William Patrick Kinsella, OC, OBC (born May 25, 1935) is a Canadian novelist and short story writer who is well known for his novel Shoeless Joe (1982), which was adapted into the movie Field of Dreams in 1989. His work has often concerned baseball, First Nations people, and other Canadian issues.

William Patrick Kinsella was born to Irish American parents John Matthew Kinsella and Olive Kinsella in Edmonton, Alberta. Kinsella was raised until he was 10 years old at a homestead near Darwell, Alberta, 60 km west of the city, home-schooled by his mother and taking correspondence courses. "I'm one of these people who woke up at age five knowing how to read and write," he says. When he was ten, the family moved to Edmonton.

He did not go to school until the fifth grade, and did not attend university until he was in his mid-30s. Kinsella was not exposed to literature in school, claiming in a 2010 interview, "One Shakespeare play and one J. M. Barrie play was the total literature of my high school years."

Coordinates: 51°30′40″N 0°11′46″W / 51.511°N 0.196°W / 51.511; -0.196

The W (Western and Paddington) postcode area, also known as the London W postcode area is a group of postcode districts covering part of central and part of west London, England, United Kingdom. The area originates from the Western (W1) and Paddington (W2-14) districts of the London postal district.

The Western district consists of the single original W1 postal district. The area it covers is of very high density development and it has been subdivided into a number of smaller postcode districts. Where districts are used for purposes other than the sorting of mail, such as use as a geographic reference and on street signs, the W1 subdivisions continue to be classed as one 'district'. In June 2000 there was a recoding of the area with the W1M, W1N, W1P, W1R, W1V, W1X and W1Y districts replaced.

Deliveries for W1 (and for WC1 and WC2) come from the Rathbone Place office. This office was a stop on the former London Post Office Railway, which has been mothballed since 2003. The Western District Office was initially located on Wimpole Street, which was also a stop on the London Post Office Railway.

Joseph Jefferson Jackson (July 16, 1887 – December 5, 1951), nicknamed "Shoeless Joe", was an American baseball player who played Major League Baseball in the early part of the 20th century. He is remembered for his performance on the field and for his association with the Black Sox Scandal, in which members of the 1919 Chicago White Sox participated in a conspiracy to fix the World Series. As a result of Jackson's association with the scandal, Kenesaw Mountain Landis, Major League Baseball's first commissioner, banned Jackson from playing after the 1920 season.

Jackson played for three different Major League teams during his 12-year career. He spent 1908–1909 as a member of the Philadelphia Athletics and 1910 with the minor league New Orleans Pelicans before joining the Cleveland Naps at the end of the 1910 season. He remained in Cleveland through the first part of the 1915; he played the remainder of the 1915 season through 1920 with the Chicago White Sox.

Jackson, who played left field for most of his career, currently has the third- highest career batting average in major league history. In 1911, Jackson hit for a .408 average. It is still the sixth-highest single-season total since 1901, which marked the beginning of the modern era for the sport. His average that year also set the record for batting average in a single season by a rookie.Babe Ruth later claimed that he modeled his hitting technique after Jackson's.

Archibald Wright "Moonlight" Graham (November 10, 1879 – August 25, 1965) was an American professional baseball player who appeared as a right fielder in a single major league game for the New York Giants on June 29, 1905. His story was popularized by Shoeless Joe, a novel by W. P. Kinsella, and the subsequent 1989 film Field of Dreams, starring Kevin Costner, and featuring Burt Lancaster and Frank Whaley as older and younger incarnations of Graham.

Graham was born in Fayetteville, North Carolina, the second of nine children born to Alexander (September 12, 1844 – November 2, 1934) and Katherine B. Sloan (March 8, 1855 – January 1, 1939) Graham. He played college ball at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and in the minor leagues for three years before joining the Giants on May 23, 1905. On June 29, the Giants were the visiting team against the Brooklyn Superbas at Washington Park. For the bottom of the eighth inning, Graham was sent in to play right field, replacing George Browne. In the top of the ninth inning, Graham was on deck when Claude Elliott flied out, resulting in the third and final out. Graham played the bottom of the ninth in right field but never came to bat. That game turned out to be his only appearance in the major leagues.

Kevin Michael Costner (born January 18, 1955) is an American actor, singer, musician, producer, director, and businessman. He has won two Academy Awards, and two Golden Globe Awards and has been nominated for three BAFTA (British Academy of Film and Television Arts) Awards. Costner's roles include Lt. John J. Dunbar in the film Dances with Wolves, Jim Garrison in JFK, Ray Kinsella in Field of Dreams, Robin Hood in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, Crash Davis in Bull Durham, Robert "Butch" Haynes in A Perfect World, Frank Farmer in The Bodyguard, Lt. Cmdr. Tom Farrell in No Way Out, and Eliot Ness in The Untouchables. Costner also founded the band Modern West, and has performed with the band since 2007.

Born in Lynwood, California, the youngest of three sons (the middle of whom died at birth). His mother, Sharon Rae (née Tedrick), was a welfare worker, and his father, William Costner, was an electrician and later utilities executive at Southern California Edison. Costner's patrilineal ancestry originates with German immigrants to North Carolina in the 1700s; he also has English and Irish ancestry, and has said that one of his ancestors had "married a Cherokee woman". Costner was raised Baptist. He attended Cabrillo Middle School and Villa Park High School. Costner was not academically inclined. Rather, he enjoyed sports, took piano lessons, wrote poetry and sang in the First Baptist Choir. He has stated that a viewing of the film How the West Was Won at the age of seven had "formed" his childhood.