#13451
John English
1903 - 1969 (66 years)
John Wilkinson English was a British film editor and film director. He is most famous for the film serials he co-directed with William Witney for Republic Pictures such as Zorro's Fighting Legion and Drums of Fu Manchu.
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Vittorio Rieti
1898 - 1994 (96 years)
Vittorio Rieti was a Jewish-Italian-American composer. Born in Alexandria, Egypt, Rieti moved to Milan to study economics. He subsequently studied music in Rome under Respighi and Casella, and lived there until 1940.
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Henry B. Walthall
1878 - 1936 (58 years)
Henry Brazeale Walthall was an American stage and film actor. He appeared as the Little Colonel in D. W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation . Early life Henry B. Walthall was born March 16, 1878 on a cotton plantation owned by his father in Shelby County, Alabama. His father Junius Leigh Walthall had been a captain in the Confederate States Army. His sister, Anna Mae Walthall had a film career in the 1920s.
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Joseph Parry
1841 - 1903 (62 years)
Joseph Parry was a Welsh composer and musician. Born in Merthyr Tydfil, Wales, he is best known as the composer of "Myfanwy" and the hymn tune "Aberystwyth". Parry was also the first Welshman to compose an opera; his composition, Blodwen, was the first opera in the Welsh language.
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Sergei Gerasimov
1906 - 1985 (79 years)
Sergei Appolinarievich Gerasimov was a Soviet film director and screenwriter. The oldest film school in the world, the Gerasimov Institute of Cinematography , bears his name. Early life and education Gerasimov was born on 21 May 1906.
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Charlie Rouse
1924 - 1988 (64 years)
Charlie Rouse was an American hard bop tenor saxophonist and flautist. His career is marked by his collaboration with Thelonious Monk, which lasted for more than ten years. Biography Rouse was born in Washington, D.C., United States. At first he worked with the clarinet, before turning to the tenor saxophone.
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Isaac Rülf
1831 - 1902 (71 years)
Isaac Rülf was a Jewish teacher, journalist and philosopher. He became widely known for his aid work and as a prominent early Zionist. Rülf was born in Rauischholzhausen, Hesse, Germany. He received a teaching certificate in 1849, became an assistant to the county rabbi and then taught in other small communities. He received his rabbinical certificate in 1854 from the University of Marburg and his Ph.D in 1865 at the University of Rostock. That year he became the rabbi of Memel, East Prussia.
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Willie "The Lion" Smith
1897 - 1973 (76 years)
William Henry Joseph Bonaparte Bertholf Smith , nicknamed "The Lion", was an American jazz and stride pianist. Early life William Henry Joseph Bonaparte Bertholf, known as Willie, was born in 1893 in Goshen, New York. His mother and grandmother chose his names to reflect different parts of his heritage: Joseph after Saint Joseph , Bonaparte , and Bertholf . William and Henry which were added for "spiritual balance". When he was three, his mother married John Smith, and Smith was added as the boy's surname, after his stepfather.
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J. Warren Kerrigan
1879 - 1947 (68 years)
George Jack Warren Kerrigan was an American silent film actor and film director. Controversy In May 1917, Kerrigan was nearing the end of a four-month-long personal appearance publicity tour that had taken him across the United States and into Canada. At one of the final stops, a reporter for The Denver Times asked Kerrigan if he would be joining the war. Kerrigan replied:
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Johann Winter von Andernach
1505 - 1574 (69 years)
Johann Winter von Andernach was a German Renaissance physician, university professor, humanist, translator of ancient, mostly medical works, and writer of his own medical, philological and humanities works.
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Leonard Rose
1918 - 1984 (66 years)
Leonard Joseph Rose was an American cellist and pedagogue. Biography Rose was born in Washington, D.C. His parents were Jewish immigrants, his father from Bragin, Belarus, and his mother from Kyiv, Ukraine. Rose took lessons from Walter Grossman, Frank Miller and Felix Salmond. After completing his studies at Philadelphia's Curtis Institute of Music at age 20, he joined Arturo Toscanini's NBC Symphony Orchestra, and almost immediately became associate principal. At 21 he was principal cellist of the Cleveland Orchestra and at 26 became the principal of the New York Philharmonic.
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Machito
1912 - 1984 (72 years)
Machito was a Latin jazz musician who helped refine Afro-Cuban jazz and create both Cubop and salsa music. He was raised in Havana with the singer Graciela, his foster sister. In New York City, Machito formed the Afro-Cubans in 1940, and with Mario Bauzá as musical director, brought together Cuban rhythms and big band arrangements in one group. He made numerous recordings from the 1940s to the 1980s, many with Graciela as singer. Machito changed to a smaller ensemble format in 1975, touring Europe extensively. He brought his son and daughter into the band, and received a Grammy Award in 1983,...
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Blue Mitchell
1930 - 1979 (49 years)
Richard Allen "Blue" Mitchell was an American trumpeter and composer who worked in jazz, rhythm and blues, soul, rock and funk. He recorded albums as leader and sideman for Riverside, Mainstream Records, and Blue Note.
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Fred Rose
1898 - 1954 (56 years)
Knowles Fred Rose was an American musician, Hall of Fame songwriter, and music publishing executive. Biography Born in Evansville, Indiana, United States, Rose started playing piano and singing as a small boy. In his teens, he moved to Chicago, Illinois where he worked in bars busking for tips, and finally vaudeville. Eventually, he became successful as a songwriter, penning his first hit for entertainer Sophie Tucker.
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Leo Meyer
1830 - 1910 (80 years)
Leo Karl Heinrich Meyer was a German philologist who spent much of his career in the Governorate of Livonia . Biography He was born at , a village in the present-day district of Hildesheim, near Hanover. He was educated at Göttingen and Berlin, where he was a student of the Brothers Grimm. From 1862 to 1865, he was professor in Göttingen, and in 1865 he became professor of comparative philology at Dorpat . One of his students there was Nikolai Anderson. From 1869 to 1899 he was the president of the Learned Estonian Society. In 1898 he again accepted a chair at Göttingen. He died in Göttingen.
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Pasquale Amato
1878 - 1942 (64 years)
Pasquale Amato was an Italian operatic baritone. Amato enjoyed an international reputation but attained the peak of his fame in New York City, where he sang with the Metropolitan Opera from 1908 until 1921.
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Muthuswami Dikshitar
1775 - 1835 (60 years)
Muthuswami Dikshitar , mononymously Dikshitar, was a South Indian poet, singer and veena player, and a legendary composer of Indian classical music, who is considered one of the musical trinity of Carnatic music. Muthuswami Dikshitar was born on 24 March 1775 in Tiruvarur near Thanjavur, in what is now the state of Tamil Nadu in India, to a family that is traditionally traced back to Virinichipuram in the northern boundaries of the state. His compositions, of which around 500 are commonly known, are noted for their elaborate and poetic descriptions of Hindu gods and temples and for capturing the essence of the raga forms through the vainika style that emphasises gamakas.
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Rex Stewart
1907 - 1967 (60 years)
Rex William Stewart Jr. was an American jazz cornetist who was a member of the Duke Ellington orchestra. Career As a boy he studied piano and violin; most of his career was spent on cornet. Stewart dropped out of high school to become a member of the Ragtime Clowns led by Ollie Blackwell. He was with the Musical Spillers led by Willie Lewis in the early 1920s, then with Elmer Snowden, Horace Henderson, Fletcher Henderson, Fess Williams, and McKinney's Cotton Pickers. In 1933 he led a big band at the Empire Ballroom in New York City. Beginning in 1934, he spent eleven years with the Duke Ellington band.
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Heddle Nash
1894 - 1961 (67 years)
William Heddle Nash was an English lyric tenor who appeared in opera and oratorio. He made numerous recordings that are still available on CD reissues. Nash's voice was of the light tenor class known as "tenore di grazia". The critic J. B. Steane referred to him as "the English lyric tenor par excellence, without equal then or now." He appeared in tenor roles in operas by Mozart, Verdi, Wagner and Puccini among others, at the Royal Opera House, and the Glyndebourne Festival. His operatic career lasted from 1924 to 1958.
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Bruce Lannes Smith
1909 - 1987 (78 years)
Bruce Lannes Smith was an American political scientist, communication theorist, and propaganda specialist. His primary research focus was the various uses and techniques of propaganda and persuasion employed by governments that were considered enemies of the United States. He taught at Michigan State College and other institutions. After the Second World War he was involved with research on propaganda and mass persuasion on a mass audience while also questioning the methods used by the Nazi propaganda theorist Franz Six.
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Frida Leider
1888 - 1975 (87 years)
Frida Leider was a German operatic soprano. Leider was a dramatic soprano. Her most famous roles were Wagner's Isolde and Brünnhilde, Beethoven's Fidelio, Mozart's Donna Anna, and Verdi's Aida and Leonora. She made over 80 recordings, mainly for Polydor and HMV.
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Raymond Huntley
1904 - 1990 (86 years)
Horace Raymond Huntley was an English actor who appeared in dozens of British films from the 1930s to the 1970s. He also appeared in the ITV period drama Upstairs, Downstairs as the pragmatic family solicitor Sir Geoffrey Dillon.
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Preston Foster
1900 - 1970 (70 years)
Preston Stratton Foster , was an American actor of stage, film, radio, and television, whose career spanned nearly four decades. He also had a career as a vocalist. Early life Born in Ocean City, New Jersey, in 1900, Foster was the eldest of three children of New Jersey natives Sallie R. and Walter Foster. Preston had two sisters, Mabel and Anna; and according to federal census records, his family still lived in Ocean City in Cape May County at least as late as 1910. There his father supported the family working as a painter. Sometime between 1910 and 1918, the Fosters relocated to Pitman, New Jersey, where Preston's father was employed as a machinist.
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Noel Gay
1898 - 1954 (56 years)
Noel Gay was born Reginald Moxon Armitage. He also used the name Stanley Hill professionally. He was a successful British composer of popular music of the 1930s and 1940s whose output comprised 45 songs as well as the music for 28 films and 26 London shows. Sheridan Morley has commented that he was "the closest Britain ever came to a local Irving Berlin". He is best known for the musical, Me and My Girl.
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Henry Edwards
1882 - 1952 (70 years)
Henry Edwards was an English actor and film director. He appeared in more than 80 films between 1915 and 1952. He also directed 67 films between 1915 and 1937. Edwards married actress Chrissie White in 1924. She appeared in many of his films as did the couple's daughter, Henryetta Edwards. He was born in Weston-super-Mare, Somerset and died in Chobham, Surrey.
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Isaac ben Moses Arama
1420 - 1494 (74 years)
Isaac ben Moses Arama was a Spanish rabbi and author. He was at first principal of a rabbinical academy at Zamora ; then he received a call as rabbi and preacher from the community at Tarragona, and later from that of Fraga in Aragon. He officiated finally in Calatayud as rabbi and head of the Talmudical academy. Upon the expulsion of the Jews in 1492, Arama settled in Naples, where he died in 1494.
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Franz Xaver Gruber
1787 - 1863 (76 years)
Franz Xaver Gruber was an Austrian primary school teacher, church organist and composer in the village of Arnsdorf, who is best known for composing the music to "Stille Nacht" . Life Gruber was born on 25 November 1787 in the village of Hochburg-Ach, Upper Austria, the son of linen weavers, Josef and Maria Gruber. His given name was recorded in the baptismal record as "Conrad Xavier," but this was later changed to "Franz Xaver". The Hochburger schoolteacher Andreas Peterlechner gave him music lessons.
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Clarence Budington Kelland
1881 - 1964 (83 years)
Clarence Budington "Bud" Kelland was an American writer. Prolific and versatile, he was a prominent literary figure in his heyday, and he described himself as "the best second-rate writer in America".
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Salomon Jadassohn
1831 - 1902 (71 years)
Salomon Jadassohn was a German pianist, composer, and teacher at the Leipzig Conservatory. Life Jadassohn was born to a Jewish family living in Breslau, the capital of the Prussian province of Silesia. This was a generation after the emancipation of the Jews in Central European German-speaking lands and during a time of relative tolerance. First educated locally, Jadassohn enrolled at the Leipzig Conservatory in 1848, just a few years after it had been founded by Felix Mendelssohn. There he studied composition with Moritz Hauptmann, Ernst Richter and Julius Rietz, as well as piano with Ignaz Moscheles.
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Bukka White
1909 - 1977 (68 years)
Booker T. Washington "Bukka" White was an American Delta blues guitarist and singer. Life and career to the 1950s Booker T. Washington White was born on a farm south of Houston, in northeastern Mississippi. He was born on November 12; various years between 1900 and 1909 are recorded – census data suggests 1904. Bukka is a phonetic spelling of White's first name; he was named after the African-American educator and civil rights activist Booker T. Washington. White was a first cousin of B.B. King's mother . His father John White was a railroad worker, and also a musician who performed locally, primarily playing the fiddle, but also mandolin, guitar and piano.
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Gaspar Sanz
1640 - 1710 (70 years)
Francisco Bartolomé Sanz Celma , better known as Gaspar Sanz, was a Spanish composer, guitarist, and priest born to a wealthy family in Calanda in the comarca of Bajo Aragón, Spain. He studied music, theology and philosophy at the University of Salamanca, where he was later appointed Professor of Music. He wrote three volumes of pedagogical works for the baroque guitar that form an important part of today's classical guitar repertory and have informed modern scholars in the techniques of baroque guitar playing.
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Richard Lewis
1914 - 1990 (76 years)
Richard Lewis CBE was an English tenor of Welsh parentage. Life Born Thomas Thomas in Manchester to Welsh parents, Lewis began his career as a boy soprano and studied at the Royal Manchester College of Music from 1939 to 1941, and later at the Royal Academy of Music. He made his operatic debut in 1939, and from 1947 onwards, sang at the Glyndebourne Festival Opera and at Covent Garden . He made his debut in the United States in 1955.
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Theodore Thomas
1835 - 1905 (70 years)
Theodore Thomas was a German-American violinist, conductor, and orchestrator. He is considered the first renowned American orchestral conductor and was the founder and first music director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra .
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Viola Dana
1897 - 1987 (90 years)
Viola Dana was an American film actress who was successful during the era of silent films. She appeared in over 100 films, but was unable to make the transition to sound films. Early life Born Virginia Flugrath on June 26, 1897, in Brooklyn, New York City, where she was raised, she was the middle sister of three siblings who all became actresses. Her sisters were known as Edna Flugrath and Shirley Mason. Dana appeared on the stage at the age of three. She read Shakespeare and particularly identified with the teenage Juliet. She enjoyed a long run at the Hudson Theater in Manhattan. Between 19...
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Kenneth Leighton
1929 - 1988 (59 years)
Kenneth Leighton was a British composer and pianist. His compositions include church and choral music, pieces for piano, organ, cello, oboe and other instruments, chamber music, concertos, symphonies, and an opera. He had various academic appointments in the Universities of Leeds, Oxford and, primarily, Edinburgh.
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Arnold Cook
1922 - 1981 (59 years)
Arnold Charles Cook was an Australian academic and senior economics lecturer at the University of Western Australia . He was blind since his teenage years and is noted for, in 1950, bringing the first overseas, professionally trained guide dog to Australia and for being instrumental in establishing the first guide dog training centre in the country.
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Horace B. Davis
1898 - 1999 (101 years)
Horace Bancroft Davis was an American left-wing journalist and academic. Davis was born in 1898 in Newport, Rhode Island and began studied at Harvard University prior to the outbreak of World War I. He refused to serve in the war and obtained conscientious objector status. Instead of fighting, he left Harvard and volunteered with the recently formed American Friends Service Committee. Returning to Harvard, he graduated with a B.A. in 1921 and went to work as a steelworker. Before returning to receive his Ph.D. Davis taught at Southwestern College in Memphis, Tennessee from 1929 to 1930 and then wrote for the labor news agency Federated Press before returning to school.
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Purandara Dasa
1470 - 1564 (94 years)
Purandara Dasa was a composer, singer and a Haridasa philosopher from present-day Karnataka, India. He was a follower of Madhvacharya's Dvaita philosophy. He was one of the chief founding proponents of Carnatic music . In honor of his significant contributions to Carnatic music, he is widely referred to as the Pitamaha of Carnatic music. According to a legend, he is considered as an incarnation of Narada.
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John Eccles
1668 - 1735 (67 years)
John Eccles was an English composer. Born in London, eldest son of professional musician Solomon Eccles and brother of fellow composer Henry Eccles, John Eccles was appointed to the King's Private Music in 1694, and in 1700 became Master of the King's Musick. Also in 1700 he finished second in a competition to write music for William Congreve's masque The Judgement of Paris .
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Frederick Clifford
1828 - 1904 (76 years)
Frederick Clifford, KC was an English journalist, known also as a barrister and legal writer. Life Born Frederick Catt at Gillingham, Kent, on 22 June 1828, he was fifth son of Jesse Catt a Kentish man by his wife Mary Pearse. After private schooling, he started before he was twenty in provincial journalism. In 1852 he settled in London and joined the parliamentary staff of The Times, of which his elder brother George was already a member at this time both he and George renounced the name Catt and adopted Clifford as their surname. This employment he combined with other work. He retained his ...
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Carl Boese
1887 - 1958 (71 years)
Carl Eduard Hermann Boese was a German film director, screenwriter, and producer. He directed 158 films between 1917 and 1957. Selected filmography Farmer Borchardt Donna Lucia The Stolen Sole - DirectorNuri's Curse / Nissami's Song - DirectorThe Geisha and the Samurai The Devil and the Madonna Nocturne of Love -Direct.The Golem: How He Came into the World The Dancer Barberina Three Nights The Song of the Puszta Blackmailed The Raft of the Dead The Shadow of Gaby Leed The Terror of the Red Mill Dolores - DirectorThe Unwritten Law Slave for Life, director, producerCount Cohn Maciste and the...
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George Oscar Russell
1890 - 1962 (72 years)
George Oscar Russel was an American speech scientist. He was a professor at the Ohio State University and published an influential book in 1928 called The Vowel: Its Physiological Mechanism as Shown by X-Ray. He was a student of Ludimar Hermann.
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Bobby Scott
1937 - 1990 (53 years)
Robert William Scott was an American musician, record producer, and songwriter. Biography Scott was born in Mount Pleasant, New York, United States, and became a pianist, vibraphonist, and singer, and could also play the accordion, cello, clarinet, and double bass. He studied under Edvard Moritz at the La Follette School of Music at the age of eight, and was working professionally at 11. In 1952, he began touring with Louis Prima, and also toured and performed with Gene Krupa, Lester Young, and Tony Scott in the 1950s. In 1956 he hit the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 with the song "Chain Gang", peaking at number 13.
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Josef Rheinberger
1839 - 1901 (62 years)
Josef Gabriel Rheinberger was organist and composer from Liechtenstein, residing in Bavaria for most of his life. As court conductor in Munich, he was responsible for the music in the royal chapel. He is known for sacred music, works for organ and vocal works, such as masses, a Christmas cantata and the motet Abendlied; he also composed two operas and three singspiele, incidental music, secular choral music, two symphonies and other instrumental works, chamber music, and works for organ.
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Hermann Wilken
1522 - 1603 (81 years)
Hermann Wilken , also known as Hermann Witekind and with the pseudonym of Augustin Lercheimer, was a German humanist and mathematician. Biography Originary of Neuenrade, in Westphalia, he studied in Frankfurt and in Wittenberg , where he was an alumn of Philipp Melanchthon. In 1552 Wilken was recommended by him to teach at the Latin Cathedral School in Riga, becoming rector in 1554. In 1561 he studied at the University of Rostock and in 1563 he became professor of Greek language in the Faculty of Arts at the University of Heidelberg.
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Chen Yinke
1890 - 1969 (79 years)
Chen Yinke, or Chen Yinque , was a Chinese historian, linguist, orientalist, politician, and writer. He was a fellow of Academia Sinica, considered one of the most original and creative historians in 20th century China. His representative works are Draft essays on the origins of Sui and Tang institutions , Draft outline of Tang political history , and An Alternative Biography of Liu Rushi .
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Jack Hoxie
1885 - 1965 (80 years)
John Hartford Hoxie was an American rodeo performer and motion-picture actor whose career was most prominent in the silent film era of the 1910s through the 1930s. Hoxie is best recalled for his roles in Westerns and rarely strayed from the genre.
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Gustave J. Stoeckel
1819 - 1907 (88 years)
Gustave Jakob Stoeckel was a longtime music instructor and college organist at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. Biography Born in Maikammer, Bavarian Palatinate, Stoeckel graduated from the seminary in Kaiserslautern in 1838, and then pursued a post-graduate course in musical composition under Joseph Krebs. He was a teacher and organist until 1847, when he emigrated to the United States. He joined Yale University in 1849 when he became a music teacher there, and was appointed organist of Yale College Chapel. Yale gave him the degree of Mus.D. in 1864.
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Lowell Thomas
1892 - 1981 (89 years)
Lowell Jackson Thomas was an American writer, broadcaster, and traveler, best remembered for publicising T. E. Lawrence . He was also involved in promoting the Cinerama widescreen system. In 1954, he led a group of New York City-based investors to buy majority control of Hudson Valley Broadcasting, which, in 1957, became Capital Cities Television Corporation.
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