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Alan Shepard was an astronaut and the first American to travel into space. In 1971, Shepard became the fifth and oldest astronaut to walk on the Moon; he was 47 years and 80 days old at that time. From 1963 to 1969, he played an important role as the Chief of the Astronaut Office. His work inspired several TV series.
Japanese-American actor Makoto Iwamatsu, or Mako, is remembered for his Academy Award- and Golden Globe-nominated role of Po-Han in The Sand Pebbles. He also appeared in Conan the Barbarian, Conan the Destroyer, and Seven Years in Tibet. He delivered a Tony-nominated performance in Pacific Overtures and co-founded East West Players.
Basil Rathbone was an English actor best remembered for playing private detective Sherlock Holmes in 14 movies made between 1939 and 1946. Renowned for playing morally ambiguous characters, Rathbone won the prestigious Tony Award for his portrayal of Dr. Austin Sloper in The Heiress. Basil Rathbone has been honored with three stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Henning von Tresckow was a German Army officer who played a key role in organizing German resistance against Adolf Hitler. He drafted the Valkyrie plan for a coup against the German government and even attempted to assassinate Hitler in 1943. The next year, he once again plotted to kill Hitler and failed again, upon which he committed suicide.
Legendary Austrian-American actor Theodore Bikel is best remembered for his Academy Award-nominated portrayal of Sheriff Max Muller in the film The Defiant Ones. He had also ruled the stage with plays such as Fiddler on the Roof. As a folk singer, he sang in 21 languages and also played the guitar.
David Ogilvy dropped out of Oxford in spite of earning a scholarship, and took up odd jobs, working as an apprentice chef and a salesman, before plunging into advertising. Co-founder of Ogilvy & Mather, he later introduced the concept of branding and earned the tag of The Father of Advertising.
Arshile Gorky, a powerful Armenian-American painter of 20th century, is counted among founding fathers of abstract expressionism. His experience, suffering and loss during Armenian genocide strongly influenced his development as an artist. With notable works like Landscape in the Manner of Cézanne and Nighttime, Enigma, Nostalgia, Gorky emerged as one of the major artists whose works defined American abstract expressionism.
German general Friedrich Olbricht was part of the First World War but is best remembered for his association with the July Plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler. Eventually arrested for the conspiracy, he and the other plotters were executed, and Olbricht was the first to be shot.
Engineer Washington Roebling is largely remembered for co-designing the Brooklyn Bridge with his father, John Augustus. He also worked as part of the Union Army during the Civil War. A perfectionist, he was once found unconscious in a compressed-air chamber at work, and that affected him permanently.
Nobel Prize-winning Zulu leader, non-violent anti-apartheid activist, and educator Albert John Luthuli, also known as Mvumbi, had led the African National Congress. Born in Southern Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe, he lost his father at 10 and was raised by his washerwoman mother. He died when a freight train struck him.
Edward B. Lewis was an American geneticist who helped found evolutionary developmental biology, a field that compares the developmental processes of various organisms. In 1995, he shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Eric Wieschaus and Christine Nüsslein-Volhard. He also won several other prestigious awards like the National Medal of Science and the Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize.
Popular magician and entertainer Bob McAllister started his entertainment career as a ventriloquist on the Today Show and soared to fame in the 1970s with his children’s show Wonderama. He also performed in the award-winning series Kids Are People Too and The Bob McAllister Show.
Seventeenth-century merchant Thomas Mun had been the director of the East India Company. He was the first to explain the economic theory of the balance of trade. A pioneer of mercantilism, he believed a nation’s wealth lay in its stock of gold, though such thoughts were proved flawed by later economists.
Hendrickje Stoffels was the mistress of popular Golden Age painter, draughtsman, and printmaker Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn. Although there is no evidence to suggest that Hendrickje posed as a model for Rembrandt's paintings, it is widely believed that she might have served as Rembrandt's muse and model for many of his artworks. Hendrickje Stoffels has been portrayed in many films.
Born in Scotland, Irish-American journalist Alexander Cockburn is best remembered as the co-editor of CounterPunch. The son of British journalist Claud Cockburn, Alexander had written for publications such as Village Voice and the LA Times. He also wrote politically relevant books such as Corruptions of Empire.
B. P. Koirala was a Nepalese political leader, revolutionary, and writer. He is best remembered for his service as the Prime Minister of Nepal from 1959 to 1960. He also served as the Home Minister of Nepal in 1951. B. P. Koirala, who was an ardent advocate of democracy, is often counted among the greatest political figures of Nepal.
Hafez Ibrahim was an Egyptian poet whose poetry expressed concerns over social problems like women’s rights, education, and poverty. He was nicknamed the Poet of the People for his work to improve the lives of the poor. Hafez Ibrahim is often counted among the most important Egyptian poets who reinvigorated Classical Arabic poetry in the 19th century.
Mikhail Mikhaylovich Gerasimov was a Soviet anthropologist and archaeologist. He is credited with developing the first technique of forensic sculpture and discovering the Mal'ta–Buret' culture. Gerasimov is also credited with reconstructing the faces of over 200 people, ranging from neanderthals to homo sapiens.
