Comments (15)

1. Paul “Iron Pants” Magloire (1907-2001), the president of Haiti during the short Haitian Golden Age–1950-1965. He was both anti-communist and an aid to the poor, using money from coffee sales to rebuild towns, roads, and public buildings. He was exiled at the end of his presidency when the Duvalier family began to rule, but was allowed to return just two years before he died.

   posted by Meagan on 9-7-2007 at 9:09 am

2. Oops, slight case of transposition. Magloire’s rule was from 1950-1956.

   posted by Meagan on 9-7-2007 at 9:10 am

3. While famous in no way, My great, great grandfather was quite the character.

   Immigrating to the US in the latter part of the 19th century, he quickly came into the fold of American politics, working his way to be the Consult General for Canton, China.

   He was removed from the office of Consult in the midst of a great scandal. He was purported to be selling passage from China to the United States during a great backlash against the Chinese, during the second or third renewal of the “Chinese Exclusion Act”. While it is nothing to boast about at family gatherings, it is quite a fascinating piece of family history.

   He also wrote 2 books, “THE UNCROWNED KING” THE LIFE AND PUBLIC SERVICES OF HON. CHARLES STEWART PARNELL, and another less popular one on the life of Irish immigrants in the late 19th and early 20th century. Both have come to be considered quite valuable.

   posted by Rob on 9-7-2007 at 9:11 am

4. How about Caesar Rodney, his big claim to fame outside of Delaware is being the guy riding a horse on the back of the Delaware quarter. Inside the first state he is known to have been President (Governor) of Delaware, Brigadeer General, a mayor, a Congressman and a signer of the Declaration of Independence.

   When it came time to sign it Rodney (who was slowly dying of cancer) was in Delaware acting as Brigadeer General to put an end to some loyalist activities when the two other delegates of at the Constitutional convention were split. Thomas McKean wanted to vote for independence, George Reed wanted to vote against.

   Since the Constitutional Congress agreed that every states delegation had to have a majority vote to declare Independence before sending the declaration to the king, Rodney’s vote became very important.

   A dispatch rider was sent to Dover to summon him to Philadelphia. Rodney having just crushed a loyalist rebellion, and again, dying of cancer, got on his horse for a heroic ride of 80 miles overnight during a rain storm and a heat wave. Obviously with no street lights or interstates this was not an easy challenge, crossing slippery log bridges covered in mud he arrived at Independence Hall covered in mud just in time to break his delegation’s deadlock.

   Next time you see a depiction of the signing Caesar Rodney will be the only man wearing a hat standing by the door to signify that he had just arrived.

   posted by Witty Nickname on 9-7-2007 at 9:36 am

5. My grandfather was an inventor for Owens Corning fiberglass company. One of his most notable inventions was something I would bet most of us see virtually every day. He invented those sheets of rippled plastic or fiberglass that go over fluorescent lights to diffuse the light. He got a framed $1 bill for his invention.
   He was also a 4 day winner on Jeopardy during it’s first run, during the 1960s. The question during Final Jeopardy that finally beat him was, actually, something he knew: What spice is thought to be the most expensive, per pound, in the world? the answer is Saffron, which nobody in my family will ever forget.

   posted by Jen on 9-7-2007 at 9:42 am

6. I vote for Charley Harper, an American artist whose work, especially his birds, caught the perfect character of the subject in the most simple, subtle way. Harper illustrated for Ford Times magazine for years, and even illustrated a Betty Crocker cookbook! You can peruse Harper’s designs at http://www.fabframes.com and find prints and such on Ebay and elsewhere.
   Many were introduced to the amazing work of Charley through his illustrations in “The Giant Golden Book of Biology.” Wish I had one of those…they’re really pricey on Ebay these days.
   Designer extraordinaire Todd Oldham was a fan, and collaborated with LaZBoy on a line of furniture with Harper- inspired fabrics. Oldham wrote a comprehensive biography of Harper that was just published this year. It’s called “Charley Harper: An illustrated life” and looks like a beauty.
   I was introduced to Harpers work when his illustration, “Missing Migrants” was the poster design for International Migratory Bird Day in 2002. http://www.birdday.org

   Charley Harper passed away in June of this year at home in Cincinnati.

   posted by Heidi on 9-7-2007 at 10:03 am

7. I’ll give you 2.

   First, and also along the local trivia lines… J. Sterling Morton founder of Arbor Day. This guy is the reason there are trees in Nebraska, and was an early environmentalist, and he did it from my hometown.

   Second, I’d say John Vincent Atanasoff. He was a interesting guy who developed and built the worlds first electronic digital computer. But he was so much more crazy than that. He also invented a language that could be read by both humans and machines, and actually tried teaching this to some kids. How handy would this language be when our robot overlords come to rule us?

   posted by Scott on 9-7-2007 at 10:39 am

8. Madam C.J. Walker (1867-1919), the first female self-made millionaire. Born in Mississippi, she picked cotton on a plantation as a child, was orphaned by age 7, married a man at age 14, and was a widow by age 20. She worked as a laundress for a dollar and a half a day until 1905 when she went to work as a hair tonic sales agent.

   Within five years she had started her own manufacturing company selling hair care products and cosmetics. By 1917, she was a millionaire and found herself in charge of the largest business in the United States owned by an African American.

   That’s 12 years from starting to sell hair tonic for someone else to self-made millionaire. That in itself is an achievement worth celebrating. But considering she was an African American woman at the turn of last century from an impoverished background, she’s incredible.

   posted by Anita on 9-7-2007 at 12:27 pm

9. Sequoyah for Prez!

   Even though I have visited his Oklahoma residence (now a museum) several times, it wasn’t until I read his biography a few years ago (by Grant Foreman) that I realized just how amazing – and unsung – the life of Sequoyah was.

   If you don’t read the rest of this post, the most amazing (and amazingly underrated) fact about Sequoyah is that he is the only known person to take a spoken language (Cherokee), and single-handedly create a sucessful, easy to use, written form for it.

   Briefly (OK, not so much), here’s a guy in the early 1800’s who has an impaired leg, “uncertain” parentage, and belongs to a tribe (Cherokee) that is being spread out and spread thin by the U.S. government. Seeing whites use “talking leaves” fascinated him. So what’s a lame, displaced, b***ard to do? Even though the idea was shunned by seemingly everyone around him, Sequoyah decides to hole up in his house and create a written form of the Cherokee language so friends and relatives spread out all over the South could communicate. He created a syllabary, eventually won support of local tribal leaders, taught it to those around him, had them write letters to loved ones hundreds of miles away, HAND DELIVERED the letters to their recipients, taught them the syllabary, and went back home with a load replies to distribute. WOW!!!

   He died while walking around part of Mexico looking for what he believed was a lost group of Cherokees, to share the gift of written language with them.

   posted by elizabutt on 9-7-2007 at 1:18 pm

10. I grew up in Laporte county (Indiana), home of the infamous potato and sausage farm of Belle Gunness, one of the first female serial murderers on record (1859 – 1908? 1931?). She operated as a black widow — by marrying and then murdering her victims, claiming the inheritance. A fire consumed the farm in 1908, in which was found a headless body which was never actually verified to be her body. Subsequently a local suitor was tried for murder and arson, and while cleared of the murder admitted to the arson, and while dying in prison hinted to Belle’s true nature, which started up an investigation of her grounds. In that investigation, the remains of over 40 victims were found buried in her farm. Gunness was not verified to have died in the fire, and was rumored to live out the rest of her quarter-million-dollar stash in Mississippi as late as 1931.

    posted by Leadhyena on 9-7-2007 at 1:27 pm

11. Oh, this is a list of who should be _honored_, not despised… oops. Still a cool bit of local trivia from where I grew up.

    posted by Leadhyena on 9-7-2007 at 1:29 pm

12. I’ll add another that I just heard about. Madeleine L’Engle, famous for her book, A Wrinkle in Time, passed away last night at the age of 89. While she is fairly well known, I think her death is being looked over in light of Pavarotti’s demise.

    posted by Meagan on 9-7-2007 at 3:01 pm

13. Mr. Belvedere is dead? Damn!

    My great great grandad was pretty cool, and famous/notorious in SC.

    Richard Baxter Hayes, was a grocer who got “red-hot” with the Holiness religion. He was instrumental in the growth of the Pentecostal church in the Carolinas and in his time was revered right up there with other evangelists such as Billy Sunday and Dwight Moody. His respect began to wane however, when he held noisy revivals complete with wild glossolalia, tambourine shaking,the whole charismatic enchilada. The family got kicked out of town a lot. Though a biblical conservative, RB was socially liberal and took a lot of criticism for his support of equality for black folks and women,(gasp!- this was in the South in 1900!) and he was dedicated to helping the poor. His greatest downfall came when his youngest child fell deathly ill and he refused medical treatment for the boy, relying instead on raucous prayer vigils from his followers. They didn’t work, the boy died, and my grt grt grandaddy was the the first man to be tried and convicted by the state for child neglect.

    Though we’d have tangled over religious dogma and expression of faith, I think I’d have like him. He was charitable, charming, and darn funny.
    His quote on full-immersion baptism:
    “Well, it didn’t hold for me. I went in a dry sinner and I came out a wet one.”

    posted by Allison on 9-8-2007 at 10:42 am

14. I would like to suggest Philo Farnsworth. He could never have imagined how his invention would be such a huge part of everyday life.

    He was the first inventor to transmit a television image comprised of 60 horizontal lines. The image transmitted was a dollar sign. Farnsworth developed the dissector tube, the basis of all current electronic televisions. He filed for his first television patent in 1927 (pat#1,773,980.) Although he won an early patent for his image dissection tube, he lost later patent battles to RCA. Philo Farnsworth went on to invent over 165 different devices including equipment for converting an optical image into an electrical signal, amplifier, cathode-ray, vacuum tubes, electrical scanners, electron multipliers and photoelectric materials.

    Imagine, instead of RCA it could have been “Philo”.

    posted by Debbie on 9-8-2007 at 8:21 pm

15. Character actor Charles Lane. You may not know the name, but you’ll recognize the face once you Google him. He was Central Casting’s uber-curmudgeon. Passed away last July at the ripe old age of 102.

    posted by Kara on 9-8-2007 at 9:35 pm

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