The James Logan Courier

From wikipedia:
Don Ameche (May 31, 1908 – December 6, 1993) was an Academy Award winning American actor.

Ameche was born Dominic Felix Amici in Kenosha, Wisconsin, the son of Barbara, who was of Irish and German descent, and Felix Ameche, an immigrant from Italy whose original surname was "Amici." He had three brothers, Omberto (Bert), James (Jim Ameche), and Louis and three sisters, Jane, Elizabeth and Catherine. Ameche attended Marquette University, Loras College and the University of Wisconsin, where his cousin Alan Ameche played football and won the Heisman Trophy in 1954. Ameche had gone to university to study law but found theatricals far more interesting and so decided on a stage career.
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Learn more about Don Ameche, free from The Independent.

From wikipedia:

Stepin Fetchit was the stage name of American comedian and film actor Lincoln Theodore Monroe Andrew Perry (May 30, 1902–November 19, 1985). His typical film persona and stage name have long been synonymous with the stereotype of the servile, shiftless, simple-minded black man in early 20th Century American film. There has been a more recent revisionist view that sees his film persona as ultimately subversive of the status quo. Perry parlayed the Fetchit persona into a successful film career, eventually becoming a millionaire, the first black actor in history to do so.

Read "An Uncomfortable Character: Stepin Fetchit’s Dead-End Role," by Scott Eyman, a review of
Stepin Fetchit: The Life & Times of Lincoln Perry, by Mel Watkins, free from the New York Observer.

From wikipedia:
Gilbert Keith Chesterton (May 29, 1874–June 14, 1936) was an influential English writer of the early 20th century. His prolific and diverse output included journalism, poetry, biography and Christian apologetics, but today he is probably best remembered for his Father Brown short stories.

Chesterton has been called the "prince of paradox." He wrote in an off-hand, whimsical prose studded with startling formulations. For example: "Thieves respect property. They merely wish the property to become their property that they may more perfectly respect it." He is one of the few Christian thinkers who is admired and quoted equally by liberal and conservative Christians. Chesterton's own theological and political views were far too nuanced to fit comfortably under the "liberal" or "conservative" banner.


Read G.K.Chesterton's book, The Wisdom of Father Brown, one of 29 of his works available free from Project Gutenberg..

From wikipedia:
Jacobus Franciscus "Jim" Thorpe (Sac and Fox (Sauk): Wa-Tho-Huk, translated to Bright Path) (May 28, 1888 – March 28, 1953) was an American athlete of mixed ancestry (mixed Caucasian and American Indian). Considered one of the most versatile athletes of modern sports, he won Olympic gold medals for the 1912 pentathlon and decathlon, played American football (collegiate and professional), and also played professional baseball and basketball. He lost his Olympic titles after it was found he was paid for playing two seasons of semi-professional baseball before competing in the Olympics, thus violating the amateurism rules. In 1983, 30 years after his death, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) restored his Olympic medals.

Of Native American and European American ancestry, Thorpe grew up in the Sac and Fox nation in Oklahoma. He played as part of several All-American Indian teams throughout his career, and "barnstormed" (played mainly in small towns) as a professional basketball player with a team composed entirely of American Indians.


Watch Jim Thorpe as "Swift Arrow" in the 1931 serial, "Battling with Buffalo Bill," free from the Internet Archive.

From wikipedia:
Julia Ward Howe (May 27, 1819 – October 17, 1910) was a prominent American abolitionist, social activist, and poet, most famous as the author of "The Battle Hymn of the Republic".

Born Julia Ward in New York City, she was the fourth of seven children born to Samuel Ward (May 1, 1786 – November 27, 1839) and Julia Rush Cutler. Among her siblings was Samuel Cutler Ward. Her father was a well-to-do banker. Her mother, granddaughter of William Greene (August 16, 1731 – November 30, 1809), Governor of Rhode Island and his wife Catharine Ray, died when Julia was five.

Read Is Polite Society Polite? by Julia Ward Howe, free from Project Gutenberg.

From wikipedia:
Dorothea Lange (May 26, 1895 – October 11, 1965) was an influential American documentary photographer and photojournalist, best known for her Depression-era work for the Farm Security Administration (FSA). Lange's photographs humanized the tragic consequences of the Great Depression and profoundly influenced the development of documentary photography.

Born Dorothea Nutzhorn in Hoboken, New Jersey on May 26, 1895, she was the daughter of Joan Lange and Henry Nutzhorn. Dorothea developed polio in 1902, at age 7. Like many other polio victims before treatment was available, she emerged with a weakened and wizened right leg, and a permanent limp. When she was 12 years old, her father abandoned her and her mother, leading her to drop her middle and last names in lieu of her mother's maiden name.

See examples of Lange's photographs and learn more about her life, free from the Oakland Museum of California.

From wikipedia:
Bennett Alfred Cerf (May 25, 1898 – August 27, 1971) was a publisher and co-founder of Random House. Cerf was also known for his own compilations of jokes and puns, for regular personal appearances lecturing across the United States, and for his television appearances in the panel game show What's My Line?.

Bennett Cerf was born and brought up in New York City in a Jewish family of Alsatian and German descent. His father, Gustave Cerf, was a lithographer; and his mother, Frederika Wise, was an heiress to a tobacco-distribution fortune.

Watch an interview with Bennett Cerf, free from the University of Texas at Austin.

From wikipedia:
Charles Edward Taylor (May 24, 1868 – January 30, 1956) built the first aircraft engine used by the Wright brothers and was a vital contributor of mechanical skills in the building and maintaining of early Wright engines and airplanes.

Initially, Taylor was hired to fix bicycles, but increasingly took over running of the bicycle business as the Wright brothers spent more time on their aeronautical pursuits.

Read more about Charlie Taylor, free from CentennialofFlight.gov.

From wikipedia:
Sarah Margaret Fuller Ossoli, commonly known as Margaret Fuller, (May 23, 1810 – July 19, 1850) was an American journalist, critic, and women's rights advocate associated with the American transcendentalism movement. She was the first full-time American female book reviewer in journalism. Her book Woman in the Nineteenth Century is considered the first major feminist work in the United States.

Born Sarah Margaret Fuller in Cambridge, Massachusetts, she was given a substantial early education by her father, Timothy Fuller. She later had more formal schooling and became a teacher before, in 1839, she began overseeing what she called "conversations": discussions among women meant to compensate for their lack of access to higher education. She became the first editor of the transcendentalist journal The Dial in 1840, before joining the staff of the New York Tribune under Horace Greeley in 1844. By the time she was in her 30s, Fuller had earned a reputation as the best-read person in New England, male or female, and became the first woman allowed to use the library at Harvard College. Her seminal work, Woman in the Nineteenth Century, was published in 1845. A year later, she was sent to Europe for the Tribune as its first female correspondent. She soon became involved with the revolution in Italy and allied herself with Giuseppe Mazzini. She had a relationship with Giovanni Ossoli, with whom she had a child. All three members of the family died in a shipwreck off Fire Island, New York, as they were traveling to the United States in 1850. Fuller's body was never recovered.

Read At Home And Abroad, Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe, by Margaret Fuller, one of four of her works available free from Project Gutenberg.

From wikipedia:
Vance Packard (May 22, 1914 – December 12, 1996) was an American journalist, social critic, and author.

He was born in Granville Summit, Pennsylvania to parents Philip J. Packard and Mabel Case Packard.
Between 1920-32 he attended local public schools in State College, Pennsylvania where his father managed a farm owned by the Pennsylvania State College (later Penn State University). In 1932 he entered Penn State, majoring in English. He graduated in 1936, and worked briefly for the local newspaper, the Centre Daily Times. He earned his master's degree at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1937. That year, he joined the Boston Daily Record as a staff reporter and a year later, he married Virginia Matthews.

Watch an interview with Vance Packard, free from youtube.com.

From wikipedia: Elizabeth Gurney Fry (21 May 1780 – 12 October 1845) was an English prison reformer, social reformer and philanthropist.

Fry was the driving force in legislation to make the treatment of prisoners more humane, and she was supported in her efforts by a reigning monarch. Since 2002, she has been depicted on the Bank of England £5 note.

Birth and family background
Elizabeth Gurney was born in Gurney Court, off Magdalen Street, Norwich, Norfolk, England to a Quaker family. Her family home as a child was Earlham Hall, Norwich, which is now part of the University of East Anglia. Her father, Joseph Gurney, was a partner in Gurney's bank. Her mother, Catherine, was a part of the Barclay family, who were among the founders of Barclays Bank. Elizabeth's mother died when she was only twelve years old. As one of the oldest girls in the family, she was partly responsible for the care and training of the younger children, including her brother Joseph John Gurney.

Read about Elizabeth Gurney Fry and the English five-pound note, free from the BBC.

From wikipedia:
Sadaharu Oh, or Wang Chenchih (born May 20, 1940), is a retired Chinese/Taiwanese baseball player and manager. He batted and threw left-handed and primarily played first base. Oh, who was born in Sumida, Tokyo the son of a Chinese father and a Japanese mother, had originally signed with the powerhouse Yomiuri Giants in 1959 as a pitcher, but was soon converted to first base. Under the tutelage of coach Hiroshi Arakawa, Oh developed his distinctive "flamingo" leg kick. His batting average jumped from .161 in his rookie season to .270 in 1960, and his home runs more than doubled. His performance dipped slightly in both statistical categories in 1961, but Oh truly blossomed in 1962. He was a five-time batting champion and led all Japanese players in home runs fifteen times and won the Central League most valuable player award nine times. In 1977, Sadaharu Oh became the first recipient of the People's Honor award.

Read more about Sadaharu Oh, free from baseballguru.com.

From wikipedia:
Yuri Kochiyama (born May 19, 1921) is a Japanese American human rights activist.

Kochiyama was born Mary Yuriko Nakahara in San Pedro, California. After the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, Kochiyama's father was imprisoned the same day. Her family, sent to the Jerome War Relocation Center in Jerome, Arkansas, were among the 120,000 Japanese Americans interned during the Second World War. Two of her brothers joined the U.S. Army.

Listen to an interview with Yuri Kochiyama, free from DemocracyNow.org.

From wikipedia:
Walter Adolph Georg Gropius (May 18, 1883 – July 5, 1969) was a German architect and founder of the Bauhaus School who, along with Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Le Corbusier, is widely regarded as one of the pioneering masters of modern architecture.

Born in Berlin, Walter Gropius was the third child of Walter Adolph Gropius and Manon Auguste Pauline Scharnweber. Gropius married Alma Mahler (1879–1964), widow of Gustav Mahler. Walter and Alma's daughter, named Manon after Walter's mother, was born in 1916. When Manon died of polio at age eighteen, composer Alban Berg wrote his Violin Concerto in memory of her (it is inscribed "to the memory of an angel"). Gropius and Alma divorced in 1920. (Alma had by that time established a relationship with Franz Werfel, whom she later married.) In 1923 Gropius married Ise (Ilse) Frank (d. 1983), and they remained together until his death. They adopted Beate Gropius, also known as Ati.

Learn more about Walter Gropius and see examples of his buildings, free from greatbuildings.com

From wikipedia:
James Thomas "Cool Papa" Bell (May 17, 1903 – March 7, 1991) was an American center fielder in Negro league baseball, considered by many baseball observers to have been the fastest man ever to play the game. He was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1974.

Born May 17th, 1903, in Starkville, Mississippi, Bell joined the St. Louis Stars of the Negro National League as a pitcher in 1922. By 1924, he had become their starting center fielder, and was known as an adept batter and fielder, and the "fastest man in the league". After leading the Stars to league titles in 1928, 1930, and 1931, he moved to the Detroit Wolves of the East-West League when the Negro National League disbanded. Detroit soon folded, leaving Bell to bounce to the Kansas City Monarchs and the Mexican winter leagues until finding a home with the Pittsburgh Crawfords in the reorganized NNL. In Pittsburgh, he played alongside Ted Page and Jimmie Crutchfield to form what is considered by many to have been the best outfield in the Negro Leagues.

Read an 1970 interview with Cool Papa Bell, free from the University of Missouri-St. Louis' Western Historical Manuscript Collection.

From wikipedia:
Tamara de Lempicka (May 16, 1898–March 18, 1980), born Maria Górska in Warsaw, in partitioned Poland, was a Polish Art Deco painter and "the first woman artist to be a glamour star."

Born into a wealthy and prominent family, her father was Boris Gurwik-Górski, a Polish lawyer, and her mother, the former Malvina Decler, a Polish socialite. Maria was the middle child with two siblings. She attended boarding school in Lausanne, Switzerland, and spent the winter of 1911 with her grandmother in Italy and on the French Riviera, where she was treated to her first taste of the Great Masters of Italian painting. In 1912, her parents divorced and Maria went to live with her wealthy Aunt Stefa in St. Petersburg, Russia. When her mother remarried, she became determined to break away to a life of her own. In 1913, at the age of fifteen, while attending the opera, Maria spotted the man she became determined to marry. She promoted her campaign through her well-connected uncle and in 1916 she married Tadeusz Łempicki in St. Petersburg—a well-known ladies' man, gadabout, and lawyer by title, who was tempted by the significant dowry.

See paintings by Tamara de Lempicka, free from bertc.com.

From wikipedia:
Katherine Anne Porter (May 15, 1890 – September 18, 1980) was a Pulitzer Prize-winning American journalist, essayist, short story writer, novelist, and political activist. She is known for her penetrating insight; her work deals with dark themes such as betrayal, death and the origin of human evil.

Callie Russel Porter, born in Indian Creek, Texas, was the fourth of five children of Harrison Boone Porter and Alice (Jones) Porter. Her family tree can be traced back to American frontiersman Daniel Boone, a heritage of which she was proud.

Learn more about Katherine Anne Porter at the Katherine Anne Porter Society website.

From wikipedia:

Edward Flanders Robb Ricketts (14 May 1897 – 11 May 1948) commonly known as Ed Ricketts, was an American marine biologist, ecologist, and philosopher. He is best known for Between Pacific Tides (1939), a pioneering study of intertidal ecology, and for his influence on writer John Steinbeck, which resulted in their collaboration on the Sea of Cortez, later republished as The Log from the Sea of Cortez (1951).

Ricketts was born in Chicago, Illinois, to Abbott Ricketts and Alice Beverly Flanders Ricketts. He also had a younger sister, Frances, and a younger brother, Thayer. Ricketts spent most of his childhood in Chicago, except for a year in South Dakota when he was ten years old.

Listen to Ed Ricketts and the 'Dream' of Cannery Row, free from npr.org.

From wikipedia:
Roger Joseph Zelazny (May 13, 1937 – June 14, 1995) was an American writer of fantasy and science fiction short stories and novels. He won the Nebula award three times (out of 14 nominations) and the Hugo award six times (also out of 14 nominations), including two Hugos for novels: the serialized novel ...And Call Me Conrad (1965; subsequently published under the title This Immortal, 1966) and then the novel Lord of Light (1967).

The ostracod Sclerocypris zelaznyi was named after him.

Visit The Annotated Amber.

From wikipedia:
Dorothy Mary Hodgkin OM, FRS (12 May 1910 – 29 July 1994), née Crowfoot, was a British chemist, credited with the development of protein crystallography.

She advanced the technique of X-ray crystallography, a method used to determine the three dimensional structures of biomolecules. Among her most influential discoveries are the confirmation of the structure of penicillin that Ernst Boris Chain had previously surmised, and then the structure of vitamin B12, for which she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

Watch Dorothy Hodgkin tell the story of her life, free from Web of Stories.

From the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's website:

Chang and Eng Bunker were born in Siam (now Thailand) on May 11, 1811, connected at the chest by a five-inch-wide band of flesh. The location of this connection suggested to some doctors and other observers that the brothers shared a heart or some respiratory functions.

These medical assumptions would be proven wrong.

According to their biography, the twins shared relatively "normal" boyhoods in Siam, running and playing with other children, doing chores, and helping to support their parents and siblings by gathering and selling duck eggs in their small village.


Read Mark Twain's short story, "The Siamese Twins," inspired by Chang and Eng Bunker, free from readbookonline.net.

From wikipedia:
Moses Schorr, (May 10, 1874 – July 8, 1941) was a Rabbi, Polish historian, politician, Bible scholar, assyriologist and orientalist. Schorr was one of the top experts on the history of the Jews in Poland. He was the first Jewish researcher of Polish archives, historical sources, and pinkasim. The president of the 13th district B'nai B'rith Poland, he was a humanist and reform rabbi who ministered the central synagogue of Poland during its last years before the Holocaust.


Visit the Professor Moses Schorr foundation.

From wikipedia:
Sir James Matthew Barrie, 1st Baronet, OM (9 May 1860 – 19 June 1937), more commonly known as J. M. Barrie, was a Scottish novelist and dramatist. Most people remember him for inventing the character of Peter Pan, whom he based on his friends, the Llewelyn Davies boys.

Born in Kirriemuir, Angus the second-youngest of ten children, Barrie received his formal education at Dumfries Academy and the University of Edinburgh. He became a journalist in Nottingham then in London and became a novelist and subsequently a playwright.

Read Peter Pan, by J.M. Barrie,one of 17 of his works available free from Project Gutenberg.

From wikipedia:
Miguel Gregorio Antonio Ignacio Hidalgo y Costilla y Gallaga Mandarte Villaseñor( 8 May 1753 – 30 July 1811), more commonly known as Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla or simply Miguel Hidalgo, was a Mexican priest and a leader of the Mexican War of Independence.

In 1810 Hidalgo led a group of indigenous and mestizo peasants in a revolt against the dominant peninsulares under the banner of the Virgin of Guadalupe. After clashes with the criollos and Mexican townspeople the group disbanded. Hidalgo was captured on 21 March 1811, and executed on 30 July.
Hidalgo's rebellion was the beginning of what would become the Mexican War of Independence. Although he was unsuccessful in his original aim, Hidalgo's efforts were followed by those of José María Morelos and Agustín de Iturbide who brought down the colonial governments of Spain in Mexico. Hidalgo is considered the Father of the Nation of Mexico.

Read historical documents associated with Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla, in Spanish.

From wikipedia:
Olympe de Gouges (7 May 1748 – 3 November 1793), born Marie Gouze, was a French playwright and political activist whose feminist and abolitionist writings reached a large audience.

She began her career as a playwright in the early 1780s. As political tension rose in France, de Gouges became increasingly politically involved. She became an outspoken advocate for improving the condition of slaves in the colonies as of 1788. At the same time, she began writing political pamphlets. Today she is perhaps best known as an early feminist who demanded that French women be given the same rights as French men. In her Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen (1791), she challenged the practice of male authority and the notion of male-female inequality. She was executed by guillotine during the Reign of Terror for attacking the regime of Maximilien Robespierre and for her close relation with the Girondists.

Read Olympe de Gouges Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen, free from the Center for History and New Media.

From wikipedia:
Nellie Bly (May 5, 1864 – January 27, 1922) was an American journalist, author, industrialist, and charity worker. She is most famous for an undercover exposé in which she faked insanity to study a mental institution from within. She is also well-known for her record-breaking trip around the world.

Born Elizabeth Jane Cochran in Cochran's Mills, Armstrong County, Pennsylvania, 40 miles northeast of Pittsburgh, she was nicknamed "Pink" for wearing that color as a child. Her father, a wealthy former associate justice, died when she was six. Her mother remarried three years later, but sued for divorce when Pink was 14. Pink testified in court against her drunken, violent stepfather. As a teenager she changed her surname to Cochrane, apparently adding the "e" for sophistication. She attended boarding school for one term, but dropped out due to a lack of funds.

Read Ten Days in a Mad-House, by Nellie Bly, free from the University of Pennsylvania library.

From wikipedia:
Alice Pleasance Liddell (4 May 1852 – 16 November 1934), known for most of her adult life by her married name, Alice Hargreaves, inspired the children's classic Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll, whose protagonist Alice was named after her.

Alice Liddell was the fourth child of Henry Liddell, Dean of Christ Church, Oxford, and his wife Lorina Hanna Liddell (née Reeve). She had two older brothers, Harry (born 1847) and Arthur (born 1850, died of scarlet fever in 1853), and an older sister Lorina (born 1849). She also had six younger siblings, including her sister Edith (born 1854) with whom she was very close.

Read excerpts from Alice Liddell's diaries.

From wikipedia:
Septima Poinsette Clark (May 3, 1898–December 15, 1987) was an American educator and civil rights activist. Clark developed the literacy and citizenship workshops that played an important role in the drive for voting rights and civil rights for African Americans in the American Civil Rights Movement." She became known as the "Queen mother" or "Grandmother of the American Civil Rights Movement" in the United States.

Clark was born in Charleston, South Carolina in 1898. Her father, Peter Poinsette, was born a slave on the Joel Poinsette farm between the Waccamaw River and Georgetown. After the Civil War, he got a job as a caterer. Her mother, Victoria Warren Anderson Poinsette, was born in Charleston but raised in Haiti by her uncle, who took her and her two sisters there in 1864. Victoria Poinsette had never been a slave. She returned to Charleston after the Civil War and worked as a launderer. Clark's mother did not work directly for whites, and refused to allow their daughters to work in white houses in order to protect them from sexual harassment.

Read an interview with Septima Clark, free from the Documenting the American South project of the University of North Carolina.

From wikipedia:
Pincus Leff (May 2, 1907–April 3, 1993), better known as Pinky Lee, was an American burlesque comic and host of a children's television program, The Pinky Lee Show, in the early 1950s.

Born in Saint Paul, Minnesota, Lee worked as comic of the "baggy pants" variety on stage, becoming an expert at the slapstick, comic dancing and rapid-fire jokes of the burlesque style. During the 1940s, he was heard on Drene Time and other radio programs.

Watch a 1954 episode of The Pinky Lee Show, free from the Internet Archive.

From wikipedia:
Henry Demarest Lloyd (May 1, 1847 – September 28, 1903) was a 19th century American progressive political activist and a muckraking journalist. He is best remembered for his exposés of the Standard Oil Company.

Henry Demarest Lloyd was born on May 1, 1847 in the home of his maternal grandfather on Sixth Avenue in New York City. Henry was the first child of Aaron Lloyd, a graduate of Rutgers College and Theological Seminary and minster of the Dutch Reformed Church, and Maria Christie Demarest.

One of Henry Demarest Lloyd's strongest formative influences was the preaching of Henry Ward Beecher, the sermons of whom he regularly attended.

Read Henry Demarest Lloyd's article 1884 article,"The Lords of Industry," free from the Modern History Sourcebook.