May 7, 1919 – July 26, 1952 She was born in the village of Los Toldos in The Pampas, rural Argentina in 1919, the youngest of five children. In 1934, at the age of 15, she went to the nation’s capital of Buenos Aires, where she pursued a career as a stage, radio, and film actress. Eva met Colonel Juan Peron on January 22, 1944, in Buenos Aires during a charity event at the Luna Park Stadium to benefit the [...]
October 5, 1951 Robert Frederick Zenon “Bob” Geldof, is an Irish singer-songwriter, author, occasional actor and political activist. He rose to prominence as the lead singer of the Irish rock band the Boomtown Rats in the late 1970s and early 1980s alongside the punk rock movement. The band had hits with his compositions “Rat Trap” and “I Don’t Like Mondays”.He co-wrote “Do They Know It’s Christmas?”, one of the best-selling singles of all time,and starred in Pink Floyd’s 1982 film [...]
July 1, 1961 Frederick Carlton “Carl” is an American former track and field athlete and United Nations Goodwill Ambassador, who won 10 Olympic medals including 9 gold, and 10 World Championships medals, including 8 gold. His career spanned from 1979 when he first achieved a world ranking to 1996 when he last won an Olympic title and subsequently retired. Lewis became an actor and has appeared in a number of films. Lewis was a dominant sprinter and long jumper who topped [...]
January 7, 1844 – April 16, 1879 Bernadette was a miller’s daughter born in Lourdes, France, and is venerated as a Christian mystic and Saint in the Catholic Church. Soubirous is best known for her participation in the Marian apparitions of “a small young lady” who asked for a chapel to be built at a cave-grotto in Massabielle where apparitions are said to have occurred between 11 February and 16 July 1858. She would later receive recognition when the lady who [...]
May 22, 1943 Betty Williams in the city of Belfast in Northern Ireland, is a co-recipient with Mairead Corrigan of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1976 for her work as a cofounder of Community of Peace People, an organisation dedicated to promoting a peaceful resolution to The Troubles in Northern Ireland. She heads the Global Children’s Foundation and is the President of the World Centre of Compassion for Children International. She is also the Chair of Institute for Asian Democracy [...]
December 10, 1830 – May 15, 1886 Emily Elizabeth Dickinson was an American poet. Born in Amherst, Massachusetts, to a successful family with strong community ties, she lived a mostly introverted and reclusive life. After she studied at the Amherst Academy for seven years in her youth, she spent a short time at Mount Holyoke Female Seminary before returning to her family’s house in Amherst. Thought of as an eccentric by the locals, she became known for her penchant for [...]
May 4, 1929 – January 20, 1993 Born in Ixelles, a district of Brussels, Hepburn spent her childhood between Belgium, England and the Netherlands, including German-occupied Arnhem during the Second World War. In Amsterdam, she studied ballet with Sonia Gaskell before moving to London in 1948 to continue her ballet training with Marie Rambert and perform as a chorus girl in West End musical theatre productions. After appearing in several British films and starring in the 1951 Broadway play Gigi, Hepburn [...]
January 3, 1892 – September 2, 1973 John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, CBE was an English writer, poet, philologist, and university professor, best known as the author of the classic high fantasy works The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and The Silmarillion. He served as the Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Pembroke College, Oxford, from 1925 to 1945 and Merton Professor of English Language and Literature at Merton College, Oxford from 1945 to 1959.He was at one time a [...]
January 2, 1873 – September 30, 1897 Therese felt an early call to religious life, and overcoming various obstacles, in 1888 at the early age of 15, she became a nun and joined two of her elder sisters in the cloistered Carmelite community of Lisieux, Normandy. After nine years as a Carmelite religious, having fulfilled various offices such as sacristan and assistant to the novice mistress, and having spent her last eighteen months in Carmel in a night of faith, [...]
October 1, 1847 – September 20, 1933 Annie Besant was a prominent British socialist, theosophist, women’s rights activist, writer and orator and supporter of Irish and Indian self-rule. She married aged 20 to Frank Besant, but separated from him over religious differences. She then became a prominent speaker for the National Secular Society (NSS) and writer and a close friend of Charles Bradlaugh. In 1877 they were prosecuted for publishing a book by birth control campaigner Charles Knowlton. The scandal made [...]
