George Raymond Wagner (March 24, 1915 – December 26, 1963) was an American professional wrestler best known by his ring name Gorgeous George. In the United States, during the First Golden Age of Professional Wrestling in the 1940s-1950s, Gorgeous George gained mainstream popularity and became one of the biggest stars of this period, gaining media attention for his outrageous character, which was described as flamboyant and charismatic. He was inducted into Professional Wrestling Hall of Fame in 2002 and the WWE Hall of Fame as part of the Class of 2010.

George Raymond Wagner was born March 24, 1915 in Butte, Nebraska. For a time, he and his parents lived on a farm near the village of Phoenix in Holt County and probably in Seward County before they moved to Waterloo, Iowa and later Sioux City. When George was age seven, his family moved to Houston, Texas, where he associated with kids from a tough neighborhood. As a child, he trained at the local YMCA and often staged matches against his friends. In 1929, Wagner dropped out of Milby High School at age 14, and worked odd jobs to help support his family. At this time, he competed at carnivals, where he could earn 35 cents for a win. By age 17, he was getting booked by the region’s top promoter, Morris Siegel, and in 1938, he won his first title by defeating Buck Lipscomb for Northwest Middleweight crown. Moreover, on May 19, 1939, he captured the Pacific Coast Light Heavyweight Championship.

George Szell ( /ˈsɛl/; June 7, 1897 – July 30, 1970), originally György Széll, György Endre Szél, or Georg Szell, was a Hungarian-born American conductor and composer. He is remembered today for his long and successful tenure as music director of the Cleveland Orchestra, and for the recordings of the standard classical repertoire he made in Cleveland and with other orchestras.

Szell came to Cleveland in 1946 to take over a respected if undersized orchestra, which was struggling to recover from the disruptions of World War II. By the time of his death he was credited, to quote the critic Donal Henahan, with having built it into "what many critics regarded as the world's keenest symphonic instrument." Through his recordings, Szell has remained a presence in the classical music world long after his death, and his name remains synonymous with that of the Cleveland Orchestra. While on tour with the Orchestra in the late 1980s, then-Music Director Christoph von Dohnányi remarked, "We give a great concert, and George Szell gets a great review."

George Bass (30 January 1771 - after 5 February 1803) was a British naval surgeon and explorer of Australia.

He was born on 30 January 1771 at Aswarby, a hamlet near Sleaford, Lincolnshire, the son of a tenant farmer, George Bass, and a local beauty named Sarah Nee Newman. His father died in 1777 when Bass was 6. He had attended Boston Grammar School and later trained in medicine at the hospital at Boston, Lincolnshire. At the age of 18 he was accepted in London as a member of the Company of Surgeons, and in 1794 he joined the Royal Navy as a surgeon.

He arrived in Sydney in New South Wales on HMS Reliance on 7 September 1795. Also on the voyage were Matthew Flinders, John Hunter, Bennelong, and his surgeon's assistant William Martin.

Bass had brought with him on the Reliance a small boat with an 8-foot (2.4 m) keel and 5-foot (1.5 m) beam, which he called the Tom Thumb on account of its size. In October 1795 Bass and Flinders, accompanied by William Martin sailed the Tom Thumb out of Port Jackson to Botany Bay and explored the Georges River further upstream than had been done previously by the colonists. Their reports on their return led to the settlement of Banks' Town.

Leopoldine "Leonie" Rysanek (November 14, 1926 – March 7, 1998) was an Austrian dramatic soprano.

Rysanek was born in Vienna and made her operatic debut in 1949 in Innsbruck. In 1951 the Bayreuth Festival reopened and the new leader Wieland Wagner asked her to sing Sieglinde. He was convinced that her unique, young and beautiful voice, combined with her rare acting abilities, would create a sensation. She became a star overnight, and the role of Sieglinde followed her for the rest of her career.

Her Metropolitan Opera debut came in 1959 as Lady Macbeth, replacing Maria Callas who had been "fired" from the production. She made her farewell to the Met as the Countess in The Queen of Spades in January 1996.

Her final performance was at the Salzburg Festival in August 1996, as Klytämnestra in Elektra. Over her lengthy career, she sang 299 performances of 24 roles at the Met. She starred in the Met premieres of Macbeth, Nabucco, Ariadne auf Naxos, Die Frau ohne Schatten, and Káťa Kabanová.

In 1951, she was the first Sieglinde of the new Bayreuth Festival in Die Walküre under Herbert von Karajan. From then on, she became one of the brightest stars of the new opera theatre, the German "Musikdrama". Wagner made her career, but it was perhaps as a singer of Richard Strauss's operas that she made the largest contribution to modern opera. She was the reigning Empress of Die Frau ohne Schatten and triumphed as Salome, Elektra, Chrysothemis, Ariadne, the Marschallin and Ariadne. But the Empress was a very special role for her: the opera became a part of the regular repertoire in her time, and she created the part in many opera houses, first and foremost the Met and the Paris Opera.

Jesse Woodson James (September 5, 1847 – April 3, 1882) was an American outlaw, gang leader, bank robber, train robber and murderer from the state of Missouri and the most famous member of the James-Younger Gang. Already a celebrity when he was alive, he became a legendary figure of the Wild West after his death. Some recent scholars place him in the context of regional insurgencies of ex-Confederates following the American Civil War rather than a manifestation of frontier lawlessness or alleged economic justice.

Jesse and his brother Frank James were Confederate guerrillas during the Civil War. They were accused of participating in atrocities committed against Union soldiers. After the war, as members of one gang or another, they robbed banks, stagecoaches and trains. Despite popular portrayals of James as a kind of Robin Hood, robbing from the rich and giving to the poor, there is no evidence that he and his gang used their robbery gains for anyone but themselves.

The James brothers were most active with their gang from about 1866 until 1876, when their attempted robbery of a bank in Northfield, Minnesota, resulted in the capture or deaths of several members. They continued in crime for several years, recruiting new members, but were under increasing pressure from law enforcement. On April 3, 1882, Jesse James was killed by Robert Ford, who was a member of the gang living in the James house and who was hoping to collect a state reward on James' head.