Jake Roberts born in Gainesville, Ga.
Roberts (Aurelian Smith Jr) is born in Gainesville, Georgia. He develops an interest in professional wrestling as a young man and begins his career as a referee with Mid-South Wrestling. He later makes his wrestling debut for the company.
Rowan Atkinson born in Consett, England
Rowan Sebastian Atkinson is born in Consett, England to farmer and company director Erick Atkinson and Ella May. He is youngest of four brothers. He attends Durham Choristers School. The school headmaster, Canon John Grove:
He is shy with a slight stutter and a slightly rubbery face.
Denzel Washington born in Mount Vernon
Denzel Hayes Washington Jr. is born in Mount Vernon, New York. His father, Denzel Washington, Sr. is a Pentecostal minister and his mother Lennis, is a beautician. A middle child, he has an older sister named Lorice and a younger brother named David. At the age of 14, his parents’ divorce. Washington starts hanging out on the streets and getting into fights.
I started heading toward the streets, getting into all sorts of trouble. My three closest friends ended up in penitentiaries.
Stieg Larsson born in Västerbotten
Karl Stig-Erland Larsson is born in the town of Skelleftehamn in the Västerbotten region of northeast Sweden, about 400 miles north of Stockholm. He is the first child of Erland and Vivianne. He is raised by his maternal grandparents in Västerbotten after his father contracts arsenic poisoning from his job at a smelting plant. When he is nine, his grandfather, Severin Boström, dies of a heart attack and he moves to the city of Umeå to live with his parents and his younger brother, Joakim. His grandfather is a survivor of imprisonment by the Nazis and is an outspoken political activist. Stieg’s favorite pastime during childhood is reading Enid Blyton and Astrid Lindgren, the author of The Adventures of Pippi Longstocking. He later begins writing novels of his own. His father:
When Stieg was 12 I read a novel he had written in a notebook. It was then that we gave him a typewriter — it was his thirteenth birthday and I remember it was very expensive at that time. It was also very noisy, so we had to make space for him in the cellar. He would write in the cellar and come up for meals, but at least we could sleep at night.
Jonathan Jay Pollard born in Galveston, TX
Jonathan Jay Pollard is born in Galvaston, Texas to Jewish parents. He has two older siblings. When he is seven years old, his family moved to South Bend, Indiana when his father, a renowned microbiologist is hired to teach at Notre Dame. As he grew up, Pollards parents instill a strong love for the State of Israel. He went to a Hebrew Day School and Stanford University. Pollard is bullied a great deal as a child for being Jewish and for his connection to Israel.
I grew up with a racial obligation to Israel. I got beaten up, but at least I knew the Israelis would beat up a couple Arab countries and maybe I would feel better.
Roddy Piper born in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada
Piper (Roderick George Toombs) is born in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada despite being billed from Glasgow, Scotland during his career. After a dispute with his father, Piper leaves home and stays in youth hostels and works odd jobs. He begins playing bagpipes as a young man. He makes his professional wrestling debut at age 15, playing his own entrance music on his bagpipe. The announcer calls him Roddy the Piper which later sticks as his ring name, Roddy Piper.
Hulk Hogan born in Augusta, Ga.
Hogan (Terry Bollea) is born in Augsta, Georgia despite being billed from Hollywood, Calif. for most of his wrestling career. He develops and early interest in music and begins playing bass guitar as a young man. He is spotted by the Brisco Brothers while playing music at a bar and convinced to pursue professional wrestling.
Ricky Steamboat born in West Point, NY
Steamboat (Richard Henry Blood) is born in West Point, New york despite being billed from Honolulu, Hawaii during his wrestling career. After graduating high school, he decides to pursue a career in the world of professional wrestling. He makes his professional debut in 1976 with the AWA after training under Verne Gagne and The Iron Sheik.
Jeb Bush born in Midland, Texas
John Ellis “Jeb” Bush is born in Midland, Texas to Barbara Bush and George H. W. Bush. He is third of his parent’s six children.
George Strait born in Poteet, Texas
George Harvey Strait is born in Poteet, Texas to Doris and John Strait. His father is a school teacher and owns and operates a ranch. He is the second of three childre, his oldest brother’s Buddy and his younger sister, Percy. George’s mother and father divorce when he is in fourth grade. He and his older brother stay with their Dad. Their younger sister, Percy, leaves with his Mother.
Jim Ross born in Westville, Ok.
Ross is born in Westville, Oklahoma. Ross begins exploring commentary in college, being allowed to cover sports on college radio. He begins his work with professional wrestling as a referee for NWA Mid-South.
Benjamin Carson born in Detroit
Benjamin Solomon Carson is born in Detroit, Michigan, to Sonya and Robert Solomon Carson, a Seventh-day Adventist minister. His parents come from rural Georgia. He is their second son. Carson’s mother raises her two boys on her own, supporting the family with two or more cleaning jobs at a time. Carson attends Durfee Elementary School.
I not only saw and felt the difference my mother made in my life, I am still living out that difference as a man.
Robin Williams born in Chicago
Robin McLaurin Williams is born in Chicago, Ill., to former model and actress Laurie McLaurin and Robert Fitzgerald Williams, a senior executive at Ford. He grows up in Chicago, Michigan and California. His half-brother Todd, born in 1938 and nicknamed ‘Toad,’ is his father’s son from his first marriage, while McLaurin Smith-Williams, his mother’s son from her first marriage, is four years older than Robin. The three boys all grow up as only children. While living in Detroit, where his father is posted by Ford, he has a whole floor of the family’s large rented home to himself and creates imaginary friends to fill it. Comedy is his way of connecting with his mother:
I’d think, I’ll make mommy laugh and that will be okay.
He attends boys-only Detroit County Day School, where he uses comedy as a defence against bullying at school in Detroit, but he is otherwise a serious student:
I started telling jokes as a way to stop getting the shit kicked out of me
He later moves to Redwood Senior High School in Larkspur, Calif., where he joins the drama club, and is voted both ‘The funniest’ and ‘Least likely to succeed.’
When I came out to California to go to high school, it was 1969. I went to this gestalt high school, where one of the teachers actually took LSD one day. So you walked in and you hear (whispers), “I’m Lincoln.”
A poem to his mother:
Think young and you’ll never grow old,
The years will pass you by,
Birthdays are for merrymaking,
Present giving and birthday caking,
Age is the state of your mind
As the days of your years unfold,
Don’t live in the past,
Right up to the last
Think young and you’ll never grow old.
Jesse Ventura born in Minneapolis, Minnesota
Ventura (James Janos) is born in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He serves in the United States Navy for two years during the Vietnam War. He begins weightlifting and wrestling while attending North Hennepin Community College.
Ron Conway born
Ron Conway is born in the Bay Area. He is the sixth child, along with his twin brother, Rick, in an Irish Catholic family of 12 children, six boys and six girls. His father is an executive at the Oakland, Calif.-based American President Lines shipping company, and later starts a business in the shipping container industry. He attends St. Stephen’s and Stuart Hall schools. His twin brother says he was shy when young:
In grammar school, no one would have expected he’d become the mayor of Silicon Valley
Richard Branson born
Richard Branson is born in Blackheath, London. His mother is Eve Huntley Branson, nee Flindt. She performs in West End productions until World War 2, when she disguises herself as a boy to take glider lessons and becomes a signaler in the RAF’s WRENS womens corps. She then works as a British Airways hostess until she meets Major Edward James Branson, known as Ted, a cavalry officer who had wanted to be an archaeologist but went into law. Richard grows up in the small village of Shamley Green in Surrey. He has two sisters, Vanessa and Lindy. At the age of seven, Richard is sent to board at Scaitcliffe preparatory school in Windsor Great Park. At the age of 15, he decides that he will go into entrepreneurship.
My early years I remember as being very loving and supportive. My mother gave us a lot of freedom to go out and explore. We weren’t allowed to watch television. My mother was always busy doing something – she made wooden tissue boxes and waste paper bins to sell to shops to supplement my father’s income. She encouraged us to stand on our own two feet and went to extraordinary lengths to do that. Most likely if she were to do it today, she would get arrested. One time, when I was four or five, she stopped the car on the way home, made me get out and told me to find my way home back from my grandmother’s house. I remember getting lost, but eventually making it home.
Zeb Colter born in Walhalla, SC
Colter (Wayne Maurice Keown), also known as Dutch Mantel, is born in Walhalla, South Carolina. After serving a brief year in the Vietnam War for the United States Army, he pursues professional wrestling, working for various Southern territories.
Jerry Lawler born in Memphis, TN
Lawler is born in Memphis, Tennessee. Lawler decides to pursue professional wrestling while working as a DJ after having a conversation with Aubrey Griffith. Lawler agrees to give NWA Mid-South free advertising in return for his wrestling training.
Benjamin Netanyahu born in Tel Aviv, Israel
Benjamin Netanyahu is born in Tel Aviv, Israel, growing up in Jerusalem then Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. His father, Jewish historian Benzion Netanyahu, works as a professor. His mother is a stay-at-home mother. He goes to Cheltenham High School in Cheltenham, Philadelphia.
You taught me, Father, how to correctly view reality, how to understand what it contains within it and draw the necessary conclusions. It certainly wasn’t an easy thing for you, because there were always those who did not see as you did, ridiculed, laughed at or belittled your conclusions. But I believe that in this, as well, you taught me to distinguish between the important and the unimportant, and concentrate on the important.
Mark Knopfler born in Glasgow, Scotland
Mark Knopfler is born in Glasgow, Scotland to Louisa Maryand and Erwin Knopfler. His father is an architect while his mother works as a teacher. He has a younger brother named David. He attends Bearsden Primary school.
I can recall being strapped by my Headmaster at my Primary School for playing the drum part to “Wipeout” on my school desk, getting detentions at the Grammar school for illegally playing the school piano and at the school folk club lying about my authorship of my own work because I’d assumed if I admitted to having written something I’d be banned from the club or worse… The assumption was that “no” would be the answer to any request of artistic support within the school.