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1-50 of 85
- Actor
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Standing 6 feet 9 inches tall, Garrett grew up in Woodland Hills outside of Los Angeles. His father was a hearing aid specialist working in geriatrics and his mother was a housewife. Garrett spent a whopping six weeks at UCLA before going into stand-up comedy full time. He began performing his act at various Los Angeles comedy clubs, getting his start at the Ice House in Pasadena and the Improv in Hollywood. In 1984, he became the first $100,000 grand champion winner in the comedy category of Star Search (1983). This led to his first appearance, at age 23, on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson (1962), making him one of the youngest comedians ever to perform on the show. In 1986, Garrett told a joke the talent booker warned him against and he hasn't been on the show since. Following his "Tonight Show" appearance, Garrett's career took off, garnering him headlining gigs at several national venues as well as opening spots for legends including Diana Ross and Liza Minnelli. He has headlined at Bally's Park Place and co-headlined with The Temptations at Trump Plaza. He has also worked at The Sands Hotel in Las Vegas with Frank Sinatra, Caesar's Palace with David Copperfield, and Smokey Robinson, Harrah's with Sammy Davis Jr. and The Beach Boys, and Radio City Music Hall with Julio Iglesias. In 1989, the Las Vegas Review Journal named him the Best Comedian working on the strip. Changing gears, he made his way into the world of television. He struck gold with Everybody Loves Raymond (1996). Apart from his supporting role in sitcoms, he has also done voice-overs and appeared in a few films. In 1998, Garrett made a real-life proposal to his then real-life girlfriend, Jill Diven, on the set of Everybody Loves Raymond (1996). Garrett currently resides in Hollywood, California with his two Labradors Retrievers, Gus and Mabel.- Writer
- Producer
- Director
George Walton Lucas, Jr. was raised on a walnut ranch in Modesto, California. His father was a stationery store owner and he had three siblings. During his late teen years, he went to Thomas Downey High School and was very much interested in drag racing. He planned to become a professional racecar driver. However, a terrible car accident just after his high school graduation ended that dream permanently. The accident changed his views on life.
He decided to attend Modesto Junior College before enrolling in the University of Southern California film school. As a film student, he made several short films including Electronic Labyrinth THX 1138 4EB (1967) which won first prize at the 1967-68 National Student Film Festival. In 1967, he was awarded a scholarship by Warner Brothers to observe the making of Finian's Rainbow (1968) which was being directed by Francis Ford Coppola. Lucas and Coppola became good friends and formed American Zoetrope in 1969. The company's first project was Lucas' full-length version of THX 1138 (1971). In 1971, Coppola went into production for The Godfather (1972), and Lucas formed his own company, Lucasfilm Ltd.
In 1973, he wrote and directed the semiautobiographical American Graffiti (1973) which won the Golden Globe and garnered five Academy Award nominations. This gave him the clout he needed for his next daring venture. From 1973 to 1974, he began writing the screenplay which became Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope (1977). He was inspired to make this movie from Flash Gordon and the Planet of the Apes films. In 1975, he established ILM. (Industrial Light & Magic) to produce the visual effects needed for the movie. Another company called Sprocket Systems was established to edit and mix Star Wars and later becomes known as Skywalker Sound. His movie was turned down by several studios until 20th Century Fox gave him a chance. Lucas agreed to forego his directing salary in exchange for 40% of the film's box-office take and all merchandising rights. The movie went on to break all box office records and earned seven Academy Awards. It redefined the term "blockbuster" and the rest is history.
Lucas made the other Star Wars films and along with Steven Spielberg created the Indiana Jones series which made box office records of their own. From 1980 to 1985, Lucas was busy with the construction of Skywalker Ranch, built to accommodate the creative, technical, and administrative needs of Lucasfilm. Lucas also revolutionized movie theaters with the THX system which was created to maintain the highest quality standards in motion picture viewing.
He went on to produce several more movies that have introduced major innovations in filmmaking technology. He is chairman of the board of the George Lucas Educational Foundation. In 1992, George Lucas was honored with the Irving G. Thalberg Award by the Board of Governors of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for his lifetime achievement.
He reentered the directing chair with the production of the highly-anticipated Star Wars prequel trilogy beginning with Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace (1999) . The films have been polarizing for fans and critics alike, but were commercially successful and have become a part of culture. The animated spin-off series Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) was supervised by Lucas. He sold Lucasfilm to Disney in 2012, making co-chair Kathleen Kennedy president. He has attended the premieres of new Star Wars films and been generally supportive of them.- Actor
- Additional Crew
- Soundtrack
This African American actor attended Penn Hills High School in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He started his junior year at 6' 5" and finished it at 6' 9"! He played basketball throughout his high-school years and won a scholarship. He averaged 18 points a game and 10 rebounds! He played basketball during college, but not when it would interfere with his major at George Washington University in Washington, DC, which was Theatrical Arts. During his college years, he met Jay Fenichel with whom he would later make musical productions. Upon graduation, Fenichel moved to Los Angeles and Hall moved to Venezuela to play basketball.
After a year, Hall lost interest and relocated to Los Angeles, California. Along with Fenichel, the duo put together two night-club acts/musicals. One was a semi-autobiographical two-man musical, "In Five," and the other was a two-man show called "The Worst of Friends," both of which played in night clubs throughout the LA area. They also had a promotional business where they did promotional acts in department stores for new products.
While working on the set of the series 227 (1985), he met his co-star, Alaina Reed-Hall, who played Rose Lee Holloway. They married--both on the set, and in real life. Predator 2 (1990) was released December 1990, and in April 1991, he died of AIDS, which he contracted through a blood transfusion a few months before.- Actor
- Writer
- Editor
Carel Struycken was born in the Hague, The Netherlands. When he was four years old his family moved to Curacao, an island in the Caribbean. At age sixteen, he returned to his home country, where he finished high school. He graduated from the directing program at the film school in Amsterdam, following which he did a year at the American Film Institute in Los Angeles.
After school, he collaborated on a number of projects of writer/director Rene Daalder. He was "discovered" as an actor at the corner of Hollywood and Vine in Los Angeles by a lady who had abandoned her car in the middle of the street, calling after him, "We need you for a movie!". The movie was Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1978). The turning point in his acting career however was Ewoks: The Battle for Endor (1985), a George Lucas film. In addition to cinema, he has also appeared on television, notably as the recurring character, valet Mr. Homn, on Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987).
Carel has also helped in hardware and software development of virtual reality systems.- Actor
- Writer
- Soundtrack
Ted Cassidy was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and raised in Philippi, West Virginia. He was a well respected actor who portrayed many different characters during his film and television career. His most notable role was Lurch, the faithful butler on the television series The Addams Family (1964). His most memorable dialogue as Lurch would be, "You rang?", whenever someone summoned him. Due to his large size, (6ft. 9in.) he portrayed larger than life characters. His deep voice, was used for narrations and for dubbing certain character's voices. His acting career spanned three decades. Ted Cassidy died in 1979 from complications following open-heart surgery. His live-in girlfriend had his remains cremated, then buried in the backyard of their Woodland Hills home.- Actor
- Writer
- Producer
Rajinikanth has been a superstar in the Tamil movie industry since the 70s. He is one of the highest earning actors in Asia. Primarily starring in Tamil movies, he has also worked in Hindi, Telugu, Kannada, and Hollywood movies. He was born in Bangalore (India), and was employed as a bus conductor before he joined the Madras Film Institute. He made his debut in Katha Sangama (1976) and became a star with Apoorva Raagangal (1975) . His unique acting style is characterized by trademark gestures such as flipping a cigarette in the air and catching it with his mouth. He played varied roles successfully and is considered as an actor who can easily perform action, drama, and comedy. He is not very popular for his dancing, which is considered a crucial art for actors in Indian Movies. His performances in movies such as Mullum Malarum (1978), Aarilirunthu Arubathuvarai (1979), Johny Ustad (1980) in the 70's and 80's to movies such as Kabali (2016) recently, are considered to be examples of his acting abilities. His performances as an action-superstar overshadow his critically acclaimed performances in these movies. The Government of India has honoured him with the Padma Bhushan in 2000 and the Padma Vibhushan in 2016 for his contributions to the arts. At the 45th International Film Festival of India (2014), he was conferred with the "Centenary Award for Indian Film Personality of the Year".- He was born in Reykjavik, Iceland and moved to the United States at the age of 5. Gunnar lived in Maine till he was 11, his family then moving to Texas, where he went to high school before attending the University of Texas. At the university, he did some theater work and majored in English and mathematics before going on to graduate in English and Scandinavian Studies. Despite graduating in the aforementioned fields, his first job out of high school was as a computer operator.
In the summer of 1973, he heard that Tobe Hooper and others were in town to work on a movie and decided to try out for a part. After interviewing with Tobe Hooper and the writer of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974), Kim Henkel, he was cast in the role of the disturbed, mentally handicapped killer, Leatherface.
After Chainsaw, Hansen went on to work as a freelance writer for magazines for several years before going on to write books, one later being set in Iceland about purported serial killer, Henry Lee Lucas. He has gone on to write multiple screenplays - one co-written with his partner Gary Jones, director of Mosquito (1994)).
Gunnar also directed a documentary on Greenland and had a stint designing web pages for GTE. - One of the USA's most notorious serial killers, Jeffrey Dahmer was born and raised in Bath Township, Ohio, a middle-class suburb of Akron. Much has been made of his childhood tendencies -including cases of cruelty to animals- but to outward appearances, at least, he seemed to be a normal child. As an adult he was always gainfully employed and was perceived as quiet and polite by co-workers. At the time of his arrest he had been working at a chocolate factory in Milwaukee and living alone in a small one-bedroom apartment. Dahmer's home was searched on July 22, 1991, after a young man fled his apartment and flagged down a police car. An investigation revealed that the apartment contained the remains of 11 young men, most of them black, Hispanic, or Asian. The bodies had been dismembered, and Dahmer confessed that he had cooked and eaten some of the remains. Asked why he committed such heinous acts, Dahmer told police that he killed because he was "lonely" and did not want his victims to leave him. He explained that he would meet potential victims in bars, shopping malls, or adult bookstores, and invite them back to his apartment where, in exchange for money or beer, he would photograph them naked. He would then drug the beer and, once the victim was unconscious, strangle and dismember the body. Dahmer's victims ranged in age from 14 to 33. On February 15, 1992, Dahmer was found guilty on 15 murder counts in Wisconsin. He was subsequently convicted of another killing in his Ohio hometown. Charges linking him to other murders were dropped for lack of evidence. He was sent to prison in Wisconsin with 15 mandatory life sentences to serve. The first year of his sentence, Dahmer was isolated from the general prison population for his own protection. In 1994 he was sent to a maximum security facility in Portage and was allowed some contact with the other inmates. He died after a brutal beating to death late night November 28, 1994, by Christopher Scarver, a fellow inmate who claimed God had instructed him to murder Jeffrey Dahmer. Even after Dahmer's death, legal battles continue over his estate. Several families of his victims sued him and were awarded millions of dollars in restitution. Those families have since been trying to gain control of the contents of Dahmer's apartment, including a 55-gallon vat he used to decompose bodies and the refrigerator where he stored his victims' hearts.
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English writer, scholar and philologist, Tolkien's father was a bank manager in South Africa. Shortly before his father died (1896) his mother took him and his younger brother to his father's native village of Sarehole, near Birmingham, England. The landscapes and Nordic mythology of the Midlands may have been the source for Tolkien's fertile imagination to write about 'the Shire' and 'hobbits' in his later book the Hobbit (1937). After his mother's death in 1904 he was looked after by Father Francis Xavier Morgan a RC priest of the Congregation of the Oratory. Tolkien was educated at King Edward VI school in Birmingham. He studied linguistics at Exeter College, Oxford, and took his B.A. in 1915. In 1916 he fought in World War I with the Lancashire Fusiliers. It is believed that his experiences during the Battle of the Somne may have been fueled the darker side of his subsequent novels. Upon his return he worked as an assistant on the Oxford English Dictionary (1918-20) and took his M.A. in 1919. In 1920 he became a teacher in English at the University of Leeds. He then went on to Merton College in Oxford, where he became Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon (1925-45) and Merton professor of English Language and Literature (1945-59). His first scholarly publication was an edition of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (1925). He also wrote books on Chaucer (1934) and Beowulf (1937). In 1939 Tolkien gave the Andrew Lang Lecture at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland titled: "On Fairy-Stories". Tolkien will however be remembered most for his books the Hobbit (1937) and the Lord of the Rings (1954-55). The Hobbit began as a bedtime story for his children". He wrote Lord of the Rings over a period of about 14 years.
Tolkien also discussed parts of his novels with fellow Oxfordian and fantasy writer CS Lewis during their 'meetings'. He was trying to create a fantasy world so that he could explain how he had invented certain languages, and in doing so created 'Middle-earth'. However among his peers at Oxford his works were not well received as they were not considered 'scholarly'. It was after LOTR was published in paperback in the United States in 1965 that he developed his legendary cult following and also imitators. Tolkien was W. P. Ker lecturer at Glasgow University in 1953. In 1954 both the University of Liege and University College, Dublin, awarded him honorary doctorates. He received the CBE in 1972. He served as vice-president of the Philological Society and was a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He was made an honorary fellow of Exeter College. Despite the immense popularity of his books today Tolkien did not greatly benefit from their sales. His son Christopher Tolkien was able to publish some of his works posthumously after his manuscripts were found.- Actor
- Music Department
- Composer
A professional singer at the age of three, Mel Torme was a genuine musical prodigy. As a teenager, he played the drums in Chico Marx's band and earned the nickname "The Velvet Fog" because of his smooth, mellow tenor voice. In the 1940s, he formed his own group, the Mel-Tones, one of the first jazz-influenced vocal groups. As a solo musician, he had a number one hit in 1949 called "Careless Hands" and several lesser hits. He also acted in films and wrote several books, including biographies of Judy Garland and Buddy Rich. Torme's career included some songwriting, too. One of his most well-known compositions, "The Christmas Song", was written in midsummer as Torme relaxed by the pool.- Richard Ramirez was a drifter from Texas who ended up in Los Angeles (the serial killer capital of the world) in the early 1980s when 5 serial killers where committing crimes independent of each other.
Ramirez worked as a car mechanic and did odd jobs while in Los Angeles. He was fascinated with "satanism" and would play the rock band AC/DC's song "Night Prowler" on his stereo for hours on end. His first murder occurred in June 1984. His modus operandi was to break into his victim's house late at night through an unlocked window. Then he would threaten them in their beds with either a gun or another weapon. He would either shoot or club his victims to death and then mutilate their bodies. His oldest victim was 84 and his youngest only 6 years. In between his murders he would sometimes just abduct young girls, sexually molest them and then let them go. He began killing again on March 17, 1985. This time one of his victims survived and gave police a description her assailant--tall, Hispanic, curly hair, bulging eyes and wide-spaced, rotting teeth! The police began to check with local dentists because they believed their killer needed to have major dental work done. Most of Ramirez's initial targets were in and around the Montery Park area of Los Angeles. On March 27, 1985, in Whitier he beat a man to death and then carved out his wife's eyes and took them with him. On May 29 he left satanic pentagrams on one victim's body and on the walls. On July 20 he killed a total of 5 victims in 2 different locations. On August 8 authorities released information to the public that they were looking for a new serial killer dubbed "The Night Stalker". Ramirez then left Los Angeles for San Francisco, and the killings soon began there. On August 28 al stolen car from one of the "Night Stalker" murders was recovered near Mission Viejo. Police found fingerprints on the backside of the rear-view mirror. They matched Ramirez's, whose prints were on file because he had previously been arrested for traffic and drug violations. The police believed they had their killer.
They checked at places where Ramirez was known to have worked and found that he closely matched surviving victims' descriptions of the killer. On August 30, 1985 his mugshot made its way to the television and newspapers. On August 31 he was recognized by residents of an East Los Angeles neighborhood as he was walking down a street. They chased him and, though he tried to escape by attempting to steal a car, they caught him. Someone called police, and by the time they arrived the crowd had almost beaten him to death.
On September 29, 1985, he was charged with, among other felonies, 14 murder and 22 sexual assault charges. When Ramirez appeared in court he had a pentagram drawn on his palm that he proudly displayed and proclaimed, "Hail Satan!" Jury selection began on by July 22, and he went on trial. On September 20, 1989, he was found guilty of 13 murders and 30 felonies. He was sentenced to death. - John Wayne Gacy was born in 1942 and grew up in a working-class neighborhood of Chicago, Illinois. His father, John Stanley Gacy (1900-1969), was an alcoholic and beat him frequently during his violent rages. As Gacy grew up, he began to develop a identity crisis - doubting his own masculinity. At the age of 11, he suffered a blow to the head from a swing. Over the next five years, he had frequent blackouts until doctors found a clot in his brain that was removed with medications. Following that, he would feign 'heart problems' for attention.
He graduated from business college and started to work as a shoe salesman. Gacy married a co-worker worker, whose family owned a KFC in Waterloo, Iowa and began to work there as Manager. He gradually earned the respect of the local Jaycees. In May 1968 he was arrested for sexual misconduct with a young male employee. Gacy actually hired a thug to beat up the witness, which failed, and only increased the charges against him. He plead guilty to sodomy and was sentenced to 10 years. Gacy was a model prisoner and was paroled in 1970 after serving only 18 months.
He then moved to Chicago where he began his life anew as a building constructor. Gacy became popular with his new neighbors and colleagues. He would throw theme parties and often dress up as 'Pogo the Clown' for children's parties and charity shows. Gacy was also involved with the Democratic party and even had his picture taken with then First Lady Rosalynn Carter (wife of former President Jimmy Carter).
On February 12, 1971 he was once again charged with sexual misconduct towards a young man. The witness did not show up in court and the charges were dropped. He finished his parole on October 18, 1971. Gacy committed his first murder on January 3, 1972. His modus operandi would be to drive around town looking for young male runaways, ex-jailbirds or even male prostitutes. Gacy's victims ranged in age from 9 to 20 years. He would flash them a 'badge' or a 'gun' pretending to be an officer of the law and 'arrest' them. Gacy would then befriend them and take take them home where he showed them tricks with 'magic handcuffs'. Once he had subdued his victim he would torture, sodomize and garrote them. Then he would bury them in a crawl space beneath his house. When he ran out of space he began to dump bodies in neighboring rivers. After he divorced his second wife in 1976 the killings escalated as he had the house to himself. On October 25, 1976 he committed a double homicide! In December 1977 he actually let one of his victims leave after he had 'done' with him.
On December 12, 1978 he killed his 33rd and last victim; a 15-year-old boy, named Robert Piest, who lived in his neighborhood. This was Gacy's one big mistake. The victim had told someone he was going to see his "contractor" about a job and was never seen again. The "contractor" turned out to be Gacy. When the police dropped by his house they noticed the smell from the decomposing corpses underneath. When they saw his police record, it wasn't hard for them to get a search warrant of his house. A total of 29 bodies were extracted from the crawlspace and five more from the nearby river, of which 9 remain unidentified. Gacy was judged sane by the court psychiatrists and in 1980 was charged with 21 counts of life for murders committed before June 21, 1977 when Illinois reinstated the death sentence. For the 12 committed since then he got the death sentence. - Infamous Chicago gangster Al Capone was born in the tough Williamsburgh section of Brooklyn, NY, the fourth of nine children of Italian immigrants from Naples. Capone was a born sociopath. In the sixth grade he beat up a teacher and promptly quit school. He picked up his education from the streets, "making his bones" when he joined the notorious James Street gang. This was run by Johnny Torrio, who later graduated Capone into the even more notorious Five Points gang. It was here that Capone became friends with Lucky Luciano, another who would become a hallmark in the '30s gangster era.
By his late teens Capone had been hired by Torrio and Frankie Yale as a bouncer at a saloon / brothel in Brooklyn. In 1918 he was involved in a bar fight over a prostitute with hoodlum Frank Galluccio. Gallucio went after Capone with a knife, resulting in Capone's picking up the moniker by which he would be known for the rest of his life--"Scarface" (although that word was NEVER used in his presence). Capone, however, would attribute the scar to wounds he received in battle while fighting with the famous "lost battalion" in France during World War I (the fact that Capone never spent one minute in the army was a minor point, apparently). By 1919 he was already suspected by New York police of at least two murders, so he moved to Chicago to work under Torrio's uncle, "Big" Jim Colosimo, a Chicago gangster who ran a string of brothels. Torrio and Colosimo had a dispute over bootlegging during the Prohibition era--Torrio was for it and Colosimo was against it. Torrio hatched a plot with Capone to have Colosimo "rubbed out" and they got their old pal Frankie Yale to do it. Over the next few years the new Torrio-Capone regime went to war with rival bootlegging gangs in Chicago. In 1924 they killed Charles Dion O'Bannion, head of the Irish North Side gang. That didn't end the war, however, which went on for several more years. Capone's younger brother Frank died in a hail of rival gangsters' bullets in 1924. In February 1925 Torrio, who had been badly wounded in a shootout, decided to retire. He told Capone, "It's all yours". At the tender age of 26, Al Capone found himself in control of a sophisticated crime organization with 1,000 gunmen at his command and a $300,000-a-week payroll. He was up to it, however, and made a smooth transition from a simple gun-toting leg-breaker, pimp and killer to a "business executive" (his business card stated that he sold "second-hand furniture"). It was estimated that at one point he had approximately half of Chicago's police department on his payroll, and his reach extended to the highest levels of Chicago's city government and even into the Illinois legislature (he was also suspected of having the Illinois governor "in his pocket"). He controlled the local political process by terrorizing voters into voting for candidates he picked. So great was his power that he claimed he "owned" Chicago, and once publicly assaulted the mayor of nearby Cicero--who was on his payroll--on the steps of City Hall for doing something without his clearance, while the local police looked the other way.
Capone was probably the first "equal-opportunity" mob boss. While many of his fellow Italian and Sicilian gangsters would only hire those from their own ethnic group, Capone hired Jews, Irish, Poles, Slovaks, blacks--as long as he considered them trustworthy, they could work for Capone. He even purged the Chicago organized crime scene of "Mustache Petes", the old-time Sicilian gangsters who he didn't think were capable of running a "modern" crime organization. Capone ran Chicago's gambling, prostitution and bootlegging empire, getting rich giving people what they wanted. He was soon wildly popular among the citizenry and was even cheered at the ballpark, while "respectable" citizens like President Herbert Hoover were not. Capone absorbed smaller gangs into his own--sometimes by negotiation, other times by gunfire--extending his reach to outside the Chicago environs and expanding his empire even further. He was, however, always concerned for his own safety and surrounded himself with trusted bodyguards (including Frank Gallucio, the man responsible for his nickname, "Scarface"). Several attempts were made on his life by rival mobsters--one time a convoy of cars full of gangster Hymie Weiss' gunmen shot up a restaurant at which Capone was dining; the place was destroyed, but Capone came through unscathed. Another time would-be assassins poisoned his soup, but his luck held out again.
On Valentine's Day in 1929 Capone ordered the bloody "St. Valentine's Day Massacre". His underlings found out the location of the warehouse of his rival George Moran (aka "Bugs" Moran) and that Moran was to attend a meeting there at a particular time. Capone sent a carload of his gunmen dressed as police officers to the address. Once there they lined up the seven men they found, but Moran wasn't among them; he was on the sidewalk heading towards the building when he saw the "police car" pull up in front and he quickly ducked into a nearby store. Nevertheless, Capone's gunmen machine-gunned them to death. Following the massacre (when Moran was later asked who he thought was responsible for the murders, he replied, "Only Capone kills like that"), public opinion about Capone began to change. He was not above killing on his own, either. When he was informed that his bodyguards John Scalise and Albert Anselmi were part of an assassination plot against him, he decided to take care of the matter himself. To put their minds at ease, he threw a banquet in their honor. While delivering a glowing testimonial to them, Capone suddenly pulled out an Indian club and beat both men to death.
Although local and state authorities had been trying to bring down Capone for years, the federal government finally managed to do it by prosecuting him for income-tax evasion. He was tried, found guilty and sentenced to 11 years in the federal penitentiary in Atlanta, GA. In 1934 he was transferred to Alcatraz, a federal prison on Alcatraz Island in the San Francisco Bay that was set up to hold the nation's worst criminals. He never finished out his sentence, though. In 1939 he was paroled because of the ravages of neurosyphilis, a disease he contracted while running Torrio's and Colosimo's whorehouses. He lived the last eight years of his life as a virtual zombie at his estate in Florida, his brain almost totally destroyed by the disease. - One of the tallest actors ever, he held various odd jobs before his debut on the silver screen. He worked for Spike Jones and his City Slickers, Ardens Dairy (in California,) as a Cowboy for Public Relations and at Knotts Berry Farm, (in California) also as a Cowboy. It was while he was working as a doorman at Grauman's Chinese Theatre in Hollywood that his height was noticed and because of it he was chosen for the role of Gort. He also hosted a children's TV show in the Los Angeles area in the 50s called 'The Gentle Giant'. He was not a very strong man for his size. He was buried at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Hollywood Hills, California.
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Tamil superstar from a poor family in Tamil Nadu, India. His father worked on the railways.
On the day of his birth his father, Chiniah Pillai, follower of Mahatma Gandhi, was jailed for participating in the Independence movement in Nellikuppam (Tamil Nadu, India). He was frequently in and out of jail, and was raised by his mother, Rajamani Ammal.
He joined theatre groups when he was young. He earned his screen name 'Sivaji' after acting in C.N. Annadurai's play 'Sivaji Kanda Indhu Rajyam', a historical play on the Maratha Emperor Shivaji.
He made his film debut in Parasakthi (1952) as Gunasekharan. He became an icon of the DMK party who made DMK films (founded by C.M. Annadurai).
He entered politics in the mid-50s where he joined the Congress party and then defected to support the opposition Janata Dal.
He is most well know for his mythological and patriotic portrayals, like in his most famous films like Karnan(mythological) and Veerapandiya Kattabomman (patriotic).
His main rival was MGR (M.G. Ramachandran) and together they dominated the Tamil film industry in the 1960s and 70s.- David Berkowitz was born as Richard David Falco. His mother had him out of wedlock when she had an affair with a married real-estate agent named Joseph Klineman. Her husband Tony Falco had left her a few years before that. His mother gave him up for adoption to Nathan and Pearl Berkowitz who named him David Berkowitz Chicago. Being rejected by his birth mother caused David to develop an inferiority complex especially with women and thought he was unappealing to them. He worked as a postman and a security guard. In 1974 he 'heard voices' in his head that ordered him to kill. Berkowitz began to blame these voices on his neighbor Sam Carr's black Labrador that kept him up at night by its barking. He would send hate letters to Carr and in April 1977 even shot and wounded the dog. On July 29, 1976 he killed his first official victim. His modus operandi was to approach unsuspecting people late at night, pull out a gun from a brown paper bag and shoot them at point blank range. Most of his victims were couples, necking in their cars or in a park late at night. His female victims tended to be brunettes with long hair, which caused a scare in parts of New York and had women 'blonding' themselves and cutting their hair short to avoid being targeted. Couples were also advised not to stay out late at night by the local authorities as the serial killings escalated. They were all shot with a .44 caliber bulldog gun and hence his first nickname by the press - ".44 Caliber Killer". Most crimes occurred in the boroughs of Bronx and Queens but other parts of the city felt the terror too. The police task force for the case - 'Operation Omega' was formed. Inside the car of one of the victims the police found a letter. One was addressed to Cpt. Joseph Borelli and another to NY columnist Jimmy Breslin (June 1, 1977). The killer identified himself as "Sam's" and now the press had a new moniker - "Son of Sam". The last "S.o.S" killing took place on July 31, 1977. A witness had seen a young man (David) near the crime scene walking away with something tucked under his jacket. He was observed removing a parking ticket from a yellow Ford Galaxie that had blocked a fire hydrant. The police traced tickets in that area to Berkowitz address in Yonkers. Inside the car they found a loaded .44. They waited for him and when he approached the car they arrested the pudgy unassuming postman. He surrendered without a fight and confessed to being 'Son of Sam'. Though diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic he was found sane enough for trial. On August 23, 1977 he was sentenced to six life sentences.
- Alleged assassin of President John F. Kennedy, son of Marguerite Frances Claverie Oswald. He never knew his father, Robert Edward Lee Oswald, who had died 2 months before his birth of a heart attack. Oswald had 1 older full brother and another half-brother (from his mother's first marriage). Young Oswald was placed in a Lutheran orphanage at the age of 3, but he was removed when his mother left for Dallas in January 1944 and married her 3rd husband Edwin A. Ekdahl. Oswald left school in 1954. He was in the US Marines until 1959 when he was discharged due to hardship as his mother was suffering from physical problems. Oswald was interested in Marxist ideologies and lived for some time in the USSR (1959-62). He unsuccessfully tried to get Soviet citizenship. When he was initially denied and as his visa was about to expire he even attempted suicide. In 1961 he married a Russian woman, Marina Nikolaevna Prusakova, (Marina Oswald) and was allowed to stay indefinitely. However by October 1963 Oswald moved along with his wife and daughter back to the States, and settled in Dallas. Oswald began to publicly express his opinions about Communist regimes like Cuba and China by distributing pamphlets. He was working for the Texas School Depository, a 6 story building located in the now 'infamous' Dealey Plaza area of Dallas, Texas. On November 22, 1963 when President Kennedy's motorcade passed by the building it is believed that Oswald was in the building. He may shot the president from the 6th floor and then concealed the rifle behind some crates. Whether he acted alone or not is still an ongoing debate. Oswald apparently left the depository when pandemonium broke out after the incident. He then headed home where he picked up a pistol. Oswald returned to the Depository where he is believed to have fired 4 bullets into police officer J.D. Tippit who approached him to ask him a question. Oswald then ran into the Texas Theatre where the double bill: War Is Hell (1961) and Cry of Battle (1963) was playing. He had not bought a ticket and the authorities cornered him in the theatre and quickly took him into custody. On 23 November 1963 he was charged with the murder of President Kennedy, whom he was alleged to have shot from the 6th floor of the Texas School Book Depository, as the President passed by in a motor cavalcade. Oswald however vehemently denied his involvement in both the Kennedy assassination and the shooting of officer Tippit. On November 24, 1963 just 2 days later, while authorities were transferring Oswald to the county jail, he was shot dead by night club owner Jack Ruby (1911-67), live before the cameras. Ruby claimed he was avenging Jacqueline Kennedy (Jackie Kennedy Onassis). Claims were made that Oswald had links with the US secret service and with the Mafia. But it seems that there are more conspiracy theories than facts.
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US cult leader, David Koresh was born in Vernon Howell located in west Texas. His mother Bonnie Holdman was only 14 when his illegitimate birth occurred. Koresh's childhood was disruptive. A dyslexic he dropped out of school in the 9th grade. He was kicked out of his SDA church for "ranting and raving" and went to Hollywood to be a rock star. After failed attempts at obtaining his dreams he went to Mt. Carmel religious commune outside Waco, Texas in 1983. It was run by a splinter faction from the SDA church who called themselves Branch Davidians that was formed by Bulgarian Victor Houteff in the 1930's. Koresh began to preach at Mt. Carmel. He even claimed to be an angel sent by God and wanted to combine rock and roll with religion. Koresh was expelled from Mt. Vernon along with 25 disciples. They went on an aimless trek until they stopped at Palestine, Texas. On Tuesday, November 3, 1987 Koresh and his followers tried to take over the Mt. Carmel commune by force. They fired machine guns at the commune, and in turn, they were fired upon. The local authorities intervened and jailed members from both sides. However Koresh got out on bail and finally took over Mt. Carmel. His rival was deemed mentally unsound and charges were dropped in the 1988 trial. Koresh was now in total control of Mt. Carmel. He began to attract largely vulnerable and insecure people to his "flock." Koresh got married to a 14 year old girl but decided that he could have a "harem of many wives." He set up a harem which he called his "house of David." Some of his concubines were as young as 10 years old. He created a goon squad he called "mighty men." Koresh then claimed he was the only one allowed to have as many "wives" as he wanted, and also the only one who could have a wife. He eventually "married" 19 female cult members and fathered at least 12 of their children. In 1990 he legally changed his name to David Koresh (a combination of "King David" and the Hebrew name for Cyrus the Great). Koresh had now become an absolute dictator. While his disciples worked on the farm in the sweltering heat he stayed inside with air-conditioning. He changed the name of the commune to Ranch Apocalypse. Koresh gradually began building an arsenal at the Ranch. They had a .50 caliber machine gun and over 300 firearms amounting to 11 tons of firepower in all. A bus was even buried to act as a bunker! The FBI became concerned about the developments at Koresh's ranch. On Sunday, February 28, 1993 they launched a command raid on the ranch. The siege lasted 51 days. Tired of waiting, the FBI fired tear gas canisters into the building and sent in tanks. A fire broke out in the building. By the time they entered the building and put out the fire they found David Koresh along with 75 followers dead that included 25 children, 12 his own.- Valmiki was the composer of the first Sanskrit poem (the Adikavya) known the world over as the epic Ramayana (Story of Lord Rama), hence he is called the Adikavi or First Poet - the Poet of Poets of India. He was born along the banks of the Ganges in ancient India to a sage by the name of Prachetasa. His birth name was Ratnakara. He apparently got lost in the jungles as a child and was found by a hunter who raised him as his own son. When he grew up he became a hunter like his foster father but also took to being a bandit to supplement his livelihood. Once it so happened he met the Maharishi Narada and tried to rob him. However Narada convinced him of the evil of his ways and converted him into a 'Brahmarishi' or religious scholar. He narrated the story of Rama (Ramayana) to him and asked him to write it down for posterity. Ratnakara did penance for many years and an ant-hill grew around him. Hence his new name 'Valmika' which in Sanskrit means an ant-hill. He came out of the anthill and penned the great epic sometime between the 4th and the 2nd century BC. "As long as there are rivers and mountains in the world, people will read the Ramayana."
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Austrian neurologist and 'father of psychoanalysis'. Freud was born to Jacob Freud, a Jewish wool merchant, and Amalia (neé Nathansohn). The family settled in Vienna when Freud was young. In 1873 he started medicine at the University of Vienna, at which time he adopted the shortened form of his name, "Sigmund." Freud served a year of compulsory military service and got his M.D. in 1881. He then stayed on for another year as a demonstrator in the physiology laboratory. From 1882 to 1886, he worked as an assistant at the General Hospital in Vienna. During this period, Dr. Josef Breuer related to Freud how he had treated a young woman suffering from hysteria with 'talking cures' while in a state of self-hypnosis. This is considered the prototype of psychoanalysis. Late in 1885, Freud went to Paris on grant to study at the Salpetriere, a mental hospital, with the famed French neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot. Charcot had pioneered the treatment of nervous disorders by hypnosis. On Freud's return to Vienna in 1886 he took up his post as lecturer in neuropathology at the university and also established a private practice in nervous diseases. In 1887 he established a close friendship with Wilhelm Fliess, the Berlin otolaryngologist, with whom he discussed his work and ideas. Fleiss is called "the midwife of psychoanalysis". In 1891 he and his family moved to an apartment at Berggasse, 19. Here for the next 45 years Freud did most of his psychoanalytical treatments on his patients. Freud's first published work was entitled 'On Aphasia, a Critical Study' (1891). Freud first used the term "psychoanalysis" for his new treatment in 1896. Some of his other famous works include: Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (1905), Selected Papers on Hysteria and Other Psychoneuroses (1909) and The Interpretation of Dreams (1913). Freud was appointed "Professor Extraordinary" of Neurology at the University in 1902. The same year he had also begun to meet informally at Berggasse, 19, with a group of medical colleagues interested in learning about the new discipline. In 1909 Freud was invited to Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts, with Carl Jung and Sandor Ferenczi, to speak about his theories. An avid cigar smoker he developed cancer of the jaw in 1923. He underwent operations, radiotherapy and the discomfort of an oral prosthetic device that to some extent affected his speech. In 1930 the city of Frankfurt awarded Freud its Goethe Prize for work that had "opened access to the driving forces of the soul." He was elected in 1936 a corresponding member of the Royal Society of London (in the company of Newton and Darwin). The growing danger of anti-Semitism and Nazi persecution made it apparent that the Freuds would suffer the fate of other Jews if they stayed in Vienna. With the help of US government officials Freud, his wife and daughter Anna were allowed to leave Austria. It was Freud's wish to "die in freedom," and so he did in his new home at 20 Maresfield Gardens, which is now the Freud Museum.- Dr. Harold Shipman was born the son of Vera and Harold Shipman. He was the middle of 3 children. His father was a lorry driver and his mother a home maker. In 1957 he studied at High Pavement grammar school (6th form). He was an avid rugby player as a child. His mother's lingering death from lung cancer in June 1963 had a profound effect on the psyche of young Harold. In September 1965 he enrolled at Leeds University Medical School. He met his future wife on a double decker during his daily trips to Leeds. After medical school he got his first medical job at Pontefarct General Infirmary where he worked for 3.5 years. In March 1974 he joined a group practice in Todmorden. While there he was very involved in social functions like the Rochdale Canal Commission. It was during his time there that the first signs of his criminal behavior were noticed. He started having blackouts in public that were initially thought to be epilepsy. In July 1975 it was realized that he was prescribing a large amount of pethidine to his patients according to a pharmacy log. The patients were questioned but none of them admitted to ever having received the powerful narcotic. When Shipman was confronted by his colleagues he admitted to having acquired an opiate addiction from his days in medical school when he had accidentally tried it. That explained the 'blackouts'. He was advised to go to the Retreat in York (an institution that helped with drug addiction) if he wanted to keep his job. However in November 1975 he was charged with 'forgery of prescriptions'. The Shipman family disappeared from Todmorden. Dr. Shipman got a job at the National Coal Board in Doncaster where he did physicals on miners. In February of 1976 he had a job in County Durham for the SW Durham Health Authority. By 1977 he had secured a job with Donneybrook Medical Center in Hyde as part of a group practice. It is believed that some of his earliest victims may have been from his time here. In July 1992 Shipman left his practice to work at The Surgery. He would give his victims a lethal dose of morphine during a house visit and actually come by again when he believed them to be dead. At this time he would perform a cursory medical examination and pronounce his patient dead and no one would be the wiser. He generally preyed upon elderly women who lived alone as they made easy targets. However his youngest victim was 49 and he may have killed a few men as well. Even though his victims were middle aged or elderly they were not generally infirm at the time of death which made a lot of relatives suspicious about their premature deaths. His last victim died on 24 June, 1998. Shipman had apparently changed his patient's will which bequeathed her entire estate to him with nothing for her own daughter. The daughter obviously found this suspicious and alerted detectives. Her body was exhumed on August 1st and an autopsy was performed. Around this time a local taxi driver who did errands for most of his victims realized that they all had one thing in common - their doctor was Shipman. This further added suspicion to Shipman. The news of his crimes was released to the public only by 20 August, 1998. On September 2, 1998 the toxicology report proved that his victim had died from a fatal dose of morphine and not 'natural causes' as he had claimed in the death certificate. When he was initially confronted with the findings he claimed that his patient was a drug addict and he had covered up for her. He was formally arrested on September 7, 1998. In order to cover his tracks Dr. Shipman had made fake entrées in his patients files. Hoever a Visa card statement showed he was elsewhere at the time the extra entries had been made. The bodies of several of his patients were exhumed and examined for morphine. His computer at work was examined and its hard drive revealed when extra entries were made and dates changed on MedDoc. During his incarceration prior to trial he believed the police were conspiring to kill him, surprisingly the same way he killed his patients. He was initially in Strangeways jail in Manchester. Then he was moved to Preston prison later in 1998 and to Walton jail in Liverpool afterward. On 5 October, 1999 he was first arrragned in court and charged with 15 counts of murder an 1 count of forging a will. The trail began on Octber 11, 1999 and went on for a marathon 57 days. The jury retired on January 24 and deliberated until January 31, 2000. At 4:44 pm he was pronounced guilty and given 15 life sentences plus 4 years for forgery. It is officially believed he killed about 215 people making him one of the most prolific serial killers of all time. He killed 7 people in February 1998 alone! Harold Shipman was found dead in his prison cell on 13th January 2004, the day before what would have been his 58th birthday. Verdict: suicide by hanging.
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Ed Gein and his elder brother Henry lived on a rural farm near Plainfield, WI. George Gein, his father, was a tanner and carpenter and was drunk most of the time. Augusta, Ed's domineering mother, was the real power of the house. She was a religious fanatic who constantly warned her sons about the sins of premarital sex and railed against "evil" women. Ed's father died in 1940, and brother Henry died four years later fighting a marsh fire (although it was later suspected that Ed might have killed him). Ed stayed at the family farm with his mother and never strayed out of the surrounding few counties. When she died of a stroke in 1945, Ed was left all alone at the "tender" age of 39. He sealed her bedroom and the rest of his house off, living in just the kitchen and one other room. During the period of 1950-55, he visited three local cemeteries at night and dug up at least ten graves. He removed bits and pieces from each body, returning some to their graves. He used skullcaps for bowls, and stitched chair seats and lampshades out of human skin. On special occasions, he would dance outside in the moonlight wearing numerous stitched skin coverings, including the face masks of some of his victims. His first murder was committed on December 8, 1954, the other occurred on November 16, 1957. He attacked his last victim in her store and dragged her body to a truck parked out back. Later that evening the victim's son stopped in at the store to check on his mother and found the doors locked, the cash register missing and a trail of blood leading out to the back door. He recalled that he had seen Ed at the store the day before. When the police went to his farm, they found her headless body in his shed, hanging by it's heels from the rafters. Gein was arrested and eventually confessed to his crimes. On January 16, 1958, he was sent to Central State Hospital at Waupun, WI. In November 1968, he was judged competent to stand trial. He was now diagnosed to have chronic schizophrenia, found "not guilty by reason of insanity" and returned to Waupun. It has been theorized that Gein might have killed two men who hired him as their hunting guide in 1952 and were never seen again. There were also two other unidentified women's body parts were found at his farm. In that his murder & grave robbing victims were all of middle or elderly age, these two women's remains were decisively young, in their teenage years. This was never conclusively investigated. In 1978, he was moved to Mendota Mental Health Institute. Gein was a model prisoner and died quietly in his sleep in the geriatric psychiatric ward in 1984. He is buried next to his mother in the Plainfield Cemetery.- Gary Ridgway who would become infamous as the 'Green River Killer' was born in Utah. He then moved to Washington state where he worked as a truck painter in Renton Washonton for nearly 30 years. Ridgway also worked at a computer company. Ridgway claims to have killed a man as early as 1971 but it was only on July 15, 1982 that the first of the Green River Killings would be committed. This would go on to become one of the longest and most expensive serial murder cases in the US. The task force included Major Richard Kraske, Detective Dave Reichert, FBI profiler John Douglas and criminal investigator Bob Keppel. His victims ranged in age from 15 to 31 and one victim even had an unborn baby! They were all prostitutes who worked the main strip in Seattle, stretching from South 139th Street to South 272nd Street. The bodies were fished out of the Green River in King County and hence the nickname for the killings. His m.o. was to have sex and then strangle them. In April 1983 attention was drawn to Ridgway in the killings when his 1977 black Ford F-150 was spotted where a victim was last seen. He was released after questioning. During this period Keppel in collaboration with notorious serial killer Ted Bundy published a book called The Riverman (2004) which used Bundy's own insight into serial killer to try and profile the psyche of the Green River Killer. A psychic, Barbara Kubik-Pattern was also involved in the case. In May 1984 Ridgway was again a suspect and even passed a polygraph test. In April 1987 his house was examined and insufficient evidence was found. In September 2001, detective Reichert asked for samples from Ridgway to be examined with newer techniques. On September 10th he was told that there was a match between Ridgway's semen and those found on the victims. On November 30, 2001 Ridgway was arrested for murder. During pretrial on November 5, 2003, Gary Ridgway, avoided the death penalty in Washington state by confessing to the murders of 48 women. He was sentenced to 48 life sentences without the possibility of parole. Ridgway may have actually killed more than 48 but cannot remember the exact number. It is believed that he might have even killed as far north as British Columbia in Canada. He could however still face the death penalty for murders in Oregon and other areas outside King County jurisdiction.
- Prem Nazir is considered to be the biggest star in Malyalam film history. He graduated from St. Berchman's College in Changanassery, Kerala. He started acting for the Excel company and most of his films were for the Udaya and Merryland Studios. He portrayed the ideal male in most of his films.
- Jim Jones was born during the Great Depression. He was the only son of James Thurman Warren Jones Sr. (1887-1951) and Lynetta Putnam (1902-1977). His father was an alcoholic Klansman and he claimed his mother was part Cherokee Indian. He spent most of his formative years in conservative rural Indiana. His father struggled to earn a living as a mystic fortune teller. His parents separated in 1948 and he went to live with his mother in Richmond, Indiana. Jones also worked as an orderly at a local hospital. He got married young, to a nurse 4 years his senior, and adopted 3 children of diverse ethnic backgrounds.
Jones began working as a Methodist minister in Indianapolis in the early 1950 decade. In 1954, when he claimed he had met God on a train ride near Philadelphia, he was defrocked. The charismatic leader then founded his own gathering - the Community National Unity Church. By 1955 he had renamed it the People's Temple Full Gospel Church. He set up a soup kitchen, gave away groceries and clothes to the poor, and established two nursing homes, while preaching messages of apostolic socialism and racial equality. Secretly, he also joined the Communist party on the side. He was appointed director of the Indianapolis Human Rights Commission in 1961. Jones began a dubious path as a "spiritual healer" by planting actors among his believers and miraculously 'healing' them. Jones was getting richer and more popular.
In the early 1960s, during the height of the Cold War, Jones had a vision of apocalyptic destruction. Jones took the vision seriously and decided to move his congregation to Ukiah, California, in the Redwood Valley region north of San Francisco. This area was believed to be one of 9 places on earth that would be safe during a global nuclear war. He then moved to San Francisco's Fillmore district in 1965. Over the next 10 years, his 'flock' of believers reached a peak of 3,000. Jones could be heard on regular radio broadcasts over KFAX radio in California. However, there were occasional bizarre behaviors as well: in April of 1968, when Dr. Martin Luther King was assassinated, Jones staged a fake attempt on his own life.
Jones received several humanitarian awards in Northern California for his work with the poor. In 1976, he was appointed to the San Francisco Housing Authority by the Mayor George Moscone for his commitment to social activism. However Jones was becoming more and more of a dictator. He demanded sexual favors from some young women, was the only person who could decide if a couple in his congregation could get married, and often separated children from their parents. In 1973, eight close aides defected from his camp and revealed these details to the press, including allegations of misuse of church money. Very soon after, Jones had begun making plans to move his congregation to the socialist nation of Guyana in South America. By 1974, fifteen of Jones' followers had negotiated a lease for 27,000 acres on Guyana's western border with Venezuela, and began clearing the jungle for what would become the Peoples Temple Agricultural Project, or "Jonestown." Jones eventually relocated to Guyana in July 1977. In December 1977, his mother Lynetta Jones died at Jonestown.
In 1978, a group of ex-members calling themselves the Committee of Concerned Relatives published literature that likened Jonestown to a concentration camp, complete with torture. Jones began teaching his followers about mass suicide and held practice drills to test his members' loyalty for the "White Night". In November 1978, U.S. House Representative Leo J. Ryan visited the compound and sought to bring back several defectors, including an ex-member's child. Leo's entourage, along with fifteen defectors, were ambushed and killed by Jones' people on the airstrip as they attempted to leave. The next day, the entire community of 914 'followers' (including 276 children) drank a deadly potion of Fla-Vor Aid laced with cyanide poison. Jones' wife was among them. After the mass suicide of his followers, Jones and a close aide shot themselves. - Soundtrack
The only child of 2 Atlanta school teachers. He dropped out of college and was considering a career in the music industry as a promoter. In his teens he had even constructed a working radio station in the basement of the family home. At the age of 23 he was still living with his parents. He is now remembered for a 2 year reign of terror in Atlanta, Georgia that involved at least 23 homicides and became known as the "Atlanta Child Murders". It began on July 28, 1979 with the discovery of his first victim. All his victims were black and the majority were male children and adolescents. There were only 3 female victims and 6 adult victims. The youngest was 7 and the oldest was 27 years old. Several of the bodies were pulled out of the Chattahoochee River, so the FBI staked it our. On the night of May 22, 1981 a police officer heard a 'splash' near the Chattahoochee River bridge. The police stopped the owner of the car who turned out to be Wayne Williams. He was now the primary suspect in the case. Scientific experts found that fibers from the carpet in the Waynes home were found on some of the victims. They also found fibers from the trunk of their 1979 Ford and 1970 Chevrolet on some of the bodies. On Februrary 27, 1982 Wayne Williams was convicted on 2 counts of murder and sentenced to a double life sentence.- US gangster and racketeer. Born Charles Salvadore Lucania in Sicily, he emigrated with his family to the US in 1906. In 1907 he started shoplifting. He was given his nickname by childhood friend and fellow gangster Meyer Lansky for his luck with betting on racehorses, but it also could have applied to the many times he avoided imprisonment and prosecution as a Mafia "godfather" who operated successfully and profitably in the 1920s and 1930s. Between 1928 and 1930 the Castellammarese War broke out between the gangs of Giuseppe Masseria (aka Joe the Boss) and Salvatore Maranzano. Maranzano sent some men to "rough up" Luciano, and when they caught him they not only beat and stabbed him, but addition severed the muscles of his right cheek, leaving him with a droop in his right eye. He was left for dead under the Brooklyn Bridge. However, he lived up to his nickname and survived. Recovering, he sided with Maranzano in the conflict. By 1931 Masseria had been assassinated and Maranzano had won. He named himself "boss of bosses" (capo di tuti capo), but that title proved to be short-lived. Luciano and Lansky's had their men visit Maranzano in his office, disguised as government agents, and assassinated him. Luciano followed that with anywhere from 40 to 90 additional murders during the series of killings that came to be called the "Night of the Sicilian Vespers". Luciano was now the undisputed boss of a "new" Mafia. His business included narcotics-peddling, extortion and, especially, prostitution, including everything from low-rent streetwalkers to high-priced call girls. Luciano, one of the most powerful figures in organized crime, was arrested 25 times between 1919 and 1936 but convicted only once. When three prostitutes finally agreed to give evidence against him, he was arrested (1936) and found guilty of compelling women to become prostitutes. Even from prison, he retained control of his Family, setting up the Crime Syndicate of Mafia Families. During World War II he helped U.S. military intelligence through his Mafia connections in Italy and was given a suspended sentence on condition that he leave the US. In 1946 he was released from prison and deported to Italy as an undesirable alien. He returned to Naples, Italy, where he lived out his life in luxury. Luciano died of a heart attack at Naples Airport. He was only posthumously allowed to return to the USA, where he was buried at St John's Cemetery in New York.
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Darwyn (Dar) Swalve began in community theater and his dream was to be in a Broadway play. His acting agent Keith Wolfe placed Darwyn with actor-turned-agent, Morgan Paul, who had contacts in the theater, as well as films. Darwyn's dream of being in a Broadway show was realized when he landed a role in the award winning Broadway show, "City of Angels." He played six months at the Shubert Theater in Century City and toured for one year with the show. In the movies in which he played he also did some of his own stunts. Darwyn also did commercials including one for Ford Mustang with Katherine Zeta-Jones. He had just finished a TV series project for Nickelodeon Productions ("The Journey Of Allen Strange") a few weeks before he passed away in May 1999 from a heart attack.- British serial killer, Peter Sutcliffe, who is infamous as the 'Yorkshire Ripper' was born under fairly normal surroundings. His father John Sutcliffe was a mill owner. Sutcliffe was very attached to his mother Kathleen. He was a loner in school and his grades were generally poor. Sutcliffe quit school at 15. He loved to visit the local wax museum where he was fascinated by specimens that showed the effect of venereal disease on the body.
He worked as a municipal gravedigger and mortuary assistant for a while. During this period he was known to steal things from the bodies he was burying. Some of his early tendencies towards necrophilia may have stemmed from here. He would later tell authorities that it was during this time that he started hearing the voice of God coming from a grave telling him to 'rid the world of harlots'. He attempted his first murder in 1969 with a home made weapon - a sock filled with bricks. On two occasions his victims escaped.
On Oct 30, 1975 however he had perfected his modus operandi. He used a ball peen hammer to bludgeon his victim to death. Then he stabbed them with a chisel or screwdriver to mutilate their bodies. He killed mainly in the cities of Leeds, Bradford and in the West Yorkshire area but two were in Manchester. His victims were all women. Though many were prostitutes, several were not - the only common factor being they were lone women who were out late at night. The age range of his victims was 16 to 47. One of his victims was even killed in her own apartment. In one case, Sutcliffe actually revisited the crime scene a week later to further mutilate the body before it was finally found by the police.
Sutcliffe was a schizoid personality who was able to remain a devoted husband at home while still committing his brutal crimes outside. The largest manhunt in British history was launched to catch the man who was dubbed "The Yorkshire Ripper". It involved interviewing 250,000 people and searching 20,000 houses. In June 1979 the police were sidetracked when they received a hoax tape and letters from someone claiming to be the Ripper. Sutcliffe was among those dismissed at this point as a suspect because he did not have the 'Wearside accent' of the hoax tape.
The last 'Ripper' murder took place on 17 Nov 1980. There had been 13 victims with at least eight attempted murders. On January 2, 1981 Sutcliffe was arrested by two Sheffield police officers on routine patrol for displaying false number plates on his Rover car. (The number plates actually belonged to a Skoda.) Peter Sutcliffe had stolen the plates from a scrapyard in nearby Dewsbury. He had a prostitute in his car with him at the time. He requested permission to 'pee' before going to the station. While he was being questioned at the station, one of the arresting officers decided to go and check the bushes where Sutcliffe had urinated. He found a hammer and chisel behind some shrubbery.
Sutcliffe quickly confessed to his crimes. he said he harbored a vendetta against prostitutes after one of them had swindled him of money and given him a venereal disease. On May 22, 1981 he was declared guilty of committing 13 murders and sentenced to spend not less than 30 yrs in prison. - Director
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Le Prince was a French artist and the inventor of an early motion picture camera born in Metz, France. His father was a major of artillery in the French Army and an officer of the Légion d'honneur. When growing up, he reportedly spent time in the studio of his father's friend, the pioneer of photography Louis Daguerre, from whom he may have received some lessons on photography and chemistry before he was 10 years old. His education went on to include the study of painting in Paris and post-graduate chemistry at Leipzig University. He then moved to Leeds, England in 1866, after being invited to join John Whitley, a friend from college, in Whitley Partners of Hunslet, a firm of brass founders making valves and components. In 1869, he married Elizabeth Whitley, John's sister and a talented artist, and the two of them started a school of applied art, the Leeds Technical School of Art, and became well renowned for their work in fixing coloured photographs on to metal and pottery. In 1881, Le Prince went to the United States with his family where he began experiments relating to the production of 'moving' photographs, designing a camera that utilised sixteen lenses, which was the first invention he patented. After his return to Leeds in May 1887, he built a single-lens camera in mid-late 1888 used to shoot his motion-picture films. It was first used on 14 October 1888 to shoot what would become known as Roundhay Garden Scene (1888) and Accordion Player (1888). He later used it to film Traffic Crossing Leeds Bridge (1888). In September 1890, he was preparing for a trip to the United States, supposedly to publicly premiere his work and join his wife and children. Before this journey, he decided to return to France to visit his brother in Dijon. Then, on 16 September, he took a train to Paris but, having taken a later train than planned, his friends missed him in Paris. He was never seen again by his family or friends. The last person to see Le Prince at the Dijon station was his brother. The French police, Scotland Yard and the family undertook exhaustive searches, but never found him. Le Prince was officially declared dead on 16 September 1897.- Serial killer who single-handedly committed the most number of murders in a single day - 8. He was the 7th of 8 children born to Robert Speck and Gladys Sterner. His father died when he was 6 and his mother moved the family to Dallas. While there he had 37 arrests for drunk and disorderly behaviour and burglary. He worked as a garbage man for a while. In 1965 he was caught trying to assault a woman at knife point. He was sentenced to 490 days and released as a parole violator. In March 1966 he was separated from his wife and went to Monmoth, Illinois where he has some distant relatives. By then he had become an alcoholic and harboured homicidal threats against his wife. He worked as a merchant seaman on the ore barges that plied the Great Lakes. Speck suffered from Satyriasis (sexual addiction in men) and though he is remembered now for his 8 victim tally on one bloody night he was resposible for 4 other killings that occurred over a period of 3 months before that. This truly makes him a serial-killer and not just a mass murderer. His first killing took place on April 10, 1966. Most of his victims were women who were abducted, raped and either strangled or stabbed to death. His oldest victim was 65. On July 10, 1966 he moved to Chicago. Speck needed money to get passage on a vessel bound for New Orleans. On the 'infamous' night of July 13/14, 1966 he approached Jeffrey Manor a 2 storey townhome at 2319 East 100th Street. It served as a dormitory for nursing students from South Chicago Community Hospital. He was high on downers and inebriated when he knocked on the door. The door was opened by a young Filipino nurse who was immediately taken hostage at both gun and knife point. Speck then aroused 5 other students and herded all 6 of them into one room where he bound and gagged them. Over the next hour 3 more nurses came back to their dormitory and Speck now found himself with 9 potential victims. Speck then came to his brutal decision - he would just dispose of them. He took them one by one, like lambs for slaughter, into adjacent rooms, where he stabbed, strangled and at times raped them. While this was going on the remaining nurses tried to crawl under beds or escape. Speck finished killing 8 out the 9 nurses. He had lost count and the lone survivor of the carnage - the Filipino nurse who had let him in, had managed to crawl away in the darkness and hide in a dark corner in another room. She waited there until 5 in the morning before she came out and screamed for help. The nurses were young who ranged in age from 20 to 24. When the police examined the corpses and noticed the use of square knots they suspected their killer might be a seaman. The lone survivor gave a description of the pock-marked Speck, including a tattoo on his left forearm that said 'born to raise hell'. On July 17, 1966 Speck was found in his crashpad and admitted to Cook County Hospital. He had tried to overdose on drugs to commit suicide. He was recognized by the doctors as the possible killer and the authorities were alerted. In April 1967 he was convicted of multicide and sentenced to death in August, 1967. However in 1972 the verdict was overturned when the Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional. His sentence was commuted to consecutive life terms amounting to 400 years. While in prison Speck considered sex change and even got regular injections with female hormones so that he could gradually change his appearance. He died in 1991 after serving only 19 years.
- A native of Bhadeli, a village near the city of Bulsar, in what is now the state of Gujarat, Morarji Ranchhodji Desai was born on leap years day in 1896, the oldest of the 6 children of Ranchhodji Desai, a teacher, and Vajiaben (or Maniben) Desai. He was educated at Bombay University, and he was a civil servant for 12 years before embarking on a long and varied political career. He joined Congress in 1930, but was twice imprisoned as a supporter of Mahatma Gandhi's Civil Disobedience Campaign before becoming Revenue Minister in the Bombay government (1937-39). He was again imprisoned (1941-45) for his part in the 'Quit India' movement, before again serving as Bombay's Revenue Minister (1946) and later, Home Minister and Chief Minister (1952). Four years later, he entered central government, first as Minister for Commerce and Industry (1956-58) then as Finance Minister, resigning in 1963 to devote himself to party work. He was a candidate for the premiership in 1964 and again in 1966, when he was defeated by Indira Gandhi. Deputy premier and Minister of Finance in her administration, Desai resigned in 1968 over differences with the premier. In 1974 he supported political agitation in Gujarat, and the following year began a fast in support of elections in the state, being detained when a state of emergency was proclaimed. After his release in 1977 he was appointed leader of the Janata Party, a coalition opposed to Mrs Gandhi's rule, and he finally became Prime Minister after the elections that same year. The Janata government was, however, characterized by much internal strife, and Desai was forced to resign in 1979.
- Applewhite was born in Spur, Texas the son of a Presbyterian Minister. He graduated from high school in Corpus Christi, Texas in 1948. Applewhite briefly enrolled to study as a Minister but changed his mind and went into Music. In 1952 he graudated from Austin College. He then did a brief stint in the US army corps from 1954 to '56. By 1959 he had obtained his Masters in Music from the Univ. of Colorada at Boulder. He was hired as choral director at Univ. of Alabama in 1961. From 1966 to '70 he taught music at Houston's Univ. of St. Thomas. Applewhite even played leading roles at the Houston Grand Opera. However, in 1970 he was dismissed for 'health reasons of an emotional nature'. He even underwent some psychotherapy but of no avail. By 1972 he had divorced his wife and was estranged from his 2 children. During this period in his life he met divorceé Bonnie Lu Nettles a former nurse and mother of 4 who was now interested in astrology. The 2 lived as common-law partners and moved to Las Vegas and Oregon looking for 'spiritual awakening'. In 1974 Applewhite was jailed in Texas for auto theft and credit card fraud. In the period after his release Applewhite and Nettles began calling themselves "the Two" and "Bo" and "Peep" (respectively) and also "Do" and "Ti" (like the musical notes). They began to collect a group of disillusioned followers preaching that the body was just a 'container' and that a great big 'mother ship' would come from outer space to collect the true believers before the end of the world. The press initially dubbed them as a 'UFO cult'! In 1985 when Bonnie died from cancer, Applewhite said that she had been collected by the 'mother ship' and only her container (body) was left behind. By 1993 they were called 'Total Overcomers Anonymous'. On January 17, 1994 when an earthquake rocked California they claimed that it was a sign that the end was near. Applewhite and his followers now needed another sign. They got it, in March 1997 when comet Halle Bopp appeared in the night skies. Applewhite along with 38 other followers made a videotape recording their last messages for loved ones. At their 'ranch' - Rancho Sant Fe (30 miles north of San Deigo, California) they committed mass suicide by consuming vodka laced with phenobarbital and covering their heads with plastic bags. They were all dressed in black with new nike shoes - a uniform by which the 'aliens' who would pick them up could identify them by. They were found a few days later in their bunk beds. Applewhite would not have said it was suicide - they had simply "moved on".
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Malayalam director who studied economics at a college near Kottayam. His grandfather educated him and gave him his first camera. He worked as an insurance salesman in Bellary. Then he went to FTII (Film and Television Institute of India) and studied under Bengali director Ritwik Kumar Ghatak. He started with a student film. His first film was Vidyarthikale Ithile Ithile (1971) made in Tamil. He also wrote his own films. He later lived a nomadic lifestyle in the 70s and depended on support from his friends and colleagues. He suffered from alcoholism and died an accidental death.- One of the greatest Greek philosophers (considered the greatest Greek writer of prose by some), Plato, was born into an aristocratic Athenian family. He met Socrates around 407 BC and became his disciple in philosophy. Socrates was executed in 399 BC. Plato and fellow disciples took refuge under Euclid in Megara. Following that for a period of 12 years Plato traveled extensively to Egypt, Sicily and Italy. He met Dionysius I of Syracuse in 390 BC. And the Pythagorean mathematician Archytas of Taras (Tarentum) while in Italy, who was a follower of the semi-legendary Pythagoras of Samos (6th Cent. B.C.). He began teaching pupils near the grove of Academus outside Athens in 388 BC. His school was named Academy after the place. Plato was summoned to the court of Dionysuis II of Syracuse by Dion, the ruler's uncle, in 366 BC, and by Dionysius II himself in 362 BC. Plato's philosophical and literary activities extend over a period of 50 years. His main works falls into 2 categories viz. letters and dialogs. The 13 letters are mainly addressed to Dionysus the Tyrant of Syracuse and deal with political advice. The 26 dialogs fall into 3 broad categories - early, middle and late based on his travels. The more well known include the Protagoras, Gorgias, Ion, the Republic (where he attacks the power and pretension of literature), Cratylus, Phaedrus, Sophist and Laws. His death is reported by some authorities as having occurred at a wedding feast or while he was writing. He was buried at the Academy.
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Singer Maria Trapp was born on January 26, 1905, aboard a train, as her mother hurried from their village in the Tyrol to the hospital in Vienna, Austria. Her mother, Augusta (nee Rainer), died shortly after Maria was born, and her father, Karl Kutschera, died when she was 6 years old. As a guardian to Maria, the court appointed a man whom she has described as a passionate socialist and a violent anti-Catholic. Although she had been baptized, she grew up outside the Church until she was 18. She was, at that time, in her final year at the State Teachers College for Progressive Education in Vienna. To atone for her earlier life, Maria Kutschera decided to enter a convent. She was accepted as a candidate for the novitiate at the Nonnberg Benedictine Convent at Salzburg, where she considered herself a black sheep because of her tomboyish ways, her willful and independent nature, and her lack of religious training. She was teaching fifth graders at the convent when she was sent by the Mother Abbess as a governess to the children of Baron Georg von Trapp. The Baron, a much-decorated World War I submarine commander, had retired with his 7 children to a villa in Aigen, near Salzburg, after the death of his wife. Maria quickly won the affection of the lonely family with her lively, outgoing disposition and the songs, games, and customs of her Tyrolean girlhood. At the end of nine months, she expected to return to the convent and take the veil. When the Baron proposed marriage, she was torn between her religious devotion and her attachment to the family. With the blessing of the Mother Abbess at Nonnberg, however, she married the Baron on November 26, 1927. After the marriage, the family often sang together, especially during their traditional observance of religious festivals. As a result of the economic disorders that plagued Europe in the early 1930s, the Baron lost his fortune, and to earn a living, the family turned their large home into a guest house for students and clergymen. A special dispensation from the Archbishop of Salzburg permitted them to have a chapel where Mass could be celebrated in their own home. At Easter 1935, the Reverend Franz Wasner (now Monsignor Wasner) came to the Trapp home as a guest and officiating priest. An accomplished musician, he listened critically to the family's informal singing and then immediately took charge of their musical education, becoming their conductor as well as their personal chaplain. He remained with them during their entire career as entertainers. In August 1936, when they happened to be heard by Lotte Lehmann, who insisted that they enter a choral competition at the Salzburg Festival. After winning the contest, they received invitations to give concerts and broadcasts. They began their first European tour at the end of 1937, as the Trapp Family Choir. In March 1938, Austria was taken over by the Nazis. With only a few possessions, they fled across the mountains to St. Georgen, Italy. There they made arrangements with an American concert manager, who advanced them enough money for their passage to New York. The first American concert of the Trapp Family Choir took place at Lafayette College, Easton, Pennsylvania, in October 1938. Over the next few years, they did several traveling shows. In 1942, they spent their summer vacation in Stowe, Vermont. They found the Green Mountain countryside a peaceful retreat that resembled their native Austria, and before the summer ended, they had purchased a 660-acre farm on a hillside offering an expansive view. During a European tour in the summer of 1950, they appeared at the Salzburg Festival. There they were greeted and feted royally and paid a visit to their former home, which had been turned over to missionaries of the Society of Precious Blood after having been used as a Nazi headquarters during World War II. In 1955, the group disbanded permanently after a farewell tour climaxed by three Christmas concerts at Town Hall. Since then, Maria wrote about her life, which became fictionalized in plays (1959) and the popular movie The Sound of Music (1965). She spent the last days of her life as a resort owner with her children and grandchildren in Vermont.- Chinese philosopher who was born Kong Qiu, with the formal name Kong Zhongni, in the state of Lu in what is now Shandong province. The second son of a minor aristocratic family that had fallen from power, Confucius was orphaned as a child and grew up in relative poverty. A voracious reader, he educated himself, eventually becoming a private tutor for the sons of wealthy gentlemen. Distressed by the division of China into fiercely competitive and often warring states, Confucius, like many other thinkers of his era, devoted much time to pondering ways to restore order to the chaotic world in which he lived. For a decade beginning when he was about 55, Confucius wandered through neighboring states, attempting to convince various rulers of his worthiness for political positions through which he could introduce his planned reforms. Though by most accounts his travels never resulted in an offer for political office (some sources say he became a minister of state), Confucius was able to gather a substantial number of students who devoted themselves to his school of thought. Though it has been described as a religion, Confucianism is more of a political and social philosophy based on humanism, rationality, education, and virtuous example. During imperial times, Confucius was lauded as the "First Teacher" and the "Uncrowned King".
- Along with his adopted cousin Angelo Buono Jr. he was part of "the Hillside Stranglers" pair. Bianchi's mother was a prostitute who gave him up for adoption as an infant. By the age of 11 he was having problems at school with his conduct and frequent tantrums. He tried for the police force but was rejected by the Glendale and Los Angeles Police Departments. In 1971 he wrote to a girl-friend claiming he had killed a man, but she did not take it seriously. From 1971 to 1973, 3 girls were killed in Rochester that became known as the 'Alphabet Murders' because the first and last initials of the their names were the same! Bianchi was later suspected of being responsible. In 1976 he moved down to Los Angeles where he lived with his adopted cousin (Angelo Buono). Ten women were killed between Oct 17 and December 9, 1977. The Hillside Stranglers displayed the bodies on hillsides near freeways to taunt the authorities. They impersonated policemen and preyed on prostitutes and female motorists. Their victims were tortured, raped and finally garroted. One of their prospective victims was Catharine Lorre (daughter of actor Peter Lorre) who testified that she had been approached by 2 policemen. The authorities now knew they were dealing with a pair of killers. In 1978 Bianchi went to Bellingham, Washington where he worked as a security guard. On January 11, 1979 2 women who had gone to meet him for a house-sitting job were found dead. Bianchi had been their last contact. His house was searched by the police and they found items stolen from his security guard posts. He was finally tied to the Hillside slayings in June 1979. In jail Bianchi feigned multiple personality. He agreed to testify against his cousin Buono and was facing 10 counts of murder. His cousin was arrested in Oct 1979. In June 1980 he received a letter from Veronica Lynn Compton (23) a poet, playwright and aspiring actress who wanted his opinion on new play regarding a female serial-killer. Compton it seems was fascinated with necrophilia. She agreed to go to Bellingham, strangle a woman there and deposit Bianchi's semen at the scene to confuse the police into thinking that the real killer was still on the loose. On September 16, 1980 she got a book from Bianchi, in prison, within which was concealed a glove containing his semen. On October 3, 1980 she was arrested for attempted murder. Bianchi's trial went on from November 1981 to November 1983. He was finally found guilty of 9 counts of murder and sentenced to 9 life terms without parole.
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Eric Charles Boardman grew up in Chicago, Illinois. He obtained a Psychology degree from Lake Forest College in Lake Forest, Illinois. He is mainly noted as a host to various 'Home and Garden TV' shows. He has been the host of various educational children's videos like: 'Prehistoric World', 'Dinosaurs, Dinosaurs, Dinosaurs' (1987), 'More Dinosaurs' (1991) and 'The Return of Dinosaurs' (1993). He was the host for 'Calling All Cooks'. His childhood heroes included Ernie Banks and Dick Van Dyke.- Writer
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Versatile Greek poet and tragic dramatist. He was the son of Sophilus, a wealthy arms manufacturer. Sophocles studied tragedy under Aeschylus, whom he subsequently defeated in the dramatic festival of 468 BC, thus gaining his first victory at these competitions. He became a general under Nicias and after the failure of the Athenian expedition to Syracuse (413) was appointed one of the special commissioners to deal with the emergency. He was a priest of Amynos, a god of healing, and offered his own house as a place of worship for the healing deity Asclepius until his temple was ready. In addition, he founded a literary and musical society. His descendants were also tragedians - his son Iophon and grandson Sophocles the younger. Unlike his rival Euripides, he had very early acquired a favorable public. About 130 plays were attributed to him, (7 of which were subsequently reckoned spurious). In the dramatic competitions he probably won 24 victories--that is to say, 24 of his tetralogies (each comprising 3 tragedies and a satyr play) were successful. Seven of his tragedies have survived viz. Ajax, Antigone, Oedipus Rex, Electra, the Trachinian Women, Philoctetes and Oedipus at Colonus (his last play performed in 401 after his death). Sophocles died just before the catastrophic end of the Peloponnesian War.- Controversial pathologist, writer and inventor, Jack Kevorkian was the only son of Levon Kevorkian a former auto-factory worker who owned an excavating company and his homemaker wife. He had 2 sisters. Kevorkian's parents were Armenian refugees, whose relatives were among the 1.5 millon victims of Turkish atrocities in World War I. As a young boy he quit Sunday school because he did not believe in Armenian Orthodox teachings. He taught himself German and Japanese in high school during World war II. Kevorkian graduated from Pontiac High School with honors in 1945 at 17. He then enrolled at the University of Michigan from where he graduated from Medical school in 1952. Kevorkian completed an internship in Pathology at Henry Ford hospital in Detroit, during which period he had an epiphany when he saw a woman who was dying of cancer. It was then that he began to think of ways to alleviate suffering in his patients. In 1953 he got his medical license for Michighan state. He then did a 15 month stint in Korea as an Army Medical Officer during the Korean War. He returned and completed his residency at Pontiac General Hospital, Michigan. He got his nickname 'Dr. Death' in 1956 when he started photographing the retinas of patients at the moment of death to differentiate between coma and death. From 1956-57 he did research in West Germany. In 1957 he obtained his California medical license. In 1958 he presented a paper on 'Capital Punishment or Capital Gain' at the American Association for the Advancement of Science' at Washington, DC. He suggested the harvesting of organs from death row prisoners. This was considered controversial because death row inmates don't necessarily have any rights. By 1960 he was licensed in Pathological Anatomy and in 1965 in Clinical Pathology. In April 1960 he testified before a Joint Judicial Committee in Columbus, Ohio to revise the death penalty and to legalize medical experimentation on condemned inmates. In 1976 he moved to Los Angeles, California. He changed jobs frequently. Between 1982 to 86 he mainly did his writing and research. In 1988, even the pro-suicide Hemlock Society founder, Derek humphry rebuffed his methods as "too perilous and risky". In 1989 after reading about a patient who had asked for euthanasia he began working on a lethal-injection machine that would be able to do the task at the 'flip of a switch'. It was called the Thanatron (and later Mercitron). He got a lot of publicity because of this. On June 4, 1990 he performed the first of his 'medicides' as he liked to call physician-assisted suicide. His 'client' was a 54 year old woman suffering from Alzheimer's. She had contacted him herself after reading his ads in the papers. It was performed in the back of his VW van. She received sodium pentothal (an anesthetic) and potassium chloride (to stop the heart). By the time of this 3rd medicide his medical licemse was revoked for violating Michigan state laws regarding euthanasia. One of his 'clients' was even found on autopsy not to have any major pathology. He continued to do his medicides by giving his clients carbon-monoxide. There were reports that one patient had asked her mask to be removed twice (maybe a change of mind) but Kevorkian had continued with his task. On August 17, 1993 he was formally charged with violating the law. By then he had already helped 20 clients to their peaceful deaths. He was jailed first in November 1993 and then again in December 1993. Kevorkian went on a liquid only fast for 18 days and was acquitted in May 1994. By now he had even gained several supporters in the general community. By 1998 he hed committed over 100 medicides. Relatives of some of his clients claimed that he had continued despite protests from his 'victims'. He was now charged with 2nd degree murder. During his trial he was defended by the flamboyant lawyer Geoffrey Fieger. In March 1999 Dr. Kevorkian was sentenced by a Michigan jury to 10-25 years for his crime.
- Indian founder transcendental meditation, born in Allahabad, UP, India in 1917. He abandoned his scientific studies to become a follower of Guru Dev. He founded the science of creative intelligence and, as an exponent of the relaxation technique called transcendental meditation, he became one of the first Eastern gurus to attract a Western following. He first introduced his meditation technique, based on a literal interpretation of yoga concepts and the use of mantras, to the West in 1958, and went on to found the Spiritual Regeneration movement, aimed at saving the world through meditation. He taught that 'life is bliss'. This concept has developed into a worldwide network of meditation centers with an estimated four million practitioners. The Beatles were among his 'celebrity' disciples.
- Velma dropped out high school in her junior year. She eloped with her first husband at the age of 17 and settled down in Paxton. In 1964 her husband was injured in a car crash and lost his job. He began to drink heavily eventually becoming an alcoholic. Velma had him committed to Dorothea Dix Hospital in Raleigh. Meanwhile she worked at a local mill and took prescription tranquilizers for 'peace of mind'. Her husband 'mysteriously' burned to death in his bed in 1969 while smoking. Her second husband died within 6 months of their marriage. Velma was hospitalized 4 times for drug overdoses. Yet she still remained dutifully religious amd taught Sunday school at the Pentecostal church. Velma began to incur debts and wrote hot checks to cover them. In 1974 she killed her own mother, Lillie, with insecticide so that she could fake her signature on a $1,000 loan. She poisoned two of her employers and a lover over the next few years. The relatives of her lover did not belive that he could have just died from 'acute gastroenteritis' and so a full autopsy was performed. It was found that he had been poisoned with arsenic which could mimic acute gastroenteritis. Autopsies on her 2nd husband revealed the same. Velma Barfield confessed to her crimes. In court the jury deliberated for an hour and found her guilty of first degree murder. She was sentenced to be executed in 1984.
- In 1988 he landed at Charles de Gaulle Airport (Paris, France) after being denied entry into England because his passport and United Nations refugee card had been stolen. He was not allowed into France and he did not want to return to Iran (his home country) from where he was fleeing as a political refugee. He ended up living in Terminal One of the airport for over 16 years. His dilemma was used as the basis for two movies: Tombés du ciel (1993) and The Terminal (2004).
- Considered to be the first American serial killer and possibly the most prolific, he was also a con-man and bigamist. He was a doctor who studied medicine at Ann Arbor, MI. He then moved to New York where he practiced briefly. His first brush with the law occurred there when some corpses were found in his possession. He fled to Chicago where he worked for a drug company. The owner mysteriously disappeared and he became the owner. Over the next few years several people who crossed his path also mysteriously disappeared. In 1891 he began construction of a hotel at the corner of 63rd St. in Chicago. It was constructed by several builders over time and had a labyrinthine network of passages that would become his "torture chambers". It was during the Chicago World Fair of 1893 that he did most of his killings when his victims checked into his hotel. They were mainly young attractive women. Holmes would drug them, have sex with their bodies and then drop them down a chute into a gas chamber. There he would watch through a glass panel as they slowly choked to death. Then he would dissect their bodies and dispose of them in acid baths, furnaces or by using quicklime. However, it was because of insurance fraud in Texas that he was brought to the attention of the authorities again. Detective Geyer followed his trail through Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts. The bodies of the Pietzel family were found in an Indianapolis boarding house and Holmes was arrested. On 11/30/1895 he received the death sentence. Holmes wrote in his memoirs that he had killed 27 people; however, when he was taken to the gallows he retracted his confession saying that he had done it just for a publicity stunt. Over 200 bodies were found in his Chicago death house, known as "'Holmes' Torture Castle".
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Major Malayalam actor and director of the 60s and 70s. Graduated from Benares Hindu University and later took a diploma in acting from the National School of Drama. He often played the sad and suffering lover. He gained major acclaim after Chemmeen (1965) which established him as a character actor. After that he acted regularly in independent productions. His fist directorial venture was 'Priya' (1970) which received major critical acclaim. Founded the Uma Studio in Trivandrum (Kerala, India).- Eddie Carmel's abnormal growth started when he was a teenager. He suffered from acromegaly because of a pituitary gland tumor that was incurable at the time. As an adult, the only work he could find involved exploiting his freakishness. With his best friend, Irwin Sherman, they worked together as stand-up comedians in New York.
Carmel starred in a B-grade monster movie (The Brain That Wouldn't Die (1962)) and made two 45-rpm records ("The Happy Giant" and "The Good Monster"). He joined the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Baliey Circus from 1961 to 1968. They presented him as "The World's Greatest Giant" and "The Tallest Man on Earth." His height was billed at 8' 9" (a 14-inch exaggeration). He very much wanted to be respected for his talent and said, "I'd like someday to reach the point when I'm known as the reverse Mickey Rooney."
He developed severe kyphoscoliosis (abnormal curvature of the spine) at the time of his death that shortened his height to about 7 feet (213 cm). Eddie died at the age of 37 in Montefiore Hospital. - Writer
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Ancient Greek poet and comic dramatist Aristophanes was the son of Philippus of Athens. A leading exponent of the Athenian "Old Comedy," Aristophanes lived most of his life during the Peloponnesian War against Sparta (431-404). Some of his works include "Acharnians" (425), "Knights" (424), "In the Clouds" (423), "In the Wasps" (422), "The Peace" (421), "The Birds" (414), "In Lysistrata" (411), "The Thesmophoriazusae" (411), "In the Frogs" (405; it won the first prize at the Lenaean festival), "In the Ecclesiazusae" (392) and "In the Plutus" (388). He is the only exponent of the Athenian Old Comedy who has left us complete plays. In his day comic plays were performed at Athens annually at the festivals of Dionysus and Lenaea, at which occasions five poets competed, each producing a single play. The targets of Aristophanes' humor includes notable politicians (Pericles, Cleon, Hyperbolus), poets (Euripides) and philosophers (Socrates), to name a few. Aristophanes often makes fun of cultural innovators (although the construction of his plays shows that he was one of them himself), whereas the characters with whom he expresses sympathy are usually people who just want to be left to enjoy themselves in traditional ways.- Sitting Bull, a Hunkpapa Lakota (Sioux) holy man and war chief, was born in 1831 near the Grand River in what is now the Standing Rock Indian Reservation in South Dakota. He was named after his father, who was killed by Crow warriors--the Crow tribe being a longtime enemy of the Lakota--in an ambush. In the mid-1860s, during what became known as Red Cloud's War, Sitting Bull led the Sioux in a series of attacks on US Army posts and civilian wagon trains in the Powder River area of the Dakotas. Although other Indian tribes signed a peace treaty with the US government ending the war in 1868, Sitting Bull refused to and continued his attacks on military and civilian targets into the 1870s. He attacked crews building railroads across the Indian territory and miners who were panning for gold in the Black Hills, an area sacred to the Sioux. His attacks prompted the US government to send federal troops to the area, under the command of Col. George Armstrong Custer, to stop them. In 1875 the US Interior Department ordered all Sioux living outside the area known as The Great Sioux Reservation to move onto it, and any who did not would be declared "hostile" and could be forcibly removed to the reservation. Rather than persuading Indians to follow the Department's orders, this policy resulted in several tribes previously hostile to each other, such as the Cheyenne and Kiowa, to unite in alliance with the Sioux against the army, although many chiefs who had previously fought the army--such as Red Cloud, Gall and Spotted Tail--decided it was in their best interests to take their followers and live on the reservation.
In 1875 the Cheyenne and several Sioux clans joined forces to resist the army's attempts to place them on the reservation. They used Sitting Bull's camp as their main assembling point, as did many other Indians who had bolted from the reservation. As more and more Indians arrived the camp expanded in size, until there were an estimated 16,000 Indians living there. It was this camp that Custer stumbled across on June 25, 1876. His attack on the camp, and the subsequent defeat and annihilation of his command, became known as the Battle of the Little Big Horn, named for the river that ran through the camp. Contrary to popular opinion, however, Sitting Bull had nothing to do with the defeat of Custer's forces--his task was to organize a defense of the camp, and it was other chiefs who led the counterattack on Custer.
Custer's defeat led the US army to assign thousands of troops to the area to track down and capture Sitting Bull, and over the next year or so many Sioux chiefs surrendered their bands due to the intense pressure from the army. Sitting Bull, however, refused to surrender and in 1877 led his band across the border into Canada, where he knew the US army could not reach him. However, conditions in Canada deteriorated for the Indians, with cold and hunger taking their toll. On July 19, 1881, he crossed back into the US and led his band of nearly 200 Indians to Fort Buford, South Dakota, and surrendered. Initially taken to Fort Yates, near the Standing Rock Reservation, Sitting Bull's band was transferred to Fort Randall, where they were kept for almost two years as prisoners of war. They returned to Standing Rock in 1883.
The next year Sitting Bull was given permission to leave the reservation to join the "wild west show" of Buffalo Bill Cody, aka "Buffalo Bill", and he became an audience favorite. He returned to the reservation after only four months with the Cody show, however. By that time he had become somewhat of a celebrity and many whites visited the reservation hoping to see him. He turned a tidy profit charging his "fans" to have their pictures taken with him.
In 1890 a movement known as the "Ghost Dance" swept the Standing Rock reservation. Part of the movement's message was to encourage Indians to defy the authorities and leave the reservation. The Indian Agency administrators were concerned that Sitting Bull, who was still considered a leader among the Sioux and wielded great influence over them, was planning on taking as many Indians as he could and flee the reservation. They ordered the tribal police to arrest and jail him to keep that from happening. On December 15, 1890, a force of more than 40 Indian police arrived at Sitting Bull's house. As they prepared to take him away, nearby Indians who had heard what was happening began to gather around the house. Sitting Bull refused to go with the police, and the crowd became angry. Reportedly a Sioux onlooker grabbed a rifle and fired it at the officer in charge, hitting him. The officer then pulled his weapon and shot Sitting Bull in the chest, and another officer fired a round into his head. The crowd then attacked the police, who fought back, and in the ensuing mêlée eight Indian police and seven Indians in the crowd, along with Sitting Bull, were killed. - Along with his adopted cousin Kenneth Bianchi he was part of "the Hillside Stranglers" pair. When he was young his parents divorced. His mother got custody of him and took him across the country from New York to California. He began stealing cars by 14 and was in a youth reformatory by 16 for grand theft auto. He became fascinated with his "idol" sex offender Caryl Chessman the "red light rapist" and began to emulate his techniques. He had several children, legitimate and illegitimate and frequently abused his wives and girl friends. In 1977 along with cousin Bianchi he began the infamous 'hillside slayings' in Los Angeles. When Bianchi was arrested in Washington state in early 1979 he confessed to the crimes and 'betrayed' Buono. Angelo Buono was arrested in October 1979. After his trial in 1983 he got 9 life terms without parole.