Charlie Chaplin was born on 20 April 1889, in East Street, Walworth, London, England. His parents were both entertainers in the Music Hall tradition and separated before Charlie was three. He learned singing from his parents. The 1891 census shows that his mother, the actress Lily Harvey (Hannah Harriet Hill), lived with Charlie and his older brother Sydney on Barlow Street, Walworth. As a child Charlie also lived with his mother in various addresses in and around Kennington Road in Lambeth, including 3 Pownall Terrace, Chester Street, and 46 Methley Street. One of his paternal great-grandmothers was Roma, a fact his father was very proud of, but which Chaplin also described as “the skeleton in our family cupboard”. Chaplin’s father was also an alcoholic and had little contact with his son, though Chaplin and his brother briefly lived with their father and his mistress Louise at 287 Kennington Road (which address is now ornamented with a plaque commemorating Chaplin’s residence there). The brothers resided there when their mother became mentally ill and was admitted to the Cane Hill Asylum at Coulsdon. The father’s mistress sent the young Chaplin to Kennington Road school. Chaplin’s father died when Charlie was twelve in 1901. At the time of the 1901 Census, Charles resided at 94 Ferndale Road, Lambeth with the The Eight Lancashire Lads that was led by John William Jackson (the 17 year old son of one of the founders).

A larynx condition ended the singing career of Chaplin’s mother. Hannah’s first crisis came in 1894 when she was performing at The Canteen, a theatre in Aldershot Military Town. The theatre was mainly frequented by rioters and soldiers, and it was one of the worst places to perform. Hannah was badly injured by the objects the audience mercilessly threw at her, and she was booed off the stage. Backstage, she cried and argued with her manager. In the meantime, the five-year old Chaplin went on stage alone and started singing a very well-known tune at that time, (”Jack Jones”).

Hannah Chaplin was again admitted to the Cane Hill Asylum. Chaplin had to be left in the workhouse at Lambeth, London, moving after several weeks to the Central London District School for paupers in Hanwell. The young Chaplin brothers forged a close relationship to survive. They gravitated to the Music Hall while still very young, and both of them proved to have considerable natural stage talent. Chaplin’s early years of desperate poverty were a great influence on his characters. Themes in his films in later years would re-visit the scenes of his childhood deprivation in Lambeth.

Chaplin’s mother died in 1928 in Hollywood, seven years after being brought to the U.S. by her sons. Unknown to Charlie and Sydney until years later, they had a half-brother through their mother. The boy, Wheeler Dryden, was raised abroad by his father but later connected with the rest of the family and went to work for Chaplin at his Hollywood studio.

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Rice was born in Birmingham, Alabama, and grew up in the neighborhood of Titusville. She is the only child of Presbyterian minister Reverend John Wesley Rice, Jr., and his wife, Angelena Ray. Reverend Rice was a guidance counselor at Ullman High School and minister of Westminster Presbyterian Church, which had been founded by his father. Angelena was a science, music and oratory teacher at Ullman.

Condoleezza (whose name is derived from the Italian musical expression, Con dolcezza, which means “with sweetness”) experienced firsthand the injustices of Birmingham’s discriminatory laws and attitudes. She was instructed to walk proudly in public and to use the facilities at home rather than subject herself to the indignity of “colored” facilities in town. As Rice recalls of her parents and their peers, “they refused to allow the limits and injustices of their time to limit our horizons.”

However, Rice recalls various times in which she suffered discrimination on account of her race, which included being relegated to a storage room at a department store instead of a regular dressing room, being barred from going to the circus or the local amusement park, being denied hotel rooms, and even being given bad food at restaurants. Also, while Condoleezza was mostly kept by her parents from areas where she might face discrimination, she was very aware of the civil rights struggle and the problems of Jim Crow Birmingham. A neighbor, Juliemma Smith, described how “[Condi] used to call me and say things like, ‘Did you see what Bull Connor did today?’ She was just a little girl and she did that all the time. I would have to read the newspaper thoroughly because I wouldn’t know what she was going to talk about.” Rice herself said of the segregation era: “Those terrible events burned into my consciousness. I missed many days at my segregated school because of the frequent bomb threats.” Read more »

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The first child of Stephen Koenig Armstrong and Viola Louise Engel, Neil Armstrong was born at 12:31:39 a.m. on August 5, 1930 in Wapakoneta, Ohio, a town outside Dayton.Stephen Armstrong worked for the Ohio government, and the family moved around the state repeatedly for the next 14 years, living in 16 different towns. Armstrong had two siblings, June and Dean. His father’s last forced move was to Wapakoneta in 1944. By this time, Armstrong was active in the Boy Scouts and he eventually earned the rank of Eagle Scout. As an adult, he would be recognized by the Boy Scouts of America with their Distinguished Eagle Scout Award and Silver Buffalo Award. In Wapakoneta, he attended Blume High School.

In 1947, Armstrong began studying aeronautical engineering at Purdue University. He was only the second person in his family to attend college. He was also accepted to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), but the only engineer he knew (who had attended MIT) dissuaded him from attending, telling Armstrong that it was not necessary to go all the way to Cambridge, Massachusetts for a good education. His college tuition was paid for under the Holloway Plan; successful applicants committed to two years of study, followed by three years of service in the United States Navy, then completion of the final two years of the degree. At Purdue, he received average marks in his subjects, with a GPA that rose and fell over the eight semesters.

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