Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis

popular name: Paul Robeson

date_of_death: January 23, 1976

age: 77

cause_of_death: Complications of a stroke

claim_to_fame: Historical Figure

best_know_for: Paul Robeson was an American actor, singer, and activist. Some of his best know work on stage included The Emperor Jones, All God's Chillun Got Wings, and Othello. Robeson best known movies include Show Boat (1936), Sanders of the River (1935), and The Proud Valley (1940). He became active in the Civil Rights Movement and other social justice campaigns. His sympathies for the Soviet Union and for communism, and his criticism of the United States government and its foreign policies, caused him to be blacklisted during the McCarthy era.

popular name: Eddie Rickenbacker

date_of_death: July 23, 1973

age: 82

cause_of_death: Pneumonia

claim_to_fame: Historical Figure

best_know_for: Captain Edward V. Rickenbacker was called America’s Ace of Aces during World War I, the highest scorer of American aerial victories over the Germans. He could just as easily have been labeled the ‘luckiest man alive,’ however, since he survived — by his own count — 135 brushes with death during his exciting lifetime. With 26 aerial victories, he was the United States' most successful fighter ace in the war and is considered to have received the most awards for valor by an American during the war. He was also a race car driver, an automotive designer, a government consultant in military matters and a pioneer in air transportation, particularly as the long-time head of Eastern Air Lines. At one time he even owned and raced at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Towards the end of his life as CEO of Eastern Air Lines, the company was the most profitable airline in the postwar era. However during the late 1950s Eastern Air Lines' fortunes declined, and Rickenbacker was forced out of his position as CEO in 1959. Rickenbacker also resigned as the chairman of the board in 1963, at the age of 73. After that, Captain and Mrs. Rickenbacker traveled extensively for a number of years and in the 1960s, Rickenbacker became a well-known speaker, sharing shared his vision for the future of technology and commerce. Upon his death, he was buried at Green Lawn Cemetery in Columbus, Ohio.

popular name: Patrick J. Kennedy

date_of_death: May 18, 1929

age: 71

cause_of_death: Liver disease

claim_to_fame: Historical Figure

best_know_for: Patrick Joseph Kennedy (P.J. to his friends and grandfather to President John F. Kennedy) was the son of Irish immigrants. His father, Patrick Kennedy, died of cholera ten months after he was born while his mother, Bridget Kennedy, who also had three daughters, found work as a clerk in a shop. Working in the shipyards after high school, Kennedy borrowed money from his mother and sisters to purchase a run-down saloon in a poor area of Boston. Although he was himself a teetotaler, the business venture was a success and he was soon able to obtain a second saloon. Kennedy purchased a third bar in an upscale East Boston hotel, the Maverick House. Before he was thirty, his growing prosperity allowed him to buy a whiskey and fine liquors importing business, P.J. Kennedy and Company. In 1887 Kennedy married Mary Augusta Hickey, the daughter of a prosperous businessman in the city. A member of the Democratic Party Kennedy was elected to the Massachusetts Senate in 1892 where he worked behind the scenes as a party boss. After leaving state politics, Kennedy held various appointed positions in the city including elections commissioner, fire commissioner, and wire (electricity) commissioner. He continued his business career by helping to incorporate two Boston financial institutions, the Columbia Trust Company and the Sumner Savings Bank.