Chan Santa Cruz or U Noh Kah Balam Nah Chan Santa Cruz is the Maya town now known as Felipe Carrillo Puerto in what is now the Mexican state of Quintana Roo. This name is often assigned to the Maya free state ruled from Chan Santa Cruz for much of the second half of the 19th century. Nonetheless, indigenous documentation including the 'Proclamation' of The State of The Cross and copious correspondence on behalf of this same state give its indigenous name as Juan, (Huaan), de la Cruz, 'The State of The Cross'.

The people of the State of the Cross are predominantly indigenous descendants of the Maya. The northern portion of the mapped area was probably included within the state of Coba during the Classic Period. One of two successors to the defunct League of Mayapan, this state held the eastern half of the Yucatán Peninsula during the decades preceding the European invasion.

Early post-invasion influences include Arawak and Carib refugees from the islands, shipwrecked Spaniards and escaped African slaves. Later, Chinese coolies fled British Honduras and settled among the 'Crusoob', (Villa Rojas 1945). More recently the state has been flooded with Mexican nationals, Haitians and Euro-American hoteliers/tourists.

Celia Cruz (October 21, 1925 – July 16, 2003) was a Cuban-American and was one of the most successful salsa performers of the 20th century, having earned twenty-three gold albums. She was renowned internationally as the "Queen of Salsa" as well as "La Guarachera de Cuba."

She spent much of her career living in New Jersey, and working in the United States and several Latin American countries. Leila Cobo of Billboard Magazine once said "Cruz is indisputably the best known and most influential female figure in the history of Cuban music."

Úrsula Hilaria Celia de la Caridad Cruz Alfonso was born on October 21, 1925 in the diverse, working-class neighborhood of Santos Suárez in Havana, Cuba. She was the second eldest of fourteen children born to Catalina Alfonso and Simón Cruz. Simón Cruz worked in the railroads as a stoker, and his wife took care of the extended family.^{[citation needed]}

While growing up in Cuba's diverse 1930s musical climate, Cruz listened to many musicians who influenced her adult career, including Fernando Collazo, Abelardo Barroso, Pablo Quevedo and Arsenio Rodríguez. Cruz also studied the words to Yoruba songs with colleague Mercedita Valdes (an Akpwon santeria singer) from Cuba and Celia made various recordings of this religious genre singing even back up for other female akpwons like Candita Batista.

Robert L. Meredith (November 8, 1945 – August 12, 2005 in Atlanta, Georgia) was a professor and innovator in the domain of quizbowl. While an assistant professor of English at the Georgia Institute of Technology, he became coach of their College Bowl team in 1980. Meredith instituted "The System", a program that Georgia Tech, and later other successful quizbowl programs, followed to develop players. A key element of the System was requiring team members to produce questions on a regular basis for practice. Meredith retired from coaching in 1989.

Meredith innovated the now standard match format of untimed games of twenty ten point toss-up questions with thirty point bonuses, with all questions on academic material, thus making him a forefather of the Academic Competition Federation. It is for primarily this reason the ACF national championship trophy is named the Meredith Cup in his honor. Doc Meredith coached Tech to three non-College Bowl, pre-ACF, national championships in the 1980s. Meredith's greatest campaign was his last in 1988-89, when Georgia Tech's 1st and 2nd teams placed first and second, respectively, at the All-American Academic Championship at the University of Tennessee.

Félix Arturo Lope de Vega y Carpio (25 November 1562 – 27 August 1635) was a Spanish playwright and poet. He was one of the key figures in the Spanish Golden Century Baroque literature. His reputation in the world of Spanish literature is second only to that of Cervantes, while the sheer volume of his literary output is unequalled, making him one of the most prolific authors in the history of literature.

Nicknamed "The Phoenix of Wits" and "Monster of Nature" (because of the sheer volume of his work) by Miguel de Cervantes, Lope de Vega renewed the Spanish theatre at a time when it was starting to become a mass cultural phenomenon. He defined the key characteristics of it, and along with Calderón de la Barca and Tirso de Molina, he took Spanish baroque theatre to its greater limits. Because of the insight, depth and ease of his plays, he is regarded among the best dramatists of Western literature, his plays still being represented worldwide. He was also one of the best lyric poets in the Spanish language, and author of various novels. Although not well known in the English-speaking world, his plays were presented in England as late as the 1660s, when diarist Samuel Pepys recorded having attended some adaptations and translations of them, although he omits mentioning the author.