Famous Pipe Smokers

Fred Perry

2013-03-03T11:54:00.000-06:00

Frederick John "Fred" Perry was a championship-winning English tennis and table tennis player who won 10 Majors including eight Grand Slams and two Pro Slams.

Brian Barnes

2013-01-31T18:13:00.000-06:00

Brian Barnes is a professional golfer. He was born in Addington, Surrey, England, and lives in England, but he represented Scotland at the international level. Barnes was educated at Millfield School in Somerset.

Heinz Kilfitt

2013-01-31T17:59:00.000-06:00

Heinz Kilfitt was a marvelously prolific camera designer, as well as founder of the Kilfitt optical works, in München (Munich) Germany. His early success in designing the Robot camera was followed by the Mecaflex, produced to his design. He was designer of the Kowa Six and said to have had a hand in the design of the Kalimar Reflex. Kilfitt became known as an innovator in lens design, some produced by "Kamerabau Anstalt Vaduz," Liechtenstein, later as "Kilfitt München," (Munich, Germany) under the "Kilar" brand. His firm created the earliest macro lens designs, along with a range of well-regarded telephoto lenses in mounts for the Mecaflex, Alpa, Exakta, Pentacon Six and others (including cine cameras). The pioneering Zoomar lens was manufactured forVoigtländer by Kilfitt. On Heniz Kilfitt's retirement his company was acquired by Zoomar designer Frank Back.

Jeff Chandler

2013-01-07T03:40:00.000-06:00

Jeff Chandler was an American film actor and singer in the 1950s, best remembered for playing Cochise in Broken Arrow, and for being one of Universal International's most popular male stars of the decade.

George Levick

2013-01-07T01:21:00.000-06:00

George Murray Levick (1876–1956) was a British Antarctic explorer, and founder of the British Schools Exploring Society.

Henry Mucci

2013-01-06T23:43:00.000-06:00

Henry Andrews Mucci was a colonel in the United States Army Rangers. In January 1945, during World War II, he led a force of 128 Army Rangers on a mission which rescued 512 survivors of the Bataan Death March from Cabanatuan Prison Camp, despite being heavily outnumbered.

Frank Wild

2013-01-06T23:16:00.000-06:00

Commander John Robert Francis Wild, known as Frank Wild, was an explorer. He went on five expeditions to Antarctica for which he was awarded the Polar Medal with four bars, one of only two men to be so honoured, the other beingErnest Joyce.

Oscar Eckenstein

2013-01-06T22:44:00.000-06:00

Oscar Johannes Ludwig Eckenstein was an English rock climber and mountaineer, and a pioneer in the sport of bouldering.

Bill Tilman

2013-01-06T22:30:00.000-06:00

Major Harold William "Bill" Tilman, CBE, DSO, MC and Bar was an English mountaineer and explorer, renowned for his Himalayan climbs and sailing voyages.

Ernst A. Lehmann

2013-01-06T22:29:00.000-06:00

Captain Ernst August Lehmann was a German Zeppelin captain. He was one of the most famous and experienced figures in German airship travel.

Lasse Dahlquist

2013-01-06T22:05:00.001-06:00

Lars Erik Dahlquist was a Swedish composer, singer and actor.

Reg Saunders

2013-01-06T21:50:00.000-06:00

Reginald Walter Saunders MBE was the first Aboriginal Australian to be commissioned as an officer in the Australian Army. He came from a military family, his forebears having served in the Boer War and the First World War.

Frank Merrill

2013-01-05T15:14:00.001-06:00

Frank Dow Merrill is best remembered for his command of Merrill's Marauders, officially the 5307th Composite Unit, in the Burma Campaign of World War II. Merrill's Marauders came under General Joseph Stilwell's Northern Combat Area Command.

General Besson

2013-01-05T14:54:00.002-06:00

Frank Schaffer Besson, Jr., was born on May 30, 1910 in Detroit, Michigan. His father was a West Point graduate and an officer in the Corps of Engineers . Frank S. Besson, Jr. In March 1969, General Besson left AMC to become chairman of the Joint Logistics Review Board, formed to review logistic activities in support of the Vietnam War. He retired in July 1970 and was promptly recalled to active duty to establish procedures to implement the board's recommendation. He permanently retired in October 1970. While in retirement, General Besson was nominated by President Richard M. Nixon as one of the founding directors of the National Rail Passenger Corporation, which ran Amtrak. He was also director of the Services National Bank in Alexandria and of ECR International. On July 15, 1985, General Besson died of cancer at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. graduated seventh in his class from theUnited States Military Academy in 1932. In 1935, he received a master's degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His early career was noted for the role he played in the development of portable military pipelines, steel landing mats for airplanes, and steel treadway bridges. He is credited with the studies leading to the Army 's adoption of the Bailey Bridge, used extensively in all theaters in World War II.

He became Assistant Director of the Third Military Railway Service (with rank of Lieutenant Colonel) in 1943, and was promoted to Director (with rank of Colonel) the following year. As Director of the Third Military Railway Service in Iran from 1944 to 1945, Besson ensured the flow of war materials to the Russian forces through the Persian Corridor. He was promoted to brigadier general, becoming, at 34, the youngest general officer in the Army Ground Forces and Chief of the Railway Division. Toward the end of World War II, he was Deputy Chief Transportation Officer of the Army Forces in the Western Pacific and, when Japan's collapse was imminent, assumed full control of railroads in Japan. During the first year of occupation, General Besson directed the rehabilitation of the Japanese rail system, moving more than 200,000 troops and 150,000 tons of supplies in the first two months.
Subsequent assignments included a tour as Assistant Chief of Staff, Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE), where General Besson formulated logistics plans and overall programs to meet the complex requirements of the fifteen nations of the NATO alliance. His efforts in instituting a system for "costing out" five-year programs, thereby bringing force goals into consonance with available resources, earned him the first Distinguished Service Medal to be awarded at SHAPE headquarters.
General Besson stimulated both military and commercial adoption of containerization and improved water terminal practices. He introduced the roll-on/roll-off technique for the rapid loading and discharge of wheeled and tracked vehicles. He further refined these concepts upon assuming command of the Transportation Center and School at Fort Eustis, Virginia in 1953. General Besson was the Chief of Transportation, U.S. Army from March 1958 until April 2, 1962, when he took charge of the U.S. Army Materiel Command.
General Besson was the first Commander of the Army Materiel Command, formed in 1962 during a major Army reorganization. During his command, the mammoth logistical organization, with an annual budget exceeding $14 billion and an inventory of $21 billion, employed more than 160,000 civilian personnel, in addition to its military complement of 14,000. As the first AMC Commander, General Besson was charged with consolidating six Army technical service organizations into a single command without disrupting effective materiel support for the Army. His success resulted in his receiving the Merit Award of the Armed Forces Management Association in 1963. On May 27, 1964, 53-year-old Frank Besson became the 75th officer in the U.S. Army's 189-year history to wear the four stars of a full general. He was the first Army officer to achieve that rank as head of a logistical organization in peacetime.
In March 1969, General Besson left AMC to become chairman of the Joint Logistics Review Board, formed to review logistic activities in support of the Vietnam War. He retired in July 1970 and was promptly recalled to active duty to establish procedures to implement the board's recommendation. He permanently retired in October 1970. While in retirement, General Besson was nominated by President Richard M. Nixon as one of the founding directors of the National Rail Passenger Corporation, which ran Amtrak. He was also director of the Services National Bank in Alexandria and of ECR International. On July 15, 1985, General Besson died of cancer at Walter Reed Army Medical Center

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Richard Greene

2013-01-05T12:15:00.000-06:00

Richard Marius Joseph Greene was a noted English film and television actor.

Valentin Danilov

2013-01-05T12:13:00.003-06:00

Valentin Danilov is a Russian physicist, whose research deals with the effect of solar activity on space satellites. On November 2004, he was found guilty and sentenced to 14 years for espionage.

Charles Eames

2013-01-05T12:09:00.002-06:00

Charles Eames, Jr. was born in St. Louis, Missouri. Charles was the nephew of St. Louis architect William S. Eames. By the time he was 14 years old, while attending Yeatman high school, Charles worked at the Laclede Steel Company as a part-time laborer, where he learned about engineering, drawing, and architecture (and also first entertained the idea of one day becoming an architect).

Charles briefly studied architecture atWashington University in St. Louis on an architecture scholarship. After two years of study, he left the university. Many sources claim that he was dismissed for his advocacy of Frank Lloyd Wright and his interest in modern architects. He was reportedly dismissed from the university because his views were "too modern." Other sources, less frequently cited, note that while a student, Charles Eames also was employed as an architect at the firm of Trueblood and Graf. The demands on his time from this employment and from his classes, led to sleep-deprivation and diminished performance at the university.

While at Washington University, he met his first wife, Catherine Woermann, whom he married in 1929. A year later, they had a daughter, Lucia.

In 1930, Charles began his own architectural practice in St. Louis with partner Charles Gray. They were later joined by a third partner, Walter Pauley.

Charles Eames was greatly influenced by the Finnish architect Eliel Saarinen (whose son Eero, also an architect, would become a partner and friend). At the elder Saarinen's invitation, Charles moved in 1938 with his wife Catherine and daughter Lucia to Michigan to further study architecture at the Cranbrook Academy of Art, where he would become a teacher and head of the industrial design department. In order to apply for the Architecture and Urban Planning Program, Eames defined an area of focus—the St. Louis waterfront. Together with Eero Saarinen he designed prize-winning furniture for New York's Museum of Modern Art" Organic Design in Home Furnishings" competition. Their work displayed the new technique of wood moulding that Eames would further develop in many moulded plywood products, including, beside chairs and other furniture, splints and stretchers for the U.S. Navy during World War II.

In 1941, Charles and Catherine divorced, and he married his Cranbrook colleague Ray Kaiser, who was born in Sacramento, California. He then moved with her to Los Angeles, California, where they would work and live for the rest of their lives. In the late 1940s, as part of the Arts & Architecture magazine "Case Study" program, Ray and Charles designed and built the groundbreaking Eames House, Case Study House #8, as their home. Located upon a cliff overlooking the Pacific Ocean, and hand-constructed within a matter of days entirely of pre-fabricated steel parts intended for industrial construction, it remains a milestone of modern architecture.

Charles Eames died of a heart attack on August 21, 1978 while on a consulting trip in his native Saint Louis, and now has a star on the St. Louis Walk of Fame.

Ben Chapman

2013-01-05T10:36:00.001-06:00

William Benjamin "Ben" Chapman was an American outfielder and manager in Major League Baseball who played for several teams, most notably the New York Yankees.

Josef Sieber

2013-01-04T23:45:00.001-06:00

Josef Sieber was a German film actor.

Paul Bley

2013-01-04T23:45:00.000-06:00

Paul Bley, CM is a pianist known for his contributions to the free jazz movement of the 1960s as well as his innovations and influence on trio playing.

Jerry Bock

2013-01-04T22:06:00.000-06:00

Jerrold Lewis "Jerry" Bock was an American musical theater composer. He received the Tony Award for Best Musical and the Pulitzer Prize for Drama with Sheldon Harnick for their 1959 musical Fiorello! and the Tony Award for Best Composer and Lyricist for the 1964 musical Fiddler on the Roof with Harnick.

Gerald Finzi

2013-01-04T16:07:00.001-06:00

Gerald Raphael Finzi was a British composer. Finzi is best known as a song-writer, but also wrote in other genres.

Arnoldo Foà

2013-01-04T12:44:00.000-06:00

Arnoldo Foà is an Italian film actor. He has appeared in over 130 films since 1938. He was born in Ferrara, Italy.

Aubrey Smith

2013-01-04T12:42:00.000-06:00

Sir Charles Aubrey Smith CBE, known to film-goers as C. Aubrey Smith, was an English cricketer and actor.

Ingvar Feodor Kamprad

2013-01-04T12:40:00.000-06:00

Ingvar Feodor Kamprad is a Swedish business magnate and philanthropist. He is the founder of IKEA a retail company.