actorBorn: 3/19/1955Birthplace: Idar-Oberstein, Germany Emmy Award-winning film and television actor who gained fame as David Addison on Moonlighting (1985–89). His films include the Die Hard…
Name at birth: Willie Lewis Brown, Jr.Willie Brown was the colorful and powerful mayor of San Francisco from 1996 to 2004. The job capped a political career which included 31 years for Brown in the…
Willy Wonka is the fictional star of Roald Dahl's 1964 book Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and its 1972 sequel, Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator. Reclusive and wryly eccentric, Willie Wonka…
Wilhelm Emil "Willy" Messerschmitt was a German aircraft designer and manufacturer whose fighter plane, the Bf-109, was the pride of the Nazis during World War II. Messerschmitt built model airplanes…
Name at birth: Walter WillisonBruce Willis hit it big in Hollywood as the scrappy action hero John McClane in the 1988 terrorists-in-the-skyscraper film Die Hard. He went on to an unusual career of…
Author Connie Willis has been winning science fiction awards since the late 1980s, including Hugo Awards for the novels The Doomsday Book (1992) and To Say Nothing of the Dog (1998). Influenced by…
Gordon Willis is a cinematographer best known for his work on Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather and its sequels. Born to a couple of New York entertainers, WIllis got into filmmaking while in…
Willie Shoemaker won his first horse race when he was 17. He went on to become the most successful jockey in history, winning the Kentucky Derby four times, the Belmont Stakes five times and the…
Country music legend Willie Nelson began as a songwriter and grew into a durable troubadour of the late 20th century. Nelson wrote "Crazy" (the signature tune of Patsy Cline), "Funny How Time Slips…
Louisa May Alcott wrote Little Women, a novel for young readers that's been popular since its appearance in 1868. Born in Pennsylvania, she's most closely associated with Boston and Concord,…
