Brown-Potter, Cora Urquhart (15 May 1857–12 February 1936), actress, was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, the daughter of Colonel David Urquhart, a banker and plantation owner, and Augusta Slocomb. Some sources list the year of her birth as 1859. Her childhood was spent in the gardens and drawing rooms of a prosperous, cultured New Orleans society. Cora displayed a talent for the stage at an early age and, encouraged by her French-born father, she often recited passages by writers such as Racine, Corneille, and Victor Hugo for family and friends. As a child Cora did not attend school but was educated both at home, benefiting from her parents’ extensive library, and through travel abroad. The family lived in Paris for two years during the unsettled period immediately following the Civil War. Cora later accompanied her grandmother on summer trips to Scotland, England, Norway, and Sweden....
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Brown-Potter, Cora Urquhart (1857-1936), actress
Adele S. Paroni
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Cody, William Frederick (1846-1917), frontiersman and entertainer
Rick Ewig
Cody, William Frederick (26 February 1846–10 January 1917), frontiersman and entertainer, better known as “Buffalo Bill,” was born in Scott County, Iowa, the son of Isaac Cody and Mary Ann Bonsell Laycock. Cody’s father managed several farms and operated a state business in Iowa. In 1854 the family moved to the Salt Creek Valley in Kansas, where Cody’s father received a government contract to provide hay to Fort Leavenworth. After his father died in 1857, Cody went to work as an ox-team driver for fifty cents a day. Shortly thereafter, the firm of Majors and Russell hired him as an express boy. Cody attended school periodically, although his formal education ended in 1859 when he joined a party heading to Denver to search for gold. He prospected for two months without any luck. He arrived back in Kansas in March 1860 after a trapping expedition. He rode for a time for the Pony Express during its short lifetime (Apr. 1860–Nov. 1861). After the start of the Civil War he joined a group of antislavery guerrillas based in Kansas. Later the Ninth Kansas Volunteers hired him as a scout and guide. On 16 February 1864 Cody enlisted into Company F of the Seventh Kansas Volunteer Cavalry. He saw quite a bit of action in Tennessee, Missouri, Arkansas, and Kansas during his one year and seven months of duty. He was mustered out of the army as a private on 29 September 1865....
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Cody, William Frederick (1846-1917)
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Kadar, Jan (1918-1979), film director
Mary Hurd
Kadar, Jan (01 April 1918–01 June 1979), film director, was born in Budapest, Hungary, and raised in Lucenec, a Slovak town occupied by Hungarians. His parents’ names are unknown. He attended Charles University in Prague, where he studied law, but in 1938 he shifted to film studies at the Bratislava Film School in Slovakia. That same year his education was interrupted by the German invasion of Czechoslovakia. His parents and sister were sent to Auschwitz, where they died, and he was sent to a Nazi labor camp near Budapest....
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Murphy, Audie (1924-1971), soldier and film actor
John H. Lenihan
Murphy, Audie (20 June 1924–28 May 1971), soldier and film actor, was born Audie Leon Murphy in Hunt County, Texas, the son of Emmett Murphy and Josie Bell Killian, tenant farmers. Murphy was reared in the rural poverty familiar to Texas sharecropping families in the 1920s and 1930s. With barely a fifth-grade education, he left home at fifteen, facing what looked to be a bleak future. Then came Pearl Harbor, and, just after his eighteenth birthday in June 1942, he enlisted in the army. Shorter, thinner, and younger than the average GI, Murphy as an infantryman capitalized on his hunting skills and, from Sicily, through Italy and France, and into Germany, exhibited uncommon aggressiveness against the enemy. His prowess and initiative in combat earned him a battlefield commission and his country’s highest decorations, including the Congressional Medal of Honor for his daring standoff (firing a machine gun atop a burning tank destroyer) against a German counterattack at the Colmar Pocket in Alsace in January 1945....
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Smith, Anna Nicole (28 November 1967–6 February 2007), model, television personality, and celebrity
Brian Donovan
Smith, Anna Nicole (28 November 1967–6 February 2007), model, television personality, and celebrity, was born Vickie Lynn Hogan in Houston, Texas, to Donald Hogan and Virgie Mae Hogan. By many accounts, her childhood was difficult. She grew up in Mexia, Texas, with her aunt under impoverished conditions; once she allegedly stole toilet paper from a restaurant because her aunt could not afford any. As a teenager, Hogan dropped out of high school, took a job at a fried chicken restaurant, and, in ...
