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Congressional Gold Medal recipients

  • Nelson MandelaRolihlahla Mandela was born on the 18th of July 1918, in the village of Mvezo, and the name his father chose carried a warning.
  • Frank SinatraFrancis Albert Sinatra weighed 13.5 pounds when he was born on the 12th of December 1915, in a tenement at 415 Monroe Street in Hoboken, New Jersey.
  • Winston ChurchillWinston Churchill was born on the 30th of November 1874 inside Blenheim Palace, the ancestral home his family had held for generations in Oxfordshire.
  • Ulysses S. GrantUlysses S. Grant was born Hiram Ulysses Grant on the 27th of April 1822, in Ohio, and by the time he died on the 23rd of July 1885, he had commanded the…
  • Pope John Paul IIPope John Paul II was born Karol Józef Wojtyła on the 18th of May 1920, in the small Polish town of Wadowice. By the time he died on the 2nd of April 2005…
  • Andrew JacksonAndrew Jackson refused to polish a British officer's boots, and the officer slashed him with a sword. The blade left scars on his left hand and head.
  • George GershwinGeorge Gershwin's last words were "Fred Astaire." He spoke them on the night of the 9th of July 1937, as he collapsed in a borrowed house in Beverly Hills…
  • John WayneMarion Robert Morrison weighed thirteen pounds when he was born at 224 South Second Street in Winterset, Iowa, on the 26th of May 1907.
  • Buzz AldrinBuzz Aldrin set foot on the Moon at 03:15:16 on the 21st of July 1969 (UTC), nineteen minutes after Neil Armstrong first touched the surface.
  • Isiah ThomasIsiah Lord Thomas III grew up on the West Side of Chicago, the youngest of nine children, in a household that would eventually be without his father.
  • 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…
  • Aaron CoplandAaron Copland grew up above a Brooklyn shop at 628 Washington Avenue, in a family of Lithuanian Jewish immigrants who had traveled through Scotland just to…
  • Harry S. TrumanHarry S. Truman became the 33rd president of the United States not by winning an election, but by walking into a room where Eleanor Roosevelt told him her…
  • Winfield ScottWinfield Scott stood six feet, five inches tall and weighed 230 pounds, and he spent the better part of six decades reshaping the United States Army from the…
  • Neil ArmstrongNeil Armstrong set his left boot on the lunar surface at 02:56 UTC on the 21st of July 1969, and said seven words that an estimated 530 million people heard…
  • 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…
  • 1980 Summer Olympics boycottThe 1980 Summer Olympics boycott began at a NATO meeting on the 20th of December 1979, just days after Soviet troops entered Afghanistan.
  • Michael Collins (astronaut)Michael Collins orbited the Moon thirty times in July 1969 and never set foot on it. While Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin descended to the Sea of…
  • Douglas MacArthurDouglas MacArthur was born on the 26th of January 1880 at Little Rock Barracks in Arkansas, the son of a Union Army captain who had earned the Medal of Honor…
  • Gail HalvorsenGail Seymour Halvorsen was born in Salt Lake City on the 10th of October 1920. He grew up on small farms first in Rigby, Idaho, and then in Garland, Utah.
  • 14th Dalai LamaTenzin Gyatso was born Lhamo Thondup on the 6th of July 1935, in a small farming hamlet called Taktser, on what the Dalai Lama himself has called the "real…
  • Marian AndersonMarian Anderson stepped onto the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on Easter Sunday, the 9th of April 1939, and opened with "My Country, 'Tis of Thee." More than…