Martha Jane Canary (or Cannary), better known as Calamity Jane, was an American frontierswoman and professional scout, known for her claim of being an acquaintance of “Wild Bill” Hickok, and fighting against Native Americans. Late in her life, she appeared in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show, and at the 1901 Pan-American Exposition. She is said to have always exhibited kindness and compassion to others, especially to the sick and needy. This facet of her character, contrasted with her daredevil ways, helped make her a noted frontier figure. Calamity Jane was also known for her habit of wearing men’s attire. She was born on May 1, 1852 and died on August 1, 1903.
Edward “Duke” Ellington (April 29, 1899 – May 24, 1974) was an American composer, pianist and bandleader of a jazz orchestra, which he led from 1923 until his death in a career spanning over 50 years. Born in Washington, D.C., Ellington was based in New York City from the mid-1920s onward, and gained a national profile through his orchestra’s appearances at the Cotton Club in Harlem. Often collaborating with others, Ellington wrote more than one thousand compositions; his extensive body of work is the largest recorded personal jazz legacy, with many of his works having become standards. Due to his inventive use of the orchestra, or big band, and thanks to his eloquence and charisma, Ellington is considered to have elevated the perception of jazz as an art form. His reputation continued to rise after he died, and he was awarded a special Pulitzer Prize for music in 1999.
Oskar Schindler (April 28, 1908 – October 9, 1974) was a German industrialist, spy, and member of the Nazi Party who is credited with saving the lives of 1,200 Jews during the Holocaust by employing them in his enamelware and ammunitions factories, which were located in occupied Poland and the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. He is the subject of the 1982 novel Schindler’s Ark, and the subsequent 1993 film Schindler’s List, which reflected his life as an opportunist initially motivated by profit who came to show extraordinary initiative, tenacity and dedication to save the lives of his Jewish employees. By 1945, Schindler had spent his entire fortune on bribes and black-market purchases of supplies for his Jewish workers. He moved to West Germany after the war, where he was supported by assistance payments from Jewish relief organizations.
Lucille Ball (August 6, 1911 – April 26, 1989) was an American actress, comedian, model, film studio executive and producer. She was best known as the star of the self-produced sitcoms I Love Lucy, The Lucy–Desi Comedy Hour, The Lucy Show, Here’s Lucy and Life with Lucy. Ball’s career began in 1929, when she landed work as a model. In the midst of her work as a contract player for RKO Radio Pictures in the 1930s and 1940s, Ball met and married Cuban bandleader Desi Arnaz. In 1951, she and Arnaz created the sitcom I Love Lucy, a series that would go on to become one of the most beloved programs in television history. In 1962, Ball became the first woman to run a major television studio, Desilu Productions, which produced many popular TV series, including Mission: Impossible and Star Trek. Ball was nominated for thirteen Primetime Emmy Awards, winning four times.
Prince Nelson, known as Prince, was an American singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, record producer and actor. He was a musical innovator and known for his eclectic work, flamboyant stage presence, extravagant dress and makeup and wide vocal range. His music integrates a wide variety of styles, including funk, rock, R&B, soul, psychedelia and pop. Prince has sold over 100 million records worldwide, making him one of the best-selling artists of all time. He won seven Grammy Awards, a Golden Globe Award and an Academy Award. In 1984, he released Purple Rain, which served as the soundtrack to his film debut of the same name and was met with widespread acclaim. Prince was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2004, the first year of his eligibility. He was born on June 7, 1958 and died yesterday, April 21, 2016, at the age of 57.
Michael Render (born April 20, 1975), better known by his stage name Killer Mike, is an American hip-hop recording artist, activist and occasional actor from Atlanta, Georgia. Mike made his debut on “Snappin’ and Trappin’,” from Stankonia (2000) by Outkast. Mike has since released five full-length albums as a solo artist. In 2012, he released R.A.P. Music, produced entirely by American rapper-producer El-P. In 2013, the two subsequently formed a duo, branding themselves Run the Jewels, They have since released Run the Jewels (2013) and Run the Jewels 2 (2014), with Run the Jewels 3 forthcoming in 2016. Mike is also known as a social and political activist, focusing on subjects including social equality, police brutality and institutional racism. He has been featured in the films 20 Funerals, Idlewild and ATL.
Killer Mike has been a visible and vocal supporter of Senator Bernie Sanders during his 2016 U.S. presidential campaign. On November 23, 2015, Killer Mike sat down with Sanders in Atlanta to discuss topics ranging from gun control to democratic socialism. I enjoyed the entire hour-long conversation, but particularly part 3 of 6 about America’s rigged economy and Martin Luther King, Jr. Three months later, on February 16, 2016, Killer Mike gave a powerful eight-minute speech at the Bernie Sanders rally at Morehouse College in Atlanta. Mike and Sanders are good people genuinely trying to change our world for the better.
Rosalind Franklin (July 25, 1920 – April 16, 1958) was an English chemist and X-ray crystallographer who made contributions to the understanding of the molecular structures of DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid), RNA (ribonucleic acid), viruses, coal and graphite. Although her works on coal and viruses were appreciated in her lifetime, her contributions to the discovery of DNA were largely recognized posthumously. Franklin’s work on the X-ray diffraction images of DNA led to the discovery of the DNA double helix for which James Watson, Francis Crick and Maurice Wilkins shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1962. Watson suggested that Franklin would have ideally been awarded a Nobel Prize in Chemistry, but the Nobel Committee does not make posthumous nominations. Franklin died in 1958 at the age of 37 of ovarian cancer.
Garry Kasparov (born April 13, 1963) is a Russian chess grandmaster, former World Chess Champion, writer and political activist, considered by many to be the greatest chess player of all time. From 1986 until his retirement in 2005, Kasparov was ranked world No. 1 for 225 out of 228 months. His peak rating of 2851, achieved in 1999, was the highest recorded until being surpassed by Magnus Carlsen in 2013. Kasparov also holds records for consecutive professional tournament victories (15) and Chess Oscars (11). In 1997, he became the first world champion to lose a match to a computer under standard time controls, when he lost to the IBM supercomputer Deep Blue in a highly publicized match. Kasparov devoted his time to politics and writing following his retirement. He formed the United Civil Front movement, and joined as a member of The Other Russia, a coalition opposing the administration and policies of Vladimir Putin.
Ken Griffey Jr. (born November 21, 1969) nicknamed “Junior” and “The Kid,” is an American former professional baseball outfielder who played 22 years in Major League Baseball (MLB). He spent most of his career with the Seattle Mariners and Cincinnati Reds, along with a short stint with the Chicago White Sox. A 13-time All-Star, Griffey is one of the most prolific home-run hitters in baseball history; his 630 home runs rank as the sixth-most in MLB history. Griffey was also an exceptional defender and won 10 Gold Glove Awards in center field. In 2016, Griffey was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame, receiving a record 99.32% of the vote, breaking pitcher Tom Seaver‘s record of 98.84%. He is the son of former MLB player Ken Griffey Sr.
René Descartes (March 31, 1596 – 11 February 1650) was a French philosopher, mathematician and scientist. Dubbed the father of modern western philosophy, much of subsequent Western philosophy is a response to his writings, which are studied closely to this day. Descartes’s Meditations on First Philosophy (1641) continues to be a standard text at most university philosophy departments. Descartes’s influence in mathematics is equally apparent; the Cartesian coordinate system was named after him and he is credited as the father of analytic geometry. Descartes was also one of the key figures in the scientific revolution and laid the foundation for 17th-century continental rationalism. His best known philosophical statement is “Cogito ergo sum” (I think, therefore I am), first found in Discourse on the Method (1637).
Virginia Woolf (January 25, 1882 – March 28, 1941) was an English writer and one of the foremost modernists of the 20th century. During the interwar period, Woolf was a significant figure in London literary society and a central figure in the influential Bloomsbury Group of intellectuals. Her most famous works include the novels Mrs Dalloway (1925), To the Lighthouse (1927) and Orlando (1928), and the book-length essay A Room of One’s Own (1929), with its famous dictum, “A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.” Woolf suffered from severe bouts of mental illness throughout her life, thought to have been what is now termed bipolar disorder, and committed suicide by drowning in 1941 at the age of 59.
Aretha Franklin (born March 25, 1942) is an American singer-songwriter and musician. Franklin began her career singing gospel at her father’s church as a child. In 1960, at the age of 18, Franklin embarked on a secular career. Following her signing to Atlantic Records in 1967, Franklin achieved commercial acclaim and success with songs such as “Respect,” “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman” and “Think.” These hits and more helped her to gain the title The Queen of Soul by the end of the 1960s decade. Franklin has won a total of 18 Grammy Awards and is one of the best-selling artists of all time, having sold over 75 million records worldwide.
James Madison (March 16, 1751 – June 28, 1836) was a political theorist, American statesman and the fourth President of the United States (1809-17). Hailed as the “Father of the Constitution,” Madison wrote the first drafts of the U.S. Constitution, co-wrote The Federalist Papers with Alexander Hamilton and John Jay, and sponsored the Bill of Rights. He established the Democratic-Republican Party with President Thomas Jefferson, and served as Jefferson’s Secretary of State (1801-09). As Secretary of State, Madison supervised the Louisiana Purchase, which doubled the nation’s size. As President, he led the United States into the War of 1812; this endeavor was an administrative morass, as the U.S. had neither a strong army nor financial system. As a result, Madison afterward supported a stronger national government and a strong military, as well as the national bank.
Andrew Jackson (March 15, 1767 – June 8, 1845) was an American statesman who served as the seventh President of the United States (1829-1837). He was born in the Waxhaws region between North Carolina and South Carolina. A lawyer and a landowner, he owned hundreds of slaves who worked on the Hermitage Plantation. Jackson became a national war hero after defeating the British in New Orleans during the War of 1812. In response to conflict with the Seminole in Spanish Florida, he invaded the territory in 1818. This led directly to the First Seminole War and the Adams–Onís Treaty of 1819, which formally transferred Florida from Spain to the United States. Known as the “people’s president,” Jackson destroyed the Second Bank of the United States, founded the Democratic Party and supported individual liberty. He is also known for having signed the Indian Removal Act in 1830, which resulted in the forced migration of Native Americans in the South to Indian Territory (now Oklahoma).
Bobby Fischer (March 9, 1943 – January 17, 2008) was an American chess grandmaster, the 11th World Chess Champion. Many consider him the greatest chess player of all time. At age 20, Fischer won the 1963-64 U.S. Championship with 11/11, the only perfect score in the history of the tournament. Fischer’s book My 60 Memorable Games (1969) remains one of the most acclaimed works in chess literature. In 1972, he captured the World Chess Championship from Boris Spassky of the USSR in a match held in Reykjavík, Iceland; it was publicized as a Cold War confrontation and attracted more worldwide interest than any chess championship before or since. After losing his title as World Chess Champion in 1975, Fischer became reclusive and sometimes erratic, disappearing from both competitive chess and the public eye. After 1992, he lived his life as an émigré.
Ralph H. Baer (March 8, 1922 – December 6, 2014) was a German-born American video game developer, inventor and engineer, and was known as “The Father of Video Games” due to his many contributions to games and the video game industry in the latter half of the 20th century. Born in Germany, he and his family fled to the United States before the outbreak of World War II. In 1951, while working at Loral, he proposed the idea of playing games on television screens, but his boss rejected it. Later in 1966, while working at Sanders Associates, his 1951 idea came back to his mind, and he would go on to develop eight hardware prototypes. The last two (the Brown Box and its de/dt extension) would become the first home video game console, the Magnavox Odyssey. Baer would contribute to the development of other consoles and consumer game units, including the electronic memory game Simon for Milton Bradley in 1978.
Katherine Johnson (born August 26, 1918) is an American physicist, space scientist and mathematician who contributed to the United States’ aeronautics and space programs with the early application of digital electronic computers at NASA. Known for accuracy in computerized celestial navigation, she calculated the trajectory for Project Mercury and the 1969 Apollo 11 flight to the Moon. In November 2015, President Barack Obama included Johnson on a list of 17 Americans to be awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, for her pioneering example of African-American women in STEM. Obama also highlighted Johnson in his final State of the Union address on January 12, 2016.
Sally Ride (May 26, 1951 – July 23, 2012) was an American physicist and astronaut. Born in Los Angeles, she joined NASA in 1978 and became the first American woman in space in 1983. She remains the youngest American astronaut to have traveled to space, having done so at the age of 32. After flying twice on the orbiter Challenger, she left NASA in 1987. She worked at Stanford University, then at the University of California, San Diego as a professor of physics. She served on the committees that investigated the Challenger and Columbia space shuttle disasters, the only person to participate on both. Ride died of pancreatic cancer in 2012.
Donald Trump (born June 14, 1946) is an American businessman, politician, television personality, author, and the probable nominee of the Republican Party for President of the United States in the 2016 election. He is chairman of The Trump Organization, which is the principal holding company for his real estate ventures and other business interests. After graduating from college, Trump was given control of his father’s real estate development firm and has since built casinos, golf courses, hotels, a New York City neighborhood, and other real estate properties, many of which bear his name, and founded Trump Entertainment Resorts. Listed by Forbes as one of the world’s wealthiest people, Trump and his businesses, as well as his three marriages, have received prominent media exposure. He hosted The Apprentice, a popular reality television show on NBC, from 2004 to 2015.
Exactly four years ago, on February 29, 2012, I created the 8-bit Purple Squirrel in honor of Leap Year. The story behind that character is one of eye-catching strangeness and an unsettling fear of its existence. The reason for creating 8-bit Donald Trump is kind of the same. This orange-tinted populist con-artist is the absolute worst, and he may be the world’s greatest troll. Trump is a racist, sexist, authoritarian narcissist who represents the culmination of 30 years of antipolitics. And he doesn’t seem to be going away, because evidently America made him unstoppable. Happy Leap Year?
Update: It got even worse. I had to add this 8-bit character to my U.S. president series as #27 of 44.
Harper Lee, born Nelle Harper Lee (April 28, 1926 – February 19, 2016), was an American novelist widely known for To Kill a Mockingbird (1960). Immediately successful, it won the 1961 Pulitzer Prize and has become a classic of modern American literature. Though Lee had only published this single book, in 2007 she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom for her contribution to literature. She was also known for assisting her childhood friend Truman Capote in his research for the book In Cold Blood (1966). The plot and characters of To Kill a Mockingbird are loosely based on Lee’s observations of an event that occurred near her Monroeville, Alabama hometown in 1936, when she was 10 years old. The novel deals with the irrationality of adult attitudes towards race and class in the Deep South of the 1930s, as depicted through the eyes of two children.
Note: Lee died in her sleep three days ago, on on the morning of February 19, 2016, aged 89. Last year another novel, Go Set a Watchman (2015), written in the mid-1950s, was controversially published as a “sequel,” though it was later confirmed to be To Kill a Mockingbird‘s first draft.
Killer Mike – No. 980
Michael Render (born April 20, 1975), better known by his stage name Killer Mike, is an American hip-hop recording artist, activist and occasional actor from Atlanta, Georgia. Mike made his debut on “Snappin’ and Trappin’,” from Stankonia (2000) by Outkast. Mike has since released five full-length albums as a solo artist. In 2012, he released R.A.P. Music, produced entirely by American rapper-producer El-P. In 2013, the two subsequently formed a duo, branding themselves Run the Jewels, They have since released Run the Jewels (2013) and Run the Jewels 2 (2014), with Run the Jewels 3 forthcoming in 2016. Mike is also known as a social and political activist, focusing on subjects including social equality, police brutality and institutional racism. He has been featured in the films 20 Funerals, Idlewild and ATL.
Killer Mike has been a visible and vocal supporter of Senator Bernie Sanders during his 2016 U.S. presidential campaign. On November 23, 2015, Killer Mike sat down with Sanders in Atlanta to discuss topics ranging from gun control to democratic socialism. I enjoyed the entire hour-long conversation, but particularly part 3 of 6 about America’s rigged economy and Martin Luther King, Jr. Three months later, on February 16, 2016, Killer Mike gave a powerful eight-minute speech at the Bernie Sanders rally at Morehouse College in Atlanta. Mike and Sanders are good people genuinely trying to change our world for the better.