Curated category
American recipients of the Legion of Honour
- Bob DylanBob Dylan was born Robert Allen Zimmerman on the 24th of May, 1941, at St. Mary's Hospital in Duluth, Minnesota. His Hebrew name was Shabtai Zisl ben Avraham.
- Martin ScorseseMartin Scorsese had asthma as a boy and could not play sports or join in games with the other children. So his parents and his older brother took him to the…
- Orson WellesOrson Welles was born on the 6th of May 1915, in Kenosha, Wisconsin, and died on the 10th of October 1985. In between those dates, he directed what is…
- Steven SpielbergSteven Spielberg was born on the 18th of December 1946, in Cincinnati, Ohio, and by the time he was twelve years old, he had already staged and filmed a…
- T. S. EliotT. S. Eliot wrote the opening of "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" when he was twenty-two years old. The lines compared an evening sky to "a patient…
- Quentin TarantinoQuentin Tarantino was born on the 27th of March 1963, in Knoxville, Tennessee, to a mother who let him watch R-rated films as a child and a father he never…
- David LynchDavid Lynch was born on the 20th of January 1946 at St. Patrick's Hospital in Missoula, Montana, the son of a USDA research scientist and an English-language…
- Jim LovellJim Lovell flew to the Moon twice and never set foot on it. That distinction alone would make him one of the most unusual figures in the history of human…
- Kirk DouglasKirk Douglas was born Issur Danielovitch on the 9th of December 1916, the only son among seven children in a Russian-Jewish immigrant family in Amsterdam…
- Elizabeth TaylorElizabeth Taylor was born on the 27th of February 1932 in Hampstead Garden Suburb, northwest London, in a family home called Heathwood.
- J. Robert OppenheimerJ. Robert Oppenheimer stood in a control bunker near Alamogordo, New Mexico, in the early morning hours of the 16th of July, 1945, holding a post to steady…
- Duke EllingtonDuke Ellington wrote his first composition in the summer of 1914, working as a soda jerk at the Poodle Dog Cafe in Washington, D.C.
- Clint EastwoodClinton Eastwood Jr. entered the world at Saint Francis Memorial Hospital in San Francisco on the 31st of May, 1930, weighing 11 pounds 6 ounces.
- Dwight D. EisenhowerDwight David Eisenhower drafted a message he hoped no one would ever read. On the eve of the D-Day landings on the 6th of June 1944, he wrote a short…
- Miles DavisMiles Dewey Davis III was born on the 26th of May 1926 in Alton, Illinois, to a family that owned a 200-acre estate in Arkansas with a profitable pig farm.
- Tom HanksTom Hanks lost 35 pounds for a single role. He thinned his hair, learned to walk differently, and prepared to play a dying man on screen.
- Francis Ford CoppolaFrancis Ford Coppola illegally hired a grave robber to supply real human corpses as props, and oversaw the ritualistic killing of a water buffalo.
- Thomas EdisonThomas Edison kept his own deafness a mystery, inventing elaborate false stories about how he lost his hearing. He was completely deaf in one ear and barely…
- Joseph StiglitzJoseph Stiglitz grew up in Gary, Indiana, a steel town whose economic fortunes would later give shape to many of the questions he spent a career trying to…
- Walt DisneyWalt Disney holds the record for most Academy Awards won by an individual, with 22 wins from 59 nominations. Yet the man behind that record was, in private…
- Bill GatesBill Gates was born on the 28th of October, 1955, in Seattle, Washington, and by age 31 he had become the world's youngest-ever billionaire.
- Arnold SchwarzeneggerArnold Alois Schwarzenegger arrived in the United States in October 1968 at age 21, speaking little English and carrying little money.
- Jamie DimonJamie Dimon was born on the 13th of March, 1956, in New York City, the grandson of a Greek immigrant banker who once worked in Smyrna and Athens and renamed…
- Walter Bedell SmithWalter Bedell Smith was born in Indianapolis, Indiana, on the 5th of October 1895. He grew up as the elder of two sons to William Long Smith and Ida Francis…
- George SteinerFrancis George Steiner was born on the 23rd of April 1929 in Neuilly-sur-Seine near Paris. His right arm withered from birth yet his mother insisted he use…