Author: Hiromimarie

Noah Webster, Jr. was a lexicographer, English spelling reformer, political writer and has been called the “Father of American Scholarship and Education.” His name became synonymous with “dictionary,” especially the modern Merriam-Webster dictionary that was first published in 1828 as An American Dictionary of the English Language. He was born on October 16, 1758 in West Hartford, Connecticut to Noah Webster, Sr. and Mercy Steele. His mother spent long hours teaching Noah and his siblings… Read the full story

William Henry Moore was an attorney and financier. He and his brother James Hobart Moore controlled several makers of primary or finished steel products such as National Steel, American Tin Plate Company, American Steel Hoop Company and American Sheet Steel Metal. These four corporations were among the ten that were merged to form United States Steel. William Moore was born in 1848 to Nathaniel Ford Moore, a prominent banker and merchant in Utica, New York… Read the full story

Julia Louis-Dreyfus is an American actress, comedienne and producer. She is well known for her roles in Seinfeld, The New Adventures of Old Christine, and  Veep. In the early 1980’s she was one of the regular cast members of Saturday Night Live. Louis-Dreyfus is one of the most nominated actresses in Emmy Award history with a total of 14 nominations. She has won three Emmy Awards, a Golden Globe Award and five Screen Actors Guild… Read the full story

Cecil B. DeMille was an American film director and Academy Award-winning film producer in both silent and sound films. His best-known films are Cleopatra; Samson and Delilah; The Greatest Show on Earth, which won the Academy Award for Best Picture; and The Ten Commandments, which was his last and most successful film. Cecil Blount DeMille was born in Ashfield, Massachusetts on August 12, 1881 to Henry Churchill and Matilda Beatrice de Mille. DeMille, but grew… Read the full story

James Spader is an America actor best known for his roles in films such as Pretty in Pink; Less Than Zero; Sex, Lies, and Videotape; Crash; Stargate; and Secretary. His best known television roles are in The Practice as Alan Shore and its spin-off Boston Legal, for which he won three Emmy Awards, and in The Office as Robert California. He was born on February 7, 1960 in Boston, Massachusetts to Stoddard Greenwood “Todd” and Jean (Fraser) Spader, both… Read the full story

Cokie Roberts is an American journalist and author. She is a contributing senior news analyst for National Public Radio as well as a regular round table analyst for the current This Week With George Stephanopoulos. She also works as a political commentator for ABC News, serving as an on-air analyst for the network. Roberts serves on the boards of several non-profit organizations such as the Kaiser Family Foundation. She is the author of the national… Read the full story

General Douglas MacArthur was an American general and field marshal of the Philippine Army who was Chief of Staff of the United States Army during the 1930’s and played a prominent role in the Pacific Theater of Operations during World War II. He was raised in a military family, when he entered West Point in 1899, his mother had also moved there to a suite at Craney’s Hotel, overlooking the grounds of the Academy. Hazing… Read the full story

T. S. Eliot was a publisher, playwright, literary and social critic and English-language poet of the 20th century. The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (published in Chicago in 1915) was the poem that made his name and is seen as a masterpiece of the Modernist movement, and was followed by some of the best-known poems in the English language, including Gerontion (1920), The Waste Land (1922), The Hollow Men (1925), Ash Wednesday (1930), and Four Quartets (1945). He… Read the full story

Jeff Bridges is an American actor, musician and producer. He began his first televised acting in 1958 as a child with his father, Lloyd Bridges, and brother Beau on television’s Sea Hunt. Some of his best-known major motion films include: Tron, Fearless, Iron Man, The Contender, Starman, The Fabulous Baker Boys, Jagged Edge, Against All Odds, The Fisher King, Thunderbolt and Lightfoot, Seabiscuit, Arlington Road, and The Big Lebowski. He won the Academy Award for… Read the full story

Dick Van Dyke is an American actor, comedian, writer, and producer. He starred in the films Bye Bye Birdie, Mary Poppins and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and in the TV series The Dick Van Dyke Show and Diagnosis: Murder. He has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame located at 7021 Hollywood Boulevard. He will be receiving the Screen Actors Guild’s highest honor: The Life Achievement Award at the annual Screen Actors Guild Awards ceremony in January 2013…. Read the full story

Eli Lilly was an American soldier, pharmaceutical chemist, industrialist, entrepreneur, and founder of the Eli Lilly and Company Pharmaceutical Corporation. During the American Civil War, Lilly enlisted in the Union Army recruiting a company of men to serve with him in an artillery battery, he was later promoted to colonel, and was given command of a cavalry unit. He was captured near the end of the war and held as a prisoner of war until… Read the full story

Elizabeth Montgomery was an American film and television actress, best known as Samantha Stephens in Bewitched. Bewitched was a rating success and at the time was the highest rated series ever for the ABC network. Montgomery played the lovable witch Samantha Stevens for eight years (1964-1972). The show had been renewed for a ninth season (1972-1973), but Montgomery wanted to move on and backed out. She received five Emmy and four Golden Globe nominations for her role on Bewitched,… Read the full story

Nolan Hemmings is an English stage and film actor. He is most known for his portrayal of Staff Sergeant Charles ‘Chuck’ Grant in the HBO miniseries Band of Brothers. He is an actor in London’s West End Theatre. Nolan is married to actress Nikki Grosse who was one of the hosts on the Globe Trekker travel show. Hemmings was born in 1970 to English actor and director David Hemmings and American actress Gayle Hunnicutt. David… Read the full story

Anthony Howard “Tony” Goldwyn is an American actor and director. He stars in the ABC drama Scandal, as Fitzgerald Grant III, President of the United States. He played the role of Carl Bruner in Ghost, Colonel  Bagley in The Last Samurai, and the voice of the title character of the Disney animated Tarzan. He is also known for his role of Kendall Dobbs on the comedy series, Designing Women. Goldwyn had a recurring role on… Read the full story

Robin Williams is an American actor and comedian. He rose to fame in the late 1970s with his role as Mork, the alien in the TV series Mork & Mindy, and later stand-up comedy work. Williams has performed in many feature films since 1980. He won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance in the 1997 film Good Will Hunting. He has also won two Emmy Awards, four Golden Globes, two Screen… Read the full story

Jordana Brewster is a Brazilian-American actress. She began her acting career in 1995 with a one-episode role in the soap opera All My Children. She then appeared in As the World Turns in the recurring role as Nikki Munson for which she was nominated for Outstanding Teen Performer at the 1997 Soap Opera Digest Award. Brewster’s first feature film was in Robert Rodriguez’s 1998 The Faculty playing the role of Delilah Profitt, one of the… Read the full story

Alexandra “Ali” Wentworth is an American comedienne, actress, and author who starred in the comedy Head Case on the Starz TV network. She has made many appearances on television, including being a cast member on In Living Color and appearances on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. In 1995, she was in the famous “Soup Nazi” episode of Seinfield playing Jerry’s girlfriend Sheila (“Schmoopie”). In 1997, Wentworth appeared as the love interest in the television film… Read the full story

Uma Thurman is an American actress and model. She has been nominated for an Academy Award and has won a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a TV Mini-series in Hysterical Blindness, a series for which she also served as executive producer. Her most notable roles include Mia Wallace in Pulp Fiction (1994), Debby Miller in Hysterical Blindness (2002), and Beatrix Kiddo in the Kill Bill films (2003/2004). Cosmetics company Lancôme selected her as their spokeswoman,… Read the full story

Woody Guthrie is best known as an American singer-songwriter and folk musician. His musical legacy includes hundreds of political, traditional and children’s songs, ballads and improvised works. His best-known song is “This Land Is Your Land.” Many of his recorded songs are archived in the Library of Congress. He frequently performed with the slogan This Machine Kills Fascists displayed on his guitar. Guthrie has been acknowledged as a major influence for songwriters such as Bob Dylan,… Read the full story

Reese Witherspoon is an American actress, film producer, and television producer. Her first feature role as the female lead was in 1991 in the film The Man in the Moon. Witherspoon’s career turning point was her role as Elle Woods in the box office hit Legally Blonde in 2001. She then starred in Sweet Home Alabama in 2002 and returned as lead actress and executive producer of Legally Blonde 2: Red, White & Blonde in… Read the full story

Ezra Cornell was a founder of Western Union and a co-founder of Cornell University. He also served as President of the New York Agriculture Society and as a state Senator. He was born in Westchester county, NY to Elijah Cornell and Eunice Barnard. He was a cousin of Paul Cornell, the founder of Chicago’s Hyde Park neighborhood. Cornell is also a distant relative of William Cornell, who was an early settler of Scarborough, Ontario and named… Read the full story

Bear Grylls is an English adventurer, writer and television presenter. He is best known for his television series Man vs. Wild or also known as Born Survivor in the United Kingdom. He has done many expeditions, in 2000 he led the first team to circumnavigate the U.K. on a personal watercraft or jet ski, taking about 30 days, to raise money for the Royal National Lifeboat Institution. He also rowed naked for 22 miles in… Read the full story

Air Commodore Whitney Willard Straight was a Grand Prix motor racing driver, aviator and businessman. He became a well known Grand Prix motor racing driver and competed at events in the UK and Europe. He started competing in 1931 with a Brooklands Riley competing at Shelsley Walsh, Southport and Brooklands circuit. Straight formed his own motor racing team in 1934, personally driving to victory in the South African Grand Prix, held on the 16-mile Buffalo… Read the full story

Patricia Rooney Mara is an American film and television actress. She has starred in the remake of the 1984 horror film, A Nightmare on Elm Street, The Social Network and the 2011 version of the film The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. She was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress and a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Motion Picture – Drama for her performance in The Girl with the Dragon… Read the full story

Ricky Nelson was an American singer-songwriter, instumentalist, and actor. He played himself in the radio sitcom series, The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet in 1949 which was the start of his entertainment career and he appeared in his first feature film, Here Come the Nelsons in 1952. In 1957, he recorded his first single, debuted as a singer on the television version of the sitcom, and recorded a number one album, Ricky. Nelson was the first… Read the full story

English poet, illustrator, painter and translator, Dante Gabriel Rossetti was the son of émigré Italian scholar Gabriele Pasquale Giuseppe Rossetti and Frances Polidori. He was born in London, England and originally named Gabriel Charles Dante Rossetti. Although his family and friends called him Gabriel, he put the name Dante first in honour of Dante Alighieri. Rosetti founded the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in 1848 with William Holman Hunt and John Everett Millai. His work influenced the European Symbolists… Read the full story

Polish novelist, Joseph Conrad was born Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski on December 3, 1857 in Berdichev, Kiev Governorate (now Berdychiv, Ukraine). He was born into a highly patriotic, noble Polish family. His father, Apollo Korzeniowski, was a Polish poet, playwright, clandestine political activist and a translator of Alfred de Vigny and Victor Hugo from French and of Charles Dickens and Shakespeare from English. He encouraged his son to read widely in Polish and French. In 1861… Read the full story

Singer and songwriter Enrique Iglesias has sold over 100 million records worldwide, making him one of the best selling Spanish language artists of all time. He has had five Billboard Hot 100 top five singles, including two number ones, and holds the record for producing 22 number one Spanish-language singles on the Billboard’s Hot Latin Tracks. He won a Grammy Award in 1997 for Best Latin Pop Performance. Iglesias shopped his first demo using the… Read the full story

Edgar Allan Poe was an American author, poet, editor and literary critic. He was the first well-known American writer to try to earn a living through his writing alone which resulted in a financially difficult life and career. He had enlisted in the United States Army as a private on May 27, 1827 using the name “Edgar A. Perry” claiming he was 22 years old when he was actually 18. Poe served at fort Independence… Read the full story

Alec Baldwin was born Alexander Rae Baldwin III on April 3, 1958 in Long Island, New York to Alexander Rae Baldwin, Jr., a high school history/social studies teacher and football coach and Carol Martineau, founder of the Carol M. Baldwin Breast Care Center of the University Hospital and Medical Center at Stony Brook, NY. Baldwin is an American actor who has appeared on stage, television and film. He first gained recognition through television for his… Read the full story

Stephen Benét was an American author, poet, short story writer, and novelist. He is best known for his narrative poem of the American Civil War, John Brown’s Body (1928), for which he won a Pulitzer Prize in 1929, and for two short stories, “The Devil and Daniel Webster” (1937) and “By the Waters of Babylon”. Benét was born on July 22, 1898 in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania to James Walker Benét, a colonel in the United States Army,… Read the full story