Lino Dante "Alan" Ameche (March 1, 1933 – August 8, 1988), nicknamed "The Horse", was an American football player who played six seasons with the Baltimore Colts in the National Football League after winning the Heisman Trophy in college at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He was elected to the Pro Bowl in each of his first four seasons in the league. He is famous for scoring the winning touchdown in the 1958 NFL Championship Game against the New York Giants, labeled "The Greatest Game Ever Played."
After emigrating to the United States in the late 1930s, his family returned for a year to Italy. The family then returned to Kenosha, Wisconsin, where Alan attended Mary D. Bradford High School. Alan was a cousin of noted actors Don Ameche and Jim Ameche. With colleague (and former Colts teammate) Gino Marchetti, Alan Ameche founded the Gino's Hamburgers chain. The Baltimore-based Ameche's Drive-in restaurants were named for him. Ameche died in Houston, Texas.
Ameche earned All-America honors at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where he played linebacker as well as fullback in single-platoon days. In four years as a Badger, he gained 3,212 yards, then the NCAA record, scored 25 touchdowns, and averaged 4.8 yards a carry. Ameche won the Heisman in 1954.
Mark D, born Mark Randall, is a British artist and punk musician (guitarist and songwriter). He is also associated with the Stuckist group of artists.
Mark D was born and spent his childhood in Peterborough. He now lives in Nottingham. From university onwards, Mark D (D standing for "degenerate") played in various bands including the Fat Tulips, Confetti (when he was known as David), the Pleasure Heads (when he was known as Mark Randyhead), Oscar, Servalan and Sundress, and appeared on dozens of releases. He published and edited fanzines, including the underground C86 fanzine Two Pint Take Home. He is a co-owner of Heaven Records.
The Fat Tulips were formed in 1987 and have been described as "incredibly skilled in the art of buzzing electric guitars, ferocious tempos, pristine pop melodies and lyrics that weren’t nearly as sweet as they sounded at first listen."
A few years after the Fat Tulips broke up in the mid-1990s, he started a dealership in art and antiques with his wife, Tully, focusing on work from the 1960s and 1970s, including John Piper, Stig Lindberg, Lucienne Day and John Clappison.
Thomas William "Tom" Selleck (born January 29, 1945) is an American actor and film producer. He is best known for his starring role as the private investigator Thomas Magnum in the television series Magnum, P.I. (1980s), which was based in Hawaii. He also plays Police Chief Jesse Stone in a series of made-for-TV movies based on the Robert B. Parker novels. Since 2010 he has appeared as the NYPD Police Commissioner Frank Reagan in the drama Blue Bloods on CBS-TV.
Selleck has acted in many TV roles, including Dr. Richard Burke on Friends and A.J. Cooper on Las Vegas. In addition to his series work, Selleck has appeared in more than fifty made for TV and general-release movies, including Mr. Baseball, Quigley Down Under, Lassiter and his most successful movie release Three Men and a Baby, which was the highest grossing movie in 1987.
Selleck, born in Detroit, Michigan, is the son of Martha S. (née Jagger), a homemaker; and Robert Dean Selleck, an executive and real estate investor. The family moved to Sherman Oaks, Los Angeles, California when Selleck was growing up. His siblings include brothers Robert (born 1944) and Daniel (born 1954) and sister Martha. Selleck graduated from Grant High School in 1962.
Don Ameche (May 31, 1908 – December 6, 1993) was an Academy Award winning American actor with a career spanning almost sixty years.
After touring in vaudeville, he starred in many film-biographies, including The Story of Alexander Graham Bell (1939), causing the name Ameche to be used as the slang word for a telephone.
He continued to appear on Broadway, as well as on radio and TV, where he was host and commentator for International Showtime, covering circus and ice-shows all over Europe. Ameche remained married to his wife Honore for fifty-four years, and they had six children.
Ameche was born Dominic Felix Amici in Kenosha, Wisconsin. His mother, Barbara Etta (née Hertle), was of Scottish, Irish, and German descent, and his father, Felice Ameche, was an immigrant bartender from Italy, born in Montemonaco, Ascoli Piceno, Marche, Italy whose original surname was "Amici." He had three brothers, Umberto (Bert), James (Jim Ameche), and Louis and three sisters, Jane, Elizabeth and Catherine. Ameche attended Marquette University, Loras College and the University of Wisconsin, where his cousin Alan Ameche played football and won the Heisman Trophy in 1954. Ameche had gone to university to study law but found theatricals far more interesting and so decided on a stage career.
Alexander Graham Bell (March 3, 1847 – August 2, 1922) was an eminent scientist, inventor, engineer and innovator who is credited with inventing the first practical telephone.
Bell's father, grandfather, and brother had all been associated with work on elocution and speech, and both his mother and wife were deaf, profoundly influencing Bell's life's work. His research on hearing and speech further led him to experiment with hearing devices which eventually culminated in Bell being awarded the first US patent for the telephone in 1876. In retrospect, Bell considered his most famous invention an intrusion on his real work as a scientist and refused to have a telephone in his study.
Many other inventions marked Bell's later life, including groundbreaking work in optical telecommunications, hydrofoils and aeronautics. In 1888, Bell became one of the founding members of the National Geographic Society. He has been described as one of the most influential figures in human history.
Alexander Bell was born in Edinburgh, Scotland on March 3, 1847. The family home was at 16 South Charlotte Street, and has a stone inscription, marking it as Alexander Graham Bell's birthplace. He had two brothers: Melville James Bell (1845–70) and Edward Charles Bell (1848–67). Both of his brothers died of tuberculosis. His father was Professor Alexander Melville Bell, and his mother was Eliza Grace (née Symonds). Although he was born "Alexander", at age 10, he made a plea to his father to have a middle name like his two brothers. For his 11th birthday, his father acquiesced and allowed him to adopt the middle name "Graham", chosen out of admiration for Alexander Graham, a Canadian being treated by his father and boarder who had become a family friend. To close relatives and friends he remained "Aleck" which his father continued to call him into later life.