Public Figures & Cultural Luminaries
Filterable archive covering centuries of intellectual, artistic, and moral contributions to the human story.
Phyllis Diller
(Phyllis Ada Driver)
Trailblazing American stand-up comedian whose wild hair, outrageous wardrobe, rapid-fire self-deprecating wit, and cackling laugh shattered barriers for women in stand-up comedy.
Meles Zenawi
(แแแต แแแ แ แตแจแต)
Prime Minister of Ethiopia from 1995 to 2012 who led the rebel overthrow of the Marxist Derg military dictatorship and steered Ethiopia through unprecedented double-digit economic expansion.
Tony Scott
(Anthony David Leighton Scott)
Dynamic British film director and younger brother of Ridley Scott, whose kinetic editing, saturated colors, and high-octane energy created Top Gun, Crimson Tide, and True Romance.
William Windom
(William Windom)
Distinguished American character actor and decorated World War II paratrooper who won an Emmy Award for 'My World and Welcome to It', immortalized as the tormented Commodore Decker in 'Star Trek' and Dr. Seth Hazlitt in 'Murder, She Wrote'.
Johnny Pesky
(John Michael Paveskovich)
Beloved Boston Red Sox player, manager, coach, and goodwill ambassador whose sixty-year association with Fenway Park made him 'Mr. Red Sox' and gave his name to Fenway's right-field foul pole, 'Pesky's Pole'.
Marvin Hamlisch
(Marvin Frederick Hamlisch)
Virtuoso American composer and conductor, one of only two people in history (with Richard Rodgers) to win an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, Tony, and the Pulitzer Prize (PEGOT), famed for 'The Way We Were' and 'A Chorus Line'.
Robert Hughes
(Robert Studley Forrest Hughes)
Australian art critic and author who served as Time magazine's chief art critic for three decades, celebrated for his landmark BBC television history of modern art The Shock of the New.
Chavela Vargas
(Marรญa Isabel Anita Carmen de Jesรบs Vargas Lizano)
Legendary Costa Rican-born Mexican singer whose raw, smoking, gravelly renditions of Mexican ranchera songs, defiance of gender conventions, and close friendship with Frida Kahlo made her an icon of Latin American culture.
John Keegan
(Sir John Desmond Patrick Keegan)
Preeminent British military historian whose 1976 classic The Face of Battle transformed military historiography by examining combat through the visceral sensory experience of the frontline soldier.
Gore Vidal
(Eugene Luther Gore Vidal)
Iconic American novelist, essayist, and razor-witted public intellectual whose historical novels (Lincoln, Burr) and piercing political critiques dissected the American empire.
Maeve Binchy
(Maeve Binchy Snell)
Warm and beloved Irish novelist, journalist, and columnist whose compassionate portrayals of rural and small-town Irish life in Circle of Friends and Tara Road sold over 40 million books worldwide.
Chris Marker
(Christian Franรงois Bouche-Villeneuve)
Enigmatic and visionary French filmmaker, photographer, and multimedia artist who invented the modern cinematic essay and created the sci-fi photomontage classic La Jetรฉe (1962).
Dianne Foster
(Olga Helen Laruska)
Canadian-born Hollywood film and television actress who starred opposite major legends including Jimmy Stewart, Charlton Heston, and Mickey Rooney in 1950s classics like 'The Kentuckian' and 'Night Passage'.
Lupe Ontiveros
(Guadalupe Moreno)
Trailblazing Hispanic-American actress who estimated she played maids over 150 times while fearlessly fighting Hollywood ethnic stereotyping, acclaimed for her chilling turn as Yolanda Saldรญvar in Selena.
John Atta Mills
(John Evans Fiifi Atta Mills)
President of Ghana from 2009 to 2012, an esteemed tax law professor revered as 'Asomdweehene' (King of Peace) who solidified Ghana's reputation as a beacon of stable democracy in West Africa.
Sally Ride
(Sally Kristen Ride)
Pioneering American physicist and NASA astronaut who made history in 1983 as the first American woman in space aboard Space Shuttle Challenger, later founding Sally Ride Science to inspire young girls in STEM.
Frank Pierson
(Frank Romer Pierson)
Academy Award-winning American screenwriter and director who wrote cinema masterpieces including 'Cool Hand Luke' and 'Dog Day Afternoon', and served as president of both the Writers Guild of America and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
Stephen Covey
(Stephen Richards Covey)
Influential American educator and management consultant whose 1989 self-mastery book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People sold over 40 million copies in forty languages.