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British-born Henry Travers was a veteran of the English stage before emigrating to the U.S. in 1917. He gained more stage experience there on Broadway working with the Theatre Guild, and began his long film career with Reunion in Vienna (1933). Travers' kindly, grandfatherly demeanor became familiar to filmgoers over the next 25 years, especially in films like High Sierra (1940), where he played Joan Leslie's kindly but slyly observant uncle, and the generous Mr. Bogardus in The Bells of St. Mary's (1945), but it's as the somewhat befuddled angel Clarence Oddbody assigned to James Stewart in the classic It's a Wonderful Life (1946) that Travers will forever be known. After a long and successful career, he retired from the screen in 1949, and died in Hollywood in 1965.

A dainty but nevertheless feisty character actress, southern-bred (Mary) Elizabeth Patterson was born in Savannah, Tennessee, on November 22, 1874, and started her career over her strict parent's objections. She became a member of Chicago's Ben Greet Players, performing Shakespeare at the turn of the century. This followed college at Martin College where she studied music, elocution and English, and post-graduate work at Columbia Institute in Columbia, Tennessee.

Elizabeth eventually traveled for well over a decade in stock tours before given the opportunity to debut on Broadway with the short-lived play "Everyman" in 1913. She continued in such other Broadway comedies and dramas as "The Family Exit (1917), "The Piper" (1920), "Magnolia" (1923), "The Book of Charm" (1925), "Spellbound" (1927), "Rope" (1928), "The Marriage Bed" (1929), "Her Master's Voice" (1933), "Yankee Point" (1942), "But Not Goodbye" (1944) and "His and Hers" (1954).

By the time the veteran player finally advanced to the screen, she was 51 years of age. Starting with the silent films The Boy Friend (1926) and The Return of Peter Grimm (1926), she would be best recalled for her series of careworn ladies, playing a host of dressed-down, small-town folk -- grannies, aunts, spinsters, gossips, teachers, frontier women -- and other sweet-and-sour types. She added greatly to the atmosphere of such popular talking films as The Cat Creeps (1930), Penrod and Sam (1931), A Bill of Divorcement (1932), Dinner at Eight (1933), Doctor Bull (1933), So Red the Rose (1935), High, Wide and Handsome (1937), Bulldog Drummond's Peril (1938) (and series: as Aunt Blanche), Anne of Windy Poplars (1940), The Cat and the Canary (1939), Remember the Night (1939), Tobacco Road (1941) (her most famous film role: as Ada Lister), Her Cardboard Lover (1942), I Married a Witch (1942), Hail the Conquering Hero (1944), Out of the Blue (1947), The Shocking Miss Pilgrim (1947), Little Women (1949), Intruder in the Dust (1949), Pal Joey (1957), and her final, Tall Story (1960).

In the television arena, she appeared on several anthology shows ("Armstrong Circle Theatre," "Chevron Theatre," "Four Star Playhouse," "General Electric Theatre," "Pulitzer Prize Playhouse") and such regular shows as "The Adventures of Superman," "The Adventures of Jim Bowie," "77 Sunset Strip" and "Playhouse 90." She became a familiar household face, however, as the elderly neighbor and part-time babysitter, Mrs. Trumbull, on the I Love Lucy (1951) TV series.

The never-married Elizabeth, who lived at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel her entire TV and film career, died on January 31, 1966, after contracting pneumonia. The 91-year-old lady was buried in a hometown cemetery.

The son of Colonel H.G. Toler, breeder of trotting horses, Sidney Toler acted on stage by the time he was seven years old. He was an established star of the theater by the 1890s, long before his career in motion pictures began. He was also active as a playwright and had a good enough voice to be cast as a lead baritone with an operatic stock company at the Orpheum Theatre in New York. He made his Broadway debut in 'The Office Boy' in 1903 and for the next nine years went on the road with his own touring acting troupes. His prowess as a writer equaled that of his performances with two of his plays opening on Broadway while a third ('The Man They Left Behind') was enacted by no less than eighteen different stock companies in a single week nationwide.

Frequently under the auspices of theatrical impresario David Belasco, Sidney starred in Broadway comedy for twelve years (1918-30). Having decided to abandon his successful stage career, he made the move to Hollywood and played supporting roles as a free-lance actor for several years, often cast as police officers, bankers or butlers.

In the mid-1930s, he joined 20th Century Fox under contract. The death of Charlie Chan impersonator Warner Oland in 1938 presented him with an opportunity for a leading role and he successfully auditioned for the part among 34 candidates screen-tested. His expansive, avuncular personality made Sidney, arguably, the most popular incarnation of the famous oriental detective with a noticeably strong line in sarcastic wit -- usually directed at 'Number Two Son'. He played Chan in 22 feature films beginning with Charlie Chan in Honolulu (1938), and ending with The Trap (1946). The first 11 Charlie Chan outings were produced by 20th Century Fox Studios. All of them were box office hits. However, by 1942, the quality of the series began to decline. With America's entry into the Second World War, overseas markets began to dwindle. Fox retired the series, but two years later, in 1944, sold the character rights to the 'poverty row' company Monogram Pictures. This inevitably resulted in poorer scripts and lower production values.

Moreover, after years of being typecast as Charlie Chan and given few opportunities to expand his range as an actor, Sidney's performances also became less defined and more automatic. While filming the last three Charlie Chan installments (Shadows Over Chinatown (1946), Dangerous Money (1946), and The Trap (1946)), the actor became increasingly incapacitated by ill-health which resulted in extra screen time for his co-stars Mantan Moreland and Victor Sen Yung. After being bedridden for several months, he passed away at his Hollywood home from intestinal cancer on February 12, 1947 at age 72.

Charles Brown Middleton was born 7th October 1879. His father was a military man with a strong sense of discipline which conflicted with Charles' own outlook on how to live his life so when 12 he ran away to join a circus and looked after the elephants before moving into performing in dramatic vignettes between traditional acts. At 18 he'd formed his own stock company which toured the South performing Shakespeare and self penned melodramas. He worked his way onto the Vaudeville circuit earning a reputation as a good actor which is how he met Stan Laurel. He appeared in some silent films in the 20's but his career took off with sound as stage actors were in demand due to their experience of vocal performance. He had a very distinctive voice which marked him out from the competition.He appeared with 3 great film comedy teams - Laurel and Hardy, The Marx Brothers and the Three Stooges. He was often cast as a 'Heavy' and appeared in a lot of serials - Di ck Tracy, Batman, and Black Raven but is probably best remembered as Ming the Merciless in 3 Flash Gordon serials of the 30's. He was never under contract which allowed him to choose his own roles but a succession of unwise career choices led to less work in his later years so for every good role there were some bad ones. In his final years he took to the stage touring theatres showing clips from his films and talking about his work. On 19th April 1949 he was admitted to hospital and had an operation for gangrene on his right foot and died on the 22nd with cause of death being given as arteriosclerotic heart disease which he'd been suffering from for 20 years.

You would think stage and film veteran Grant Mitchell was born to play stern authoritarians; his father after all was General John Grant Mitchell. But Mitchell would actually be better known for his portrayals of harangued husbands, bemused dads and bilious executives in 30s and 40s films. Born in Columbus, Ohio and a Yale post graduate at Harvard Law, Mitchell gave up his law practice to become an actor and made his stage debut at age 27. He appeared in many leads on Broadway in such plays as "It Pays to Advertise," "The Champion," "The Whole Town's Talking" and "The Baby Cyclone," the last of which was specially written for him by George M. Cohan (see "Other Works"). Mitchell's screen career officially got off the ground with the advent of sound, though he did show up in a couple of silents. The beefy, balding actor appeared primarily in "B" films, and actually had a rare lead in the totally forgotten Father Is a Prince (1940). From time to time, however, he enjoyed being a part of "A" quality classic films such as Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939), The Man Who Came to Dinner (1941), Laura (1944) and Arsenic and Old Lace (1944). Unmarried, he died at age 82 in 1957.

Born in Blenheim Palace, the residence of his grandfather, the 7th Duke of Marlborough. His father was the Duke's third son, Lord Randolph Churchill. His mother, Jennie Jerome, was the daughter of an American financier.

After passing through famous English public schools such as Harrow, he went on to fulfill his ambition for a life in the army. He fought in various parts of the British Empire until in 1900 when he won the Conservative seat in Oldham in the general election. From here until 1929 he held various offices in British Parliament.

The 1930s saw fascism grow in strength throughout Europe with dictators such as Italy's Benito Mussolini, Germany's Adolf Hitler and Spain's Francisco Franco. When the UK and France declared war on Germany in 1939, Neville Chamberlain was British Prime Minister. On May 10, 1940 Hitler's forces invaded Holland, Belgium, and Luxembourg in order to invade France. Chamberlain was widely blamed for the failed British invasion of Norway, although realistically Churchill as First Lord of the Admiralty was largely to blame for the failure of the Norwegian Campaign. Chamberlain recommended the King should ask Churchill to succeed him as Prime Minister. He made a speech on 13 May: "You ask: 'What is our policy?' I will say: 'It is to wage war by sea, land and air, with all our might and with all the strength that God can give us: to wage war against a monstrous tyranny, never surpassed in the dark lamentable catalog of human crime.' That is our policy. You ask: 'What is our aim?' I can answer in one word: 'Victory! Victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory however long and hard the road may be; for without victory there is no survival.'"

The United States officially entered the war after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. The US's participation was excellent news to Churchill and after success on D-Day and as the Nazi forces were gradually forced back, the war in Europe gradually drew to a close. He lost the 1945 General Election by a landslide, lost again in 1950, but was re-elected as Prime Minister in 1951 despite receiving fewer votes than Labour. Due to deteriorating health he retired in 1955. He died at Hyde Park Gate, London, on January 24, 1965 at the age of 90. He had succeeded in the uniting of thought and deed. He had succeeded in uniting everyone in the common purpose, inspiring them with fortitude and strength to face whatever hardships that would have to be incurred in the process of first surviving and ultimately winning the war. His daughter Mary wrote to him on his death bed: "I owe you what every Englishman, woman, and child owes you - liberty itself."

As one of the most significant British politicians of the 20th century, Churchill remains one of the country's most widely recognized figures. He has been played by an almost incalculable number of actors on screen, but three of the most notable and acclaimed screen portrayals were by Robert Hardy in Winston Churchill: The Wilderness Years (1981) (which covers Churchill's life from 1929 to 1939), Albert Finney in The Gathering Storm (2002) (also set in the 1930s before he became Prime Minister) and Gary Oldman in Darkest Hour (2017) (set in May 1940).

As well as a politician, Churchill was also an author and a prolific artist, who painted over 500 canvases, exhibited at the Royal Academy and at Paris, and sold paintings.

Stalwart character actor Henry Kolker appeared on the Broadway stage from 1904, comedy being his forte early on. Later, as a leading man in romantic dramas, he partnered famous stars like Alla Nazimova. Moving on to films in 1914 as actor/director, he became noted in particular for directing Disraeli (1921), starring George Arliss (now a lost film, except for one reel). Plagued by ill-health and much publicised marital problems, Kolker's star had waned somewhat by the end of the silent era. However, he continued to remain in demand as a supporting actor, generally typecast as stern judges, priests, heavy fathers and cuckolded husbands. Usually scowling and sombre, he chided and glowered over stars like Melvyn Douglas, Gary Cooper and Katharine Hepburn (arguably his best role being the latter's father, Edward Seton, in Holiday (1938)). He was equally effective in the role of banker John Fair in The Crash (1932), and as Friar Laurence in George Cukor's Romeo and Juliet (1936). Kolker remained a prolific fixture on screen throughout the 1930's, managing to tally up in excess of twenty appearances each, for 1934 and 1935 alone.

Peter Robinson was born the son of Norwegian immigrants. He stated that during his childhood, he had a normal appearance until his early teens when his weight began to drop rapidly. He first went on exhibition in 1895, working at Coney Island and later Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus.

Robinson was married twice, both times to circus fat ladies. He married "Sweet Adaline" la France, his co-star in the Blue Ribbon Show in 1914. At the time of their marriage in Troy, New York, Pete (then known as "The Cigarette Fiend") was just 49 pounds and Adeline was 600. In fact, she was too large to enter the courtroom, so the judge performed the ceremony in the hallway. They honeymooned in Niagara Falls, but the marriage did not last.

In 1916, while with Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus. 37-year old, 58 lb. Robinson married for the second time at Madison Square Garden to 18-year-old Helen "Bunny" Smith (1898-1951). a 467-pound Coney Island fat lady. Bunny later related that he had been involved with no fewer than eight fat women before he married her. In their circus act, Pete played to a patriotic audience during World War I by claiming that Bunny had tried to fatten him up with her cooking so he could serve in the Army, although in reality he was too old for the service.

Apparently, over the years, the two were "married" over and over again for circus promotions purposes, and as an example, here is an article from the Indiana Evening Gazette dated November 26, 1924, eight years after they were originally married:

"The living skeleton has married the fat lady. Pete Robinson, who is 45 years old and weighs 58 pounds soaking wet, and Baby Bunny Smith, aged 23, weight 467, got the necessary papers and were married in the Municipal Building. The bridegroom wore a striped shirt, one stripe on each side. The witnesses were Mr. and Mrs. Bernard Harris, in whose home the bride and bridegroom have occupied rooms. Living skeletons have been marrying fat ladies in circuses ever since Barnum had a show. The romance of Baby and Pete started in a Barnum & Bailey show eight years ago. Mrs. Harris said to reporters after giving the newlyweds her blessing, 'I never had easier people to feed. They are wonderful. She makes up for what he leaves. And he makes up for what she doesn't do. They are certainly ideally suited.'"

Pete and Bunny seemed to find true love together, as friends reported that they were quite devoted to each other, and eventually had two children. They entertained crowds with a comical couples' dance on the Coney Island sideshow stage called Dreamland, and in 1928, Pete toured with a revue called "A Night at Coney Island," which performed at vaudeville theaters around the country, a rare experiment in those days.

Robinson only screen appearance was in Tod Browning's Freaks (1932) as a circus performer who is overjoyed as he celebrates the fact that his wife, the Bearded Lady (Olga Roderick) has just given birth to their child, who is also bearded. By all accounts, his character in the film, the chatty, good-natured fellow who plays poker in the back of the tent and celebrates his baby's birth with a round of fine cigars, was not much of a stretch for Pete. He was a jovial man who loved to stubbornly argue about politics, and was rumored to be a classically trained Shakespearian actor and an expert harmonica player.

Pete Robinson died in 1947 at the age of 72.

Emma Dunn was a much noted stage actress before turning to films. She worked with such theatre luminaries as Richard Mansfield, Frances Starr, James Ellison and Blanche Yurka. She appeared in 3 productions under the direction of the legendary David Belasco. Miss Dunn also authored 2 books regarding diction and voice quality.

Contrary to his familiar image, Clarence Kolb started out as one half of a vaudeville comedy act, Kolb and Dill. He made a few shorts in 1916 and a feature in 1917, but went back to vaudeville and the stage immediately thereafter, and did not return to films until the late 1930s. His stern, authoritarian looks and booming voice fit the irascible, bombastic politicians and businessmen--usually crooked to a greater or lesser degree--he played so well. Best remembered as the fast-talking, corrupt mayor in the classic His Girl Friday (1940) and Mr. Honeywell, Vern Albright's boss, in the TV series My Little Margie (1952).

Popular British novelist, playwright, short-story writer and the highest-paid author in the world in the 1930s, Somerset Maugham graduated in 1897 from St. Thomas' Medical School and qualified as a doctor, but abandoned medicine after the success of his first novels and plays. During World War I he worked as a secret agent and in 1928 settled in Cap Ferrat in France, from where he made journeys all over the world. Maugham's spy novel "Ashenden; or The British Agent" (1928) is partly based on his own experiences in the secret service. In making the transition from secret agent to writer, Maugham carried on in the tradition of such classic writers as Christopher Marlowe, Ben Johnson and Daniel Defoe to such contemporary writers as Graham Greene, John le Carré, John Dickson Carr, Alec Waugh and Ted Allbeury. Maugham's skill in handling plot is compared by critics to that of Guy de Maupassant. In many of Maugham's novels the surroundings are international and the stories are told in a clear, economical style with a cynical or resigned undertone. Although Maugham was successful as an author he was never knighted and his relationship with Gerald Haxton, his secretary, has been subject to speculation.

American character actress famed for roles as mothers. Born in a Philadelphia suburb as Mary Kennevan, she became a schoolteacher, but soon gave it up for work as an actress in touring companies. She married actor William Carr and toured extensively with his company. After the turn of the century, he became involved in film production as both an actor and director, and he brought Mary and their six children into the film business with him. Mary made her film debut in 1916, but it was her appearance in Over the Hill to the Poorhouse (1920) which made her a success in movies. It was a tremendous success due in large part to her touching portrayal of a poverty-stricken mother. She followed it with similar roles in scores of films throughout the silent period. A fallow period arrived with the talkies, and Carr found herself nearly destitute, but publicity about her status rallied help to her cause and she found help and occasional work. She spent her later years appearing infrequently, often in films directed by her son Thomas Carr. She died at the age of 99 in November 1973.

The great American escape artist and magician Houdini (immortalized by a memorable performance by Tony Curtis in the eponymous 1953 film) was born Erich Weiss on March 24, 1874 in Budapest, Hungary, though he often gave his birthplace as Appleton, Wisconsin, where he was raised. One of five brothers and one daughter born to rabbi Samuel Weiss and his wife Cecilia, the future Houdini was four years old when his parents emigrated to the U.S., where Weiss, as "Harry Houdini", became one of the major celebrities of the first age dominated by the mass media.

His boyhood was spent in poverty and, when he was 17, he conjured up a magic act with his friend Jack Hayman, in order to escape the poverty and anonymity of manual labor which would likely have been his lot in life. Young Erich had been fascinated with magic since he was a young lad, when he was in the audience of a magic show put on by a traveling magician named Dr. Lynch. Billing themselves as the "Houdini Bros." in tribute to French magician Jean-Eugène Robert-Houdin, Erich Weiss became an entertainer, though it took him some seven years to catch on.

Weiss and Hayman specialized in the Crate Escape (eventually known as Metamorphosis or The Substitution Trunk), and Houdini's brother Theodore replaced Hayman when he became uninterested in the act. Eventually, Theodore -- billed as Hardeen -- was replaced by Wilhemina Rahner (known as Bess), the woman "Harry Houdini" would eventually marry. The marriage on June 22, 1894 caused a conflict with his Jewish family as Bess was a Roman Catholic. They married in secret, then again at a synagogue and in a Catholic church to please both of their families.

While developing his act, Houdini was not above the old carny trick of posing as a spirit medium, making the rounds of the town clerk's office and nearby cemeteries in order to provide "messages from beyond". In 1896, while visiting a doctor friend in Nova Scotia, he saw his first strait jacket, which gave him the idea of developing an act in which he would escape from it.

Houdini finally hit the big-time when he was 24 years old with his Challenge Act in 1898, while he was making the rounds of vaudeville. Houdini's Challenge Act consisted of him escaping from a pair of handcuffs produced by an audience member. Eventually, this evolved into escapes from strait jackets, boxes, crates, safes, and other instruments and devices (such as his Water Torture Cell), as well as from jail cells. Houdini was also adept at escaping from being "buried alive". Hand-cuffed and strait-jacketed, he could escape while being hung upside down from a crane, or while lowered from a bridge, or even make his escape from padlocked crates lowered into a river.

Houdini also became famous as a debunker of mediums and "experts" of the paranormal, but this was done in hope he could find an actual medium that could communicate with the dead so that he could communicate with his beloved mother Cecilia after she passed away. He became quite famous in the ragtime age of the first quarter of the last century, even appearing in motion pictures produced by his own company.

Harry Houdini, the greatest magician ever produced by America, died in Detroit, Michigan during a national tour. The cause of death officially was peritonitis from a ruptured appendix. His death came nine days after having been punched in the stomach during the Canadian leg of the tour by J. Gordon Whitehead, a McGill University student who was testing Houdini's famed ability to take body blows. Always the trouper, Houdini had soldiered on despite stomach pains. (Early during the tour, he had broken an ankle but did not let it stop him or the tour.) His wife Bess, to whom Houdini left his half-million dollar estate, collected a double indemnity on his life insurance policy, as the blow was considered to have shortened the great magician's life and contributed to his premature death at the age of 52.

The date of his death was October 31, 1926 -- Halloween, one of three days (October 31-November 2) of Samhain, the Celtic New Year, when the veil between the living and the dead allegedly is at its thinnest and the living can make contact with the dead. Annually on Halloween from 1927 to 1937, Bess held a séance to try to contact her departed husband. She did not succeed, though she helped keep the memory of her husband alive in the American consciousness. Even today, magicians worldwide conduct séances on Halloween in an effort to contact the late escapologist.

Nance O'Neil was born on 8 October 1874 in Oakland, California, USA. She was an actress, known for Kreutzer Sonata (1915), Princess Romanoff (1915) and Hedda Gabler (1917). She was married to Alfred Hickman. She died on 7 February 1965 in Englewood, New Jersey, USA.

The second in a family of ten, his father Henry farmed at Kilkea. His mother Henrietta was descended from the Fitzmaurices, a family which had been in Kerry since the Norman times in the 13th century. In 1880 when Ernest was six his father gave up farming and went to Trinity College Dublin, and qualified to be a doctor. The family lived at 35 Marlborough Road in Dublin and in 1884 they moved to Sydenham in South London where Henry practiced for 30 years.

After attending school at Dulwich College as a day boy Ernest, aged 16, joined the Merchant Navy. After 10 years he gave that up and joined a British Expedition led by Captain Robert Falcon Scott to try and be the first to reach the South Pole. In the summer of 1901 the ship , The Discovery departed for the Antarctic. On 30th December 1902 Scott, Shackleton and Edward Wilson FZS ("Uncle Bill") reached within 400 miles of the South Pole, the furthest South yet achieved by anybody. Shackleton was invalided on the return journey and was sent home early. His experience on this expedition then spurred Shackleton on, to have a go at reaching the South Pole himself. In 1904 after his return he married Emily Dorman, they had three children Raymond, Cecily and Edward.

Next came the Nimrod expedition. In March 1907 Shackleton outlined his own trip, which he organized himself with the minimum of official support. The Expedition was to leave New Zealand in 1908. The ship chosen was a sealing ship which generally worked from Newfoundland. It was brought down and arrived in London in mid-June 1907. The Queen presented Shackleton with a Union Jack to carry on the sledge journey. They ship left for New Zealand on the 7th of August. The Commonwealth Government gave Shackleton £5000 and the New Zealand Government gave him £1000 and agreed to pay for half of the cost of towing the ship down to the Antarctic Circle to save coal for the journey that lay ahead. They entered the Ross Sea on January 16th. On the 28th of January the ship froze in the ice. The next day they lowered the motorcar onto the ice pack, the first automobile on the Antarctic Continent. The team set up the hut they had brought with them and the men crammed in. The weather began to close in and the sun to set. On the 29th of October 1908 Shackleton, Adams, Marshall and Frank Wild headed for the South Pole, a 1700 mile round trip. The other men had set up many depots for the journey using the motorcar for several of them. The team began to run low on rations shot the ponies for food. On the 9th of January 1909 they reached a new furthest south - just 97 miles from the South Pole. They had to turn around due to lack of food.

After the Norwegian Roald Amundsen (December 1911) and Scott (January 1912) had reached the South Pole, Shackleton thought up and attempted to carry out another great plan - to cross the 2000 mile Antarctic continent. This trip was a very successful failure. The team of 28 men and 68 dogs never set foot on the continent. Shackleton's ship the "Endurance" was trapped in the ice in the Weddell Sea for 11 months, from January 1915 until it was squashed and sank in November 1915, leaving 28 men on the ice with 3 small ship's boats. They then spent 5 ( admittedly summer) months on an iceberg floating away from the continent. With great good fortune they landed on Elephant Island on the 15th of April 1916. It is a small godforsaken island of rock and ice with a few penguins and seals for food. So there they were in April 1916, lost to the civilized world, and heading into an Antarctic winter. Losing no time Shackleton's next move was to be one of the greatest small boat journeys ever made. Shackleton and 5 others set off in the 22 foot boat the "James Caird" on an 800 mile journey across one of the roughest seas in the world to island of South Georgia to get help. Tim McCarthy first spotted South Georgia, 15 days after they had left Elephant Island. Their extraordinary journey was not yet over - to reach help, Shackleton, Tom Crean and Frank Worsley then had to cross the mountains, glaciers and snowfields of South Georgia to get to the whaling station at Stromness. Three and a half months later, at the fourth attempt, Shackleton, in a Chilean tug the "Yelcho' rescued the remaining 22 crew on Elephant Island on the 30th August 1916. It was amazing that all the crew had survived. In December Shackleton left New Zealand on the Aurora to rescue the Ross Sea Party from Cape Royds - on the other side of the Antarctic , this party had successfully laid food depots along the Ross Ice Shelf towards the South Pole. Shackleton had intended to use these as he crossed the Continent from the Weddell Sea side.

The 1921 trip on the Quest was his final journey. He died of a heart attack in the early hours of the 5th January 1922 shortly after the start of the expedition, at Grytviken in South Georgia where he was buried. A few months later on their journey home the crew of the Quest erected a cross at King Edward Point, across the bay from the cemetery where their "Boss" lies buried.

Helen Haye was born on 28 August 1874 in Assam Province, British India. She was an actress, known for The Frightened Lady (1940), The 39 Steps (1935) and Drake the Pirate (1935). She was married to Ernest Attenborough. She died on 1 September 1957 in London, England, UK.

Gustav Holst was born on 21 September 1874 in Pittville, Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, England, UK. He was a composer and writer, known for Knowing (2009), The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976) and The Vast of Night (2019). He was married to Isobel Harrison. He died on 25 May 1934 in Ealing, Middlesex, London, England, UK.

Robert Dinesen was born on 23 October 1874 in Denmark. He was a director and actor, known for The Four Devils (1911), Malva (1924) and Die Feuertänzerin (1925). He was married to Margarete Schön, Marie Dinesen and Johanne. He died on 8 March 1972.

Paul Wegener was born in Arnoldsdorf, West Prussia, part of the German Empire. His birthplace is currently part of Poland, under the name "Jarantowice". Wegener's family included a number of scientists, the most notable being his cousin Alfred Wegener (1880-1930). Alfred is remembered as the originator of the theory of continental drift.

Paul has no known relation to another Paul Wegener (1908-1993), who served as a Nazi Party official and an officer of the Schutzstaffel (SS).

Paul Wegener initially followed legal studies in college, but dropped out in order to become a theatrical actor. By 1906, he was part of an acting troupe led by Max Reinhardt (1873-1943). Reinhardt went on to become a film director. By 1912, Wegener himself had become interested in the film medium, and sought roles as a film actor.

In 1913, Wegener heard of an old Jewish legend, concerning the Golem. He wanted to adapt the legend into film, and started co-writing a script with Henrik Galeen (1881-1949). Their script was adapted into the film "The Golem" (1915), with Wegener and Galeen serving as the two co-directors. The film was a success and established Wegener as a celebrated figure in German cinema. Wegener returned to adapting the Golem legend into film, by directing a parody film in 1917 and the more serious "The Golem: How He Came into the World" (1920). The 1920 film remains one of the classics of German cinema. Wegener's other films often reflected his personal interests, such as trick photography, the supernatural, and mysticism.

He continued his film career into the 1930s, and made the transition from silent films to sound films. Under the Nazi regime (1933-1945), several actors and directors faced persecution or exile. Wegener instead found himself favored by the regime and appeared regularly in Nazi propaganda films of the 1940s. Wegener personally disliked the regime (which had persecuted a number of his friends and associates) and reputedly financed a number of German resistance groups.

In 1945, with World War II over and Berlin in ruins, Wegener took initiative as president of an organization intended to improve the living standards for surviving citizens of Berlin. He continued to appear in theatrical productions from 1945 to 1948, although he was suffering from an increasingly poor health.

In July 1948, Wegener collapsed on stage during a theatrical performance. The curtain was brought down and the rest of the performance was canceled. It was his last acting role, as he retired in an attempt to recuperate. He died in his sleep in September 1948. He was survived by his last wife Lyda Salmonova (1889-1968).

Charles Waldron was born on 23 December 1874 in Waterford, New York, USA. He was an actor, known for The Big Sleep (1946), Mademoiselle Fifi (1944) and Stranger on the Third Floor (1940). He was married to May King. He died on 4 March 1946 in Hollywood, California, USA.

Prolific English poet, novelist, essayist G (ilbert) K(eith) Chesterton was born in London on 29 May 1874. He was traditional, extolling the virtues of the 'little man', and the romantic, pre-modern past. He rejected the experimental in art as well as life, and distrusted the state and the modern world. His _Father Brown series of detective novels center around a humble but clever Anglican Catholic priest; Chesterton converted to Catholicism at the age of 48. He was considered somewhat eccentric, idiosyncratic, and was fiercely opinionated. George Bernard Shaw disliked his work, calling him "a freak of French nature", and various men and women of letters disdained the comparative gaudiness of his thought and his work, and his unfashionable political conservatism. Nonetheless he was popular, and beloved by many. He died on 14 June 1936, the same year his autobiography was published.

American leading man of silent pictures who specialized in Westerns. His mother and father were, respectively, a singer and an actor, and he and his younger brother William Farnum were introduced to the theatre at an early age. Raised in Maine, Dustin attended the East Maine Conference Seminary, but left school to go on the stage at the age of fifteen. With his brother, he formed a vaudeville act consisting largely of tumbling and wrestling. He spent several years touring in stock companies before making a great success in the play "Arizona" in New York. After a number of Broadway hits, he went to Cuba in 1913 to star in a film, Soldiers of Fortune (1914). Soon thereafter, Cecil B. DeMille gave Farnum the leading role in the film version of one of Farnum's Broadway hits, "The Squaw Man." He followed this smash hit with a number of film versions of plays he had starred in on Broadway. His brother William had himself become a big star in pictures, and the two of them signed contracts with the Fox Film Corporation. Although Dustin Farnum played a wide variety of roles, he tended toward Westerns and became one of the biggest stars of the genre. At the age of fifty-two, Farnum retired from films and, but for a few stage roles, lived quietly with his third wife, actress Winifred Kingston for three years, until his death in 1929 from kidney failure.

George Irving was born on 5 October 1874 in New York City, New York, USA. He was an actor and director, known for Bringing Up Baby (1938), Man Power (1927) and The Landloper (1918). He was married to Mary Katherine Gilman. He died on 11 September 1961 in Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, USA.

Chief Many Treaties was born on 11 April 1874 in Montana, USA. He was an actor, known for Flaming Frontiers (1938), Buffalo Bill Rides Again (1947) and Go West, Young Lady (1941). He died on 29 February 1948 in Los Angeles, California, USA.

Fred Niblo entered films in 1917 after two decades as a touring actor in vaudeville and one-time manager of 'The Four Cohans' (he married Josephine Cohan, the sister of George M. Cohan). He made his film debut with two early Australian silent films in 1916. He worked for Thomas H. Ince from 1917 as producer-director, many of his films starring his second wife, Australian actress Enid Bennett. Niblo joined Paramount under a three-year contract from 1918-21 and then settled at MGM (1923-31). During this period, his chief claim to fame rests on directing the epic Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ (1925), filmed in Italy (though completed in California) at the (then) staggering cost of $4 million. Niblo was brought in by Louis B. Mayer to replace director Charles Brabin after the production ran into financial difficulties.He not only rescued it but made it into one of the biggest blockbusters of the decade. However, it was second-unit director B. Reeves Eason who deserves credit for the famous chariot race.

In 1926 Niblo replaced Swedish director Mauritz Stiller who had a disagreement with producer Irving Thalberg, on Greta Garbo's The Temptress (1926). This, alongside Camille (1926) and The Mysterious Lady (1928), were his last successes. His career failed to survive the transition to sound and even a stint in England could not resuscitate it. After a few small parts as an actor, Niblo slipped quietly into relative obscurity in 1943.