a founder of the academic field of postcolonial studies. Born in Mandatory Palestine, Said was an American citizen from birth by way […]

John Brown (1800 - 1859)

John Brown (May 9, 1800 – December 2, 1859) was an American abolitionist who believed armed insurrection was the only way to overthrow the institution of slavery in the United States. During the 1856 conflict in Kansas, Brown commanded forces at the Battle of Black Jack and the Battle of Osawatomie. Brown’s followers killed five slavery […]

Robert Ford (1861 - 1892)

Robert Ford was born in 1861, in Ray County, Missouri. He was the youngest child of James Thomas Ford and his wife, the former Mary Bruin. As a young man, Robert became an admirer of Jesse James for his Civil War record and criminal exploits. In 1880, at the age of 19, he finally met […]

Zerelda James (1825 - 1911)

Born as Zerelda Elizabeth Cole in Woodford County, Kentucky her parents were James and Sarah Lindsay Cole; she had one younger brother, Jesse Richard Cole. One year younger than she, her brother committed suicide in 1895 for undisclosed reasons. When Zerelda James was a small child, her father broke his neck in a riding accident leaving […]

William T. Anderson (1840 - 1864)

William T. Anderson (1840 – October 26, 1864), better known as Bloody Bill, was one of the deadliest and most brutal pro-Confederate guerrilla leaders in the American Civil War. Anderson led a band that targeted Union loyalists and Federal soldiers in Missouri and Kansas. Raised by a family of Southerners in Kansas, William Anderson began supporting […]

Cole Younger (1844 - 1916)

Thomas Coleman “Cole” Younger, was born on January 15, 1844 on the Younger family farm. He was a son of Henry Washington Younger, a prosperous farmer from Greenwood, Missouri and Bersheba Leighton Fristoe, daughter of a prominent Jackson County farmer. Cole was the seventh of fourteen children. During the American Civil War, savage guerrilla warfare wracked […]

Jim Younger (1848 - 1902)

James Hardin Younger (January 15, 1848 – October 19, 1902) was a notable American outlaw and member of the James–Younger Gang. He was the brother of Cole, John and Bob Younger. Born in Missouri on January 15, 1848. He was the ninth of fourteen children born to Henry Washington Younger and Bersheba Leighton Fristoe. Jim Younger […]

Bob Younger (1853 - 1889)

Robert Ewing “Bob” Younger (October 29, 1853 – September 16, 1889) was an American criminal and outlaw, the younger brother of Cole, Jim and John Younger. He was a member of the James–Younger Gang. Born in Missouri on October 29, 1853, Robert was the thirteenth of fourteen children born to Henry Washington Younger and Bersheba Leighton […]

Blanche Barrow (1911 - 1988)

Blanche Iva Barrow (née Caldwell) (January 1, 1911 – December 24, 1988) was a fringe member of the Bonnie and Clyde gang and the wife of Clyde Barrow’s brother Buck. Brought up by her father, she had a poor relationship with her mother, who arranged for Blanche Barrow to be married to an older man. […]

Ted Hinton (1904 - 1977)

Ted Hinton, then twenty-nine, was assigned to accompany Deputy Sheriff Bob Alcorn on the premise that Hinton knew Clyde Barrow and could identify him. Hinton and Alcorn were assigned by Dallas County Sheriff Richard A. “Smoot” Schmid to assist Frank Hamer and his assistant Benjamin Gault in a shoot-to-kill order against Bonnie and Clyde that […]

Ralph Fults (1911 - 1993)

Born to a U.S. postal worker in Anna, Texas, Ralph Fults was arrested in Aspermont, Texas after police found him carrying a suitcase full of stolen goods. The 14-year-old Fults escaped from the town’s jail a week later after making a key from an old tobacco can. With the town sheriff attending the county fair, […]

Raymond Hamilton (1913 - 1935)

Little is known about Raymond Hamilton’s childhood. He was born in Oklahoma and raised in Dallas, Texas, where he received his minor public education. He met Clyde Barrow who lived in the same neighborhood as Hamilton when both men were youths, and later he would join the “Barrow Gang”. Hamilton participated in the killing of […]

Henry Methvin (1912 - 1948)

Henry Methvin was born in Louisiana on April 8, 1912, to Ivan “Ivy” T. Methvin and Avie Stephens. He was serving a 10-year prison sentence at the Eastham prison farm in Huntsville, Texas when Bonnie and Clyde came to break out Raymond Hamilton on January 16, 1934; one guard was killed and another wounded in […]

Charles Stuart (1959 - 1990)

In 1989, Charles ‘Chuck’ Stuart was serving as the general manager for Edward F. Kakas & Sons, furriers on Newbury Street. Stuart’s wife, Carol (née DiMaiti, born March 26, 1959, in Boston), was a tax attorney, and pregnant with the couple’s first child. On October 23, the couple were driving through the Roxbury neighborhood after […]

Reeva Steenkamp (1983 - 2013)

Reeva Steenkamp was born in Cape Town, to parents Barry Steenkamp, a horse trainer, and his wife, June (née Marshall, previously Cowburn), who was born in Blackburn, England. She had two older siblings, Adam and Simone. The family later moved to Port Elizabeth, where she attended St Dominic’s Priory School. After school she studied law […]

William Sloper (1883 - 1955)

William Thomson Sloper (December 13, 1883 − May 1, 1955) was an American stockbroker and survivor of the sinking of the RMS Titanic. Sloper, who was 28 when the Titanic sank, traveled as a first-class passenger and was saved after boarding lifeboat #7, the first to be launched from the vessel. William Sloper was born in […]

Matthew Shepard (1976 - 1998)

Matthew Wayne “Matt” Shepard (December 1, 1976 – October 12, 1998) was an American student at the University of Wyoming who was beaten, tortured, and left to die near Laramie, Wyoming on the night of October 6, 1998. Matthew Shepard died six days later at Poudre Valley Hospital in Fort Collins, Colorado, on October 12, […]

Kayla Rolland (1993 - 2000)

The death of Kayla Rolland occurred at Buell Elementary School in Mount Morris Township, Michigan, United States on February 29, 2000. Six-year-old Dedrick Darnell Owens fatally shot classmate Kayla Renee Rolland (May 12, 1993 – February 29, 2000) in a stairwell before he was taken into police custody. Buell Elementary School closed in 2002. It […]

Medgar Evers (1925 - 1963)

Medgar Wiley Evers (July 2, 1925 – June 12, 1963) was an American civil rights activist from Mississippi who worked to overturn segregation at the University of Mississippi and to enact social justice and voting rights. He is remembered for saying “You can kill a man, but you can’t kill an idea.” A World War II […]