1900-Present

Fred Korematsu was born in Oakland, California in 1919. His parents Kotsui and Kakusaburo had emigrated from Japan fourteen years ago to start a new life for themselves in America, setting up a plant nursery in Oakland and having four sons.…

Some time before I left Ireland, I took a short holiday to Galway, the main town on the west coast. Walking along the Salthill Promenade, a scenic road that traces the northern shore of Galway Bay, I stumbled upon a nondescript, somewhat…

Roger Casement was born in Dublin in 1864. His father, Captain Roger Casement, was a Belfast-born soldier who had served in India and fought in the bloody war for Afghanistan in 1842. Young Roger was raised on his father’s tales of travel,…

Alfred Daniel Wintle (known throughout most of his life as “AD”) was born in Ukraine in 1897. His father John was an English diplomat who was posted there along with his wife Teresa, Wintle’s mother. The family spent some time in Romania…

I was born in a country that today doesn’t exist anymore. It was called the German Democratic Republic (GDR), or East Germany. Founded in 1949, after the Second World War, as a socialist bulwark against West Germany, it became a satellite…

Johann Heinrich von Bernstorff was born in London in 1862. His father Albrecht was a Prussian Count and experienced diplomat who had just spent seven years as the Prussian ambassador to Great Britain. Shortly before Johann’s birth he had…

Horatio Bottomley was born in the East End of London in 1860. He had only one sibling - an elder sister named Florence. When he was three years old his father, an ex-tailor named William, died in Bethlehem Hospital (better known as Bedlam).…

Ruth Brown, later to become Ruth Snyder, was born in Manhattan in 1895. She came from a working-class family but was determined to better herself. So though she had to leave full time education around the age of fifteen she got a job…

The county of Clare has produced many fine sportspeople over the years including a World Light Heavyweight champion in the form of Mike McTigue. The Kilnamona native won his world title in an incredible bout against an opponent from Senegal…

William Randolph Hearst was born in San Francisco in 1863. His father George was a former Missouri farmer who had come to California for the gold rush, but had been smart enough to see the money to be made in quartz and silver mining as…