This autobiography/biography was written at the time of the award and later published in the book series Les Prix Nobel/ Nobel Lectures/The Nobel Prizes. The information is sometimes updated with an addendum submitted by the Laureate. John F. Nash Jr. died on 23 May 2015. ...

Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower (October 14, 1890 – March 28, 1969 was an American politician and general who served as the 34th President of the United States from 1953 until 1961. He was a five-star general in the United States Army during World War II and served as Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces in Europe. ...

Francis Albert Sinatra was born on December 12, 1915, in an upstairs tenement at 415 Monroe Street in Hoboken, New Jersey. He was the only child of Italian immigrants Antonino Martino "Marty" Sinatra (May 4, 1892 – January 24, 1969), the son of grape growers from Lercara Friddi, and Natalina "Dolly" Garaventa (December 26, 1896 – January 6, 1977), daughter ...

Wilson was an automobile enthusiast, and took daily rides while he was President in his favorite car, a 1919 Pierce-Arrow.His enjoyment of motoring made him an advocate of funding for public highways. Wilson was an avid baseball fan, and in 1915 became the first sitting president to attend, and throw out the first ball at, a World Series game. Wilson ...

Massachusetts Listeni/ˌmæsəˈtʃuːsᵻts/ mass-ə-choo-sits; officially the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, is the most populous state in New England, and a part of the northeastern region of the United States. It is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the east, the states of Connecticut and Rhode Island to the south ...

Nasar was born in Rosenheim, Germany, to a Bavarian mother and an Uzbek father, Rusi Nasar, who later joined the CIA as an intelligence officer. Her family immigrated to the United States in 1951, then moved to Ankara, Turkey, in 1960. She graduated with a BA in Literature from Antioch College in 1970 and earned a Master's degree in Economics ...

Our Mr. Wrenn, The Trail of the Hawk, The Job, The Innocents, and Free Air they were called, published between 1914 and 1919, and all of them dead before the ink was dry. I lacked sense enough to see that, after five failures, I was foolish to continue writing. ...

Walter H. Brattain was born in Amoy, China, on February 10, 1902, the son of Ross R. Brattain and Ottilie Houser. He spent his childhood and youth in the State of Washington and received a B.S. degree from Whitman College in 1924. He was awarded the M.A. degree by the University of Oregon in 1926 and the Ph.D. degree by ...

South Dakota is a state located in the Midwestern region of the United States. It is named after the Lakota and Dakota Sioux Native American tribes, who comprise a significant portion of the population and historically dominated the entire territory. South Dakota is the 17th most expansive, but the 5th least populous and the 5th least densely populated of the ...

In June 1812, the United States declared war against Great Britain in reaction to three issues: the British economic blockade of France, the impressment of thousands of neutral American seamen into the British Royal Navy against their will, and the British support of hostile Indian tribes along the Great Lakes frontier. ...

Born on July 4, 1804, in Salem Massachusetts, Nathaniel Hawthorne’s life was steeped in the Puritan legacy. An early ancestor, William Hathorne, first emigrated from England to America in 1630 and settled in Salem, Massachusetts, where he became a judge known for his harsh sentencing. William’s son, John Hathorne, was one of three judges during the Salem Witch Trials in ...

Mississippi is bordered on the north by Tennessee, on the east by Alabama, on the south by Louisiana and a narrow coast on the Gulf of Mexico; and on the west, across the Mississippi River, by Louisiana and Arkansas. ...

When South Dakota state historian Doane Robinson read about Stone Mountain, he invited Borglum out to the Black Hills of South Dakota to create a monument there. Borglum, perhaps realizing that Stone Mountain had only regional support, immediately suggested a national subject for Rushmore: Presidents George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. Theodore Roosevelt and Thomas Jefferson were added to the program ...

Thomas Paine was born in Thetford, England, in 1737, to a Quaker father and an Anglican mother. Paine received little formal education, but did learn to read, write and perform arithmetic. At the age of 13, he began working with his father as stay maker (the thick rope stays used on sailing ships) in Thetford, a shipbuilding town. ...

Born on April 12, 1777, in Hanover County, Virginia, Henry Clay worked as a frontier lawyer before becoming a Kentucky senator and then speaker of the House of Representatives. He was secretary of state under John Quincy Adams in the 1820s, later returning to Congress, and pushed for the Compromise of 1850, with overall conflicting stances on race and slavery. ...

Sidney Luft (November 2, 1915 – September 15, 2005) was an American show business figure, the third husband of American actress and singer Judy Garland and the second husband of American actress Lynn Bari. He was known primarily as Sid Luft. ...

The United States five-dollar bill ($5) is a denomination of United States currency. The current $5 bill features the 16th U.S. President (1861–65), Abraham Lincoln's portrait on the front and the Lincoln Memorial on the back. ...

In January 1776 it became the first of the British North American colonies to establish a government independent of the Kingdom of Great Britain's authority and it was the first to establish its own state constitution. Six months later, it became one of the original 13 states that founded the United States of America, and in June 1788 it was ...

Guided missiles were one of Germany’s most important technical achievements during World War II. Rockets and missiles have been part of warfare since the late 1700s. In 1812, for example, the song The Star Spangled Banner made reference to “the rocket’s red glare.” Throughout the 19th century and into the early 20th, experimenters in many nations hoped to turn simple ...

On this day in 1732, Benjamin Franklin of Philadelphia first published Poor Richard’s Almanack. The book, filled with proverbs preaching industry and prudence, was published continuously for 25 years and became one of the most popular publications in colonial America, selling an average of 10,000 copies a year. ...

Gerald Rudolph Ford was born Leslie Lynch King Jr., on July 14, 1913, at 3202 Woolworth Avenue in Omaha, Nebraska, where his parents lived with his paternal grandparents. His mother was Dorothy Ayer Gardner, and his father was Leslie Lynch King Sr., a wool trader and a son of prominent banker Charles Henry King and Martha Alicia King (née Porter)+ ...

Born January 1, 1895, in Washington, D.C., J. Edgar Hoover joined the Justice Department in 1917 and was named director of the Department’s Bureau of Investigation in 1924. When the Bureau reorganized as the Federal Bureau of Investigation in 1935, Hoover instituted strenuous agent-recruiting and advanced intelligence-gathering techniques. During his tenure he confronted gangsters, Nazis and Communists. Later, Hoover ordered ...

John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy (May 29, 1917 – November 22, 1963), commonly referred to by his initials JFK, was an American politician who served as the 35th President of the United States from January 1961 until his assassination in November 1963. The Cuban Missile Crisis, The Bay of Pigs Invasion, the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, the establishment of the Peace ...

In October of 1870, he suffered a massive stroke. He died at his home, surrounded by family, on October 12. ...

The Magnificent Seven is a 1960 American western film directed by John Sturges and starring Yul Brynner, Eli Wallach, Steve McQueen, and Horst Buchholz. The picture is an Old West-style remake of Akira Kurosawa's 1954 Japanese-language film Seven Samurai. Brynner, McQueen, Buchholz, Charles Bronson, Robert Vaughn, James Coburn, and Brad Dexter portray the title characters, a group of seven gunfighters ...

The Treaty of Paris, signed in Paris by representatives of King George III of Great Britain and representatives of the United States of America on September 3, 1783, ended the American Revolutionary War. Britain acknowledged the United States to be sovereign and independent. The treaty set the boundaries between the British Empire and the new country, on lines "exceedingly generous" ...

George Washington (February 22, 1732 [O.S. February 11, 1731 – December 14, 1799) was the first President of the United States (1789–97), the Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War, and one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. He presided over the convention that drafted the current United States Constitution and during his lifetime was ...

Wallach died on June 24, 2014 of natural causes at the age of 98. He was survived by his wife of 66 years, three children, three grandchildren and a great-grandchild. His body was cremated. ...

Frieze of the United States Capitol rotunda On October 5, 1813, the Americans attacked and won a victory over the British and Native Americans at the Battle of the Thames, near Moraviantown. Tecumseh was killed, and shortly after the battle, most tribes of his confederacy surrendered to Harrison at Detroit. As to the actual circumstances surrounding Tecumseh’s death, "the Americans ...

Zachary Taylor was an American president born on November 24, 1784, near Barboursville, Virginia. Known as a national war hero for his battles in the Mexican War, Taylor was elected as the 12th president of the United States in 1849. He led the nation during its debates on slavery and Southern secession. After serving only 16 months in office, Taylor ...